#i forgot to post this yesterday but the times app was being weird | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

charincharge · 4 years ago

Text

Cruel Summer, Epilogue

cruel summer masterlist

AN: I swore to you I would have this posted before I moved, and I DID (I leave in 11 hours for my cross country drive). Sorry this took forever, I pretty much wrote... a 10k word sequel.

It seems that fate enjoys playing cosmic jokes on Rowan Whitethorn when it comes to the first day of summer.

He and Aelin were supposed to take off for Terrasen yesterday, in order to make it to opening day at the park. Then, after closing, he was going to take Aelin down to the water, beneath the docks, where they’d kissed for the first time. It was going to be perfect. Just the two of them, reunited by the water, watching the sun dip below the horizon, ready for a new summer of memories – this time to be made together. But today was a piece of shit, and everything had gone to shambles. With the app formally launching this week, Rowan’s office was in crunch mode. He tried to escape, but was held back with last minute bugs to fix. He sent Aelin off, telling her he’d meet her there as soon as he was freed from work. But before he knew it, yesterday turned into noon today. And somehow noon turned into five. And then to six. At seven, Rowan finally put his foot down and insisted he would answer any questions from the road. He’d be working remotely all summer anyway. He’d dictate code for them over the phone, if they needed. And they had. His front dash rings with an incoming call from Aelin as he speeds along the interstate, praying to the gods he doesn’t get pulled over. Although with the way his day is going, he wouldn’t be surprised. He sighs loudly in greeting.

“That bad, huh?” Aelin’s sleepy voice comes through the speakers. It’s already midnight, and he’s sure she’s about to fall asleep any second.

“I’ve had about six calls with Darrow,” Rowan sighs. He doesn’t really mind – he loves his job, and loves being part of this team. But, his boss’s perfectionist tendencies have him working long after the clock stops. “I’m so tired,” he complains. “Oh no,” Aelin coddles him. “How far away are you?” Rowan glances at his navigation. “Three hours out. If I don’t hit any more snags.” Aelin chuckles softly. “Yeah, you didn’t forget anything else important, did you?” Rowan groans, thinking of his absolute incompetence as a human. Maybe if he’d been less flustered about rushing out of work and heading to Terrasen, he wouldn’t have made this insane mistake. Nearly an hour on the road, Rowan realized he’d forgotten the most important item he needed this summer. Unconsciously, Rowan pats at his pants and finds the lump in his pocket easily. He swallows thickly. His entire plan would have been ruined without that tiny box. Unable to tell her what he really went back for, he lied and told Aelin he’d forgotten his wallet. She seemed to believe him, but he was now running two hours behind. He picks up his pace even more. “I miss you,” he sighs, and he can hear the crinkling of Aelin’s starchy sheets beneath her head as she rolls to her side. “You’ll have me soon enough,” she laughs. “I wish I could have you right now,” he whines, and he can hear the small hitch in Aelin’s breath before she replies. “Oh yeah? And what would you do to me?” Her voice is low and breathy, and he can’t help but groan her name in frustration. He’s been working his ass off prepping for this app launch. And with Aelin taking classes and studying for boards on top of teaching, they’ve both been far too tired to do anything but curl up in bed and sleep. Two exhausted ships passing in the night. Two exhausted, and clearly horny, ships. Rowan swears as arousal courses through his strained muscles. “Should I pull over?” he asks.

If Aelin wants help getting off through the phone, he’s not not participating. Rowan looks ahead to see when the next exit is. He’ll need to find somewhere dark and secluded fast. But Aelin hesitates, and he can practically see her flushed cheeks and wild eyes as she chews on her bottom lip as she debates her answer. “No,” she finally replies, resigned. “Just. Drive fast.” Rowan taps the accelerator a little harder, pushing his new car another few miles above the speed limit. “On it.” “Rowan?” She breathes softly into the receiver. “I don’t care how late it is, wake me up when you get here.” “Yes ma’am,” he laughs. “Love you,” she mumbles sleepily. Rowan blessedly doesn’t get pulled over, and somehow he makes up an entire hour, pulling up the long driveway to Ashryver Estate just after 2am. He turns the headlights off quickly, hoping he didn’t wake anyone. The house looks as imposing as always, its wide balconies and oversized windows glowing under the outdoor lights. But Rowan can’t help but think how different his life is from a single year ago. For one, he and Aelin will be sleeping in her room together, with the complete awareness and approval of her parents. Rowan assumed it would be weird for them to be in the house, so they rented a place of their own, but Rhoe and Evalin insisted they spend at least their first night with them. At least. He supposes when he’s been living with their daughter since last Yulemas and asked for her father’s approval of their marriage a few days later, it can’t be that weird. But still, Rowan’s excited to have their own place. Albeit. A much smaller. Less expensive place.

A large yawn rips its way from Rowan’s mouth, and he decides to leave his bag in the bag seat. He’ll get it in the morning. For now, he just wants to take off his work clothes and get into bed with Aelin.

But of course, nothing about today is easy. Rowan lifts the front mat, expecting the key beneath, but it’s missing. He checks his phone to see if Aelin told him they moved it elsewhere. But no. It’s supposed to be there for him. He reaches under a potted plant just to make sure. But still. No key. He jiggles the doorknob, hoping against all hopes that in this small beach town maybe they left the door unlocked for him. But it remains unmovable. Shit. The gods truly are against him. Rowan flicks his cellphone light on, searching the small path that leads to the backyard. Thorns from the overgrown rose bushes scrape his arms, and he hisses as one catches his skin. Fuck this day. Once he makes it safely to the back patio, he attempts the sliding door, but of course, it is locked, too. Rowan glances at the rose trellis, leading up to the second floor balcony he knows so well. It’s been a while since he climbed it, but he thinks he can. He grasps at the holds above his head and pulls himself up, one foothold at a time. As he launches himself over the railing and onto the balcony, he prays to every god he knows that Aelin has left her window unlocked. It doesn’t budge.

Crouched uncomfortably, Rowan lifts his tender knuckles and knocks against the glass of the large window. He watches as Fleetfoot lifts her head, wondering where the knocking is coming from. She spots Rowan and thumps her tail against Aelin’s fluffy comforter, but doesn’t bark or come to greet him. She’s not exactly the best guard dog.

Rowan knocks again, this time a little louder, and he watches as Aelin sleepily rouses from her slumber. He knocks a third time, and Aelin looks around, confused, obviously thinking that he’d woken her from inside the room. He waves from his crouch as she finally locates him on the other side of the glass.

She pads barefoot across the room and unlatches the window, which finally swings open easily.

“Feeling nostalgic?” she asks, her eyes squinting with unreleased laughter.

“Ha ha.” Aelin is the only one laughing as she helps Rowan through the window, but he can’t help but smile at the way her arms circle his waist and pull him towards the bed at the center of the room. “Where’d the front door key go?”

“Oh no, I forgot to put it back? I must have been more tired than I thought…”

He nods, and her arms squeeze his waist tighter, apologizing with her touch. A shiver runs up Rowan’s spine as her warm hands push the hem of his shirt up his back.

“If you’re too tired,” Rowan begins, but his words are muffled by Aelin tugging his shirt up and over his head. “This can wait until tomorrow…” Her fingers splay across his bare chest, and her lips brush against his shoulder, her eyes dark with want as she insists.

“We’ll sleep in tomorrow,” she insists, tilting her chin up towards his.

Rowan lowers his head to hers, and she hums happily as his mouth caresses hers. He doesn’t have to be asked twice. He lets Aelin lead the way, crawling onto the bed on top of her. Aelin’s hands immediately go for his belt buckle, and he helps her, kicking off his pants one leg at a time as he pushes her nightgown over her head.

Clothes scatter across Aelin’s bedroom floor as the pair climb under the covers. Fleetfoot dodges his flying briefs with a loud huff and slinks under the bed, causing both Aelin and Rowan to laugh. But they aren’t distracted by the dog’s antics for very long. Within seconds, the pair is wrapped up in each other, finally after so long, relishing in the feel of being skin to skin. Rowan’s hands skim up her thighs, and he kisses every inch of her neck and shoulders he can reach. He has every intention of taking his time and worshipping her body, something they haven’t had the privilege of doing in weeks, but Aelin has other thoughts in mind.

She guides his hand between her legs, showing him how much she wants him, moisture dripping onto his fingers before he’s barely even touched her.

“Please, Rowan,” she moans, and Rowan chuckles into her cheek, whispering into her ear with a quiet. “Bossy.”

“You like it,” she says, smirking softly.

He does. He loves when she takes charge. But he doesn’t let it happen for very long. Before she can finish her sentence, Rowan lines himself up with her and slides into her with a deep thrust.

Aelin gasps and wraps her legs around him, digging her heels into his ass as he sits back on his heels and grasps her hips. He’s overwhelmed, as he always is when he first enters Aelin. Warmth spreads through his body as he adjusts their position and pace, lifting her hips off the mattress to meet him as he kneels in front of her. He loves her this way, splayed out for him, her hair a tangled, golden mess haloed around her head. She breathes heavily with each torturously slow movement of his hips. She bites down on her lip, but releases a too loud, breathy moan regardless.

Rowan shushes her through his chuckles, loving that even after a year, this hasn’t remotely gotten old.

“C’mere.” She reaches out for him, and Rowan is helpless before her commands. He lowers her hips and leans down to kiss her. Fingers tug at his hair, keeping him pressed against her face. Even when their kiss breaks, they’re content to just breathe into each other’s mouths as he moves inside her slowly and deliberately, savoring each moment.

Rowan increases his pace, feeling them both on the brink, Aelin’s nails digging into his back, his lips at her neck – when the doorbell rings.

They both freeze. Rowan stills his hips, and Aelin’s gaze swings to the door.

“Was that our house?” she asks, eyes wide. The doorbell is followed by several knocks.

“Uh, I think so,” Rowan says, glancing at the clock, which now reads 3 am. Who the hell could that be? Fleetfoot pokes her nose out from under the bed and slinks towards the door to sniff under it.

“Do you think if we stay quiet they’ll go away?” Aelin whimpers, grasping his neck tighter. “I’m so close,” she half cries-half laughs. Rowan joins her.

“Me too,” he says, letting his head drop onto her shoulder.

“Just finish quickly,” she says, tilting her hips toward his, and Rowan chuckles into her skin.

Rowan refuses to move as he hears two pairs of footsteps coming down from the third floor. Aelin’s parents.

They listen as the front door opens, but are unable to pick out any words. The door closes just as fast, and he can feel Aelin relax and push her hips against his as her parents make their way back upstairs. He finally gives in and starts moving again, much to both their relief.

The relief is short-lived, though.

“Um, Aelin?” Evalin calls from the other side of the door, accompanied with a quick knock, and Rowan has the good sense to roll off to the other side of the bed, grumbling the entire way, upset to be cockblocked as Aelin tosses on her nightgown. Whatever was happening is officially over now. Rowan briefly wonders if it’s a cursed day as Aelin swings her door open.

“Is everything okay?” she asks her mom breathlessly, and Rowan tucks himself further under the blanket, willing his still prominent erection to subside quickly.

Suddenly, two cops emerge, and Aelin crosses her arms over her chest, backing up into the darkness of her room. Rowan would like to throw a robe over her, too, by the way the two cops are looking at her, but he can’t exactly go anywhere right now.

“Sorry to disturb you, ma’am,” the shorter of the two begins. “But we were notified by your neighbor of a breaking and entering? We wanted your permission to sweep your room for any intruders.”

Rowan groans loudly and lets his head fall back against the pillow as Aelin snorts.

“I’m so sorry to waste your time, officers,” Aelin says politely. “But, uh, there’s been a huge misunderstanding.”

Her eyes flick to Rowan’s, who is still under the covers, but based on the state of the pair of them, there’s little question as to what they’ve been up to.

“Let me guess?” the other cop snickers. “Intruder?”

Rowan waves, and Rhoe and Evalin smile as they wave back.

“Rowan, when did you get in?” Rhoe asks, failing to hide his smile behind his hand.

But Rowan’s fairly certain this day could not get any worse. He’s still erect beneath the covers, and completely naked, and his nearly naked girlfriend is being interrogated by the cops and her parents. He wants to die.

“I forgot to leave the key out for my boyfriend,” Aelin explains. “So, he climbed up the trellis into my room.”

The cops apologize for the late-night intrusion, and Rhoe finally laughs fully. “As you were…”

They close the door with a soft click, and Rowan groans, falling back onto the pillow as Rhoe and Evalin head back upstairs, taking Fleetfoot with them.

“Intruder,” Aelin laughs as she closes her bedroom door. “The Cortlands would never have called the cops.”

Rowan perks up at that. “Oh yeah, who’d they sell to?”

“I don’t kno-oww!” Aelin hisses in pain and clutches at her foot. “Ow, what the hell did I just step on?” she cries again, stumbling her way over to the light switch. “Was that your belt buckle? Shit, that hurt.”

Rowan squints as the bright bulb illuminates the room, and his heart stops as he sees what Aelin holds in her hand. Aelin stares with wonder at the tiny box that he’s managed to keep from her since he purchased it last December. Six months living together, and she never suspected once. In his haste to disrobe earlier, it must have fallen out of his pocket. He forgot it was even in there. He’s a fucking idiot.

Aelin’s jaw drops as she looks from the box up to Rowan, her blue gold eyes swimming with awe and confusion.

“Rowan?”

Her voice sounds so small and timid and so un-Aelin like, and Rowan’s stomach drops. Does she not want this?

“I swear to the gods, it was going to be perfect,” Rowan says, scrubbing at his face with his hand. He watches as Aelin’s eyes grow impossibly wider. He closes his eyes and imagines the scene he’d wanted so badly. ”I had it all planned out for today. But, then today happened.” He He sighs loudly.” Six months of waiting… to find your ring on the fucking floor.”

He hates the spike of insecurity and flagellation that fills his brain, ready to convince him he’s useless. He’s gotten better about his negative self-talk over the last year, but sometimes old habits are hard to break.

“Six months?” she asks, fiddling with the box in her fingers.

“Yulemas shopping,” Rowan chuckles to himself, but there’s no humor to be found there.

“Rowan.” She repeats his name, nothing more than a whisper from the other side of the room.

“I used to feel like the lesser party in this relationship. And I swear, I don’t feel like that anymore. But, the way this has happened, I’m feeling pretty useless. That, or this proposal is cursed.”

“Can I see it?” she whispers, and Rowan suddenly feels even more nervous, if that were even possible.

He nods, feeling the strain in his throat as it bobs uncomfortably, his throat suddenly dry.

She cracks the box open, and Aelin breathes in sharply as she picks up the emerald, flanked by two smaller diamonds, and laid into a platinum band. It had cost two full months of his paycheck, but he’d seen it and immediately known it was meant to sit on Aelin’s finger for the rest of her life.

She approaches the bed slowly, and his body warms as her awed expression turns into a brilliant smile. He loves when she looks at him like that. Like he’s special. She straddles his lap, bringing one knee to either side of his waist and wraps one arm around his neck, the other cradling the box in her hand still.

Her lips press against this over and over again as she whispers between kisses, “Yes, yes, yes, yes.”

Rowan’s heart pumping wildly as he pulls back to look at her.

“Yeah?” he asks, and she replies quickly.

“Oh yeah.” She grins and kisses him again. “And if you want to do your plan tomorrow, I am all yours,” she says, and Rowan’s heart feels like it’s going to explode of joy.

He slides the ring onto her finger. It looks just as perfect there as he’d imagined, and he can’t resist perssing the newly jeweled hand against his thrumming heartbeat.

“I’ll give it back in the morning,” she says, a small tear trickling down her cheek.

She can’t stop smiling, and neither can Rowan, both of them mumbling “I love you,” over and over as Aelin climbs into his lap to finish what they started earlier in the evening.

~*~

Rowan wakes before Aelin, which is highly unusual, but she did say she was tired. He glances at the glittering gems on her finger and kisses it softly. He can’t believe this beautiful creature is actually going to marry him.

“Mmm,” she smiles back in her sleep, and he can’t resist pressing his lips against hers.

As he distracts her with sleepy kisses, he slides the ring off her finger, and she pouts immediately. “I’ll give it back soon, I promise,” he says softly, and her smile returns. The ring finds its way back into the small velvet box without any problems, and Rowan pulls on clothes from the floor and pockets it immediately. “Coffee?” he whispers into her ear, and Aelin nods, eyes still closed.

Rowan heads downstairs and grabs his bag from his car, and decides to shower before bringing Aelin coffee. After working all day, then sitting in a car for nine hours, and then engaging in sexual activity for most of the night, he could really use a shower. Plus, maybe he can tempt Aelin into joining him, he thinks.

Upstairs, though, Aelin is already in the bathroom and looking worse for wear. Dark circles rim her undereye, and her cheeks looks pale and sweaty. She flushes the toilet and walks slowly to the sink to rinse out her mouth.

Rowan drops his bag from his shoulder and rushes to her. “Aelin? Are you okay?”

She shakes her head and shrugs. “I think you might be right about the cursed proposal. I’m so sorry,” she apologizes, splashing water onto her ashen face. “A few of my students had this stomach thing, and I thought I escaped it, but…”

She stops and breathe slowly through her nose and out through her mouth. Her eyes flick to Rowan’s in the mirror, looking disappointed and upset.

“Hey, hey,” he reassures her, pushing back her damp hair from her clammy forehead. “You never have to apologize for getting sick.”

Aelin had also caught the flu from one of her students in January, a terrible cold in March, and strep throat that turned into an ear infection in April. Rowan was extremely grateful she’d already gotten the chicken pox otherwise their May would have been really upsetting. It turns out Aelin’s immune system kind of sucks.

“Good thing is it’s only a twenty-four-hour bug, so we can just push until tomorrow?” she says hopefully.

Rowan kisses the top of her head. “Get back in bed. We’ll worry about that when you’re feeling better.”

Aelin grumbles all the way back to bed, but she must be feeling extremely sick if she followed his directions so quickly. Aelin is one of those suffer in silence such people, who likes to think that if she doesn’t acknowledge not feeling well then she won’t be sick. As if she ignores her problems they’ll cease to exist. Rowan has to admit, when he discovered that he was fairly relieved. He’d thought it only applied to him. Oh how wrong he was. If the fact that she climbs into bed without any hesitation is any indication, she currently feels like shit.

“Who gets sick during the summer?” she complains to herself, but when Rowan comes out of the shower, she’s already fast asleep again.

He wanders downstairs to grab coffee for himself and is only slightly surprised to see the whole family there.

“Uncle Rowan!” Gavin cheers, throwing himself around Rowan’s thighs.

“Hey, bud, you’re getting really tall,” Rowan laughs. “And strong,” he continues, realizing he’s unable to walk with the little boy grasping his legs.

“Where’s Auntie Ae?” Gavin asks, his blue eyes wide with wonder and curiosity. Rowan recognizes that look. It’s the look of a man obsessed with Aelin Ashryver. He doesn’t particularly blame the child.

“She’s still sleeping,” Rowan answers the little boy, who immediately looks disappointed.

“Someone wore her out?” Lysandra jests, welcoming Rowan with a warm hug and a nudge to his ribs.

“Very funny.” Rowan says, though his tone lacks any humor.

Aedion snorts. “Come on, it’s a little funny. And a great story. Locked out, and then interrupted by the cops while banging?”

Rhoe chokes on his coffee. “I don’t think I used the word banging.”

“No, you used the words ‘being intimate’ which is somehow much grosser,” Aedion laughs again, taking a long sip of his coffee.

Rowan’s cheeks are burning, he can feel the flames go all the way up to his ears. This is why he’s grateful he and Aelin have their own rental they can check into tomorrow.

He ignores the conversation at the table and instead lets them know Aelin isn’t feeling well.

“So she’s not coming to the park today?” Gavin pouts.

“I don’t think so, but maybe tomorrow?”

Appeased, Gavin rushes off to play with Fleetfoot..

Rowan wishes the family a good time at the park and heads back upstairs, wanting to check in on his sick girlfriend. Wait, no. Not girlfriend. Fiancée. He grins at that.

Upstairs, he climbs into bed next to Aelin’s slumbering form. She immediately curls into his thigh, and his mouth twitches upward when she sighs his name in her sleep. His fingers run through her hair, and he basks in a moment of silent happiness. In sickness and in health, right? While Aelin sleeps, Rowan opens his laptop to see about a hundred emails waiting for him. He answers them dutifully as he sips his coffee. His work only halts when Aelin launches herself out of bed and stumbles to the bathroom, still half asleep. He itches to help her, but he’s learned from previous experience that Aelin does not like to be coddled when she’s sick. Instead, he opens her windows to let some fresh air in. The room fills quickly with the crisp scent of salty sea air traveling on a breeze. The shower turns on in the bathroom, and Rowan returns to his never-ending emails while he waits for her to emerge. A cloud of steam billows around her skin as she opens the door. Her skin has regained some color, a pink flush to her cheeks and her eyes look brighter. “Napping helped?” “How long was I out for?” she asks, her voice hoarse as she curls back up next to him. He glances at his watch. “Only a few hours. How are you feeling?” “Like crap,” she laughs. “You should go downstairs. You do not want to catch this.” “I don’t know,” Rowan says, stroking her cheek. “I wouldn’t mind staying in bed for a few days.” Aelin shivers and nuzzles further into his side. “You’ll mind it when you’re hunched over the toilet.” She sniffs the air and a greyish pallor takes over her complexion. “If nothing else, can you take your coffee cup downstairs. The smell of anything food-related is...” “Not good?” he asks, and as Aelin goes to shake her head, she rushes into the bathroom again and slams the door shut. As loathe as he is to leave her, Aelin is right. He can’t afford to get sick right now. So, Rowan takes his laptop out to the patio with Fleetfoot keep him company as he finishes his work. When Aelin finally makes her way downstairs at the end of the day, she looks significantly better. The whole family sits at the dinner table, and their heads swivel to the disheveled blonde, still wearing her pajamas. “You look like you’re feeling better.” Aelin nods in affirmation and Rowan breathes a sigh of relief that it seems the worst has passed. “Can I make you toast, Fireheart?” Evalin asks her daughter, who wrinkles her nose at the large dinner spread on the table. “No, I need something cold for my throat.” She pats at her neck. “Do we have any ice cream?” Rhoe laughs. “Yeah, she’s feeling better.” “Freezer,” Evalin directs her, and Aelin makes herself a bowl of mint ice cream quickly before taking a seat on Rowan’s knee. Rowan looks at Aelin’s empty ring finger as she eats. He can’t wait for tomorrow. Can’t wait to make it official. ~*~ “Twenty-four-hour bug, my ass,” Aelin frowns as she exits the bathroom the next morning. She’d been so convinced it’d passed when her ice cream stayed down last night. Apparently not. “This is the worst.”

Rowan pats the fluffy comforter next to him, and Aelin crawls on top, cuddling into his side like a cat. It’s been a long time since she felt this sick before. And she had the flu earlier this year. Stupid music students and their germy fingers!

“Rowan,” she whispers, wondering if she should admit what she’s about to admit. “I’m starting to believe in the curse.”

Rowan snorts too loudly, taking her comment as a joke, but she’s not so sure. Three days in a row his plans have gone to shit, and Aelin is starting to feel antsy to have that stunning ring on her finger again. She missed its weight as soon as he pulled it off yesterday, and she’s ready for it to be returned to its rightful owner. Her.

As if he senses her agitation, Rowan drags his fingers through her hair, scratching her scalp and playing with the strands like he knows she likes. Her eyes flutter close, and within a few minutes, she’s asleep again. Aelin wakes again in the late afternoon feeling groggy but with an even stomach. She takes a quick shower and brushes her teeth and heads downstairs, where Rowan is lounging out on the back patio. His computer glasses are perched on his nose as his fingers type a mile a minute, probably fixing some bug that Darrow couldn’t reprogram. His brows are furrowed, and he bites his lip – his concentrating face.

He finally looks up as she approaches the doorway, and she watches as his wrinkled forehead smooths out, his serious face replaced by one of delight. It makes her heart beat faster.

“You must be feeling a lot better than this morning if you’re looking at me like that,” Rowan says, closing his computer and standing to greet her. His arms welcome her with a warm embrace, and she inhales deeply as he wraps his arms around her, tugging her close.

“Is everyone at the park?” she asks, lifting an eyebrow suggestively, and she can’t help but smile as Rowan’s eyes darken.

“What happened to being concerned about me getting sick?” he asks as his fingers trail patterns against the thin fabric of her tank top.

“Who said we had to fuck face-to-face?” Aelin says, tugging his shirt with her hands. “Just bend me over the kitchen island.”

“Aelin,” he groans, pressing his face into the top of her head. She can feel his chest vibrate with laughter against hers, letting her know that her idea is being rejected. But if the other things moving against her are any indication, he’s not completely disinterested.

“As tempting as that sounds,” he begins, and by the look on his face, she knows he’s been thoroughly tempted, “I was kind of hoping not to be interrupted the next time we do it. If you’re really feeling better, though, maybe we should move into our own place tonight?”

Aelin grins excitedly. As much as she loves Ashryver Estate, she’s thrilled she and Rowan will have their own place this summer. Where they can be as loud as they want. And desecrate every single surface.

It takes them barely thirty minutes to pack, and Aelin calls her parents to let them know they won’t be there when they return. Aelin assures her parents she feels better, that the bug has run its course, and apologizes for sneaking out while they’re gone.

She and Rowan pull up to the small brown house nearly simultaneously. It’s not on the beach, about a fifteen-minute drive from Aelin’s parents, and about a ten-minute walk to Lysandra and Aedion’s, on a small residential street dotted with lush green trees and bright verdant lawns. They drop their bags in the foyer and immediately wander around the place, taking in the cozy, beach town vibes.

The backyard is perfect, and Rowan opens the screened in porch door for Fleetfoot to run around the wide gated lawn. At the center is a long, narrow pool, which glistens a bright turquoise. Aelin can’t wait to spend her summer lounging in it.

As they make their way back into the house, they finally make their way to the kitchen. Its immaculate marble counters are dotted with decorative bowls of lemons, and Aelin notices Rowan nearly drooling at the Viking double ovens. But what has her attention is right in the middle of the room.

Rowan follows her gaze and his green eyes darken, a shade of forest that she knows means trouble for her. The pair practically race to the kitchen island, and they make good on Aelin’s earlier suggestion, well into the evening.

~*~

Aelin wakes in the middle of the night, gasping for air, feeling overheated in her own skin. She must have had a nightmare, but she can’t remember what about. She looks down at a dreaming Rowan for comfort, his eyelashes twitching against his tanned cheeks, and feels her heart swell in her chest. She loves this man so much. She can’t believe she’s going to be his wife. Years ago, when Chaol had thrown around the word “marriage,” she’d flinched. Literally. Flinched. Now, she aches to let everyone know that this man is going to be her husband.

She leans down and kisses his bare shoulder. “Rowan,” she whispers against his skin, and he stirs slightly. “Rowan, wake up.”

He startles awake, bolting upright faster than he has any right to do, and looks her over seriously. “Are you okay?”

“Yes,” she says, and he exhales quickly.

“Why am I waking up then?” he asks, looking at the clock. It’s barely past 4 am.

“I know you wanted to do your perfect proposal, but…” Rowan’s face pales in the moonlight, and Aelin reaches out to reassure him quickly. “I don’t need a perfect proposal. I knew when we left here last summer that you were it for me. You’re kind and funny, and you understand my terrible humor without making me feel stupid about it.” Rowan smiles at that one, making her stomach flutter. “You’re ambitious and proud, but you have never asked me to change what I want or to make myself bigger or smaller. You just love … me.” He swallows and nods. He does. She knows he does. Which is why, she barrels on, confessing what she’s been ruminating over the last two days in bed.

“I want to marry you so much,” she breathes, her voice cracking with the weight of her emotion. “And even though I don’t know what your plans were, I know this wasn’t even close to what you imagined. But,” she pauses and bites at the skin on her lip as Rowan leans closer. “I can’t imagine us doing anything traditionally, can you?” He shakes his head and rubs his thumb against her bottom lip, unhooking it from her tooth. She smiles at the gesture. “I loved my accidental proposal,” she says more boldly, “And I want to tell everyone I know immediately. I want to have a celebratory dinner with all our friends, and I…” Her voice cracks again as a rogue tear falls from her eye. “…want my ring back.”

“Right now?” Rowan asks, unshed tears in his eyes, and Aelin nods readily. As Rowan crosses the room to the dresser and pulls the small velvet box from his sock, Aelin’s heart starts pounding again. This is really happening.

He shakes his head slightly as he opens the box and pulls out the ring. It gleams under the soft glow of the moon, casting emerald shadows across their white duvet.

“You know, that was a hell of a proposal, Ms. Ashryver.” He smirks, and she cocks her eyebrow in return.

“So what’s your answer, Mr. Whitethorn?”

He pretends to look pensive for a second, before sliding the ring back onto her finger. It fits perfectly. “Yes, I think I’d like to marry you,” he says, leaning close to her lips. “And what about you? You’ll marry me, too?”

“I already said yes,” she whispers. The tension hums between them, both their hearts pounding with the electric current of their promises. “Yes,” she answers again, and Rowan pulls her beneath the blankets with him.

~*~

“You know your initials are going to spell AAW, now, which I find absolutely adorable,” Lysandra says as she takes Aelin’s splayed hand in her grasp. Her eyes narrow in on the new piece of jewelry, examining it like a hawk.

“It’s stunning, Ae,” she concludes, and Aelin can’t help but peer over Lysandra’s shoulder to grin at the man of the hour, taking beers out of their fridge.

“I know,” Aelin says, her cheeks starting to hurt from smiling so much at her family and friends’ enthusiasm over their “very expected” nuptials, as Manon put it.

The doorbell rings, and Aelin attempts to extract herself from the small circle of women who have huddled around her hand to “oo” and “ah,” at her ring, but Rowan is faster. He welcomes her parents into their abode with a wide smile. Evalin and Rhoe drop off giant catering tins filled with food, prepared by Emrys, on the kitchen island.

Rowan throws Aelin a knowing smirk, and her cheeks pink remembering the thorough way they debased that particular part of the house last night.

Lysandra chuckles softly and whispers in her ear, “I hope you Cloroxed that.”

Aelin’s pink cheeks darken, heating wildly at Lysandra’s knowing smile. She must look shocked, because Lys simply shakes her head and shrugs. “How do you think we got two kids? Please. Aedion and I used to screw on every surface in—”

“Okay!” Aelin holds up her hand. “I don’t need to know.” She gags, feeling slightly queasy at the image of her brother and his wife going at it. “But yes, we invested in Clorox wipes this summer.”

“Smart girl,” she says, squeezing Aelin’s shoulder lightly.

Aelin rolls her eyes and heads to the island to help her fiancé unpack the food and welcome her parents. They greet her with hugs and kisses, and Evalin can’t stop smiling. Neither can Aelin, though. She’s getting married. To Rowan. She’s never felt this kind of happiness.

When Aelin goes to lift the foil from the food, Rowan pushes her away. “Go, sit. I’ll make you a taco.”

The food smells heavenly. Emrys has outdone himself, Aelin thinks to herself as she takes in the spread of multiple taco fillings and accoutrements. And in a separate Tupperware, just for her, is her favorite potato salad, labeled with her name and the word, “Congratulations!” underneath. She thinks she might cry.

“Grilled adobo chicken with corn salsa, guac, and cheese?” she asks, and Rowan nods.

“Chips?” he asks, and she shakes her head, instead pointing to her special Tupperware. He winks at her and shoos her away, back to entertain everyone as he calls out, “Food’s ready!” A line forms across the island, and Rowan oversees food distribution as Aelin wanders back out to heir friends. She knows what he’s doing. By staying by the food, Rowan doesn’t have to socialize or make small talk. Things he loathes. She doesn’t call him out, letting him retreat to his comfort place of the kitchen as she makes her way out to the screened in porch where most everyone is sitting.

“So, when do we get proposal details?” Elide asks, sipping at her beer. Lorcan frowns, commenting that proposals are private, and Aelin briefly wonders if those two are next in line to walk down the aisle.

She smiles as slides onto the chaise next to an outstretched Dorian, who’s already working on his third beer, and tells a very vague and abridged version of their proposal.

Manon laughs every step of the way, relishing in the ridiculousness of their premature proposal. “And the ring traveled across the room from his pocket, hm? How aggressively was he kicking them off?”

“Manon, my family is here,” Aelin hisses.

“Your family knows what you two were up to in your bedroom all last summer,” Aedion laughs loudly, “And apparently this summer,” he continues, pulling Lysandra into his lap, as the room bursts into laughter at Aelin’s expense.

“I hate you all,” Aelin groans as Rowan walks into the porch, both their plates in hand.

“I hope not,” he says as he hands off the plate to Aelin. “Otherwise, the rest of our lives are going to be pretty awkward…”

“You know I love you,” Aelin says, batting her eyelashes. “You bring me food.”

Rowan rolls his eyes and takes a large bite of his taco. Aelin does the same and nearly moans in satisfaction. It’s so spicy and so good. She really hopes it stays down. The only food she’s had in the last two days has been ice cream and toast.

As she devours her plate, she listens to Elide and Lorcan’s summer plans, nodding and hmming in all the right places. She saved her potato salad for last, because you should always save the best for last, and excitedly plops a piece into her mouth. She chews twice before she spits it back out onto the plate. The whole room silences.

“Sorry,” Aelin apologizes, covering the chewed potato with a napkin. “I think the mayo was off.”

Rowan takes a bite of it himself and cocks his head to the side. “It tastes fine to me. Are you sure you’re not still sick?” he asks, leaning over to feel her forehead. It flushes under his touch, but not because she’s sick. She’s been fine for over twenty-four-hours.

“I’m fine,” Aelin whines. “But that mayo was not.”

Manon opens her mouth and closes it. And then opens it again. “Maybe you’re pregnant.”

“No…” Rowan and Aelin reply quickly at the same time, before glancing at each other, and then back at the room filled with their friends and family. Their expressions range from amused to suspicious to horrified to confused, and suddenly Aelin thinks she’s going to be ill all over again.

“That’s not possible,” Aelin comments confidently. There’s no way. She went back on the pill as soon as she went home last summer. Although now that she’s thinking about it, she’s not a hundred percent sure she actually bled during her last placebo pill week. But she must have, right?

“Aelin?” Rowan asks, his voice unreasonably high. He leans forward and places his hand on her knee, and she looks down at it, placing her hand atop it, before looking back at him.

“I think we should go to the pharmacy.”

“Oh, I’m coming too!” Elide announces, downing the rest of her beer.

Aelin rushes out of the house without saying goodbye to anyone. She assumes Rowan makes some excuse for their departure, but she doesn’t have time to delay. She needs to know and needs to know now. How the hell could this have happened? There must be some other explanation. Her knuckles are white on the steering wheel as Rowan hops into the passenger seat, and Elide slides into the back.

“Are you okay?” he asks softly, and Aelin nods tersely.

“Uh huh,” she replies, but she’s not entirely sure how she feels.

Inside the pharmacy, Aelin pulls three different brands of pregnancy tests. Rowan stands awkwardly beside her, arms crossed, perusing the back of each.

“I don’t know,” he says calmly, but his wild green eyes betray his panic. “Is there a best brand?”

Aelin doesn’t know. She decides to get all three.

As they wait in the check-out line, Elide giggles loudly.

“Aw man,” she places a hand each on Rowan and Aelin. “Remember the last time I ran into you here? You were buying condoms.” Her eyes flick to the pregnancy tests. “Why’d you stop using them?”

“Elide!” Aelin hisses, and Elide grimaces at her tone. Rowan pays quickly and swipes the bag of the counter and returns to the car. She looks at Rowan, his eyes simmering with worry as he looks her over. “The mayo was off… wasn’t it?” she asks again, and Rowan reaches for her hand, taking it in his larger one and shakes his head.

Aelin speeds home, ignoring everyone as she makes her way into the guest bathroom and pees on every single stick. She’s taking no chances. She sets a three-minute timer on her phone, and slinks against the bathroom door, falling until her butt hits the cold tile of the floor. This was absolutely not the engagement celebration she had anticipated.

Through the door, she can hear Rowan lean against the other side. He must be sitting, too. His head thumps against the wood and she breathes in deeply, eyes screwed closed.

“I love you,” he murmurs against the door, sliding his fingertips through the crack beneath it. Aelin brushes her own against his, and she releases some of the panic she’s been holding in her shoulders at his calming touch.

She stays like that, until her alarm goes off. And she can feel that tension creeping back into her body, which is suddenly frozen with fear.

“I can’t look,” she says.

“You have to look,” Rowan insists through the door.

“I don’t want to,” she groans. “And I don’t have to.” She pauses. “You can.”

She can hear his sharp exhale. “Do you want me to?”

“Please,” she says quietly, and she can hear him stand. The doorknob turns and he pushes the door open. Aelin shifts slightly so he can get through, and he walks straight to the counter top where the tests are laid out, getting her pee all over one of the fancy hand towels.

Aelin closes her eyes tightly, thinking that if she closes her eyes, she won’t have to see the result. But of course. She forgot about her ears. Rowan’s breath stays steady as he turns and crouches in front of her.

“You’re pregnant,” he whispers. Aelin’s heart thuds. She knew she was. As soon as Manon said the word, she knew.

“It was those stupid antibiotics when I had strep,” Aelin grumbles, putting her face into her hands. “I knew there was a chance, and I didn’t say anything. Why didn’t I say anything?” This was so not the plan. Her feelings are all over the place. “Rowan, what are we going to do?”

She opens her eyes, shocked to see how close Rowan is to her. He cradles her face in his hands, his thumbs stroking her cheeks gently as he probes into her with a loving gaze. It takes her aback for a second. The way he looks at her. Gods, she loves him so much. She blinks and is surprised when a tear rolls down her cheek. He wipes it away and kisses it. The small gesture is enough to solidify how Aelin feels.

“I know this isn’t the right time for us. It’s so soon, and you’re in the middle of your schooling, and I’m going to be looking for a new app to work on soon, so… if you don’t a baby right now…” He swallows, his voice pained as he continues forward, and Aelin can’t gasp soon enough. “I’ll support you no matter what—”

“No!” Aelin shakes her head.

“No?” Rowan asks, quirking his head to the side, and Aelin finally lets her tears spill over her cheeks.

“No.” She shakes her head, giving him a watery smile. “This is our baby. I want this.”

“Yeah?” he asks, and she nods again, blinking rapidly. She can’t blink the tears away fast enough, so Rowan kisses them away, pressing his lips against her eyes and her cheeks until her crying abates.

The pair kissing in the bathroom don’t even notice when their party departs, too busy being wrapped up in one another.

~*~

Rowan is woken up in the middle of the night, again, by his fiancée. He loves her more than anything, but he’d really enjoy a full night of sleep one of these nights. Preferably without her yelling at him.

“Rowan!” she growls, rousing him from his pleasant dreams, and hoisting him up. Her face is red with anger, her eyes glittering in the moonlight, looking ready to attack.

“Hmm?”

“I can’t believe you knocked me up! Now we have to have a shotgun wedding!” she yells, louder than she has any right to in the middle of the night.

“Can it really be considered a shotgun wedding if I proposed to you before I knew you were pregnant?” Rowan asks, trying to pull her back down, and immediately regrets it, based on Aelin’s increased anger.

She frowns. “I don’t want to be fat at my wedding.”

Rowan laughs sweetly and pulls Aelin into his arms. “You won’t be fat. You’ll be pregnant.”

Aelin pushes herself out of his grasp and glares. Ok. Wrong thing to say, clearly. “I refuse to be fat at my wedding,” she growls, flopping back onto her pillow. “But if we wait until after we have the baby for me to get my body back… that could be two years from now.” She rolls over and faces him. “I don’t want to wait two years.”

Rowan scoots down until he’s facing her, his legs tangled with her bare ones beneath the covers. “First of all, you’re beautiful, no matter what.” Aelin scoffs, clearly not believing his truth. “But, we don’t have to wait.” He can’t help but kiss her surprised face. “Let’s get married this summer. Here. It’s where I’d want to do it anyway.”

He can see a hundred thoughts racing through Aelin’s blue eyes as she contemplates his proposal.

“Plan a wedding in two months? My mom is going to die.”

“If it’s too much…”

“It’s not too much,” Aelin replies, snuggling closer to him. He runs his hand up the back of her tank top, feeling her skin warm the pads of his fingers. She presses closer to him, her curves against his chest, and he dips his head down to kiss her.

“It’ll still be a shotgun wedding,” Rowan says through kisses. “The people who don’t already know will surely figure it out when the baby comes six months later.”

“As long as I look good in photos, I don’t care.”

“Good to know motherhood won’t affect your vanity,” Rowan chuckles, and Aelin gasps.

“Rowan, we’re getting married, and we’re going to have a baby.”

Rowan shakes his head. “I know. What have we done?”

~*~

If Rowan thought last summer was a whirlwind, it’s nothing compared to a summer with a pregnant, last minute wedding-planning Aelin. As soon as they told her parents the plan, Aelin was off to the races. They’ve decided to forgo everything traditional, much to Evalin’s distress. The only thing Aelin has insisted upon is Rowan not seeing her wedding dress beforehand, which he has no problem with.

In fact, he’s been fairly uninvolved in the wedding plans, leaving the decisions to Aelin. He found out very quickly that she had strong opinions about flowers and colors and food. The only thing he’s insisted upon participating in is the guest list – which includes only twenty of their closest friends and family. He knows that number isn’t even a tenth of the amount of people who attended Aedion and Lysandra’s wedding. Aelin is expected to have a high society wedding, but she and Rowan are defying expectations left and right with their lives. But somehow, it doesn’t seem to matter. They stopped asking for approval from anyone the second they got together, and everyone seems to be okay with that.

Rowan smirks as Aelin sighs loudly from the back seat of his car. Her arms are crossed against her chest, pushing up her breasts to make an even larger than usual swell of cleavage. Despite her insecurities, pregnancy looks incredible on Aelin, and Rowan can’t help if his eyes flick to her chest more often these days.

“Stop checking out my rack, Rowan,” Aelin frowns, and he laughs boisterously, tipping his head back in amusement at his grumpy fiancée. “It’s not funny. Look at the road.”

Rowan stares harder. “We’re at a stoplight.”

Aelin’s lips curl into the most adorable pout, and her blue eyes widen.

“You know, you could have driven up here with me,” Rowan says of the empty passenger seat next to him, and Aelin shakes her head.

“No, changing levels is the one thing that makes me queasy,” she explains.

“Which is why you should have driven up here,” Rowan says. “My mom is going to insist that the pregnant girl sit in the front.”

“Adults sit in the front,” Aelin snaps, and Rowan smiles.

“I hate to break it to you, but you are an adult.”

Aelin frowns again. “You know what I mean.”

They drive in silence for a few more seconds until the tension becomes so thick that Rowan has to ask. “Are you nervous about meeting my mom?”

It’s all the prompting Aelin needs to explode. “Yes!” she shouts, throwing her arms up in defeat. “Of course I’m nervous! I’ve stolen her son away from her. You didn’t even go back for Yulemas,” she prattles nervously. Rowan watches as she emphasizes with her hands, a sure sign of Aelin’s stress. It’s completely unfounded, though.

“Aelin, you don’t understand,” Rowan throws her what he hopes is a reassuring smile over his shoulder. “You made Dora’s dreams come true by dating me, much less marrying me and incubating our child. She loves you.”

Aelin barks out a laugh. “Incubating?”

Rowan shrugs. “What would you call it?”

“Incubating works,” she replies with a snort, and Rowan can tell he’s had some luck in calming her nerves.

By the time they arrive at the airport, Dora is already waiting on the curb with her bag in her hand. She’s come to spend the whole wedding week, spending time with Rowan and meeting her in-laws before they make it official. Rowan’s been playing it cool, but he is incredibly excited to see his mom.

He hops out of the car and welcomes her with a big hug as soon as he can. Aelin nervously exits the car and waves hello. He watches as Dora’s eyes go wide as she extricates herself from Rowan and throws her arms around Aelin.

“You are even more stunning in person,” Dora says, causing a soft blush to appear on Aelin’s cheeks. “How are you feeling? Sick at all? How are the cravings? How are your studies? Are you teaching at all this summer?”

“Uhhh…”

It’s so rare that Aelin is flustered, that is gives Rowan some sort of sick pleasure that it’s Dora Whitethorn, who makes her nervous. Rowan can’t help but smile as he watches his two favorite women meet each other. As he expected, Dora goes straight for the back seat when it’s time to return to the car, and it’s a fight Aelin loses quickly.

“Told you so,” Rowan says, winking at a disgruntled Aelin, as she buckles herself in.

“Has your son always been so self-righteous?” Aelin asks the white-haired woman making herself comfortable in the back of Rowan’s roomy SUV.

Dora’s green eyes twinkle as she hums. “No, but he’s always been a pain in my ass.”

“Mom!” Rowan can hear her snickering behind him, and Aelin’s eyes widen in joy. There’s nothing she loves more than teasing him. He forgot that these two share that interest.

“It’s true, baby,” Dora laughs. “You’re constantly making things much harder than they should be. Aelin should know what she’s getting herself into.”

Rowan frowns as Aelin laughs harder. “If I get left at the altar I’m blaming you.”

Aelin snorts loudly and puts her hand on her stomach. “As if I’d raise this chicken on my own. No offense, Dora, but I seems really hard. I don’t know how you did it. And so well.”

“Sometimes you get a good egg,” Dora says with a small smile just for Aelin. “Now, tell me all the gossip about everyone who’s going to be at this wedding. I just flew ten hours and am ready to be entertained.”

~*~

“Stop fidgeting,” Manon hisses, swatting Rowan’s hands away from his carefully brushed hair.

“I can’t,” Rowan admits, tugging nervously at a lock of his hair. He’d meant to get a haircut before the big day, but clearly that hadn’t happened, and now his hair is just a smidge too long, falling into his eyes ever so slightly.

Manon glares, her heavily lined eyes throwing him a look that could kill. And he knows she means it. Rowan stands still, taking a deep breath and attempting to center himself as Manon rolls up the sleeves of his light blue blazer.

“How are you this nervous?” Manon asks, quirking her red-painted lips into an amused half-smile. “Dorian is officiating.”

“Don’t remind me,” Rowan groans. How he said yes to that idea, he’ll never know. Aelin must have been in the midst of performing some incredible sexual act for him to agree to that detail. But it seemed too important to her say no. Plus, it’s not like there was anyone else he’d rather do it. He was just… nervous. About what Dorian might potentially say in front of their guests. After all. He’d been there since the very beginning.

“He loves you both,” Manon says with a sigh. “And I do too. Although if you ever use it against me I’ll deny forever.”

“You love Aelin?” Rowan asks, and he watches as his best friend rolls her eyes and hip checks Rowan. She adjusts the thin straps of her navy jumpsuit, smoothing out the silky fabric to assure her minor assault hasn’t messed up her wedding look.

“I just told you I’d deny it.” She places her hands on her hips, examining Rowan up and down, before adjusting the small white pocket square in his blazer. “There. Perfect.” She says with a pat to his chest. “Ready?” she asks, and Rowan nods.

Rowan leads Manon through the gates of Ashryver Playland and lets his worries ease away. He’s not sure why he was ever nervous. He’s about to marry the most amazing woman in the world.

Beside the pier, in the location where Rowan had intended to ask Aelin to marry him, is a small walkway leading out to a platform on the beach. Ten chairs flank either side, filled with smiling, familiar faces. Dorian waits at the center of the platform, beneath a stunning arch of twisting greenery dotted with pale flowers.

As the sun starts to descend, a dark golden haze casts itself over the sand. He watches as it turns to orange and then pink beneath his shadow. And then he knows it’s time.

Rowan smiles as Gavin leads Fleefoot down the aisle, spreading pale flower petals across the platform with his other hand and then takes a seat next to his family, who congratulates him with high fives and cheers. Fleetfoot happily thumps her tail as Rowan gives her a smile, too.

But his attention is diverted immediately as everyone stands to welcome Aelin. His heart thumps wildly in his chest, hammering against his ribs as he spots her face. Aelin lifts her chin up toward the colorful tie-dye sky and takes a deep breath. As she takes her first step onto the platform, she smiles the most beautiful smile Rowan’s ever seen. He’s sure his face mirrors hers, and he can’t help but laugh as she scrunches up her nose slightly and sticks her tongue out at him. Gods, she’s perfect.

His eyes never leave her grinning face. When he takes her hands in his, when she stands here facing him, all the way until they say, “I do.” He’s not sure what he was ever worried about, because he barely even hears Dorian’s officiating, too busy being swept up in the turquoise-gold of Aelin’s eyes.

When Dorian announces, “You may kiss the bride,” Rowan doesn’t think twice before wrapping his arms around her waist and pulling her close. If she’s surprised by the exuberance of his kiss, Aelin doesn’t show it. She matches his fervor with equal force, soft lips parting to let their tongues explore each other’s mouths a little too thoroughly for public consumption.

“Now everyone knows how Aelin got pregnant,” Dorian snorts quietly behind him, and Aelin smiles and laughs into Rowan’s mouth.

Seeing his opportunity, Dorian interrupts them before they can go in for another kiss. “I now pronounce you husband and wife!”

Rowan lifts Aelin, scooping her from under her knees, and cradles her against his chest as he bounds off the platform.

“Where are you going?” Dorian yells as Aelin squeals loudly. But Rowan doesn’t care.

He finds the pole he was looking for immediately. Below the pier. Where he first kissed Aelin. He wants to kiss her there as his wife for the first time.

“Rowan!” she gasps as he presses her against the wooden beam, his mouth finding hers quickly. He can feel her soft fingers in his hair, tugging him against her, reciprocating his kiss, making his pulse race just like that very first time.

He pulls away panting, and rests his forehead against hers.

“I love you so much,” she whispers. “But if you ruin my dress before we get a picture together, I’ll murder you.”

Rowan laughs and lets her down, and they both kick off their shoes and sink their toes into the sand. He finally lets his eyes trail down her body, taking in her flowing white dress and grins.

“I’m going to be honest, I just looked at the dress for the first time.”

She smacks his shoulder, and he recoils, grabbing her hand and bringing it to his lips. “You’re perfect.”

She tilts her head to the side, letting her loose waves fall over her shoulder. “You’re a sap.”

“A sap you love,” he retorts quickly.

“Gods help us,” Aelin laughs, reaching up to kiss him again. But Rowan has other thoughts in mind. He trails his lips down her neck to her chest, loving the way the neckline of her dress emphasizes it.

“Oy!” Dorian cackles, “Let’s keep it PG. There’s people who want to eat dinner soon.”

Rowan flicks him off. “We’ll meet you there.”

But Aelin grabs his hand and pulls him to follow Dorian.

Their small reception is only a ten minute walk away in the Ashryvers’ back patio. Aelin made the playlist herself, and they covered the pool with a temporary dance floor. Emrys made the dinner – no mayo in anything and sparkling cider to last well into the night.

Rowan walks hand in hand with his bride across the sand, walking the familiar stretch from Playland to the Ashryver Estate. Only this time, everything is different. Nothing is a secret. And they both belong in a world of their own creation – one they’re going to start getting ready to bring a life into.

~*~

“What are you thinking?” Aelin says from her perch on his lap, well into the evening. She runs her fingers through his hair, now disheveled from hours of dancing and too many sips of champagne.

“I’m thinking that I can’t wait until next summer,” Rowan says, cracking a smile at Aelin. She rubs her thumb against his cheek and presses her lips to his.

“The last two summers weren’t crazy enough for you?” she asks. “You want to know what it’s going to be like with an infant in the mix?”

Rowan pales. “Oh my god, Aelin, we’re going to have a baby.”

“Did you forget?” she says, holding back a laugh.

He shakes his head. “No. I just…” He pauses. “What are we going to do with a baby at Playland?”

Aelin laughs, leaning her tired head against his shoulder. “Well, we’ll obviously take them on the Firecoaster, first and foremost. Then the High Flyer. Oh, and the Bumper Cars.”

Rowan can feel his lips turning down into a frown as he imagines his child on the dangerous rides.

“Rowan, I’m kidding,” she assures him, and he squeezes her side, causing her to let out a sharp cackle. “We’ll figure it out,” she finally says quietly. “We always do.”

She tightens her hand around his, and the pair sit together, wrapped up in each other, long after their party has ended and their friends have gone home, telling each other stories of summers to come and memories yet to be made.

~*~

I have loved writing this fic so much, and I don’t truly want to say goodbye. Which is why if you ever want a futuretake with these two, I will be more than happy to take prompts. ALSO, in case you hadn’t seen, I started a new Rowaelin fic called I Don’t Want To Wait (linked the masterlist).

Per usual, if you’d like to be added to my TOG taglist, please message me HERE.

TAG LIST:

@thewayshedreamed

@b00kworm

@alifletcher2012

@aknymph

@the-third-me

@mymultiversee

@superspiritfestival

@empress-ofbloodshed

@http-itsrebecca

@queen-of-glass

@but-she-was-aelin-galathynius

@westofmoon

@bilkul-sharam-nahi-aati

@iliketoasterstrudels

@bamchickawowow

@hizqueen4life

@faerie-queen-fireheart

@giorgia-the-trashpanda

@acourtofmoonlight

@m-like-magic

@rolltide7

@wordsafterhours

@amren-courtofdreams

@alserath

@tswaney17

@jesstargaryenqueen

@joyceortiz13

@itsme-malin

@aesthetics-11

@keshavomit

@alxanxah

@but-she-was-aelin-galathynius

@minaidss

@meowsekai

@deepdarktrashhole

@samotita

@in-love-with-caramel-macchiato

@ehazzard7

@cursebreaker29

@flourishandblottsx

@maastrash

@nishlicious-01

@sailorsassley

@aelin-queen-of-terrasen

@anunforseeablereader

@galyxsy

@greatwombatblaze

@queenofbumblebees

@kaitlynn1216

@januarystears

@officialasianbitch

@jewel334

@justgiu12

@df3ndyr

@l0sts0uls1128

@aelinfeyreeleven945tbln

@anniejulianneh111

@readystudyhike

@sjmships

@studyliketate

@iammissstark

@maybekindasortaace

@dean-winchesters-impala-1967

@heirofthenightcourt

@sleeping-and-books

@acourtofmarauders

@cmoff1

@stardelia

@alyx801

@verryberriess

@viajandosinalas

@grace-k-sterling

@tottenhamboys20

@throne-of-frost

#rowaelin #cruel summer au #amusement park au #charincharge writes #she did it #tog fanfic

322 notes · View notes

tundrainafrica · 4 years ago

Text

Title: Lovebug (2/10)

Summary:

“It might be a bug.”

“A bug?”

“Sometimes the developers of this application make mistakes. This is our first time meeting I’m sure so…Isn’t it a bit weird that we just met for the first time and it rings like this? And for two strangers to coincidentally ring each other’s alarms?“

Levi is the developer of the Love Alarm App and Hange is married to Zeke.

Link to cross-postings: AO3

Other Chapters: 1 3 4 5

Notes: I was torn between publishing the next chapter of lovebug or outlier tonight so I opted to just go for lovebug. I'll post the next chapter of outlier mid next week. As always, feedback is very much appreciated.

“We’re gonna delay the release of our next fix…” Levi repeated, just a little slower that time. He didn’t trust himself then to speak in anything faster or with a tone any louder.

It was too early in the morning for a meeting, just a little past eight in the morning. He was called into Erwin’s office right after arriving into company grounds and Erwin, a natural early bird, was talking louder than what could have been considered bearable for Levi.

At eight in the morning though, not a lot of things were bearable, especially if they involved a huge change of plans and a glaring reminder that he had a long work day ahead of him.

More importantly, Erwin’s voice was grating in a way that most bosses’ voices were grating when laced with a little more urgency than necessary. “Yes Levi, we’re delaying our fixes indefinitely, not just for Love Alarm but all of our other apps as well.”

Levi raised his eyebrows. “Really? You know we’ve been announcing this big fix for months.”

“I’ve contacted the marketing team. We are pushing the fixes back a week. You think that will be enough for you to finish everything you need?”

Levi shook his head. “There’s no need to push back the release. I can work on this bug now and I can have the other developers and the support team work on getting the regression testing done and getting the release out.”

Erwin shook his head. “I do not want to give Mr. Jaeger the impression that we aren’t prioritizing his complaints. Levi, you have to understand. He’s an important client.”

“I understand that. And I will be on top of things. I’m testing this issue myself.” Most days, Levi left the testing option to the support team. Given the nature of the bug though and the severe urgency of getting it fixed, it had been an easy decision for Levi to take it upon himself.

Erwin hummed in approval. “Yes and I’m happy to hear that you're going to be investigating this bug. I would rather that we didn’t release anything while investigating this.”

“May I ask why? This bug doesn’t involve any of our other functionalities. I can test this myself.”

Erwin hummed. “Zeke Jaeger is an unpredictable man. I don’t think he would appreciate us improving our product while such a glaring bug still exists. He is a very vocal and he might give us some bad press.”

“Oh?” Levi heard the derision in his own tone then, a smooth yet venomous sound. Zeke Jaeger had been outwardly friendly yet for some reason Levi couldn’t explain just yet. He wasn’t at all drawn by the charisma that accompanied it. In fact, the blonde had just been annoying and the conversation only cemented Levi’s first impression of Zeke Jaeger as bad, maybe even terrible.

What the hell does Hange see in him? He added to himself then. How that had entered his own contemplations then, he didn’t know. He quickly brushed it away and mustered the most seemingly uninvested face he could make then.

Erwin had that special talent of seeming uninvested either. As he settled on the sofa in front of Levi, he mixed the coffee just a little too loudly. He had an aura about him that very much meant business. “Have you done some prior investigation?”

“I did,” Levi said. As he soon found out, that aura was contagious.

“Anything new?”

“I’m entertaining the idea that what if…. The application is working fine?”

“Can you explain why his partner had two hearts while he had none?”

Levi cleared his throat. “Assuming the application is working perfectly, we can draw two conclusions. One, someone in love with Hange Zoe had their application on and Two, Hange Zoe isn’t in love with Zeke Jaeger.” That last conclusion couldn’t have easily been true, but still such words left such a sweet aftertaste in Levi’s mouth that he had to make some considerable effort not to smile.

Erwin raised his eyebrows inquisitively. “Any leads on whose application could have been on?”

It had taken some strength, some self confidence and some self discipline on Levi’s side to pull his phone out then. “My love alarm was on yesterday, I forgot to turn it off after the demo…” He navigated to the ‘history’ tab and opened his history to the exact time to late afternoon yesterday.

One person nearby is in love with you. Levi read silently to himself. In that split second, he was contemplating display issues and front end bugs that maybe just maybe accidentally chalked Hange’s heart as ‘love.’ It was highly unlikely though so even before that idea had ripened into something worth an explanation and a support ticket, Levi brushed it aside.

“So your application was on the whole time.” Erwin murmured, looking intently at the phone in front of him.

Levi nodded. “But it’s a good step in the right direction. That means there’s a bug to investigate after all. I just have to isolate it to either Hange Zoe’s application build or mine,” he explained.

“That seems promising and do you need any help organizing a meeting with her.”

“She’s coming today for a little testing.”

“Just like my best engineer to think a few steps ahead.” Erwin asked, a smile curling up his lips. “And you think you can get it done within a week?”

“If all goes well… Even less than a week.”

***

It had turned out that that small meeting had worked well to organize Levi’s thoughts. He had a quick action plan from there and with an action plan, a new burst of motivation, or at least enough of it to carry him from Erwin’s room to his own small office space in a little less than five minutes.

A week to investigate. Levi thought to himself as he leaned back on his office chair. He looked back up at the ceiling for a good few seconds before writing his deadline down on the white board next to him.

He didn’t need that whiteboard, their workflow trackers and excel sheets worked well to always keep Levi in the right state of mind. Yet there was something organic about white boards, something natural about being able to write the numbers with his own hand, freely changing his fonts with just the slight of the hand, impulsively changing formats at just a quick motion.

So he kept it there next to him, a large annoying waste of space to most people. But Levi had taken great pains to make it look organized in his room, measuring each frame to the millimeter. It was a large clean slate right next to his desk in his very small office. And more importantly, it was something that was very much his to play around with like he wanted to.

Under the deadline, he put the new release date of their fix.

We’re delaying the release of the next fix by a week.

Such wise words from someone who didn’t know how the investigation process actually worked. But with an employee and boss relationship, emphasis on Levi being the employee, he had to make it work. That’s how it had always been in the office. Erwin wasn’t a developer. He was a manager. And Levi was being paid by him.

Levi though never liked the idea of delaying fix releases. Once the date was announced, he liked to make sure all of the quality assurance testing and the regression testing was done two weeks ahead. And with that habit becoming custom for the Love Alarm project, he was sure they would have managed to make the release next week. Staring at the workflow interface, he noted the bar was more than half full already, most bugs were tagged as fix. All test builds were submitted and passed and they could have easily moved on to the final regression testing before release.

And regression testing never actually failed. The Love Alarm app after all was a very functionally simple application.

With the weight of a wasted timely release and the powerlessness of corporate politics bare on his back, Levi let out a long sigh.

He opened up his slack channel and typed out a few words.

We’re delaying the next fix release.

But it wouldn’t just be the Love Alarm which would be affected, all the other applications would be affected as well. His notifications exploded within five seconds, all feedback from each time. Levi started to wonder, maybe he should have put everything in one message.

So he edited his old message.

We’re pushing it back a week.

Under that, he put a new date and time as a reminder to all other employees. There were many why’s, many protests and his application continued to shake with notifications.

He checked the time on his phone. Hange had agreed to meet at nine and she should be texting soon. With little to no brains pace to create a summary of his meeting with Erwin in less than ten minutes, Levi typed out two words.

Erwin’s orders. Without waiting for anymore protests, he closed his laptop, packed up his things and ready to move to the small conference room he had reserved for him and Hange.

It was a few floors below. A small room among others but Levi was familiar enough with the layout of their offices to know it was very much soundproof.

Any unwelcome alarms, unwelcome notifications and unwelcome conversations would stay in that room. Even before Levi had dropped off his things in the conference room, Hange had already texted.

Her car was by the gate already.

Meet in the lobby. Levi texted back as he quickened his pace, quickly turning back towards the elevator, laptop bag still in hand.

He could have been too slow. Or Hange could have just been too fast but by the time he had arrived in the lobby, she was already on one of the seats next to the reception, playing around with her phone.

She was wearing a light sweater, her brown hair was pulled up messily into a half ponytail. Levi though had to note that it still looked very much like it fell into place. For a second, he had given her a good onceover, admiring everything at once.

Only a split second later, he was cruelly reminded that he had made her wait, long enough for her to have to sit down in one of the lobby sofas. “How long were you waiting?” It wouldn’t have been the first greeting Levi would have liked to give then. His heart was racing though and soon he realized, maybe he had taken up the unnecessary challenge of jogging down those five flights of stairs while keeping his laptop safely in tow.

Hange looked up from her phone seeming surprised. “Are you busy? Was this a bad time to visit?” Hange asked. “We could reschedule... “

More and more, the first greeting then was seeming less and less ideal. “No, no. This is great. I don’t know what just came over me. Thank you for taking the time to test this bug with me.”

Hange shook her head. “No, no, I asked my partner to invest in this application for a reason. I see great potential and I’d be happy to tweak some of those bugs with you.” Her lips widened into a smile. “So what’s the game plan?”

Levi gestured towards the elevators. “We do some simple testing. I just need to isolate the cause of this bug.”

“Oh? How does application testing work?”

“We use the application,” Levi answered matter-of-factly. Was there any other way to test it? It didn’t seem like something he should be asking the very important partner of a very important person though so Levi kept that last question to himself, instead keeping his face then as something both subtle and questioning.

“That’s cool,” Hange said. “So how’s your job?”

“It’s fine,” Levi answered. “The investigation will keep me busy.” He stared at the numbers on the elevator, getting lower and lower and Levi could have sworn it couldn’t go any slower. He could have found some consolation if anybody else had joined them in the elevator then, to at least abate that awkward need to carry some conversation between them.

Any other employees though had chosen for themselves to wait in front of other elevators. Levi was almost considering doing the same thing.

After all, Hange was talkative. She was asking questions. When they entered the elevator together, the very slow elevator, there would be more than enough time to send two to three questions back and forth. And Levi was quick to realize, he was an incredibly boring person.

“So do you have any hobbies?”

“Programming.” What about you? Levi had readied himself to ask in that long split second of silence that followed.

Hange though was quick to respond even before he could take control of the conversation. “Well aside from your actual job.”

“I like to clean,” Levi answered. He started to wonder how dorky that hobby sounded like. He needed to rephrase. “I meant--- organize things…” He added a second later. “Like Marie Kondo.”

“Oh yes, I’ve heard about her,” Hange said. She had at least allowed for a split second silence then, long enough for Levi to take the reins of the conversation.

Hange though was a high profile person, her partner was one of the richest men in the country and Levi’s mind was racing with hypotheticals. Was it okay to ask her about her hobbies? Her interests? Or was that supposed to be an exclusively professional meeting?

Soon, with all the questions nagging at him at once, he unearthed a question at the back of his mind that he had been meaning to ask since he had met Hange down at the lobby.

So how’s your husband?

Where’s your husband? Do you hang out with him often? Do you usually do stuff alone? A question that couldn’t so easily be answered by a single google search on an incognito window, only that night, he had tried searching keywords just to be sure.

Hange Zoe Zeke Jaeger Relationship

And soon after searching that just once. He had made sure to clear his browser history just in case he didn’t do it in some incognito window. After all, night mode and incognito mode had almost the same interface.

He soon found out though after jumbling around keywords over a search engine that Google wasn’t omnipotent as it turned out. The only one who could have satisfied his curiosity at that moment was the brunette next to him then.

He couldn’t bring himself to ask it just then though. So he went for another question, a very vanilla one but it seemed like a safe bet. “What about you?”

“What about me? What do you mean about me?”

Levi was starting to doubt the flow of the conversation of a while ago. Did he remember it correctly?

The elevator dinged like it was announcing some coming of a messiah. That had been more than enough to break the awkwardness of that exchange and Levi quickly slammed the open elevator door, just a little more loudly than usual. He gestured for Hange to go ahead.

“Hobbies,” Levi said as he met her outside the elevator.

“I like research,” Hange answered.

“Is that your full time job?” Levi asked. He didn’t need to ask. He had read more than enough articles of Zeke Jaeger’s partner to have seen ‘neuropsychologist’ used as an epithet enough to be convinced that that was her full time job. The last thing he wanted to do though was actually accidentally imply in a conversation that he had googled a few keywords for answers before clearing his browser history.

Hange nodded. “Yes it is.”

“Well… Hobbies aside from your actual job?” Levi asked. He kept his own word usage and his own phrasing similar to what Hange had used with him. If Hange asked it that way, that should have been a socially acceptable way to ask.

“I like plants,” Hange said firmly. She wasn’t looking at him. Although Levi had wanted to see the face she was making then, he started to realize that craning his neck to get a good view of her face might just look a little too weird.

So he settled for her side profile. From his view he could see eyes were everywhere at once from the hallways to the doorways just a little further away from the area that opened up as soon as they exited the elevator. “Where are we going?”

“Over here,” Levi said, he was quick to pull her towards the other side though, before she found out that he had taken a good few steps already in the wrong direction. “The conference room is over here…”

“We have a meeting?” Hange asked, her voice suddenly very tense.

“No, it’s nothing like that. I just thought it would be better that I reserved a room, so we could do some testing where we wouldn’t bother anyone.”

She let out a sigh of relief. “That’s good. I thought I was supposed to be preparing something.”

In those few minutes, he had made her wait, made her navigate some awkward conversation and made her panic. Then and there as he led her to the room, he was guessing what kind of dashing review she’d be giving Zeke about their first meet up.

More importantly, was he giving a great second impression? It was nine in the morning, too early for him to be confident that he was a fully functioning human being. Or so, that was what he repeated to himself then. He could make up for it after lunch.

Hange settled on one of the chairs nearest to the door. “Do we sit together?” She asked. The meeting room was designed for a maximum of ten people and for a good few seconds, he wondered if he should have gotten something much smaller.

Even before he had figured it out for himself, he was looking between sitting right next to her or towards the other side of the room. They weren’t married. Could he sit beside someone who was married?

But if he sat too far, he might not be able to hear her. He went for a very safe in between. He dropped his laptop bag on the seat next to her with some flourish, as if to say, he was married to his job and he was happy with that arrangement before sitting on the seat right next to his bag.

There was a bag between them, they were a safe distance away and Levi pulled his laptop out and booted it up. “I’m suspecting that the issue with your application might be the build. Can you redownload it for me?” He asked. The laptop had been a reminder at least that they were there for business. And business meant that they had a topic of conversation and he had practiced that script enough times to know, he probably didn’t sound like an idiot.

“Are we testing now?” Hange pulled her phone from her bag.

“Yes we are. Just download the app from the app store. I need to confirm that this isn't just your build in particular being faulty,” Levi brought out his own phone, deleted the application from the folder before redownloading it into his phone.

The ‘downloading’ message next to the love alarm application served some form of inspiration for conversation topics at least. “So, how does your husband like the app?” Levi asked. That line was straight from the basic customer service manual and he was very much sure that was acceptable territory for a professional conversation topic.

“Ahh Zeke? He loves the application. He told me himself, he sees potential in it too.”

Did he tell you over dinner? Over car rides? Somehow, Levi was picturing them over a happy dinner in their European style dining room in their very expensive penthouse apartment down town. He knew how it looked. He had seen it in one of the lifestyle articles he had googled just the night before. “That’s good,” Levi said, he felt that comment catch at his throat. He cleared his throat. “The bug... How does he feel about it?”

Hange’s face fell at that. Subtly at least, but with Levi had been staring at her for the past few seconds, it was very much noticeable as a split second movement. “Yeah, about that…”

“Did he say anything about it?”

“We did research on the application last night… And we were theorizing… so the heart could have been from him… and from someone else right? Someone else had their application open then. And he was saying it was you.” Hange’s eyes were wide with disbelief. “But I remember you said, it could be a bug right? And I’m sure you turned off your phone before we tested it…”

“And we’re testing again,” Levi said as he opened the newly downloaded application on his phone. “Log into your account.” He ordered, looking pointedly at Hange’s phone.

The biometrics were already in his account, all he needed was to log his fingerprints again. Levi took a glance at Hange’s phone laid out on the table.

She had gone through the log in process quickly. He turned the love alarm on and rested his chin on his hands and waited. Hange only needed a few seconds. Soon she had turned it on.

And within a second, her phone buzzed then his phone buzzed. It did wonders to shake the whole table then, enough for Levi to have to grit his teeth as the table shook sending a bolt of shivers up to his chin.

He could have sworn he felt blood rush to his face then. He quickly turned off the alarm. “It might be a problem with our phones. I”ll bring down some test devices and we can try this again. He avoided Hange’s gaze only brushing his hands on her shoulders long enough to make his point known. “Just wait here.”

Hange mumbled something with a seemingly obedient tone. Levi didn’t bother to guess. He quickly made his way out of the room, up the stairs--- he was in no mood to run into anyone in the elevator.

It had taken him roughly ten minutes to go back up to the office and come back down with a bag full of gadgets. He dropped the bag on the meeting table, maybe a little too loud and a little too roughly. “These are the most common gadgets used for testing the love alarm. They’ve all been factory reset so just set any one of them up and we try the application again.”

Hange seemed frozen with surprise, at the least she had managed a nod.

Setting up the device was a simple process and Hange didn’t ask too much about it. She had at least kept quiet through the whole ordeal and although it was second nature for Levi to set up a device, he made sure to keep his head down, his eyes intent, feigning deep concentration.

Or maybe he needed to concentrate. His hands were shaking just a little bit, his heart was racing.

He was sure he only needed to try it one different device, one commonly used model for both of their phones to rule out any problems with build or model. It was a decisive move.

And the climax of such a process came once again when Hange had motioned to click the love alarm again before looking up at him. Before they even met eyes, Levi clicked the on button on his end.

It was at the moment when the alarms rang in unison again did Hange avert her gaze. Levi bit his lip as he stared back at his phone.

One person nearby is in love with you.

He glanced up, at Hange’s phone. Although he couldn’t make out the words on it, the characteristic heart near the center was enough. She was getting the same heart.

He grabbed the phone from her. “It might be related to the model,” Levi said, Years of experience working with applications and phones were telling him, it wasn’t related. One working phone was more than enough proof. Looking at the watch at the end of the meeting room, he saw it was far from lunch time, he had at least ten devices in the bag. “Let’s try it on other phones… Just to be sure.”

***

“Levi, what if…”

“What if…” Levi nodding his head at Hange slowly, a subtle gesture for her to continue speaking.

For lunch, they had settled for one of the diner just along the wide shopping streets only a few minutes walk from the building.

An eventful few minutes walk. Levi had turned on his love alarm, put an earbud to one ear and listened to the alarm ring on repeat as he followed Hange through the streets. There were a few other notifications that popped up and left as he listened. But the ringing coming from that one heart which he had already surmised long ago, was from Hange’s heart had settled into even the cadence of his steps. It became an ubiquitous part of the short walk to the shopping street.

When they had settled in the diner though, Hange was quick to drop her phone in front of him and show him the history of her application. On her phone, there was one heart that remained steadfast through the whole ten minute walk as well.

At that moment, Hange pointed at it, then glanced quickly at Levi’s own phone. “What if… You are attracted to me. And I’m attracted to you? Because this love alarm, it doesn’t just check love right? It checks attractiveness. So if a passer by thinks you’re attractive, your alarm rings,” Hange said.

Levi leaned back on the diner behind him, picking at his fries with a fork. He couldn’t bring himself to eat one, just the results of their testing that morning had him losing his appetite. Consequently, he had ordered the burger meal at the front of the menu, something he was in no mood to eat.

“So maybe…” Hange said.

“Hange, we just met. During all the tests. I have never made anyone’s love alarm ring. Besides, I don’t think I’d be the type of guy to get attracted to someone at first glance. I don’t believe in love at first sight.” And someone who’s married at that. If Levi had something in his mouth then as that thought ran through his mind, he was sure he would have choked. He was more grateful than ever that he hadn’t started eating.

“But, we saw it already… The application was giving the same reading and when we were walking too… It never stopped ringing…” Hange explained. Still she looked like she was still finding the right words.

Levi understood her clearly though. “Hange, are you in love with me?”

Hange turned a bright red. “What? No, I'm married. Also, we just met and I don’t believe in love at first sight either”

“So do you believe there’s a bug?”

Hange nodded. “Maybe? Or maybe the data you put into the application was flawed. Maybe there are things that need to be improved.”

“That is a good point. So what do you suggest then Hange?”

“I’ll help you research. I pitched this application to Zeke because I wanted to try rolling something out similar to hospitals, psychiatric units. And if he invests maybe we could improve the application, work to make it more accurate?”

“That’s the plan. But he said so himself, he’s not going to invest in the application until the bug is fixed.”

“But what if it is working as expected… What if it’s just a matter of fixing the data?” Hange looked out the window, seeming deep in thought. Levi wondered if that last question had been for him or for herself.

“I can do further testing on this. Just to make sure,” Levi said. “The problem is… How are you gonna convince Zeke to invest in this?”

Hange sighed. “I guess it's going to be a question of timing. I'll catch him when he's in a good mood and--”

“Hange, are you willing to admit to your husband that you might just be attracted to some stranger?”

That shouldn't have been such a difficult thing. He had heard before of married couples who window shopped so Levi amended that question in his mind.

Are you willing to admit to your seemingly unhinged husband that you might just be attracted to some stranger?

***

Sometimes, the only way to find the bug is to break the application.

Levi and Hange got caught in the lunch time rush. But Hange wasn’t a typical worker, Levi wasn’t a typical eight to five employee either.

So Levi saw opportunity for a little test. “Open your love alarm,” he whispered. He put one earbud to his ear, motioning for Hange to do the same. He turned on the application once again, letting the shill ring grace his ears one again.

It was annoying at first, but over time, he had started to see it as an old friend. He was far from the denial stage already and he was already threading the lines of acceptance.

He was a developer. He had fucked up the coding and a bug had appeared. And that issue, it was a bug for sure, a bug he needed to investigate.

And any opportunity for data and evidence, was an opportunity he couldn’t waste.

“We walk through the lunch crowd,” Levi said. “Usually when I walk through, I get two to three rings. Sometimes more. There have been issues before that getting too many at once, sometimes the application would conceal all the hearts and the only way to get it to work again is to reset the application.”

“So what do we do?” Hange asked.

“Turn on your application and we walk through the crowds,” Levi repeated matter-of-factly.

The crowds around him though were disconcerting and he could understand how Hange would have needed some guidance then.

What did she know about testing? When Levi asked himself that question, he started to pick out another question too. What did he know about testing?

He was an engineer and he had been working with applications for years. He had experienced a lot about testing. But he had never experienced testing with a customer married to one of the biggest opportunities of a company and being accused of being in love with her by his own brain child.

He was treading unfamiliar grounds.

The ringing of the alarm was always unsettling at first. By the fifth ring, it always found a rhythm. Or maybe it was his own brain that found rhythm in it.

And he walked to that rhythm, he pushed past the crowds to that rhythm and every two to three rings, he would take a glance to see Hange beside him, her face had settled to some rhythm too. Sometimes, she would look back at him, other times she would look behind her, as if she suspected someone had set her alarm off.

But he had become part of her rhythm too. From his peripherals, he could see she snuck glances at him. Very quick glances that Levi had been perceptible, invested enough to notice.

They could have been walking for five minutes, or maybe even ten. Soon, Levi realized, the love alarm had embedded itself into the background noise, an annoying ring amid faint voices, conversations, public announcements.

It had only seemed loud once again when the street had opened up to an open space at the center.

In front of them was an empty park, and it usually was empty when the lunch crowds had made their way back to their offices. Levi had worked there long enough to know.

The chaos of the alarm had subsided into one noise. He turned to Hange to see that she was looking up at the sky then, one hand over her forehead, shading the view from the bright afternoon sun.

The light from the sun had done wonders to make her cheeks look a bright pink and for a second or so, Levi just stared, long enough for Hange to have noticed. Or maybe it was her plan to look to him eventually.

“Did it stop?” Levi asked as soon as he became aware of those hazel eyes on him. He averted his gaze and looked around the empty park. Nobody should be ringing his alarm. Nobody should be ringing her alarm. But them.

It should have been a win-win situation. If that had worked to break the application, Levi could have clocked that as the bug and investigated that instead. If it worked as expected, if the two applications continued to ring, then maybe it was working.

His alarm was still ringing. He did a thorough 360 of the park. No one was near enough to even meet the ten meter radius. Just to be sure though he turned to Hange. “Anyone around our ten meter radius?”

The park was empty save for one old man on a bench a good distance away, definitely more than ten meters. He hoped it had sounded like a redundant question.

Hange shook her head. “Nobody. But the application is still ringing.”

“Did it stop at all? During the walk?”

Once again, Hange shook her head.

Levi took a deep breath and dropped his shoulders back. “Erwin gave me a week to figure this out. I’ll do some of my own personal investigation after this.”

“Hey, I’ll do what I can too. I really want you to get those funds.” Hange took her hands in his and Levi had half the mind to pull away. If her hands weren’t so soft and maybe a little too warm even for a cool spring day.

Levi had been almost disappointed when Hange dropped his hand and turned back to her phone. Just ‘almost’ though. They just met, he couldn’t be too invested in hands.

So he thought back once again to backend work to the numbers that made up the love alarm. And he thought of Hange’s little suggestion. “You said something about flawed data right?”

***

“My plan is I’m gonna see if I can convince Zeke to take up that love alarm,” Hange said.

“No need to hurry. I have a week to get it working,” Levi muttered. He wasn’t looking at Hange then. His laptop was propped on his lap and he was looking through open support tickets.

They had a support team and being a developer, answering customer queries wasn’t his job. At that rate though, he was looking for anything to keep him busy. Zeke would be coming to pick up Hange and the last thing he wanted to be was free enough to stare at them.

“I have some books on love, I could send them over,” Hange suggested

Levi looked up from his laptop. The support ticket on ‘how to download the app’ was not very interesting after all and he found reason once again to stare at Hange’s bright hazel eyes. “Why would I need books about love?”

“You seem… inexperienced with love?” Hange started. She seemed unsure with that answer.

“Inexperienced with love?” Levi narrowed his eyes at her.

“Allergic to love,” Hange repeated. “so I thought it might help if you read on them.”

“Why would you care if I read them?”

“If we’re gonna work together to improve the accuracy of your alarm, I think you should learn. I’ll do my part too. I’ll learn a bit of coding.”

Levi shrugged. “Send them over then. I’ll look through them if I have time. First things first, I need to get a little more testing done.”

“They might be useful for testing. Or maybe they’ll be able to help you pick out which sensations in particular point to love.”

“I loaded the data. I would know,” Levi said.

Hange raised one eyebrow at him in playful suspicion. It had done some magic in helping Levi recall that all he remembered were the numbers and some hints about sweating, palpitations and some quickening paces. But machines had a tendency of learning more about the users over time.

“Maybe I’ll read one or two before bed," he added a second later.

“Great. Then I’ll do my homework too. I’ll see what I can get from Zeke. Hopefully I can convince him to invest, even with the bug.”

“You have my number---” Just update me. Before Levi could let those words out, he had fallen back into that support ticket about that one person not knowing how to download the application.

It was still a boring and stupid support ticket. But when Zeke had padded into the lobby like he owned the place with a butler in tow, Levi decided that the idiot of a ticket was still a better view than Zeke at that moment.

“Thank you for picking me up,” Hange said in an almost melodic tone, a tone that made Levi’s ears bleed.

“My meeting ended early and I don’t think we had a good dinner since last week. What did you have for lunch?”

“Burgers and fries.”

“Burgers and fries? Hange, I gave you more than enough money for a good meal." Zeke sounded mortified.

Levi froze. He had suggested the diner for its strategic location. He found himself running his right hand slowly over his wallet in his front pocket. He was sure he had the money for anything more expensive.

“It was good.”

“Well, I’ll make sure we get something better tonight. There’s a new restaurant, just outside town, they sell the pink fatty tuna and Kobe beef imported straight from Japan, same day shipping apparently so it’s definitely the freshest we can get here. What do you think?”

“That sounds great,” Hange said.

She had said it in such a tone, a tone she had never used with Levi before. Like she was tasting the food as she spoke of it. Of course she wouldn’t use it on you. You just met her. Levi thought to himself. As he willed himself to get back to his senses, he realized the ticket was still untouched. Although he had been staring at it since a while ago, he hadn’t made any progress at all.

He looked up at Hange then at Zeke. “Apologies for only taking her to a diner. Next time, I’ll make sure to take her somewhere a little…” Rich, expensive, snazzy, exclusive, snobby? Too many adjectives were running through his head then but Levi settled for something seemingly more professional, or as professional as he could go. “More your tastes.”

“That would be very much appreciated,” Zeke said. He took one of Levi’s hands in his, too suddenly and too forcefully that Levi had to smack his laptop to keep it balanced on his lap. “Thank you again for taking very good care of my Hange here.” He had slipped a hundred dollar bill in between Levi’s hands and maybe he had expected Levi to smile and say ‘thank you.’

And most days, Levi was polite enough to have mustered one but his ears were still ringing, not from hearing the love alarm non stop that day but from those last words Zeke had said.

My Hange.

Hange waved, motioning with her hands to ‘text soon,’ then she turned her back on him.

Levi couldn't’ even get a good view of Hange as she walked away. Soon enough, Zeke had wrapped one arm around her shoulders. From Levi's angle, he couldn’t tell whether Hange had pushed closer to him or Zeke was the one who pulled her closer.

For a second longer, he pondered it. Of course Zeke would pull her closer, that’s his Hange. Of course Hange would move closer to him, she’s his.

Levi looked back at the support ticket, he had opened again.

How to download application. Please help.

He closed his eyes and leaned back on the sofa. He closed all his open tabs before laying his eyes again on the empty draft.

Within seconds, he had closed that tab as well. There were larger issues then than a customer not being able to download an application.

***

Hange had sent books about love in a drive folder and she had emailed it to him. When Levi opened it, he was quick to figure out, they were all self help books

Scott Peck? He could have sworn he had heard that name somewhere and when he opened it, he found the book was hundreds of pages long. He didn’t have the attention span for that.

Maybe I’ll read one or two before bed. He had promised Hange that evening. But he didn’t actually have to read it right?

So instead, Levi googled the summary.

Genuine love is volitional rather than emotional. The person who truly loves does so because of a decision to love. This person has made a commitment to be loving whether or not the loving feeling is present. ...Conversely, it is not only possible but necessary for a loving person to avoid acting on feelings of love.

Levi was quick to close it after that. If that concept of love was real, that would defeat the whole purpose of the love alarm. The last thing he had wanted to do so late at night was invalidate his own brain child.

“Book one for the night. Done,” Levi whispered to himself as he opened the next book on file.

Before you love others, you must learn to love yourself.

“Cliche,” Levi said. But soon after reading it, he turned back to the application on his phone. He turned it on to see an empty blue screen void of hearts. There wouldn’t be hearts, he was alone in his apartment.

He thought back to Hange’s mention of flawed data. He thought back to the alarm that wouldn’t stop ringing. They had been testing it that whole day, there was nothing wrong with the application and the developer in Levi knew there weren't any glaring bugs.

But the testing would continue. He hadn’t completely tested all the scenarios after all. The alarm ringed with Hange but would it have alarmed with anybody else? His five years worth of experience testing the application told him 'no.'

Or maybe he just hadn’t been actively looking for the right people.

Even at night, the gears in his mind managed to turn and soon, he had a plan albeit a vague one. But the first few steps were clear at least. Levi navigated to his play store and typed a few words on the screen. A few minutes later, he was downloading an application with a familiar flame icon on the screen.

He took a deep breath. "This is part of the testing process," he muttered to himself. He was gonna be spending the whole night swiping.

#levihan #levihan fanfiction

33 notes · View notes

moonlit-mizukage · 4 years ago

Text

Chapter Fourteen: No, I have never seen these before.

Summary: Popular punk band, Skull crusher, had to find a new drummer due to the sudden disappearance of the last one. As band manager and lead singer, Semi Eita’s girlfriend, Y/l/n Y/n brings Kyotani, a rising internet drummer they found online into the picture. Everything was great at first, then Kuroo, the lead guitarist, started getting creepy messages and presents. Y/n is determined to find out who is trying to sabotage the band when things only take a turn for the absolute worst. Who could be the mysterious stalker really be? Is it their new band mate? Or could it be a close friend of one of the members?

TW: Swearing, blood

Word Count: 1.2 K

An: I had a chapter that was supposed to be uploaded yesterday at 9pm and it never posted??? I checked my app and even desk top and it’s completely gone. I typed it on tumblr cause I was out. I will retype it and this is it now and I will work on posting the second one as well tonight or tomorrow with Tendou’s smau update 😭

_______________________________________________________________

Third person POV The next day

“Because the Ip address was given to us one day earlier than expected I think we should add it to our stops.” Y/n said looking over at Semi as he drove.

“How would we find his address Y/n?” He said as he pulled into Akaashi and Matsukawa’s driveway.

“I googled him and it came up.”

“So what would we just knock on his door and ask him why he’s in love with Kuroo?”

“I mean why not?” The back door opened on the van as Kuroo Matsukawa, Akaashi and Kuroo climbed inside.

“What’s going on?” Matsukawa asked.

“Y/n found Asahi’s house and wants to go after Kuroo’s and Daichi’s.”

“That’s a genius idea.” Matsukawa said.

“No it’s not. We could get arrested.” Akaashi said.

They pulled up into the parking lot of Kuroo’s apartment building.

“Are you ready to head in?” Y/n name asked Kuroo.

“Not really, but let’s go inside. I text Kyotani to come up too since he lives here too.” Kroo said.

They all headed up as Kyotani was waiting by the elevator on Kuroo’s floor.

“Hey Kyotani. Thanks for your help today.” Kuroo said as he walked down the hall to his place. He unlocked the door as he stepped back scared to go in first. Matsukawa walked in before anyone else could move.

“Looks pretty normal doesn’t it?” He asked Kuroo.

“Check the windows like last time.” Y/n said. The group split up as Y/n and Kuroo went into his bedroom. Y/n was looking along the window as she turned to Kuroo. “Are these yours?” She held her hand out with something in it.

He picked up the rings from her palms for a closer examination.

"No, I have never seen these before." He said as he met her gaze and past them back.

“I will ask the others.” Y/n said as she turned and left the room. She walked up behind Semi and tapped his shoulder.

“Do you know who these belong too?” She held up the rings. Before he could say anything Kyotani snatched them from your hand. “HEY!” She shouted at him.

“These are fucking mine.” He snapped.

“I found them in Kuroo’s room.” She said.

“I lost them at the last fucking concert.” Kyotani spoke up. Y/n looked at Semi.

“We found nothing in the kitchen except smelly food.” Matsukawa said.

“We cleaned out your fridge.” Akaashi added.

“Oh thanks. I forgot since I have been at your place now for some time.”

“Why don’t you just fucking stay at mine?” Kyotani asked.

“I mean I could yeah. I keep putting out Akaashi and Matsukawa. I know it has been keeping them up at night with me on their bedroom floor.” Kuroo responded with an awkward laugh.

“It’s no issue for us.” Akaashi said.

“Yeah Akaashi is a great cuddler.” Matsukawa said with a wink.

“So should we head out then?” Akaashi said quickly changing the topic.

“Daichi lives just 4 buildings down so we can walk over.” Kuroo said.

“Does he still have his apartment?” Kyotani asked.

“I still have his spare key so we shall find out.” Y/n said.

The six walked down the sidewalk as they got to the building. Y/n reached into her pocket and pulled out the key to the front door. They walked inside as the five guys waited by the door inside and Y/n approached the front desk.

“Hello. I am Y/n. Apartment 1506’s girlfriend. I was out of the country for a few months so I was unable to call him. Does he still live there?” She asked.

“What’s the residence name?” He signed, sounding annoyed.

“Daichi Sawamura.”

“Ah yes. I know him, a lovely fella. He always pays his rent by cheque by slipping it in my mailbox each month. Other than that I never see him in the building anymore. Does he spend a lot of time with you?” He asked with his sudden attitude change.

“Not in a while unfortunately.” She said truthfully. She said her goodbyes and waved the guys over to the elevator.

“Alright so Daichi does pay his rent here still somehow.” She said.

“He had a specific bank account that the money came out of. He had enough in there for 5 years.” Akaashi said.

“Yeah but he pays by cheque.”

“Wait what?” Semi asked. “That’s really creepy. Are we sure this is safe?”

“I mean no, but we have to check it out anyways.” Y/n said as she laced her fingers in Semi’s.

They finally got upstairs to his apartment on the fifteenth floor. They walked down the hall as she pulled out the key and unlocked the door. She turned to the others with her hand on the knob.

“Pray for no dead people behind here.” She said just above a whisper.

They walked into the apartment as they all let out an audible sigh.

“It seems weird how everything is just how I remember it.” Matsukawa said.

“Let’s look around anyways. See if we can find anything.

Y/n and Semi laced fingers again as they headed to Daichi’s room. Semi grabbed the door as he whispered to the count of three before pushing it open.

The two looked around and nothing still seemed out of place.

“I’ll check under the bead and in the closet. You check his desk and ensuite.” Semi said.

Y/n walked over to his desk pulling out his chair and started to shuffle through the stuff piled on top of his desk. She began to shuffle through drawers as she found nothing on top. She noticed a small raise in the wood of the second drawer she was now in. She began to scratch her nails along the wood to see if there were any weird spots. She noticed a weak spot near the back. Y/n grabbed hold of the shelf covers that lined the drawers and pulled it up slowly. She took a deep breath as she noticed a small slim box inside. The wood was deep enough to hide something but not deep enough to notice from a quick view or grab.

She pulled out the small box placing it on top of his desk. She opened the small box. Inside there were upside down photos folded in half around something. She carefully unfolded the photograph. Three small vials rolled along the top of the desk. Each vial was tagged with a small name tag. They read;Mai and Daichi’s promise, Yukie and Kuroo. Being as curious as she is, Y/n opened the vial with Mai and Daichi’s promise written on it.

With a hard pull, the small cork came loose and so did the liquid from inside. Crimson liquid spewed from the inside and landed on her clothing and bare arms. Her breathing began to grow heavy as she shakily placed the vial back down calling for Semi.

She reached out to the photograph that sat on the table unwrapping it only to see a group photo of the band and her friends. It was taken before Daich had disappeared at a party. Over Yukie’s head was a red X.

Semi called to her as he walked up and placed his hand on her shoulder. Startling her she jumped and tossed the photo down.

His eyes immediately went to the blood spilled on her.

“Y/n... What happened?”

________________________________________________________________

Previous | Masterlist | Next

Taglist: @satan-ruler-of-hells @elianetsantana @elephantloser @putmeinyourdeathnote @levithansbabygirl @megumitodoroki @idontknow-whatto-callthis @jellyfishsart @freakydeaky226 @atria-avior @doodletingz @kac-chowsballs @twistedvalkyrie @ranu-chan @why-couldnt-it-be @thisnoodlewritesao3 @lady-tokugawa-of-mikawa @trashy-simp @inumakis-salmonroll

#yandere haikyuu #haikyuu x reader #haikyuu horror #haikyuu horror smau #haikyuu smau #haikyuu fanfiction #haikyuu x manager #haikyuu x you #haikyuu x y/n #semi smau #semi x you #semi x y/n #semi x reader #kuroo smau #tw blood #tw body horror #tw stalking

31 notes · View notes

sword-of-summer · 4 years ago

Note

All of them answer every question fuck you

ahahaha no i respectfully deny your "fuck you" and i accept the ask and so-

i am 5'10", and i don't wish to be taller or shorter- i am the perfect height for hugs and messy hair, and yep, i like it here-

dream pet would be a mix of golden retriver and a husky called Holly and a chonky cat called Loki- yes ofcourse my future kids have names everyone should name their future pets-

ripped jeans/black pants with a Darth Vader tshirt or a Ethnic Fusion Kurta with black sneakers/artificial leather slip-ons, and if it's cold, a black jacket open obviously- and a black wristwatch i love my black wristwatch.

favourite video game was Clash of Clans and going even back, GTA Vice City and, the og- MARIIOOOO

three things/people are Oreos, Nutella and Pizza. The Holy Trinity-

"Beware me my fingers are smeared with chicken popcorn grease"

you didn't mention an opinion, @chunkybirb, so imma give my opinion on Vanilla ice cream and Nutella- ANYONE WHO HADN'T COMBINED THESE TWO COMBINE THESE TWO THEY ARE FUCKING AWESOME

im either phlegmatic or melancholic bruh idk maybe ik or maybe not

im v v v v ticklish

not an allergy, but an intense hatred for ketchup- i vomit if it gets too close to me fuck you ketchup

im heterosexual

any between tea and coffee but full milk coffee (ik, kill me), never had cocoa- but i love a chocolate or nutella milkshake

both. both is good. (cat and dog)

i would be an elf cause hell yeah, knowledge and wisdom

favourite youtuber is Samay Raina, a stand up comedian turned youtuber who is just awesome-

as i mentioned in 1., i am 5'10"

i would not change my name cause it's the coolest fucking name ever, i am Tanay, and Tanay in Hindi means Son, and my parents literally named their son Son, and hell yeah i like it

i forgot how much i weigh- last i checked it was 75 kilos, but ive gained weight since 2019 so yep, gotta walk in the mornings

yes i believe in metaphysicality cause one- it seems cool- second- me and @theclassyghost discussed a metaphysical life theory that i really really like and metaphysicality gives preservation of knowledge so i believe in spirits

SPACE. SPACE. SPACE.

im not that religious, no

pet peeves no well nah not really

nocturnal def nocturnal i sleep at 4.50 anyway hehehehe

fav constellation is Cassiopeia

fav star is Sirius tho

what the fuck are ball jointed dolls

i do have a fear of losing people that's just anxiety i guess

yep, global warming is real

never thought that much about reincarnation tbh but maybe, i do

fav movie is Spider Man : Into The SpiderVerse and Inception and The Dark Knight Rises and Revenge of The Sith and yes, for my indian gang, 3 Idiots and Gully Boy

yep i get scared v v v easily

i have had no pets but i plan to once i grow up

@chunkybirb 's blog is fucking cool awesome and *chef's kiss* a masterpiece

blue calms me. i love blue.

live in Norway cause pretty lights, snow, and less people than this overpopulated country i am in

born in Mumbai, India

v v v dark brown like it's almost black but no it's dark brown

introvert

horoscopes and zodiacs, i do read them, never believed that much tbh-

HUGS I LOVE HUGS

i really wanna visit my brother i haven't met him in a long time i really wanna play cricket w him just like old times

my sister- she's annoying but well i care for her

nah

tattoos idk bruh im okay idk may get one or may not get one

nope, smoking is ewwww *vomits*

ah my crush- she's cool [ if she exists

when the chalk doesn't write on the board but goes iiiiiieeee I HATE THAT

a sound i love is rain pitter pattering i just hhhhhh sends me into happiness

nope fatass here

favourite actors have to be eddie redmayne, oscar issac and pedro pascal- and margot robbie and winona ryder in the actresses section also yes, elliot page

bruh already answered in 30.

im okayish!! spotify and tumblr, cool combo-

my hair are okay being black for me

yesterday, monday, from 6.40 to 6.50

music

uhhh naah not that i know of

well in Rick Riordan's Magnus Chase books, the sword of Frey aka Sumarbrander TALKS and demands to be called Jack, so here i am

bakwaas, music and comfy

yep, i believe in evolution

unfollow on hate and when they dm me sending nsfw pics ugh why are people like that

follow, well, i like people and they seem cool, so i follow them

fav kind of person is the one who'll sit with me for hours not even talking and just vibing to music

fav animals are beavers, doggos and cats

three fav blogs are @chunkybirb, @theclassyghost, @little-boats-on-a-lake, @aredhel-of-gondolin, @sue-me-imbadass, @alleenkaas, @my-ackerman, @brrrrrrrrrrzone

fav emoticon has to be ☹ this me seeing my stupidity outrank others

fav meme has to be Butternut is a master of psychological manipulation

INTP

Libraaa let's go

no dog, i have

black darth vader tshirt, black pants, black sneakers and black wrist watch

i have no selfies my phone has no cameras i live in eternal darkness

what the fuck are platform shoes

i, uhhh, i remember weird things like what i drew in class in 3rd while i was supposed to be doing english

lazy ass here, no front flips possible

i like birds they fly

nope i don't Iike swimming i like blankets

wrapped up in blankets reading books sounds better than both

ketchup

hyperspace travel

nope none

reading writing eating sleeping

my friend

tumblr seems cool

i have around 60-70 idk

yes i can run but why

yes they do but what's the fun in that

nope I'd fall over

sapphire let's go

koala bear or panda

sunflower or the one on a lemon tree

ketchup store

one cup of coffee is enough, tysm

read minds that sounds cool cool yeaaahh

nope never wore it a black clothes guy here BatMan

winter winter all year long

i don't know and i don't wanna try

i don't know and i don't wanna know

everyone cause they are better than me

bookstores cause bookstores any bookstores

sneakers, black onez

apparently some gas bitches mixed up to form a planet

non vegetarian but i partake meat just twice or thrice in two weeks

i don't know they don't seem like liking

naaaaaaaah

bugs ew

spiders ew

about the fact that i come off as arrogant and overconfident while in reality it's just that my communication skills suck

i can draw averagely whenever im in a mood

this thing im answering but i like answering it

uhhhhhhh brain freeze- idk bruh questions are good they give knowledge

yep, while sleeping

ahh yes calming, they are

cloudy days cause fucking cool vibes

hehehe wouldn't you like to know, weatherboy

CumuloNimbus i really like it's name yknow nimBUS

dark blue, dark blue always or black

naaaah no freckles

fav thing is when they laugh and it's just happy and we're both laughing like shitheads but who cares we're rebelling against depressing life and we laugh

both. both is good [ fruits and vegetables

sleep but i have to answer 170 questions cause @chunkybirb

sky sky sky it's my blog's header duh uh sKy

sweet and sour candy. SWEET AND SOUR CANDY.

dim lights it makes me feel cool

ahhh so here we go- Mooncalfs, Thunderbirds, Phoenixes, Sphinxes, Dragons that seem to be Space Nebulae, and more and more and more

i really feel like a boomer sometimes

i love everything about this site/app it makes me feel happy cause i like the people and the posts

uhhhhh i think too much about everything cause i just do. i like thinking

"He's dead, guys. For the sake of The Force, please watch Star Wars now he wanted to discuss it with you" actually no i would just say "A big shoutout to Garlic Bread he loved Garlic Bread"

myself cause i should be sleeping but sleep is for the weak and i am the weak and the strong i am a paradox-

that i obsess too much on things and try involving people it never works out

nope. had braces for 4 years, that beat out teeth showing smiles

i prefer computer-tv ahahahahaha

never tried them, so IDK

naaaaah not motion sickness- never travelled by sea so idk seasickness

lobed ears

yep i believe that deeds do count in life and beyond

idk bruh i don't believe in physical attraction too much- bodies are fake- mentally/metaphysically tho, im a 7

ahhhhh many many Stupid Genius, Tani, Tanu, Tanya

i still do-

i really want to talk to a therapist. converse. and discover.

im both, i am both.

10:1 is the ratio- giving 10, receiving 1

uhhh nothing just when i am right and people use the old "disrespect" argument

3, Hindi, Marathi, English

girls

uhh no i am not

my hair i love them everyone says things about my hair but i love them

knowledge vibes i give, someone tells me- and that's all i ever wanted

anyone i know tbh, my mutuals, my friends, my discord friends

ahhh no i wouldn't but i wish i was born 20 years earlier

bleh bloo, neither like nor dislike

i don't know if i have one

i don't know, haven't had physical contact in a long long long time in a galaxy far far away

the above point stands but i would like to ig

anything i write, 3 hours later, i instantly hate just idk why

anything i write

that i am normal no i am not and i am not okay hahahahaha

65-70 ish people

somewhere around-

many many many don't ask please but okay if you do ask

somewhat

uhhhhh idr exactly but i won't tell in public duh uh

mediummm hairrrr

last year lockdown i became harry potter

i don't know buddy i seriously don't know

yep i do cause knowledge i like knowledge

naaah never tried

no i definitely cannot stand on my hands or my head for more than 30 seconds

yep, im pretty sure i answered most of them correctly-

og link-

#personal #ask #tumblr

16 notes · View notes

tomspancakes · 4 years ago

Text

This Way: Part 4

*not my gif*

Pairing: Tom Holland x Actress! reader

Word Count: 3580

Warnings: still a crazy ass bih lol. I can’t stop with the drama sorryyy

Summary: Y/n starts noticing how weird Tom is being and decides to confront him.

A/N: I think I’m going to post two days in a row then have one day off, but like a sis is nearing the end of her school year so let’s hope I stick with it haha. Please lmk if you’re enjoying this/ have any constructive criticism. ALSO I need help like ded ass don’t know if I’m stupid or if it’s tumblr’s fault, but when I tag people some of the tags don’t work :/ BUT don’t hesitate to ask to be a part of the tag list :)

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

+++

*week and a half before lock down*

You opened the door to the flat exhausted after a long day of filming and walked into the living room to see Tom busy on his laptop. He looked up,

“Oh hi, y/n.” He shut his laptop and stood up, you gave him a strange look.

“Leaving already? Do I smell or something?” You joked and flopped on the couch. Tom has been acting really strange with you after the dinner with his family. Lately he’s been leaving you alone whenever one of the boys got up to leave as well. ‘Was he feeling awkward about being friends?’ you thought to yourself.

“Oh no no you don’t smell. You always smell nice,” He blushed because he said too much, “Just need to work on this script, Harry’s been on my ass about it.” He said and began to walk away before you could reply.

“What? Not even gonna ask how my day was... you know like a friend?” You teased and Tom sighed and squeezed his eyes shut and turned around

“How was your day, y/n?”

“It was long, tiring, and someone was really rude to me on the set.” You sighed and waited for him to sit back down so he could listen, but he never did, “Ok then… how about your day, Tom?” This was starting to get awkward,

“Didn’t really do anything, just ate and worked on the first act of the movie, which still isn’t done so if you’ll excuse me I’m going to my room now.” He said quickly, turning around again walking away.

“How rude. ‘Ya let’s be friends, y/n, it’ll be fun.’” You grumbled and mimicked him in an annoyed voice. Tom heard and felt really bad to pretend he didn’t.

You were now sitting on Harry’s bed watching him edit his short film and eating ice cream, he listened to how your day went,

“And oh my god one of the stunt fighter guys was being a straight up asshole,” You rolled your eyes eating another spoonful of ice cream,

“How so?” Harry asked

“Well I kept messing up this one stunt where I was in heels and we ended up filming it 7 times. I mean I felt bad for wasting time, but that was until the dickhead said, ‘I don’t even know why they casted you, it’s a simple stunt just get this shit down already so we can move on!’” You said in a deep voice mimicking the guy, “I was so embarrassed, but thankfully Ryan stood up for me. Still ruined my day though.”

“What the hell? What kinda asshole-,” He got up from his spot on the bed all riled up, “Who is this guy? I’m gonna end him. Does he even realize how damn hard it is to do a stunt in heels?” You laughed at Harry’s protectiveness, “Tom literally took half a day to film one stunt and he wasn’t in heels!” You shrugged.

“Sit your ass back down. Thanks for trying to protect me, but everything will be fine, I’m strong. It’s business gotta suck it up.” He rolled his eyes and jumped on you with a bear hug. You laughed and tried to push him off of you, but he was too heavy.

“Harry, you bitch, I can’t breathe.”

“I just want to protect my best friend.” He said before letting you go and going back to editing.

“Speaking of Tom, have you noticed that he’s avoiding me?” You asked quickly.

“Huh? I haven’t noticed anything of the sort. I mean you guys are both really busy right now aren’t you?” You nodded and rested your head on Harry’s shoulder,

“I mean I guess, but haven’t you noticed like yesterday when you left the kitchen Tom rushed a bit to leave also?”

“Oh yeah I forgot about that, it was quite strange now that I think about it.”

“Yeah Tom’s been doing that to me ever since we left your parents’ house. And when I got home today I tried to talk to him about my day, because you know I thought he’s my friend, and he just said he really needed to work on the script and left to his room!”

“Hmm, I did tell him to finish the first act by tomorrow, but he’s been working in the living room all day. Said something about his room being more of a distraction. Also it’s not like Tom to leave without hearing someone out. He always listens.” You just sighed,

“I guess he thinks it’s still weird to be friends. I tried, sorry, Harry.”

“Please don’t give up just yet, y/n, maybe he’s just stressed or something. You know I wouldn’t want to pick sides.” You nodded and started to drift off to sleep and felt Harry remove the bowl from your lap.

“Y/n, love, wake up.” you were being shaken by Harry.

“Huh? Oh sorry, did I fall asleep?” You asked groggily and he laughed,

“Yeah and I finished editing the short film!” You jumped up no longer tired anymore.

“Oh my god yay, Harry! Can I see it now pleaseeee?” You jumped up and down on the bed.

“Tomorrow, love, it’s 1 am now and I want to show everyone in the house at the same time.” You pouted and he laughed.

“Fine then be like that. But I’m proud of you.” You hugged him, “Good night, Harry, can’t wait to see the finished product!”

“Night, love.” He chuckled and you walked out with your empty dish.

You pulled out your phone and opened the Instagram app to see that Tom posted something on his story about 30 minutes ago. It was a picture of the script and his foot captioned, “Working on something big, like my big toe.” You giggled a bit and muttered, “Idiot.” The next story post was from Tuwaine, it was a picture you all took together after breakfast when Tom burnt himself. You were laying across the boys’ laps and Tom was happily looking down at your smiling face. It was captioned, “If lock down happens, it’ll be a real party with these people.” You smiled and reposted it to your story.

As soon as you reached the kitchen you saw Tom sitting at the counter and typing away on his laptop.

“Hey, Tom, still working?” Tom jumped at the sound of your voice.

“Jesus, don’t scare me like that. And yes I couldn’t sleep, b-but I think I’m getting tired now.” He was about to close his laptop and leave, but you stopped him.

“Oh my god… I’m just gonna put my dish in the sink and leave.” His frazzled expression turned to a relaxed one and he sat back down typing again, refusing to look at you. You began to walk away then felt the urge to ask,

“Tom, a-are you avoiding me?” It came out quieter than you thought, you felt vulnerable. He stopped typing for a brief moment when you asked.

“No, definitely not. Why’d you think that?” You walked back to the counter and stood across him leaning on the surface.

“I’ve been noticing that you're in a rush to leave the room when we’re alone…” Tom continued to type, but incorrectly because of his nerves.

“Oh, I-I’m sorry, love, didn’t mean for you to think that. I’m just busy is all, I promise.” He said and pointed at the laptop.

“Too busy to hear your friend rant about her day?” You asked and he sighed. His heart dropped when you called yourself his friend.

“I’m afraid so, love. Now why don’t you go sleep don’t you have to film tom-” You cut him off getting tired of the excuses,

“Tom cut the shit, I know you’re avoiding me and I don’t get why.” Tom sighed as you rambled and he put his laptop to the side because he wasn’t getting anything done, “I really appreciate you letting me stay here, but shouldn’t we at least talk a little bit? I mean I was ready to be friends with you for Harry’s sake and then we talked at the dinner and then I was genuinely ready to start off on a new foot. I’ve been trying so hard to reach out to you and you’re literally avoiding me now. Like are you even trying at all? Because I don’t-” Your eyes began to water. Tom got too frustrated and cut you off,

“Y/n I can’t talk about this right now. Please, it’d be better if we discussed this another time.”

“What the hell? Are you being serious? You were a dick when we broke up, you were a dick when I tried to reach out to you, and now you’re being a dick for putting our so called ‘friendship’ on ho-”

“Y/n, stop! Ok? I get it. You can call me a dick and an asshole whatever you want, but this is all for you! Everything I do is for you or because of you! So just leave me the fuck alone, please.” His voice cracked when he said the last sentence.

“What the hell are you talking about? What are you doing for me?” You stared at him confused.

“I can’t say anything, it’s for the best. Just drop it.” You looked at one another, tears threatening to fall out of Tom’s eyes, you hadn’t noticed you were already crying.

“No. I’m not gonna leave until you tell me what’s going on, Tom. I care for you and I want to be here for you, just tell me what’s going on please.” He looked at you and furrowed his brows making tears stream down his cheeks, it hurt to see you so sad especially since he caused it. He turned around in distress and brushed his hands through his hair before turning back to you. He looked into your eyes and sighed knowing there was no way out of this situation.

“I’ve been avoiding you because I told Allana you’re my ex.”

“Ok and what’s so ba-”

“Let me finish, y/n, please.” You apologized softly.

“I told her not to tell anyone because I didn’t want to break the promise of letting the world know that we dated. A-and she threatened to spill the secret if I didn’t stay away from you. She said if I ever told anyone about what she said or if she ever saw me close to you again she’d expose us right away. I-I didn’t want to jeopardize our friendship because I decided to be honest to my two-faced girlfriend.” All this information hit you like a train.

“Wow, what. a. fucking. Bitch.” You said stunned, Tom scoffed.

“I feel like an idiot for not listening to the boys and not seeing the red flags.” He sat back down and put his head in his hands.

“Hey don’t worry, I didn’t notice anything either. Hell I tried to help her. Maybe we’re too gullible…” What you said didn’t really help so Tom began to sob a bit. You walked over to his side and put a hand on his forearm so that he could look at you. His heart was racing at your touch.

“Look, I know Allana is bat shit crazy, but…” You paused thinking if this was a good thing to tell him, “I uh I don’t think I can have you avoiding me all the time, I want you in my life,” He looked up at you surprised, “a-as a friend.” His heart dropped, was that all you were ever going to see him as? A damn friend?

“Ok, but Allana will tell everyone, and I know how much you care about your privacy.” He said with a stuffy nose, you grabbed a tissue for yourself and Tom.

“I know, but we’ll figure out a way. We were clever enough to hide a 6 month relationship.” You smiled, but you both felt sad when you mentioned your past. He got up and wrapped you in his arms tightly. You swayed back and forth as you felt wet droplets fall on the top of your head, and you soaked Tom’s white t-shirt. You both weren’t crying only because of what just happened, but because you missed one another in a way that words can’t explain. You let out the tears you didn’t cry from when Tom didn’t respond to you and remembered the nights you’d go through old pictures of you and him alone. Tom was crying out all the tears he wanted to let out when he saw that picture of you and Gavin and from the nights that he craved your touch. He tightened his arms around you like it was the last time he’d ever see you.

“Allana might be watching from outside the window, I’m gonna let you go now.” You said and Tom chuckled sadly letting you go, “We’ll talk about what we can do about this situation in the morning or another time.” You smiled kindly at Tom and he nodded. Tom grabbed your hand softly before you could walk away and pulled you close. You gulped because of how close you were to him,

“Thanks for being so kind, sleep well. Goodnight, y/n.” You smiled and replied,

“Thanks for being more kind to me. Goodnight.” You gave him one last hug and walked away feeling relieved while Tom still felt guilty despite what you said. He still felt like he needed to do more.

You woke up at 8 AM feeling a lot happier for some reason. Maybe it was because you cleared things up with Tom last night or because you were going to film a really exciting scene today with some new people.

You walked into the kitchen, “Goodmorning boys!” You said enthusiastically walking up behind where Harry was seated and gave him a hug from behind.

“Ew why’re you happy?” Harry asked, still tired.

“Morning, y/n!!” Tuwaine and Haz said in unison. You grabbed a bowl and poured yourself a bowl of cereal.

“Harry, when are we gonna watch your film, I can’t wait any longer.” You complained.

“Maybe when you come back from set, I want to go back to sleep after I eat.”

“Ugh you’re so lazy.” You joked, “where’s Tom, isn’t he usually up by now?”

Tuwaine looked at the other boys then at you apologetically, “He uh left around 5 this morning.”

“Oh for an early workout or something?” You asked, taking a bite of cereal.

“No,” Tuwaine cleared his throat, “to Berlin, Germany.” You choked on your cereal.

“Wait what, you’re joking I thought he leaves in 3 days.”

“I don’t know exactly why he left, something about needing a few days for himself before filming. Which I understand because he’s been working hard.” Haz said and you furrowed your brows, was it because of what happened last night? Harry noticed your concern.

“Y/n, do you know exactly why he left?” You wanted to tell him, but you couldn’t. If the boys found out what Allana said they’d definitely do something about it and you couldn’t let that happen. You shook your head,

“Nope, I’m just as confused as you are.” You said coolly.

“Are you sure you don’t know what was making Tom stressed?” Harry asked as he pulled up in front of the studio.

“Ya, I’m sure. He’s avoiding me, remember?” It pained you to lie to Harry like that, but you weren’t sure if you were ready to let the world know you and Tom dated. Harry looked like he didn’t believe you, but he let it go.

“Ok then… Text or call when you need me to pick you up.” You thanked him again for dropping you off and walked to the set. You saw Lana and walked with her,

“Hey, babes, did you see the text from Melissa?” You shook your head no. Melissa was in charge of scheduling which scenes would be filmed every day, “She said everyone needed to meet at crafty’s before going to sound stage 32.”

“Really? Why?”

“Not quite sure, but there’s been rumors that filming will be postponed.” Lana said sadly.

“Wait, you’re joking.” She shrugged and shook her head as you guys entered the food tent, everyone already looking disappointed.

“Hi everyone, as many of you know Covid-19 was just announced as a world wide pandemic and we’ve just been shut down from shooting anymore scenes at least for two weeks.” Melissa said everyone groaning, “Yes I know this sucks, but please stay safe and healthy while we’re shut down. If you have a trailer here please make sure you clear all your things out because there will be a cleaning team here in two days to…” You drowned Melissa’s voice out

“Just when I thought this day couldn’t get any worse…” You sighed and dropped your head on Lana’s shoulder and she patted your head.

“Lastly make sure you all stay in the same shape you are in now, so nothing looks different when we resume shooting.” Melissa hopped off the table and everyone began to clear out to get their things. You called Harry telling him the sad news.

“I’m so upset, Harry, today sucks.” He patted your thigh as he made a right turn.

“It’ll be ok, love. I’m sure you will go back to filming in no time and you’ll actually miss having a break.” You just leaned your head on the window wondering if Tom at least made it safely to Berlin, and in that exact moment your phone pinged.

Tom: Hi, y/n, I assume the boys have already told you that I left for Berlin. I just landed. I’m really sorry for not giving a warning, but the space is for the best. I hope you can understand xx

You were upset with everything and everyone at this point and Tom’s text just ruined your mood more. How does he know what’s best for you? Mad and feeling petty you texted back,

You: k.

Tom: Please, trust me, y/n. This will help out our situation.

You: Last time I checked running away from your problems never helps the situation.

You threw your phone back into your purse annoyed.

“Oh shit, what the fuck is she doing here?” Harry asked, displeased. You looked up to see Allana pulling into the driveway just before you and Harry did.

“Great. Just fucking great. Harry, I think I’m gonna scream.”

“I think I will too. Can we just drive around until she’s gone?”

“That would be nice, but I think she already spotted us and won’t leave.” You pointed at her going to sit down on the porch. Harry groaned and pulled into the driveway. As soon as you and Harry stepped out the car she stood up and barked,

“Where the hell is Tom? He hasn’t texted me since yesterday afternoon, today is our 5 month anniversary.” Well that makes things more complicated. Harry looked at you with wide eyes, “What? Why’re you looking at her like that? Did you have something to fucking do with this, y/n?” She said giving you the dirtiest look ever. ‘Bitch I hope it wasn’t because of me.’ You thought. Harry got closer to you in protective mode.

“No no I swear. We were all surprised to see Tom gone this morning.”

“Gone? Where the hell is he?”

“He went to Berlin early. Now if you’ll excuse us we’d like to relax in our home.” Harry said not letting you talk, almost standing in front of you now. You both began to walk past her, but she squeezed your arm tight and yanked you back. You winced in pain.

“You bitch what did you do? Don’t even think about fucking lying to me.” Her eyes burned into your soul.

“Allana, what the fuck you’re crazy! back off!” Harry said, pulling you back behind him, “I suggest you leave now before things get more ugly.” He said in the most intimidating way possible.

“Ok, but the only thing ugly about this is whatever y/n did with Tom. I don’t doubt for a second that you’re a stupid whore. I saw that photo of you laying on him last night, and I’ve seen how you flirt with Tom you sk-”

“Allana that’s enough, go now!” Harry yelled and she looked surprised. She glared at you before stepping back, “Stay the fuck away from Tom he doesn’t need your ugly ass all over him.” “Allana, sweetie, we live in the same house. Quite dumb of you to think we can really stay away from one another.” You laughed darkly as tears of anger welled up in your eyes.

“Ok then, cunt. Go near him, I dare you. You have no idea what I’m capab-”

“Allana, I said fucking leave!” Harry was tired of this shit. Allana scoffed and finally drove away.

Harry turned to you cradling you in his arms as you let tears fall down your face, “I hate today…” you hiccuped, “a lot.”

“I know, I know.” He cooed. You looked up at him, “I know something is up, y/n. You need to tell me why my brother really left so I can help you.” You sighed and nodded.

“Ok let’s get you cleaned up.” He kept you close to his side and you both walked in. Tom was so wrong thinking him leaving would solve anything.

+++

Tag list: @averyfosterthoughts @thollandx @mrsjeffwittek @panicattheeverywherekid @racewife2004 @greatpizzascissorstaco @witchything @wheelertozier @runway-to-my-aid @rafficorn @jessirosebud @peterspideyy @superstarchick @jackiehollanderr @astridcommings @mineymak712 @hollands-osterfield @inhumanwithpowers

#tom holland #tom holland imagine #tom holland x you #tom holland x reader #tom holland x y/n #tom holland series #tom holland x famous! reader #tom holland x actress! reader #tom holland x actor! reader #tom holland angst #tom holland fluff #harry holland #tom holland fandom #tom holland fanfiction #bestfriend!harry holland

161 notes · View notes

timetoresurface · 4 years ago

Text

one day at a time / JYH

online dating idol!au Yunho x Y/N 2,5k filled with a fluffy meet-cute

ATEEZ’s new comeback has me feeling things for Yunho. I HAD to give him a little scenario inspired by this text post that has been haunting me ever since I saw it. Honestly that guy has me feeling things, and I couldn’t be more proud of his growth on his stage presence.

optional second part where Y/N starts to realize she might like Yunho more than just a friend.

“He looks cute.” Your colleague, but also friend said while you were both going through Tinder during lunch-break. Your account to be more exact. You had been in Seoul for almost half a year now, and your contract was supposed to end, but due to the corona outbreak, you were stuck in Korea. Not that you necessarily minded because you had made some great friends here, and life wasn’t all that bad, but you did miss your home country. You missed the connection with people who spoke the same language, and who had watched the same tv shows while growing up.

“They are all cute, but I don’t know, maybe I shouldn’t swipe right to Korean boys.” You mumbled while you swiped left on the handsome person.

“Why not?” She asked you bewildered. “Every man you swipe right will be a match.” She continued with a strange enthusiasm for your non-existent love life.

“Because I’m a foreigner?” You asked her insecurely. That’s precisely why you didn’t want to match with some random Korean dude. They probably had this adventurous foreigner imagined in their head, and well, you weren’t exactly considered bold. You also had some experiences with Korean men in your time in Seoul, and they weren’t all that great. The one telling you to lose weight was by far the best you had encountered.

“Yes, a beautiful foreigner, and you should use that in your advantage.” She told you forcefully before she took a big bite out of her salad.

“I don’t want to be someone’s conquest just because I’m a foreigner, you know?” You tried to explain to her, but she wasn’t having any of it.

“You don’t want a relationship. I don’t see what the issue is?” She asked you sceptically while she kept her eyes on you.

“I don’t want to be Someone’s prize, and I also don’t want to have a relationship. I honestly don’t know what I want.” You dropped your head into your hands, ignoring your food, having lost your appetite. Meanwhile, your colleague, Yuna, kept looking through your Tinder. You had lost your interest in the app a while ago.

“Hey!” Yuna exclaimed, making you jump up in surprise. You quickly grabbed your phone to take a look at the commotion.

“Isn’t that guy in a k-pop band? I forgot their name, but they’re getting more famous every day.” You told her excitedly. You swiped through his profile, and you were in awe by his beauty. He only had two pictures of himself, but his bio sparked something in you. You had to give it to the person behind the profile, he did a real good job at piquing your interest. He wanted to hang out with Someone who had the same passion and love for eating ramen in the middle of the night at a 24/7 convenience store. Oddly specific, and oddly something you liked.

“I think he’s from ATEEZ.” Yuna thought out loud, and you simply shook your head. There was no question about it, the guy behind the profile was not the same as the one in the pictures.

“Someone must be using his pictures to get matches. Which Idol would ever make a profile on a dating app?” You said while putting your phone back on the table.

“Only one way to find out.” Yuna giggled before swiping right on the guy who could or could not be an idol. She took another bite of her food as if nothing had happened.

“What!” You screamed in panic after watching Yuna’s actions. “Why did you do that?” You asked her while shaking her shoulders, trying to get her back to her senses.

“It was the first guy who honestly sparked some interest in you. What else was I supposed to do?” She asked you as she tried to ignore the eyes of the other people in the cafeteria. It wasn’t the first time the two of you were loud. Most people simply shrugged it off as another day at the office with two crazy girls.

“You should’ve ignored it. He’s an idol. He doesn’t have a dating profile on the most basic dating app of all. It is probably some ugly guy who couldn’t get any matches with his own pictures.” You explained to her while you lowered your voice. Some people got used to you and Yuna being loud, but you still wanted to keep a good reputation.

“You don’t know that.” She told you at the same moment your phone made the Tinder notification sound. You both looked at each other before she grabbed your phone.

“It’s a match.” She simply announced before giving you your phone back. You kept your mouth shut. It was a weird feeling to have a match. You looked at the heart and your two profile pictures next to each other. That wasn’t such a bad combination if you said so yourself. If only he was the guy from the photos. Still, it was nice to have a match.

“I should have done that sooner if I had known it would shut you up.” She laughed at your awkward state.

“I never thought I’d have a match.” You confessed softly while you were looking through his profile.

“I’ve looked into the guy while you were drooling, and I can’t find this picture online. What if it really is him?” Yuna asked you excitedly. She showed you pictures of him, and indeed one of the selfies on his profile was nowhere to be found.

“You work fast.” You laughed, but she simply shrugged at your behaviour. People in Seoul are indeed more open to the idea of blind dating than where you were from.

“Are you going to message him?” She asked you.

“He probably has a lot of matches. I’m not going to say something first. I don’t want to bother him.” You told her honestly, which made her roll her eyes in annoyance.

“You are frustrating. Yunho probably likes girls who take the initiative.” She said while getting up to throw her leftover food away. She also took your untouched food with her.

“Yunho.” You mouthed softly. “That’s a nice name.” You whispered more to yourself. You were staring at his profile picture. He wasn’t the most handsome man you had ever seen, but he had this aura around him that was so inviting. He looked gentle and innocent.

“Y/N! Just send him something.” Yuna said at the same moment, your phone lit up with a notification from Tinder. You both looked at each other in panic.

“Oh, my God! He sent you something. Open it.” Yuna screeched excitedly.

“What if it is a dick pick?” You asked her, concern taking over your body.

“If he’s really Yuhno that would be extremely stupid of him,” Yuna told matter of factly, and you couldn’t deny her reasoning.

Yunho: I was trying to come up with a good pick-up line but then I realized they’re lame, so all I have to give you is a hello. Yunho: Hello.

“That’s actually really cute.” You told Yuna while you showed the message you had gotten from Yunho. She simply nodded her head while you pondered what to answer.

Y/N: Titanic. That’s my icebreaker. What’s up?

Yunho: hahaha I knew you would be funny! Yunho: I’m having a much-needed break from work at the moment. Yunho: What about you? Yunho: Your Korean is really good.

“He’s a double text kind of person. That’s cute.” Yuna remarked. You thought it was also cute to double text. It showed he was enthusiastic to talk to you, and somehow this fact made you feel warm inside. It made you feel appreciated.

“He seems nice.” You told her before putting your phone in your bag. “Our break is over. Let’s go.” You said while getting up.

“Let me know what happens next,” Yuna demanded before running off to wherever she was headed to.

“I will.” You yelled after her, making some people turn their head in surprise. This time you didn’t care though.

You and Yunho kept messaging for a couple of days. Sometimes one of you didn’t answer for hours because the other was busy, but it never bothered you. It was a good sign that he was busy. Someone who had a life outside of social media was always attractive. You hadn’t heard from him for a while now, and you had to admit, you were starting to worry that maybe you weren’t as exciting as you thought. Perhaps he had another match. Maybe the other person was better at keeping the conversation going. You hadn’t swiped right to any other guy because you honestly didn’t want to go through the stress again of not knowing what was going to happen.

Yunho: You still up?

Y/N: Yes. Why?

Your heart started to race, and the palms of your hands began to sweat. What was he implying with his question? Was he insinuating something? Or was he perhaps oblivious to the tone of his question?

Yunho: You told me yesterday you were walking next to Seongsan Bridge. There is a good ramen place there. Do you want to go? As in now?

You pondered what to answer to his question. It was nice talking to him through the safety of your phone, but it would be more fun to speak in person. A couple of minutes passed, and you had to answer because he already got the read notification. You didn’t want him to think you didn’t want to go have some food with him, but you were also scared. This would be your first date through a dating app, and honestly, it scared the living shit out of you.

Y/N: Sure.

Yunho: I was starting to worry there. Yunho: See you in a bit :) Yunho: *shared a location*

You decided to not dress up to go to a small ramen place. From what you gathered, it was a small business that looked cosier than high class. You really liked that he had chosen this place. You could just go in your jeans and t-shirt without having to worry about your appearance. You were, however, concerned with his. Who was going to be waiting for you when you got there?

You tried to shake it off. You were going to be open-minded to whoever who was going to show up. You only talked for a couple of days, but Yunho had left a great impression. You both had talked about your families, and how you weren’t able to see them for an extended period due to work. There were a lot of similarities, but not too much. You liked to have a different point of view from time to time. For example, he was more a dog person while you are more a cat person.

The wind was cold, but it didn’t bother you. The coolness was welcoming after a day filled, trying not to sweat out of your dress shirt at work. You strolled looking over at the bridge you saw every day coming back from work. You liked to take the long route back home. Seoul had a lot of views to offer, but numerous bridges were your favourite thing, and you were pleased such a beautiful piece of architecture was close to your home.

“Y/N?” Some yelled your name, insecurely, and you immediately stopped walking. Could that be the guy you had been messaging for the last couple of days? If you turned around, you couldn’t pretend him to be Yuhno anymore if he was Someone else. Were you ready for such a commitment?

“Yunho?” You replied, while you turned around. You were surprised, to say the least. The person standing in front of you was indeed Yuhno from ATEEZ. You couldn’t stop staring at him because you honestly hadn’t expected to see him here.

“I thought it was you. Not a lot of people here admire this bridge.” Yunho laughed softly while he took place next to you. You were both admiring the view when you realized you had to respond to his remark. That’s was people do in conversations.

“That’s a shame. It’s stunning.” You told him shyly, not knowing how to act around him. His pictures didn’t do him any justice. He was glowing in the setting sun, making his features even more appealing to you. He was clad in simple jeans and t-shirt combination like yourself. He was in black while you were wearing a white t-shirt.

“I’m going to be really honest. I didn’t expect you to show up.” You told him after a couple minutes of awkward silence. You appreciated the fact that he let you gather your thoughts.

“I asked you to come? Why wouldn’t I show up?” Yunho asked you, surprised. He didn’t understand what you were trying to say.

“That’s not what I meant. You’re an idol.” You tried to say more straight forward. He blinked a couple of times before he regained his casual form again.

“Oh, that.” He muttered while moving his head away from you. He was looking at the view again, but you had a feeling he wasn’t really looking.

“Why do you even have Tinder? You should delete it immediately.” You told him forcefully, not wanting to believe his stupidity. Why was an idol on a dating app?

“I actually only use the app to talk to you now. There is this setting where you can choose if people can see your profile. I turned that on the minute we started talking.” He explained while he looked into your eyes. There was this strange kind of connection between the two of you. You couldn’t place it, but somehow he had you wrapped around his finger.

“Oh. That’s smart.” You finally told him while you kept staring at his face. Why couldn’t you stop looking? Why couldn’t he stop staring?

“Thank you.” He softly thanked you while he averted his gaze away from you. The moment his eyes fell off you, you could finally breathe again. You didn’t realize you had been holding your breath in the first place.

“But still, I could’ve been someone with bad intentions.” You pressed the matter, which made him laugh. A strange sensation shot through your body the moment you heard his low chuckle. It was adorable yet manly, and it sounded like music to your ears. You could listen to it all day as if it was one of your favourite songs.

“But you’re not.” He concluded happily as if he had just been as worried as you about this meeting.

“You don’t know that.” You told him.

“I know enough to know you’re not that kind of person.” He kind of complimented you, and you liked it.

“You’re too naive, but I’ll take the compliment.” You told him with a smile which he happily returned.

“Good. Let’s go eat.” He laughed while he started walking toward the restaurant that was supposed to be the best ramen place on earth. His enthusiasm made you laugh, and soon the two of you were just joking with each other like old friends would. As if you hadn’t only met. As if you hadn’t actually met on an online dating app.

I’m going to be honest here. I could write more, but I really felt like this was enough to give you that inspiration to dream about him. Ever since that post I have been dreaming this scenario with Yunho, and lately I really love going to sleep haha

#ateez #ateez fic #yunho fanfic #yunho fic #ateez fanfic #ateez x Y/N #ateez x you #ateez x reader #jeong yunho #jeong junho fic #yunho x reader #yunho x you #jeong yunho x reader

83 notes · View notes

popculturebuffet · 4 years ago

Text

Tom and Jerry 2021 Review: It’s Almost Adequate!

Hello you happy people, and welcome to a surprise review! While this was on my schedule, I moved it out to make room for my new Patreon Sponsored review. Yes at the 5 dollar tier you too can get a review a month.. but enough shilling. Point is I had some thoughts on the film, and felt I could squeeze a review of it into the schedule since my review for yesterday, the 90′s Tom and Jerry movie, got canceled as I both had to finish up my tex avery birthday review and hadn’t noticed it wasn’t on HBO Max like I thought. I could’ve sworn it was once but not anymore. Gee it’s almost like they removed their overtly awful Tom and Jerry movie from the service so people woudln’t be reminded of it when they watched the mediocre new one. Or it was never on there because HBO wants to bury that mistake in a hole. You make the call.

Point is I had some room in my schedule, so if I can’t cover the 1990 movie this weekend, though I FULLY intend to still do that at some point as it still fascinates me, might as well cover the one everyone’s actually watching. So join me under the cut with spoilers to go into why this film is .. ehhhh. under the cut

Tom and Jerry follows, as you’d expect, our working boys up to their ass in shit, what is this buisness. In this case Tom literally rides in on a rail with his keyboard wanting to be a big musician one day, while Jerry is shopping around for a home but can’t find any in his bracket. The two end up fighting, as you’d expect, when Tom performs as a blind cat in a park, a great gag, and Jerry first steals his customers by dancing to his music, but then when Tom tries to stop him, not only exposes his scam, but gets Tom’s beloved Keyboard broken.

In the process of Tom trying to get Jerry back for runing his day, Tom ruins the day of Kayla, a cynical young lady played by Chole Grace Moretz who like Robin in the last theatrical film, is a blonde girl who takes up way more screen time than our heroes for some reason. Tom accidently destroys the clothes she was sent to deliver, and she gets fired from her Task Rabbit esque job... despite the fact that TaskRabbit is app based, entirely built around how you do jobs for hire as needed, and that at most she’d get a bad review and that the app dosen’t actually hire people. I know this both because i’ve seen the apps and parodies of it show up on tv shows I watch, most recently Close Enough, and because I took the 2 minutes it took to google it , read some of the Wikipedia article and do the bare minimum that me, a paid only by commissions and patreons reviewer, did to prove a point, and that the writers of this film, who likely got paid at least 10000 for a rewrite, and more for whoever wrote the treatment, which is about 30,000 at lowest as told to me by this article on what screenwriters get paid I looked up solely to prove a point. So they got paid tens of thousands of dollars, probably more than standard... to not spend 5 minutes looking up what task rabbit is, becuase they wanted to give her a “hip” job instead of just having her work for a dry cleaner. Then again they got thousands upon thousands to half ass it and i’m getting paid nothing to go on a rant about how they half assed it, so maybe i’m the dumbass, I dunno, but at least I take pride in my work. And i’ve had trouble spellchecking at times so take that as you will.

But so far the film is not bad: the slapstick is blended really well, the action is pitch perfect and our heroes are given good motivations: Kayla’s to find a job, Tom to play piano professionally and Jerry to find a proper home. You ready for some letdown?!

All three of our heroes converge at the Royal Gate Hotel, a prestigious hotel that’s been host to popes, dignitaries and Drake. Jerry sneaks inside, and soon finds himself at home and making himself home, Tom TRIES to and ends up getting on the wrong side of Butch, the black cat from the shorts played in this film by reggaton performer Nicky Jam. Why they choose him over a comedian or anyone who could actually act, especially since Butch dosen’t have a musical number or anything, is a riddle for the ages. My best guest, as it always is, is that Tim Story owes him a Wookie-Style life debt. Not only that but even more bafflingly Butch’s gang, who to the films credit like him are all his gang of cats from the classic shorts, are played by Kevin Hart’s Improve Troop, The Plastic Cup Boyz. I got a preview for what passing a kidney stone’s going to feel like just typing that name. I thought I had no explanation for this, not even a wookie life debt can explain how Kevin Hart’s posse, because he has one for some reason but at least unlike Adam Sandler he’s helping his smaller named friends get big instead of just promoting guys who really shouldn’t have a career or dragging poor guys like Shaq or Terry Crews into your bullcrap because they like you., can explain how this happened. But I forgot I looked up Tim Story’s filmography when I first found out he was director here, more on him later, and found out he directed both Ride Along films, both think like a man films, and one of Kevin Hart’s specials, so the two presumably are friends or at least have a solid working relationship, and given how successful the first Ride Along was for both men, I doubt Tim would turn down a favor from him and vice versa.

And while I find the Plastic Cup Boyz inclusion in this film bizzare and wish it was fellow comedy troupe and starkid adjacent wonderkinds the Tin Can Bros so I could get Joey Richter voicing an animated cat, they at least try their best, their just not given much to do and I don’t get casting them in these side rolls or not giving the butch role to one of them as Nicky Jam just sucks in the role. And I get Butch isn’t the most solid or complex character, but it still isn’t THAT hard, with the 80 drumloads of great comedians out there, to find SOMEONE better, and it’s weird Kevin Hart himself isn’t in the roll. If it wasn’t a wookie life debt i’m betting Hart was going to play Butch, had to back out due to scheduling conflicts or whatever, and Tim found the first guy he could who’d take almost nothing instead of an actual actor.

Kayla meanwhile somehow takes herself from sympathetic to wholly unlikeable in the span of the scene by maniuplating and terrifying a poor woman into not taking the job, outright STEALING HER RESUME, meaning if she screwed up this might go on the poor woman’s record, and lying her way into the job. And if the woman had been you know a classist dick or something, i’d understand but this is a perfectly nice lady who worked really hard, and who looses out on a job because some little bitch talked her out of it and then stole her identity. This one act really just makes me not care: It’s one thing to do what you gotta to get a job, I myself have never lied on an application but I get new york’s insanely expensive. Even if she presumibly lives in a hole that’s cramped, has roaches or rats, who given this unvierse probably have tiny tv’s that are still way too loud and binge watch way too much Jersey Shore at 2 in the morning, and is probably haunted, probably by Droopy wearing a bedsheet going boo but still, and yes he’s also alive here but he has identical cousins. Not the point. Point is even if she has sympathetic motives.. what she did is not okay and when she get flashes of guilt throughtout hte film it’s never long enough to feel like it’s not her simply feeling bad she didn’t get this herself and not that she STOLE IT FROM ANOTHER PERSON. Again if she’d FAKED her resume, this would’ve been fine, simply set up some websites, and it would’ve worked so why they went with this elaborate setup that takes her into outright crimes is beyond me.

Point is she gets hired by the manager/owner, Mr. Dubrois, played by Rob Delany, but since his name isn’t used enough i’m just going to call him Mustache Manager. Her direct superior whose against her being hired is Terrance, the Gate’s Event Manager played by a way too good for this film Micheal Pena, who sadly is given nothing to work with. Terrance.. is supposed to be the bad guy because he distrusts kayla. And while one of those reasons is stupid, she makes a joke about the goldfish being an aquatics manger and he takes it dead seriously, he’s rightfully supscious she’s not who she says she is, since one of the places on her resume is a place he knows people from. The only way the film manages to make him the bad guy is he is COMICALLY out of touch: he dosen’t get sarcasm, as seen before, dosen’t want people posting jerry to “snapgram or instaface”, and seems to have trouble relating to his guests. What makes this not work is that he’s manger at a ludicrously expensive hotel. As such a good chunk of his events would be for Celebrties, since New York’s a big hub for them, having tons living there and visiting for films, apperances on late night talk shows, SNL and what have you and being a prime spot for events and it’s clear part of his job is talking to the guests as the two the film focuses on, more on that in a minute, know him and have met him before. He also mentions Drake having stayed there... he would NOT have kept this job.

You’d need to do through research on these kinds of celebrates and social media is the easiest way to do that, to get what they like, what they don’t, what they don’t want to talk about, what scandals or gos might be going on to keep paparazzi out. I don’t even know how this business works nor did I google it.. and I didn’t to prove a point.. that even with no real idea how this works.. I still get what you’d probably need to know to make events for rich famous people. I’m not convinced Terrance knows how an internet works. And given writer Kevin Costello wrote the well received and weird film I still want to see Brigbsby Bear, I get the sense a lot of this nonsense was added in rewrites demanded by executives and credit him more for what works in the film. More on that in a moment.

Kayla is hired on because the Royal Gate has it’s biggest event ever, the wedding of Ben, played by Colin Jost, and Preeta, played by Pallavi Sharda. Why is it big? What do they do exactly? Are they trust fund babies? Did Ben invent an app? Did Preeta cure global warming? Did they both help defeat Galactus DEVOURER OF WORLDS?!... I dont’ know. If the film told me at all why their big names, even if it’s just because their famous for being famous which would be fine, why this is bigger than a fucking pope visiting, I missed it and I actually went back to their first scene and the scene where Mustache Manager brings up the wedding in the first place to Kayla, and found nothing. We just know their rich, their getting married, Ben doesn’t listen to Preeta and is insufferable, and that they own two classic Tom and Jerry characters: Ben owns spike whose played by Bobby Canavale who isn’t bad but dosen’t try to sound like spike at all and that annoys me given unlike Tom and Jerry, the former of whom’s signature noises from the cartoon were used archivally and otherwise dosen’t talk and only sings on occasion or does that wonderfully weird “don’t you belivie it” thing., has a distinct voice they could’ve got someone to imitate. The other is Preeya’s cat toodles, that white cat Tom is always trying to bang, who got a neat less anthro redesign.

Toots, Toodles whatever you call her the redesign works, making her more of a cat, and only speaking in meows for some reason, and combinging the two female cats tom’s liked, but while still being just funny animal enough that him wanting some pussy, so to speak, isn’t too creepy.

And this is where the film undergoes a bit of a shift. While the 20 or so minutes are rightfully focused on our boys with a bit of focus on Kayla, from here on out she’s our defacto lead. Given the last film did the same damn thing of making Tom and Jerry not the main leads in their own movie, you can see the problem. I will say to the film’s credit it is still LEAGUES better in a lot of other ways than the 90′s film in that the plot is actually centered around them: Jerry, when stealing some cheese, and runs afoul of the tempermental Chef Jackie played by Kim Jeong. Though i’m 100% not convinced Ben Chang didn’t just lie on his resume at some place and has now somehow become a michline star canditate. He finds Jerry, and Kayla volunteers to catch him to help her own career and validly points out her doing this discreetly with only the staff knowing about the mouse will keep it from becoming a social media nightmare.

The 90′s film could work without them, replacing them with any animal sidekick for Robin, since nit’s so far removed from Tom and Jerry their really an afterthought. Here the film DOES feel like a tom and jerry plot at it’s core, Jerry’s somewhere he shoudln’t be, Tom wants to chase him either due to personal greivance or his job depending on it, in this case both. The small side cast are all involved, and given decent if thin justifications for being there: Butch is an ally cat and Spike and Tootles are the pets of the happy couple.

And honestly the slapstick portions, the portions that are tom and jerry focused or use the humans well, are BRILLIANT. No really, it’s good stuff once in a while using a bit from the classics but mostly coming up with new gags and the animation is gorgeous. I won’t lie and say it’s always perfect, sometimes the models are a bit off and look unfinished and that’s not forgivable when you delay your film two months, and thus have extra time to work on that. But that’s a few shots here and there versus the majority of hte film where the various animals all blend perfectly. Unlike most Live Action adaptations of an old cartoon, this one actually seemed to have good reason, as they’ve taken the basic roger rabbit tech of decades ago and expanded on it well. Just like that classic you often wonder how the hell they pulled this off, and outside of one egregrous sequence where tom sets up an elaborate trap we spend far too much time on, when they do use CG for any props, you can’t tell. This is best highlighted by what I consdier to be the film’s best sequence and what brings Tom into the plot proper after lurking on the fringes for a good 15 minutes: Tom, miserable in the rain, finds jerry living it up in an empty room, and after some fun shenanigans trying to get in, finally succeds leading to a good 2-3 minute sequence of the two chasing after each other in the room. There are no actors, no one else and the room is empty, but perfectly gimmicked to time with thier movments. Wether they used cg and I couldn’t tell or just simply timed things great, it’s utterly fantastic and shows why this film is live action: while i’td be fine animated they cleary ahd the tech and ideas to do it live and thus did it this way. Naturally Kayla meets Tom again, and after finding out the room was trashed by both him and Jerry gets Mustache Manager to hire him.

But this is the problem: While there are great set pieces like this, or a REALLY damn impressive one later where Terrance gets dragged into a ball of violence while walking Spike for Ben and we see INSIDE IT, with Terrance not moving as fast but that being okay. And I love the movie’s commitment that ALL animals are animated. So it has it’s charms and gets a LOT right.

It’s clear to me from this strong core that the script was messed with, either by director Tim Story or the execs. Some misguided and stupid bits I get even if it was a bad idea: Tom does do the piano at one point, after he thinks he’s gotten rid of Jerry thanks to again an unwieldy overly long bit of CGI that’s a down spot on the usually good just tom and jerry stuff. And he STARTS singing a 40′s jazz song, and I thought “Okay they really got this and are doing something like is you is or is you ain’t my baby this will be fun”. Then T-Pain started using autotune, because of course, and Tom’s shoulder devil started scratching next to him...

By the way Tom’s Shoulder Devil and Angel are played very well by Lil Rel Howrey , aka Rod from Get Out. So good on you man, one bit of non miscasting. There’s one or two cringe inducing moment of trying to be hip here or there though for a film like this it isn’t nearly as bad as you’d expect. Still bad but i’ve seen so much worse at this point i’m not going to bother getting mad or upset over it. I’m used to this kind of thing from kids movies.

But while the film dosen’t really lack Tom and Jerry, it sidelines them way too often> There’s just too many scenes just about Kayla, whose not only not a great character despite Chole trying her absolute hardest god bless her. Her hitting it off with the bartender, her arguing with Terrance whose even more insufferable and her bonding with Preeta and Ben being annoying, we’ll get to him.. WE’LL GET TO HIM. But they aren’t funny or interesting, there’s nothing THERE to really get me interested, nothing new or fresh that we haven’t seen done better before. There’s just nothing, it feels like large parts of blank space. And to illustrate this my Niece, who I watched the film with and really loves Tom and Jerry after I showed it to her... played with other stuff during most of those scenes. And she’s young, her attention span is not great.. but noticably during the actual scenes of slapstick she was glued to the tv, just like she was when I showed her the classic shorts. It’s not just old farts like me who remember tom and jerry from their youth.. it’s the kids your TRYING to appeal to that don’t want this. If you can’t get kids, who in general and speaking from my own personal experience will watch just about anything, to pay attention YOU. HAVE. FAILED.

Okay took a second to compose myself, let’s move on to the rest of the movie. So after T-Pain stabbed music in the throat, we get to the worst section of the film as Kayla brokers peace between the two to get Preeta’s ring back after the three end up in the aformnetioned violence ball with Terrance, who she ducks his claims that she didn’t catch the mouse.. which she did not but for once she’s sympathetic as Terrance is much more likeable either, though gaslighting him and getting him put on leave is a bit extreme. Bafflingly, Kayla gets his job as event cordinator for now, and thus has to broker peace between the two warring factions.. and does so in the strangest way possible: by booking a day for them in new york to hang out and be BUDDIES!. This isn’t bad as the last film as it dosen’t last, but it is just.. surreal seeing the two having a hanging out montage around new york. Like the film just took a really weird turn with this, the montage itself isn’t weird, it’s standard shenanigans minus the fighting but still good stuff. Unlike the 90′s movie instead of singing about being palls or helping a small child, they just get into cartoony shenanigans together. More proof the film could’ve been so much better just with them.

Speaking of proof the film would’ve been better without them , Ben fucks around with a drone for the wedding, after Preeta confided in Kayla the wedding’s getting to be a bit much. So let’s talk about Ben shall we? While Preeta is just nice, friendly and down to earth, Ben... is a dumbass, a jackass and just an ass. His whole schtick is that he keeps escalting the wedding despite her wishing he’d stop, and i’ts just.. not funny. A guy ignoring his partner’s wishes, constnatly doing big gestures in large part to try and win over her dad who RIGHTFULLY hates, and in general just sucks. I do not blame this on Colin Jost: He’s perfectly charming on SNL, and Weekend Update is usually damn fun under him and Micheal Che. But like with Pena and Mortez, he’s given NOTHING to work with, and furthe rmore can’t improvise.. aka the skill most SNL cast and almnus walk away with. So it’s no suprise he instead comes off like an anoying plank of wood you want to see fall down a manhole and never return so Preeta can marry someone else. I dunno the Doorman’s a pretty cool guy, and if he’s taken or something there’s always Droopy. Droopy’s the smoothest motherfucker and we all know. And if HE’S taken there’s mustache man. The point is we have a Dating Game’s worth of elligble bachelors and the film tries to sell a plank of wood who clearly wants to bang Preeta’s dad more than he wants a genuine equal relationship with Preeta.

So that dosen’t help the final act.. which is started with something REALLY weird to round off tom and jerry’s day as Tom catches a ball, interupts a play and get.s. thrown in the pound for it?

I don’t know how tha’ts a crime, I don’t get it either, point is the animal control guy is a creep who shows them off as they pass some angry dogs.. and..

MY BOY. There was an earlier joke with him taking the place of The Joker, and I thought that was it sadly but nope there he is! While, given they don’t really have much to do with each other, it is a tad weird he’s been grafted onto the tom and jerry legacy.. I really don’t care because it means Droopy gets to show up every so often in other stuff like this.. And hopefully the spinoff series coming in the summer. I”ve talked before about how much I love this dog so having him show up here was a HUGE delight and easily the higlihgt of the film and the gag is perfect. WHy is he in prison? I don’t know. But given who we’re dealing with I also assume he just disappeared later and showed up at the Wolf’s place again to get the evidence to clear his name and to help a young brodway hopeful played by Peyton R LIst get to her audition in time. And yes I just imagined another live action film with a classic character.. but admit it you’d rather be watching that one. They also run into butch who tries to force him to eat Jerry or they’ll kill him.

Terence saw the arrest on the tv though, so he bails the two out, pits them against each other, and sets them loose at the wedding. This goes how you’d expect. the two cause chaos and thanks to Weekend UpDumbass there’s pecocks, tigers and elephants, and Jerry naturally spooks the elephants, Spike, who has it in for tom as usual, goes after tom the tiger goes after him and the wedding is destroyed. Preeta breaks up with Ben and leaves, and Kayla is fired.

Less good is that Tom gets thrown out because Terrance backed out on his deal because he’s a fucking asshole. So while Kayla gripes to her sorta loveintrest bartender man, and wishes she could fix things, T and J show up, both realizing it’s their fault and both with a plan to fix things leading to our climax. Kayla goes back to the hotel, and while Terrance tries to boject she rightfully blackmails him. Sadly neither get their commupance and while Mustache Manager puts two and two together, he’s all for ending this PR Nightmare and helping with Kayla’s plan to get ben to stage a wedding in central park that Preeta actually wants while our two actual heroes go to stop her and do some light kidnapping of toodles to get Preeta to stop.

So it ends how you’d expect: Preeta makes a huge mistake, seriously Droopy go to their honemoon I guarantee Ben will wonder off into the ocean because he thought it looked sick bro, Kayla gets her job back and in a move that makes her almost tolerable hires the woman she stole from who Terrance clearly wants to bang, and Tom actually catches Toot’s eye, but then Jerry mucks it up because cockblocking tom has been his job since the 40′s, they fight, Kayla tells them to cut it out, they put an the end thing over it. Roll credits.

As you could tell I had issues with this film and had more the more I thought about it. So it’s not very good.. but I still recommend watching it if you have Max right now. Yes really. While the human parts are pretty awful as you could tell, you can have some fun mocking them, and it’s worth suffering through them for the bits with our boys, as those bits are geneuinely energetic, fun and what you came for. If you like tom and Jerry, you probably won’t like this movie.. but you’ll enjoy those bits. Hopefully if there’s a sequel, and this film was a suprise hit so their probably will be, they’ll learn their lesson from this one and focus less on the humans and more on the hyjinks but overall this is just a medicore waste of some really great technology and slapstick. This is just one huge ball of dispaointment instead of cartoon violence and i’m sorry it ended this way. If you liked this review, you can follow me on my patreon at patreon.com/popculturebuffet. Even 1 dollar a month helps and my next stretch goal nets a Darkwing Duck episode a month, so if that excites you, please sign up. And if you can’t afford to that’s fine and feel free to stick around anyway. Times are hard and I get that. And I will see you at the next rainbow.

#tom and jerry #tom and jerry 2021 #tom and jerry movie #tom and jerry the movie #tom cat #jerry mouse #droopy #toodles #spike #micheal pena #chloe grace moretz #kim jeong #colin jost #hbo max #mgm #warner brothers

6 notes · View notes

jincherie · 5 years ago

Text

fox rain | four

• ☽ — pairing: bts x reader • ☽ — genre: crack, fluff, angst, college/uni au • ☽ — words: 13.9k+ • ☽ — rating: sfw • ☽ — warnings: stop one on the angst train express!!! conflict, crying, hurt feelings and perhaps a little bit of a complex... also someone gets slapped (rightfully). what a chapter! • ☽ — notes: two months late LETS GET IT FOOOXXX RRAAAIIINNN !!! this shit HURTED. for maximum owies, I advise reading a particular intermission before this one uwu

— posted; 08.09.2019

When the love letter you wrote and submitted as an assignment is leaked to the entirety of your university, it becomes a race against time to dispel rumours and convince the seven suspected muses of the poem that they aren’t the subject before anyone realises that you are the author. Easy, right? Well… maybe not as easy as you think.

— • masterpost | prev. | four | next • —

Never in your life, have you ever truly entertained the thought of killing someone before now.

As though your stormy mood is a thick fog permeating the air and rendering it unbreathable, the students moving past you in the hall hasten to give you a wide berth. You’d appreciate it, if you weren’t so caught up in your half-baked murder plans that you didn’t even notice.

You’re a nice enough person, right? You’ve never gone out of your way to be mean, or bullied anyone—hell, sometimes you feel so bad about the current state of the earth that you walk around the park looking for litter to pick up. Being the stellar example to humanity that you are, you’ve managed to steer clear of—for the most part, also not counting these very stressful past few weeks—drama. In high school you managed to dodge the drama entailed by school dances, juvenile love triangles, and pretty much anything pubescent you can think of. You did your own thing, and generally most people took enough pity on your poor excuse of an existence that they became oddly endeared and protective of you, like they were adopting a small alien ball of slime that fell from the heavens and wheezed painfully with each breath. You’ve never had to face the cold, agonizing frostbite of betrayal, and you didn’t really ever expect to.

But now for the first time ever you have, and god does it suck. You woke up this morning like you had a hangover, head throbbing as though an iron ball was rolling from one side of your skull to the other in uneven laps, and your eyes were somehow a combination of dry and tight, swollen and moist— admittedly, you still kind of feel like that to a degree. You woke up sad, and angry and hurt, but thankfully Karma isn’t one to leave you stewing in any one emotion too long. What a benevolent queen you find yourself ruled by.

As soon as you settled down this morning with your flavoured coffee (the last sachet from your “depression days” emergency stash on the top shelf of the cupboard—you feel as though with all you’ve been through, you deserve it) and opened your phone like a fool to pass the time while your waffle (another comfort food from your stash) cooked in the kitchen, you were met with a very sudden and very stark change in emotional stasis. No longer were you a moody, depressed and sad sack of mouldy mashed potato—now you were a fucking livid sack of mouldy, mashed potato, who nearly snapped her fork in half from the sheer strength of her tight grip.

After all you’d learnt of Sera the afternoon previous, you shouldn’t have been as surprised to wake up to what you did. And yet, the second you laid eyes on that damn post it had taken you so off guard you’d nearly flown into a blind rage on the spot.

The gall, the absolute audacity of her to plead and proclaim that she was going to “fix this”, only to turn around and plunge another knife into your back by publicly announcing on the university forum she used to start all this that she is the author. This entire ordeal was already such a convoluted mess that even before this, she never could have truly fixed it—but she could have lessened it, made it more bearable. Yet she didn’t. And with her blatant choice to not only do the opposite but essentially plagiarise your damn poem and steal your unwanted, unintentional fame—you’ve never been so fucking furious in your life.

You’ve never considered murder before now either but you have to admit, the further onto campus you get and the more whispering and gossiping you catch about the “development” in the mystery moon poem drama, the more appealing it seems.

All day, you have put up with this shit. All day, as you sit through class and then move from one session to another, you have heard people gasp and chatter and rant and rave about how Sera is the supposed author to the poem. You’ve heard them wax poetic about her and her “skills” that she doesn’t deserve and aren’t really for her, flattering comments about her ‘humble’, ‘sweet’, ‘sensitive soul’ character that you now know couldn’t be further from the truth. The combination of her betrayal and the injustice of the situation as you now find yourself in it are almost enough to break you into a soggy, emotional mess, but it seems the pure, unadulterated rage will be enough to feed your fire and keep you going for now.

You’ve been in such a state all day that you can hardly remember what it was like before you were angry. Depression? What depression? You’ve never heard of her. This must be what it feels like to be an Aries, you think. You almost feel invincible, and would if it weren’t for the looming cloud above you that rained angry droplets on your parade.

By the time you drag yourself through the day and your first tutoring session arrives, you feel a strange combination of emotionally exhausted and absolutely fucking wired. You’re still seething, of course, but it’s less of an in-your-face anger and more of a crazed undertone at this point. You attempt a smile when you enter the library and see Hoseok, but you mustn’t be very close to achieving it because a brief expression of fear flits across his features and he straightens in his seat. Oops, you forgot Hoseok is a scaredy cat. It seems you’ve accidentally activated his deeply ingrained and well-exercised fight or flight response.

“H-hey, y/n…. are you okay?” His concern for your wellbeing has seemed to override his initial fear response, and you feel a little touched amongst the angry bubbling of your insides. You try again to flash a smile, and this one appears to be a closer approximation than the last as some of the tension leaves Hoseok’s form.

“It’s a lovely day,” you say, fighting a twitch that’s trying to make itself known in your left eye. “But enough about that, let’s talk about you. What are we going over today?”

Hoseok is hesitant, pausing a moment as his eyes survey your seated form like he’s assessing whether it’s worth it to probe a little more. He seems to reach a decision and turns to his bag, pulling out his things. They hit the table with a tentative thunk, even the sound seeming cautious. He is treating you like a bomb that could go off at any moment and to be honest… you can’t blame him.

“I need your help brainstorming for a project that’s due in a few weeks,” he says, most of the fear having left his voice. “But I was wondering if we could practice essay writing some more, maybe timed? One of my exams is an essay.”

You wince for him, but nod and reach for your phone, unlocking it carelessly and trying to shove down the hot spark of anger that ignites down your spine at the post being the last thing you were looking at. With a little more anger than necessary, you flick that screen away and pull up the timer app. “Yeah, we can do that. We’ll split the session in half, I’ll start the timer.”

When you turn back to Hoseok, his gaze is on your phone as his brows draw together in a pensive sort of expression. Something you can’t decipher washes over his face in the next second, his eyes flitting to you and then to your phone before he’s sitting back, covering his momentary lapse with a bright smile. You’re a little bit suspicious but not bothered enough to really be wondering about whatever is going through his head.

You start the session, and given how previous ones have gone you’re kind of expecting him to fall into the same serious, broody mood as he has been. To your complete and utter surprise, however, Hoseok begins acting in his usual dumbass antics right off the bat. He’s more animated than you’ve seen him in weeks, making weird Hoseok Noises™ and laughing loudly, even poking you playfully every now and then.

You still feel a little stormy, but the longer the session goes on the more he has a smile fighting to be set free. It’s Hoseok, so of course that resistance doesn’t last long. By the time his session is drawing to a close he has you chuckling, a small smile on your face. He appears accomplished, grinning brightly himself before he catches sight of the time and it falters slightly. You wonder what could have incurred such a reaction before the realisation smacks you and suddenly the inklings of sunlight peeking through the clouds above your head are swallowed up again. Right, the whole thing with Jimin.

With the events of yesterday and this morning still fresh in your mind, the slight parallel hits a little closer to home than you’d like.

You don’t have to wonder if Hoseok has noticed the backtrack in your mood, because the expression of slight regret playing across his features tells you he has. He gives you a somewhat strained smile as he hastens to pack his things away, almost hesitating once done as though he wants to stay despite a deeper desire to avoid Jimin.

“I’m gonna head now, avoid some of the traffic on the way home,” he rambles, seemingly torn between meeting your eyes so he can smile and avoiding them since he’s fibbing and he knows you know. You squint at him.

“Yeah, that’s fine. Wouldn’t want you stuck in traffic,” you say, staring him dead in the eyes. “You live so far away after all.”

He lets out a nervous-sounding laugh, most likely at the way you’re looking at him, and slings his overstuffed bag over his shoulder. “Ahah… yeah.”

He lives about ten minutes away, the little turd.

You roll your eyes, giving the boy a brief smile. “See you on Friday, Hoseok.”

Somewhat relieved you’re not too mad, Hoseok grins and salutes, returning the sentiment before he’s hightailing it out of there faster than you can say “emotional constipation”. Well, now that you’re left to your own devices for the next eight or so minutes, you’re not really sure what to do. For a moment you sit there, staring in a somewhat disassociating manner at the dark, matte grey surface of the library table. It’s a little quieter than usual this afternoon, and it really allows you to zone out more.

You don’t really want to look at your phone, lest it appear like a request for more suffering to the powers that be. The last thing you want is them thinking you’re hungry for more shitty luck and going out of their way to give you more. So with your phone out of the question, you’re left with nothing to do for the next few minutes except sit and stare at nothing, and maybe transcend the mortal plane a bit while you’re at it. Which is what you do, and do so thoroughly that when a voice sounds next to you, you nearly scream and shit yourself.

“Uh, excuse me…”

“HOLYFUCK!” A strangled noise escapes you, body spinning to face whoever almost scared you to death. “DUDE, you can’t just—oh, hey Jungkook.”

The tall boy flushes as your face softens upon seeing him, the anger that resulted from your scare quickly fizzling away. Jungkook has a face that you’ve always found impossible to be angry at. It feels like being angry at a baby, or a puppy, or a little sugar glider with their big ol’ eyes and tiny paws. You just… can’t do it. You’re lucky he’s not aware of his power or else, like any other bastard adolescent male, he might use it to get up to no good.

“Oh, sorry! Sorry—I didn’t mean to scare you, I- I just saw this on the ground and came to give it to you. I think… I think one of you dropped it. I don’t know if it was you or Hoseok.” Jungkook does his best to meet your eyes, voice soft as he stumbles ever so slightly over his words. He can’t manage to hold your gaze for long however, before his is flying away and straying to the floor, and the ceiling, anywhere but you really. One of his hands rises to sweep through his long, inky curls and rub the back of his neck, the other occupied with gripping a notebook by his side.

You examine the object a little closer, quickly coming to the conclusion you’ve never seen it before in your life. “I don’t recognise it. Could be Hoseok’s though. I’ll keep it for him in case it is his. Thank you, Jungkook.”

The male freezes, completely disarmed for a moment as you flash him a grateful smile. He is so completely still in the seconds following that you can’t help but worry—did you look so bad just then that you shocked him into a coma? Do you have a pimple you don’t know about, glaring at him from somewhere humiliatingly obvious on your face? Is there something in your teeth??

"O-oh," Jungkook clears his throat, blinking twice and then giving his head a little shake as though to clear it. "It's no— It's no problem! I mean I kind of work here so... it would be irresponsible of me to leave it? I mean, not that I would, I—"

You can't help the brief chuckle that wrestles its way from your chest to escape unbidden, your hands reaching to take the notebook that he'd begun holding out for you not long after he started talking. In the process your fingertips brush his own and Jungkook lets out a sound that rings suspiciously like a squeak, hands yanking back so suddenly you almost drop the book before you can adjust your own grasp.

"Oop," he says, the tips of his ears beginning to glow pink beneath the tan of his skin. "Sorry, your next session is probably about to start. I'll leave you be."

Then, as abruptly as he'd arrived, he departs— for a second your wired brain almost tricks you into seeing a cloud of dust form behind him from how fast he flees, reminiscent of the cartoon characters from your childhood.

Well, certainly not the strangest interaction you’ve ever had with Jungkook.

Blinking, you adjust your grip on the book, fingers feeling like they’re slipping against the back for a moment before they finally stop sliding and the notebook remains firm in your hold. Weird, you think, but quickly dismiss it as nothing more than sweaty butterfingers—something you’re prone to getting when stressed. Which, lately, seems to be all the damn time.

You slip the book into your bag, setting a mental reminder to bring it next time you have a session with Hoseok so that you can ask if it’s his. You don’t actually remember what his notebooks look like (you’ve never really made it a point to burn them into your memory) so there’s a fair chance it could be his. In which case, you’re going to make fun of him for being a dumb doo-doo and dropping his book without even realising.

Considering Hoseok left before his session could even end, you were kind of expecting at least a few minutes of peace to yourself where you sit and dissociate by staring at the table again. You’re mistaken however, it seems, and you barely get to blink before there is a familiar set of footsteps making their way to your table and the subsequent light, melodic voice that sounds as they announce themselves loudly and clearly, as they usually do.

“y/n! Honey, I’m here!”

You close your eyes, taking a deep breath. He seems to be in a good mood. May the lord give you strength.

Jimin’s footfalls change and you look up just in time to catch him begin skipping over to where you’re seated at the table, arms swinging and a bright grin overtaking his face, almost making his eyes disappear. You stare at him, caught off-guard by his sudden sunny disposition (the past few sessions haven’t been awesome to him, after all), but he doesn’t stop grinning at you the whole way over. You think you catch Jungkook giving him a dubious look from the front desk, but can’t be sure before Jimin is right in front of you and blocking your view of anything else with his midsection.

“Hi y/n!” he greets again, body swaying slightly where he stands before he slings his bag off and moves to plop in the chair. “Isn’t it such a lovely day tod—oh? Oh!”

Torn from your inner musings of whether or not you should be concerned at Jimin’s sudden mood shift, your eyes whip to his hand where it’s reaching for the chair seat, plucking something from the surface before he suddenly turns and flops down as originally intended.

Jimin’s face has morphed into a picturesque expression of curiosity as he holds up what was between him and his seat; a piece of paper, barely a slip, folded neatly in half. The nosy male is quick to open it, clearly enunciating the words that are apparently scrawled across the inside.

“’You look pretty today’… Aw, y/n, you shouldn’t have !”

You roll your eyes so hard you almost feel the nerve pinch inside your skull. Jimin, of course, knows that you didn’t leave the note for him, but apparently today is one of the days he delights in your suffering.

You almost contemplate the effort of giving a response before realising that you don’t even need one; the male has quickly lost interest in the paper, leaving it discarded on the table top, and is now staring somewhat wistfully out the window with a slightly dazed grin. Okay, what? When he’d first rocked up, he seemed like he was buzzed and brighter than the sun, in one of those energetic top-of-the-world moods. Now… you’re rethinking that observation. If anything, he seems a little distracted.

And as your session with Jimin begins and proceeds, you quickly realise just how true this is.

Initially, you’d been slightly worried about Jimin rocking up with the same knowledge everyone else on this damn campus no doubt possesses after this morning. However, the further into the session you get, the more it becomes apparent that he’s far too off in space to have picked up anything like that. Not to mention, the more you think about it, the more you realise that you’re not even sure if Jimin even goes here. So would he know about all the latest campus gossip and drama? He is friends with Taehyung…

Ultimately you’re unsure, but cautiously optimistic that Jimin hasn’t seen anything to do with the poem or the post that was released this morning. You also figure that, given how distracted he currently is, he probably wouldn’t have had a chance to pick up on the gossip running through the halls anyway— you’re glad that you don’t have to worry about Jimin pitching in his two cents as to who the author is, but honestly? A small part of you kind of wishes that he knew, if only so you could see who he supported in this scenario, like whether he would defend your honour or whether he would betray you and stomp all over your friendship garden by falling for Sera's propaganda.

You suppose there's no way to know, since you're definitely not going to inform him about everything just to find out. No, this peace and calm that comes from how simply detached he feels from the current messy climate of your life is nice and you don't really want to throw that away just yet. For now, you're content to just sit and let it be. It's actually helping a little more of your anger fizzle out, so that's a definitely plus as well.

Content as you may be to let Jimin stay oblivious and wrapped up in his own little world as he currently is, you can't help but wonder what on earth has him so out of it in the first place. You don't think you've ever seen him like this, all spacey and distracted, dreamy smiles sent into the air where his eyes stare, half-lidded and dazed. You'd almost worry he's high on something were it not the brief moments of clarity where he checks back in to be a little shit and tease you.

Today's session for Jimin consists of a few worksheets he's brought for you to assist him with— two of which are similar enough and the third nothing to do with the others— and you do your best to guide him through them. Usually Jimin isn't that hard to tutor. You figured out early on that he's motivated by positive reinforcement more than anything else, and praise is what tickles him most. With this little hack up your sleeve, you never usually have an issue with guiding him along in sessions. Today, however, not even praise seems to be enough to bring him back to the present long enough to pay attention and actually make a dent in the work.

You like to think you're a pretty patient person, but even you have limits and they're reached about two thirds of the way into the session when Jimin gets distracted once more mid-sentence and leaves you sitting in place waiting for him, for a solid three or so minutes.

"Hey, Park," you bark sharply, hoping that if you sound enough like Hoseok then maybe it will startle him fully out of his reverie. "What's going on with you today? What the hell has you so distracted?"

Jimin jumps in his seat at your sudden tone, and turns to you now with wide eyes. It takes a moment for your words to sink in through the shock, but as soon as they register he sags in his seat and the tension leaves his form. His eyes flick to the right, a shy, lazy smile tugging his lips as his thoughts clearly go somewhere else. Seriously? Just how easily distracted is he right now? You only just got his attention, for crying out loud!

Just when you feel about ready to reach over and strangle an answer out of him, the crimson-haired male speaks and halts your violent thoughts in place.

"It's, um..." Jimin rakes his teeth over his bottom lip, using both hands to fiddle with his decorative ice-cream pen, a sundae with chocolate and cherries sitting cutely on the end. "Say, do you..."

Great, you can't help but think, looks like you're in this for the long haul.

"Do I...?" you prompt him, when you decide he's dawdled long enough in giving you an answer.

"Do you... you know... uh." Jimin rakes a hand through his hair, a button on the sleeve of his light denim jacket almost catching on the strands. He pauses, taking a deep breath, and then turns to meet your eyes— wait, is he blushing? "y/n... you know Lee Sera, right?"

Your entire brain seems to halt, the tip of your pen hitting the tabletop despondently. There's something funny about the way he looks right now, something odd and niggling at the back of your mind, but you can't quite place it because you're sitting there with a mild case of whiplash. What. "What?"

Jimin lets out a noise that is somewhere between a chuckle and a giggle, and shifts his gaze down to the paper on the table before him. Fiddling with the ice-cream pen once more, he bites his lip to hide a shy smile— oh, you realise what it is now. He looks like a school girl talking about her crush.

Two beats pass before that thought really sinks in —oh. no— and it's just in time for Jimin's continuation to sucker punch you in the face.

"Do you know if she... likes anyone?"

You blink. Once. Twice. Your brain decides to pitch in, the words mere millimetres from your lips, 'Give me one reason why I shouldn't just kill you right now—'

You just barely hold the words back. The noise you make instead doesn't really sound human, nor does it constitute an actual response of any sort, yet it's all the male gets and still, he's not deterred. It's as though he hasn't noticed the steam currently beginning to spill from the surface of your head, coiling tendrils betraying your current fuming state. What kind of cruel injustice is this? No, you almost want to plead to the heavens and appeal the cruelty currently taking place on this earth— please no.

“Y-you’re asking me if… if she…” You can’t seem to get the words out, the sounds choking in your throat. Jimin does seem to notice this, taking a moment to send you a somewhat concerned expression. It’s brief, though, and he’s soon off in his thoughts once again.

“Yeah,” he says, appearing bashful for a moment. “Although, that’s kind of silly of me, isn’t it. I mean, it’s Sera. Of course she has someone special, right?”

For one thing, you’re wondering just how you’ve managed to get this far in your tutoring sessions without finding out about Jimin’s evident crush on your ex-best friend. Like, is this a recent thing? Or is it more of a slow-burn, consistent for a long period of time thing? And on the other hand, given the context of the situation (despite full details being privy only to you), you can’t help but marvel at Jimin’s apparent poor taste in suitors.

Really, of all the people he could happen to have a crush on, it has to be her?!

“Nggh…” you choke down the words that attempt to rise to your lips, suddenly very uncomfortable in your seat. A barrage of thoughts rain upon your brain, overloading your mind.

Does he know? Does he know about the whole mystery poem ordeal that has so far worked to ruin your life in more than one way? Has he seen the posts? Especially the one that Sera made this morning? It’s hard to pinpoint, but when Jimin doesn’t elaborate further and simply resorts to doodling on his paper as he disappears with the fairies once more, you muse that maybe he hasn’t. If he’d seen it, surely he’d be mentioning it as he spoke of her? Bitterly, you recall that no one today could seem to pass up the opportunity to praise her with every fibre of their being. Just the memory makes hot flames of anger lick at your chest, and you do your best to cool them before Jimin picks up on the Big Kill Energy beginning to emanate from your general direction.

Somewhat thankfully, it’s at this moment that the timer on your phone goes off, signifying the end of the session. A long breath of relief escapes you as you reach for the device, sliding your thumb across the screen to dismiss the timer. The sound seems to have brought Jimin back to the present too, as he’s begun packing away his things in an indolent manner, humming softly to himself. He pulls his phone out, skimming through his feed distractedly as he does so. You decide you may as well do the same, beginning to pack up while he does. There’s no rush, so you actually take your time packing your things away instead of hastily cramming them all in your backpack at once like you usually are inclined to do.

You almost zone out yourself before a sharp gasp breaks you from whatever reverie you were about to get stuck in. Your eyes whip up to Jimin and, immediately after seeing the expression on his face, a feeling of dread begins to creep into your gut.

“Oh my god…” he murmurs, hushed, eyes wide and glued to the screen of his phone. A beat passes before he scrambles to take it into his hold, ring-adorned finger whipping across the screen as he rapidly reads whatever is on there. You don’t like the way he seems to glow with each moment more that passes.

“y/n!” he exclaims very suddenly and very, very loudly. You jump in a combination of fright and tension. “y/n! She— she’s—!”

Oh, god. You wish you could sink into the earth and never resurface. He’s seen it.

Cramming the last few items in your bag, you make use of the fact that Jimin is still staring at his phone and pretend that you don’t hear him, rising from your chair and beginning to walk towards the library doors. Jimin scrambles to his feet, following after you like a puppy, or a child wishing to show their parent something important. “y/n!”

“Hm?” You throw the noise over your shoulder half-heartedly, looking hastily for the best escape route that Jimin isn’t likely to follow you down. Unfortunately this isn’t downtown, this is the second-biggest library on your campus, and there is nowhere you can go that Jimin wouldn’t be able to follow you.

“I— y/n! Do you know that whole mystery poem author thing? I heard something about it a while ago but I just— I only just read about it and! y/n!” Jimin reaches out to grasp you by the sleeve, effectively halting you for a moment. “It’s just been found that Lee Sera is the author!”

Lord give you strength, you absolutely want to die.

“O-oh?” The utterance is literally ground through your teeth, but Jimin seems to be in such a state of euphoria that he doesn’t even notice. Of course.

“I mean, this is such a shock but… I’m not surprised.” The male is positively beaming with pride, looking down at his phone fondly. You think you’re going to be sick. “She’s amazing, isn’t she? And she’s so humble to have kept quiet about the whole thing, too. Wah, she’s so….”

You don’t know whether you’re going to implode from anger or frustration, or maybe a dangerous cocktail of both. It’s as though there are live wires beneath your skin, nerves abuzz and wrought with the urge to strangle someone (preferably a certain someone) or hit something (preferably your head, against a desk).

“She sure is something,” you say, the toothy smile you slap on completely juxtaposing the bitter note to your voice. Jimin again, bless him, completely misses it.

You’re so close to the doors, but not close enough. Please… you just want to go home and angry cry into your pillow.

“I never really paid it much attention, but now that I’m rereading the poem… she’s so talented,” Jimin’s tone is full of awe, and you know that you felt murderous this morning but now you feel that and incredibly done. When will karma finish rawing you? Have you not suffered enough? Was everyday living not torture enough? Jimin’s lovestruck babbling stops for no man, “It’s no wonder it blew up so much, she’s such a gifted—”

“Who’s such a gifted what?”

You jump slightly at the sound of a new voice, eyes whipping over to catch sight of Kim Taehyung as he slips into the library through the widening gap in the doors and makes his way over. It seems he’s donned a loose white shirt and black pants ensemble today, something you notice because of the way they flow as he walks. His question was directed at Jimin, but his eyes seem to be surveying your expression to get a read on the situation.

Regrettably, you can feel that the face you’re currently pulling… really isn’t a good one.

The second he sees him, Jimin changes targets and latches onto his friend’s arm instead. “Tae! The author of that poem you’re always raging about—oofft—”

You don’t quite catch it, but you swear you glimpse Taehyung— whose cheeks seem to have taken on a flushed tone— deliver a powerful elbow to Jimin’s ribs, who grunts but nonetheless continues, undeterred. You’ve really gotta give him points for his determination and perseverance at this stage.

“The author of the poem, it’s Lee Sera! I know I always ignored you when you talked about it, but now that I think about it, it makes so much sense!” Jimin’s gushing again, and you really think you might be sick sometime soon. Is it possible to be so angry that you become nauseous? You suppose you’re about to find out. “She’s one of the best in her class, isn’t she? Of course she’s able to make such a beautiful poem that goes viral the second it’s released— it’s her!”

Taehyung’s eyes had been trained upon Jimin the whole time he spoke, but now they’re sweeping to you and for some reason, you find yourself freezing in place under their weight. The dark cocoa of his iris’ swim with something indecipherable, a curious tilt to the corner of his heart-shaped mouth. It’s as though he’s watching for your reaction to something. His gaze doesn’t leave you for the entire moment that he answers his friend, “Uh huh. Is that so?”

You’re unnerved— or maybe it’s just a very sudden, very potent overload of your senses. You’re angry, you’re upset and hurt; you’re frustrated now more than ever at the injustice of the situation and how much of an absolutely helpless position you have found yourself in. You want to leave, and you know that if you don’t soon, you’re probably going to start angry crying in the middle of the library and that is a mess you absolutely do not want to experience handling. Besides, you don’t think poor Jungkook at the reception is really equipped to handle those sorts of breakdowns. You really wouldn’t want to put him through it either.

“Right, well I really have to go. I have a bunch of readings to do, so… better get started on those,” you announce loudly, cutting Jimin off before he can start again and drive you any further towards insanity than he already has. “Finish those sheets, Jimin. Don’t make me chase you up.”

Jimin whips his hand to his forehead in a salute, and you resist the urge to roll your eyes. Already turning on your heel, you make your escape while you can and wave goodbye. “Okay, see you! Have fun doing whatever it is you’re about to do!”

And then you absolutely yeet yourself out the library doors and all but bolt home.

Alright. You have a date with your pillow and some tears, and you’re not about to miss it. May the gods of fortune guide you home without anymore incidents that make you want to slam your head against a brick wall, please and thank you.

x x x x

“— I just, sort of like, you know, write whatever comes to my head. Like, whatever I feel comes from the heart—”

She follows you like the plague, bits and pieces of her and oh-so-casual reminders that she exists and is tormenting you, everywhere you go, and it takes every inch of your willpower to block her out and keep walking as you have every other time you encountered her preaching to admirers in the public spaces you frequent on campus. Sometimes Sera sees you, and you think that if she weren’t surrounded by half a hundred people sucking her toes then she might chase after you. You’ve been screening her calls, after all, and there have been a lot of them.

You regret to say, that in the days following that cursed announcement, things don’t begin to die down nearly as much as you hope they would. People are still talking, still whispering about it, and instead of it becoming old news it’s as though instead it’s a rampant forest fire, feeding ravenously on the hot gossip passed between peers at brunch, posts typed out meticulously on various media and dramatic recounts told by the friends of those that, wisely, seem to live under a rock.

You, of course, couldn’t be any less pleased with how the situation is panning out.

Your hot, scalding, unadulterated cauldron of bubbling rage has since settled down to a reluctant simmer. This is partly because you realised it is kind of unhealthy to be that angry so constantly, and partly because you’re not a fan of the constipation that results from being so tense with anger. You lose some, you lose some, you suppose. It’s lose-lose these days, babey!

The climate at university isn’t looking good for you, and each day passes with great testament to your willpower and determination not to purchase an automated vehicle and run yourself over. You still go to classes, and attend even the stupidest of lectures and tutorials (you’ve had to suffer through experiencing Seokjin more often than you’d like, but he seems to have toned himself down a little the past few times you’ve seen him— perhaps he’s caught wind of that [redacted] post and actually feels sorry for you?... No, he’s probably just got the flu and doesn’t want to use his voice up to torment you all at once). To be honest, you even kind of forgot about Jimin and his apparent crush for a while— probably would have continued forgetting if it weren’t for your sudden recollection approximately three minutes before his session on Friday.

With Hoseok gone, early as usual these days, you’re left to stew in your own thoughts and it’s barely a few minutes into dissociating that you remember Jimin’s last session and the knowledge that unfolded towards the end of it.

True to your luck and arguably a few minutes early to being right on time, you hear Jimin’s patent patter of footsteps and fight the urge to sink in your seat. You really need to get it together because this is ridiculous, you’re not prepared for anything and everything is out to ruin your day one way or another. You’re well on your way to crashing and burning in some sort of way but you still have no idea when exactly it’s gonna go down. An absolute travesty. You’re a mess waiting to get even messier at barely a moment’s notice.

“Afternoon, y/n!” Jimin crows in greeting as he nears you, a skip in his step and three books in his arms on topics that have absolutely nothing to do with each other. Does he even go here? You really wonder sometimes. “The sun says hello!”

You’re unsure whether he’s referring to himself, or the fact that the sun has indeed just peeked out from behind the clouds that have obscured it since early this morning, but either way the best you can manage is a strained smile in returned greeting. You can’t really bring yourself to look at him the same. Have you lost respect for Jimin after finding out that he has a massive crush on Sera, the person single-handedly responsible for ruining your life the most it has ever been ruined before and then going to ruin it further after you confronted her about it? Absolutely. Can you tell him without sounding like an absolute asshole because evidently to everyone but you Sera has managed to keep up a stellar appearance and benevolent persona? No, no you cannot and it’s probably going to end up making you drink questionable fluids later.

Somewhat stupidly optimistic, a small part of you hopes that maybe it was a brief crush, a spur of the moment affection erection, and that this Jimin in front of you now has realised the error of his ways and has moved on from this blight in his romantic record.

Of course, this is not to be, and the second there’s a lull in conversation after he’s begun working on the task you set him, he begins chattering away as he scribbles his half-hearted answers on the paper. If he starts dotting his I’s with hearts, you really might k-word yourself.

The topic of his vocal musings is, of course, one Lee Sera. You manage to sit there as he waxes the usual poetic, the stuff you heard last session and the things you’ve heard floating in the halls, with minimal incidence. While he’s talking about Sera, you’re constructing a little zen garden in the depths of your mind and it’s taking all of your brain power. Well, almost all of it— you do catch one little tidbit that makes you halt in your mental raking of sand.

“-- and I mean, I know it’s dumb, but I just can’t stop thinking about all those conspiracy posts on the forum, and, like… well, now they know who the author is, but they haven’t discovered the muse, you know? So like…”

The implication of his words hits you like a freight train, and the anger sizzling in your abdomen cooling suddenly into an odd sense of dread. Oh, oh no.

“I don’t think it is, but what if it really is me she wrote it about…?”

It seems, that Jimin— bless his pure, naive heart— has begun to hope. Learning that “Sera” is the author of a poem he’s suspected to be starred in seems to have crumbled the floodgate keeping the bulk of his feelings at bay. As he continues to mutter and ramble, pausing in his writing every so often to doodle a heart, or a tree with a heart and initials on it, you realise just how deep he seems to be in this little infatuation.

The very prospect of there being a chance his feelings aren’t unrequited? He can’t help but cling to it, and the more you hear tumble from his mouth the more you realise this tomato-haired crackhead is actually a hopeless romantic, and literally cannot stop himself from hoping, from feeding that fantasy he has.

Sitting there and listening to him, as the person knowing who the poem is really about and where Sera’s fixation doesn’t lie, you begin to feel a little guilty. You can’t tell him, can’t inform him of the reality because it would compromise you— not only that, he’s so taken with Sera and caught up in the romantic glow of the situation as he sees it that you doubt he’d believe you. That saddens you a little, that realisation. You’ve been friends with Jimin for months now, you’ve tutored him and even had a few impromptu therapy sessions when he rocks up a mess; but not once have you ever seen him or Sera so much as glance at each other, not once has his name passed her lips, and yet… if you were to confess to him, right here and right now, that you are the real author of the poem… would he believe you?

A part of you suspects the answer, and it makes your heart sink.

You can’t bring yourself to say anything to him. The rest of his session is spent stewing internally in your own perplexing cocktail of guilt and hurt, and you realise only as it ends and you watch him leave through the door that you never even had a chance to convince him that he’s not the muse. It feels cruel, thinking of doing such a thing when you now know how attached he is to the possibility of being the muse with Sera as the author. It would be an awful thing for you to do, to stomp on the morsels of hope that have bloomed within him for his crush. But it doesn’t change the fact that you are the original author, and you know who the poem was really written about— is it not the morally right thing to do, to tell him the truth?

Do you protect his feelings, or do you hurt them for a greater good?

You don’t know which is the right thing to do in this situation, and when you eventually pack your things up and exit the library, it’s with a sick feeling in your stomach and a foreboding tingling of your sixth sense that tells you this… isn’t going to end well.

x x x x x x

VVVVVBBT. VVVVVVVBT. VVVVVVVBT. VVVVVBT.

It seems to take longer for the ringing to end this time, you note, as you somewhat despondently watch the phone vibrate and move across the table slightly from the force of it. Then again, it could just be the thousands of calls you’ve screened over the weekend that have you feeling so weary. Most would get the message that your continued silence and refusal to answer indicate, but apparently not Sera. You’ve always known she’s stubborn, and determined, but this is borderline crazy and you’re having trouble wrapping your head around the emergence of all these facets you never knew about or even noticed before now.

The weekend just gone, the two days that are meant to be your one time of reprieve and sanctuary from the messy shithole your world has become lately, had been desecrated. Not even in the safety of your own home could you pretend your anxieties didn’t exist, the tell-tale vibrations of your phone and the occasional, persistent series of dings that alert you to a new message were ceaseless. It’s a little concerning, her dogged dedication to attempting to contact you, but at this point you’re not even interested in psycho-analysing it. You just want a break, and for the “block call” function on your phone to maybe actually work for once.

Actually, you’ve been (unfortunately, regrettably) given a lot of insight into sides of Sera you’d never witnessed before, faces she’d kept hidden behind a carefully prepared facade and the persona she wanted to present to the world for the duration of your friendship. The messages she sends you come in groups, and more often than not in completely contradicting tones. Begging, pleading, empty apologies, anger, spite— you’ve seen them all, sometimes in the same message. For the most part, they’re shameless pleas and begs for you to talk to her, to answer her calls and listen to what she has to say. Some of them, though, give you a massive whiplash when you read them.

One such text from mid-Sunday reads from the notification bar, “i’m doing what you wanted, what the fuck is your problem? why are you so mad? honestly, at this point it’s a little selfish of you, i’m sacrificing so damn much just to…”

Another, barely an hour after that one, was quick to backtrack, “llisten y/n, i’m sso fuckiggn sorry for that last tesct. it was so uncalled for im so sorry. i’m trying so hrard but you wont evenn anser my callss, and im jsut, imr realluy having g scucjh a hard time with all of this stuff goigng on adn…”

You didn’t click on the notification or open them, so you don’t actually know what she says in the latter half of her messages. You don’t think you want to though, if the start of some of them are any indication as to what the rest will hold.

As if your phone being constantly lit up in some way or another due to her wasn’t enough, you also had to bear witness to the rest of the bullshit manifesting at her hands. In actuality, it was largely this that is responsible for relighting your rage pit and getting you back on the “incredibly pissed and absolutely unimpressed” track.

Contrary to the texts and voicemails Sera left you over the course of the weekend, she is simultaneously active on the cursed forum that she used to start all this, and the posts you've been seeing only serve to fuel your anger. At one point you got so mad you nearly threw your phone into your pot of noodles, the only thing stopping you being that you’re better than that and you’d rather throw yourself off the bank into the nearby river than let her get one up on you in any way.

Pleading and begging she would be in your inbox, and then she’d turn and press send on a post in the forum that completely contradicts whatever crap she bawled at you in her messages. The forum is currently an absolute mess of shipping posts (no longer starring you, but her) with varying suspected muses, the odd conspiracy post, and questions directed her as the ‘author’ that she answered in full character. You could deal with the shipping posts (well, all but one. That one made your blood boil and your stomach twist into an ugly pit of warped envy), but her impersonating you as the author and answering questions about your work as though she wrote it herself? You’re ready to spill blood.

The most common question, of course, in all its variations is something best encapsulated by this particular gem that shows up late Sunday evening: ‘omg, i love love love moonlight sonata! the second i read it i couldn’t help but fall in love, whether with you or the poem idk yet! I just wanted to know, like probably everyone does, who was the muse?’

That [redacted]’s response to this is probably the one that gets your blood boiling the most too.

‘hi, thank you so so much for all the love! its so strange since this was never meant to get out and i never really get such response to my works,, but i’m getting more used to it and im so so grateful!! haha! its actually funny you say that,, it was so embarrassing at the time but i once had a teacher say that they thought i could make someone fall in love with me with a poem alone >< hehe i guess they were right! and i did write moonlight sonata for someone, but i’m not sure if i should reveal that just yet… you’ll have to wait and see!’

Murder is illegal and so is manslaughter. Again, with more feeling. Murder is illegal, and so is manslaughter. There. You take in a deep breath, attempting desperately to find some zen after recalling all the forum posts you’d seen over the duration of the weekend. You suppose the only silver lining you’re going to be able to find in this is the fact that Sera doesn’t actually know who you wrote the poem for. Well, she might have a suspicion, but you’ve never told her. And even so, there would be no point in her ‘revealing’ who your muse is, since she’s claimed she is the author and ‘confessing’ someone would lead to circumstances she’d likely rather avoid.

But, now that you think about it, shouldn’t that mean that she’d try and avoid mentioning it altogether? If so, why is she feeding it every chance she gets…?

You don’t get to spare that train of thought much time, since despite how long the weekend drags on, the next day arrives very quickly. Before you know it, almost the entire day is gone and you’re zipping through your tutoring session with Hoseok, helping the somewhat frantic boy with a last-minute assessment he’d completely forgotten about. You’ve spent the whole day successfully avoiding anything to do with Sera and that stupid poem, and you’re actually feeling quite good at this point, in comparison to how you’ve been feeling the past, well, the past month or so. The hour passes quicker than you’d like and before long you’re packing your things up and helping Hoseok with his own bulging assortment of textbooks and notepads before they all go tumbling to the floor. You swear you see some receipts with hasty scribbles littering the bottom of his bag but you try not to look since you don’t want to ruin your progress and stress yourself out. You’re in such an oddly peaceful mood you’re actually thinking of asking Jimin if he wants to spend the session outside under the trees in the new garden the university brought in. Uncharacteristic, you know, but what is the human experience if not getting so stressed and exceeding your emotional capacity so extensively that you transcend all planes of feeling and feel contrarily at peace?

It’s as you’re exiting the library after your session with Hoseok, carrying some of his things for him while he fixes his bag, that the universe decides to remind you of your place and the fact that you can never truly avoid your problems in life. Apparently, they’re prone to chasing you down and sniffing you out like a bloodhound, and like a particularly nasty yeast infection they never truly go away until you seek professional help and purchase an antibiotic restraining order for that shit.

You barely get the words, ‘See you on Wednesday, Hoseok’, out of your mouth before you hear another familiar sound, much sooner than you anticipated. Hoseok returns the farewell and turns away, still cramming the rest of his things in his bag as he begins to move off. A laugh, light and airy and very familiar, brushes your ears and you turn with a slight smile on your face. Excellent, given he doesn’t see Hoseok making his quick escape, then he’ll probably still be in a good enough mood to agree to studying outside with you.

You turn, greeting already on the tip of your tongue, and promptly feel the words die in your throat and the smile on your lips drop completely. Oh, for the love of fuck.

Jimin is smiling, laughing, as he comes down the hallway, cheeks flushed pink and eyes disappearing into gleeful crescents— it’s a sight that would made you smile if it weren’t for the fact that he’s not alone.

The woman of the hour, the source of your suffering for the past month or so, is striding along next to the oblivious male, like the scorpion perched on the frog’s back. She’s placed her hand on the back of his arm as they walk, smiling at something he’s said as he chatters away, resembling an eager puppy as he does so. You recognise the move as one of her favourite lightly flirty ones.

Somewhat belatedly, your flight response kicks in, and you go to move and leave while you can— but its not before Sera turns and notices you standing there, mid-movement.

The shift is instantaneous. You might have thought that the interested expression she was directing at Jimin was genuine, if it weren’t for the way her entire demeanour changes the second she catches sight of you. Your first instinct is to be angry that she’d managed to find her way to Jimin, and that he’d probably fall for whatever bullshit spouted from her mouth about being the author, but as you see the slight, victorious flicker pass through her gaze, you become angry for another reason entirely. The suspicion weighing heavy in your gut makes your blood boil as Sera straightens, angling her body away from Jimin completely and all but non-verbally dismissing him, as though he’s no longer even there.

Jimin halts, brows drawing together as he takes in the change in Sera’s behaviour, confusion colouring his puppy-like features as he looks around for anything that could have triggered it. His eyes fall on you and they light in recognition, smile returning to his face as he waves at you, some of his crimson locks falling across his forehead from the movement. “Oh, y/n! Hey! I was just on my way to the session!”

Something churns in your gut, a foreboding feeling that feels far too icky to touch.

He takes a step closer, but pauses when Sera moves forward. Your entire body is tense with the conflicting urges to run and sock her in the face, limbs coiled and ready to spring you away. You’re going to have a massive crick in your neck after this. She begins stepping closer, hand stretching out as though to touch your arm, her brows drawing together in as close an approximation as she can get to regretful.

“y/n, I’ve been trying to talk to you all day,” she says, tone having adopted an edge you’re very familiar with. Is she stupid? You know all her manipulation tactics, what is the point in employing them now? You think you know, though, and the thought only serves to stoke the bubbling pit of molten rage in your stomach.

Her hand reaches for your arm, trying to touch it, and you move it out of the way before she can, taking a few firm steps back. “Don’t touch me,” you warn, unable to help the glare that your features are pulled into. “I’m not interested in talking to you. I don’t want to.”

She’s really pushing it. You’re a patient woman, but even you have a limit and she’s fast approaching it.

A flicker of irritation flashes across Sera’s features before she masks it with her go-to ‘kicked puppy’ look. From the corner of your eye, you see Jimin flounder in confusion, probably because he has absolutely no idea what happened between you.

“y/n,” Sera whimpers, and when you see Jimin shift in concern behind her you realise why she’s acting the way she is. She’s using him as collateral, and she used him for land development to actually lock you down. Seems she doesn’t take being avoided very well. “Why are you being so harsh? I— I’m doing what you asked, why are you still so mad?”

You can’t help the venomous response that rips itself off your tongue, glare deepening. “Cut the shit. You know exactly why I’m pissed— it’s the same fucking reason I was pissed last week, except now it’s worse because you’ve made it worse. How could you possibly think any of what you’ve been doing is what I asked?”

You can only be glad that Hoseok has already left and the hallway is mostly deserted, the sole witness being Jimin to the spectacle beginning to unfold as Sera places a hand to her chest, sniffing and throwing her other hand out for emphasis. “Please, y/n, what do I have to do to fix this? I really have been doing what you asked, I’ve been—”

It’s as though something snaps within you, almost an entire week of her bullshit placing you at your wits end. You’re fuming, practically spitting flames, and it’s just barely that you hold yourself back from wrapping your hands around her throat. “You’ve been doing nothing but make things worse for me! You started this whole thing, you continued feeding into it even though you knew what it would mean for me— there is no fixing this!”

“y/n,” Sera’s eyes have begun to water, and you’re so enraged you don’t even see Jimin taking a few alarmed steps closer. “Please, I-I’m so sorry, I’ve said it a thousand times that I am s-so sorry—”

“Don’t you dare come to me and tell me you’re sorry. You’re not sorry, you were never sorry, and you clearly don’t regret a thing because the entire time since last Wednesday all you’ve been doing as parading around and proclaiming yourself as the author of that stupid poem when we both know it isn’t you!”

Sera flinches back, a visible clash of hurt and rage whipping across her features. It seems she settles on the latter emotion, face dropping into a glare and mouth opening to hurl a response back. The front she has put up is falling apart the longer this goes on. “I’ve told you so many times how much I regret what I did, how can you say—”

“y/n, what the hell?” Jimin’s voice has a sharp edge you don’t think you’ve ever heard before as he steps forward suddenly, looking incredulous and angry at once as he suddenly reminds you of his presence. “She’s the author, stop being so horrible. Isn’t she your friend? How could you doubt her? Is it so hard to believe that she’d want to write a poem for the person she likes?”

You’re momentarily stunned by his words, confused as to why he’s stepping in to defend her so avidly even with his little crush. It takes a moment, but it clicks eventually— dread fills the pit of your stomach as you realise that the idealistic hopes Jimin had revealed to you last session about being the subject of the poem have been exploited by a scorpion wishing to cross the pond.

“Shut up, this doesn’t concern you.”

Torn violently from your thoughts by the harsh, unexpected words, your gaze whips back to Sera, eyes wide. Jimin flinches, a soft noise of shock and surprise escaping him as his own wide-eyed gaze centers on her and hurt floods his deep chocolate irises. “Wh-what? But you said—?”

“Shut. Up,” she grinds out through teeth clenched so tight that part of you thinks they might shatter beneath the pressure.

Jimin fumbles, his confusion urging him to continue when he probably shouldn’t. “When we were walking here you said that you… that I was—”

Sera explodes, like a bomb with faulty wires and a timer that went off too soon. “I LIED! I’m not the author, and even if I was, that poem would never be about YOU!”

In the seconds that follow her booming exclamation, her words ring in the absolute silence of the hall. For a moment, it’s still. Then your eyes flick to Jimin’s face and you see how it falls, and all of a sudden it hits you— the realisation of what she just said, and who she said it to. How awful Jimin must feel, to hear those things directed at him. Now, for a moment, you see red, and you feel it slowly climb up your body from your toes to your fingertips and to your chest. You aren’t even aware of moving until you’re barely a foot away from Sera and your arm is whipping through the air, body apparently more in control than your brain.

You’ve never slapped anyone before, didn’t ever think that you really would, but the motion comes easily and the harsh impact of your hand against Sera’s cheek is satisfying in an odd, sickening way. Apparently you pack quite a punch when absolutely fucking livid, because her head turns from the force of your blow, her eyes shooting wide. You’ve left a mark in her foundation. Jimin’s crushed expression crosses your mind’s eye once more and suddenly the satisfaction you felt prior isn’t enough. You go to move again.

You get barely a split second into the movement before arms are looping under your armpits, your body being hauled away and out of hitting range. You’re so angry you barely pay attention to who it is, your focus on the piece of work in front of you and the absolute spitting rage that has swallowed you whole at the sight of her.

“How dare you—” you seethe, the words spilling like acid from your tongue faster than you can think them. “How could you say that to him—”

Everything suddenly hastens into movement from the stillness that had possessed it before. Distantly, you realise the person restraining you has stopped moving backwards and is attempting to calm you, but that doesn’t carry much weight when you hear a choked noise and your gaze is drawn suddenly to the side.

Jimin has taken a step back, almost stumbling in his leather boots, his hands trembling and brows drawn together, expression nothing short of crestfallen. You swear you catch his bottom lip quiver, and then your attention is taken by the way his dark eyes begin to water right in front of you. You’re almost rooted to the spot in shock as they begin to fill with tears, but you don’t get to see them fall because before they can, Jimin turns on his heel and begins walking away, pace quick and hurried.

“y/n.” The red has cleared from your vision enough that you now realise the person restraining you is Hoseok, his voice sounding close to your ear. He speaks again and you freeze because it’s with a tone you’ve never heard come from him before. It’s fury, but quiet and controlled unlike your hot spark of rage, and it makes you snap back into your senses instantly, spine straightening. “Go after him. He’s hurting.”

The brain cell rattling around in your brain reserved for mortal combat might be telling you to finish Sera off while you can, but Jimin is your friend and the reason you want to kill her in the first place is because she did hurt him. And the look on his face… you’ve never seen it on him before and you never want to again. For whatever reason, her careless words seem to have cut him deep, and you need to go and make sure he’s okay.

Without a second thought, you slip out of Hoseok’s arms and he lets you go. You begin in the direction that Jimin is going, footsteps hastening in an attempt to close the distance. You forget about Sera in favour of chasing more pressing things. “Jimin—”

The call had slipped out of your lips unwittingly, but the sound of it seems to set Jimin off. He quickens his pace further, and his legs aren’t that much longer than yours but the muscles are clearly more developed since you’re eating his dust even more than before. He disappears around the corner, and you just barely catch sight of his behind before you have to push to glimpse him once more.

Whether he doesn’t want to be followed by anyone, or whether he— heaven forbid— thinks it’s Sera coming after him, Jimin does his best to try and lose you. Around twists and turns, down hallways that you didn’t even know this building had, you chase him for what feels like forever and you can’t pinpoint where but somewhere in that time the two of you transitioned to almost running, Jimin’s light jog-speedwalk fusion easily getting the better of your own weak attempt.

Despite the heaviness of the situation, you can’t help but marvel that he really didn’t successfully streak across the university sports field for nothing— he’s super fast, and the only reason you’re able to keep up somewhat is through the temporary rush of adrenaline that slapping Sera gave you and the sheer determination not to lose him. You don’t normally have this much stamina, after all, but you don’t think Jimin is going to be running out on the other hand either. If he takes you up one more flight of stairs it’s game over for you.

“Jimin, wait—” you attempt to call out once or twice, but he never turns around, and each time you do so just results in him moving faster. You get the message quickly, but still have to bite your tongue to quell the natural urge to call out that rises.

The longer he goes, the more frantic he seems. Once or twice you think you see his shoulders shake, but can’t tell if it’s him or the rattling of your vision from your jerky movements. Jimin can’t evade you forever though, and this building and its hallways aren’t endless. Eventually you reach a dead-end, and the red-haired male gives up. He stumbles a little, making it through the doorway before he moves to the wall, his back to you.

Slowing down from your jog, you feel the tax of the exercise catch up with you as your breathing works to compensate the uncharacteristic energy use. You pause as you make your way towards him, somewhat tentative now he’s backed in a corner. Well, corner might not be the right word for it. Somehow, in all his evading, Jimin has managed to lead the two of you to the small balcony on the top floor of the building, barely anything more than a little alcove to overlook the horizon. It faces the direction that the sun sets, and you receive a view of that now, the soft reds, pinks and oranges a contrast to the light blue of Jimin’s denim jacket but a compliment to the scarlet of his hair.

Despite the fact you chased him this far, wanting to comfort him, now that you’re here… you feel kind of bad for intruding. Still, you didn’t tail him through the entire building for nothing. Tentatively, you make your way over to where he is. You’re not very loud, but he seems to sense your arrival when you step out onto the balcony with him, back still to you. You take another step closer, going to peer around his shoulder, but he flinches, bringing his hand up over the side of his face and using the other to wipe under his nose.

“Don’t look,” he sniffs. “This is humiliating.”

At his words, you feel your heart sink right down to your feet. The resulting sensation is an empty ache in your chest, something you think you can best describe as empathy that is a little too deeply rooted. Suddenly you realise that, in a way, this is your fault. You wrote the poem that ended up hurting him, and even though you weren’t the one who said those things to him, you’re the one that provided the fodder.

You don’t know what to say, so much was on the tip of your tongue trying to burst forth before, but now it’s as though your voice is stuck in your throat. You swallow, shuffling the slightest bit closer, and attempt to pull something meaningful from the dredges of your mind.

“It’s okay. Everyone looks a little bit ugly when they cry, you know.” Not what you intend to come out, but it comes out anyway.

It pulls an unwitting laugh from Jimin though, the sound tinged with the echo of a sob. He turns and presses his back to the wall, covering his face with both hands, and slides down until he’s seated on the floor, knees drawn up. You watch him for a moment, the way his form trembles slightly and he sniffs, before you’re carefully placing yourself down next to him, trying not to be too obnoxious in your movements.

You wait a moment, partly because you want to see if he is going to say anything and partly because you, yourself, have no idea where to start. It occurs to you, though, that maybe what he wants isn’t comfort in the form of words. When he doesn’t speak, and the moment still doesn’t feel right to say anything, you ease a little closer and, when he doesn’t protest or shift away, you do the only thing you can think might comfort him in this moment.

Silently, you move your arm up and around, slipping it over his shoulders and pulling him close to you into a half-embrace, feeling somewhat like a mother hen sheltering her chick from the harshness of the world. Jimin stills for a second, frozen in your arms, but then he lets himself fall into you and it seems the proverbial dam holding his tears at bay breaks.

He lets himself sob now, hands still over his face and his body shaking against your side as he curls up into you and draws his knees closer to his body. His tears flood his hands, some escaping to drip down onto your legs and shirt. Your heart aches at the sounds escaping him— trust Sera to unintentionally pinpoint someone’s deeply hidden trauma when insulting them. The only thing stronger than the dislike you feel for her right now is the regret that you allowed the circumstances of your own situation to spill out and affect other innocent people in your life, like Jimin.

You spend some time simply sitting there, letting Jimin cry out the hurt against you at the cost of your shirt and jeans, running your hand soothingly along his back and arm. You place your other hand on the knee closest to you, not much but another small symbol of comfort you hope he receives. He’s in a state for a while, sobbing and hiccuping until his voice grows a little hoarse and thick from the snot congesting his nose. Eventually, he calms enough that his body no longer shakes with his weeping, and after a period of silence broken only by a few sniffles here and there, the male pulls away so that he’s no longer leaning on you like the tower of Piza.

You let him slip out of your hold, simply sitting and waiting for him to speak— you could sense the intention in the way he wipes his face and swallows, readying himself. You don’t have to wait long.

“This is probably the one thing I’m most afraid of in life, you know,” he croaks softly, a humourless laugh tacked onto the end. Your heart gives a painful throb, but you bite your tongue from comforting him just yet. You can feel there’s more to come.

Jimin seems to finally manage to wipe his face somewhat clean, at last letting his hands drop onto his lap and allowing his head to fall back softly against the wall. His profile is illuminated by the last reaches of the sun, casting him in a soft pink glow that almost disguises the redness around his eyes and nose.

Watching him so keenly as you are, it doesn’t escape you when he opens his mouth to speak again and his chin wobbles, his gaze directed to the ceiling of the alcove. His voice wavers, growing strained as he vocalises the thoughts weighing him down so.

“It’s kind of stupid, isn’t it?” he says softly, still looking upwards. “Everyone’s afraid of rejection, but for me… I can’t— I can’t… handle it.”

“It’s stupid, to be crying over this,” he sniffles, eyes watering but no tears falling as he attempts to hold them back. “It’s stupid, but it just— it just hurts, you know? It fuckin’ hurts. All the people I admire, and the people I have admired in my life…”

Jimin blinks, a single tear slipping down over his cheekbone of its own accord. He lets it go, not bothering to wipe it. You’re caught frozen in your spot, watching with wide eyes as he reveals the most hidden part of himself and entrusts it to you. From just your usual interactions, you’d never have garnered that this side of him even exists. He takes a deep breath, a shaky breath. “It doesn’t matter who they are, what they are to me, it never seems to change. Either they don’t want me from the beginning, or they— they find something more important to them than me and they leave.”

“A-and I know I shouldn’t, but I can’t help but think,” he chokes a little, voice growing thicker and wobbling dangerously. He blinks rapidly, fresh tears burning his eyes. His voice cracks on the last of his words. “I can’t help but think, w-what if that’s what is meant for me? W-what if there’s no one who will stay?... What if no one will want me, y/n?”

His words are a boot crushing your heart beneath its sole, and you swear even with all you’ve been through in the past month or so you have never felt as gutted before as you feel now for him. The last question to leave his mouth seems to bring the rest of his feelings to the surface, his eyes closing as a soft sob slips from his lips once more. He brings his hands to his face again, elbows resting on the top of his knees, and you’re so busy trying to squash down your own tears for him that for a moment, you can only sit there and listen to him. You feel a bit lost.

What could you ever possibly do to even begin healing a wound that seems to run that deep?

You know, realistically, there isn’t anything you can do, and it’s not your place nor wound to heal. But still, you know there is something you can do to ease it a little in this moment, you just need to figure it out. It’s at that thought that suddenly, you receive a stroke of genius, an idea that honestly is a little embarrassing but definitely better than nothing coming to mind.

Already feeling somewhat humiliated in advance, you reach for your bag and open it enough to stick your hand in and rifle through it for the familiarly shaped object. Jimin has shown you one of the most vulnerable parts of him, so you can live with the embarrassment this once. Your hand finally locates what it’s looking for, pulling out the beaten-up A5 spiral notebook that has lived in your backpack for the past two years. Jimin either doesn’t hear you or doesn’t care enough at the moment to pay attention to whatever the shuffling sound is, which you’re kind of thankful for because you need a minute or two to actually follow through with your idea.

You slip your hand back into your bag as you open the notebook with the other, performing a lucky-dip of sorts into the risky depths of your bag one more in search of a pen. You find one and pull it out without discrimination— god, alright, it’s the rainbow ink gel pen with a crystal cat on the end that you bought on a whim at the dollar store. Guess that’s the hill you’re dying on this afternoon.

Peeking to the side to make sure Jimin isn’t watching— he’s still crying into his hands, something you probably shouldn’t be slightly relieved about in the moment— you try and flick through the book as quietly as possible, eyes scanning the messy scribbles on each page.

This, is your little rough idea scrapbook. The only thing that’s in a state anywhere near as chaotic and messy as this is your phone notes, and you really don’t want to think about those right now. In this old, beaten notebook that surprisingly hasn’t run out of pages yet, is where you usually scribble your ideas for writings, or poems. You’re looking for one of the latter currently, a rough draft that came to you in a fever dream and you copied onto paper in a haze, before never touching again. It’s incomplete, but you’re finally about to give it the ending it deserves.

Finally, you catch sight of it on one of the pages to the back, the words “softer than the embrace of the moon” jumping out at you. Ah, this is it. The rough draft of Moonlight Sonata, the poem that ended up turning your life on it’s head and leaving you for dead in the dust from the upheaval.

Making sure Jimin is still not focusing on you, you uncap the stupid, glittery pen and hastily put it to paper, throwing down whatever enters your head that makes sense and feels right. You don’t think you’ve ever written anything this fast that wasn’t a heap of absolute trash, but perhaps it’s the emotional potency of the moment that has you scrawling lines across paper with ease.

You only take a few minutes, and after which you somehow simultaneously feel the cathartic effects of creating a poem and the embarrassment of the fact someone else is about to see it. Well, it’s not Moonlight Sonata in any way, but this little abridged creation… it’s not too bad.

Quietly as you can so you don’t prematurely disturb his weeping, you tear the page from the book and make sure there’s nothing on the back and the old title is scribbled out before you fold it in half, turning to Jimin at last.

Gently, you reach and brush some of the dyed strands from his forehead, successfully catching his attention. Jimin peels his hands from his face, eyes red-rimmed and bloodshot but containing a curious glint as they turn to you.

You opt not to say anything just yet, pulling one hand towards you and placing the folded piece of paper onto his palm. Confused, he stares at it for a moment before bringing it back towards him and tentatively unfolding it. You wait until he begins to scan the page before you speak.

“Just because you weren’t the subject of that poem, doesn’t mean you’re not worthy of being the subject of any.”

His head whips to you as your soft words catch in his ears, eyes wide and glistening slightly, full lips parted and mouth slightly ajar. You can feel your face beginning to burn, but you ignore it for the sake of Jimin. You’ve come this far, you need to say it and he needs to hear it.

“There are many things about you to fall in love with, Jimin, and even if the author didn’t, I know someone will,” your voice shakes slightly as you speak, a small smile touching your lips. Something pops into your mind before you can call it quits, and you feel the rest of your face light on fire in anticipation. Right. Just do it, pussy. It was embarrassing when done to you, and it’s embarrassing to be the one doing it, too.

This is so humiliating, but you’ll do it… for him. Fuck this whole friendship thing, man.

Taking another deep breath, you reach for the hand closest to you and take it into your grasp, pulling it closer. “And I know it hurts, right now, a lot… and it might hurt for a while, and that’s okay.” You swallow your embarrassment and bring his palm to your lips, placing a soft kiss there, before moving his hand back and placing it over his heart. “But my mother always said kisses take the pain away, so I hope this can ease it, even a little.”

In the moments following your little spiel, it’s silent, and Jimin stares at you in a mixture of shock, appreciation, and something else you’re not quite emotionally equipped to decipher. The stillness breaks in the next second when his eyes water once more and he lets out a long whine that sounds suspiciously like your name, and to save face you let out a loud groan as you reach and pull him into a hug again, rolling your eyes playfully.

“Hopeless,” you say, shuffling you both so you’re facing the sunset and watching the last of it slip past the horizon. “If you keep crying, how are we going to explain your face after? I know I told you everyone is a little ugly when they cry but you’re really— ow!”

Jimin chokes a sobbed laugh into your shoulder, retracing his fingers from where they jabbed your ribs. You glance from the corner of your eye and can’t help the smile that rises when you see he’s clutching the scribbled poem you finished for him to his chest.

“Shut up and let me commit the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me to memory and watch the sunset before I push you over the railing,” he grumbles, smile evident in his voice. You roll your eyes again, face still warm from your embarrassment. You relax into each other, soaking up the last of the sun’s warmth while it’s there.

Backtalk, after you willingly humiliated yourself to make him feel better? Fuck this friendship thing, bro. Gremlins have rights, too.

— • masterpost | prev. | four | next • —

473 notes · View notes

tehuti88-art · 3 years ago

Photo

5/20/21: Okay, so I planned to finish this tomorrow and submit it for Free Draw Friday (I may still--if the Imgur app ever starts working again, it's been saying it won't be long now for like the past half hour 😕 ), but couldn't help but want to see it complete. I'm rather happy with this one. 😁 This of course is the Egyptian god of the dead, Osiris, and considering that I haven't tried drawing him in probably well over a decade, and never in my current "style," I think it turned out rather well. (I may hate it tomorrow.)

I've been into Egyptian mythology for most of my life though the interest faded in recent years, and sad to say my recall of my own versions of these guys has gotten rusty. While drawing him, I looked him up on Google Images to make sure I was getting everything right (I forgot his beard 😩 ) and ended up getting sucked down a weird rabbit hole to some sort of manga (sorry--manhwa) called Ennead and now I'm signed up on a site called Tappytoon and may very well end up spending good money to see WTF is going on between Osiris and Set. Completely unrelated, all sorts of ideas (including some naughty ones) about the Egyptian gods are now banging around in my head and I feel almost inspired to work on some writing about them for the first time in years. Almost.

Would help if I had readers, I guess. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

In my fiction Osiris starts out as really compassionate and idealistic, though after being locked and drowned in a sarcophagus, resurrected, then chopped into bits and having your throne usurped by your brother who then tries to murder your son, I imagine you'd have had just about enough, too, thus his facial expression. His eyes are blue because he's dead and they're glowing because he's neteri (divine). And yeah, he's green. Deal with it.

EDIT:

5/21/21: r/SketchDaily theme, "Free Draw Friday." I actually finished this yesterday but wanted to share. It's the Egyptian god of the dead, Osiris. I wrote more when I posted him in my blog but I'm tired right now and what can I say, he's the god of the dead. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Osiris 2021 [Thursday, ‎May ‎20, ‎2021, ‏‎3:17:34 PM]]

#artists on tumblr #sony sketch #original characters #sketchdaily

1 note · View note

dreamlikeapsycho · 4 years ago

Note

I saw the max facts (pun intended 😂) you did for that question a while ago. So I was wondering if maybe you could tell us some more facts about Max it doesn’t have to be anything too detailed but anything you know would be nice to know, pretty please 😊

Okay... RANDOM FACTS ABOUT MAX - PART 2

I went on deep analysis mode this time to try and say all of Max's little nice and cute moments I know of.. Pls take notice, tho!! I'm not trying to flex or anything, I'm just a simple peasant girl on Maximilian's kingdom for a long time and it happens I have FBI blood in my veins 😭 so It's all gather on my brain and hard drive lol SO! I'm just answering this ask with a lot of thought and care so you can know more about Max and how he is even more awesome than you think!!! (And just in text form, cause Max doesn't need to be tagged on more personal stuff on IG (there’s too much illegal fishing at my tumblr pond already! 👏). It’s probably weird to know certain things, yes, but at least I'm respectful, I'll never bother him with this kind of stuff). Well, enjoy the bible below to end up knowing very little about him, still haha.. Just some more small facts.

- Max was at a barbecue just yesterday. It was someones birthday from the set of his new movie. He drank his beer, like usual, idk about the meat.. there was wurst and chicken.. I'm not sure if he's trying to be a vegetarian or not (after that thoughtful video he posted) 🤔.. maybe he didn't eat it, I don't know!!

- a little while before the start of this shooting, he was at the Baltic Sea filming for the series he's gonna be in (just one episode again! Don't get your hopes too high lol he's gonna be a security guard who disappears mysteriously, so....)

- He helped his friend renovate his house a few weeks ago!! How could I forget that on the first post.. Then, he had to go to Hesse for the movie shooting, and his friend had to call another friend to come help him lmao damn

I think I could describe some videos I have then... at least there's some cool and funny stuff. (Friends himself tagged in the past and cast friends)

- Max's dad went to the same uni as him. Also, he voiced a police officer on the phone in a short film Max wrote and directed all by himself (he didn't act on it, but he was also another police officer over the phone haha). Another thing, his dad made the official music for one of his plays.

- The falafel day.. his friend was taking a piss filming Max at the shop from afar and zooming in, saying "omg, guys! I found Noah from Dark! He's right there buying falafel" lmao, then, Max is just standing there looking all wonderful with his perfect hair and such, moving his hands, scratching his chin, ordering his food, and his friend talks some more, doing like a rough Max voice "yeah yeah, I'll have that one. Good, yeah". 😂

- the day he went to take a walk in nature. His friend asks him for a cigarette, he is denied, he goes to take it anyway, Max slams his cup of tea on the table and tries to take his cigarette back and it's all black and they're just laughing lmao (I love his laugh btw, so giggly!)

There was storys posted by Max himself.. so, maybe you saw it, but it's from before dark s3 came out.

- The pigeon storys. He filmed two pigeons chasing each other at the station, one always running from the other and he captioned "me trying to flirt" haha

- He screen recorded an ad for an app that deletes people from pictures and made some joke too, I can't remember exactly what he wrote, smt like "when you break up, but still wants to keep the picture" lol also, he unfollowed like 5 people that week after posting that... hm 👀

- he posted a video of him walking in the dark with really cold wind.. you can only see his hair flying around. Also, with a mask on, another chasing a cat in a big field, and that one drinking his coffee and eating his yogurt (you most likely saw it already)

- Ohh.. His friend was playing Max's drums the other day!!! Made a lot of jokes, it was obvious he was messing around in Max's room (maybe they live together, maybe he just waters the plants lol idk). Some of the jokes were "I've been playing this drums since 1921" and "the drums and me are a perfect pair, don't ever believe otherwise". I wonder what Max said to him.. he can't do anything about it, he's not in Berlin hahah. He has a little giraffe in his room, and other home decors (you can see it on his drumming video on his own IG)

- he likes to read on longer train rides.

- there's a video of him screaming inside a wardrobe after being jumped by a friend and one of him putting lipstick on with the song "I'm a sexy motherfucker" playing in the background hehe we was tagged, it was easy to find when there wasn't much tagged post.

- There's moments of ppl filming something/themselves and he just comes and photobombs it lol he is just like thiss 👏 showing his tongue and doing a funny face and such. One of those I saw it on the IG of a Das Boot cast member I actually already followed before.

- this group was such a blast. There's a few pictures, one of them he's in a dress, he has white stockings on til his thighs, heels and all haha lovely

- His improv-group.. he was almost in tears singing "I believe I can fly" with the group on their last day.. But he was happy! A mix of emotions. He loves everyone, he expresses his love a lot to people in general, he says it and adds heart emojis to make sure haha you can see his comments going on IG of his cast friends, especially from Das Boot (I followed a lot of the guys). So, about always commenting something funny on people's posts.. I didn't saved those, so I forgot most of it, but one I remember was that someone posted a video of a hailstorm and he was like "what are u doing, free ice!! Go grab them" hahaha

- Max has that Noah picture where he's peaking by a wall (you know that one Baran posted) printed and framed! 👏

- Things he’s pretty much always with: his backpack and his big headphones (it's always on his neck. At almost every picture, from every year, with different people etc. I was confused when he had normal headphones at his farm storys. Maybe he forgot them in Berlin 😭. Besides those, his rings, necklaces and bracelets (always, for years and years! Same ones, even). He uses frequently on premieres, as I saw it. Sometimes they also show up on his characters in his one-episode works!! Hahah is so nice when that happens. You can notice this on my screencaps.

- that pic of him that is everywhere now (with glasses, holding a bottle of champagne), I posted that months ago.. There's 2 more pics and 1 video. One pic, he is pretending the automatic lighter that's on the table is a Harry Potter wand (but I think I cropped the table, right.. I can't remember). This was actually posted by Max himself and he tagged his friend who took it. I went to see if they posted smt and there was a picture where he is literally biting the cork of that bottle off with his teeth Lmaoo, and one video.. he is talking on the phone trying to block the view with his feet.. this man!!

- he really doesn't care about buying too much unnecessary clothes and shoes and stuff. He is mindful of his things and the environment!!

- there's a video of him on the set of Der Zauberlehrling, I need to recall where I got that from (maybe I could share this one. I'm not sure), he is messing with the broom and someone asks him "hey Max, what's that animal?" and points to the fluffy microphone. He says "it's a fucked up coala bear" (in english) 😂

Again.. I can't say names or anything, cause ppl are not mindful! Like.. I know I'm probably weird, but only for myself and my FBI office LOL I don't go over there and follow/reply to all these people’s posts and storys or take their videos and tag Max on them, this is just not.... nah. I'll always be respectful (yeah, some older stuff has gifs, cause he had like 10k followers, and 5 fans on tumblr lol But i never sent/tag him in anything personal directly.. that’s why i only posted on tumblr for the past year, in fact! I never thought things would be the way they are now a year later.. so, newer stuff it's not posted/gif nor ever will). I don't want him to be weirded out and like, disappear from IG!! I think about these things.. when people are being weird and stuff towards him. I don’t know how ppl don’t think about this when tagging him recklessly in random pictures and videos!!!

I wish he had more interviews, so we could know more proper stuff about him. (The few interviews he has are translated on my IG highlight. There's still an 8min interview missing there, cause I'm contemplating about being more of a bother to german speaking people, since I only have basic german..

15 notes · View notes

istheresomebodywhocanimagine · 5 years ago

Text

New York Minute PT. 1

anonymous said: I saw you say your requests are open (but your bio doesn’t say they are so I totally understand if I misunderstood and I apologize). I was wondering if you could do a ben hardy imagine where the reader and he aren’t together but he gets jealous about one of the other boys (and realizes his feelings) and the rest is up to you ;) thank you! and anonymous said: Ooh could you do an age gap thing with either roger or ben of like roger being in the early 1980s and reader/oc being in their early 20s and Ben being the age he is now with someone in their early 20s??

(a/n: this will be a multi-part series!!!! i just had too many ideas for these requests and had to go crazy - sorry i’ve been so inactive lately yall i promise i’ll try to post more now that the summer is winding down. i should have part two out in the next week or so??? anyways this one’s a thickie tbh (like.... almost 10k) so buckle up!!!)

"Ben's moving here? He that blond bitch in all your posts?" You were draped across Joe's couch, feet resting on his left thigh as you popped another berry into your mouth, humming happily as you chewed. Joe's eyes were slightly glazed over, still focused on the TV that was playing some baseball game as you studied his face, watching the way his tongue darted out to wet his lower lip before he afforded you a quick glance. "Yeah. Real 'lad' type, Gwilym's words. Kid's a textbook definition of a ladies man when he wants to be." "Kid? How old is he?" you asked curiously, quirking an eyebrow at your rather indisposed neighbor. His fingers tapped at the armrest to his right, and you scowled a bit at his apparent disinterest in your questions. He was always a baseball guy, but you couldn't believe how distracted he could become by a single game. You were less than a couple feet away, and it was like you were speaking into the void. "I thought he was like 30."

"28," Joe corrected, still not taking his eyes off of the TV. You huffed at that. 28 was still a good half a decade older than you, and here Joe was calling him a kid. "If he's a kid, then I'm baby." "What? What does that.... why do you always say that?" he asked, finally looking at you with a questioning look that seemed more pained than anything else. "I'm baby? What does that mean?" "It means.... I don't know how to explain it, Joey, I'm baby!" you exclaimed, throwing up your arms in defeat before letting them fall back down limply. "Anyways, you said he's a ladies man? Is he gonna put the moves on me?" Joe snorted at that, returning his gaze to the TV as you sat the plate back on the coffee table, waiting patiently for his answer. "Maybe. Like I said, he's a ladies man when he wants to be." "Wants to be? What's that supposed to mean?" you asked, suddenly wanting to clarify the discrepancy. Sitting up a bit, you pulled your feet off his lap and instead hugged your knees to your chest, staring across the couch at Joe, who was slightly slack-jawed and way too interested in the current play to answer. Clearing your throat, you spoke louder, commanding his attention. "Joe!" "Huh?" he asked, turning his head slowly over to you and following with his eyes a few moments later. Slowly, recognition registered on his face and he pulled his jaw closed, swallowing hard before he answered. "I mean he's a smooth talker, but he also gets all messy when he fumbles." "You get messy when you fumble during flirting," you pointed out, and Joe furrowed his eyebrows before sneering a bit, mocking your words under his breath. "You do! Remember that blonde at Feinstein's-" "Yes! I remember the blonde at 54 Below, okay? Let it go," he rushed out all in one go, his face a bit red as he closed his eyes and tried to push his memory of the wine-soaked night to the back of his mind. "And for the record, she did end up coming back to my apartment later." "I'm just saying." Holding your hands up in surrender for a moment, you made a show of letting it go before hugging your legs again, hiding your amused smile behind your knee. Joe's glare was almost burning, his narrowed eyes only making your smile harder to hide. It had been over two years since you moved in next to this dumbass, and you still hadn't learned a single thing about controlling your facial expressions from a well-seasoned actor like him. Finally, Joe sighed and shook his head, deciding to pick his battles wisely. "Anyways, he'll be here next week. Are you free Thursday? We're going out with Chace." "Chace?" you repeated, humming nervously before shaking your head. "No go. Chace still probably thinks I'm a moron from the time I thought he was you on the balcony so I came out and did jumper cables on his side and found out - surprise, surprise - it was not you." "That was like, two years ago. How do you still even remember that?" he laughed, turning his attention back to the screen. "I can't even remember what I ate for breakfast yesterday. Chace probably forgot all about it." "It was mortifying, Joe! Imagine some random chick just walking out on your friend's balcony and jabbing your sides with the force of a great typhoon." Pursing his lips, he considered it for a moment before grimacing. "Yeah, no, that's pretty fucking weird." It fell silent, Joe focusing on the game while you watched him once again, back to square one. Finally, you spoke to cut off the silence, wanting to make one last comment before you let him get too invested. "Ben's kinda cute. Is he single?" "Dunno," Joe answered noncommittally, making you frown as you stretched your legs out again, intentionally kicking his thigh lightly. "Ow!" Scowling at you, he reached out to smack your foot away before he crossed his arms, snuggling more into his armrest and fighting back a laugh. "I think he is. Know he has that bee dating app. Buzz....le. Bumblebee?" "Bumble," you snickered, nudging his leg again teasingly and making him fake scowl a bit more before he laughed once at himself, shielding his face from your gaze with one hand. "Stop, I know I'm a terrible millennial! I've got to start keeping up with this shit." "As a fellow millennial - you right."

---

"First night out as an American citizen! How was it, bud?" "Dual citizen, thank you! You'd think as a dual citizen, you'd know what the hell to say," Ben corrected, his cheeks a deep red from the liquor coursing through his veins and muddling his thoughts. Closing his eyes for a moment, he leaned against the wall next to Joe's door as Joe fished through his pockets, grabbing the key chain with the worn-down Yankees mini-bat and picking out the key that read 'APT' on some painter's tape. You'd dubbed it so once Joe had forgotten which key it was for the fortieth time when you came over to help him patch a hole left in the wall by the previous renter. Ben just assumed the label was Joe's handiwork. It looked dorky enough. Sliding the key into the lock, he easily turned it and swung open the door a little too drunkenly, leading his equally-as-drunk friend into the living room. "You're American when you're here, okay? I'm requiring it by law, starting.... now!" Ben laughed, trudging his way into the apartment before heading down the hallway towards the bathroom and rubbing the side of his face, the skin hot to the touch. "M'not sure it works like that, but whatever. I gotta take a leak." Before Joe could yell out a half-assed reply after him, Ben had already disappeared into the room down the hall and to the left, only re-emerging minutes later and wiping his still-damp hands on his jeans while sending Joe a look that said everything about the glaringly empty towel ring, even without even saying a word. "Sorry! Laundry day, dude... I gotta piss." "I'm gonna have a smoke, then," Ben mumbled as Joe passed him in the hallway, transferring a slightly bent cigarette from the crumpled package in his pocket to his mouth as he made his way to the sliding doors that led out to Joe's balcony. The lock refused to budge at first, but it slowly slid out of place with a bit of extra effort from Ben and clicked up into an unlocked position before he moved to tug the door open. The door slid open a lot easier than the lock did, smoothly gliding over and letting in the pleasant, if a bit warm midnight breeze on the late spring day. It smelled vaguely of rain, and Ben wondered if it was going to storm later, a sardonic chuckle leaving his lips as he eyed the dark clouds hovering over the harbor. The moon peeked just under the bottom of one, teasing the city with a light that wouldn't last long. "Get a place in America to escape the rain and end up in a thunderstorm. Alright," he remarked to himself, flicking the lighter a few times before raising it to the cigarette end and lighting it. He inhaled slowly as he did so, feeling the familiar light burn of the tar smoke filling his lungs - it didn't taste as well as it once did, but it filled a space for the time being, and distracted him enough. In fact, it distracted him so well that he went on smoking for a good minute or so before he realized that there was another human being on the extended balcony with him. Their arm was dangling over the edge of the reclining lawn chair, which was conveniently placed next to a crate that featured a phone on a wireless charger and a half-drank bottle of Apothic Crush in a cheap wine chiller. Just a single bottle, sans a glass, a red that looked as though it tasted of relatively inexpensive inebriation and drunk texts to your best friend about how you were crying over Keanu Reeves. It was you, though he obviously wouldn't know that. Ben's usually warm green eyes widened in fear as he spotted your unfamiliar figure lazily draped over the fully reclined chair, your mouth hanging open slightly as you dozed away peacefully just out of reach of the rays of moonlight. You were wearing a familiar shirt, though - one for a baseball team Ben only faintly recognized because Joe had mentioned his brother being on that team. A faded 'Mazzello' was printed on the back, the end part visible to Ben as he peered curiously over at you, trying to figure out what in the hell his plan of attack was here. He had a predicament. There was a half finished cigarette in his hand, one that couldn't go back inside with him but also one that he didn't particularly want to drop from several stories up with this many people passing by below. And he sure as hell didn't want to waste the cigarette, so stomping it out was a no-go. But there was a literal stranger on Joe's balcony, drinking what was probably his wine and wearing his shirt, and in his inebriated panic over your presence, Ben conveniently skimmed over the full view he had of the door that led into your apartment. It was a shared balcony, a nice fact that Joe could have shared with his friend before he got 5 frantic texts and a picture of sleeping you in rapid succession. Benjamin: HOLY FUCJ Benjamin: Joe, getout here right now!!! Theres a literal stranger on your balcony! Benjamin: JOE Benjamin: [picture] Benjamin: WHY IN THE BBLOODY HELL IS THERE A STRANGE WOMAN It was less than 30 seconds before Joe came stumbling out, Ben staring at him helplessly as he held the cigarette just over the railing, nodding to your side. Peeking his head around the doorway, Joe managed to keep an even expression on his face as he cleared his throat, stepping out onto the balcony between you and Ben. "Hey!" You stirred a bit at Joe's aggressive tone, your lips smacking together as you ran your tongue over them and peeked open an eye just barely, indicating you were listening. "This is like the fifth time this week, lady, stop getting drunk on my porch and using my reclining chair!" "My reclining chair," you corrected, groggily raising to a sitting position and running a hand over your hair to smooth it down before looking down at the wooden crate and smiling sleepily upon remembering the wine. "Oh yeah. Mmmmm. Forgot about that." "Pfffft. Drunks, am I right?" Joe scoffed, throwing a thumb over his shoulder at you when he turned to face Ben. His hand came to rest on his hip that jutted out with a bit of sass as Ben stared at him in complete confusion, utterly baffled at how calm and collected he was despite the apparent situation. "Who are you calling a drunk, you drunk?" you giggled quietly, letting your head fall back against the chair as you eyed the back of Joe's head with an unreadable look. Joe rolled his eyes like it was obvious, not even turning to face you as he made an exaggerated annoyed expression at Ben, then proceeded to ignore your question. "I get these all the time, dude, crazy bums just taking up my space out here." "Why do you keep acting like I'm a homeless person bumming on your shit- No, nevermind, fuck you. I'm ignoring you now," you retorted, yawning as you reached for the wine bottle and pointing to the ground between you and Joe with your free hand as you narrowed your eyes. Ben's eyes followed your direction to a line of duct tape on the concrete below, clearly meant to demarcate something, though he wasn't sure what. It was crudely placed, but seemed to have an enormous effect on Joe when he looked over his shoulder and groaned, letting his head roll back for a second before he gave the wall opposite you a withering look. "Are we seriously still fucking doing this?" Joe remarked scornfully while he turned, his hands going into his pockets, and he slumped over a bit in stature as a pout etched itself into his features. "I said I was sorry. I was asleep! Also, is that my shirt? You said you'd bring that back weeks ago." You remained silent, staring up at Joe through your lashes in an unmoved manner before taking a drink of the wine. As you returned the bottle to the chiller, your attention switched over to Ben, who was still standing there in absolutely dumbfounded astonishment. A wondrous smile made its way to your lips, and Ben felt a light blush creeping onto his already-red cheeks as he dropped the cigarette to the concrete balcony floor, stomping it out gently and trying not to shrivel underneath your delightfully bleary, sleepy gaze. It was odd, being so affected by you. Ben usually had a relatively charming, laidback personality, and he was easy to get along with, but something about you sent him into a panic as he kept eye contact for a painful second or two, the sparkle in your hazy eyes enchanting to him. Maybe it was the liquor. Yeah, definitely had to be the liquor, he decided. There was no way that this dizziness was anything but top shelf gin having a row in his digestive system. His eyes dropped to the ground, seeming hyperfocused on his own actions, but it was blatantly obvious he was avoiding eye contact now. Noting the blush, your smile grew even wider as you sat up a bit, suddenly interested in the flustered man across from you. He looked quite familiar, and you were amused that he was so unsettled and shy right now - he didn't seem to be like the type who couldn't talk in front of girls. He must have just been caught off-guard today. "You're Ben, from the Queen thingie! Ah, I'm so glad I finally get to meet you, y'all are so cute on Instagram." Climbing up from your chair, you swayed a bit at the sudden rush of blood to your extremities, reaching out to steady yourself on Joe and grinning sheepishly. Then your gaze shifted once again to your neighbor, your eyebrow cocking slightly in challenge, and Ben let out a breath he didn't know he'd been holding as you mumbled, "Never puts me on his Instagram like that. You'd think after two years-" "I've told you a million times, I can't let you steal the spotlight from me!" Joe teased back, crossing the duct tape line and dropping into the chair that sat just over the boundary of it, next to your reclining chair, his hand easily snatching the wine from the chiller before he took a long swig. "And besides," he added, his arm coming up to swipe a bit of excess wine that had dribbled out of the corner of his mouth. It looked like watery bloody slipping down his chin, and he quickly wiped it away before reaching over the wipe it on your leg, much to your chagrin. But he retracted his arm before you could reach out and swat at him, instead leaving you with a mildly grumpy expression while he grinned impishly. "Ben wouldn't like sharing his primetime spot." "Ben can share. I'm low maintenance anyways, I only need, like... one feature a month. I'll even settle for just a story shout-out." "Low maintenance? Says the one who has to have Sugar In The Raw or she won't drink her coffee!" "Says the one who now steals my Sugar In The Raw because he knows it tastes better! Fuckin' leech." This dynamic was weird, Ben had decided. No explanation left him hopelessly in the dark as he watched Joe hand off the wine casually to you when you reached out for it, a wordless exchange that didn't even need to really be prompted in order to happen. It made Ben wonder if he'd somehow been ignorant of Joe having a girlfriend until just now. A very attractive girlfriend, at that, despite the mussy, sleep-wrinkled state of you and your clothes. A mouthy girlfriend that was easily out-sassing Joe - a girlfriend that slept on his balcony? This wasn't adding up. "You look confused," you hiccuped, narrowing your eyes a bit as you scrutinized the charmingly quiet blond that stood about five feet from you, still awkwardly stanced up near the railing on Joe's side. A deft observation, too, because Ben's facial expression read like a book, highlighting all of the absolutely baffling thoughts he was having. Suddenly, it clicked. "Joe, you dumbass, did you not tell him we share a balcony?" "It may have.... slipped the mind," Joe admitted, smiling sheepishly as he shrugged and tapped on the armrests of the chair he was in. "Ben, this is my neighbor. She's annoying as hell, trust me. Still holds a grudge from when I napped on her chair at least two years ago and pretended to be asleep when she came out here and yelled so I wouldn't have to move." "And he thinks I'm the bad neighbor," you giggled, rolling your eyes before stepping forward to reach out your hand and offer your name, swaying a bit from the effort. Looking at the three of you from an outsider's position, it was getting hard to tell who was the most sloshed. "It's nice to finally meet you, I've only seen his dumb videos that he sent back from England and posted on Instagram every once in a while." "Oh my god, I'm proper fucked, you both had me there for a second," Ben admitted in relief, laughing a bit as his panic ebbed away into amusement at the mild freak-out moment he'd just had. Taking your hand, he flashed an embarrassed smile and shook your hand gently, letting it go after a moment and immediately flexing his fingers a bit, noting how cold your hand had been from the wine. It was an odd sensation, one that sent a tingle down his spine upon contact, but he did his best to ignore it and put on his best smile before continuing. "It's nice to meet you too. Just glad I didn't call 999 on you." Your nose wrinkled at the discrepancy as you sat back down in your reclining chair, Joe immediately catching it and raising a finger to correct his friend. "It's 911 over here, buddy. Don't worry, you'll get used to it." "Oh yeah! Joe said you're moving over here, welcome to the States!" Laughing lightly, Ben rubbed the back of his neck slowly, then nodded in acknowledgement of your words. "Have you settled in yet, or are you still unpacking?" "Still unpacking," Ben grimaced, making you pout a bit in sympathy as you clutched the shirt that rested directly over your heart, signaling you understood his pain even in your drunken state. "But I should be done getting all my stuff unboxed by tomorrow evening - Joe said he'd be coming over to help?" He tried to speak it as a statement, but the end came out as more of a question as he side-eyed Joe, who nodded in confirmation and pointed a finger gun at him, indicating he'd be there. "Now that you're here, does that mean I'll finally see someone in Joe's apartment besides him?" you joked, Ben chuckling at how well you managed to casually roast Joe with every other word out of your mouth. Maybe the dynamic wasn't so weird after all, he figured. Maybe it was fun. "You telling me that this guy over here doesn't even bring home girls from the bar?" Ben asked curiously, nodding to Joe. He finally took the opportunity to drag a chair from the far end of the balcony over to join the two of you, accepting the wine gratefully when you held it out for him. Joe let out a humorless laugh as you burst into a fit of gleeful giggles, reaching over to smack Joe on the thigh several times in amusement. A small smile played at the corner of Joe's lips, and he glanced at you before shaking his head, his eyelids fluttering closed a bit, heavy from the alcohol. "I tried that once! I'd never seen a woman throw a full wine glass at me until that day! Genius here," he paused, pointing to you with his thumb and ignoring the ensuing peal of laughter that had you doubled over, "popped over in some underwear and a t-shirt to ask where I kept the eggs! She was making cookies! Can you believe that?" Ben shifted his gaze over to you for confirmation and found you to still be doubled over in silent laughter, shoulders shaking with the effort of holding it in. A wide grin spread across Ben's face, and he looked back to find Joe trying to look annoyed, but failing miserably and bursting into laughter with you. "What was her name again?" you asked between peals of laughter, wiping at your watery eyes as Joe tried to stifle his laughter, resting his head on his hand and sighing. "It was Tori, I think," he replied, shaking his head and smiling a bit. "Art history major. You fucked that one up for me majorly." "Well, you got me back the next week anyways," you finally got out when your laughter had subsided, a grin still quirking at the corner of your lips as you looked at Ben and continued. "Knew I had a Tinder date one night and literally waited in my living room in boxers for hours until we got back!" "Joe, that's almost cruel," Ben scolded jokingly, reaching over and giving Joe a gentle punch on the arm before handing the wine back to you. "You're telling me," you mused, a sly smile gracing your lips as you looked from Joe to Ben, your gaze lingering a bit on the blonde. Ben met the stare evenly, his face a lot more level than he felt as you rose from your chair, brushing a hand down your torso to smooth out the frumpy shirt before walking over to the railing and leaning forward against it. Your stomach pressed into the cool metal through the thin Mazzello shirt that denied you any curves, giving you a boxy frame only marginally saved by the corner of the shirt that had got caught in the waistband of your shorts. "Well, feel like I've overstayed my welcome, so I'll probably head in for the night," you stated, looking out to the moon that was slowly disappearing over the harbor before you turned to face the two of them, giving them a sleepy smile. "No, stay out here with us," Joe complained, patting the reclining chair, but you were already making your way past the chair, taking another drink of the wine. "I want you to bond with Ben, he'll be over here a lot now that he's in NYC." "I will? Jake Gyllenhaal lives here too, is he over here all the time because of that?" Ben teased, looking up at you with a dopey grin when you let out a single laugh. Stopping just behind the chair, you raised an impressed eyebrow at him while Joe studied the two of you with a mildly annoyed glare. He didn't appreciate being teamed up on, but he had to appreciate the two of you getting along on your first meeting. You, however, were completely ignorant to your neighbor's pointed looks as you kept eye contact with Ben, noting that he had gorgeous green eyes. "I like this guy. Bring him around again when I'm not sloshed, yeah?" Joe nodded at that, and you began to walk towards your door, yawning. "I've got a hot date tonight, so don't wait up for me, Joey." "God, I told you not to call me that," Joe groaned, but a boyish grin remained on his face as he watched you saunter back over to your door, wine in hand. "And who's the guy? Shouldn't have told me, now I might have to come crash your party." "His name is Mattress, Matt for short. We sleep with each other a lot... Nice meeting you, Ben." Swirling the bottle around a few times, you wiggled your eyebrows at the two men before retreating to the sound of Joe's exaggerated groaning and Ben's hapless attempts at reciprocation of your pleasantries, your door sliding shut just before you drew the curtains. That left the duo alone on the balcony, the faint smell of smoke still lingering in the space around them as Joe sighed a bit, grinning and shaking his head. Ben, on the other hand, was still reeling from the whiplash that the last few moments had given him, and it must have clearly registered on his face, because Joe laughed a bit as he stood, brushing off his pants. "Sorry I didn't warn you beforehand. Didn't think she'd be out here getting wine drunk. That's Y/N for you, though." A shrug coupled with his last observation made Ben chuckle, cocking his head slightly and curiously gazing over at your door before shaking his head. Following in a similar fashion to Joe, Ben rose to stand again, instinctively reaching for a comfort cigarette and placing it between his lips before offering a weak smile in return, fishing for the lighter while he spoke. "Wasted my first one." Inhaling slowly, the end of the cigarette finally lit and Ben held the smoke in for a moment before leaning over the railing, looking around as he exhaled. When he'd taken in a proper amount of the dwindling NYC night, he finally returned his attention to Joe, the cigarette resting delicately between two fingers as his hands came to rest on the railing he leaned back against. "Y/N, you said, yeah? Seems alright... you been neighbors for long?" "A couple years now, actually. Met her about the same way you just did! She's cool, though," Joe confirmed, coming over to look over the balcony right next to Ben, one foot on either side of the duct tape line that divided the floor. It was scuffed, like it'd been there a while, and that made the stories slowly check out in Ben's brain while he looked over to Joe, a sly smile slowly creeping onto his face. "She's kinda fit, yeah?" Joe hung his head and let his eyes close for a moment, laughing at Ben's apt remark before nodding a bit. "But definitely seems a bit mean. Got a bite to her all the time?" "She's got her weak moments like everyone else! But yeah, she's definitely quick with the comebacks. I think I'm better for it, honestly, keeps me in check. Always brushing up on my wit, you know? Kids these days always keeping me on my toes." Reaching up to tap on his temple, he only had a moment to grimace before his phone was ringing, prompting him to pull it out of his pocket and answer it as Ben watched. "Hey, Seb... No, I didn't grab your wallet from the bar. Did you leave it there?" As Ben watched his friend retreat back into his own sliding door, his thick blond eyebrows furrowed in mild confusion. Kids these days? She couldn't be a day under 25, as clever as she was. Wait, that didn't even make sense. Cleverness is not an indicator- "Hey!" Ben jumped at the sound of your voice, whirling around to meet your accusatory stare as he looked on helplessly. You looked mad, and he couldn't even begin to think why. The cigarette, maybe, but you hadn't even flinched about it earlier. Was he too quiet? "Do you want the rest of this wine?" you asked, grinning once you'd let him suffer enough, and Ben let out a sigh of relief as he leaned forward on the railing again, pressing a hand to his forehead. "Christ, you scared me again!" Taking a deep breath, he laughed once before shaking his head, taking another drag and turning to face you. "No thank you, though. If I drink any more tonight, my old man body will punish me tomorrow." "Old man body?" you repeated, quirking an eyebrow in disbelief as you looked him up and down for a moment. "Uh huh... Good night, then." You shut the door before he could get the chance to reply, so he just gave a half-hearted wave before he widened his eyes, trying to restore his heart to a regular beating pace. "Jesus Christ on a cross," he mumbled, rubbing his hand over his face for a moment and messing up his eyebrows even more before he took another drag as he stared out at the last hint of the moon just before the clouds completely covered it up, plunging the city into a new darkness.

---

It was a bitch moving to a new country. The DMV, the bank, the moving companies - everything was a living nightmare, and Joe was the only thing getting Ben through it, on call at all times to help him with anything he needed to know. So when Ben texted him that he was frustrated about his internet connectivity ("It's fucking rubbish, seriously"), Joe offered a simple solution - come over and use his until the problem was resolved. And that's what he did after the gym, taking an Uber over to the now-familiar building and making his way to Joe's floor, which is how he walked in on Joe in the middle of an.... argument? Spat? Friendly fight? He wasn't sure how to place it as he entered his friend's apartment to the sound of you switching between laughing and shrieking while Joe made unintelligible noises of frustration. All Ben knew was that this was something beyond teasing - Joe honestly looked like he could drop at any moment, worn out from trying to keep up with whatever you were doing. Though you were keeping it playful, he was definitely at his wit's end. "You have to do the whole thing!" Joe cried out in frustration, dancing along with the figures on the screen and sending quick glares in your direction between moves. His hips were swaying along with the music, limbs flailing accordingly but sometimes not really even resembling anything close to what was on the screen. The scores popping up on his corner of the TV seemed okay by itself, but in comparison to yours, it was meager at best. "Absolutely not, dummy. That's so much energy conserved to do this." You continued shaking your Wii remote around in the appropriate moves, just the remote, and used the other hand to pick up your drink, taking a long sip from the straw and trying not to laugh as Joe made yet another noise of frustration. "Joe, come on.... who's winning here? I think I'm right." You were both playing Just Dance, one of the earlier versions, and a stark difference between the two of you had been quickly found out - while Joe, ever the dancer, did every single move with every part of his body, you were the type to swing only the remote hand around in time with your moves. Joe was beginning to get very annoyed at this tactic, so much so that he paused the game and crossed his arms, turning to scowl at you for a moment before he saw Ben's head peeking around the wall just past your shoulder. "Oh, hey bud!" Joe greeted, giving him a dopey grin before pulling off the Wii remote strap and purposely shouldering past you to greet Ben with a one armed hug. Ben reciprocated, meeting your gaze over Joe's shoulder and nodding in acknowledgement as you turned to face them, a hand on your hip and a cocky smile on your face. This was a much different you from when he'd seen you a few weeks ago, sleepy, slow, and somewhat inebriated. Now you were bright-eyed, alert, and seriously giving Joe a run for his money. "Sorry, she came over with her Wii and knew I couldn't resist a friendly game of Just Dance." "Friendly?" Ben laughed, looking between the two of you as he pulled out of the hug, setting his laptop on the counter. "Seems like you weren't having a good time." Glancing to the screen, he raised an eyebrow at the scores. "She's killing you, mate." "Well, she's a cheater, so." Shrugging, Joe went to grab his WiFi router so he could give Ben the password, Ben taking a seat at the stools placed under the counter and turning a bit so he could see both of you. "Joe's just mad because I've been roasting him nonstop for the past hour," you informed Ben, pulling your Wii remote off your wrist and setting it on the couch as you lifted your gaze to meet his. You were reminded that they were green, paired with slightly damp, curly blonde hair that fell a bit over his forehead and blonde lashes that were extra visible at this angle. It was a fascinating combo, bright eyes framed by equally as bright lashes, and you couldn't help but smile a bit in wonder as you straightened up again. Was he made in a factory? He seemed too perfect to be real. Ben was intrigued by the look you gave him, so unreadable but so persistent that he almost asked if he had something in his teeth. But Joe ruined the moment, cutting in with his own biting words that severed the eye contact and directed attention back to him. "I hate it when you say roasted. That's my least favorite part of your vocabulary." Breaking out of your trance, you shook your head before giggling at the mild venom behind his words, unfazed by the grumpy pout he currently had on his face. Rolling your eyes playfully, you gave him the middle finger while you made your way past Ben into the kitchen, grabbing a bag of popcorn from the cabinet and tearing the plastic off as Joe helped Ben log in to his laptop. While your bag of popcorn popped, you quietly observed the two men, hunched over Ben's computer together and figuring out which network was his out of the hundreds that had similar names. Joe was focused, his thin, darker eyebrows furrowed in concentration as he watched Ben scroll through the list on his screen. There was a clear stubble on his chin, a five-o'clock shadow that refused to be hidden as it shaded the area along his jaw and just above his lips, which were pressed together into a thin line when he wasn't murmuring network names to himself. He was cute, a goofy camp counselor kind of cute that was more endearing than anything, and you smiled a bit at the thought of Joe as a camp counselor - that would be too good. In contrast, Ben's lips fell slightly parted, his tongue trapped between his teeth as he directed all of his attention to the list as well. Assessing him sober this time, you realized he was actually quite good-looking, far beyond what you'd seen on that dark balcony through drunk goggles. Like, seriously good looking. This was another level of attraction, way past what you'd felt the first time Joe had showed up with Seb Stan and Chace Crawford. You crossed your arms over your chest, an insecure habit, as Ben's curious green eyes darted up and down the screen, searching for the name Joe had provided. When he finally located it, his plump, slightly chapped lips pursed into a round O shape, and Joe pointed to the name excitedly, his finger tapping the screen. Ben groaned and smacked his hand away meekly, jokingly complaining about a smudge on the the display while Joe laughed and wiped his hand off on the front of his shorts. "Sorry, we've been eating popcorn in between Y/N cheating," Joe explained, making you roll your eyes and suppress a grin as you turned to retrieve the bag of popcorn. Opening the steaming bag, you poured it into the bowl next to the microwave, then turned to sit it on the counter between the three of you as you spoke. "Again - still just salty that he's getting roasted." "Roasted? Is that really a popular slang word here?" Ben asked curiously, his eyes flicking up to meet yours for a moment as you hummed and turned to grab a packet of ranch seasoning. His eyebrows furrowed a bit when you flicked the packet back and forth, moving the seasoning to the bottom before you ripped open the corner, and you started to pour it over the popcorn as he watched, dumbfounded. "What kind of monstrosity is that?" "Ranch popcorn," you replied simply, emptying half of the packet before folding it over and pinching the corner, providing Ben with a sugar sweet smile as you did so. "Don't knock it 'til you try it, bloody ol' chap." Your smile disarmed him quite a bit - it was a smile that could disarm anyone, really, and he could tell by the way that Joe smiled with you that it had a similar effect on him. But your attempt at imitating his accent didn't go unnoticed, and Ben cringed a bit as he laughed, shaking his head. "Horrible. Truly horrible. And you didn't answer my question." "In Y/N's world, roasted is the only word," Joe answered for you, reaching to shake up the bowl a bit before he snatched a piece of popcorn off of the top, tossing it into his mouth and making a happy noise as he chewed. For a moment, he paused, then swallowed and added, "Actually, that and dummy." "Makes sense." Ben watched you as he replied, grinning a bit when you just smiled impishly and tossed the packet onto the counter, shrugging a bit before leaning forward to rest your elbows on the counter. Propping your chin on your hands, you cocked your head to the side a bit and fought back a bigger smile as Ben almost mirrored you, his head tilting just slightly to the side out of curiosity. "So, Mr. British Man-" "Ben," Joe interjected, sending you a pointed look and a raised eyebrow that only made you roll your eyes before continuing. "He's American now." "Dual citizen, but I'll look past it for now," Ben corrected, Joe scoffing quietly in response. "Okay, Ben. How has it been so far in America? You liking it?" Joe picked up his slip of paper from the counter, returning it to the router as Ben leaned his head on one hand, looking down to his computer screen and grimacing a bit at the thought of all the hell he'd had to go through in the past few weeks. But you were still practically a stranger, and even if he did want to get to know you better, he figured it was far too early for him to unload all of his problems on you. "Yeah, yeah, it's been alright," he yielded, scratching at his temple with his index finger before sitting up straight again and crossing his arms on the counter in front of him, the fabric of his sleeves straining a bit against the movement. "Unpacking was hell, but the rest was okay, I guess." "Oh, stop bullshitting me!" you laughed, pushing yourself up off the counter so you could go retrieve a beer from the fridge for him, the action in itself revealing your familiarity with Joe's apartment to Ben. Without looking, you grabbed the bottle opener magnet off of the freezer and popped the top off the beer, bringing it over to the handsome blond. "The DMV fucking sucked, didn't it?" "God, it was so terrible," Ben groaned unhappily, relieved that you'd practically read his mind as his shoulders slumped a bit, hand automatically reaching out to receive the beer. "Thank you. But seriously, between that and the bank, I swear I'm going to lose my fucking marbles! I had to go back to the DMV three times before they could finally see me, 'cause the wait was so long and I had other things to do!" "You gotta set aside, like, a whole afternoon for the DMV," you laughed, leaning on the counter again and watching quietly as he went to take a drink, his hand easily dwarfing the bottle. "Screw that, you need a whole day off for the DMV," Joe interjected, climbing onto the stool next to Ben and popping another piece of popcorn into his mouth. "I swear to God my license expiration dates have always haunted me." "Happens when you're pushing 80, dusty bones," you teased, propping your head up on one hand and imitating Joe's bitter, sarcastic laugh when he flipped you off. "I'd rather be old and scared of license renewal than 22 and a cheater at Just Dance Wii." Twenty-two. So that's what Joe was talking about when he called you a kid. By no means was 22 a kid, but in relation to Joe, that was quite a jump. And yet, you carried yourself like you were at least 30, the confidence in your posture and sureness of your words masking the childishly playful glint in your eyes as you watched Joe, pressing your lips together to fight back a smile. Joe was returning the favor with a playful glare. "Speaking of Just Dance, are you gonna catch these L's again or what?" you challenged, Joe huffing before climbing off the stool again and heading for his discarded remote while you wiggled your eyebrows at Ben, then made your way back to the living room too. Sitting still for a moment, Ben blinked a few times in amazement at the whiplash you'd managed to give him yet again. You were full of surprises, someone that could talk sweet one moment and flame you to high heaven in the next, and honestly, he'd never wanted to be a person's friend so badly in his life. Turning on the stool, he watched as you both restarted the song, Joe immediately complaining when you set right back into your one-armed efforts. "Play the game like a normal person!" he whined, making you laugh and falter a bit in your dance moves as you leaned against him, your head on his shoulder while you squeezed his arm and made him cry out in even more frustration. "That's sabotage! Stop!" Straightening back up again, you fought a round of giggles as you tried to catch up, Joe frowning when you easily got back into the groove. Huffing softly, he reached over and clamped a hand over your eyes, making you cry hypocrisy as you struggled to pull his hand away, laughing in delight as Ben turned back to face his computer again, a contagious smile adorning his lips. That smile stayed well on into the night, fueled by jokes, laughter, and friendly banter between the three of you that kept Ben there even after he'd gotten his emails sorted through. And somehow, you'd ended up on the balcony, Joe snoozing away in your reclining chair while you shared a smoke session with Ben, chatting about everything under the moon. You didn't smoke yourself, so you definitely didn't actually partake, but Ben didn't mind sharing space with someone who was picking his brain as well as you were. It was odd, bonding with Ben. He'd seemed like such a foreign concept when Joe had started all of this BoRhap business, something you weren't quite attached to - though you did enjoy the movie. But Ben had been nothing more but a character to you, some hot guy who frequented Joe's Instagram pictures and had comebacks/comments to rival your own. Now, he was here and real. You didn't know what to think of him yet - it was hard appraising a person in real life when you'd become so accustomed to the idea of him, the picture that Joe painted of him. To you, Ben was a pretty boy, a fitness-obsessed lad who was a bit of a flirt and couldn't resist a good bromance. Sure, Joe had said he had some shy moments, but really, he'd pegged him as quite a player, and that alarmed you when you found out he'd be around more - you didn't exactly have the best track record with men and a player would most certainly not be the worst blemish so far, so his frequent drop-ins could spell trouble. However, you hadn't seen any red flags about the man so far. Ben was quite a normal person, and you were starting to enjoy his company and conversation just as much as you enjoyed Joe's goofy, 'average Joe' personality. That didn’t mean you weren’t keen on keeping your guard up, though. "That's what I don't get!" Ben scratched his eyebrow a bit before taking another drag of the cigarette, shaking his head and exhaling the smoke to his left so it wouldn't go into your face. "You're saying guilty pleasures don't exist, but I have to hide my Spotify session every time I listen to the Spice Girls so I won't get absolutely walloped by all of my friends for my activity." Giggling at the thought of Ben jamming out to Spice Girls, you wrapped your fingers around the railing and leaned back once more to stretch as you shook your head in response. "I'm not saying they don't exist, but I'm saying they shouldn't exist!" you corrected, groaning a bit when Ben only gave you a more confused look. "Oh my god, I don't know how to make it any clearer here! Guilty pleasures shouldn't exist. If it's a pleasure, why does it have to be guilty, you know?" "I'm.... trying to follow," he admitted with a laugh, glancing back at Joe for a moment before meeting your gaze again and squinting a bit. "So, are you saying that because it's a pleasure, you shouldn't be guilty about it?" You made an excited noise and tapped the railing, then grinned at him and gently poked his arm to accentuate your next words. "Exactly. If I like drinking milk straight from the carton, why should I be ashamed?" "Because that's like, kind of disgusting," he replied, laughing a bit at your excitement and wrinkling his nose a bit. "D'you really drink milk straight from the jug?" Giving him a pointed look, you pressed your lips into a thin line before leaning forward on the rail with crossed arms. "See, that's why guilty pleasures still exist. You can't judge other people for things that make 'em happy, you know?" "Christ, sorry," he grimaced, and you could barely fight back the grin that played at your lips as you watched his expression morph into one of regret. "That was a shitty thing of me to say, of course it's fine if you like drinking milk from the jug. Jesus, I'm such a dickhead sometimes, I really don't think about what I say before it comes out of my mouth..." Scooting over a step or two as he rambled, you gently elbowed his side to get his attention, smiling benevolently when he turned to meet your gaze and his words faltered. "Chill, it's alright. Nobody's perfect." A pregnant pause followed soon after as Ben smiled just a bit, mainly just to make it seem like he wasn't still beating himself up over seeming like a cunt to you, but you weren't thinking about that anymore. Your mind was already moving on, eyes roving over his facial features slowly as you took them in. He was attractive, no doubt, and you had the faintest idea that there was some very real traction to the ladies man persona that Joe had talked about so much. It was wishful thinking to even consider that Ben wasn't at least half-aware of how potent his looks were. It was also wishful thinking to let any attraction you had to him get away from you and convince you that one date really wouldn't be that bad. You desperately needed Joe right about now so you could hear a discouraging story about Ben's conquests during filming, just to knock your self-confidence out and keep you from doing anything rash. It was really quiet now. Ben squinted a bit as he did the same to you, his gaze wandering quite a bit, but not lewdly. There was an innocent gleam in his eye, one that you couldn't quite understand - was he looking at you as Joe's neighbor, or a kid, or the hot girl next door? What was his approach here? You truly couldn't tell whether he was objectifying you, but the idea that he was sent a shiver through your spine as you tore your gaze away from his, unable to handle the heavy air between you and the stocky blond next to you. A loud snore from Joe seemed to puncture the moment just seconds after you looked away, the both of you jolting a bit as the tension deflated, and you shared a laugh at how quickly Joe had managed to pass out on the balcony despite your incessant chatting. "Sleeps like a log, eh?" Ben commented, pushing himself back from the railing before snuffing out the cigarette he'd been neglecting in the mug that was serving as an ashtray. "Always," you deadpanned, but a smile played at your lips as you walked around to stand on the other side of Joe, crouching down until you were eye level with the heavy sleeper. Ben could see every quirk of your lips, every subtle expression in your face as you reached out to shake Joe's shoulder gently, murmuring to him as you did so. "Hey, Sleeping Beauty. You in there?" Joe stirred, though not much, and a soft grumble from him prompted a sympathetic look in your eyes that did not go unnoticed by Ben, who now stiffened up at the interaction. Whiplash, once again, as he tried to reckon with the gentle side of you that wasn't privy only to him like he'd blindly and so dumbly assumed. That warm, somewhat sentimental look in your eyes was achingly familiar to Ben, seeing as he'd only witnessed it mere hours ago when you were nothing more than friendly strangers, your gaze following his while you listened to him groan about the DMV. So why was he so covetous? You'd barely just got to know each other, only having a few hours of talking time tonight where you'd picked up small details about each other, so the fact that your fondness of Joe irritated him was baffling. But it couldn't be jealousy, could it? Not this early. No, for sure not. By the time he'd snapped out of his stupor, you'd already managed to get Joe to his feet, giving him a warm hug before patting his back and sending him back to his apartment. That left you alone with Ben, and the heavy air settled once again as you gave him a somewhat shy smile, sighing before stepping around the chair and pulling him into a hug as well. Reciprocating, he wrapped his arms around you briefly, the warmth of his body surprising as it transferred between the layers of clothes between you and assaulted your skin. While you'd been almost cold out here on the balcony, he seemed like he was burning alive. And his face matched as he pulled away, a rosy coloring to his cheeks making you wonder whether it was you, or just rosacea and you were a dumb bitch. Taking a shaky breath, you decided to pocket the assessment for later. "Thanks for entertaining my bullshit all night." Ben laughed at your words, shoving his hands in his pockets and shaking his head as you moved your hand to the back of your shorts, subconsciously fiddling with the tag that was sticking out. "I'm really sorry if I said anything wrong. I didn't mean to be an arsehole," he admitted, bowing his head a bit before shooting a sheepish look at you that was paired with a boyish smile. "It was nice talking to you, though. Sleepy Joe doesn't make great conversation. And I like getting to know you, you're.... interesting." He said the last word as his lips quirked upwards even more, his eyes crinkling a bit at the vague compliment that made you furrow your eyebrows playfully and give him a questioning look. "Wow, Joe wasn't wrong when he said you were a charmer," you noted. While Ben shrugged and shoved his hands in his pockets with the same undying smirk still on his face, you took the opportunity to return to your side of the balcony, your hand going to pull your sliding door open as you peeked over your shoulder. There was a sly smile on your lips as you did so, one that said everything and nothing at all in one go as you spoke. "Goodnight, Ben. See you later." You would see him later. Never had you considered how true that statement could be as you came across his profile on Bumble while you were burrito-ed in your comforter, curled in the fetal position as your nightly playlist was on in the background to lull you to sleep. Hozier crooned to you while a sweaty, cutoff-clad Ben stared you down from the confines your phone screen. You hadn't actually expected to run into him on the app, despite having that nagging memory of Joe mentioning that Ben was on here. It made you drop your phone at first, a knee-jerk reaction paired with a shocked expression that lasted for a few seconds before you scrambled to pick up your phone, staring at the picture of him at the gym again. It was a stereotypical fuckboy picture in the big mirror at the gym, but you got a good giggle out of the short bio that didn't even remotely hint at him being an actor - how humble, and how juxtaposed with his red carpet flexes in the subsequent photos. Suddenly, you realized that you had to swipe left or right. Your heart seized up for a moment, and all rational thought was thrown out the window as you went into a panic. If you swiped right, what if you matched? But if you didn't and then he swiped right on you, then he would know when you didn't match and that would make things really awkward. "Mmmmfuck no. Nope." You closed the app, too overwhelmed by all of the situations that choosing could cause, and you fell into an uneasy sleep as Ben sat dormant in your Bumble cache, waiting for an answer. Little did you know, seeing your profile had induced the same panic for him. But he'd done something that you couldn't. He chose.

---

taglist - @crosmopolitan @just-ladyme @rogerfxckingtaylor @fourmisfitz @shae-is-not-ok @moreinfinite @fruityfreddie @poachedhazontoast @strawberryfields-forever @imladrs @psychoticobsession @killer-queen-xo @rebelrebelyourefaceisamess @destiel-stucky4ever-loki-queen @brownhardyho @stardvstial @iminlovewith-rogers-car @benyeehawdy @mercurys-bike @mazzelloplots @beaaatle @sunshine112 @wonderless-screwup @rogers-sweatbands @whowaits4everanyway @sunflower-borhap-boys @bitemerog @jennyggggrrr @bensrhapsody @xiaoqueencava @discodeacygotmorerhythm @reedusteinrambles @extrovertedwallflowerboy @the-next-one message me/reply to this to be added to the permanent taglist! REQUESTS CLOSED

#ben hardy #ben hardy imagine #ben hardy x reader #borhap #borhap imagine #borhap x reader #joe mazzello #joe mazzello imagine

519 notes · View notes

ellana-ravenwood · 6 years ago

Text

Salt, Tequila, Lemon - Jason Todd x Reader

Please read this intro, thank you very much :

So. I posted this yesterday, but after a bug on the Tumblr app on my phone it got deleted. I’m super bummed out because it had over 200 notes and quite a few feedbacks that I never got to read because it was accidentally deleted...If the people that took the time to comment things on the story could take a bit more time to write a little comment again and give me their feedbacks, and also if the people that liked and reblog could do it once more...i’d appreciate the hell out of you <3. So reposting it (thanks god I always have back ups of all my stories now). Written in twenty minutes during my break at work. Bam. Hope you’ll like it :

Also, since Tumblr’s new guidelines and enforcement of it, I DON’T really appear in searches anymore, so the only way for this story to be seen by others than those who follow me is to reblog it. So if you wanna, you can show your support for my writing by doing just that. Thanks very much. You can find my masterlist here : @ella-ravenwood-archives

_________________________________________________

Ok. So. Grandma’s remedy against heartbreak ? Oh, right.

Salt. Tequila. Lemon.

Got it. Licking the back of your hand to make the salt stick to it, you pour yourself a massive shot of “To-Kill-Ya” in your coffee mug, not even caring about the fact that there is still some remnant of your cappuccino from last night in it.

You focus on the sound the liquid makes as it fills your cup. Makes you think about something else. Good. Yup. This was totally gonna help right now.

“Cheers”, you exclaim to yourself, your empty apartment echoing your voice.

Salt.

Wincing. Stingy. Salt on its own is gross.

Tequila.

More wincing. Oh my god, it burns. The coffee that was still at the bottom of the cup is an oddly nice touch.

Lemon.

The last of the Wincing.

You spit the piece of lemon you just bit into in the trash and…miss. The yellow fruit falls with a little flat sound on the floor, and you honestly can’t bother to pick it up. Your apartment is a mess anyway, so you just stare at it angrily and pour yourself another drink.

Salt. Tequila. Lemon.

You gulp the last of the citrus and shiver. Miss the trash again.

Damn. This was good.

Well, actually, it was disgusting.

You didn’t like strong alcohol and what the Hell ?! Why did you leave a bit of coffee in your cup ? Now that the aftertaste was kicking in, it was actually really gross. If the tequila itself didn’t make you wanna throw up, the stale coffee taste nearly did. Oh, and the salt and lemon combination was as awful as ever.

You really didn’t like salt, tequila, or lemon.

But it was still good.

Because thanks to all this immediate awfulness, you could slowly feel yourself drift into “haze land”, and forget about your worries.

Forget that your boyfriend of two years just cheated on you with some random woman you worked with. Woman that, by the way, he met at the Christmas “end of the year” party from you work you invited him to…You gave him free champagne and mise-en-bouche and all your love, and he broke your heart.

It wasn’t your thing, to drink your sorrow away. And it wasn’t your thing either to wallow because of a man…But you genuinely thought he was “the one” (oh what a mistake you would soon realize that was).

He was always so nice, treating you like a princess. He complimented you daily, and never forgot an important date. He was affectionate, not to an annoying point. He was the perfectamount of affectionate. He was a gentleman and seemed to love you and yet, he betrayed you.

If a man like him, that was nothing short but sweet and passionate with you, cheated on you, then did that mean you couldn’t trust anyone ?

Because in your eyes right now, he was perfect. Albeit said eyes were slightly clouded by a a few tequila shots.

You were downing a fourth drink starting to slowly sob when…

There’s very few things that can get you out of a drunk state in seconds.

An extremely cold shower could do the trick, for instance. Brings you back to your senses a bit you know ? You wouldn’t magically be sober, but you’d get a clearer mind. Or someone giving you shocking news ! Or like, an event so incredible that your body just forgets how drunk it is for a minute.

And this event, for you, came at the perfect time.

Right when you were entering your “sad drunk” phase, which was between the “lol alcohol does NOTHING to me” phase where you downed most of your drinks, and the “dancing on the bar’s counter” phase (a few more drinks and you would have a one woman dance party in your living room, acting as if you were on a bar’s counter and that your name was suddenly “Britney”).

Right when you were about to wallow times a thousand, and cry, and yell “whyyyyyyy ?!” to the sky, arms in the air (drama queen).

Years later, looking back on that particular event, you’ll start to realize that Destiny HAS to exist. Because come on, it was just too perfect a timing to be a simple coincidence.

You were about to swallow up your fifth drink, launching yourself head first into the “sad phase” when an ear shattering noise rang all around your apartment.

Broken glass.

It was the sound of broken glass. Heightened to the max by your drunkness. You turned on your stool, and…there he was.

It was a guy. That you were sure of because he had no boobs and too much pecs. And that guy…well that guy just flew right through your window, destroying it. How rude.

There was glass everywhere.

How much did a window cost ? Probably a fortune.

You wondered briefly if you could just use aluminium foil and tape the shit up. There was nothing of value to steal in your apartment anyway, and if aluminium foil could keep meals warm, it definitely worked with a house too right ?

You sobered up quite a bit, but you were also very drunk when this event happened, so your mind was still in that cloudy weird phase where your priorities were…interesting.

You worried more about the broken window at first, than about that guy who just launched through it.

A guy.

Not just any guy.

You saw that guy before.

He was one of those night vigilante your crazy hometown was filled with…RED HOOD !!

“Thick thighs”, is the first thing you thought right after you recognized him (priorities).

The second thing you thought was that you needed another drink, and so you downed what was your fifth one, but with that crazy thing happening ended up being on the same level as if it was a second one. You were tipsy, but not “drunk” anymore.

The third thing that came to your mind was…Is he still alive ?

No cause, he was like, just laying there, on your living room’s floor, not moving.

“…Outch.”

Oh. He spoke.

So he ain’t dead. Good, means you can have another drink then, you don’t need a clear mind to call an ambulance or something.

Oddly enough, in your half-drunk half-sober state, this sounded completely reasonable. Nevermind if Red Hood had some internal bleeding or something. He talked. He was probably fine.

A minute passed, and you just sat there, sipping up your tequila in between taking a pinch of salt and biting into a piece of lemon.

Salt, tequila, lemon. Great remedy against heartbreaks.

Wait, were you heartbroken ? Really ? You couldn’t really recall that fact now. But, yeah…it was the reason why you were drinking right ? Because right now, all you could think about was the fact that this Red hood guy had abs for days…

This unforeseen event sobered you up quite a bit, but the two shots you just took kinda brought you back to the same state than you were before.

Well. Not quite. You were drunk as hell again, but seemed to have avoided the “sad phase”. Instead, Red Hood bursting quite literally through your window took you to another road.

The : “Cool, I got a drinking buddy phase”. Well, taking for granted he didn’t have any internal bleeding and wouldn’t die while biting into a lemon wedge.

“Tough day ?”

You ask him, as he slowly sits up and shakes his head, trying to regain his senses. He looks towards you and seem surprised (or at least you think he is, because he wears a mask so…kinda hard to tell).

************

Jason definitely thought he was alone in this place, because no sane person would just sit there, not saying anything, as someone simply jumped through their window. Nope, most people would just freak out. Scream.

He knows, because it’s not the first time he falls through a window during a night on duty. And every single time it happened, people freaked out. Screamed. Threw stuffs at him, or hid away begging for their life to be spared.

And yet here you were, half a bottle of tequila in front of you, surrounded by lemon wedges you bit into, and table salt all over your hand, just staring at him curiously. And did you just say : “tough day” ?

Well, Jason guessed the empty half of the bottle was why you were so chilled about it all. He sat up, and slowly got back to his feet.

Usually, going through a window meant the end of the night for him. He’d go back to one of his secret stash, patch himself up and get some rest. Most of the time, he fell through windows because someone pushed him or threw him there…Though today, he just embarrassingly missed a step and fell by himself.

Of course, no one would ever now he tripped while jumping from one building to another (you lived on the last floor) and went careening into your home (and life). Nope, the official story would be that he fought a fierce enemy and was thrown into that window. Finding fake villains name was easy, given how truly ridiculous some could be.

Tim and Damian were still after the “Illusive Blue Man” that he totally made up that one time he walked into a poll and had a huge black eye that he couldn’t quite explain…Oh man, he had to stop telling such elaborate lies and just say “I fought with a few guys last night” without more explanation.

But he couldn’t help it. And those kids believed everything he said, it was too tempting…But for now, this wasn’t the issue. Nope.

He did a quick check of his body and knew he wasn’t really hurt (thanks “dad” for the amazing body armor ugh ?), so he was planning on leaving that poor girl’s house and send a mystery check in the mail to pay for the damage (money stolen from a certain Bruce Wayne of course, as if he would pay himself).

Yup. He was just gonna stand up, and go on his way and…somehow, he found himself sitting on the stool opposite side of this mysterious girl, and now she was peppering salt on his hand ?

“Salt”, she says, and she has a cute drunk voice. Jason almost forgets he just went through a window a few minutes ago.

“Tequila”, she continues, downing her drink and pointing at the one she poured him. He doesn’t even care the she poured it in a cereal bowl that she didn’t even seem to have clean…He drunk worst things in worst recipient. He turns away to take off his mask and so that she can’t see his face, and “bottom’s up”.

“Lemon !” she finishes, biting into the sour fruit and spitting it in the direction of the trashcan but missing completely. The lemon wedge goes to lost itself amongst his fallen brothers…

Jason bites into his own lemons, and spits it. Right into the garbage.

There’s a slight pause, where she just stares at the trashcan, and then at Jason, back to the trashcan, and then turns to him again and simply says :

“Wow.”

************

So. This was surreal.

Here you were. In your home. Taking tequila shots. With…Red Hood.

One of Gotham’s night vigilante. The most violent one. But the dude seemed chilled. He was holding his liquor really well.

And now you were talking about your broken heart, telling him the story as if he’d been your friend for years. And he was listening. Intently. And reacting to what you were saying. It had been a LONG time, since you had this kind of talk with anyone, and despite the fact you were drunk, you still noticed how nice it felt to have someone to talk to. Someone that genuinely listened.

“And then he slept with her !” you say angrily.

“Nooooooo !?!”

“Yes, he did ! He slept with…with…what was her name…”

“Nicole. From accounting.”

“Right, Nicole from accounting ! That bitch ! She always just…counts and shit ! And he slept with her ! Nicole from accounting ! Whom he met thanks to me, by the way ! At a partyyyy !! At my wooooork !!”

“What an ass.”

“Right ?! Oh but he had such a good ass though…Quite firm. But whenever he wore jeans, it was super flat.”

“So, not such a good ass in the end then ?”

“I guess not. You have a good ass. Popping right out in this outfit of yours.”

Red Hood chuckles, and the sound of his laughter makes you forget that you just said something incredibly embarrassing. His voice is…nice. Deep. Manly. You like it. You wanna make him chuckle some more, so you say, hoping :

“And it looks very firm. Not just quite firm.”

It works. He snorts and it’s very cute. Oh wow. He can be sexy and cute. Full package. You smile a bit dreamily.

For a second, he’s lost in that smile of yours, and there’s a silence installing itself in the room. A comfortable one. That you break :

“Ok. So now, he’s not that perfect anymore ! He got no ass ! Penalty points ! I never notice how un-assed he was before…”

Jason smiles and damn. He’s hot.

Somewhere along the way, he stopped turning his face away from you whenever he took a shot, and just ended up taking his helmet off. He was probably hoping that you’d black out or something, so you wouldn’t remember his face (or he just didn’t care).

In any case, you were pretty sure you never saw him before. His face kinda reminded you of an old memory. Of someone you saw somewhere long ago, when you were a kid…Which wasn’t really a big help right ?

Right. You had no idea who he was. And in your drunken state, probably couldn’t piece anything together anyway. So even if you did know who he could be, you wouldn’t know in the end anyway…Makes perfect sense right ?

What you knew was : he’s hot.

This white streak in his hair did something to you that you couldn’t explain. And that jawline ? You would love to get cut on that bitch. It could actually cut a bitch, you were sure of it. Those blue eyes ? You’ve never seen someone with such blue eyes. And did you mention to yourself how muscular he was ? Because man you only saw guys like this in magazines !

But beyond his handsome features, he seemed like a nice guy. Like he was listening to you, a total stranger. And this realization suddenly raised your guard up.

You also thought that your ex-cheating-boyfriend was a nice guy. And come to think of it, who the hell just barge in someone’s home like that, and actually stay to drink tequila shots ?! Wait but…in your guts…it’s not like with your ex.

You don’t think he’s a nice guy. You know he is.

************

There’s a visible shift in your mood, after this realization. So far, you talked to him about your broken heart freely, and he listened.

Oddly enough, no words that came out of your (perfect) mouth bored him. Jason wasn’t sure wether it was the alcohol or not, but you captivated him.

But in a split second, and without him knowing why, your features changed. You were now frowning. Like an unhappy little kid. It was kinda cute, but he didn’t like it because…why were you frowning ?

He tries to lighten up the mood and says :

“Well here you go. See, you didn’t loose the perfect guy, his ass was flat in jeans. Can’t work with that, can you ? I bet we can find other flaws. Make you realize he actually was a looser.”

Your guard is up, but you can’t help but smile a bit, plus you were frowning just now because you realized you just knew you could trust that total stranger, and it was so weird….

Besides, no harm in indulging this, because you’re pretty sure it’ll make you feel better to try and see the bad side of your ex-boyfriend, not just his good ones. No one was perfect. And so, still a bit careful, you say :

“Well…He never got any of my Tv shows or movie references.”

“Well, here’s a point to take off of his “perfectness”. Doesn’t get pop culture references. Deal breaker.”

“Yeah…Yeah you’re right. It is. He also used to hate when I made jokes. I like puns ya know ? Terrible ones. Well, he was always embarrassed whenever I made them in public.”

“Ashamed of his girlfriend, doesn’t sound very gentlemanly, right ?”

“Yeah. It doesn’t. Maybe he wasn’t such a perfect gentleman…He also used to not want to go out with me if I didn’t wear any make-up and was dressed just casually.”

“What you mean, he never just went out with you ?”

“We only went out on dates. I had to dress up. I could be casual home though…”

“Well goodie, the man let you be yourself when you were home. Big deal. To be honest, sounds like a douchey move.”

“That was kinda douchey…I never cared what he looked like.”

And it’s true. For you, physical appearance wasn’t everything. And sure you thought your ex was hot and all, but only because you liked his personality too. You liked his jokes, you were never ashamed of anything he said.

And right now, sure that stranger that bursted through your window was hot, but the reason you felt like you could tell him things was because he just made you comfortable by his mere aura. Because he gave you such a good vibe.

You never were fully about appearances. It was always just a bonus for you…So it never occurred to you why your ex would only hang out in public with you if you were pampered. Like he used to hate when you just wore hoodies and no make-up, even if you didn’t need make-up to be beautiful.

Comes to think of it, he was very much about appearances…Uh. Interesting. You never realized that before.

You turn to Red Hood, and the look on your face says it all. You’re slowly realizing maybe you didn’t just lost “the one”. The vigilante says :

“Ok, so : no ass, no humor apparently, doesn’t get pop culture references, and was kind of a jerk when it came to going out with you…”

“He did tell me often that I was beautiful though. Including when I just woke up from a night out, and was awful looking.”

“Yeah, but he never went out with you looking like that. He shouldn’t feel ashamed of hanging out with you looking like that. Just like he shouldn’t feel embarrassed when you joke. He can be exasperated, like if you really make bad puns, sure. And he can think it’s unfunny…But embarrassed ? No.”

“I guess…I never thought about it.”

“Well let me tell you, as someone who does not know neither you nor him personally, he sounds like a bit of a jerk. Let’s not forget he cheated as well. Like, that’s not something good people do. Especially not with…Nicole from accounting.”

“Nicole from accounting…Yeah. They’re together now though.”

“So ? He should’ve broken up with you if he realized he liked her. That’s the right thing to do. Trust me on that, I put villains behind bars for a living, I know what’s right or wrong.”

“I heard you kill criminals.”

“Used to. I used to kill criminals, I had issues. I’ll tell you one day if you wanna. It’s a real tear jerker story. With clowns and crowbars. And I’m telling you that because I’m drunk, right now. Also, if we want to be specific, I don’t actually make a living out of putting villains behind bars. Like, I don’t get paid or anything…”

Jason finds himself ranting about anything that comes to his mind, and though he hears himself claim it’s because of the alcohol he’s saying all this, he realizes maybe there’s something else making him want to talk.

You. A total stranger he walked upon. Or rather, went-through-the-window upon. Who didn’t freak out when he went through said window. And instead, invited him over to have tequila shots.

Because, according to your grandmother, the best remedy to…basically any problems in life, was “salt, tequila, lemon”.

“She was a wise woman.”

He says, and you turn to him, clearly not understanding what he was talking about.

“Who ?”

“Your grandma. For saying that salt, tequila and lemon was a great remedy against heartbreaks and all.”

“Oh. Yeah. I wouldn’t know, I never met her. She died before I was born.”

“Well what she passed on to your parents is great.”

“What ?”

“Well, that “salt, tequila and lemon” thing, I assume she said that to your mom or dad, and then they said that to you, and then it became your grandma’s advice. Right ?”

“…Nah. It’s an excuse I made up. Whenever I need to justify something, I just say “like my grandma said, ain’t no shame in eating an entire tub of ice cream if you want to”, and then people are just like “oh yeah, cool”, because when you say the word “grandma”, then it gives a perspective to your words ya know ?”

Jason had no idea what you were on about, but he loved it. You seemed to be very smart. And witty. And funny. The hell did that guy cheated on you for ? And why was he ashamed of going out in public with you when you weren’t dressed up ?!

You currently wore “Hello Kitty” pyjamas, had absolutely no make up on, and your hair was a mess, and he thought you looked gorgeous.

“Why are you so nice ?”

Your question takes him by surprise, and for a few seconds he doesn’t register it and just says : “ugh ?”

“To me. Why are you so nice to me ? Is it the alcohol ? Does it make you nice ? Or are you just nice to every stranger ? Every girl you destroy the windows of ? Or are you like my ex ? You seem nice, but then you go off and cheat on your girl simply because you like another girl and you’re too cowardly to break up with your current girl ?”

Jason hiccups slightly, and says :

“No, I’m not nice to any girl I met. I’m actually usually kind of a jerk, too “brutally honest”. But you…I don’t know. You give me good feelings. Oh and here’s to add on his flaws list. “Coward”. Can’t even break up with a girl, has to wait to get caught red-handed and break her heart. Cooooward. Bad flaw. Kind of guy who runs in the face of danger, instead of standing by you.”

It’s probably the fact that he said “you give me good feelings” that spurs this in you. That gives you a new clearer perspective on things.

“My heart wasn’t broken.”

It’s a shock, to you. This realization. This sudden feeling jumping in your face. You…are not heartbroken. You’re mad. You’re frustrated. You feel betrayed. You feel a crazy burning anger towards your ex for toying around with you like that. For not having the balls to just break up, after spending two years together.

He was suppose to know you. To be your friend. Things could have turned out better. He could have just come up to you, say the truth, and…You were pretty sure you’d still be friend. Because he really was a great guy.

He really was all the good thing you though about him. He made a mistake, an unforgivable one in your book. But he was a great guy.

He was just…not your great guy. Not anymore at least.

And you realized, there, quite drunk, that…It was ok.

Your heart wasn’t broken.

Your pride was. Your trust was. But your heart ? …Maybe you weren’t completely in love with him. You were best friends, yes, but love ? Maybe it wasn’t love…

Your heart wasn’t broken.

“My heart isn’t broken.”

You tell Red hood, looking at him right in his wonderful ocean blue eyes. And he looks right back at you, and just nods. Just like that. And then he pours you one last tequila shot.

Because like your grandma would say : “When you make great discovery about yourself…Salt, tequila, lemon”.

************

It took you only a few hours with him to realize that you weren’t in love with your ex, and that was kinda scary. Because this realization didn’t come from nowhere.

Nope.

But when he said that your ex broke your heart, you felt obligated to tell him that no. No your heart wasn’t broken. You were sad and angry, yes, but not heartbroken. For you, in that moment, it was important for this total stranger to know you weren’t actually in love.

Hell, you didn’t even know yourself you weren’t that in love before you talked to him. It just came as a sudden, yet utterly true revelation.

Because, and this wasn’t the alcohol speaking…You felt incredibly attracted to that guy. To Red Hood. Not just because of the white streak in his hair, and the eyes, and smile, and voice, and abs, and thick thighs. That too, sure, but not only…Nope.

Nope. Not because of this.

But because he had a tough day (he said so himself, explaining to you how he went through the window…he was fighting a super-villain when he got flung through your window, tough tough time ahem), and yet he sat with a crazy lady that peppered salt on his hand and practically forced him to take a tequila shot…

Because you could see in his eyes, and felt in your guts that he didn’t have an easy life…and yet he took a break from whatever he was doing to just sit with you and listen to you. He didn’t even make sense, that you trusted those feelings so fiercely. And yet, you did. Because he listened to you.

He saw you were struggling and he stayed. And though you felt you couldn’t trust anyone at that time…You oddly felt like he was ok.

Like he wouldn’t be the kind of guy to cheat, or run in the face of danger, leaving you all alone to fight off demons.

In a few short hours, you fell for this guy more than you ever fell for your ex.

What did that say about you uh ? …That was pretty pathetic…

************

Jason didn’t think that you were pathetic at all.

On the contrary. If he went to seat with you, and drink with you, is because he was instantly mesmerized by you.

And though he didn’t know at first why, now he was sure of it.

It’s because you didn’t freak out. And something told him it wasn’t only because you were a bit drunk (he fell in drunk people’s home before…none reacted like you).

Nope. It was because you were special. He just knew it. Special in every way. Funny. Beautiful. Genuinely listening to him when he was speaking.

He peppered his own problems within your story, as you told him. And you listened. Hell, even referenced a few things he said early on, way later, while you were crazy drunk. You listened.

You gave a total stranger that seemed to have a tough day some salt. And tequila. And lemons.

And then you cared. You asked him a thousand times if he was ok, and he basically had to take off his armor to prove it so (to your eyes’ greatest pleasure…mm mm mm those muscles).

Captivated. He was captivated by you. It was strange, and though he knew it was because you were special, he still was unclear as to why his feelings were that strong.

For someone he just met. And barely knew. And only knew while drunk.

You were just…Special.

************

It was surreal. The all thing.

What started as a night where you planned on wallowing your pain and drinking…ended up changing your life.

And no one could convince you that it wasn’t Fate. Because what were the odds that Red Hood would fall through YOUR window after tripping (yeah you didn’t buy that “fighting super-villains thing” at all) ?

What were the odds of his timing being so perfect, arriving just before you started to cry ? Because there was no doubt in your mind that if he had come a few seconds later, he wouldn’t have stayed.

He would have found a crying mess, and maybe he would have tried to confort you but…You wouldn’t have answered. In your “sad phase”, you only cry and whine. He would have eventually left. And the wonderful talk you’d just have, would never have happened.

But instead. He came right before your lips touch that fatal shot of tequila that would have brought you into the “sad phase”. And took your drunkness down a notch. Rerouted your evening.

You weren’t wallowing anymore, you were ranting.

Sharing your anger and frustration.

And he helped you realize that your ex wasn’t that perfect…That maybe it was just not meant to be…After all, he cheated on you.

Uh. What a shame. You didn’t even know his name…”Red Hood”…

You wished you knew his name.

************

The morning lights were rising, and the bottle of tequila was long gone.

There were still salt and lemons though. For some reason, you decided to buy the entire grocery store’s stock of lemons.

Red Hood stood up, and said he had to go.

He was nice about it. Said it was a pleasure to have spend the night with you. You both laughed about the innuendos that ensued.

You were exactly on the same page. And he understood all your joke referencing to pop culture…

But it was time for him to go. And he apparently had no intention of telling you his real name. He didn’t hint either at ever coming back to see you again.

And there was that. Just a nice night, spend talking to a genuine friend that you’ll never see again.

A genuine friend that you didn’t even know a few hours before.

Maybe it was the alcohol speaking. Maybe not.

And even if you ended up never seeing him again, this evening truly changed your life…At least, it saved you from a heartbreak. Made you realize it wasn’t that.

Though, now, as he climbs out of the window again (he couldn’t possibly use the front door), you feel like the actual heartbreak is starting.

Grandma’s remedy against heartbreak ? Right.

Salt, tequila, lemon…

But the tequila is all gone.

“I’ll send someone to fix that window…Sorry again about that. …Bye.” are his last words, and then he’s out.

And the tequila is all gone.

************

…

Days pass by in a blur.

Salt. Tequila. Lemon.

Ugh. But you don’t want to this time. You don’t want to get drunk to forget.

You don’t want to forget him. And you know it’s ridiculous to get that worked up over a guy you met one night and that will never come back. That you didn’t even know the name of.

This entire night was weird anyway.

Getting drunk with a dangerous night vigilante. Pouring your heart out to him, and him doing the same. The hell were you even thinking ?

Salt. Tequila. Lemon.

That would be a good idea to do this right now, because man…your heart hurt. More than when you discovered your ex sleeping with Nicole. From accounting. But you can’t resolve yourself to drink. To forget. Nope. Instead you…

*Knock knock knock*.

Uh ? You take a quick look at your clock in the kitchen.10 pm. Who the hell is coming at 10 pm ?! It can only be bad news. Especially in Gotham…You peep into the eyehole and…

WHAT ?!

You open your door quickly, and…

“Told you I’d send someone to fix your window.”

It’s him. It’s Red hood. But in…civilian clothes.

His ass doesn’t look flat in jeans.

He’s holding a window wrapped in cardboard, and there’s a toolbox at his feet.

“Yeah, you did…come in.”

************

Jason Todd.

That’s his name. And connections are fast to be made in your brain. Jason Todd. Bruce Wayne’s adopted son. That supposedly died…ten years ago.

And is Red Hood now. Oh. It makes sense. Even his little “killing criminals” thing while Batman never killed. You easily put two and two together.

Red Hood. Jason Todd. Bruce Wayne.

Wow. Can’t believe you never guessed that before. Of course Bruce Wayne is Batman. He’s got the motive, the means, the excuses…It’s so obvious. And yet, you never realized. And no one else in Gotham ever realized.

Jason Todd.

Now you know his name.

And he’s fixing your window. Nobody ever fixed windows for you before (even those who broke it).

Um. To add to the “perfect man” list : “Handy”.

Jason Todd.

He quickly works the window up, and then he turns to you. While he was working you talked, as if you knew each other for years. Joking around. Like old friends. Like old extremely good and close friends.

It fits. It clicks. It’s natural. You and him, him and you.

Barely knowing each others, and yet knowing each others the best.

Jason. Todd.

He turns to you now, and with a smirk, he says :

“Ya know, my grandma always say that when something good happens to you, you need to celebrate. And I feel like this, right now, you and I, though I have no idea what we’re doing and where it’s going…Well it’s still something to celebrate. And she always says, my grandma, that to celebrate perfectly you need…”

You smile.

Yeah. You don’t know where this thing between you two is going, but you do know that you never met someone who so fully understood you.

And in such a short span of time. And you know you’re not mistaking. It’s a feeling too strong to be a mistake.

He came back to fix your window for god’s sake. And trusted you enough to tell you his actual name. Without a second thought. Which meant everything. Especially since from all the hint he let slip through last time you saw each others, about his father, well…let’s just say telling people his real name wasn’t really something he was used to.

But it just works. It fits. It clicks. It’s not like with your ex, because you don’t think you know it does. It just does. The fact that you say those next few words in perfect sync finishes to convince you :

(“…And she always says, my grandma, that to celebrate perfectly you need…”)

“Salt, tequila, and lemons.”

______________________________________________

I’m so mad the Tumblr app crashed and I deleted the original post...Y’all were great and reblogged the hell out of it ! Which is why it got so many notes in such a short span of times. And feedbacks. I haven’t had that many feedbacks on a story in a long time. So just one last time and I won’t bother you with that again : Please, if you enjoyed this story, don’t hesitate to reblog it and share it with others. People who don’t follow me can’t really find my stories anymore so...you’re a big help by spreading them. It’s always very encouraging.

And if you got the time, feedbacks are always hella appreciated and always make my day a little brighter <3.

2K notes · View notes