#i got emotionally attached to him in the entire two minutes he existed

[kirishimaswife2819]

Them Playing Minecraft Survival With Their S/o || Midoriya, Bakugou, Kirishima, Todoroki, and Kaminari

Masterlist

Pairings: Izuku Midoriya x Reader, Katsuki Bakugou x Reader, Eijiro Kirishima x Reader, Shoto Todoroki x Reader, and Denki Kaminari x Reader

Summary: What it’s like playing Minecraft survival with the boys

Word Count: 1.4k

A/n: So, I do this weird thing where I’m obsessed with Minecraft for like a week, and don’t stop playing it, then I forget it exists for like anywhere from 1-3 months, then remember it exists and the cycle just goes on like that. And I remembered Minecraft existed earlier today, and I decided to write this. Anyway, I’ll try to get some requests uploaded tomorrow, but I’ll have to see if I’m in the mood to write them or not. Anyway, I hope you all have a great day/night! -Danielle <3

Izuku Midoriya:

He’s very peaceful when he’s playing Minecraft

He’s not in any rush to get to the end and spends a fair amount of time working on building farms for various animals and food

When you guys play together, you do pretty much everything together and don’t leave each other’s sides for the whole game

You guys also share all your resources, and split the stuff up evenly between the two of you

When y’all go caving, you each might split up for a few minutes to go into different parts of the cave and find different things, but he’d rather not stay apart for too much longer

He’s literally so calm and doesn’t generally get too mad when he dies

It’s literally impossible for him to not tame any pet he finds, you probably have a countless amount of dogs, cats, and birds, yet every time he sees an untamed one, he’ll be like, “Hey, Y/n. Do you have any bones/fish/seeds?”

“Izuku, you have like fifty at home. No.”

If you refuse to give him some then he goes out and finds it on his own and comes back for the animal, so there’s no escaping it

He’s not really focused on beating the Ender Dragon, he only really remembers that’s what he supposed to be doing when he gets bored

It probably takes y’all like nine months til you finally get around to beating the Ender Dragon, and you play for like four hours every two days or so, since you have school work to focus on as well

Katsuki Bakugou:

Warning, he blows your shit up when he gets bored, so make sure he doesn’t get bored while your playing together

He’ll share a house with you and the same storage area, but what he finds is his and what you find is yours, unless you both agree to share it

He focuses on actually beating the game, for the most part, but occasionally he likes fucking around and doing random stuff

Katsuki sucks at building, since he’s more focused on the actual game than making anything look nice (he also can’t build to save his life, but if you asked why he’s so bad at it, he would use the excuse that I just mentioned)

Doesn’t waste his time on taming animals, except for wolves

He gets two wolves, breeds them, and then makes an entire army

If you piss him off bad enough, he will not hesitate to make them all stand, before hitting you, so that they all attack you

He doesn’t play too often, since “school work is more important”, but you probably play, at the minimum, once a week, but most of the time you play twice a week

You would probably end up beating the game, after a few months, but it honestly depends on how often Katsuki decides to blow up your stuff, or just blow up stuff in general

Eijiro Kirishima:

He likes to try and build and make your world look nice, but he really sucks at it, but don’t tell him that or he might get upset. You called something he built ‘weird’ once and he took it personally, and didn’t want to play the game anymore

He’s always sort of got the goal of beating the Ender Dragon in the back of his mind, but he mostly just focuses on building and having a good time

He only has about one, at most two, of each pet, but he gets emotionally attached to them and if one of them dies, he will probably cry, and he also insists on hosting a whole funeral and building a grave for it (honestly, I would do that too, so I can’t blame him)

He also will give you all of his resources, without you asking, and you’ll be like, “Kiri, why don’t you have any armor” and he’s like, “Oh, I gave you all my iron. It’s fine though! Don’t give it back, I can live without armor!”

Then y’all get an aggressive war of passing back the iron between the two of you, until you get sick of it and just take the iron (but you sneak on his phone/computer after he goes to do something and you make him armor and put it on him)

This man protects you with his life, like you’ll be fighting like one skeleton and he’ll be all dramatic and try to protect you

It’ll probably take like a year or longer to beat the game when you’re playing with Kirishima, because he likes to, not necessarily mess around, but he likes to waste time on building useless stuff and playing with your animals and all of that

You two play almost every day for at least an hour, unless you have the day off, then you play longer

He really enjoys playing with you while your cuddling, and it’s one of his favorite things to do

Shoto Todoroki:

He had never played Minecraft but then he saw Kaminari playing it and asked him what he was doing, and then after Kaminari explained the game to him, he went to you and asked you if you’ve played it before and if it was fun

He has no idea what he’s doing, so he follows you around the whole time, as you try to teach him how to play the game

You’re going to have to teach him literally how to do everything, even if it’s simple, he lacks common sense when it comes to these kinds of games

He is the most gullible person too, like if you tell him a certain something about the game, that very obviously isn’t true, he will believe you

Once he gets a hang of the game, he still chooses to follow you around, and if he doesn’t he’ll ask you what you want him to do while you’re off doing something

He doesn’t tame any animals, because he doesn’t really see the point in it

You always have to tell him what he should do, if you don’t then he’ll sit there and just wait for you to tell him to do something

Shoto actually has a lot of fun playing the game, since he’s never played any video games before and as much as he just sits around doing nothing except staring at your screen and waiting for you to tell him what to do, he still manages to have a good time

How long it takes you to beat the game, is solely based on on your pace and your pace alone, since Shoto will just go along with whatever your doing

You two don’t play often, just whenever you two get bored and want to play something together

Denki Kaminari:

Depending on the day, he’s either really focused on actually playing the game, or he’s fucking around the whole entire time

Most of the time it’s the latter though

This man made an entire army of chickens and a very poorly built castle for them as well

He doesn’t tame too many animals, maybe a few of each, but that’s about it

He’s not a big fan of building, unless it’s to do something stupid with the building (e.g. the castle for the chickens)

Freaks out at the sight of any monsters, even though he has no problem killing them

Denki has a tendency to rage when he dies, but it’s never too bad

You guys share all of your resources, and if you try to not share with him, he will bug you until you do (he’s totally willing to share his with you too, though)

He thinks its funny to hide the item you’re looking for in a chest (if it’s like string or something that’s common and easy to get), so you’ll go out and get some, only to come back and find the item you were looking for in the same chest you were looking in before

Plays Minecraft at least two hours a day, but most of the time longer than that

Sometimes he even tries to sneak and play it during class, but the teacher always catches him within like two minutes because he talks to himself when he plays

If I’m being completely honest with you, you and Denki probably never make it to the end of the game because you’re too busy messing around, but both of you are perfectly fine with that

[jungshookz]

the one where yoongi hates his therapist but kind of likes her receptionist; lveb!verse

➺ pairing; min yoongi x reader

➺ genre; lveb!universe equal parts emotionally constipated and cheeky yoongi!! the man of our dreams!! i don’t really know what to categorize this drabble as but it’s cute and it’s sfw <3 

➺ wordcount: 5k 

➺ summary; yoongi hates going to therapy - but you and your dumb little hershey kisses make it a tiny bit better, he supposes. 

➺ what to expect; “you like a man who’s unable to form emotional bonds with people, baby?”

➺ optional reading: not necessary but feel free to read la vie en bonsai just to get a feel for what yoongi’s like and why we’re all falling hopelessly in love with him!! 

                                          »»————-　♡　————-««

“see you next week, yoongi!”

“uh-huh, yep.” the smile on yoongi’s face drops as soon as he shuts the door behind him and he immediately rolls his eyes

well

that was an hour and a half of his life that could’ve gone towards something more productive

watching paint dry probably would’ve been more productive than whatever the hell that was

dr. i-don’t-have-chairs-but-i-have-beanbags basically spent the entire session asking him to list out things that he loved which he thought was going to be an easy task because he liked a lot of things!

and everything was easy peasy lemon squeezy until dr. glittery-purple-nameplate pointed out that yoongi kept saying that he ‘liked’ this and he ‘liked’ that and he’d never actually said he ‘loved’ anything once and then she went into the whole ‘why do you think you’re so scared of love?’ thing and his eyes rolled so far back into his skull that he actually saw his pink, wrinkly brain

he knows that she’s just doing her job but he’d really appreciate if one of his sessions with her just consisted of the two of them sitting in silence while scrolling through their phones

he even asked her one time if it’d be alright if they did that just so he could tell his friend (the one that sent him here) that he willingly sat through an entire session of therapy 

obviously she said no and yoongi resisted the urge to use that as an excuse to give her 1/5 stars on google reviews (unfortunately the option to give 0 stars isn’t available) 

it’s just really hard to believe that dr. are-you-more-comfortable-opening-up-to-my-homemade-handpuppet-rory-the-lion has 5/5 shining gold stars on basically every single one of her google reviews

yoongi should be happy that he’s going to one of the best therapists in the city but he’s noT because: he doesn’t even need therapy!

he doesn’t even know why he’s here!

he shouldn’t be in therapy!

he’s min frickin yoongi!!

what the hell does he need a therapist for??

what the hell does he need therapy for?!

he can literally solve his own problems

if he’s sad he just plays video games all day and also eats an entire pint of ice cream  

if he’s mad he just plays violent video games all day and aggressively shoves an entire pint of ice cream into his mouth

he’s spent his entire life coming up with different coping mechanisms for himself and he thinks that he has a pretty good grip on his emotions

the only one that he’s a little iffy about is obviously <3 love <3 but-

that’s not a big deal, is it?

yes, technically speaking, he’s “emotionally unavailable” or whatever, but he really doesn’t know why that’s such an issue

yes, the thought of committing to someone in a long-term relationship and the thought of saying “i love you” to someone makes him want to rip his skin off but again, he really doesn’t know why that’s such a big iSSUE

besides

emotional unavailability is sexy

whenever he tells someone that he’s incapable of loving and the sex we’re going to have in three seconds will be animalistic and primal and will also mean nothing to me whatsoever their underwear basically flies off their legs and out the window

so, again: what! is! the! big! problem!

the only reason why he’s here is because, as mentioned earlier, one of his friends set up an appointment for him because god knows he’s not here of his own accord

(also, she did it without asking him first, so he’s still a little upset with her, but she made him a whole batch of brownies as a form of an apology so now he’s a little less upset with her. just a little, though.)

he knows she means well and only wants the best for him but he’s starting to think that maybe she sent him here to torture him and not to help him

his original plan was to go for like one or two sessions and then end it there buT there’s just a teeny little detail he has yet to mention 

there is one (1) thing that keeps him coming back every week

he’d even go as far as to say that this thing is the only thing that motivates him to continue to waste his hard-earned money on these weekly appointments

and that thing is-

“yoongi!” your eyes light up and yoongi can’t help but smile at how excited you are to see him even though you literally saw him when he was checking in an hour and a half ago, “how was your session?”

“it was-”

“oh, wait!” you gasp before pressing a finger up against your lips, “i don’t know if i’m legally allowed to ask you that. pretend i didn’t said anything.”

“my session was fine-” yoongi ignores you as he folds his arms up on the counter and leans forward, “i’m still dead on the inside and the concept of love remains ever so terrifying, so… yeah! everything’s pretty much the same.”

“ah, yes.” you lean forward as well, “that’s exactly what every girl wants to hear.”

“oh yeah?” the corner of yoongi’s mouth twitches in a smirk, “you like a man who’s unable to form emotional bonds with people, baby?” he asks in a particularly sultry tone and you grin in response

“you gotta stop calling me that before i fully fall in love with you, yoongi-” you sigh dramatically before flittering your lashes at him and yoongi laughs lightly, “well, it is what it is. one day at a time, right?”

“baby steps.” yoongi hums and you nod in agreement before suddenly perking up

“hey- you want a kiss?”

another reason why yoongi enjoys your company is because you keep a little gumball machine on your desk

except you despise gumballs (you told him that on his very first day here when he asked you why there were no gumballs in what was obviously a mini gumball machine) so you filled it up with hershey’s chocolate kisses instead (you change the flavour of them every week! last week they were the milk chocolate almond ones)

“a kiss? from you?” yoongi digs his hands into his pockets, “at least let me put some chapstick on first, darling.”

“you know what i mean, yoongi.” you roll your eyes playfully before plopping the machine down in front of him, “they’re the cookies and creme ones this week!”

"mhm. whatever helps you sleep at night, y/n.”

                                                                  ♡

“see you next week, yoongi!”

“you got it, chief.” yoongi forces a smile before promptly shutting the door behind him

he lets out a huff before shaking his hair out of his eyes

somehow the hour and a half in there felt more like four hours and a half

he kept looking at the clock and whenever he thought that at least a good twenty minutes had gone by, it’d turn out that only like two and a half minutes had gone by!

he feels like maybe once the door is shut that time just ceases to exist

today he was forced to talk about all of the romantic relationships he’s ever had and that’s something that he’s never really discussed with… anyone, really.

not even his closest friends! 

yoongi’s had a multitude of flings but he’s been in three serious-ish relationships (yes, he knows that’s a huge surprise) - obviously none of them worked out because he’s now in therapy for his intimacy issues, but still

needless to say, they messed him up pretty bad

see, his problem was (and you probably wouldn’t be able to guess it after looking at him) the fact that he… fell in love too hard and way too fast.

his first one was in high school - he was pretty much ready to marry this girl and even gave her a promise ring to which she freaked out and broke up with him on the spot 

(she said she felt that it would be better if they broke up since they were both going off to different universities and long distance relationships were tough)

(on the same day they broke up she immediately changed her facebook status back to single which yoongi thought was a pretty icy thing to do)

his second one was in his first year of university (not very long after the high school breakup because that’s how desperate he was to fall in love again) and he wasn’t super sure if he loved this person or if he just wanted to fill the empty void inside of him bUT after two months of dating yoongi asked them if they wanted to move into the same dorm together for the second semester of first year - they said no. 

and then they broke up with him. 

and yoongi ended up with a single-person dorm, which was great!

:D because it meant no one could hear him crying himself to sleep at night worrying that he would never find true love and that no one would ever love him :D

and finally, with his last relationship, he told [unnamed person because yoongi would like to keep that private, thank you very much] that he loved them, like, two weeks after they’d started properly dating (they’d known each other for a year before getting together so yoongi didn’t think it was that weird. it’s not that weird, right??)

long story short, they didn’t say it back, and instead responded with: “oh! thank… you?” and that was a pretty devastating (and humiliating) blow for yoongi and it was after that breakup that he decided that things just had to change

he couldn’t be this person for the rest of his life!

this pathetic wimpy shrimPY little ‘<3 i love you <3’ weak-ass PUNK

eventually he figured that if he just turned all his emotions off, he wouldn’t run into anymore issues

it’s like that saying mo’ money mo’ problems except in this case it would be less emotions less problems

and he thinks it’s been working out pretty well for him so far!

he’s never gotten attached to any of his one-night stands (although he can’t say the same for them, because c’mon - he’s an absolute catch)

and he kind of takes pleasure knowing that they want to have something more with him when he doesn’t want anything at all

he likes playing with feelings

it’s like dangling a piece of candy over a little baby

it’s fun!

…does that make him a twisted individual? 

is he going to go to hell for being a little emotionally manipulative?

also he always finds himself snickering whenever one of his friends started talking about how much they love (gags) their significant others

even the one who sent him here - she just started dating someone in her apartment building - is fully in love with her significant other (he might even go as far to say it was love at first sight for the both of them (double gag)) and sometimes yoongi has to shove a croissant into her mouth just to get her to stop blabbing about how fond she is of her boyfriend

after all this time, yoongi has finally figured out that love is merely a concept

it’s not real!

it’s an idea. 

love is not real.

so, again - yoongi genuinely doesn’t see the issue with being emotionally unavailable. 

this isn’t just him being stubborn or anything - he literally cannot come up with one single reason as to why being emotionally constipated is such a bad thing 

real life constipation is pretty bad but emotional constipation is totally fine! 

emotions make everything that much more difficult and he doesn’t have the time nor the energy to deal with it

being emotionally unavailable makes life easy, breezy AND beautiful!

...

of course, there is the one slight issue that sometimes pops into his mind

is he okay with being like this for the rest of his life?

because if he is, he’s… literally going to die alone.

sure, his friends will be there (unless they die before him, in which case he’s actually going to be alone), but even yoongi has to admit that platonic companionship and romantic companionship are two entirely different things 

is he truly incapable of falling in love with someone? 

he... doesn’t like thinking about that

he prefers to keep those gloomy thoughts tucked away in the dusty basement of his brain

he’d much rather think about-

“yoongi!” you greet as enthusiastically as always as yoongi rounds the corner, “have fun today?”

fun?

in therapy?

that’s hilarious.

“fun? oh, yeah.” yoongi snorts as he folds his arms up on the countertop, “i even got to talk to rory today.”

the two of you exchange knowing glances and you snort before quickly reaching up to clap a hand over your mouth

hey! 

you’re supposed to be supportive of rory’s role in therapy!

he has a very important job

one might say that his job of providing emotional support is far more important that yours, you measly little receptionist

you make appointments all day but rory saves lives 

“well, i’m… glad that rory is helping you during these trying times.” you clear your throat as you straighten up in your seat

if you get caught making fun of rory you’re dead meat

“mhm.” yoongi nods before leaning over a little, “now gimme a kiss, babe.”

your heart skips a beat in your chest and you can’t help but grin when yoongi turns his head and points to his cheek, “well?”

“milk chocolate caramel this week, babe.” you hum as you place the little gumball machine in front of him

“ooh, yummy-“ yoongi’s eyes widen in excitement as he cranks the metal knob, “so, you got any plans tonight?”

a single kiss plops out and he opens up the little metal flap to take it out

“eh, i mean i guess i do?” you shift in your seat before shrugging, “sort of.”

yoongi raises a brow as he unwraps the tin foil, “what’s that supposed to mean? you got a hot date or something?”

“...yep!”

wait what

yoongi pauses right as he’s about to pop the chocolate into his mouth

because he was… just kidding about that

that was supposed to be a joke

“oh!” yoongi clears his throat, “well, who- who are you… who are you going out with? tell me about them.”

“oh, you don’t wanna-” you shake your head, “the details are boring, i promise it’s nothing to geek out over-”

“no, c’mon! tell me.” yoongi shoves the wrapping into his mouth as the chocolate melts over his tongue, “give me the deets.”

“alright, well…” you reach up to push your glasses up, “i actually met him at the club that he works at! he’s a bartender. we’ve gone out on a couple of dates and he’s really nice! he’s super nice, i just- i don’t know. i guess i just- there’s not much of a spark, you know? he’s taken me out four times and he kissed me on the last one and it was nice but… i don’t know. i’m not sure i even know where i’m going with this story- b-but he’s nice!”

yoongi nods slowly as he pokes his tongue against the inside of his cheek

ah

well

good for you!

whatever

you’re going on a date and it’s whatever

it’s not like he cares

because if he cared it would imply that he has feelings for you

and in case it wasn’t already clear, yoongi is incapable of having any feelings at all because that’s just who he is

he’s spent years building his status as an emotionless android and he’s not going to let a stinky girl like you ruin it (you are not stinky. you smell like pears and it’s very pleasing to his nostrils. and he hates that he spent thirty minutes at the drugstore sniffing multiple shampoos until he found the one that he’s pretty sure is the one you use. and now his pillows smell like you.) 

“nice, nice…” yoongi mutters under his breath, “anyways, i should, um, probably go! i’m like, two minutes away from getting a parking ticket-” he laughs nervously before reaching up to scratch the back of his head

“oh! okay, yeah-” you take the gumball machine down and set it back down next to your monitor, “are you- is everything okay?”

yoongi’s no longer looking at you and you’re usually the first one to break eye contact so this is… odd  

“yeah, i just- i remembered i had a thing, so-” yoongi coughs into his fist, “yeah, i gotta go.”

“should i- should i put you down for next week, or-” you get up from your seat quickly when yoongi basically sprints towards the elevators

“yeah!” he flicks his wrist at you, “um, yeah- go for it. i’m just gonna-”

ding!

the elevator doors slide open and yoongi rushes in at the speed of light

“s-same time, or-”

the door glide shut before you get a chance to finish asking your question and you can’t help but feel a little… rejected?

even though you’re not entirely sure what it is you’re being rejected by

that was weird

that was weird, right?

it’s not just your imagination?

you frown to yourself as you plop back down on your squeaky chair

maybe your chocolates tasted funky or something?

you unwrap one for yourself before popping it into your mouth

…

no, the chocolates are fine!

what went wrong?

you chew on the inside of your cheek anxiously as you quickly go through what just happened

everything was fine

everything was normal up until the point you said you were going out on a date…

oOh, maybe you shouldn’t have brought up dates or anything like that

you don’t know too much about yoongi’s sessions besides the fact that he has intimacy issues but maybe the subject of dating was triggering for him?

damnit

you idiot!

this is why you could never be a therapist because you’d probably end up traumatizing your patients instead of helping them 

you should’ve just told yoongi that your plans tonight involved NO dating and it was just going to be you going to town on a pizza at home

it’s too bad

you were kind of hoping the reason why he started acting so weirdly was because he didn’t want you to go out on a date

here’s the thing: 

you… you sort of… have a little crush on yoongi. at least, you think you do.

you can’t help it!

he’s surprisingly very sweet and he has that boyish charm that you’re really into anD he’s also super goofy AND hello!!!! even when you’re not wearing your glasses you can see that he’s really attractive!!!

sometimes you find yourself daydreaming about that smirk of his 

it just makes you feel tingly 

...

what were you talking about again?

oh

right! 

you’re pretty sure the two of you use the same shampoo and you don’t want to be that person but... 

match made in heaven? 

you’d like to think so. 

you just don’t want to ruin this super fun and bantery and also kind of flirty relationship you have with him (though, now that you’re thinking about it, you can’t help but wonder if it’s actual flirting or if yoongi’s just doing his thing) and you knoW he’s definitely going to freak out if you’re suddenly like hey,.,. do u,.,. maybe wanna go out on a date or something.,,. because i think i have a teeny crush on you because even though you’re dead on the inside you are OBSCENELY charming and witty and attractive and everything i want in a significant other,.,.

yoongi would run for the hills if he ever found out you felt that way about him!

“good going, y/n.” you grumble to yourself as you lean back against your chair

well

you can worry about your yoongi-related issues later

you have a date with a cute bartender to get to

a cute, very nice bartender

                                                                 ♡

yoongi’s jealous.

at least, he thinks he’s jealous

this is weird, right?

because yoongi doesn’t get jealous!

he doesn’t get jealous over anything so whY does he not like the idea of you going out with someone who isn’t him?

yoongi squeezes his fingers tighter around his steering wheel as he stares ahead with knitted brows

he left the office like half an hour ago and now he’s just been sitting in his car in silence

and before you ask, yes, there was a parking ticket tucked behind his windshield wiper when he came down here

“jealous, jealous…” yoongi mutters to himself before shaking his head and letting out a huff, “no. i’m not jealous. i’m not!”

he’s not jealous because he doesn’t like you!

he doesn’t!

he likes flirting with you, it doesn’t mean that he likes you

of course, if he didn’t like you… he wouldn’t be grinning like an idiot every time you greet him

if he didn’t like you, he would’ve called you out on your lame ‘you want a kiss?’ joke a long, lonG time ago - instead he just lets you keep saying it because he knows you like making the same joke over and over again

if he didn’t like you, he wouldn’t be coming back to therapy every week, for crying out loud

if he didn’t like you, he wouldn’t have bought pear-scented shampoo for himself

he should be buying manly shampoos!

like… winter breeze!

or… musky oak??

or diRTy monster truck??!? (he’s not sure if that’s an actual shampoo scent for men, but he wouldn’t be surprised if it was)

you know, those kinds of scents!

not frickin pear

yoongi pauses when he realises that he actually doesn’t mind the thought of waking up next to you

he feels his heart skip a beat and he gasps in surprise before quickly slapping his hand up against his chest

oh god

it’s happening!

“…son of a bitch!” yoongi groans as he slams his head back against the headrest, “are you kidding me?!”

he’s feeling!

NO!!!!

that, or he’s having a heart attack

(he’d rather have the heart attack.)

yoongi turns his head right as you exit the building and he doesn’t know where these emotions are coming from but all of a sudden he’s being flooded with what can only be describe as…

pure, blinding rage

“what the hell did you put in those damn chocolates?!” yoongi slams the car door behind him and you practically leap ten feet into the air

“i have no money in my wallet i only have a starbucks gift card and it has like three dollars left on- oh.” you immediately relax when you realize that you’re not about to be robbed

it’s just yoongi 

your eyes widen in slight fear when you see him storm his way over to you with his fists clenched at his sides looking like he wants to skin you alive

“you are unbelievable.”

“me??” you shake your head in confusion, “yoongi, what are you-” you pause to glance down at your watch, “why are you still here? you left, like, forty minutes ago-”

“answer the question, y/n!“ yoongi crosses his arms, “you did something to those chocolates! that’s the only reason why i’m feeling like this-”

“what- i don’t- is it your stomach or something?? maybe you’re lactose intolerant-”

“nO, i don’t mean i physically feel something-“ yoongi looks around before leaning in, “i’m feeling something.”

you frown

“yoongi, the chocolates aren’t special chocolates, if that’s what you’re implying. there are kids that come to the office, i can’t go around giving out marijuana infused hershey kisses-”

“i don’t want you to go out with your nice bartender guy!” yoongi blurts out, “because i… i want you to go out with me instead.”

you pull back in surprise before tilting your head curiously

…what?

“what do you- what are- what?” you ask incredulously before narrowing your eyes at him

did he just... ask you out?

yoongi swallows nervously

his pure rage has now been replaced by pure anxiety

“i’m saying that i-” yoongi shoves his hands into the pockets of his jeans, “i’m- i wanna be the one to take you out. o-on a date. or whatever they’re called.”

“you wanna take me out on a date?” you ask dumbly and yoongi rolls his eyes

“a.. i mean i guess it’s technically a da..ate...” yoongi’s mouth goes dry and you can see the panic quickly filling his pretty brown eyes 

“we don’t- we don’t have to call it a date!” you perk up, “we can just... we can call it a... flirty hangout!” 

“a flirty hangout?”

“a flangout.”

“a flangout.”

yoongi takes a second to think it over

a flangout

yeah!

he can do a flangout because a flangout is noT a date 

“i’m sorry, i just-” you wave a hand in front of yourself, “i thought your whole schtick was that you didn’t believe in dates- flangouts- and ooey-gooey holding hands related situations, so why would you wanna-”

“because i like you!” yoongi groans before looking away from you and running a hand through his hair, “i think? i don’t know, okay? i know that i’m definitely attracted to- i just- you make me- i like talking to you after my sessions are over, and i like that you keep a gumball machine on your desk even though it still doesn’t make sense to me that you’ve filled it with kisses and not with actual gumballs, and i like that even though you know i, professionally speaking, have very intense intimacy issues, i-i like that you don’t judge me for it...” he trails off before letting out a breath and turning back to face you, “you can say no, obviously, but… i just think you’re really pretty and i think you know exactly what you’re doing whenever you ask me if i want a kiss.”  

you blink owlishly at yoongi and he immediately feels like he’s about to projectile vomit everywhere

see??

this is exactly what he means when he says that feelings make literally everything ten times more complicated

he just told you that he likes you and now he just made things awkward!

which means noW he has to go find a new therapist-

wait, no

nope! he’s not going to find another therapist - he’s just going to noT go to therapy

why?

because min frickin’ yoongi doesn’t need therapy-

“i do.” yoongi looks at you with wide eyes when you suddenly speak up

you do

did… did he PROPOSE to you?!

great!!

of course he did!!

his feelings are back and they’re even worse than before-

“i do know exactly what i’m doing whenever i ask you if you wanna kiss-“ you hold up a finger to correct yourself, “if you want a kiss.”

“i’m happy with either one of those options-“

“there is one minor issue, though.” you turn your phone around to show yoongi, “what am i supposed to tell sweet tae?”

“who the hell is tae- ohhhh, bartender guy.” yoongi winces as he glances at your texts briefly, “i forgot about him.”

“nice bartender guy!!” you push your bottom lip out in a pout as you scroll through your texts with taehyung

:-(

his last message to you was ‘excited for tonight!! see you soon :-)’

:-(((((((

“do you… do you genuinely like him?” yoongi asks cautiously

“i mean, i- i don’t noT like him, you know?” you sigh and reach up to tuck a strand of hair behind your ear, “it’s just that… he’s so nice-”

“okay, i think we’ve got that part covered-”

“i don’t wanna break his heart!!” you whine, “what do i do?!”

“alright, here’s what you’re going to do-” yoongi clears his throat, “you go out with him tonight-”

“but i don’t want to lead him o-” 

“you go out with nice bartender tae tonight to tell him that it’s over. and you tell him that you’ve really enjoying spending time with him, but you feel like the two of you would be better off as friends. it’s simple, it’s clean, it’s straight to the point! no harm, no foul.” yoongi dusts his hands off before smiling proudly, “and then i’ll take you to the mcdonalds drive-thru for dessert.”

“i mean, i guess so…” you purse your lips in thought, “should i, like… if he kisses me or something, should i kiss him back?”

“you’re going to pity-kiss him?” yoongi gasps dramatically before tutting at you, “wow. and i’m the one in therapy.”

“wha-”

“now, c’mon-” yoongi places his hand on the small of your back as he leads you towards his car, “let me drive you to your gross date so that we can go on our cool flangout afterwards-”

“you know, they’re doing a limited edition chips ahoy mcflurry right now-“ you grin excitedly as yoongi opens the door for you, “you wanna split one with me?”

“split one?” yoongi scoffs and bends down a little so he can look you directly in the eye, the corner of his mouth curling upwards in a teasing smirk, “baby, i’ll get you your very own mcflurry-”

(it turns out that taehyung actually planned to end things tonight, too - he said if you ever made your way back to his bar he’d give you a cocktail on the house! so, it looks like you can have your cake and eat it too.) 

help me help you make your wishes come tru (aka send me a request)

requested drabbles masterlist

[noaltbruh]

BUCCI GANG AND HOW THEY WOULD PLAY UNDERTALE

Since I got my friend into the UT fandom, and the brainrot for this game is slowly coming back, I've figured that I'd fuse my favourite franchises and make this post, enjoy!

GIORNO:

-This may surprise you, but Giorno would almost do a Blind Pacifist run

-While at first, he was planning on taking out whoever got in his way, he changed his mind in the moment he saw Toriel

-After she taught him how to resolve the various conflicts peacefully, he decided not to fight, but to show MERCY to every monster

-He finds the multiplicity of choices a very interesting mechanism, especially since he's not much of a gamer, and he's pleasantly surprised to see such an innovative game

-While most of the times he would completely avoid the FIGHT button, if a monster got on his nerves a little too much, he may attack it until it doesn't want to fight anymore

-He takes the time to interact with everything and everyone, he wants to enjoy the game at its fullest

-He was so freaking lucky to meet Gaster on his first run

-Actually brought the piece of snowman with him

-He's part of the "Chara defense squad", and finds them strangely...relatable

-He was just about to do a full Pacifist route, but he couldn't bring himself to SPARE Flowey, and killed him

-"I won't let you hurt her"

-Ultimately, he regretted it, and reset his save file

-After doing a TRUE Pacifist, he left the game, leaving the monsters alone and giving them an happy ending

-Only knows about the Genocide through gameplays

-Favourite character: Toriel, but also likes Chara quite a lot

-Favourite OST: Memories, followed by home, Undertale, Megalo strikes back and Star (he doesn't care if they actually don't play in the game)

-What SOUL would he have: DETERMINATION

BRUNO:

-My man wouldn't hurt a fly if he had the chance to, off to the Pacifist route he goes

-Similar to Giorno, he finds Toriel a very comforting character, but he feels bad for pretty much every monster he meets. He thinks it's unfair for them to be forced to stay in the UNDERGROUND, and wants to find a way to destroy the barrier at any cost

-He's never played a videogame before, but he gets the hand of it quite quickly, even though he still ends up dying a couple of times.

-He would also be the kind of player to interact with EVERYTHING, paying close attention to whatever the passing monster has to say

-Sometimes, he likes to take a break, lay down and listen to the OST of the place he's exploring

-The most challenging enemies for him were Undyne and Asgore. It took him a while to realize that the only way to spare her was to run away, and he just really didn't want to hurt Goat papa

-He lets the bird carrying him to the other side, even if he doesn't actually need to move around. He just wants the little guy to feel appreciated

-Veeeery reluctantly, he decided to SPARE Flowey, it would have been a waste to kill somebody now, after everything that he had done so far

-He almost cried at the Pacifist ending

-He refuses to even acknowledge what happened in the Genocide route

-Favourite characters: Toriel and Asgore

-Favourite OST: Fallen down, but he also likes Heartache, Home and Waterfall

-What SOUL would he have: KINDNESS

MISTA:

-Mista's first run would be a Neutral. It's not that he enjoys killing the monsters, he's mostly just too lazy to think of a way to spare them

-If it's obvious, however, he'll just casually show the enemy MERCY, there's no need to take out absolutely everyone

-The only one who he genuinely looked for a way to spare was Papyrus. Honestly, he couldn't bring himself to just hurt him 'cause he had the chance to. Besides...He was afraid of what Sans would have done

-Speaking of him, he finds his jokes HILARIOUS, and he will use them in real life conversations if he gets the chance to

-He basically wasted all his money fighting Undyne

-He didn't buy the spider donut in the RUINS, and was forced to farm gold for 3 entire freaking days and buy one directly from Muffet

-After finishing the neutral route, he decided to go back and try the others. His next route was a Genocide

-He was about to shoot his computer AND himself while fighting Sans, but he eventually managed to beat him. Of course, after swearing at 3 A. M., drinking 10 cans of Sprite, listening to Megalovania on loop and threatening to throw Narancia out of the window because he interrupted him while he was playing

-His favourite moment during the Pacifist was cooking with Undyne

-He immediately questioned his life choices when he finished the route and saw Chara taking over Frisk's body. Closed the game and never opened it again

-Favourite characters: Papyrus, Sans and Undyne. He refuses to choose an absolute favorite

-Favourite OSTs: Megalovania and Song that might play when you fight Sans. He also likes Bonetroulse and Spear of justice

-What SOUL would he have: BRAVERY

NARANCIA:

-Narancia playing this game would be a total mess. Ironic, considering he's the one in the gang that likes video games the most

-Despite Toriel's guidance, at first, he would FIGHT every monster that got in his way, following the simple "It's an rpg, the more I kill, the better it is" logic

-When he saw the "but nobody came" screen, however, he freaked the hell out and immediately reset

-After that mini heart attack, he went on a full Pacifist route. However, sometimes, he would snap and accidentally kill a monster. He lost count of how many times he had to reload the file

-He also really likes Toriel (she's just very popular among the Bucci gang). The reason for it...Is not a very happy one, like in Giorno's case

-He genuinely tried to stay with her, he didn't want to leave Goat mom

-He's the one who gets emotionally invested in the game the most, he even forgets it's a game at times and just erase the surrounding world from his head

-He LOVES to voice the characters while he plays, it makes the story feel way more alive for him. He makes a very good Papyrus impression

-Speaking of which, his favourite parts of the game were the interactions between Sans and Papyrus.

-He lost his s**t when he arrived at the Temmie village. He stayed there FOR HOURS farming money. Heck, he even bought the Temmie armor

-He refused to open the game for two days after Flowey stole the SOULS

-He wanted to ask someone to play the TRUE lab with him, but he refused to admit that he was scared

-While he's not the kind of player who stops by to read every dialogue, he makes an exception for Snowdin. He really likes that area of the game!

-While he would never admit it, he cried three times during the Pacifist route. The first time when he left Toriel, the second when he heard Chara and Asriel's story, and the third when he finished it

-His favourite fight in the game is the one against Asriel. He kept on repeating the "Don't you have anything better to do" dialogue for 20 minutes, before giving up to the idea that there was really no way to save him

-After giving the monster an happy ending, he was overwhelmed by his own curiosity, and decided to try the Genocide route...Boy did it go wrong

-You thought he cried a lot during the Pacifist? He became a freaking fountain during the Genocide. Every single time he killed a Boss, he cried, with no exception

-He spent days trying to defeat Sans, until he was given the option to SPARE him, and so he did

-...The others could hear him yelling from the other floor after what happened next

-He got tired of Sans' bulls**ts, reset and did a Pacifist again

-He watched a gameplay to know what happened in the Genocide ending. Chara's jumpscare still haunts him

-Narancia gets really involved in the stuff made by the fandom, especially fan made songs and comics

-He listens to "To the bone" religiously, it's part of his routine

-He tried and failed to figure out how AUs work

-Favourite character: Papyrus, followed by Toriel and Asriel. He used to like Sans a lot too...But now he gets Vietnam flashbacks every time he thinks about him

-Favourite OSTs: Bonetroulse, Hopes and dreams and Snowdin. He can't choose between them

-What SOUL would he have: INTEGRITY

FUGO:

-Fugo would categorically refuse to reset on his first run. What it's done, it's done, and he has to take responsibilities for his choices

-He would do a Neutral, killing whoever he encounters, but without specifically looking for the monsters just so that he can kill them

-That doesn't mean, however, that he dislikes to play with the timeline. It's quite the opposite, to be honest

-Fugo enjoys messing around with the save files A LITTLE too much, dude basically became an hacker playing this game

-In his attempt to make a Pacifist run, he fu**ed up and accidentally got the Hacker ending

-"...THIS IS NOT WHAT I MEANT WHEN I SAID I WANTED EVERY ENDING"

-He toned it down a little after that, but he still managed to modify the FUN value enough to meet Gaster and his followers

-He's also the only one who unlocked Sans' room. He doesn't trust him, but he finds him an interesting character

-Neither the Pacifist or Genocide endings particularly picked his interest, even though he did punch the walls a couple of times fighting Sans

-He likes to try the different Neutral endings, he doesn't do all of them, just the ones he thinks that would affect the monsters the most

-The only character he got attached to emotionally was Alphys, he can see himself a lot in her

-He's very interested in the various theories that surround this game, and he's waiting for Deltarune to come out, he just wants to know more about Gaster

-Favourite character: Alphys, but Gaster is a close second

-Favourite OST: Darker, darker, yet darker, followed by Here we are, Waterfall and Premonition

What SOUL would he have: faded BRAVERY

ABBACCHIO:

-MERCY? Is that a food? Yeah uhm...No, that doesn't exist with Abbacchio, nothing but Genocide for him

-It's already a surprise someone convinced him to play this game. He'll play in his own way, and that means killing literally everyone, not simply the ones he encounters, but even looking for them just to earn more Exp

-He was...Weirdly satisfied when he saw the "But nobody came" screen, and he was lucky enough to find every monster almost immediately

-He hadn't found a single character that he liked until he reached Undyne. Her sense of justice reminded him of his old self, which wasn't exactly pleasant at first, but at least he felt something

-He was finally happy to see a monster actually trying to stop what he was doing, and killing her was the only thing in the game that made him slightly sad

-He's still offended for not having the chance to kill monster kid, he couldn't stand that child

-He skipped through pretty much every dialogue in the game, not that there are many people to interact with during the Genocide...

-He'd eat a piece of the snowman right in front of him just to spite him, then take the rest and leave

-He didn't care about whatever Flowey was trying to tell him about his past. That's also because without knowing he's Asriel, most of what he says doesn't really make sense

-In the moment Sans dodged his attack, he realized that he had screwed up REALLY bad. After dying against him a couple of times, he considered resetting, but he wouldn't have let "the lazy skelefu**" have it his way

-He let out a huge "YES" and a sigh of relief when he finally managed to hit him, it took him around a week

-However, little did he know, that the worst still had to come. When he noticed that he wasn't the one who had just killed Asgore and Flowey, he freaked out a little, and Chara staring directly at him made him feel a small shiver down his spine

-Still, he decided to decline their offer to destroy everything, not because he regretted what he had done, he just wanted his revenge on the child for scaring him

-He closed the game after the jumpscare, and never questioned what the hell he had been through

-Favourite character: Undyne

-Favourite OSTs: But nobody came and Battle against a true hero, he also likes The fallen child

-What SOUL would he have: very very faded JUSTICE

TRISH:

-Trish got into this game just because of its music, she kept on hearing it everywhere and wanted to understand where it came from

-She was kinda scared at first, videogames aren't exactly her forte, and her encounter with Flowey didn't help

-She slowly got used to the dynamics of the game, even though she died at least three times in every area, exept for the RUINS. (She only got a game over two times there)

-She doesn't have the heart to hurt anybody, she thinks the monsters (well...Most of them, at least) are adorable! Shyren is her favourite minor enemy, and when she saw the "Taking piano lessons again" text, her heart melted a little

-She refused to take off the faded ribbon until she found she tutu, but she never sold either of them

-She loves flirting with literally ANYONE. You can? Well then...You must!

-Her favourite area is Hotland, including the Core too. She loves the whole "artificial" theme of the place, and she had a lot of fun reading Alphys's posts!

-She would pretend to be an actual part of Mettaton's programmes, but only when she was 100% sure nobody could hear her

-Needless to say, the boss fight against him was one of the funniest parts of the story for her

-Another thing she absolutely adored were the dates with Papyrus and Alphys, especially the latter. After everything that had happened, it was a nice opportunity to relax for a bit

-Similar to Narancia, Trish gets really involved emotionally in playing the game, and she had to take a little break from it before facing Asgore

-The ending genuinely made her cry, but it was the only time she shed a tear through it

-She doesn't care about trying the Genocide, she's worked hard to give the monsters an happy ending, and she wasn't going to throw it away

-She's in love with the Undertale Musical by Man on the Internet, she knows pretty much every song by memory

-Favourite character: Mettaton, but she honestly really likes all of them

-Favourite OST: Death by glamour, followed by Metal crusher, Power of NEO, and Another medium

-What SOUL would she have: INTEGRITY

Yes, I know that Narancia's part is longer, but it's just so funny to write about this baby, bear with me please 😌

[itsclydebitches]

Welcome back, everyone! Starting here in Chapter Six these recaps are doing double duty with my latest attempt at completing National Novel Writing Month. Granted, this isn’t a novel and yes, I technically started this project well before November, but there’s no way I’d manage 50,000 words of fiction in 2020, so I’m hoping to hit that with these recaps instead. You all get semi-frequent updates and I may get to finally say I completed this challenge! That’s a win-win as far as I’m concerned.

Quick reminder: new teams, CFVY was separated, everything is awful. There, done. Seventy-five pages in we’ve come back to Velvet’s point of view as she and the other students are carted off in airbuses. She’s experiencing the “same shock and dismay” that she saw on Yatsuhashi’s face before they were separated, thus I’d like to re-emphasize last chapter’s argument that though shaking up the teams isn’t inherently a bad idea, doing it in this way while your students are recovering from/still involved in a war is… not so great for their mental health. Yeah, yeah, Remnant is a hard place and these kids experience traumatic events on the weekly, but still. There’s a fine line between preparing students for that kind of life and simply traumatizing them further, because this is a kind of trauma when the teams so heavily rely on one another - fill every aspect of one another’s lives: friend, colleague, family, teacher, student, leader, follower, romantic partner - and you’re now uprooting them with no warning. Whether or not new teams actually happen, the students think they are and that’s messing with their heads. Basically they’re just:

This problem is highlighted when we get confirmation of what I stated last time: the teams aren’t merely colleagues turned friends, but family. These fighters have got all their emotional eggs in one basket. Velvet goes so far as to imply that she loves her team more than her parents, with the logic being that they (her parents) “never talked to each other anymore.” So… if Coco and Yatsuhashi stopped talking would that undermine your love for each of them as individuals? I get what the overall takeaway is - divorce is a nasty business and can leave lasting scars on kids caught in the middle, to say nothing of the fact that, as a young adult, Velvet is poised to start creating a family by choice, not blood - but it’s still an odd way to phrase the issue. Here we have another instance of me picking up on implications due to RWBY, the franchise’s, overall themes. When you’ve got a story so thoroughly touting a teens vs. adults mentality, having Velvet mentally reject her parents for her team reads differently than it otherwise would. Chock that onto the pile that already includes things like, ‘Ruby denies that Qrow ever helped her’ and ‘Yang is no longer a part of grieving for Summer’ and ‘Weiss seems to have forgotten all that Klein did for her.’ There’s a lot of uncomfortable details attached to our heroes and how they see the adults in their lives, parents included.

Velvet doesn’t get to worry for long though. A much happier voice sounds across the airbus and she spots Sun, classically hanging from his tail. Instead of hearing more about her fears we segue into - you guessed it - Sun bashing. The first thought to pop into her head is that Sun “wasn’t with the rest of his team, but knowing Sun, that might have been his decision.”

...Velvet, you just tried desperately to stay with your own team and were (somehow) swept away by the apparently overwhelming crowed (still ridiculous imo). But if you didn’t manage this, what makes you think Sun had a chance? Why is his separation suddenly a potential choice when yours was presented as nothing of the sort? That is some real insistence on thinking the worst of him. I dragged Sun for abandoning his team in Volume 4 because that was abandonment. It was a choice worthy of criticism. This? This was outside of his control and Velvet knows it.

Sun saw her, smiled, and waved. Velvet looked away.

Nice, Velvet.

He comes over anyway and (kindly!) asks if she’s okay. Velvet says no, specifically because “Yatsu and I were separated.” Here we have another example of how close the partners get even within each team. Blake and Yang are inseparable. Ruby talks to Weiss more than her sister (and the concept of her talking to Blake in any meaningfully way is hilarious at this point). Now, despite being separated from her entire team - everyone is in the same awful boat - Velvet frames the situation as just being separated from Yatsuhashi. Later she repeats, “Well, I still want to try to find Yatsu.” So would it be a disappointment to find Fox or Coco instead? It’s especially weird because in the main show we see Velvet and Coco interacting the most. I actually had to look up who Velvet’s partner was because I just assumed our two girls were a duo. Apparently not. I’m not really into the CFVY side of the fandom, but I imagine there’s a substantial ship community for these two based solely on how Velvet embraces RWBY partnerships in this book, outside of the always popular Velvet/Coco, of course.

That’s admittedly a ship I can get behind. 

After Velvet unloads all her worries “Sun stared ahead, like he couldn’t quite manage to feel bad.” Attention, readers, this is an important lesson coming up! In fandom spaces I often see people analyzing novels (and other print media/visual media with narration) without taking into consideration the perspective. Unless we’ve got an omniscient perspective we need to take into account that our narrator might, simply put, be wrong (and even then, omniscient unreliable narrators are a popular choice). Often I see readers taking a characters’ thoughts - and words - at face value, which is understandable given that we’re meant to emotionally connect with them, but we have to keep in mind that this is their interpretation of events. We see the story through their eyes, how they perceive the world, but their perception of the world may not be accurate or, at the very least, is open to further interpretation. Sometimes this is used in an obvious, plot-driven manner - there’s a surprise twist for the reader, made possible because our protagonist was likewise kept in the dark - but it applies to our reading of more casual interactions too. This is a good example. Just because Velvet says Sun looks “like he couldn’t quite manage to feel bad” doesn’t mean that’s actually how Sun feels. As we’ve just re-established, Velvet is inclined to think the worst of Sun, or at least consider the worst as a distinct possibility. So if we’re asking the question, “Is Velvet’s perspective accurate to reality here?” weighing her previous assumptions against actions like Sun smiling, waving, and asking how she’s doing, AKA caring about her situation… I’d say no, it’s likely not.

At least she doesn’t outright accuse him of anything. Given that he’s not privy to these insulting thoughts, Sun chatters on about the test. He thinks it “isn’t a bad idea” because, as established, a lot of students lost teammates and are having trouble settling into Shade while still trying to live the life they had at Beacon. Changing the teams could be a “chance to really commit to our new school and our training, and learn from one another in a new way.” That’s what I think!

“Right… Or maybe some of us burned bridges with our team and might be looking for an easy way to avoid fixing those relationships.”

Velvet what the actual fuck. Can our cast NOT be assholes for five minutes??

Sun goes red at the accusation and calls her out on being harsh. “Tough love” Velvet calls it. Okay, no. Tough love is reserved for people you’re actually friends with and is meant to have them face a harsh reality they might be avoiding. Sun is avoiding an overt apology with his team, but we (and Velvet) have been given no indication that his thoughts on the test are a smokescreen to hide ulterior motives, which is what she’s talking about here. Sun clearly wants to make up with his team, he’s just struggling to accept what needs to be done to do that. Tough love would have been Velvet encouraging Sun to use this separation to reflect on what his team means to him and then, regardless of whether they end up back together, apologizing for how he unintentionally hurt them. Not… this. Plus, again, Velvet hasn’t exactly been friendly lately. She has little ground for dishing out “tough love.” You need established “love” before the “tough” part.  

In addition, she’s not listening to what Sun’s saying. “If they want us prepared for an attack, breaking up teams sounds counterproductive.” When did Sun mention anything about an attack? That’s your assumption of what’s going down based on the illegal investigation you’ve been assisting with. Sun just said that changing the teams would provide some of them with a much needed clean slate, which is true. Just because that’s not what Velvet needs doesn’t mean it’s not useful for others. As she eventually acknowledges, they can get too comfortable in the roles they’ve been playing.

We get her line about wanting to find Yatsuhashi followed by, “Sun, you do whatever you want. That’s what you’re good at.” Velvet seriously? Then minutes later she’s hoping Sun sticks close to her if he can. Real talk: everyone deserves better than this. ‘Friends’ who constantly act like your presence is a burden, insult you whenever they get the chance, insist such insults are for your benefit (it’s just tough love), but then turn around and play nice when you have something they want... those aren’t friends. Note that Velvet is - both privately and overtly - mean to Sun while he’s just existing in the airbus, going through the same horrible test as her, trying to be nice, and holding an otherwise civil conversation. While trapped on the bus with nowhere to go, Sun is a nuisance despite his best efforts. When the floor suddenly opens up and Velvet is terrified of falling and surviving on her own though, then his presence is desirable. That’s not friendship and in another story I’d praise the author(s) for writing a compelling move from shaky acquaintances to a strong bond… but I’m honestly not sure that the relationship (any of them, really) will improve. Far as I can gather, Myers thinks this is friendship.

So Velvet accuses Sun of always and forever hurting others in his pursuit of doing what pleases him (after checking in on Velvet… literally minutes ago…) which is right around when Scarlet decides to make himself known. He agrees with Sun’s belief that this test will be harder than they assume: “I think you’re right… For a change.” Everything comes with a caveat. Apparently Scarlet has been listening in the whole time, but somehow manages to turn that into an insult as well with “I’ve been standing five feet away. Maybe I’m ready for a new team, too.” Wait, is the implication that Scarlet is further annoyed because Sun didn’t notice him? Do you all have ANY idea how many times a friend has stood right next to me and I didn’t notice them because I was caught up in something like work, a show… a conversation? I’m oblivious af. I get that Sun has things to make up for but at the very least these characters could keep their criticisms to what he’s actually done wrong, not crazy reaches like, ‘Sun probably abandoned his team when everyone was separated’ or ‘Sun was busy talking to Velvet and didn’t notice me eavesdropping, so I guess I don’t mean much to him, huh.’ I’m constantly torn between the presumed realism of this writing - people are unfair in their criticisms, teens do hold unsubstantiated grudges - and acknowledging that Myers seems to have felt confident writing (1) personality and just gave it to everyone. Velvet privately becomes as critical as Coco, who is as vocal as Fox, who agrees with Yatsuhashi, who echoes Sun’s team, and Sun himself often throws that attitude right back. Round and round we go. 

As one might imagine, the three begin theorizing about what the test itself will be like. Usually Shade sets up initiation just like this. Students are transported in windowless airbuses, dumped in the desert, and told to find their way home. I’m interested in the bit about how teams are made up not only based on arrival, but also “the manner in which [the students] survived.” It definitely lends support to the assumption I’ve always had that the teams can really be random. At least not entirely. There’s strategy on the part of the instructors, thinking through aspects like, ‘Well, these two students used their wits in this manner so they’d pair together nicely.’ Or the reverse, ‘Put together the strategist with the student in love with blunt force, let them balance each other out.’ I certainly don’t think that Ozpin formed teams based solely on who ran into each other first. Not only do we have agency on the part of the students (Weiss leaves Ruby, then Jaune, then goes back to Ruby), as well as the fact that two sets of partners had to be paired together someway, but Ozpin was also carefully watching their whole performance. If the only thing that mattered was getting back to Beacon with a chess piece, why bother examining their choices? Shade appears to employ a similar setup of careful decisions portrayed as randomness, which would make sense given that Ozpin set up these schools. Though all the headmasters may not realize it (is Theodore a part of the inner circle?), or perhaps don’t agree with his methods overall, Ozpin’s influence is undeniably evident in each institution we’ve seen. 

The only difference between normal initiation and this test seems to be that the students have to find a gold figurine this time around. Though as our trio points out, there’s likely to be other differences as well, otherwise the original Shade students would have a pretty significant advantage. 

During all this Velvet remanences about Beacon’s initiation and we learn that Ozpin does, apparently, use the whole ‘Throw you into the woods where you’ll find some relic’ setup each year, as Velvet remembers being “thrown into the air” during hers. She also hits on another concern that hadn’t crossed my mind until now: what if a team includes a new student alongside the “more vocal in harassing recruits from Beacon and Haven?” It might do the Shade students some good to get to know the newcomers, but it’s not the newcomers’ responsibility to teach them some basic respect and kindness. 

During all this Rumpole, via a screen, has been explaining how the test will go down. Her little info session concludes with her telling them to “Prepare for drop-off… See you back home soon.” I really like that she used the term “home” here. It says something about how she views the school and her students’ place in it, despite the tough attitude and tougher culture of Vacuo.

Turns out, when Rumpole said drop-off she meant that literally. The floor opens up and we get a mix of some students panicking while others just happily jump out. 

Yeet. 

Like I said, Ozpin’s influence. 

I didn’t understand the panic initially - aren’t landing strategies a basic part of huntsmen training, something everyone (except Jaune) is expected to know coming into a school? Isn’t it at least partway through the year when everyone, even firsties, has had practice at this? - until I remembered Rumpole’s comment about how she hoped everyone remembered to bring their weapons this morning.

…that’s one hell of a lesson. Let’s break this down for a second. Yes, everyone at Shade is expected to carry their weapons at all times, but the meeting that started all this was early in the morning and, far as I can tell, entirely unexpected. ‘Supposed to’ is not the same thing as ‘will,’ especially when one is dealing with college-equivalent students who are still figuring expectations out. It’s not outside the realm of possibility that someone did leave their weapon behind. So now what? These buses are thousands of feet in the air, dropping students randomly as they jump/fall. If a student did need help how in the world would a professor assist them? Do they just expect other students to help like Pyrrha did for Jaune? It’s possible given that in a moment Octavia will help Velvet despite seeming to dislike her... but that’s not something I’d want to bank on. Whether a student forgot their weapon or has a weapon unsuited to a landing strategy, they’re going to die from this fall. Yeah, yeah, the test is supposed to be deadly, but what’s there to learn then? You’re dead! The lesson ‘Don’t forget your weapon’ or ‘Find a weapon more suited to landing strategies’ will never stick unless there are contingency plans in place to ensure that students survive their first mistakes. 

It just all seems kind of flimsy, like everything works out because the plot says it must, not because I believe this in-world setup is geared towards keeping students alive and teaching them how to survive this world. (The reverse of the story conveniently not killing civilians off during a major grimm attack.) If landing strategies are so crucial to a huntsmen’s work - and we see them a lot - why are students allowed to have weapons like Yatsuhashi’s Fulcrum that, far as I can see, provide you with no way of slowing your descent? What if you don’t have a suitable semblance? Or it hasn’t been unlocked yet? What if your weapon would work, theoretically, but you haven’t taken any pictures of other suitable weapons lately (Velvet)? What if you never figure out that there are parachutes on the ship? Unless the instructors have a secret way of saving someone from getting splattered, this seems like a test rife with deadly mistakes, not just encounters. Why not teach your students to carry mini high-tech parachutes on their belts, with weapons and semblances as backups? Incorporate Atlas tech into standard schooling, then give us huntsmen who suddenly have it taken away with the embargo, resulting in a lot of problems. I mean, the students are legit scared in this scene, Velvet included. Having them face deadly grimm is one thing, but why test the odds with a thousand foot plunge when there’s absolutely no reason to? Far as I can see, the schooling isn’t built around ensuring they survive a fall like this - nothing like weapon requirements, or carrying additional gear if you semblance is something like Ren’s - which means making the fall a part of the test itself is... not great. 

Which, to be clear, is the fault of the author(s) and how much thought (or not) they’ve put into their fictional school, not the fictional school’s fault because it’s, you know, fictional. Basically, the world building in this series kind of drives me nuts, in case you haven’t noticed lol. 

Velvet does find the parachutes, oh so conveniently, and at least has the decency to give one to Sun. Also yeah, kudos for thinking to search for them in the first place. I do like the ‘survival is the only thing that counts’ theme. Cheating, lying, and the like is great when it’s used because the odds are already stacked against you. We get her agreement to try and stick close because remember, there’s nothing like a dangerous situation to remind you to be decent towards someone else. As Velvet magnanimously thinks, “Being with Sun would be better than being alone.”

Okay. Low bar, but okay. 

So they fall and we get to hear a fair bit about Vacuo’s history based on what Velvet remembers about each landmark from history class. Honestly, I’m impressed at her recall. I wouldn’t be able to dredge up class notes while falling through the air. We get an abandoned city previously hidden by sand and the somewhat confusing sentence, “These were all that was left of the underground mines, the Drylands, the site of the old Paradise Oasis, long since dried up following Dust mining and the Great War.” Are these three separate places among the rock-less area pockmarked with holes? Or is this a single area of underground mines, called the Drylands (for some reason?), that includes the contrasting place called Paradise Oasis? I’m not sure. The takeaway though is that Velvet hopes Coco isn’t heading to that ambiguously named place because she’s incredibly claustrophobic.

What I find the most informative in all this is the description of the quarries as “physical manifestations of the wounds that still ran deep in the people of Vacuo.” The overall issue of outsiders coming into Vacuo, draining it of its resources, and then taking it back to their own kingdoms (while leaving their trash behind) is the sort of theme significant to our own lives and worthy of examination in fiction… Not saying that RWBY necessarily handles this theme well - especially given the messy conflation of that generational trauma and the awful treatment of any ‘outsider’ who wanders into the kingdom - but I do appreciate when I can see the series trying. Even if it fails, effort is (to an extent) still worth acknowledgement.

What I’m less inclined to praise is the strange follow up of “maybe that was why Rumpole was sending students there.” …what does this mean? Velvet just told us the quarries are the “wounds” of Vacuo, so are they being sent there because they’re dangerous? Because huntsmen will somehow fix this?? Neither of these make sense but I literally don’t know what point Myers is trying to make… which happens a lot. Again, there’s a whole lot of wise-sounding statements in this novel that, at the end of the day, mean very little - if anything at all.

Velvet eventually lands, nearly getting pulled into one of the openings when she can’t get out of her parachute. She’s saved at the last moment by Octavia Ember, a member of Team NDGO. You know, “One of the people she least wanted to run into.” We all knew the moment Velvet worried about running into one of the crueler members of Shade that it would happen.

Their conversation is filled with heartfelt gratitude and riveting greetings:

“Thanks?” Velvet said.

“Whatever.” Octavia sheathed her blade and started walking away. That was more like it.

What is wrong with all of these people? My kingdom for a kind, enthusiastic, non-team exchange!

You know the ‘enemies forced to work together’ conflict couldn’t end there though (a trope I normally love and would likely love here except having Octavia be another stereotypical mean girl was the least innovative choice possible). She and Velvet end up heading towards the same quarry, simply because there’s nothing else for miles around. Velvet displays some quick thinking when she explains that the instructors likely hid the relics in there to ensure they weren’t forever hidden under the sand. Velvet, unlike Yatsuhashi, has also realized that there’s more to the test than just their fighting skills. They’ll be graded on everything, “Including how we treat each other.” I’m always appreciative of characters who use their brains as much as their brawns.

Perhaps that not-so-subtle nudge resonated with Octavia because she opens up a bit. By this I mean she moves from “Whatever” to telling Velvet the traumatizing story of how she lost a third of her clan to Blind Worms in one of these quarries. Okay. That’s a complete 180, but I’ll take it. Velvet continues to have supposed insights about the Vacuans like, ‘Maybe they don’t cry because that’s a waste of water?’ and ‘Maybe they hate everyone on principal because of the past?’ and ‘I guess bullying is just something you’re supposed to survive out here’ (um… no.) In Velvet - and Myers’ - defense she acknowledges that none of these explanations excuse their actions… but I’m not so sure it explains them either. A few chapters ago we were hammering home how teens don’t have an emotional connection to their past, despite it not actually being that long ago (recall Coco’s conversation with Rumpole in class), but now we’re supposed to believe that all of these teens reject newcomers because of stuff that happened during a war they weren’t alive for? Also, I’m neither a doctor nor an anthropologist, but the concept of a desert people refusing to cry because it’s a waste of water - especially in an otherwise advanced civilization - seems suspect. I can buy someone being unable to cry because they’re currently dehydrated, but a whole culture denying themselves this outlet when most of them don’t actually lack water anymore is odd.

Granted, culture isn’t always logical. Case in point: memes. So let’s give that a pass. 

However, we’ve still got the issue of continuity across paragraphs. First Velvet is smug because she’s a better climber than Octavia. Then Octavia is ahead and supposedly annoyed that Velvet was slowing her down. It’s unclear when, or if, they’ve finished climbing at this point and a second later Octavia is climbing a tree - why didn’t Velvet do that? Really, I lay little blips like this at the feet of the editors, not the author(s), simply because as an author I know precisely how easy it is to lose track of every detail you’ve introduced. It becomes obvious to the reader when things don’t quite align, but it will often go unnoticed by the writer - like typos. (RIP my own work.) Which is why you need that second perspective to not just catch the big mistakes, but tweak all the smaller ones too. RWBY is now a part of WarnerMedia and Before the Dawn was published by Scholastic. There’s a standard here I don’t think either is meeting.

As said previously though, Octavia climbs a tree because Velvet - with faunus eyes - spotted a trinket the others had missed. Octavia falls, Velvet catches her, and a whole swarm of Ravagers show up, which seem to be a bat-like grimm. Nice. My gothic, vampire, Stellaluna loving ass can get behind that. 

Behold: my childhood.

They make a run for it and we - finally - get some solidarity as Octavia admits that the relic is technically Velvet’s and Velvet wonders in turn if they can share it. I offered my kingdom for a kind exchange and I got it! Hurray! More importantly, apparently that is an option because the airbus coordinates have shown up on both their scrolls. I’m not going to pretend that I understand how that tech works, but that’s a level of world building we don’t actually need. Not unless the hypothetical of students piggybacking on another’s relic is a part of the evaluation. 

I love that Velvet used her camera flash to scare off the Ravager in their way. That’s a fantastic twist on the ‘Velvet will use her semblance and impress Octavia’ expectation as well as a great way to demonstrate that she is a formidable fighter, capable of paying attention to her situation/surroundings and responding accordingly.

There are more Ravagers though, incoming Blind Worms, an avalanche… and the airbus. A narrow escape indeed. Octavia drops that attention-catching, “Thank the Brothers” as they reach safety.

Going back to my earlier point about Shade seeming happy to kill its kids, apparently Velvet and Octavia were the last to reach the bus and Sun told the pilot to wait. That says good things about Sun, but horrible things about the test. If Sun hadn’t insisted on staying would Octavia and Velvet have had a way out? Why in the world wasn’t the pilot told to wait longer?? The whole timeline is confusing, with Sun and Velvet leaving the airship only a short time after everyone else, but it looks like the whole group was way ahead of them (the quarry is empty of both relics and people by the time they arrive), except Sun managed to get super far ahead of Velvet somehow, and their pilot was apparently working under an unspoken deadline… I’m just taking information at face value because if you try to piece it all together, good luck.

Also sorry, but I straight up laughed at Sun’s “You woke up the Ravagers. And you lived to tell the tale.” That is so unnecessarily dramatic. Oh no. Not the Ravagers. Literally the first thing I thought of was some B horror movie like

Coming only to a streaming service near your couch because we’re still living through a pandemic. Wear your masks, friends!

Back to this very entertaining reaction. Sun, you and Velvet have both taken out Atlesian knights, you fought a gigantic sea monster with Blake, and Velvet just bypassed a nest of Ravagers with a simple bright light. If RWBY is going to randomly try and make the grimm threatening again, do it with stuff that actually reads as a significant threat to these fighters. After you’ve got your first years blasting through (Yang) and riding (Nora) bear grimm at initiation, a couple of bat grimm just doesn’t cut it. 

Moving on, Velvet’s iffy perspective rears its head once more as she thinks, “What if Sun had passed by the trinket in the tree, knowing it would be too dangerous to retrieve it? She and Octavia had not had that luxury.”

There’s a lot wrong with this theory: 

How do you know Sun has better vision, even as a fellow faunus? As Volume 7’s Tyrian attack brought to the surface, supposedly not every faunus has that advantage.

Velvet straight up says that she wasn’t able to see the Ravagers, otherwise she would have warned Octavia about them. The whole point is that they startled her and she fell. So what, Sun not only has faunus vision but better than Velvet’s? (Do monkeys have better vision than rabbits? I have no idea, but this is the kind of stuff I would google if I wanted to potentially draw attention to it in my book). 

If that trinket was too dangerous to retrieve, why did the instructors put it there in the first place? Fox mentioned things being unfair with his lack of sight, but that’s a pretty big difference: easy grabs in a supposedly abandoned quarry vs. a grab that wakes up the whole nest of grimm.

“She and Octavia had not had that luxury” why does this sound like another dig at Sun? Like it’s worth criticizing that he… got there first? Got lucky with the relics closer to the floor? Probably because everything is a dig at Sun in this book, including Velvet’s surprise that he might have “respect in his eyes.” Velvet! He was just asking about you, made the bus wait, and has always worn his heart on his sleeve! Sun’s respect/care is not in question, only how he chooses (at times) to display it.

Not that the story seems to get that. We can’t work through Sun’s questionable choices if we’re stuck in this never ending loop of ‘He’s so annoying/incompetent/willfully cruel’ into ‘Hark! is that a positive trait I see?’ and then back to ‘Never mind he’s awful.’ Maybe Velvet’s pride at his reaction to the Ravagers will finally move things forward.

Which is where we leave off. The airbus scares off the other Ravagers with its guns, the group heads back towards Shade (or a second part of the test? That did feel too much like a normal initiation to be fair), and Velvet ends with the equally dramatic line, “The initiation ritual had been hard and almost deadly, and even worse was yet to come: the assignment of the new teams.”

I have to say though, that is the most teen-accurate thought I’ve seen so far. An 18 year old would be more scared of their team social life than getting eaten by a monster lol.

On that note, drop a comment or an ask if you feel like being social yourself and I’ll see you during the next burst of NaNoWriMo energy! 💜

[ Ko-Fi ]

[magaprima]

Okay, so I was going to do a list of all the moment where Lilith was soft and emotionally vulnerable etc, but the list was surprisingly long, so I’m having to divide them into basically sub-genres. 

So behold, all the moments Lilith shows pure softness. 

1. When she creates a secret book club for the girls of Baxter High. She had so many ways she could have solved this problem with Roz, including just compelling the school to allow the books to be read. But instead she creates a Book Club that she leads, allowing girls to have a safe place to go, and to read and grow and develop their minds, and despite Lilith claiming she’s doing it to tear their souls apart, she never does, and she just has these flashes of delight at all the girls around her. Lilith is in her element in leading women to enlightenment.

2. When she was thanked for the first time ever. The woman has clearly never been genuinely thanked for her work/actions in her entire existence, or at least not for thousands of years, and Sabrina genuinely thanking her for her help really seems to effect Lilith, it stuns her and we see she is emotionally effected by it. And I think it’s the first time we see her physically soften. 

3. When she helps Dezmelda tell her story. Lilith takes the girls there to make a point about corruption within High Priests, but when Dezmelda finds it hard to tell her story, Lilith instinctively reaches out to put her hand on Dezmelda’s knee supportively and helps her tell the tale. There’s a lot of falseness going on in this scene, but her interactions with Dezmelda seem entirely genuiine and they are very soft.  She may be using it to her advantage, but Lilith clearly has genuine solidarity with a witch chased out by an abusive man, choosing to live in the woods rather than submit.

4. When she admits they’ve all done unspeakable things to help the ones we love. There is something very genuine in this moment, she avoids Sabrina’s eye and doesn’t have the same manipulative expression she usually does when encouraging Sabrina to do something. There’s an honesty here, Lilith recounting what she has done for love, and though it might not seem a typical example, this is a very soft moment, because we’re seeing how Lilith can be motivated by love in regards to the Dark Lord, as much as by ambition. 

5. Attending Theo’s try-outs and being genuinely interested. So she ensures Theo is allowed to try-out as part of her determination to have no gender bias at Baxter High under her rule, but there is absolutely no reason for her to attend the try-outs. She’s not required there as Principal, she has no idea Sabrina is going to be there, and whether Theo gets on the team doesn’t effect her...and yet she goes, and we see her actively look for Theo, following where he is. Lilith got invested in a student’s life and that is so freaking soft. 

6. When she’s watching the passion play. Seeing her past played out on stage, even if with Blackwood’s biased re-write, has Lilith revisiting her own memories and she gets so very emotional about her. We see her entranced, remorseful, broken-hearted, upset, she is near to tears the entire time, and if that’s not softness I don’t know what is. We see here that despite everything, despite what she does, what she’s been through or how old she is, she has not been as completely hardened as she likes people to think. 

7. When she loves Adam’s gift. She was not expecting to like what he had, she probably expected something twee, and yet with a gift that was not only thoughtful but was something that appealed to Lilith’s rage, he wipes away all her murderous intent. She was planning to stab him with a knitting needle two minutes previously and then with this gift and this action, she’s suddenly going to him and smiling. It shows us how the smallest action of kindness has such an effect on Lilith. 

8. After Adam tells her he loves her for the first time. He openly says I love you, admittedly he believes he’s saying it to Mary, but the declaration alongside the kiss just makes Lilith utterly speechless. She’s thrown by it which is just so incredibly soft; how is it that an ancient witch, the mother of demons, future Queen of Hell can be so thrown by a simple declaration of love and a kiss?

9. When she dances with him. At first she’s reluctant and slow to accept what she has to do right now, but the more the song carries on, we see in the background as Lilith lets him twirl her nad even bobs with the music herself. She starts loosening up, but I think it’s partly because amongst the crowd she feels no one is seeing her. 

10. The foot rub. When Adam is giving her a foot rub after the dance, Lilith is so relaxed, she’s so comfortable and at home with him and it’s so starkly different to how she was when she first met him only a few hours ago. And she openly admits ‘a girl could get used to this’ which is a very telling thing to say and is probably why Stolas squawked so angrily. 

11. When she admits Adam 1.0 was cruel to her. We never hear her talk about Adam at all, or the Garden, but she genuinely shares here (it seems to be taken that it’s Adam in the Garden she talks about since she speaks of him in the past tense and she says he was only ever cruel, yet she tells Sabrina that Lucifer used to be kind), she feels safe enough to share, and she’s so broken and upset as she does, showing us just how much of an effect her experience in the Garden has had on her. 

12. Touch Starved. When she leans willingly and so eagerly into Adam’s touch, so she can feel his hand on her cheek. She leans and rests against it and just shows how much Lilith does long for intimacy and love and security. Something she probably had with the Dark Lord originally but hasn’t for centuries. This is where we see that Lilith not only can be soft, but she knows she is, when she admits it to herself.

13. When she initiates the kiss herself for the first time. This is the very time we see Lilith be the one to initiate the kiss, when Adam silently asks permission and she grants it. But the way she leans in, what it means for her to grant consent, how different it is to when she’s being sexual in order to trap someone (such as Hawthorne or the Pizza Boy) and we see that when Lilith is being genuine, she is very soft and gentle. Surprisingly so. 

14. When she realises she doesn’t want to lose him. This is a key post-kiss moment, when he has his eyes closed and she doesn't so we the audience see how she’s looking at him, how she’s studying him, and we see the dawn of realisation in her eyes that she does not want to lose him, and there’s that soft intimacy of their foreheads touching, the comfortable closeness of it. 

15. When she gives Adam the ring and he agrees to set a date. She’s so enthusiastic here. Yes, there’s a need to get that ring on his finger to protect him from the Dark Lord, but she’s genuinely eager to do it. We see her being so open here. Wide-eyed and open. 

16. When he agrees. When he says yes to the ring and they kiss, she is just so excited to keep him, she is biting her lip barely able to contain her delight and she is at one of her softest moments here. Adam is seeing a side of Lilith no one else has ever gotten to so far. 

17. Engaged. When she’s basically engaged now and she recognises this, she just looks so full on fucking happy. She’s utterly delighted and she’s looking at him with actual adoration and that’s so freaking, freaking soft. 

18. When she’s being all domestic with Adam. This quiet morning when she’s doing all her Principal admin work and he’s sat with her and there’s tea and jam bread. It’s just so softly domestic and shows how easily Lilith does slip into that. 

19. When she agrees to skip work and spend the day with him. Firstly, the fact she actually debates being able to skip work, and then when she does it’s while looking at how tempting she finds Adam, she wants to spend the day the with him

20. When she laughs at him for suggesting Tibet then realises he’s serious. This is just so sweet and cute but also shows how comfortable and relaxed she is with Adam, and also how much she thinks about his feelings, enough to feel bad when she laughs at him when he was being serious

21. When she says she’ll think about it. She agrees to genuinely debate giving up the throne and crown to go to Tibet to live a life with a mortal. If that isn’t soft I don’t know what is. 

22. The pebble wish. When she makes a fucking wish on a fucking pebble like a fucking princess and smiles while she fucking does it and then fucking launches it while leanign against Adam with his arm around her waste like the fucking Queen she is. Sotfness Squared. 

23. The look of love. When she studies Adam when he’s not looking like you do when you’re in love, where you watch them when they’re not watching you, and she seems to realise herself in this moment just how much she loves him. SOFT. 

24. Romantic Meal. If you forget for the moment that it’s really the Dark Lord, if this was really Adam, Lilith is being so domestic yet again having a meal with him, smiling, complimenting his cooking...

25. Agreeing to go to Tibet. If anything is soft it’s Lilith smiling while she officially decides to give up her claim to the throne and instead run away for a life with a mortal. 

26. The Widow. Despite the sadness attached to this scene, I still think it’s very soft that Lilith chooses to take Adam’s ring and put it on her wedding finger. She marries him in death essentially. She chooses to consider herself his widow. And despite the tragedy of that it is also very soft. 

27. Keeping the ring on. Even when she crowns herself, she’s wearing the ring still, the fact she doesn’t take it off even to meet the Dark Lord or to attend the coronation, ah, so very soft. 

28. The prayer. When she’s being prayed to, Lilith is so emotionally effected by that. She is so touched by the sound of a coven of witches praying to her, considering her to be worthy of worship and seeing her reaction here shows just how much Lilith needs to hear she’s worthy and how much that prayer meant to her

29. Looking after Lucy. Lilith is very instinctive here, she reaches out for Lucy so naturally and holds onto her so naturally and doesn’t even blink at the fact the girl holds onto her and does, in fact, hug her back, holding onto her. She only stops when she consciously realises she’s doing it. And then there’s the fact she erases the horrible things Lucy went through so she only remembers being rescued. 

30.Ambrose’s enthusiasm. She gets genuinely and quietly amused at Ambrose geeking out rather than being annoyed, and it shows a softness that she appreciates and accepts his excitement over being in Hell. 

31. Being sympathtic to Sabrina’s loss. When Sabrina breaks up with Nick, Lilith offers sympathy but it’s when Sabrina isn’t looking at her that we see her genuine softness as she remembers what it is to lose someone you love and how ‘Queens aren’t allowed to cry’

32. When she fully commits to ruling beside Sabrina. This moment is so brief, and it’s when Lilith has come to totally accept Sabrina as Queen, which is a big fucking deal for Lilith, and even bigger deal? She’s happy about it. She talks about she and Sabrina ruling side by side for eternity, a glorious eternity, and she doesn’t hide how happy she is about that, she lets Sabrina see her happiness. This is just showing not only that Lilith can adapt her ambitions, but when she works with someone, if she believes there’s equality and respect she’s happy. And that’s why it made the next moment such a betrayal to her. But that’s a different post I already made ages ago.  

[stylesluxx]

hate the club – s.rogers

[warnings: maybe angst? minor swearing and age gap]

summary: in which y/n hates parties but knows steve will be there - inspired by hate the club by kehlani

word count: 4,124

masterlist

You were in training for as long as you could remember. And since you started at a young age, you were good at it; it could be argued that you were one of the best assassins produced, but your only flaw was that the guilt ate you alive. It was the only thing that held you back. And that's how you ended up working with the Avengers.

At the bright age of 18 you were fighting Captain America alongside Iron Man. You honestly had no idea what was going on but Tony had reached out to you. You had been in Nick Fury's records for two years now, which you allowed. If you wanted to disappear, you had all you needed to be able to do so. You figured, if he knew about you he'd offer you a way out. After all, you let him find you.

When it came down to fighting Thanos and his army, you had to put everything that happened in 2017 aside. You hadn't gotten a chance to properly introduce yourself to any of your teammates. You were a last-minute call for Tony in 2017 and introducing yourself wasn't exactly the easiest thing to do while fighting an extraterrestrial army. And when you all went to go visit Thanos at his farm, nobody was worried about introductions.

"I used the stones to destroy the stones. It nearly... killed me-"

"Should've," You mumbled and looked at him with stone-cold eyes.

"But the work is done, it always will be. I am... inevitable," He droned on dramatically.

You zoned out after that performance and only snapped back as Thor angrily cut off the monster's head. And without thinking you kicked it across the room. Not one of your classiest moments, you'll admit, but you were frustrated with the Titan as well.

"Worthless piece of shit," You mumbled and stormed out the house and to the jet.

But when all the dust settled (no pun intended) you got to talk to Captain America.

"I remember you, from the airport?" He said, looking down at you as you walked between him and Natasha. "Where did you learn to fight like that?"

You, Steve, and Natasha had just gone back inside the compound from walking Tony and Pepper out to their car.

"Call if you need anything, Kid," was the last thing Tony said before rolling up his window and Pepper driving off.

"Yeah, uh, I'm Y/N. Y/N Y/L/N. Trained assassin since before I could remember. Speaking of which, I'm a big fan of your work, Miss Romanoff. You're very calculated and smart... in a good way," You spoke softly, not necessarily knowing how to articulate your words.

"Just call me Nat and thanks. It's good that we use our training for good," She said and you nodded in agreement.

"I'm Steve Rogers. Nice to officially meet you. It's... nice when you're not beating our asses," He chuckled.

"It's nice when you guys aren't under my boot, begging for mercy," You said before making a face. "Yeah, sorry that's the assassin talking. But uh while we're all here, maybe you guys could teach me a few things? I could learn a lot from you. 'm only 19."

"19?" Steve asked with his eyebrows furrowed, clearly taken aback.

"Yep! And only 18 when I kicked your ass," You teased and Natasha laughed. "How old were you?"

"Technically... I was 99, but I guess I was only 33."

"Oh man, when's the big day? The big 100?"

"July 4th."

"Well, you only turn 100 once, let's make the most of it," You winked and pat his shoulder.

The rest was history. You made sure Steve had the best birthday he could've possibly asked for despite half the population being wiped out. Everything was good for a while. Five years. Everything was as good as it could be. For you, it kind of felt normal. You didn't have anyone you were attached to go in the snap. The people you had now, grew important to you in the last five years.

But Scott Lang came and shook up your entire world with the whole time travel concept. While they were trying to recruit Tony, you sat with Morgan on your lap. Your leg bouncing up and down was fun for the child but you and Steve knew your brain was working overtime; your anxiety was running wild.

"Hey, what's going on in that pretty little head of yours?" He asked and pecked the top of your head.

"Oh nothing. I'm just..." You sighed. "Thinking about all the people we're going to get back. Our new normal will change but... at least everyone will be back," You lied easily. You knew you had succeeded when he gave you a small smile.

"You'll be able to meet Bucky," He hummed with genuine hope.

"Finally, my assassin idol," You chuckled and shook your head.

"What's an ass?" Morgan asked and looked up at you.

"Don't worry about it, Little Stark," You told her and held her close.

You stayed at Tony's while the other three left to go back to the compound. You sat in Tony's workspace in an office chair that spun, wanting to stay distracted from your inner quarrels.

"What's up, Kid? The compound was too overwhelming?"

"Underwhelming, actually. There's nothing to do, so all I do is think. And after the news we received today, I-I don't really want to think," You told him honestly.

"What's worrying you about time travel? Old demons?"

"If there's a way for Steve to go back to Peggy," You started but stopped so you could breathe. The idea of losing Steve just took the air out of your lungs. You put your hand on the base of your neck and softly pinched at the skin to remind yourself this was reality. "He won't lose the opportunity to do so-"

"I think that might've changed-"

"Is there a way... to maybe... a-act like I didn't happen? I don't want to face him making that decision. I already know what he's going to choose and I don't want to be here for it," You practically begged, you leaned toward him trying to get him to see your desperation.

"You want me to make sure you don't exist so you don't have to deal with your problems? Yeah, no. There's a reason you're here," He said as he waved his hands, looking at a design. "Your problems will go away and you'll be happy again. This pain doesn't last forever, I know they must have taught you that at your little spy academy."

"Gosh you're such a dad these days," You mumbled and slumped in the chair, defeated.

"My greatest accomplishment, if I do say so myself. But spend the night, we have a long day ahead of us."

Tony was right. The next day was the longest day you've ever lived through. It was physically draining but also emotionally. You couldn't get the thought of Steve leaving you out of your head, so you decided to shoot him before he shot you. A typical assassin habit.

Five years of your life gone. You didn't even get in the shower before you walked into Steve's room at the old Avengers tower. The newest compound was turned into rubble and luckily, Tony still had this space available. You quietly knocked before letting yourself in and your eyes immediately went to his nightstand where his compass was open and facing him. You sighed softly and looked at him, defeated.

"Hey, what's wrong? It's been a great day. Everyone's back and nobody died. It's a great day for us!" He rambled, worried, and sat up.

He sat at the edge of his bed and put his hands out for you to take. But you shook your head and took a step back. You looked at the compass quickly before looking back at him.

"Go be with her," You said softly.

"What–?"

"When you return the stones, go back to her, Steve. I have the rest of my life to heal a broken heart but you-you only have one chance," You said as your voice cracked. You cleared your throat and tried to turn the assassin back on. "You only have one chance to be with the love of your life. Take it," You now spoke confidently.

You went with him the next day; you promised to be there for moral support and so you could meet Bucky.

"Bucky, this is Y/N. Y/N, this is Bucky, your 'assassin idol,'" He chuckled. "Y/N's been keeping me afloat these last five years. And Bucky's kept me afloat most of my life. You two will get along well."

Bucky gave you a small smile as if to thank you for being there for Steve. You returned the smile before turning back to Steve. You assumed he and Bucky already said their goodbyes before you got there and now it was your turn.

"I'll be okay, Steve," You assured him and held his face in your hands.

"I know, you're beyond resilient. This is not easy for me at all and it's tearing me apart. I've learned that where I want to be isn't necessarily where I need to be but sometimes they just line up that way. Sometimes where I want to be is exactly where I need to b-"

"Okay that's enough," You stopped him. You didn't want to hear him choose Peggy over you. You wanted to get out of here as soon as possible.

He nodded and kissed your forehead one last time. You watched Steve walk over to the platform and you looked at him intently, longingly.

"How are you two okay with this?" You heard Tony from behind.

"What're you doing here?" You asked him, surprise in your voice but you kept your eyes on Steve.

"I'm your moral support. You here for him but you need someone here for you. Steve called me; in case something went wrong I'd be here for you," He explained and stood next to you, a hand on your shoulder.

You shook your head and crossed your arms over your chest.

"Well, assassins are good at letting things go. This is nothing to me," You huffed out the lie, and turned around as Steve pressed the button for the helmet. "See you guys around."

It took you three and a half hours to get to Ithaca from Tony's house. You went three and a half hours without looking at your phone and when you finally crashed on the couch and took a peek, you let out an exasperated sigh.

Tony: He stayed

—

You tossed out yet another party invitation from Tony before sitting at the island in your kitchen.

Y/N: drop Morgan off before the party

Tony: you're seriously not coming ????

Y/N: I'm seriously not coming

Y/N: morgan > party

Y/N: see you when you get here, dweeb

Tony: 🙄

It's been a year since Tony told you Steve stayed here. It's been a year since Thanos was defeated and what better way to celebrate than a party. You've spent a whole year avoiding parties because you knew Steve would be there. He tried contacting you after he stayed, but you ignored all the texts and calls, even when he called from Bucky's phone.

You let him go and he stayed. It embarrassed you that you easily gave up someone who so clearly wanted you. You thought he decided Peggy was the one but you read the situation all wrong. Where he wanted to be and where needed to be was with you and you felt like an idiot for not realizing that.

But Tony figured if you were going to avoid the parties, you might as well watch Morgan, which, honestly, felt more like a reward than a punishment.

"Morgan, tell the loser bye," You hummed to her and took her bags from Tony.

"Bye Loser," She laughed while hugging Tony.

"Maguna, why do you listen to her?" He chuckled and ruffled her hair.

"She's my favorite aunt," She shrugged.

"Well, who else was supposed to be your favorite? Natasha?" You teased and held your hand out for her to take.

"I like Wan-"

"Gosh Kid, your standards are unbelievably low. Wanda? Really?" You cut her off and made a face at her.

You brought her inside your apartment and watched her kick off her shoes and get comfortable, this was nothing new to her. You set her bags down by the guest room (which might as well be her room) before walking over and sitting on the couch.

"So, how's school?" You asked.

"Fun! We have baby butterflies in our classroom!"

"Caterpillars?"

"Mhm," She hummed and climbed on the couch. "Uncle Steve picks me up sometimes. And you'll never guess what he said."

"What did he say, Kid?"

"Guess!"

"Uh, I don't know," You shrugged and clapped your hands together. "You're his favorite niece?"

"No silly! He said he misses you," She smiled and poked your cheek.

"Mmh, I bet," You mumbled and blushed a bright red.

"Why are you turning red?"

"Am not!"

"Well, I think it's time for you to have a baby, so you should talk to him."

"A baby... with Steve?"

"Yep!"

You shook your head, "don't hold your breath on that one."

"And you can name her Morgan too!"

"No thanks," You shook your head and she huffed.

"You remind me of my dad."

"Thank you? I think?"

And this is usually how it went. Tony threw a party and you stayed home and watched Morgan all night. She was great company and she always made you wonder what you and Steve's lives would've looked like if you didn't let him go.

You probably would've found a house in the country somewhere. Sitting on the couch with a newborn in your arms as Steve fixed you a sandwich. Going back and forth with Little Stark on FaceTime about why you didn't name your baby "Morgan." But if you knew Steve, which you thought you did, you knew he would've wanted to marry you first. He'd strive for the most perfect life he could get.

The next invitation you got was for Morgan's birthday and you knew you couldn't miss it. You sighed and texted Tony.

Y/N: will there be alcohol at this party?

Tony: It's a party for kids !!!

Tony: Of course there's going to be alcohol

Y/N: Morgan is gonna be the only kid there...

Tony: Well if everyone got their acts together ... there would be more kids

Tony: For example, Bruce and Nat could adopt ????? Thor and the scientist girl maybe ???? One day ??

Y/N: you forgot clint. we forgot clint has 3 kids

Tony: Honestly? I like to pretend they're agents because how could he not tell us about them !??

Tony: But how could we forget Y/N and Steve ???

Y/N: yeah, you're officially blocked. bye. tell morgan and pep I love them

Tony: See you soon 😘

You arrived at the Stark home and sucked in a breath as you pulled in next to Steve's bike. You exhaled shakily and tapped the steering wheel before running a hand through your hair.

"Okay, relax. You're ready for this. It's just Steve. He's seen your asshole before," You mumbled to yourself and nodded.

You got out the car and grabbed the bags from the trunk. You looked at the house and sighed. It was a cute house. It was a family house and it was everything you've ever wanted since you met Steve.

You walked up to the front door and opened it.

"Little Stark?" You called out and walked into the house, straight into the living room, only to be met by Tony.

"Look who crawled out from under her rock!" Tony laughed and walked over to pull you into a hug.

"I'm only here because I love Morgan. Now where is she? And where's my shot?" You laughed with him and hugged back.

"'Little Stark' is in the backyard with the other kids... well the agents," He said and pulled away from the hug. He kept an arm around your shoulder and walked you to the backyard. "Let me know if you feel uncomfortable and I'll get you out of here faster than you can say 'I love Tony,'" He whispered to you as you saw your other friends sitting in the yard. But Steve was nowhere to be found.

"Is that the code word? Isn't it supposed to be something discrete? People will definitely know something's wrong with me if I said that."

"You're annoying."

"Can you get me a drink? Maybe a shot of 1942?"

"Auntie Y/N!" Morgan yelled and ran to you.

You dropped the bags in your hands and pulled Morgan into a big hug.

"Hi Little Stark! Happy Birthday!" You smiled and spun around a couple of times as you kept her tucked in your arms. You were so occupied with the birthday girl you didn't notice Tony walk off.

"Thank you! What did you get me?" She asked once you set her down. You kept your arms on her shoulders so she wouldn't feel too dizzy.

You laughed and reached for the gift bag with her present. You handed it to her and watched as she opened it.

"Wow! A Nerf gun," She hummed happily as she took it out the bag.

"I thought maybe you could start training. What're you, like six?"

"Y/N! Training?" You heard Pepper.

"What? You're never too young to learn," You chuckled and turned the face her. "How are you, Pep?"

"Much better now than I know you're actually alive and Tony wasn't bringing our daughter to some random nanny," She teased and pulled you into a hug that you returned.

"Yes, I'm alive and well. Waiting for Tony to bring me my drink," You mumbled. "Oh! And I brought the kids candy."

As the mention of candy, Clint's three little ones came running over.

"Hello Mini Clints! Yes, I bought you guys candy, it's in the-"

You were caught off by them and Morgan running off with the candy.

"I-okay."

"Come! Natasha's been hoping you'd come," Pepper said and ushered you over to your former teammates (four out of the six original Avengers) and Laura.

"Y/N!" They all cheered making you blush.

"Hi guys," You said softly and gave a small wave.

"We missed you," Nat smiled and stood from her seat at the picnic table. She hugged you tightly and you laughed.

"I missed you guys too," You smiled and rubbed her back.

"How have you been?" She asked.

"Uh, I've been okay. Pretty good. Honestly? I miss sparring with you. I might have to make a trip to the new compound Tony built so we can go a few rounds," You said and backed away.

"Me, you, and Bucky?" She suggested and you nodded in agreement.

"Y/N?" You heard from behind you. The voice caused your body to visibly tense and everyone at the table gave you a comforting smile.

"Hey... Steve," You said gently as you turned around to face him, but your eyes looking at your feet. "How are you?"

"Better now," He nodded and let out a breath.

"Well that's good. I'm gonna go see what's holding up Tony with my drink. I'll be back," You excused yourself and walked back into the house quickly.

You walked downstairs to the basement where you knew the bar was. And surprise surprise, it was completely untouched. You sighed and went behind the bar to get a bottle and poured yourself a shot.

You couldn't believe you thought you were ready to face Steve. At the sight of him you bolted and you could barely get a conversation in. It wasn't off-brand for you to run away from your problems. But you knew you couldn't just leave the party so you just sat there at the bar. You didn't even know how long you were sitting there until you looked over at the clock.

"Oh wow," You mumbled and took maybe your sixth shot. You stopped counting after a while.

"So this is where you've been this whole time?" Tony sighed and sat next to you.

"Avoiding Captain America," You nodded.

"Technically, he's not Captain America anymore. Just boring Steve Rogers."

"Oh yeah, that's very boring," You scoffed and poured yourself another shot.

"Someone's gonna have to drive you home?"

"Yes please," You nodded. You downed the shot without flinching, causing Tony to shake his head in fake disappointment. "Okay, I'm gonna go talk to him. Wish me luck?"

"You don't need luck, he still loves you. He's upstairs in the kitchen," He pats your shoulder and stands from the stool.

He walked upstairs and you followed him until you spotting Steve in the kitchen.

You cleared your throat, "hey."

He looked up from his phone and smiled at you.

"Hey."

You walked over to him and we're genuinely surprised you didn't fall over. You were both leaned against the counter, he was facing you and you had the perfect view of the picnic table where you saw everyone watching you.

"Tony told me you'd be in here," You said shyly, attempting to spark a conversation.

"Yeah," He nodded. "Got tired of looking for you. The house is nothing like the Avengers compound but it's still a bit big."

"Yeah, but it's small for Tony," You smiled and watched as Tony stood on the picnic table.

"I just want to say happy birthday to Morgan! Besides me, she's the greatest thing to happen to any of you. I also think we should thank her because, without her, Y/N would never leave the house-"

"He loooves an audience," You shook your head and laughed. "There's only- one, two, three, eight adults here besides him. H-He didn't have to stand on the table and give a speech."

"He was right though. You only leave the house if it's for Morgan," Steve commented and turned from looking at Tony back to you.

"This time it was for Morgan and you," You admitted to him. "Do you mind walking me out, we can t-talk on the way to the car? Pleaseee Rogers?" You begged, drunkenly stumbling upon your words.

"Yeah, I'll walk you out," He nodded after thinking for what seemed like a minute to you. It was like he was trying to assess the situation, see if it was a good idea.

He takes your hand in his and leads you toward the front of the house and out on the front porch.

"M-Morgan says you miss me but I need proof," You blurted out. You've been wanting to know if he missed you ever since Morgan brought it up and the alcohol gave you the courage to speak up.

"I never said that," He shook his head and looked at the sunset, avoiding your eyes.

You tilted your head and looked at him with an annoyed expression.

"I-I came all this way to see you and you're lying to me. I c-can tell when you're lying, Rogers, I spent half a decade with you."

"Well, some might say we were only together for five hours," He said to try to deflect, causing you to frown.

It must've been the alcohol because you felt your eyes well up. This was overwhelming to you; you were holding your ex's hand while being emotionally vulnerable and drunk and he couldn't even take you seriously. It was frustrating.

"You're s-still important to me, Rogers. I still love you and I still need you. I d-don't act like it, but I do. If I didn't let you go, we'd probably have all of this right now," You blabbered and used your arms to gesture to Tony's house and little family as you let a tear fall down your cheek.

This wasn't like you at all, this was something that wasn't a part of your assassin training but when it came to Steve, all of that training went out the window.

"Tired of being scared to run i-into you. I hate parties, and you know that but I love Morgan and being with you and I knew you'd be here. W-wanted to see you finally. We can hash everything out later. I just- I just wanna finally go home, Rogers," You spoke with desperation.

You were desperate for him to hear you, understand you, and take you seriously. You didn't want to leave here without him; this wasn't your initial plan but being in his presence changed that.

"You're so drunk calling me 'Rogers,'" He chuckled and shook his head, lovingly.

"Please Steve."

"Let's head home."

[AN: hopefully tumblr decides to let me post this without being shadow banned. I’ve been trying to post this for like a month]

[shih-coulda-had-it]

Sorahiko is a jealous dad with his sunflower son's friends and Nana is trying to calm him down, I'm completely sure that happened 👀👀

/rubs hands slowly/ This might necessitate Sorahiko wanting to bond with Toshinori, anon. For all we know, he might have approved Toshinori lone-wolfing it at the beginning. He certainly doesn’t think that way by the time we reach the Shie Hassaikai Arc — he was, I think, a factor in Izuku’s internship?? Don’t quote me on that — but I wouldn’t put it past Sorahiko to think that teenager Toshinori shouldn’t drag people into his ‘delusions of grandeur.’

Anyway! This is yet another entry into the NanaLives!AU. For the last bit, just know that Nana survives All for One, fled to the States with Toshinori, and Sorahiko found and adopted Kotarou before joining them.

//

This is the third week in a row that Sorahiko’s found the dumb dandelion-haired brat underfoot at his and Nana’s agency. Yagi is still dressed in his black uniform, the one that clearly marks him as a junior high student, and he looks like any bright, diligent kid. Kenta, the agency’s hapless receptionist, sends Sorahiko a pleading look.

Sorahiko knows it’s not a ‘please get him out of here’ look, because it didn’t even take Yagi a goddamn day to charm the civilian staffers. No, what Kenta is mentally begging Sorahiko for is to not make a snarky comment. 

So what if there aren’t any official rules against civilians in agencies? What if Yagi has wormed his way into Nana’s good graces, to the point where she’s already considering making him her successor?

Doesn’t explain why a student has so much time to spend at a small pro-hero agency. 

“Torino-san!” says the brat cheerfully. He’s carrying a stack of files in his twiggy arms, looking ready to drop it all and assist Sorahiko. “Hi! Oshishou said you were coming in late today!”

Sorahiko squints, bleary. It’s just too many exclamation points for someone who’s just woken up from an afternoon nap. The front door swings shut behind him. Sorahiko hasn’t changed into his gear yet, he’s kinda hungry, and he’s being overwhelmed by a kid who’s taken Nana’s philosophy to heart.

“It’s not a training day for you,” he grunts, and moves forward, brushing unceremoniously past Yagi.

“Every day is training!” Undeterred by Sorahiko’s grouchiness, the brat trails behind and lectures Sorahiko about dedication of all things, and new things oshishou tells me about, I’m learning all the time, I’m so grateful to be here—Sorahiko lets the chatter wash over him, unwilling to cross the line of bullying a child just yet.

“Sky Drop,” Sorahiko says, opening the door into his and Nana’s private office. They used to keep their workspaces separate, and then a month into that, caught each other sneaking out the window (Nana) and snoozing over the paperwork (Sorahiko).

“Oshishou, I have the files!”

Nana looks up from her desk, looking frazzled. “Oh, thank you, Yagi-shonen. Gran Torino, hey, how was the nap?”

“Too short.” Sorahiko watches Yagi bounce to Nana’s desk, hand her the files, and vibrate expectantly in place. Youthful eagerness. It tires Sorahiko just witnessing it, and he makes eye contact with Nana, trying to communicate, ‘I can’t believe this kid.’ She glares at him for a brief second, then turns to Yagi.

“Do you have anything you need to study?” she asks.

“Tests are easy,” the brat says. He scuffs the heel of one sneaker. “I can test, oshishou, but I just don’t like, um…”

“Paperwork?”

Yagi brightens. Ugh, they’re kindred spirits, these two. Sorahiko can’t believe Nana’s letting him get away with the idea that a Pillar of Society isn’t going to have to deal with all the generated paperwork. “Yeah! It’s all in my head, so I’m free to do whatever, oshishou.”

“All in your head,” Sorahiko mimics. Look at that, he is willing to bully a child. Nana can kick his ass later, when the ball of sunshine isn’t setting fire to his dignity. “I can guarantee you, you aren’t ready for the written exam for U.A. Go. Shoo. Come back in five minutes.”

He only adds that last part because Yagi had wilted, drooping at the order to leave like Sorahiko had been responsible for sucking up all the nutrients and will to live, and Sorahiko doesn’t need to be guilt-tripped by a thirteen-year-old child.

In any case, Yagi perks up. “Okay! What can I do?”

Fortunately, Nana intervenes. Maybe she could predict that Sorahiko was going to send Yagi out to fetch taiyaki. “There’s a table tennis set in the backroom. It’s at the top of the metal shelves, you can’t miss it. Bring it back here, and I’ll show you a trick for improving hand-eye coordination, okay?”

“Okay!” And off he goes, shooting past where Sorahiko is still lounging against the doorframe. There’s a draft of cold air, and then Sorahiko is finally stepping inside and closing the door. The room isn’t sound-proofed, but they’ve got a solid minute before Toshinori scrounges up the paddles and the elusive white ball. 

Their desks are technically on opposite sides of the room. Sorahiko likes to sit by the door, and terrorize visitors (mostly Commission agents) by standing up when they enter, startling them backwards and unnerving them into honesty. Nana sits in plain-view of the door.

He approaches her desk and leans his hip against the edge. “Why is here,” he asks plaintively. “Doesn’t he have friends?”

“Don’t be a dick,” Nana chides. “You can connect the dots yourself.”

“He had the confidence to pester you.”

“Sorahiko,” she says, stern.

“Nana,” he whines. Sorahiko might be losing heart in this argument, because he can connect the dots. The dots are telling him that he’s being an asshole to a previously Quirkless teenager. “I can only deal with one extrovert at a time.”

“You’ll get attached to him,” Nana says with great confidence. She’s been saying this for the past three weeks; the novelty of Nana having an apprentice has worn off, and now Sorahiko is even more confused as to why Recovery Girl took the position as U.A.’s school nurse. Nana leans forward and pokes his elbow. “You got attached to me, after all.”

“Hm.”

“I think he’ll make lots of friends at U.A.,” she adds, with less confidence.

“Hm,” Sorahiko hums again. It’s likely. U.A. usually feels like the chance to start over a social life; the influx of students outside of Musutafu meant new faces. But Sorahiko knew better than most that old habits died hard; years after graduation, his closest friend is still Shimura Nana, and everyone else (save for Chiyo, who was more willing to ally with Nana and force him into socializing) remains at arms’ length.

“Found you!” Yagi’s exultant cry travels through the whole agency. Sorahiko resigns himself to Yagi’s effusively loud existence, and Nana pats his wrist.

“If you needle him about overstaying his welcome, I’ll kick your ass,” she reminds him pleasantly.

“When you go on full maternity leave, I’m the one stuck with him,” Sorahiko shoots back.

“I will make Yagi-shonen run so many errands…” She sounds wistful, as if the prescribed rest from work hasn’t been haunting her for days. “When I can’t bend over and get the tea from the bottom shelf, I’ll just tell Yagi-shonen to help this poor pregnant lady, oh, her gigantic stomach…”

The joke works; Sorahiko doubles over in laughter.

//

Yagi Toshinori does not make any close friends through high school. Instead, he spends more and more time at the agency, helping with the reports and patrols, desperate to ease the burdens weighing Nana and Sorahiko down.

“He’s supposed to have a childhood,” Nana mutters. They’ve made a stop at the rooftop, and she is staring blackly at the blue and pink neon glow of the city. “He’s—supposed to be irresponsible, and goofing off with friends, and getting terrible grades as a consequence for not studying.”

Sorahiko studies the passing cars, and he keeps his mouth shut.

Toshinori’s constant presence at the office helps. He’s a quick study at paperwork, for all that he professes to hate it, and just having him there lightens the mood. They’ve tried kicking him out for his own good, pointedly reminding him about the necessity of networking and downtime. And like clockwork, he shows up the next day.

It soothes something in Nana to see her successor, hale and hearty. Sorahiko can appreciate Toshinori for that.

“He does talk to his classmates, right? You’d know if he was being bullied?”

Sorahiko rolls his eyes. “You think I would keep that from you? His classmates worship the ground he walks on. He’s just standoffish, I guess.”

“Oh no,” Nana grieves. “Of all the things he learned from you, Sorahiko.”

“From me?” he says, outraged.

“I know I told him to make friends!” she continues. “God, maybe if we weren’t operating outside the Hero Association’s purview, he’d bring them to the agency, and he could finally brag about his experiences working with us…”

“He’s fine, Nana. I think—” his throat seizes for a second. I think he knows he has to be All Might alone. It’s true, but Sorahiko doesn’t need to rub the fact in Nana’s face. If entering U.A. is like wiping your social slate clean, then entering the pro-hero workforce is like exchanging your life for an entirely new tablet. Sorahiko’s luckier than most that Nana was willing to cling right back, and that Chiyo demanded to be their GP.

“You think,” Nana prompts.

“Toshinori’s as emotionally-balanced as any teenager can be,” Sorahiko says. “Don’t mess with his social life until we’re out of the clear.”

//

This isn’t a conversation Nana thought she’d be having with Sorahiko, of all people. But he’d been biting poor David Shield’s head off during dinner, and even Kotarou has caught onto the inexplicable animosity. Fortunately, Kotarou takes his cues towards strangers more from his adopted big brother than Sorahiko.

Toshinori is looking at her in askance, when Nana decides David’s suffered enough and politely excuses herself and Sorahiko from the table.

“We’ll be back with dessert,” she reassures the kids. “Don’t worry about it.”

“No kissing,” says Kotarou petulantly. “You always forget the time when you’re kissing tou-chan.”

Nana fake-gasps, smiling even as she scolds. “Kota! Not in front of guests. You wouldn’t want me telling Dave what happened the first time I took you flying, would you?” Kotarou reddens like a tomato, and mimes zipping his mouth. Ah, a Sorahiko-tic. Her heart warms.

“It’s okay,” Dave says.

“Yes, it would be nice to gain information, wouldn’t it, Dave?”

She grabs Sorahiko’s wrist and marches him to the kitchen. He goes willingly, but Nana knows he’s just shot one more suspicious glare over his shoulder. And when they’re standing in the kitchen, ostensibly retrieving the ice cream bucket and assorted bowls and spoons, Sorahiko crosses his arms and scrunches his face into a scowl.

“What is with you?” she whispers.

“Look at him!” Sorahiko whispers back, gesturing at his face. “He’s a smarmy little prick trying to figure out what’s behind All Might!”

“He’s asking very normal things, as expected from very normal engineering students,” says Nana. “You remember the Support students. David isn’t being any more invasive than they are.”

“He’s Californian.” The disdain drips from Sorahiko’s voice. “He’s obsessed with bodybuilders in the spotlight, like that, that one governor they had—”

“What, was he eyeing you too?”

Sorahiko dismisses her attempted derailing. “The boy’s ogling Toshinori like a piece of meat, he’s not going to look at some old-timer.”

“It’s a mutual attraction,” says Nana, certain of this, at least. “I think Toshinori likes nerds.”

He makes a face.

“He gets that from me,” adds Nana mischievously, and she leans in to kiss the affectionate outrage off Sorahiko’s face.

[weyassinebentalb]

Gaza Conflict Stokes 'Identity Crisis' for Young American Jews

Dan Kleinman does not know quite how to feel.

As a child in the New York City borough of Brooklyn, he was taught to revere Israel as the protector of Jews everywhere, the “Jewish superman who would come out of the sky to save us” when things got bad, he said.

It was a refuge in his mind when white supremacists in Charlottesville, Virginia, chanted “Jews will not replace us,” or kids in college grabbed his shirt, mimicking a “South Park” episode to steal his “Jew gold.”

But his feelings have grown muddier as he has gotten older, especially now as he watches violence unfold in Israel and Gaza. His moral compass tells him to help the Palestinians, but he cannot shake an ingrained paranoia every time he hears someone make anti-Israel statements.

“It is an identity crisis,” Kleinman, 33, said. “Very small in comparison to what is happening in Gaza and the West Bank, but it is still something very strange and weird.”

As the violence escalates in the Middle East, turmoil of a different kind is growing across the Atlantic. Many young American Jews are confronting the region’s long-standing strife in a very different context, with very different pressures, from their parents’ and grandparents’ generations.

The Israel of their lifetime has been powerful, no longer appearing to some to be under constant existential threat. The violence comes after a year when mass protests across the United States have changed how many Americans see issues of racial and social justice. The pro-Palestinian position has become more common, with prominent progressive members of Congress offering impassioned speeches in defense of the Palestinians on the House floor. At the same time, reports of anti-Semitism are rising across the country.

Divides between some American Jews and Israel’s right-wing government have been growing for more than a decade, but under the Trump administration those fractures that many hoped would heal became a crevasse. Politics in Israel have also remained fraught, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s long-tenured government forged allegiances with Washington. For young people who came of age during the Trump years, political polarization over the issue only deepened.

Many Jews in America remain unreservedly supportive of Israel and its government. Still, the events of recent weeks have left some families struggling to navigate both the crisis abroad and the wide-ranging response from American Jews at home. What is at stake is not just geopolitical, but deeply personal. Fractures are intensifying along lines of age, observance and partisan affiliation.

In suburban Livingston, New Jersey, Meara Ashtivker, 38, has been afraid for her father-in-law in Israel, who has a disability and is not able to rush to the stairwell to shelter when he hears the air-raid sirens. She is also scared as she sees people in her progressive circles suddenly seem anti-Israel and anti-Jewish, she said.

Ashtivker, whose husband is Israeli, said she loved and supported Israel, even when she did not always agree with the government and its actions.

“It’s really hard being an American Jew right now,” she said. “It is exhausting and scary.”

Some young, liberal Jewish activists have found common cause with Black Lives Matter, which explicitly advocates for Palestinian liberation, concerning others who see that allegiance as anti-Semitic.

The recent turmoil is the first major outbreak of violence in Israel and Gaza for which Aviva Davis, who graduated this spring from Brandeis University, has been “socially conscious.”

“I’m on a search for the truth, but what’s the truth when everyone has a different way of looking at things?” Davis said.

Alyssa Rubin, 26, who volunteers in Boston with IfNotNow, a network of Jewish activists who want to end Jewish American support for Israeli occupation, has found protesting for the Palestinian cause to be its own form of religious observance.

She said she and her 89-year-old grandfather ultimately both want the same thing, Jewish safety. But “he is really entrenched in this narrative that the only way we can be safe is by having a country,” she said, while her generation has seen that “the inequality has become more exacerbated.”

In the protest movements last summer, “a whole new wave of people were really primed to see the connection and understand racism more explicitly,” she said, “understanding the ways racism plays out here, and then looking at Israel/Palestine and realizing it is the exact same system.”

But that comparison is exactly what worries many other American Jews, who say the history of white American slaveholders is not the correct frame for viewing the Israeli government or the global Jewish experience of oppression.

At Temple Concord, a Reform synagogue in Syracuse, New York, teenager after teenager started calling Rabbi Daniel Fellman last week, wondering how to process seeing Black Lives Matter activists they marched with last summer attack Israel as “an apartheid state.”

“The reaction today is different because of what has occurred with the past year, year and a half, here,” Fellman said. “As a Jewish community, we are looking at it through slightly different eyes.”

Nearby at Sha’arei Torah Orthodox Congregation of Syracuse, teenagers were reflecting on their visits to Israel and on their family in the region.

“They see it as Hamas being a terrorist organization that is shooting missiles onto civilian areas,” Rabbi Evan Shore said. “They can’t understand why the world seems to be supporting terrorism over Israel.”

In Colorado, a high school senior at Denver Jewish Day School said he was frustrated at the lack of nuance in the public conversation. When his social media apps filled with pro-Palestinian memes last week, slogans like “From the river to the sea” and “Zionism is a call for an apartheid state,” he deactivated his accounts.

“The conversation is so unproductive, and so aggressive, that it really stresses you out,” Jonas Rosenthal, 18, said. “I don’t think that using that message is helpful for convincing the Israelis to stop bombing Gaza.”

Compared with their elders, younger American Jews are overrepresented on the ends of the religious affiliation spectrum: a higher share are secular, and a higher share are Orthodox.

Ari Hart, 39, an Orthodox rabbi in Skokie, Illinois, has accepted the fact that his Zionism makes him unwelcome in some activist spaces where he would otherwise be comfortable. College students in his congregation are awakening to that same tension, he said. “You go to a college campus and want to get involved in anti-racism or social justice work, but if you support the state of Israel, you’re the problem,” he said.

Hart sees increasing skepticism in liberal Jewish circles over Israel’s right to exist. “This is a generation who are very moved and inspired by social justice causes and want to be on the right side of justice,” Hart said. “But they’re falling into overly simplistic narratives, and narratives driven by true enemies of the Jewish people.”

Overall, younger American Jews are less attached to Israel than older generations: About half of Jewish adults under 30 describe themselves as emotionally connected to Israel, compared with about two-thirds of Jews over age 64, according to a major survey published last week by the Pew Research Center.

And though the U.S. Jewish population is 92% white, with all other races combined accounting for 8%, among Jews ages 18 to 29 that rises to 15%.

In Los Angeles, Rachel Sumekh, 29, a first-generation Iranian American Jew, sees complicated layers in the story of her own Persian family. Her mother escaped Iran on the back of a camel, traveling by night until she got to Pakistan, where she was taken in as a refugee. She then found asylum in Israel. She believes Israel has a right to self-determination, but she also found it “horrifying” to hear an Israeli ambassador suggest other Arab countries should take in Palestinians.

“That is what happened to my people and created this intergenerational trauma of losing our homeland because of hatred,” she said.

The entire situation feels too volatile and dangerous for many people to even want to discuss, especially publicly.

Violence against Jews is increasingly close to home. Last year the third-highest number of anti-Semitic incidents in the United States were recorded since the Anti-Defamation League began cataloging them in 1979, according to a report released by the civil rights group last month. The ADL recorded more than 1,200 incidents of anti-Semitic harassment in 2020, a 10% increase from the previous year. In Los Angeles, the police are investigating a sprawling attack on sidewalk diners at a sushi restaurant Tuesday as an anti-Semitic hate crime.

Outside Cleveland, Jennifer Kaplan, 39, who grew up in a modern Orthodox family and who considers herself a centrist Democrat and a Zionist, remembered studying abroad at Hebrew University in 2002, and being in the cafeteria minutes before it was bombed. Now she wondered how the Trump era had affected her inclination to see the humanity in others, and she wished her young children were a bit older so she could talk with them about what is happening.

“I want them to understand that this is a really complicated situation, and they should question things,” she said. “I want them to understand that this isn’t just a, I don’t know, I guess, utopia of Jewish religion.”

Esther Katz, the performing arts director at the Jewish Community Center in Omaha, Nebraska, has spent significant time in Israel. She also attended Black Lives Matter protests in Omaha last summer and has signs supporting the movement in the windows of her home.

She has watched with a sense of betrayal as some of her allies in that movement have posted online about their apparently unequivocal support for the Palestinians, and compared Israel to Nazi Germany. “I’ve had some really tough conversations,” said Katz, a Conservative Jew. “They’re not seeing the facts, they’re just reading the propaganda.”

Her three children, who range in age from 7 to 13, are now wary of a country that is for Katz one of the most important places in the world. “They’re like, ‘I don’t understand why anyone would want to live in Israel, or even visit,’” she said. “That breaks my heart.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

© 2021 The New York Times Company 

source https://www.techno-90.com/2021/05/gaza-conflict-stokes-identity-crisis.html

[ruusverd-fandom-blog]

I started this as a reply to another post, but it got super long and went in a bit different direction so I made my own. It probably needs a "read more" but I'm on mobile, so oh well.

Note: I'm talking exclusively about what we see on the screen in the Netflix show here, not the information from the books or games or fanon interpretations.

I think it's interesting that Geralt's supposed emotional constipation and weak social skills only seem to get mentioned in relation to his interactions with Jaskier. Geralt gets along fine for the most part with pretty much everyone else he meets if he wants to (except for his fight with Yen about the wish) and even though he isn't as chatty as his book counterpart, his emotions are generally very clearly conveyed and not inappropriate to whatever situation he's in at the time. There's definitely a lot of trauma and trust issues going on there, but all things considered he's actually a surprisingly functional adult.

I think people assume Geralt is emotionally repressed and socially stunted because he doesn't act like he likes Jaskier or wants him around, but that's only a sign of emotional repression if it isn't true. Watching the show... it looks to me like Geralt genuinely doesn't like Jaskier and doesn't want him around. I'm not going to analyze every scene because this is already going to be really long, but Jaskier gives Geralt very little reason to trust him, let alone like him. It's not a crime or a sign of bad social skills to not want to be friends with someone, particularly someone who doesn't respect you at all. (It definitely is a really bizarre writing choice for both characters since they are supposed to be best friends, but I digress.)

In the very first episode Jaskier is in, he sees Geralt in a tavern, decides all on his own he's going to make him his muse, completely ignores that Geralt isn't interested, gives him some "help" that Geralt didn't ask for and actively objected to, then in later episodes acts like Geralt owes him friendship (and favors, and actual money) in return. He constantly treats Geralt like an idiot who needs Jaskier to run his life. And he does this for literal decades. What part of that was Geralt supposed to interpret as genuine friendship? That's not how a friend would act, even if Jaskier's intentions were good.

And for once let's not pretend his actual intention in writing the song(s) was a selfless desire to help Geralt, at least not entirely. Netflix Jaskier isn't book Dandelion the master poet, celebrated graduate of Oxenfurt and independently famous bard. Netflix Jaskier when we meet him is a young guy who can't even busk in a tavern without having things thrown at him, his songs are that terrible. He latches onto Geralt of Rivia the famous witcher as a potential career boost for himself before he knows Geralt doesn't like to be called the Butcher; he was equally happy to write songs about the Butcher of Blaviken before Geralt punched him. (Also a strange writing choice by the way, Geralt isn't generally the type to punch random strangers for being accidentally insulting. Or even purposefully insulting for that matter.)

People like to talk about how Jaskier made Geralt famous and improved his reputation (which is debatable, I'll get to that in a minute) but I seldom see anyone point out that Jaskier's own professional reputation was entirely built on songs that he attached Geralt's name to without his approval, capitalizing on Geralt's already existing fame to boost his own.

How much the song(s) really helped Geralt is, as I said, debatable. He was clearly already pretty famous if Jaskier recognized him on sight, and the worst instance shown of human prejudice against witchers occurs in episode 1 before the Butcher of Blaviken came to be. In the tavern in Posada he's sitting alone, but he's clearly visible to the whole room and not hiding in his hood like he was in Blaviken, and no one seems hostile towards him for being there. The farmer isn't scared to approach him with a job, and even pays him up front. The Blaviken incident doesn't actually seem on screen to have made Geralt's life noticeably worse than it already was in a practical sense, he just really hates that memory and doesn't like being called a butcher.

The only major difference I can see for Geralt after Jaskier writes his song seems to be that occasionally he gets called White Wolf instead of Butcher (though Butcher is still far more common, at least on screen), and that he now also has a reputation for slaughtering elves, as shown by Calanthe's banquet. Granted the latter likely doesn't hurt his popularity with humans, but Geralt obviously (and rightfully) hates it.

I say again, what part of this is supposed to make Geralt so incredibly indebted to and fond of Jaskier?

There are a lot more instances I could mention, (grabbing the djinn right out of Geralt's hands, trying to use the wishes all for himself and what he chose to wish for, immediately lying about Geralt's feelings to bolster his own reputation when he thinks Geralt just died, I could go on) but the overall impression is that this relationship is really heavily slanted in Jaskier's favor, and Jaskier engages in a lot of controlling behaviors to ensure that he continues to benefit as much as possible, frequently at the expense of Geralt's physical, emotional, and moral comfort. I'm not sure why it's considered "emotionally constipated" for Geralt to be unhappy with this and pretty bluntly tell Jaskier to go away and leave him alone through the whole show.

It's not until episode 6 that Geralt finally snaps and phrases his oft-repeated "go away and leave me alone" so harshly it finally gets through Jaskier's habit of filtering out everything Geralt says. Too harshly maybe, but Geralt has been saying essentially the same thing at every opportunity for 22 years and Jaskier doesn't listen or else just doesn't care. No wonder Geralt finally blew up. It's actually very telling that after so many years Jaskier doesn't even know Geralt well enough to read his moods or warning signs. Maybe Jaskier is the one who actually lacks social skills and/or emotional awareness?

Regardless, I was super turned off by Geralt and Jaskier's relationship in the Netflix show. I wanted so much to like it, but frankly I was relieved when Jaskier finally left in ep 6, for both their sakes. And I felt so bad that I was relieved, because it could have been so much better. If these two are supposed to be friends, the script should have been written so that both Geralt and Jaskier actually like and respect each other and want to be friends, because so far they're just two completely incompatible people. I hope season 2 is better, but given how tv shows usually work my hopes aren't high.

Tl;dr, I don't think the travesty of Geralt and Jaskier's relationship in the Witcher Netflix is due to Geralt being socially inept or emotionally stunted. It's due to the fact these two characters, instead of being written as opposites that attract, are written as a man who deeply hates being taken advantage of, and another man who ceaselessly takes advantage of him. It just doesn't work. Jaskier can't just force or guilt-trip Geralt into being his friend if he doesn't want to, and he's given Geralt precious little reason to want to.

[touchingoldmagic]

Day 8 - Non-Canon Ship

Day 8 of the 30 Day Ghostbusters Challenge! 

Author’s Note: Ray/Egon and Ray/Egon/Peter. SFW, just angst and cuddling. I might work up the nerve to share my NSFW stuff someday but today is not that day...

With only one light on in the lab and a desk lamp on in the bunk room, the firehouse second floor was dark. Ray lingered in the doorway to the lab, watching the stiff back and squared shoulders of the physicist focused on his work. Or at least, the appearance of working.

Awkwardly, Ray couldn't find the words to disturb him and so he stood there in silence.

On days when he was truly focused, Egon wouldn't notice a nuclear war going on in the next room. Tonight was not one of those nights. Ray had a feeling he knew he was there--they were all hyper aware of each other at the moment. (Even subconsciously Ray knew he was keeping an ear out for when the sound of the shower stopped running.) The silence hanging around the room like an odor existed entirely because both of them were bad with words.

A small screwdriver rolled off the top of the table and Egon didn't even make a grab for it. He did however jump when it hit the ground--Ray did too.

"Egon," he blurted out, like the sound had broken some sort of hold on them. The physicist paused but didn't look up. "Egon," he said again, gaining courage and emphasis. He could tell by the tilt of the man's head that he was listening. "I know the lab is how you decompress. I don't mean to interrupt you. But it's late. And we need to get up early and get to the hospital tomorrow. Will you come to bed?"

Egon finally glanced at him and Ray tried very hard not to look like he was pleading.

"Of course," Egon said stiffly. His glasses had been broken earlier and he was wearing his spares. His face was closed down and carefully controlled, a look he only got when he was really upset. "I'm sorry."

"You don't have to apologize." Ray's response was immediate. He shifted his weight. "I should be the one apologizing."

"Unfortunate incidents happen in our line of work. A bad bust is not your fault--"

"I need to watch where I'm going. I didn't think, at the time, that I was taking chances but--"

"Raymond."

Ray's mouth closed with an audible click. Egon left his tools on the desk and came over to his partner and teammate. He frowned as he studied Ray's face. Ray knew he was looking at the road rash across his chin and left cheek from where he'd fallen on the concrete basement floor of the old house they had been in earlier in the day. He'd already checked himself out in the mirror; it was very visible and unfortunately in an awkward place for a bandage. It was going to be a painfully visual reminder of the incident for a while.

"It looks worse than it is," Ray promised him, voice low.

Egon nodded. "I wish to point out again that Winston is not seriously injured and is only being kept overnight for observation due to his concussion."

Ray sighed. "I know." The knowledge didn't make it any better.

Egon hesitated, then gestured toward the bunk room and Ray turned and retreated there with relief. After this disaster of a day, his only goal was to make sure everyone was okay and then to (hopefully) sleep.

They changed into their night clothes in silence. Ray glanced anxiously over at the physicist more than once, but Egon's gaze was blank and unreadable.

Ray said quietly, "Are you okay?"

His tone broke through Egon's thoughts and he met Ray's worried gaze with his own, attempting to be reassuring. "I'm not upset." He changed the subject by asking, "Do you wish to push two of the beds together?"

Ray brightened immediately. They still had separate beds, mostly because they all tried to keep a measure of professionalism in their work space. Bad days sometimes made it a hard choice to live with. "If you don't mind," he replied.

"Quite the opposite. I'm also aware in these situations that you sleep poorly if you can't reassure yourself of our presence."

Ray colored with embarrassment. "Well," he said, but then didn't have anything to finish it with.

They pushed two of the beds together and Ray collapsed onto them. Physically, he hurt all over. Mentally his brain wouldn't quiet down, and emotionally he was exhausted. It was going to be a long night.

Egon fussed with the arrangement of the blankets (much to the shorter man's amusement), covering Ray before climbing under them himself. Ray gently stole his glasses and set them on the bedside table, since half the time Egon forgot to take them off when he fell asleep.

As usual Egon slept on his back. Ray curled up against his side, allowing himself to relax a marginal amount with his head resting on the other man's shoulder, listening to the steady heartbeat against his ear, reassuring. The shower was still running. Peter had taken a flung metal bucket to the ribs during the bust. He insisted he was fine, but he was taking a while. Ray wasn't going to sleep until he got out.

Egon could feel the tension that still remained in his body. "Would talking about the matter help with your own decompression?" he asked, reusing the word Ray had used earlier.

A sigh gusted from the engineer's lips. "There's not much to say," he muttered.

"You fell," Egon pointed out. "Thankfully without sustaining serious injury."

Ray winced. He couldn't bring himself to add to Egon's statement, with the memory still so vivid. The bust had taken place at a large old house upstate with multiple ghosts, but the first floor hallway had a trap door, unexpectedly propped open (most likely by one of the specters). Ray had leaped back to dodge an attack, but had instead fallen through the open trap door and down the stairs to the small, cold root cellar.

Quick-thinking, Winston had jumped down after Ray, which meant it was Winston who took a rotting two-by-four to the head trying to defend Ray, while he collected himself and tried to get to his feet. Egon and Peter had followed in time to help with the fight, but the small size of the basement left them little room to dodge, and the litter of old wood and other home debris that had been stored down there, ripe for the flinging, meant it was a very nasty battle. They had all been knocked down and flung around before it was finally over.

Into the silence of the bunk room, Ray finally muttered, "I'm fine with the dangers of the job, Egon, but it's different when someone else gets hurt because I screwed up."

"This is not the first time it's happened," Egon pointed out. They had all had their share of busts gone wrong.

"I know, but it doesn't get any easier."

"This is true." Egon cleared his throat. "Seeing you and Winston disappear... worried me greatly."

"I know. I'm right here." He leaned over and kissed Egon's cheek gently, careful of bruises.

None of them had escaped the house without injuries, though only Winston had to be hospitalized. The first aid kit in Ecto had been enough to patch them up while they waited for the ambulance. Then, after many hours waiting at the hospital just to be told Winston would be kept overnight, they had finally gotten home very late.

"So what were you working on?" Ray asked, hoping for something to discuss that was a little less emotionally harrowing.

Egon was happy to launch into an explanation of his latest experiment, and Ray was happy to have something to fill the silence. Slowly he relaxed further, letting it sink in that everyone was as safe as possible at the moment. Egon's voice was slower and quieter by the time his explanation concluded. Soon his eyes were closed and Ray thought he was probably asleep, though it was hard to tell. The physicist had a very slow, steady breathing rate even when awake.

At one point the sound of the shower stopped and Ray listened intently for several long quiet minutes until it was replaced with the whir of the hair dryer. Ray waited, slipping in and out of light sleep. Finally there was silence and the bathroom door opened. He roused from his light doze at the sound of footsteps approaching his side of the bed.

"We need a bigger bed," Peter announced.

Ray objected sleepily, "I like it when we're closer together."

Peter snorted. "Of course you do, blanket hog."

"Hey, I do not--!"

Egon covered his mouth. "Shh." The sound was a mumble and the physicist sounded mostly asleep.

Ray grinned apologetically and kissed the hand that was trying to block his lips from moving. "Sorry, Egie." He scooted over closer to Egon so Peter could crawl in. The psychologist turned out the bedside lamp and then did so, sliding a possessive arm over Ray's hips.

"Are you actually going to sleep, or is this an all-night discussion situation?" Peter's warm voice ghosted across the hairs on Ray's neck. He sounded as exhausted as Ray felt.

"I can sleep if you're here," Ray promised him.

Peter was quiet a moment. Ray's sincere attachments to his partners and willingness to say so still caught him off guard. Then his flippant tone returned and he said, "Good to hear." His arm tightened around Ray.

There was silence in the darkened room for seven seconds. Then, "I swear from now on I'll be more car--"

"Ray!"

"Raymond."

"Right. Sorry."

[toast-the-unknowing]

11, 14, 18, because I'm greedy :P!

I DID YOURS LAST BECAUSE YOU’RE SO GREEDY. Or because I knew 18 was going to take a while, one of those two.

11. If you could only write angst, fluff, or smut for the rest of your life, which would it be?

I often have a little angst in my fluff, or a little fluff/humor/comfort in my angst, and either some angst or some fluff in my smut, so it's not even just a question of "you don't get to write the others" it's that "you don't get to write hybrids," that's the part that makes this question tricky. I suppose of the three genres, the one that I most often write in its purest form is fluff, because that lends itself to comedy better than the other two, and I like writing comedy. So I’d have to say fluff. But I wouldn’t like saying fluff.

14. If you were stuck on a desert island with only two characters, which would you pick?

Blue for being practical and hard-working and Henry for company/morale boost.

A part of this consideration was picking two characters that get along well with each other, because oof, the last thing you need on a desert island is drama.

18. What is a line/scene you’re really proud of? Give us the DVD commentary for that scene.

I worked really fucking hard on it all will fall, fall right into place and I am really fucking proud of the whole thing, but I think my favorite scene might be the one where Ronan talks to Adam’s mom. So that’s the one you’re getting. I am putting it behind a cut and I am sooooooooo sorry if the cut doesn’t work for people, because it’s long.

Adam's dad is seeing a doctor the next morning; Adam says he might visit in the afternoon, depending on how that goes. His voice is totally flat.

The main reason we don’t get actual dialogue of Adam talking here is just practical, to avoid needing a mini-scene of that conversation, but I do like that it has the effect of distancing us from Adam, stripping some of his agency away from him. So much of this fic is about Adam being disconnected from what’s going on inside his own head, that I like this moment where we take away his voice.

Ronan hopes the nurses will tell Adam that Robert isn't up to visitors, that he got rushed to the ER, that he's dead, so he doesn't leave the hospital after Adam disappears inside of it. He ditches the car in the parking lot and slinks back to main entrance, prepared to pace back and forth for a minute or an hour or the rest of the day.

The hospital visits are set up for a progression where Ronan stays at the hospital longer each time, as the situation wears him down more and more. He’s less and less willing to let Adam out of his sight, but he has to, since that’s one of the very few things Adam actually asks him for.

Except he comes to a dead halt ten feet away from the entrance, because while he was parking, Adam's mom arrived.

Relatively early in working on this fic I had the thought of “oh, FUCK, Ronan’s going to have to talk to Adam’s mom at some point, isn’t he?” It was one of the moments that I was the most interested in writing, so there was a lot of excitement attached to it once the horror cleared up, but my first impression was also correct. I suspected this scene would be an absolute bitch to write and it absolutely was. I worked on this fic a lot while riding my commuter bus and I cannot tell you how many afternoons I spent working on this scene, only to come away with one or two new sentences to show for the entire hour.

He hasn't seen her since that night in LA. She'd caught a flight back the morning after her dinner with Adam, so they hadn't all had to travel together, thank fuck. He doesn't know what he would have done stuck on an airplane with her. He doesn't know what he's going to do now.

The moment of Adam’s mom ambushing him in front of his friends was one of the very first things I knew would happen in this fic; the moment of Adam meeting her for dinner came a bit later, I forget when exactly. It was only MUCH later that I put together that this timeline makes no sense from her point of view. She ambushes him on a Monday; he calls her on either Thursday or Friday. That means she paid for three nights in a hotel or motel, without knowing if Adam was going to get in touch with her (and with more reason to assume he wouldn’t than that he would). I don’t think it’s hard to believe that she would fly out to LA in the first place, once Adam refused to take her calls; it’d be the only way to get in touch with him, and she’d know that the shock of seeing her, and the guilt she could lay on him about how she had to fly all this way because he wouldn’t just talk to her on the phone like a son is supposed to, would be effective manipulation. But it’s hard to buy she’d spend the money staying in LA, and spend the time away from Henrietta when Robert’s condition is so serious.

But I really LIKED the idea of Adam meeting her for dinner, and the scene after dinner is such an essential part of the story – and I don’t think it would have been as effective after just a phone call, although I suppose he’d  have been pretty wrecked after a phone call, too. So I had to make a call on whether a character would do this thing that doesn’t make any practical sense, or change it and risk weakening the story.

Sometimes you have to take something out of a story that you really love, but I generally hold that that’s if the element in question is causing problems within the story itself; e.g. if a joke is really funny but is ruining the tension or the mood of a scene. My own writing philosophy is that good scene work is more important that rigidly holding true to details of reality, but a different writer might have made a different call.

So here is an answer to the question of “when did Adam’s mom go back to Virginia,” whether it’s the right answer or not. And, of course, the answer to “why did she go back on a different day than Adam and Ronan did” is “I didn’t want to ruin this scene by having Ronan spend any time with her before now.”

She spots him at the same moment he spots her. She doesn't have the decency to look away or try to hide. There's something eating at her and she's making up her mind about how nasty she's going to be when she lets it out. Ronan hates that he knows that; Adam twists the corner of his mouth the same way.

I like the idea of Ronan – and, by implication, Adam – noticing the ways that Adam looks like his parents. I also liked having the gesture that reminds Ronan of Adam be a negative one. It ties in with the bit later, of Ronan being aware of Adam’s flaws.

"You just going to stand there all day?" is what she goes with.

"What," Ronan spits, "you think I want to talk to you?"

"You could leave," she suggests. "Better for your eyes than gawking."

"Don't pretend you care. You didn't know I existed a week ago."

"Wouldn't've pictured he'd have someone like you," she agrees, breezy in a way that turns his stomach inside out.

Probably Adam’s mom didn’t know he was bi until a couple night’s before this, when he took her out to dinner – I don’t imagine he would have told her before then, and I imagine there was some awkward “so how has the last decade+ since we stopped abusing you been” conversation during that dinner. Which raises the question of how she and/or Robert feel about Adam being in a relationship with a man, but honestly, I didn’t want to muddy the waters by bringing homophobia into the story. I wanted to deal with the abuse, that was the part that was interesting to me emotionally, which is more or less the approach that canon takes, too. So for “someone like you” I really meant it to be more about “someone with a giant tattoo and a foul mouth” but I suppose it could also be read as “someone with a dick.” In either case she’s intending to be very dismissive of Ronan.

"You don't know anything about him."

"But you know me, is that it? I can see you judging me. You don't know anything."

"I know what you two did to him."

"Is that how he tells it?" she asks, like she isn't interested in an answer. "He makes it sound like any of us had it easy? Three people in that little trailer, never any space, any quiet, never enough of anything. Robert'd work all day and come home and there's the kid getting in the way again, making trouble, telling lies...anyone could lose their temper. I did my best to keep Adam out of the way, but I'm just one woman. He never did learn to listen to someone who knows better."

There’s for sure one time in canon where Robert accuses Adam of lying to him (when he finds Adam’s pay stubs, the night of the concussion) and I feel like there are others, but I may be misremembering. In any case I find it an interesting accusation – because it probably is true at least sometimes, Adam would have to lie to his parents in some situations. But there are probably others where he isn’t lying, and that’s an interesting bit of psychology to me, this idea that his parents might think of him as a fundamentally dishonest person -- because they HAVE to think of him that way, because they cannot reconcile “Adam tells the truth” with “we are decent human beings.”

Beyond that: this paragraph got reworked about ten thousand times, and usually that means that I’m never really happy with the result (because maybe one of the 9,999 other ways was slightly better, because maybe 10,001st time was the charm) but this? I’m pretty happy with this paragraph. It’s awful in exactly the way I wanted this scene to be awful.

"Yeah, I'm sure it would have been really convenient for you if he'd just made himself stop existing," Ronan spits. "It would have been pretty great for him if that shitbag had gone to jail."

"Right," she says. "He goes off the jail. Makes a dollar a day. Gets out with a record and now no one'll hire him. Now there's no money coming in, all on account of a couple of bruises, that would've been better for Adam?"

The reason this scene was so hard to write, which was also the whole reason I WANTED to write this scene at all, was that it meant getting into her head and explaining what the abuse looked like, to her. What story does she tell herself about her husband hitting her son? How could she allow it to happen, for years? How does she live with herself? I wanted to get her point of view across, not to justify it, but just to make her an actual person. I didn’t want her to be a cartoon-moustache-twirling villain.

(I suppose I could have had a version of her that had realized what they’d done to Adam was wrong, but that’s so far out of line with the rest of the tone and plot of this story that it literally only occurred to me now, months after I finished the story and months more since I started it. That’s not interesting to me.)

She absolutely believes what she’s saying here: a couple of bruises are better than starvation. On its face, that’s a reasonable sentence! But oh, how convenient it is that she plays down the extent of the abuse; how convenient it is to pretend that those were the only two options; how convenient that Adam doesn’t get to express a preference between those choices.

"Having nothing would have been better for Adam than having you."

She shakes her head, unfazed. "That right there tells me you've never had nothing."

I think it’s reasonable to assume that she grew up poor, which makes this another of those uncomfortable parallel moments between Adam and his mom. Ronan has absolutely heard Adam point it out to him before, when he unintentionally shows off his privilege.

"If you were such a great fucking mom you could've taken him and left."

She doesn't answer right away. Ronan doesn't want to give her any space to feel comfortable in, to come up with these lies, but he can't force any more words out. His whole mind is one blaring siren, lights and sound, emergency emergency emergency.

There’s a bit of advice I’ve gotten in improv, that if you don’t know what else to do in a scene, you can just say how you, the actual improviser, feel in the moment: “I’m confused,” “I don’t understand,” “why are we doing this again?” Endow your character with those feelings.

I didn’t want to give Ronan another line of dialogue here, but I didn’t know what he’d be thinking or why he’d let Adam’s mom just take her sweet time coming up with horrible things to say to him, so I just went with “Ronan doesn’t know what to say and he doesn’t like this and he can’t even make thoughts happen.”

"You think you're gonna marry my boy?"

"Yes." He never figured he'd say that with so much hate. He never figured she'd be the first person to ask.

The whole “are you going to marry my son” bit of the conversation was something I knew was going to be in this scene basically since the moment I realized this scene was going to exist, but this exactly line about Adam’s mom being the first person to ask was one that just happened during writing. It was a complete surprise and I love it so much.

"You think he's perfect?"

Ronan clenches his jaw. Adam is a stubborn control freak with a temper and intimacy issues a mile wide. Ronan knows that, and he doesn't care; he doesn't need Adam to be perfect.

Adam and Ronan recognizing each other’s flaws is one of my absolute favorite things about the ship.

But he's not going to say that to her. Adam is a god compared to her. She should be walking door to door proselytizing for him. She should be proud of him.

When you’re listing things, you generally want to get stronger as you go through the list; if you’re e.g. writing a joke, you want the funniest item on the list to be the last one (unless the joke is that you’ve messed up the list; Leslie Knope’s “I gotta stop ending on that boring thing” is a good example). This one plays out the other way. The list of things gets more reasonable as it goes along, to emphasize how tragic it is that Adam’s mom cannot do this one very reasonable thing.

"You know what marriage is?" she asks. "It's picking a man and saying, I choose this one, even though he's not perfect. If you can't stay with him when he makes a mistake then you don't marry him."

Another moment where Adam’s mom puts words together in a way that is completely true and rational and yet also a horrifying nightmare sentence when you put it in context!

Everything stops.

He can't speak. He can't move. Every living part of him is blasted away by a scalding wave of outrage. His vision blurs out and Adam's mom fades out of existence -- and then it slams back into place, everything too sharp against his eyes, and she's still there.

He wants her to stop talking. He wants to strangle her so she has to stop talking. He wants to drag her through the streets while people throw things and scream her sins at her. He wants her to admit that she did something wrong. He understands, in a sudden, terrible way, why Adam doesn't expect his father to apologize, and he's shaking with all of the things he's not doing.

Oh my lord these paragraphs. THESE PARAGRAPH. I mean this whole scene was painstakingly forged one word at a time, like I was making chain mail or some shit, but THESE PARAGRAPHS probably took a week’s worth of afternoon commutes all on their own. The thing he’s reacting to is so horrifying, but at the same time, they’re just words; from the outside this just looks like a conversation, this looks like nothing. So I suppose some of the difficulty was in walking this line between too strong of a reaction and not strong enough of a reaction.

Also, just, is there a word for that medieval punishment kind of thing, where they drag you through the streets and yell at you and throw things at you? Is there? That sentence alone I changed every single word of so many times, fuck.

I do quite like that moment of Ronan better understanding Adam, though. That is, of course, the actual plot and character significance of this scene; getting inside of Adam’s mom’s head was an interesting puzzle for me, as a writer, to play with, but what actually matters is that Ronan comes away from this conversation really KNOWING something that before he could only know in an academic way, if that.

"You had to make a choice." His voice is harsh in his own ears, but she just looks bored with him. "And you picked the wrong one."

This bit of dialogue is another one that was written relatively early, compared to the rest of the scene, so I’m not sure why it took me so long to figure out that “you pick a man and stick with him” “well you picked the wrong one” sounds like Ronan is saying that Adam’s mom picked the wrong man to marry out of all of the potential men she could have married. It is SUPPOSED to mean, “you had to pick between your husband or your son, and you fucked up,” but I couldn’t really find a way of rephrasing it that made that clearer and that still flowed in the conversation. I consoled myself that readers would probably understand it, anyway. I had to trust you guys on this one.

[obsessedwithbbandsuju]

Love Scenario | Part 1

Things weren’t the same between them.

Pairing: Lee Hyukjae/Son Taeyeon

Things weren’t the same between them.

Warnings: Infidelity, smut, parental emotional neglect

___

oppa: a term used by a female to refer to a male, older than her, that she is close to

tteokbokki: a Korean dish made with spicy stir-fried rice cakes

sshi: a Korean honorific used when the speaker is relatively unfamiliar with the object of their words, usually regardless of age

hyung: a term used by a male to refer to another male, older than him, that he is close to

eonni: a term used by a female to refer to another female, older than her, that she is close to

noona: a term used by a male to refer to a female, older than him, that he is close to, but can also be used to refer to a man’s biological older sister

___

When she and Hyukjae-oppa first became close, all the way back in 2014 while Taeyeon was working with Super Junior for their MAMACITA album, they’d hit it off instantly. She’d been a fan of Super Junior since their debut and was thrilled to get to know the members – though Heechul-oppa she’d been friends with since 2009 because they had emceed Inkigayo together. All the rest of the members were friendly and welcoming and generally pleasant to be around, and Hyukjae-oppa had been no exception to that – but there was something more. When Taeyeon talked to him, she often felt like the rest of the world had temporarily faded out of existence. Obviously she was still aware of what exactly she was with Super Junior for – for work, of course – and she made sure to keep that line drawn, but Hyukjae-oppa especially had a way of pulling her thoughts away from being purely professional and more towards being somewhat more personal.

After years of being friends – becoming such close friends that they would even frequent each other’s apartments and call each other often about work or troubles or even just for fun – Taeyeon realized that he made her heart flutter. Feelings for him were beginning to bloom inside her, leading to her rising temperature and quickened breaths when he was near. She was pretty good at hiding romantic sentiments, and this time was no exception, but she was starting to see signs that Hyukjae-oppa returned what she felt. She noticed him sneaking glances at her when he thought she wasn’t looking, glances that were too charged and intent to be just platonic like their relationship supposedly was. When there was even the slightest contact between their bodies, like shoulders bumping or fingers brushing, she could feel and see him stiffen just a tiny bit.

It wasn’t long after that Hyukjae-oppa began his flirting game. Taeyeon supposed that based on personal type, his push-and-pull could be seen as annoying, but to her it was just endearing – and entertaining. He would make teasing comments effortlessly here and there, comments that couldn’t be described as normal words between two friends. Things like, “You’re amazing.” “You’re really pretty today, Taeyeon. But then again, you’re always pretty.” “It seems like we’re dating or something, don’t you think?” They were always said with a mixture of both teasing and sincere that Taeyeon wondered how he could pull off. Cringy, maybe, but like she said – loveable.

And Taeyeon reciprocated gladly. It was a fun little game between the two of them, throwing suggestive words back and forth to each other. “I’m glad I have you.” “That’s why you’re irreplaceable.” “If someone saw us they’d definitely think we were on a date together.” She wasn’t sure how exactly Hyukjae-oppa felt about the comments, but she could tell was that he enjoyed them thoroughly. He would flash her that big grin whenever they had another exchange, and Taeyeon would inevitably find herself smiling back at him, too.

It went on like that until one day, the two of them were in Hyukjae-oppa’s apartment, sharing ideas for songwriting inspiration. Hyukjae-oppa was a pretty creative soul, and his suggestions were always interesting and, when followed, resulted in satisfactory products. That day, Taeyeon had given him an idea that was apparently particularly appealing to Hyukjae-oppa. He’d given her that signature wide and wholehearted grin, the one that exposed his gums in the cutest way, and she’d just had time to catch that flicker of conflict and nervousness in his large brown eyes before he leaned forward and gave her a kiss on the cheek.

Surprised and not surprised at the same time, Taeyeon stared at him as he pulled back. “What are you doing?” Somehow, both of them could tell that the question was completely rhetorical – she already knew not just what he was doing, but what he meant by it. Nevertheless, she went on. “We’re not even dating, Hyukjae-oppa.”

“What do you mean? I thought we pretty much were,” was the reply. And then Hyukjae-oppa let a little bit of his doubt show through. “At least,” he said hesitantly, “I want us to be. I like you a lot, Taeyeon.”

It was completely natural, the way Taeyeon leaned forward and returned the kiss on the cheek and smiled at him. “I like you a lot too.” That was how they began dating. The stage leading up to their confessions was like the spring between the two of them.

When she and Hyukjae-oppa first began their relationship, there were just no words that could have described what Taeyeon felt. Every minute with him was filled with a sort of muted euphoria; even when she was calm, somewhere inside her she was absolutely elated at just his presence. When they were together, she could forget, if only for a little while, everything that was weighing on her and just bask in him – his charm, his kindness, his humor, his cuteness, his passion. He was just such a joy to be around, and she was sure that this was the first time she’d had such strong feelings for someone. They even matched well; their senses of humor were similar, they shared many of the same beliefs, the same hobbies, and even the differences between them became points of connection as they discussed their opinions with each other. He was cheeky and playful, and constantly made her laugh through his lighthearted teasing and natural jocundity. It was just… Hyukjae-oppa was so satisfying in every way – physically, psychologically, emotionally – and Taeyeon felt like she would never stop loving him. In all honesty, she might even be willing give him her entire world.

One thing that she’d expected, but still made her giggle, about their relationship was Donghae-oppa’s constant presence. He was practically attached to Hyukjae-oppa by the hip, visiting him constantly and turning a date night into a night for the three of them, curled up and watching a movie, or cuddled together and just relaxing. There were more than a few instances when Taeyeon would be reading something or working on a song, Hyukjae-oppa laying down with his head in her lap, and Donghae-oppa would be on her other side, leaning with his chin against her shoulder, or squeezing in next to Hyukjae-oppa to lay with him. It was odd and could have been taken as that kind of relationship to others, but Taeyeon never minded. She knew that Hyukjae-oppa and Donghae-oppa were practically a package deal, and the latter’s presence never made her annoyed. He was a dear friend, someone whom she cared about and respected, and in all amusing honesty, sometimes it felt like she and Hyukjae-oppa had adopted a son. The other members made appearances with they were together too, of course, but none as frequently and as naturally as Donghae-oppa.

Plus, Hyukjae-oppa and Donghae-oppa had an undeniable connection. Taeyeon thought it was touching, honestly. She’d been content, satisfied, happy with the way she and Hyukjae-oppa’s relationship was. It was the summer between the two of them.  

But maybe she should have known better. Taeyeon didn’t have loads of dating experience; she’d only dated four other people in her life before dating Hyukjae-oppa, but she knew enough about how they all eventually turned out. Either something went wrong, something got in the way of one or both of the two parties involved continuing to be content in the relationship, which had happened to her once before – or this. This, which was far more common, but no less sad.

Feelings just cooled off. It was inevitable, really. After all, romantic feelings were at least partially driven by hormones, and one’s body didn’t have the energy to maintain what was necessary to keep those hormones flowing enough. Once it stopped, once you became familiar with everything about the other person, that was the real test for couples. If they had become close enough emotionally and mentally, come to know and respect each other thoroughly, come to understand one another, and built a solid enough foundation upon which their relationship lasted, then the relationship survived that sudden plunge.

If not, well… maybe this was the direction that such couples ended up heading towards.

Taeyeon still loved Hyukjae-oppa. She’d gotten to know so much about him over the past three years that they’d been dating, and she knew nothing about him had changed. He was still the same Lee Hyukjae with whom she shared so many beliefs and passions, with whom she could, naturally as breathing, switch between conversations mulling over the fact that it was impossible to not be miserable at some point if you were born to conversations making petty, lighthearted fun of each other. He was still the same Lee Hyukjae whose unabashed harmony with his emotions she found amazing and fascinating and even a little inspiring. He was still the same Lee Hyukjae who was never hesitant to display his affection for her, the same Lee Hyukjae whose shoulder she could comfortably cry on and who trusted her to let him comfortably cry on hers. The same Lee Hyukjae whose perseverance through his difficult early years and his neverending dedication and determination today moved her and earned her admiration and respect for his character. Yes, she still loved him.

But love wasn’t quite the same as the burning zeal that fueled the initial stages of a serious relationship, and that zeal was dying between them. She still couldn’t imagine life without having him with her, but she no longer wanted to spend every waking moment by his side, just like he no longer wanted to spend every waking moment by hers. He could go several hours without thinking about her, she knew, just like she could, when during the first few years they were constantly on each other’s minds. Conversation lessened, the time they spent together decreased. Where they’d once walked side-by-side, shoulders brushing and holding hands, they now walked separately, usually one person slightly ahead of or behind the other. Once, when they’d had to part from each other for more than ten minutes, like the time before they’d moved into an apartment together, Taeyeon would always catch Hyukjae-oppa looking back at her longingly as he walked away, and she knew she gave him the same glances. Now, though, even when in the same room they barely acknowledged each other’s presence apart from a quick smile. Before, it was like they couldn’t live without saying “I love you” to each other at least every other minute. Now, it had become a somewhat rare occurrence. She could still hear the sincerity in Hyukjae-oppa’s voice when he said it to her, and when she said it to him she was being genuine, too, but it wasn’t as ferocious and ardent as it once had been.

Something was stagnating between them; Taeyeon could feel it, and she knew Hyukjae-oppa could feel it too. He’d always been open with his emotions and thoughts, wearing them on his sleeves, and even now when he tried to hide them, she could tell roughly what was going through his mind. Is this right? Is this supposed to happen? Is this normal? Will we get through it? Is it just a phase?

And she had the same concerns. Was it right that some days the only words they exchanged was a relaxed “hey” back and forth? Was it supposed to happen, the fact that they often slept with their backs to each other, barely touching, and at times even opted to crash in separate bedrooms of their shared apartment? Was it normal that there were instances where Hyukjae-oppa looked slightly annoyed when she made conversation with him? Would they get through the inexplicable awkwardness between them that seemed to pop up at times? Was it just a phase that they felt like they could easily go days without seeing each other, a phase that was soon to end?

It was now the autumn between the two of them, the autumn that seemed to be going on forever.

Taeyeon felt the problem – the problem that she wasn’t even sure could be count as a problem – exacerbating when Hyukjae-oppa began coming home late more frequently. Of course, as an idol like him, she more than understood the hectic schedules that he had to endure, but something about this didn’t add up. He would stay out even when Super Junior wasn’t promoting, mostly with Donghae; always practicing this or that with his friend or having to prepare for some broadcast or another, again with his friend. The amount of work he actually had did not at all seem proportional to the amount of time he spent taking late nights out with Donghae.

As much as things had cooled down between them, it was still difficult for Taeyeon to be without him so often. He would sometimes spend two consecutive weeks coming home late – past twelve in the morning, and it was only thanks to her workaholic tendencies, which prompted her to engross herself in work (like lyrics or composing or designing) far past the time the sun had set, that she sometimes wasn’t in bed and asleep by the time he came back in.

Oddly enough, when she was awake to welcome him back, he was probably the most openly affectionate that she saw him during the strange cool-off period that had come over them. When she greeted him then he would smile tiredly, open his arms and give her a hug and a big kiss on the cheek or forehead. For some reason, those hugs were needy in the way they had been during the earlier stages of their relationship. Often he would insistently pull her toward the couch and they would fall into a tangled mess of limbs onto the cushions. Then Hyukjae-oppa would cling to her for at least a good ten minutes in silence, his face buried in her neck, or her shoulder, or in her hair, breathing in deeply. Sometimes he would continue peppering her face and throat, maybe even her ears and collarbone, with soft, open-mouthed kisses.

But those spells were few and rather far-between; most of the time, they were consistently indifferent towards each other in their actions, although Taeyeon didn’t think that apathy quite extended to their feelings. She still loved him, and she could tell he still loved her too, but things had changed.

She knew she should talk to him about it, but she couldn’t bring herself to. Something between them seemed… fragile, and she was cautious that if she pushed even a millimeter too far, that something would break.

Admittedly, it hurt – proof that she was still in love with Hyukjae-oppa. Having to nurse all these concerns was hurtful, frustrating, and inconvenient, but Taeyeon didn’t know what else to do. Normally she was a straightforward person who liked to talk through her problems, but she had a gut feeling that this problem couldn’t be fixed by talking. In fact, taken the wrong way, she felt like talking, or rather, trying to talk, would only make it worse.

So she just… let it sit. Hyukjae-oppa did the same; he made no attempt to approach her rationally about the issue.

Taeyeon hadn’t been intending to let anyone in on their relationship’s state, either, but Donghae-oppa caught on. Everyone who knew him was aware that he wasn’t the most observant man in the world, but everyone who knew him was also aware that there was no one more in tune with Hyukjae-oppa than him. He had noticed something about his friend, and one day gave her a call about it. Taeyeon had been in front of her piano, composing, when she picked up. They exchanged quick greetings, and then Donghae-oppa asked her the questions that was on his mind regarding Hyukjae-oppa. He sounded a little hesitant, like he wasn’t sure he should be looking into this business, but Taeyeon didn’t mind. With respect for Hyukjae-oppa’s opinion, she didn’t give Donghae-oppa all the details, but she did open up to him about the matter. He was sweetly reassuring as he always was.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “Things might be getting complicated now, but I know Hyukjae loves you.”

If no one else, Taeyeon trusted Donghae-oppa’s words regarding Hyukjae-oppa. She smiled. “Thanks for the talk.” It wasn’t often that just comforting words made her feel better – usually she only felt better when there was a concrete way to approach the problem that she had in her hands – but this time was an exception. It felt good to just know someone had listened to her.

“It’s no problem.” Donghae-oppa said. They said their goodbyes and hung up.

It was a Saturday night approaching a Sunday morning. Taeyeon was sitting in her bedroom, curled up on her bed with her blankets bundled around her, reading a book about Wu Zetian, the female emperor of China. One of her most lasting fascinations had always been women rulers in history, and Wu Zetian was a figure that couldn’t be ignored when it came to those matters. The book was a biography, a compilation of most of the information known about her, and it also addressed many of the rumors surrounding the emperor. Was there evidence that she killed her own daughter? Was there proof that she was really as malicious and sadistic and utterly without conscience as a good part of history made her out to be? It was a fascinating read, and Taeyeon found that she could often turn to it to engage her and take her mind off the world.

When she finally broke free of the daze that she fell into when reading about topics that interested her, she was stretching languidly on the bed, a yawn escaping her mouth. Hyukjae-oppa had left early that day, saying he needed to polish and practice some choreography with Donghae-oppa, at around eight a.m., and he still wasn’t home. The only word he left her was a quick text:

I’m probably going to stay late at the studio with Donghae again today. I’m sorry I’m gone for so long these days. When I get the opportunity I’ll make sure we get the chance to spend an entire day together, okay? Love you.

A quick look at her phone revealed that it was eleven twenty-three at night. As usual, Super Junior had no promotions and no upcoming schedules, so it was one of those instances when Taeyeon had no idea what her boyfriend could possibly have to do for so long. She did know, though, that he was at the S.M. dance studio with his friend.

Taeyeon wondered if she should maybe bring him some food. Hyukjae-oppa was better at managing work and leisure than she was, but he could be just as persistent as her, especially when it came to dance and choreography. Knowing him he hadn’t even eaten anything since dinnertime, which was an entire five to six hours ago. Plus, Taeyeon was sure Donghae-oppa would appreciate the break, too.

Her mind made up, she marked her spot in the book and left it on her bed. The tteokbokki didn’t take long for her to make, and soon, she was packing them into containers along with two sets of chopsticks, one for her boyfriend and one for Donghae-oppa. Putting it all in a spare lunchbox, she washed her face and brushed her teeth and was out the door.

Arriving at the studio, Taeyeon closed and locked her car door behind her. She had worked with Super Junior enough that she knew where they usually practiced, so, assuming that Hyukjae-oppa and Donghae-oppa were there, she made her way to the practice room. To her surprise, though, it was empty except for a few dancers, whom she recognized.

“Hana-sshi.” She called the name of one of them. Hana-sshi turned around and saw her, exchanging a quick word with the other dancers before hurrying over to where Taeyeon was standing.

“Taeyeon-sshi! What are you doing here so late?” the dancer asked.

“Have you seen Hyukjae-oppa and Donghae-oppa? I’m here to see them.”

Hana-sshi’s fine brows furrowed as she ran a brisk hand through her dyed red-streaked hair. “They left about an hour ago. They were going to head over to Donghae-sshi’s house to work on some lyrics.”

“Oh.” Mild annoyance stirred in Taeyeon’s gut. Great. Now she had to head all the way over to Donghae-oppa’s house. She would have just given up and eaten the tteokboki herself, but she had made too much of the dish for that. Besides, the sooner it was eaten, the better it tasted.

“Thanks, Hana-sshi.” She said her goodbyes to the dancer and left the studio, soon back on the road for Donghae-oppa’s house. It was a pretty lengthy drive, and Taeyeon spent it full of thoughts. She wondered if this was the first time Hyukjae-oppa had gone over to his friend’s place without letting her know. While she had never been the type of who needed to know what her partner was doing 24/7 – in fact it annoyed her when her partners needed to know what she was doing 24/7 – given the rust that was creeping over her relationship with her boyfriend, it was a little bit more disgruntling than it would have been otherwise.

Some time later, she had arrived at Donghae-oppa’s apartment complex. She’d been over to his place several times, too, though not as often as she’d been over to, say, her members’ places, or Jiyong-oppa’s place, or Heechul-oppa’s place. Still, with Donghae-oppa’s trusting nature and the speed with which they’d become close, she did have the code to his apartment.

Taking the elevator to the floor he lived on and then reaching his door, Taeyeon rang the doorbell. It was broken. Grimacing at her luck, she rapped her knuckles against the solid wood and waited, but there was still no response. She did it again. Still nothing. She checked the apartment number, just in case, to make sure she was at the right door. She was, so she knocked again. After three minutes, there was still no response.

Wondering if maybe the two men had fallen asleep, Taeyeon, reluctantly, put in the code to Donghae-oppa’s apartment. She was invading his privacy and she knew it, but she wasn’t about to just leave after everything, and she also wasn’t keen to stand outside of the door until someone finally came and opened it.

Cautiously, she inched her way into the apartment, closing the door behind her and peeking around furtively between her fingers, just on the off chance that there was something private happening. Nothing that she shouldn’t see was going on – in fact, the living room and kitchen of Donghae-oppa’s place were completely devoid of any human life.

Wondering if maybe they had gone into Donghae-oppa’s room to be more comfortable – after all, these were two men who had shared a bedroom more than a few times before – Taeyeon quietly made her way down the hall. The last thing she wanted was to be loud and make them think there was an intruder in the apartment.

She approached the door of the bedroom, but something made her pause just a little under a meter away from it. The sounds that were coming from inside were––Taeyeon felt her entire body freeze, and it took every ounce of control in her not to drop the lunchbox filled with the food she’d prepared onto the ground.

Because she could hear thumps of the bedframe repeatedly hitting the wall, and more than that, she could hear moaning and gasping and mewling coming from the bedroom, and both of the voices, she recognized. One was Donghae-oppa’s, and one – she would have recognized that voice, and those grunts of pleasure, anywhere. She’d heard them plenty of times before, after all.

“Hyukjae.” That was Donghae-oppa, his voice throaty and raw and dripping with pleasure. Taeyeon’s knees wobbled, and she put a hand on the wall to stop herself from collapsing to the floor in a boneless heap.

“Fuck.” The single word was strained and hoarse, and unbearably, undeniably, shamelessly erotic. This time it was decidedly not Donghae-oppa – it was him. “God, Donghae, you feel so good––!”

Taeyeon spun around, the lunchbox still miraculously held in her clenched fingers. Trying to be as silent as possible, she fled the hallway, fled the apartment, and ran back down the stairs. She didn’t stop until she’d reached her car, and it was only then that she realized her fingernails were digging painfully into her palms, on the verge of breaking skin and drawing blood. It took a conscious effort on her part to unclench her hand.

Yanking her car door open, collapsing into the driver’s seat and slamming the door shut, Taeyeon stared blankly out into the night. She didn’t know what to think. While the extended amount of time Hyukjae-oppa spent with Donghae-oppa had stricken her as odd rather frequently, and the thought had he could be cheating had fleetingly crossed her mind before, never, never, had she considered it to be an actual possibility that could really, legitimately happen. And yet –

Taeyeon realized she was trembling. Taking a deep breath, she leaned back in her seat, letting her head loll back so her gaze met the plain grey hood of her car. She wanted to get out of there, she wanted to banish the apartment complex from her sight that very instant, but she knew it was dangerous to drive under the influence of strong emotion. And strong emotion was the most enormous fucking understatement she could think of to describe her state.

Her eyes drifted to Donghae-oppa’s floor. She didn’t know which window was his, but what she did know was that somewhere up there, her boyfriend and his best friend were fucking behind her back. How long had this been going on? Since Hyukjae-oppa started having late-night outings with Donghae-oppa so frequently? It all made sense in the way that Taeyeon didn’t want it to. And if she was right… if this had really been going on since Hyukjae-oppa’s early days out with his friend – then they’d been doing this for several months, the better part of a year. Since before she’d had that phone call with Donghae-oppa when he’d assured her that things would be alright.

And was that… was that why Hyukjae-oppa was so randomly affectionate with her after coming home late if he found her awake? Because he’d been getting cozy with Donghae-oppa and was now… what? Feeling guilty about it?

Taeyeon wasn’t sure how other people felt when finding out that their partners had cheated on them, and she was even less sure how they felt when finding out that that person their partner had cheated with was one of their close friends. Until then, she hadn’t been sure how she would feel in that situation – hell, she never imagined that she would ever find herself in that situation – but here she was. And strangely, even when she tried to summon up fury and bitterness and resentment, she couldn’t. Instead, there was a void opening up inside her. Suddenly, she felt so very tired.

Taeyeon started her car and pulled away from the apartment complex’s parking lot. She just wanted to go home.

The home you share with your cheating boyfriend? The home into which you invited your friend who willingly cheated with him? A voice inside her head asked. It wasn’t mocking, but sympathetic, careful, cautioning. Taeyeon swallowed and didn’t, couldn’t, answer.

When she got back to the apartment she shared with Hyukjae-oppa, Taeyeon hastily put the tteokbokki she’d made in the refrigerator to worry about later. The following shower she took lasted nearly an hour as she sat in the tub and let the hot water stream over her body, wondering what she was going to do now.

Finally, she came out of the bathroom, her hair still dripping, wearing nothing but her underwear and the first piece of clothing she’d gotten her hands on – which happened to be one of Hyukjae-oppa’s hoodies, plain light grey and oversized so it hung down to cover the tops of her thighs. She had just hung the towel she used up to dry after patting down her hair a few times when she heard the code of the apartment being punched in and the door opening. Hyukjae-oppa came in, and Taeyeon fought the brief impulse to throw the still-damp towel at his face. He looked so fucking disgustingly normal.

Instead, she just said quietly, “Hi.”

Kicking off his shoes, Hyukjae-oppa walked to her, his arms opened wide. Taeyeon didn’t have the energy to shove him away like part of her screamed at her to do. She let him embrace her tightly, and the two of them collapsed onto the cushions of the sofa, Hyukjae-oppa on top of her. His warmth against her body was so… comforting, so grounding, and Taeyeon hated it. Even after finding out what he and Donghae-oppa had been up to behind her back, even after being fully aware just what Hyukjae-oppa had come home from doing, his touch was still soothing to her.

He began brushing his lips tenderly against her face and neck, each graze more ardent than the last. Taeyeon knew she should feel disgusted, because she finally realized just what exactly it was that that passion was fueled by: his sentiments about cheating on her. And yet, she couldn’t. And when he pressed a hot, open-mouthed kiss to her pulse point, the breathy moan that slipped out of her was in no way faked. They hadn’t had each other in – God, it had been over four months.

Hyukjae-oppa seemed to realize that too. He switched from kissing to nipping and sucking at her skin, putting that talented mouth to use against her throat and collarbones, even her inner shoulders. She could feel him hardening against her thigh, and his chest moving against hers was rubbing against her nipples through the fabric of their clothes. Suddenly desperate to have him, Taeyeon gripped his face in her hands and kissed him, hard. Not missing a beat, Hyukjae-oppa reciprocated, shamelessly letting his tongue tangle against hers in a sloppy mess of wet, hot muscle. His hands traveled to the hem of her hoodie – well, his hoodie – and pulled, hitching the material up her abdomen and exposing her hips and stomach. His fingers brushed against the sensitive flesh there before he continued to take off the article of clothing, Taeyeon raising her arms above her head to help him slip it off.

His urgency feeding off of hers, Hyukjae-oppa made quick work of the rest of their clothes, flinging them off to the side haphazardly. Beginning at the curves of her breasts, he kissed, sucked, nipped his way down her body until he was holding her thighs apart with his hands. Taeyeon hissed, bucking her hips to demand that he hurry up, and it seemed that he wasn’t in the mood to tease either. He obeyed her unspoken command and buried his face between her legs, dexterous tongue working her clit and entrance as his hands on her thighs kept her from reflexively closing around his head. It wasn’t long until Taeyeon could feel the beginnings of an orgasm rippling inside her, but before she could fall fully into its throes, Hyukjae-oppa pulled back.

Coming back up, he pressed their lips together in a tender kiss that made Taeyeon feel simultaneously like there were fireworks going off in her stomach and something curdling and rotting in her chest. But fuck, she couldn’t even think about telling him to stop, especially not when he lined himself up against her entrance and she could feel how hard he was. Then he snapped his hips forward, those impossibly precise dancer’s muscles doing their work, and buried himself up to the hilt inside her, instantly connecting to that one spot that made her toes curl and her back arch. Taeyeon moaned, pressing her eyes closed tightly, seeing stars.

Neither of them lasted very long, on account of the amount of time it had been since they’d been together like this and their heightened emotional, and consequently physical, sensitivity. Hyukjae-oppa was relentless as she remembered him to be, every stroke pressing against that area inside her without fail, and the hilt of his cock rubbing against her clit with every move he made. It must have been barely over five minutes later that Taeyeon came with a shrill cry of pleasure, hanging on to Hyukjae-oppa for dear life as her walls clamped down around the searing-hot member inside her like a vice. That must have done it for Hyukjae-oppa, too, because he gave one final, harsh thrust, every centimeter of him buried in her dripping channel, all of his pelvic muscles filled with tension about to snap.

“I love you,” he whispered hoarsely into her ear.

Taeyeon wished he hadn’t said that. Now she was forced to hold back her tears as he came inside her, the warmth of his seed spurting in her core. A few seconds later, Hyukjae-oppa relaxed, slipping out and going limp on top of her, for which she was grateful. With his face pressed against the crook of her neck and her shoulder, he couldn’t see that she was making a visible effort not to cry.

By the time her boyfriend had lifted his head to look at her, she managed to get herself under control and was laying there with her eyes closed. She could feel his gaze on her, so she cracked her eyelids open to stare back at him. Sure enough, he was looking at her.

But then he ducked his head again like it stung him to look too long into her eyes, and instead began peppering her jawline and throat with kisses. Taeyeon suspected that she knew why he was finding it difficult to hold her gaze for long.

As Hyukjae-oppa lavished her neck and lower face with attention that would have been sweet, Taeyeon curled her fingers into his soft, luscious hair, wondering what she was going to do. A part of her, the rational part probably, was telling her to break up with him right then and there; reveal to him that she knew exactly about his activities. But laying there as he pressed worked at her skin with single-minded tenderness before gently slotting their lips together to kiss her sweetly on the mouth, Taeyeon couldn’t find it inside herself to do. If she did, the next thing that happened was that she would leave him, because there was no chance in hell that she would let him think she was willing to stay with him after what he’d done. And the thought of leaving him was… it wasn’t pleasant. As much as Taeyeon wished she could say that she’d easily made up her mind to break up with Hyukjae-oppa as soon as she learned about his infidelity, she couldn’t do it. She still loved the bastard, and the image of the shocked face she knew he would make was too much for her to bear. It was the first time she cursed herself for being so softhearted, or maybe for being so completely in love with Hyukjae-oppa.

But she also couldn’t act the same around him. How could she, after she found out that he was cheating on her? There were times when she just wanted to strike him across that beautiful face of his, but of course she couldn’t just do that. So instead, she put as much distance, physical and emotional, between herself and Hyukjae-oppa – at least as much as was possible when they shared an apartment. She found herself beginning to be less and less halfhearted when returning the already fairly sparse gestures of affection from him, because she couldn’t put her heart into it, not when she was aware that Hyukjae-oppa was going behind her back with Donghae-oppa, and especially not when he continued to do it. His “outings” with his friend didn’t decrease, and of course although Taeyeon couldn’t say for sure if they fucked every time they said they were going somewhere together, she knew that sometimes they were.

And as a result of her withdrawal away from him, Hyukjae-oppa withdrew from her, too. The occasional days that he was feeling openly affectionate dwindled to almost nothing. They could hardly carry out a casual conversation without friction, verbal or nonverbal, rising between them. Taeyeon wasn’t a fool, and neither was Hyukjae-oppa – they could feel the tension that was undeniably splintering the relationship between them that had once been so strong. Soon, it became a rare instance for them to acknowledge each other’s presence in the same apartment. They’d go days, even weeks, at a time exchanging only three words in total. Hyukjae-oppa sometimes seemed like he wanted nothing to do with her. Taeyeon couldn’t really blame him for it, after the way she was treating him. But she also wasn’t sorry for treating him the way she did.

It was undeniably, irrefutably, impossibly painful, the fact that they’d drifted so far apart. Taeyeon was under no illusion that she’d somehow managed to fall out of love with Hyukjae-oppa. No, she was still impossibly enamored with him. She wouldn’t really be surprised if the sentiment was no longer returned – even beyond the mess that their relationship had deteriorated into, he had cheated on her, and was still cheating on her, after all – but she did know that she still loved him. And looking back at what they had been to each other as compared to what they were now, if they even were anything, she sometimes had to hold back tears with all her might. But she couldn’t act like she was completely happy with him when she wasn’t, and yet she couldn’t find it in herself to break up with him. It was laughable.

That was the winter between them – monotonous, cold, awkward, everything they had ever felt for each other freezing under a thick layer of ice and snow – and it seemed that it wasn’t going to be ending anytime soon. Still, Taeyeon was positive that they would be over one day; it was only a matter of sooner or later.

She supposed it could be counted as later.

It was the day of her and Hyukjae-oppa’s six-year anniversary. Six years ago today, he had given her that peck on the cheek that she’d returned, the one that had begun their relationship.

Surprisingly, Hyukjae-oppa had put some effort in this time, the kind she couldn’t remember him putting in since the first few years of their dating. Taeyeon had a broadcast that day – she had been a guest on Running Man along with Soojin and Minhee-eonni – and had come home to find that her boyfriend had made a shrine of sorts next to the large window leading out to the balcony of their apartment. It was simple, just a wooden stand on which he’d framed and placed some of the pictured that they had taken together in the past, as well as little gifts they’d bought each other. Among the miscellaneous items, Taeyeon saw the ring that he’d gotten her for their one-year anniversary and the small hand mirror that she’d gotten him for their six-month anniversary. The sight of the gifts made her chest feel hollow. It seemed like so long ago since they’d had that loving connection between them.

“Babe.” Hyukjae-oppa’s voice was sweet as he came out of his bedroom while she was kicking her shoes off and peeling off her coat. Taeyeon felt a pang. She couldn’t even remember how she would have felt about his preparations had they not been locked in this wreck of a relationship – if she hadn’t found out he was cheating. Or rather, if he just wasn’t cheating. Maybe she would have thrown herself into his arms and kissed him all over the face, but right now – right now, she just felt tired. Tired of looking at their photos together, tired of seeing all the things they’d bought for each other, tired of thinking of the fact that it was their anniversary which seemed like such a laughable shamble now, tired of him and his unfaithfulness and the fact that she still clung to whatever this had become despite all that.

“Hey.” Her voice came out even more weary than she’d intended it to. She just wanted to retreat into her room, but Hyukjae-oppa grabbed her hand, entwined their fingers and pulled her gently over to the stand. “Look,” he said. “We took that picture on our first date. Remember?”

Taeyeon did, despite the fact that she didn’t really want to. Their first date had been nothing special, but it had had that special kind of private intimacy that Taeyeon valued in a relationship. They’d gone over to her apartment, since they still lived in separate places back then, watched a movie and eaten dinner together. It was only the slightest bit awkward since they were already more than familiar with how the other acted, just with the added little fact that they were now dating. Hyukjae-oppa had insisted on taking the photo right before he left, looping his arm around her shoulder and pressing their heads together as they looked up at the camera. He had always liked recording the times they spent together.

“I remember,” she said, trying to sound at least somewhat enthusiastic as to not hurt his feelings. But she had never been naturally good at expressing her emotions through tone, and she was just so tired. Her words came out strained, and she could tell Hyukjae-oppa was crestfallen at her lukewarm response.

It’s the very least he can suffer for fucking Donghae-oppa behind my back, a voice inside her head sneered.

Still, he kept trying. “And that one,” he said, gesturing to another photo. “For when we visited Jeju Island together.” They were on a ship, and had been doing the classic Titanic pose upon, once again, Hyukjae-oppa’s insistence. Taeyeon stared in silence at the bright, wide grins on their faces in the photograph. Was that really her and Hyukjae-oppa, the same two people they were now? The two in the frame, their utter happiness together, it seemed like it was all from a different world.

“That was fun, wasn’t it?” Despite the lighthearted question, there was a kind of strain in Hyukjae-oppa’s voice. Taeyeon thought she might know where that feeling was coming from. She felt the same. “Yeah.”

If only he would just leave her alone.

But Hyukjae-oppa seemed to have no intention of doing that. He spun towards her, anger flashing in his dark eyes. In all honesty, Taeyeon couldn’t say it surprised her, even if he was a person who rarely expressed his anger in loud or emotional ways. She was the same way, after all, and she knew the imminent signs of a rare explosion. Hyukjae-oppa was frustrated and irritated at her lack of much enthusiasm, after the work he must have put into this – and she didn’t feel in the least bit sympathetic for him. Maybe if he hadn’t cheated on her she wouldn’t be acting like this, had he maybe considered that?

“What’s up with you?” Hyukjae-oppa demanded, his voice louder than she’d heard it for a long time. He must be legitimately riled up. “I don’t expect you to start shouting hallelujah, but is it so hard to at least pretend that you care?”

Like you obviously care so much, cheating on me and all? Taeyeon spat back in her head, but she wasn’t looking for a fight. She was too exhausted and felt too drained to be shouting, in spite of the ire stirring inside her at his brazenness. Did he really think he was in a position to be complaining to her?

“Do I always have to say only what you want to hear?” she asked quietly.

Hyukjae-oppa recoiled like she’d slapped him. “What?” He sounded dumbfounded, as if the very fact that she’d said something like that to him was blowing his mind.

Taeyeon sighed. “Never mind. I’m just… I’m tired.” She went to move away, but Hyukjae-oppa gripped her forearm with his hand, stopping her. His hold was tight, not tight enough to hurt, but tight enough that she could tell he was more than a little vexed.

“Why are you like this?” His voice was rising. “Fuck, Taeyeon, we’ve barely had a conversation in months! I know we’re not like we used to be, but I tried! Doesn’t that matter to you at all?”

Doesn’t it matter? Doesn’t it fucking matter? Never mind about not wanting to fight – Taeyeon could feel that earlier ire beginning to bubble. He was lecturing her about mattering? Did it matter to him that the fundamental quality of a relationship was trust? Did it matter to him that he was deceiving her by not being faithful? Did it matter to him that he was, for the love of God, cheating? Clearly not. Clearly the relationship meant nothing to him, clearly she meant nothing to him, so why should she have to care? How dare he talk like he had the right to say anything?

“How much longer are you going to be like this?” Hyukjae-oppa continued, oblivious to her fury and furious himself. “How much longer are you going to act like you have a stick up your ass? I don’t understand what’s wrong with you! Why won’t you talk to me?! Is it so hard to just––”

“Oppa!” Taeyeon shouted, the resentment that had been building inside her since she found out about his activities starting to boil over. She couldn’t remember the last time she had raised her voice so much. The surprised look on Hyukjae-oppa’s face at her outburst only fed the ugly mass of frustration, hurt, sadness, and anger seething in the pit of her stomach. “Take your own advice! How much longer are you going to be like this? How much longer do we have to keep this up? Are we going to do this until we die?!”

“What are you talking about?” He really, genuinely sounded so confused and exasperated that Taeyeon could have burst out laughing if she wasn’t so angry.

“You’re really acting like you don’t know? Skirting around the apartment, avoiding any talking, going out with other people, trying to somehow salvage this laughable disaster of a relationship, while really hating each other?!” At the last part – hating each other – the confused indignation in her boyfriend’s eyes turned to shock. He opened his mouth, but Taeyeon didn’t want to hear him talk.

“Don’t you think I tried too? I kept telling myself we’d be fine, I kept telling myself that it would all pass eventually – but then you had to go and ruin everything!” Her words reminded her of a child throwing a tantrum, but Taeyeon couldn’t help it, because the words were right. He had ruined everything. Maybe she could have had some faith that things would work out between them, maybe she could have had the will to fix the crumbling pieces of their relationship, if he hadn’t cheated on her. But he had – he fucking had – and since she’d found that out she’d been unable to muster up the energy to try any longer. More than that, she felt like a part of her ability to trust had broken. If her own boyfriend was continuously cheating on her while pretending that nothing was out of the ordinary the whole time, if her friend was cheating with her boyfriend while also acting like everything was fine in front of her for so long, how was she supposed to trust anyone?

This is wrong. This is all wrong. She should have just ended it all with him the moment she learned he was cheating. Then they wouldn’t be in this mess. But she just had to be an idiot and cling on to hope that somehow they would manage to turn over a new leaf. Taeyeon didn’t know why she had bothered. She knew the truth now; they’d never be able to do that. They were stuck with the lot that they had, and that lot was festering, rotting, and crumbling to nothing.

“What do you mean?” Hyukjae-oppa was reaching toward her, face full of hurt incredulity, but Taeyeon slapped his hands away. She felt like if she allowed his fingers to come in contact with her, they would burn her skin. She wouldn’t be able to stop herself from flying into a complete rage at him.

“Why – why did you have to do it? Who gave you the right to make me feel so pathetic? Who gave you the right to make me so miserable?!” Taeyeon shouted, covering her face with her hands, unable to stomach the sight of him any longer. She hated – hated – that she was losing her composure like this, hated that she was letting anyone see her so riled up and raw and vulnerable, but her control was slipping from her like grains of sand slipping out through her fingers.

“I don’t hate you!” Hyukjae-oppa cried. Even without looking at him, Taeyeon heard the anguish in his voice. It didn’t help. “Hating each other – that’s not what’s been going on at all!” She could feel the warmth from his body as he got closer in an attempt to take her hands. “Taeyeon, I still lo––”

“No!” Taeyeon screamed, shoving him away. Once the words that he was almost about to say might have given her hope, but now it was good for nothing except serving to make her tears spring up faster. If you loved me you wouldn’t have done this to me! “You don’t get to say that! Why can’t you just admit that you’re done with me?! What’s the point of all this when you don’t really care about me at all?!” She lashed out at the stand, blinded by her tears and the unfair hopelessness of the entire situation. It crashed to the ground, sending pictures and trinkets across the floor. Against her will, one in particular caught Taeyeon’s eye: herself and Hyukjae-oppa, arms wrapped around each other, their forms set against the breathtaking backdrop of a setting sun and the Eiffel Tower rising high into the sky. They’d taken that trip together to Paris a little over two years into their relationship, and she remembered that she could hardly stop smiling.

“This!” Taeyeon screamed. She snatched the photo from the floor and thrust at Hyukjae-oppa for him to look at. He looked paralyzed with shock, but his eyes instinctively moved to the object she was holding out at him, and Taeyeon saw recognition flicker in his gaze. Right before she flung it hard back down onto the ground, because the sight of it made bile rise in her throat. The frame of the photograph shattered, shards of glass skittering across the apartment.

“What’s the point of this if our relationship was worth so little to you anyway? What’s the point of your so-called trying if you’re just going to go behind my back and fuck Donghae-oppa again? It’s all useless, it’s a waste of your time and mine – just forget it all!” Wiping at her face and eyes furiously, so hard that the harsh pull of her hands against her skin was enough to hurt, her head throbbing and her chest splitting, Taeyeon shoved past Hyukjae-oppa and ran to her bedroom, slamming the door behind her. To her dismay, she heard his footsteps come down the hallway, after her.

But she wasn’t going to let him get in. She didn’t want to see him right now. She didn’t want to see anyone right now. Frantically fumbling with the door handle, she locked the door and backed away from it just as Hyukjae-oppa, reaching her room, tried it out. The handle caught on the lock.

“Taeyeon? Taeyeon, please listen to me.” There was wild desperation in his voice that she’d never heard before. Trembling, Taeyeon stumbled deeper into her room and sank to the ground right next to her bed. She hated crying out loud, but the pressure in her chest, the pounding in her head, the tightening of her throat, it was all too much to be quiet. Burying her face in her knees and wrapping her arms around herself, she began to sob. The adrenaline of her explosion faded, leaving her feeling gapingly hollow inside. She didn’t know what to do. There was nothing to do. She was a fucking fool for thinking they could have ever gotten past what had happened to them.

“Open the door. Please – please, Taeyeon. Let me explain. Please.” Hyukjae-oppa sounded near tears. The handle of her bedroom door rattled wildly as he shook it, futilely trying to get in. Taeyeon didn’t want to hear his explanations. They would all be empty, anyway. It was all useless. Any attempts she’d made, and any attempts he would make, to salvage their relationship – all of it was useless. They were over. They’d been over for a long time, it was just that Taeyeon had been too much of an idiot to see what was right in front of her nose.

“Don’t you dare!” She wanted to sound angry, she really did, but the entire phrase came out between a garbled mess of sobs and heaves. “If you try to come in I’m never looking at you again!”

The rattling of the handle stopped. Taeyeon squeezed her arms around herself harder. Her entire body was shuddering with the force of her sobs. This wasn’t it. This wasn’t how she’d imagined she’d one day part ways with Hyukjae-oppa. The fluttering of her heart from the earlier stages of their relationship, the happiness she had felt whenever she so much as got a text from him, seemed like a cruel joke.

Maybe if they hadn’t met. Maybe if they hadn’t become romantically involved. Then Hyukjae-oppa and Donghae-oppa could have done whatever they wanted to do without it affecting her. Then she wouldn’t feel so utterly meager and worthless. She knew Hyukjae-oppa and Donghae-oppa had known each other far longer than she’d known either of them, and anyone could see the intimate connection they shared, but did they have to do this? Did they have to lie to her like this? It would have been better if they’d just come clean about it instead. It would have hurt, but she would have accepted it and moved on with her life. But apparently – apparently she wasn’t worth even that to either of them.

It must have taken a good thirty minutes for her cries to completely stop, and after that Taeyeon just sat there for at least two more hours. She huddled against the bed, drained and exhausted, her eyes sticky with dried tears. The devastated atmosphere of the apartment was practically palpable, but somehow, she felt less awful after letting it out. Her head felt a little bit clearer than it ever had since that day she found out about her boyfriend’s relationship with his best friend. It was obvious now; she couldn’t be with Hyukjae-oppa, but she didn’t want to end it so messily. She still cared about him – she didn’t think she could ever stop doing that – and she knew that if she just left in this state, she would be hard-pressed to ever see him or Donghae-oppa again.

Before she put a close on things, as she should have long ago, she wanted to clear everything up.

Taeyeon stood, her legs screaming in protest after several hours of being tucked against her chest, and she had to grip her bedframe to stop herself from grimacing at her unsteadiness. Taking a deep breath, cracking her back and giving her legs a quick stretch to rejuvenate her body, she unlocked her room door and peeked outside. A head snapped up, and familiar eyes that practically glittered even in the dim light stared back at her.

Hyukjae-oppa was sitting against the wall in front of her bedroom. Somehow he looked like he’d aged since she’d last seen him, which was only hours ago. His eyes seemed to be sporting faint dark circles under them, and the vigor and life that she was so used to seeing in his gaze was gone, leaving him looking dull and empty. He was always fairly pale, but at the moment he seemed to be outright pallid. His entire body was limp, but as soon as he saw her he shot to his feet. Instinctively, Taeyeon flinched at his sudden movement, and, seeing her discomfort, Hyukjae-oppa froze.

“Taeyeon… I…”

She didn’t want to hear it earlier than she had to. Holding up a hand, Taeyeon shook her head once, clenching her jaw. “Later. Call Donghae-oppa, please.”

Fear spread across Hyukjae-oppa’s face, although of what Taeyeon couldn’t say exactly. Could he tell where she was going with this? They had been such close friends before everything, after all. The thought of how tight-knit the two of them had once been sent a nauseating pang through her stomach.

“Taeyeon,” he tried again, “please––”

“Tell me later,” she interrupted again. “When Donghae-oppa’s here.” Stepping out of her room, she closed the door and slipped past him, heading towards the living room. The stand she’d knocked over was still toppled, and the pictures and bits of glass were still scattered across the floor. Kneeling down, Taeyeon carefully picked up the shards, concentrating unnecessarily hard to shift her focus away from Hyukjae-oppa, who had followed her and was now standing at the junction between the hall and the living room, staring at her motionlessly.

Finishing the job and placing the shards carefully into a bag for later disposal, Taeyeon reluctantly turned back to Hyukjae-oppa. He hadn’t moved from his spot, and the expression on his face might have convinced her to stop what she was doing under other circumstances. But now, nothing could stop her. She had made up her mind.

“Call him,” she said curtly. “And don’t tell him that I know. I don’t want him making up excuses on the way.” She sounded harsh, but Taeyeon thought she had a right to be. She was tired of hearing bullshit from both of these men, and wanted to make this as quick and clean as possible, no more ugly emotions involved. Bad enough that she and Hyukjae-oppa had to split with the knowledge that he had cheated hanging over them; there was no need to make the situation worse.

Hyukjae-oppa flinched at her tone. He looked like he was about to protest, but then, his shoulders sagged and his entire body drooped. He knew as well as she did that it was pointless. Reaching into the pocket of his sweatpants, he pulled out his phone, and was putting it to his hear a few moments later.

“Hey.” His voice as he greeted his friend was so miserable that it made Taeyeon want to begin crying again. If he was going to be so upset that she’d found out, why did he do it in the first place? “Can you come over now?”

There was a pause; Taeyeon couldn’t hear what Donghae-oppa was saying, but she suspected that it was something along the lines of being surprised. After all, it was almost midnight.

“Yeah, now.” Another pause.

“…You’ll find out. But it’s important.” Hyukjae-oppa’s face seemed to crease at that last word – important. It wasn’t exactly an accurate description of the situation.

“Okay. Thanks. Bye.” He hung up, slipping the phone back into his pocket but not looking at her, even as she knew he could feel her watching him steadily. He seemed unable to meet her eyes, and Taeyeon fought the urge to sigh – something she felt like she’d been doing quite often lately. Preoccupying herself again, she knelt on the ground and began to pick up the photographs and frames that had gone flying when she shoved the stand in her earlier rage.

The sound of tentative footsteps told her that Hyukjae-oppa was approaching to help. She tried not to stiffen and instead aggressively narrowed her focus onto what she was doing, staying vigilant for any shards of glass that she might have missed earlier as she gathered the photographs in her hands. Thankfully, she managed to not look at Hyukjae-oppa as he knelt a few feet away from her and occupied himself with collecting the little trinkets they’d given each other in the past that he’d put on the stand.

Once they finished the cleanup and set the stand back upright, awkwardness fell. Neither of them knew what to say; Taeyeon sat on the couch, arms crossed, staring numbly ahead at the wall in front of her, while Hyukjae-oppa paced the living room, sneaking furtive glances at her when he thought she wasn’t looking. The one time she looked back at him he averted his gaze so fast that Taeyeon almost thought she had been imagining it.

Eventually, the ringing of the doorbell alerted them to Donghae-oppa’s arrival. Hyukjae-oppa’s face fell as he glanced toward the front door, stopping his pacing. For her part, Taeyeon stood quickly and hurried to open the door for the man waiting outside. If she thought too much about what was about to happen, she was afraid she was going to lose her nerve. She had to be clearheaded if she was going to rationally and calmly stomach what was about to come.

Taeyeon opened the door. Sure enough, it was Donghae-oppa, dressed casually in a jacket and a pair of jeans. Unexpectedly – even though she should have been expecting it, in fact – the sight of him sent a new rush of resentment through Taeyeon’s veins. Questions leaped to the tip of her tongue, most of them beginning with “why” and “how could you”, but she stayed quiet except for one word.

“Hi.”

“Hi.” Donghae-oppa looked faintly worried as she stood aside and let him come inside. Despite Hyukjae-oppa not giving him the specifics of the situation, Taeyeon was sure that Donghae-oppa had gotten some wind of it. There wasn’t much going on that was so urgent that he would need to come to their apartment out of the blue.

Taeyeon closed the door behind Donghae-oppa and turned around to see him staring at Hyukjae-oppa, who was avoiding his gaze. She wasn’t sure how to feel about it. Jealous at their connection? Angry at them for tricking her? Betrayed that they had found it in themselves to have the sort of relationship they did when she was in the picture? She had felt all of those things plenty of times before, since finding out that they were fucking – and whatever else they could have done – but in all honesty, right now she just felt tired. She just wanted this to be over, quickly and painlessly as possible.

“Sit.” At her brusqueness, Donghae-oppa turned back to her, his eyes wary. Hyukjae-oppa just looked entirely lost in thought. Nevertheless, neither of the two men argued as she lead the way to the living room and sat on one of the couches, hoping that Hyukjae-oppa wouldn’t be senseless and try to sit next to her. He didn’t, instead taking a seat on one of the armchairs across from her spot. Meanwhile, Donghae-oppa sat in the other one, shedding the jacket. Both of them seemed to be avoiding her gaze.

“How long has it been since you two got together?” Taeyeon asked. Her words might have been a little too blunt, but she needed to get her point across: the charade was up. She knew what they had been doing.

Hyukjae-oppa seemed to wither a little bit more. Donghae-oppa looked shocked, like a teenager who’d been caught red-handed trying to steal from the convenience store. He glanced over at his friend, whose gaze was glued firmly to the ground, and then back at Taeyeon, his eyes wide and his lips parted slightly. With the expression on his face, anyone would think she had just given him a full slap across the jaw.  

“Taeyeon––”

Hyukjae-oppa had already tried to explain himself. She did not want to hear it from Donghae-oppa, either. “Please stop,” Taeyeon said quietly. “I don’t need to know your reasons. Just answer the question.”

“Since two years and two months ago.” Hyukjae-oppa’s voice was tremulous. Taeyeon gripped the arm of the sofa to stop herself from squeezing her eyes shut at the information. Two years and two months ago meant it was before the cooling down of their dating started. Which meant that Hyukjae-oppa had begun his infidelity before it became obvious that what was between them wasn’t what it once was. He hadn’t just cheated because he was looking for comfort outside a deteriorating relationship; he had cheated because of the feelings he had had for the person he was cheating with.

It took her a few seconds before she could bear to face them again. Her boyfriend – or was he her ex-boyfriend now? – still wasn’t looking at her, but Donghae-oppa was. There were tears in his eyes.

“I’m so sorry,” he said, although the words sounded closer to a whimper. Taeyeon shook her head. She didn’t need his apologies, or anyone’s. What good would they be?

“I love Hyukjae.” Donghae-oppa’s sudden statement hung in the air, charged with tension and yet somehow so utterly flat at the same time. Taeyeon wasn’t surprised. She’d known it for a long time now. Next to his friend, Hyukjae-oppa buried his head in his hands.

“I know,” Taeyeon said quietly. “And Hyukjae-oppa? Do you have the same feelings?”

There was a long silence as her ex-boyfriend sat still, not even looking at either her or his best friend. But when he finally did, it was Donghae-oppa he looked at first, before he looked at her. His dark eyes were filled with guilt.

“Yes,” he whispered. “I love him, too.”

Taeyeon nodded, wordless. She’d already expected that.

“Hyukjae-oppa,” she said, “I’m sorry I made you think earlier that I didn’t care about your anniversary preparations. I didn’t mean to make you feel that way – I was just so frustrated and angry at everything. I wish I could have appreciated what you did for today more.” The way he was looking at her, both hopeful and hopeless simultaneously, broke her heart, but it was no longer enough to change her mind.

“That’s all.” Taeyeon stood from her spot on the couch. It was time to go; she couldn’t stay a second longer in this apartment any longer. Her old place at Hanwha Galleria Foret was still hers in name, even though she didn’t live there anymore. “I’ll come back for my things another time.”

“No.” Donghae-oppa shot to his feet, although Hyukjae-oppa was still motionless, as if paralyzed, next to him. “No. Taeyeon, please,” he begged. “Please don’t leave him. He loves you so much.”

“He loves you more,” Taeyeon replied instantly – she hardly even had to think about it. Hyukjae-oppa’s actions had made that clear enough; she would never be enough for him. “Don’t make this harder than it has to be.” It was already plenty difficult to stomach the reality of what this had become. Donghae-oppa begging her to change her mind was only bound to make it even more agonizing for everyone involved.

Feeling heavy, she walked away, heading for the coat rack near the front door. The coat she’d taken off earlier today when she came home from filming Running Man hung there, with her car keys, her phone, and her wallet that she’d left in its pockets. Perfect. Everything she needed at the moment. I guess I should be grateful for the small things in life, she thought sarcastically.

She had almost reached the rack when Hyukjae-oppa dashed in front of her, blocking her way. His eyes were wild and frantic and filling rapidly with tears.

“Please,” he begged. “Please don’t leave me.”

“How can you say that?” Taeyeon asked softly, in disbelief at his words. She had to leave him. What else was going to remedy this wreck of a scenario, other than her getting out of the picture? This was the best thing that could be done for all of them. Donghae-oppa and Hyukjae-oppa could be together without her in the way, and she… she wouldn’t have to be a fool any longer. She would rather have nothing to do with either of them at all from this point onwards than be… this.

It was obvious that Hyukjae-oppa knew what she was talking about, too, from the helplessness that filled his gaze. But he didn’t give up. Taking her hands, he sank to his knees in front of her. Taeyeon followed him down with her eyes as he knelt, her head beginning to pound with the promise of imminent tears. Why couldn’t he just let it go? Why couldn’t he just let her go?

“I’m begging you,” he whispered, his voice shaky and unstable from crying. “Please. I’m horrible. I know that. I know I’m the most disgusting thing to walk the earth for what I did to you, but don’t leave me. Please don’t leave me. I’ll do anything, Taeyeon, please. I love you. I love you.”

I’ll do anything.

And maybe he would. Maybe he would end this thing with Donghae-oppa, maybe he would choose his feelings for her over his feelings for his best friend, if only to stop her from leaving for good, for forever. But Taeyeon couldn’t force him to make that decision. She couldn’t force him to choose one love over another, and she couldn’t ask Donghae-oppa to bury his feelings for Hyukjae-oppa for her sake. The only thing to do was to act herself, and the only action she could take without being unspeakably selfish and inhumanly cruel to both of them was to go.

“I’m leaving,” she told Hyukjae-oppa softly, squeezing his hands in hers. “I have to.” She glanced over her shoulder at Donghae-oppa, who was watching the exchange, crying silently. Their gazes met, and that was enough to tell him what she wanted to say.

Turning back to Hyukjae-oppa, who was staring up at her with desperation in his eyes and tears streaking his cheeks, Taeyeon bent down to kiss the crown of his head. His familiar scent flooded her nose, and her own tears threatened to rise up and destroy her composure, but she held them back firmly. “Goodbye, Hyukjae-oppa. You and Donghae-oppa be good to each other, okay?”

And then, pulling her hands out of his, she stepped around him and swept her coat off the hook of the rack, hearing the familiar jingle of her car keys inside. Unable to find the courage to look back one last time, she left the apartment, closing the door firmly behind her. With a deep breath, raising her chin and straightening her shoulders, she walked down the hallway, down the stairs, and to her car. Then she got in and drove away, heading back toward Hanwha Galleria Foret. Her heart wanted her to look in the rearview mirror at the apartment complex, fast getting further and further away, but she didn’t.

An amount of time that Taeyeon felt too exhausted to even think about identifying later, she was standing in the elevator, heading up to the floor of her apartment in Galleria Foret. Taeyeon leaned against the cold metal wall, fighting against the urge to close her eyes and deny all of reality for a few seconds. In the midst of her spacing out, the elevator stopped at her floor. Shaking her head in an attempt to clear her mind, Taeyeon stepped out into the hallway, only to pause and blink in surprise as she saw a familiar figure heading towards the elevators. It was Jiyong-oppa.

But what was he doing on her floor? Wondering if maybe she’d pressed the wrong button in her daze, Taeyeon glanced at the floor number displayed in the hallway. Sure enough, the digits etched into the fancy metal confirmed that she had, in fact, accidentally brought herself one floor below where her apartment was.

But if that meant she had run into Jiyong-oppa, so much the better, even though she was curious to know where he was going at this time of night. From the look of surprise on his face, too, it was clear he’d seen her. The sight of her friend sent a wave of welcoming through Taeyeon, enough to rejuvenate her a little bit. She smiled weakly and waved him over.

“Why’re you back here so late at night?” he asked as he closed the gap between them. Taeyeon hesitated, not sure how to answer. A part of her wanted to let out all that had happened in the last few hours so that she could finally get some of the weight off her chest, because she felt like she was suffocating, but she knew that doing so would be disrespecting Hyukjae-oppa and Donghae-oppa’s privacy. Instead, she simply said, “I broke up with Hyukjae-oppa.”

Jiyong-oppa’s face turned sympathetic. Not the kind of sympathetic that made you feel pitied and belittled, but the kind of sympathetic that made you feel like you were understood and supported. Nodding, he gave her a once-over, taking in her state. “You didn’t bring anything with you,” he noted, “and nothing’s been delivered to your place, which means you haven’t been preparing to move back in.”

Taeyeon nodded silently. They both knew the unspoken conclusion to Jiyong-oppa’s observations: the breakup between her and Hyukjae-oppa hadn’t been clean or agreed upon before today.

Jiyong-oppa brushed his hand reassuringly against hers. “Come on, let’s go. I’ll help you get settled in – or something.”

Despite herself, Taeyeon smiled at his word choice, grateful that his lightheartedness could take her mind off what had just happened with her ex-boyfriend. “Thanks, but aren’t you going somewhere?” she asked. “You’ve got to have an appointment if you’re going out so late at night.”

“Seunghyun-hyung invited us to a nightclub. But it’s okay, I can ditch.”

“You sure?” Under other circumstances, Taeyeon would have been more hesitant to steal Jiyong-oppa when he had a prior agreement to be somewhere. But this was Seunghyun-oppa; she knew he wouldn’t mind, as long as Jiyong-oppa notified him of his absence.

“Positive.” That was all it took. The entered the elevator together, and as it went up a floor Jiyong-oppa quickly texted the other member of Bigbang, letting him know he couldn’t make it.

Entering her apartment with Jiyong-oppa behind her, Taeyeon involuntarily let out a contented sigh, not realizing how much she had missed the place. She had checked it occasionally when she was living with Hyukjae-oppa, but it had been nearly a year since she’d come back. Everything was familiar, nostalgic, and comfortable, without anything to remind her of bad memories.

“Everything’s collecting dust,” Jiyong-oppa teasingly commented, looking around. Taeyeon rolled her eyes. Both of them were well into adulthood by now – Jiyong-oppa was even back from the military, after all – but around each other there were times when they both seemed to become ridiculously immature. It was a common thing among friends who’d practically seen each other go through puberty, she supposed.

I’m hungry, Taeyeon thought tiredly, being back in her own place suddenly making her aware of the fact. She glanced at the refrigerator in the kitchen, but knew better than to hope something was there. Of course everything was empty. Her furniture was still here, but that was about it, and there was certainly nothing perishable left in the apartment. She could order, since food delivery services were open 24/7, but she didn’t feel like really conversing with anyone unfamiliar, even just briefly.

“You’re hungry.” Jiyong-oppa wasn’t asking a question; it was a statement, because he knew her enough now to even pick up on the signs that she was hungry, just like she did him. Taeyeon nodded, her lips thinning into a straight line in displeasure.

“I could bring something from my apartment,” Jiyong-oppa offered. Grateful for him, Taeyeon nodded with a quick word of thank you. Waving it off and saying he’d be back quickly, he jogged out, leaving her alone with her thoughts.

With another sigh, Taeyeon made her way to the bathroom, washed her hands, took off her coat, and walked down the hallway to the room that she used as a closet. Flipping on the light switch, she was greeted by the hollow space, left completely empty when she moved in with Hyukjae-oppa save for a few clothing racks here and there. She hung her coat on one of them, took out her car keys, phone, and wallet from its pockets, and went to the bedroom. For some reason, as she opened the door she felt nervous, but it was a grounding kind of nervous. Almost comforting, like she was coming back to a family that she hadn’t seen in a long time.

Switching on the light, Taeyeon’s body sagged when she took in the sight of her old bedroom after so long. She felt safe here. This room, at least, was free of memories of agonizing over an unfaithful boyfriend and a friend that was complicit and part of his cheating.

Putting her phone, keys, and wallet on her desk, she sat down heavily in the swivel chair in front of it. Inevitably, her mind was already going back to Hyukjae-oppa, wondering what he was doing now. Had he accepted that she’d left, or was it still hard for him to stomach? Was Donghae-oppa comforting him? She hoped so.

Not the time, she chided herself. Honestly, she wasn’t even sure it would ever be the time to think about Hyukjae-oppa again. But right now, she had more immediate, more concrete concerns, such as what she was going to wear to bed. She hadn’t brought any home clothes from the old apartment. Sleeping in what she was currently wearing – a pair of black jeans and a loosely-fitting black hoodie – was possible, but it didn’t seem like something she would particularly want to do, given a choice. She could just outright sleep with only underclothes on, but it was cold these days, and she didn’t want to risk getting sick.

Just when she was resigning herself to the situation, she heard the sound of her apartment code being put in. Standing up, she hurried back to the living room just in time to see Jiyong-oppa enter. He was holding a light blue plastic container in one hand, two bottles of water dangling unsteadily by their caps from his other hand, and a plain white T-shirt and black pajama pants draped over his arm, all of which made for an odd picture when they came together.

Taeyeon took the container from her friend so he could hold the water bottles with both hands, looking at him curiously. “Are those for me?” she asked, gesturing with her eyes at the clothes. Jiyong-oppa nodded. “I figured you hadn’t brought any clothes and you don’t want to sleep in what you’re wearing now, so I brought you these. And,” he added, pulling out two items out of his pocket, in which they’d been stuffed rather awkwardly, haphazardly between his index and middle fingers, “a toothbrush and toothpaste. They’re spare, so don’t worry about returning them.”

“You just took the first thing you found in your closet for the clothes, didn’t you?” Taeyeon snorted, eyeing the plain, crinkled T-shirt and pajama pants. Jiyong-oppa didn’t say anything, but the small, knowing smile that crept over his face briefly was all the confirmation she needed.

“Thanks though,” she said genuinely, because moving back in would have been much more troublesome if not for him. Running out of the apartment she had shared with Hyukjae-oppa had not been the smartest idea, and she’d known she was leaving behind plenty of necessities, but the need to get away from him as soon as possible had overwhelmed all other concerns. She would have had to pay for that had Jiyong-oppa not come to her rescue.

He patted her head in response to her thanks, the same way he’d been doing for over twenty years now. When she was younger it had baffled Taeyeon, because it was a gesture he never did to anyone else, but now she appreciated it, and secretly even enjoyed the fact that it was reserved solely for her. “No need to thank me,” he said. “I’m always here for you.”

Taeyeon smiled, and although she was drained emotionally and mentally, the smile was sincere. “I know.” They had had each other’s backs for almost as long as she could remember – since she was newly twelve and he was newly seventeen. An uncountable number of things had changed since 2004, but miraculously, thankfully, that wasn’t one of them.

Placing the container down on her table, Taeyeon opened it to find two rolls of kimbap cut into pieces arranged neatly inside. On the inner lid was fastened a pair of chopsticks. Looking at it made her mouth water; she hadn’t been able to eat anything since having lunch during Running Man, several hours ago. Eagerly, she freed the chopsticks from their spot on the lid and popped a piece into her mouth. Flavor flooded her tongue, and she nearly purred in satisfaction.

“At least go change.” Jiyong-oppa’s amused voice broke through the pleasure-induced haze that the food had cast over her.

He was right. Reluctantly, Taeyeon took the clothes he was holding out to her and dragged herself away from the food and to her bedroom, where she quickly changed. The T-shirt and pajama pants were just what she liked to wear in casual settings; comfortable and loose-fitting, excess fabric hanging from her body. She could faintly smell Jiyong-oppa’s cologne on the smooth, cool material, but she was so used to the scent after two decades and counting that it only just barely crossed her mind as a point worth noting.

After she finished putting on the borrowed clothes, Taeyeon hurried to the bathroom to splash some water on her face. The stark cold temperature of the liquid, which she’d set on purpose, against her skin brought jarring perspective to the entire situation. As Taeyeon stared in the mirror, strands of hair around her face dripping wet and some plastered against her cheeks, drops of water running down her face, it all seemed to sink in for good. She had broken up with Hyukjae-oppa. Six years together ended with this ridiculous fiasco, and on their anniversary, no less. It wasn’t like she had expected them to last forever, but what had happened just bordered on the plot of a novel, complete with a shocking reveal of infidelity and a dramatic climax consisting of a barrage of screaming and knocking things over. It was the kind of thing that Taeyeon would have rolled her eyes over had she read it in the book, and yet…

Fuck me. She leaned against the sink on her elbows, her gaze fixating on one drop of tap water running off her chin. Maybe she should just swear off relationships forever, Taeyeon thought with humorless amusement. Time and time again they seemed to be proving that they weren’t worth all the baggage that they came with, at least in her experience.

And neither is that baggage worth the time it takes to think about, she told herself. Turning away from the sink, she tried her hands and face on the towel and rejoined Jiyong-oppa in the kitchen. They ended up sharing the kimbap since it turned out that he was hungry too, after which they caught up with what had been going on in the other’s life, having not been able to have a substantial conversation with each other for a good few months. As expected, Jiyong-oppa, despite working constantly for the past few weeks like her, was as busy in the upcoming days as she was. They were both addicted to work to the point that it was unhealthy, but neither of them could help the fact that in spite of how exhausting it was, work was an undeniable comfort. She would rather fly through the day occupied with schedule after schedule than be left with the free time for her mind to slip back to Hyukjae-oppa, or the other things that had long bothered her since she was young.

By the time Jiyong-oppa left, it was nearly three in the morning. Just before he went out the door, he turned back. “Is it okay if I let the others know that you… broke up?” he asked.

Taeyeon nodded. Jiyong-oppa might not be the best person at keeping news to himself, but she knew he wouldn’t go spilling the information to people who didn’t need to know – just like she knew that he was asking because he was aware of her tendency to keep things like this to herself. It was because Taeyeon didn’t like talking about matters too personal to others, preferring to distance herself from and move past the topic, which was difficult when people kept mentioning it around her. And, she admitted, it was also maybe a little bit because she didn’t want to be pitied. But she knew that was a ridiculous concern, that the people Jiyong-oppa told wouldn’t pity her; they’d just be sympathetic, like he was.

Besides, she’d already found herself in some awkward situations because of her reluctance to tell others about things like this. The last thing she wanted was for someone to bring Hyukjae-oppa up around her, or worse, show up with him under the assumption that she’d be happy to see her boyfriend. In that vein, she was grateful that Jiyong-oppa was willing to give the news.

Thankful that she had no schedules tomorrow, so she could take one day to plan things out before she became busy again, Taeyeon brushed her teeth and crashed. It was no unfamiliar sensation to sleep alone, since it had been a long time since she and Hyukjae-oppa had slept in the same bed, but this time, there was the added comfort that it was her bed in this apartment that was solely hers. It wasn’t something that was addled with memories of Hyukjae-oppa and her relationship with him, the way every little thing at their old apartment seemed to be.

Despite that, she didn’t sleep well. When she managed to lose consciousness, something in her subconscious seemed to prick at her, summoning up the hazy image of shining big brown eyes and a wide, cheerful smile that exposed gums. She would wake back up, disoriented and groggy, her chest hurting and her throat tightening like she was going to cry, then roll back over and try to fall asleep again. She would eventually, only for the same thing to happen and for her to wake up again.

Helplessly, Taeyeon pulled her legs into her chest and lay there in a fetal position, staring blankly ahead of her into the darkness. It was true that she felt liberated from all the choking frustration that had been a part of her life since she found out about Hyukjae-oppa and Donghae-oppa, but now she had these new emotions to deal with. Knowing that she could no longer touch, hug, or kiss Hyukjae-oppa made her heart sink. Knowing that he, whether he loved her like he said he did or not, had cheated on her made her eyes burn. Why would he do that to her? Why hadn’t she meant enough to him that he, at the very least, hadn’t lied straight to her face for years? It was even more painful because she now knew that his relationship with Donghae-oppa had started when his relationship with her was still going fairly strong, no signs of the coolness that had eventually settled over it making themselves known yet. And still he had cheated on her. What was she supposed to think of that? If he loved Donghae-oppa that much – and Taeyeon was sure he did, otherwise he just wouldn’t have done what he had – then why not just be honest about it so they didn’t have to slough their way through the muck and grime to such a low point before it finally all shattered?

Thinking of Donghae-oppa was far from pleasant, too, but it was probably what her mind most constantly went back to after Hyukjae-oppa. Taeyeon didn’t know what to think. She’d always believed that Donghae-oppa was such a good, kind, and honest person. Hell, she still believed it, which made the knowledge of what he had done with his best friend all the more jarring. She couldn’t quite reconciliate the Donghae-oppa who had offered her such sincere comfort about the deterioration of her relationship with the Donghae-oppa whom she’d heard in his apartment, being fucked by her boyfriend. Those two things had gone on at around the same period of time, and she knew that, but her mind just couldn’t seem to wrap itself around the idea completely.

At some point before the sun rose, Taeyeon gave up. She took to just lying there motionlessly and silently with her eyes open, too drained to think about trying to fall asleep again. The hours blurred together until finally, sunlight peeking in through the gaps in her curtains coaxed her into sitting up in bed. Rubbing her sore, itchy eyes with the back of her hand, Taeyeon grimaced slightly, but immediately her facial muscles fell back to an expression of apathy as she realized that even grimacing took more effort than she was willing to make.

She didn’t feel rested. She wasn’t sure she’d be able to feel rested for a long time. Maybe it would have been better to just have a schedule today.

Stumbling out of bed, she picked up her phone and checked the time. It was 6:09 in the morning. To her slight surprise, she had already received several texts about what had happened yesterday.

[Soojin 💎– 3:38 A.M.] Heard that you broke up with Eunhyuk-oppa. I know you probably won’t talk about it, but I’m here if you want to, ‘kay?

[Yuna 🌺 – 4:01 A.M.] Eonni, I’m sorry to hear what happened. But you’re the strongest person I know, I have faith that you’ll get through it.

[Hana-eonni 🌙 – 4:19 A.M.] Are you okay? I’m always prepared to let you lean on me :)

[Sunbin 🎀 – 4:37 A.M.] I know you probably won’t mention it much, but we’re all ready to listen if you ever want to talk, eonni.

[Taeyong 👶 – 4:41 A.M.] Jiyong-hyung told me what happened with Eunhyuk-sshi. You definitely aren’t looking to cry about it in front of anyone, but just this once, could you call me when you see this text?

[Youngbae-oppa – 5:04 A.M.] Taeyeon, you’re the kind of person who bottles everything up inside. I’m not going to pester you, but just remember that there are people who are there for you. I’m here too, if you want to vent.

Another text came as she was looking over the ones that she’d already received. Taeyeon clicked the notification.

[Daesung-oppa – 6:10 A.M.] You’ll be okay, right?

Touched but also overwhelmed at all the messages, Taeyeon sat down on the armchair in front of her desk. Are you okay? Do you want to talk? I know you’ll get through it. She sincerely appreciated all of them, even though she wasn’t sure how much the messages really helped her emotional state. Granted, it was undoubtedly such a blessing that she had so many people looking to comfort her, but she couldn’t open up about it. Doing so would mean invading Hyukjae-oppa and Donghae-oppa’s personal boundaries, and as momentarily gratifying as it might be to spill the beans, Taeyeon knew she couldn’t do it. The knowledge that her boyfriend had cheated on her with their mutual friend was something she would have to stomach by herself. The thought left a sour taste in her mouth.

Don’t dwell on things, Taeyeon. It will never be useful.

It sounded like something she’d say to herself, but that voice in her head wasn’t her own. It was her father’s – saying one of the many things he’d begun telling her since after her mother passed away until the day that he passed away himself. Obviously he was no longer here to keep saying it to her, but his words – and not just those particular ones, but many that he’d said to her in his life – stuck with her even today, years and years and years later. As much as she failed to grasp what her actual feelings toward that man were, Taeyeon knew a lot of her personality and tendencies came from him.

Despite her resolving time and time again not to think of her father anymore, Taeyeon couldn’t help herself; she wondered what he would have done, if he was still alive. Not that she would have told him about the ridiculous way she’d broken up with her boyfriend – he was probably the last person she’d want to tell – but if she, for some reason, found it in herself to do, what would he have said? “Get over it”, maybe? “Focus on your career”? “Relationships usually end, anyway”? Taeyeon understood that fathers got angry when their daughters were hurt, much less cheated on, and if her mother had lived then maybe her father would have reacted like that. But the kind of man her father had been since after his wife’s death… Taeyeon couldn’t imagine it from him.

It wasn’t like he hadn’t cared, although that was what she had believed when she was younger. He had cared, she recognized that (and wished she’d done it sooner because then it wouldn’t have cost her so many tears thinking that he didn’t care about her), but he’d never expressed it in any way that she and Taeyong could have been happy with. He certainly hadn’t expressed it in a way that would have had him shouting and becoming furious if he learned his daughter had been cheated on. Her father had been a touching success story in many ways, but in that particular way he had been a failure, and she was pretty sure that if she lived in a universe in which the possibility existed that she’d tell him about what had happened in the past twenty-four hours, she wouldn’t have taken it. He would have disappointed her again.

On the other hand, she wondered what her mother would have said. She only remembered a little bit about her – that she’d read to Taeyeon before she went to bed, that often when Taeyeon asked her what she was doing her mother would reply that she was writing, that she’d gotten frustrated at Taeyeon once for disturbing her reading time, although she’d apologized later. Her mother had been a woman who valued her alone time and privacy. That, Taeyeon thought, she’d gotten from her.

But she couldn’t say with certainty what Lee Jiyu would have said if she’d heard her daughter had broken up with her boyfriend of six years because he’d cheated on her with a mutual friend. In fact, she hardly had any idea. Her mother had died when Taeyeon was a complete child – around five years old. She couldn’t recall much about her. And Taeyong probably remembered even less than she did.

Opening her phone again, Taeyeon stared a long while at the messages. She felt sorry towards all the senders for how she felt – vaguely irritated, because she didn’t want to deal with human communication at the moment. She didn’t want to deal with anything at the moment, not even her own mind.

But they were looking after her, and the least she could do was reply. So she fired a quick text back at everyone – something along the lines of “Thanks, I’m fine, don’t worry about me” maybe adding the occasional “really” at the end – except Taeyong. Her little brother had asked that she call, and, tired as she was, Taeyeon felt the motherly instincts she had somehow developed towards him stirring. As much as she would never admit it, she couldn’t just not do something when he asked it of her so seriously.

Holding the phone to her ear and listening steadily to the unchanging ringing, Taeyeon rolled her eyes. Of course her brother would urgently tell her to call him and then not answer. Granted, it was over an hour ago since he texted, but still.

Taeyong picked up after about ten rings. “Noona!” was the first thing he said, voice surprised and tinged with concern. “What are you doing up so early?”

“Coming from the person who’s also up at the same time after sending me a text at 4:41 A.M.?” Taeyeon asked, amused.

There was a brief but clearly annoyed silence at the other end before Taeyong switched the subject.

“Why’d you break up with Eunhyuk-sshi?”

Well. Her little brother had always been straightforward, like her. Normally he wasn’t this nosy, but he could be when it came to her.

“What do you mean, why? It was just your usual breakup reasons,” she lied. Taeyong had always liked Super Junior, and he’d seemed rather happy about her and Hyukjae-oppa dating. He certainly hadn’t disapproved of it (not that that would have stopped her). She didn’t want to punch him in the face with the news of the real reason why she and Hyukjae-oppa had broken up – for Hyukjae-oppa and Donghae-oppa’s sakes, too. Taeyong had a hot temper, and she didn’t want him calling anyone and cursing them out – which was the least he’d do if he found out. Maybe one day, after everything had settled and she had gotten over Hyukjae-oppa cheating on her and Donghae-oppa lying to her, she would tell him. But now, with all the emotions that were involved, letting anyone know would only make the situation messier.

“Noona,” Taeyong snapped, “I know you love being mysterious and cool and dealing with everything by yourself, but you clearly aren’t okay. If it was a normal breakup you wouldn’t sound like this.”

Taeyeon shifted in her seat. Did she sound out of the ordinary? Slightly, maybe, although most people usually couldn’t tell – but it was true that most of the time she didn’t even really speak to anyone much until she’d worked out whatever issue was bothering her in her head somewhat.

And this was Taeyong, her younger brother.

She sighed. Obviously Taeyong was already on to her; trying to deny things would be useless. “Fine,” she admitted. “It wasn’t exactly typical. But I can’t tell you more.”

Her brother made a noise of irritation. “For fuck’s sake, noona. Why did I know you’d be like this?”

She could tell he was frustrated with her unwillingness to say anything, and for that Taeyeon was sorry. But that didn’t change the course of action she was going to take; she simply wasn’t willing to divulge Hyukjae-oppa and Donghae-oppa’s personal information to anyone, and not even out of any particular fondness for them, but because she just didn’t feel comfortable with giving out such intimate matters in general. Although Taeyong was her brother, he was no exception.

“I’m sorry,” she said, and she meant it sincerely, because she was sorry that her refusal to be forthright with him about what happened annoyed him. But past that, there was nothing she could do about it.

Taeyong sighed. “No, you don’t need to be. I know you have good reason not to tell me. I’m just… I’m frustrated. Can’t you open up to me now? I’m only a year younger than you anyway, I’m not a baby.”

Her younger brother’s words made Taeyeon wince, if only slightly. She knew he wasn’t much younger than her, she knew he wasn’t a baby, and he was right – she didn’t often open up to him. But she couldn’t help her nature; she’d never been the kind of person to tell others about her problems much. Maybe a word here and there, but she didn’t like talking in depth about the negative things that often went through her mind. It made her feel exposed, vulnerable, and it made her feel like somewhere in the universe, her father was looking on in disappointment that she hadn’t followed his words. It was ridiculous, she knew; her father was dead. He’d been dead for well over a decade. But still, she couldn’t escape his influence – no more than she could bring herself to be open with Taeyong about her problems. He might be an adult, but she still remembered more than clearly the days when she’d tuck him into bed, help him with his homework, give him what advice she could at only a year older than him, all over the phone if she had to. She remembered reminding him to eat healthily, she remembered comforting him when he called her, crying about something harsh their father had said, and she remembered looking at him and thinking, “Don’t worry. Your big sister is going to take care of everything. Leave it all to me.” It was difficult for her to forget those times, and in turn, it made her wonder: was it right of her to be dumping her problems on him? Surely he had enough of his own; he was a celebrity, like her, a popular actor who had plenty of pressures and responsibilities that came with his many roles. Taeyeon knew better than anyone how stressful fame could be, and if her brother was already suffering from those difficulties, he didn’t need her to be adding on to them.

“I’m okay,” she told him. She wasn’t sure how true that was, but it felt like the only thing she could say. “Really, I am. I’ll get over it.” Eventually. Maybe. Hopefully.

Taeyong was silent for a few seconds. Taeyeon could tell he didn’t believe her, but she could also tell that he could tell that she wasn’t going to elaborate any more on the matter. “Okay,” he said, reluctantly. “I’m just – I’m here for you, got that?”

“Never forgetting it,” she replied. With an undignified snort, he hung up.

Taeyeon placed the phone back on her desk and leaned back in her armchair, staring at the wall. Now what?

As soon as she realized she had nothing to do, her mind immediately, against her will, flew right back to Hyukjae-oppa just as if it had been waiting for this moment for years. Taeyeon groaned, unable to stop the tide of thoughts about him that flooded her head like a torrential downpour. What was he doing now? Was he thinking of her, like she couldn’t seem to stop thinking about him? Maybe he’d already gotten over everything that had happened. He had Donghae-oppa, after all. Donghae-oppa, who apparently meant more to him than she ever had. Donghae-oppa, with whom, for whom, he’d deceived her for years. Once again, the knowledge that their relationship had been going on since before she and Hyukjae-oppa had begun to drift apart hit her like a train skidding off of its tracks. The two of them had seen her many times since they’d started fucking – and whatever else they had done – had seen her, talked to her, smiled at her, laughed with her. Hell, the three of them had even met up more than once in that duration. How could they interact normally with her while fully aware of and participating in what was going on between them?

Moreover, why couldn’t they just have been honest with her? Why did they have to be such utter cowards and drag her into the issue for such an unnecessarily, ridiculously large span of time? For fuck’s sake, if they had just told her what was happening, she would have simply walked away and left them to their own devices!

The anger, humiliation, and betrayal were bubbling inside her, but it was barely a minute before they simmered out, flickering weakly in the pit of her stomach before vanishing altogether. Furious at herself for not being more furious, Taeyeon tried to summon that searing rage that had momentarily sent energy flowing through her limbs, but she couldn’t. She tried to resent them, but she couldn’t. She felt betrayed and she knew she felt betrayed, but she still couldn’t resent them.

She knew why. Because it was completely, thoroughly, hopelessly, and totally futile. Hating them would only bring her more useless pain. Hating them would only make her life harder. Hating them – it wouldn’t change a thing. Not one single, infinitesimal, miniscule, god damned thing.

Her life went on. It was just that simple.

No matter how splintering her breakup with Hyukjae-oppa felt, no matter how utterly used and betrayed she felt by both men, it didn’t matter. It was already in the past, and regardless of how much she raged, shouted, protested, or shrieked about it, what happened had already happened. Hyukjae-oppa had cheated on her, Donghae-oppa had deceived her, both men had lied to her and stabbed her in the back – and none of it mattered. It seemed, right now, like what they’d done to her was everything that she cared about and would ever care about, but Taeyeon knew it wasn’t – and in fact, it was nowhere near everything that she cared about. She had other, much larger concerns in her life. A shattered romantic relationship, a broken friendship, they didn’t matter enough that she would be crying over them forever. It hurt so much right now, but in the end, being miserable about what happened just wasn’t worth it. It wasn’t worth the time, it wasn’t worth the pain, it wasn’t worth the effort. And if Hyukjae-oppa and Donghae-oppa had decided that she wasn’t worth their honesty – which they evidently had decided, years ago, when they’d begun their relationship and decided not to tell her for so long – then they weren’t worth her sadness.  

She couldn’t wallow in this forever. Eventually she’d have to see both of them again, too.

Taeyeon rubbed her eyes tiredly with the heel of her palm. Going back to sleep wasn’t an option, not when she was already out of bed. So, she stood. Stretched. Cracked her back, stretched her inner thighs, rolled her neck, and stilled for a second longer, staring at the wall in front of the desk.

But only for a second. Because then, she walked out of her bedroom, purposefully tucking her hair behind her ears. Her chest still felt painful and stuffy, and the thought of Hyukjae-oppa and Donghae-oppa was still raw and shaky, but she pushed it all back somewhere inside her. Somewhere she would be hard-pressed to reach.

There was work to be doing.

[jujutsu-headcanons]

Yes to Yuji wrecking Mahito! Just so much yes my boy needs to avenge those wrongfully killed!

See I wanted Geto to be on my shit list (as I'm not normally a bad guy lover) but I swear he wore me down reading the manga. Plus he's just so pretty he makes my brain all static noises 😳 Not to mention that backstory between him and Gojo like YES give me all the drama I need buried drama 🤩

Totally agree on the Mai thing. See I wanted to hate Todo too bc of well him beating on Megumi but the moment him and Yuji were just like "Big Dumb Meat Heads" together I threw that out the window! Those two together are *chefs kiss* Absolutely stupendous I never get tired of them 👌👌👌

Mai on the other hand is just crawling more and more under my skin. Like why you gotta be like that gurl? You wanna go in the crusty corner with Mahito? Cuz you gotta crusty attitude that needs fixing like yesterday 😐

Literary brain tells me it wants more drama/character growth between Megumi and Toji. But my useless overly big heart wants to punch Toji and protect Megumi at all costs bc he just showed up on the screen like the kool aid man and burst right into my heart and I shan't forgive Megumi for that but now I will die for him so ¯\_( ツ)_/¯

But I'm not the only one who lowkey fantasizes about self inserty type day dreams??? Like every day all day I got my thoughts flowing into 500 different lil oneshots I'm too chicken to post anywhere bc I havent written anything in a while and I feel I'm rusty. But your idea! YOUR IDEA WOO BOI- I'm not even a Gojo fanatic (like I adore him but my heart dick thudded elsewhere RIP) but that scene you described of straddling him just to rip his blindfold off in the heat of an arguement that's clearly deadly to either party- Just to see him on the brink of tears fighting back every emotion to slate his composure to cocky/uncaring. Only to have it obviously failing, and the metaphorical reality around you both crumbling along with Gojo's emotional state- Oh God I would read that crap outta something like that. It fills me with the angst and I thrive on it daily *heavy breathing* You should think about posting more of your original content too! Self inserty or not bc that sounds down right brilliant on so many levels

💛anon

Bro I can't help but feel had for Gojo. That shit must have hurted. Like he looked so calm and collected when it all happened but was he really? His best friend potential lover went feral and murdered an entire village AND his family then he tried to kill his first years once and now AGAIN what is happening. Did you see the look on Gojo's face when Yaga told him he went rogue? That was a face of hurt and betrayal he couldn't even begin to understand at the young age of... What was it, 17? 18? He was practically a little itty bitty baby compared to now. I haven't read the prequel yet don't laugh at me but I've heard it hurts so much worse having to face Getou back then AND now. Stupid brain worms, stop fucking around.

I wanted to hate Todo too hut before he even turned good I couldn't. I have a thing for big buff boys who have zero brains and too much brawns I'm looking at you Metal Bat, Captain Ōbi I just wanna adopt/marry them because in all reality they're trying their best. I'm really glad Todo exists and has his big brother delusion because honestly I think that's something Yuji needs, especially in the current arc. Yuji needs as much support as he can get.

PFFFT CRUST CORNER I cannot with you omg they do need to sit on the time out chair for s bit and think about what they've done lmaooo

DID YOU CALL TOJI ZENIN- FUSHIGURO THE FUCKING KOOL AID MAN AHAHAHHHSH oh my god i hate this so fucking much or were you calling Megumi the koolaid man bc really each one is absurd n e wayz I dunno bro I rlly can't wait until Megs wakes up post Shibuya arc and actually has time to process what the fuck happened to him back then. I really want to know if he can connect the dots by himself and realize holy shit that was the source of my daddy issues right there in the flesh and how he reacts to him being a curse and all that. There's so many ways that can go too it's scary to think about.

Low key unrelated but I have a theory that Gojo can see everything from his little cube prison and knows what's going on. Its probably because of the six eyes, or because he's just fucking Gojo, or even because Geto seems kinda sadistic and would do something like that. But I can imagine him watching Megs and Toji fight and it absolutely destroying him. For starters, Gojo killed him .... Right? Wtf is he doing back? What? Second don't commit suicide in front of your kid oh my god Toji what (I'm probably just salty because of a past experience, but also, calm down Toji oh my god) and third I can see it hurting Gojo because in a way it feels like he's been trying to protect Megumi. Its obvious Gojo has this attachment to Megumi, and maybe it's because they've known each other so long, but I don't think Gojo is prepared to deal with the aftermath. Does he have to tell him, if Megs doesn't put the pieces together? Will he have to knock some sense into him to actually tell him? Because he DID try to tell Megs once before and he avoided it like the plague. Its also gotta hurt when you feel like someone's dad and you witness them have a bad interaction with their other dad.

Throw in his daughter being on the brink of death, his other son being emotionally demolished, his second year kids lost in the void and not even his void, his best friend locked him in a box, his other best friend exploded, etc. I think Gojo I pretty distraught even if he doesn't show it

Bro okay my brain is riddled with ideas like this and 90% of them are always angst. Idk where tf they come from half the time but they exist and I hate it. They're always self inserts too.

So I actually read this ask last night, but due to personal reasons I didn't reply to it now, and I actually started experimenting writing out this scenario. I had to stop when I wrote the line "Approximately one year after the first finger was consumed, Itadori Yūji was formally executed. At three minutes to midnight, Sukuna Ryomen was expelled from his body, destroying the vessel along with it. The executioner was none other than the teenager's teacher and mentor Gojo Satoru. When Y/N awoke to this news, they attacked on sight."

Oh god I made myself so sad with that line

And i do really want to post some of my fics, like I did with Nobara Meeting Sukuna For The First Time. However, I only posted that because it was short and simple lmao it was basically just a meme I didn't even run it though grammarly like I do with the headcanons.

I like sticking to the headcanons as of right now because I feel like grammar didn't exist when I make those. I can spell things wrong and leave off punctuation and word then like I'm a third grader just learning English and no one will laugh lmao. Fanfics kinda stress me out because i want them to be perfect. I also have a hard time with fight scenes and transitioning and it's s mess.

I REALLY want to write out my Guardian Angel! Junpei AU because I think it's so cute. Just the idea that this boy is assigned to fight against fate and the higher ups and keep Yuji alive despite him being an idiot and a target is cute to me. Like I just canon him being the plantonic equivalent of in love with this boy and he feels like he rlly owes it to Yuji for trying to save him it's the LEAST he can do. Plus I need the mental imagine if Junpei annoying reader-chan into finding Yuji because "they play a pivotal role in Yuji's future" just for the "pivotal role" to literally be playing therapist and just being there for him and being a medium between Junpei and Yuji because guardian angels aren't allowed to reveal themselves to the person they're guarding but also/// he might risk his wings being stripped just to talk to Yuji one more time////

Okay I'm going to stop now

But yea, maybe if I have time and create little mini works like Nobara Meeting Sukuna For the First Time I'll def post them! I'll work on casually making them longer and soon I'll be confident to posts longer ones. But until then I hope just the headcanons at alright ;-;

[visambros]

For the sake of my future, I am leaving Tumblr.

I haven’t been very active on here, and I know I haven’t been particularly talkative either, but I’m making this post to let people know that I’m going. I may delete this blog in the future, but I’m keeping everything for now.

There is a long list of reasons why I’m doing this, but if you don’t want to read the entire post then the long story short version is: My life is a dumpster fire that will not change for the better unless I devote as much of my free time as possible into improving my craft so I can make a living through my art/writing.

Full details under the cut.

I’ve been planning on making this post for a while, but I didn’t want to abandon this account forever because despite not being as active on here as I used to be in the past, I’m still emotionally attached to my account and still wanted to use Tumblr as a means of entertainment when I wasn’t working. And I knew that if I made this post, I’d have to commit to staying away and I wanted to avoid that. But two things happened last Sunday that acted as a major wake up call for me.

1) There was a false alarm at a power plant not too far away from where I live. I don’t live in the same city as the power plant, but I live in what would be the danger zone should the power plant have a melt down. The false alarm for the power plant was issued in the morning. I don’t have a cell phone, but my sister (who I share a room with) does and received the alert for the “meltdown”. Since it woke her up, she was tired and accidentally exited the alert without reading it first. She then went back to sleep.

Now I don’t blame my sister for doing this. Hell, I probably would’ve done the same thing in her shoes.  My issue lies in the fact that, had there been an actual emergency, I would’ve a) slept through it or b) had no reliable way of getting out of the city.  I can’t drive, never learned how, so I couldn’t have driven myself to safety if my mom had decided not to leave the house (I know what you’re thinking; “why wouldn’t she leave the house?” and honestly she most likely would’ve left the city, but my mom has made enough stupid decisions throughout her life that her staying home isn’t outside the realm of possibility for me to believe).

Even though I know it was a false alarm, it’s still scary to think about how I could’ve died- or at least gotten very sick- had it been a real meltdown. I hate living in this city and I want to move, but I don’t have the means to do so at the moment.

2) My stepfather. For those who don’t know, my mom married a man she only knew for a few months and he is a horrible human being. He has threatened to kill me and my mom in the past, has been arrested multiple times since arriving to Canada (late last year he was arrested for possession of heroin), and is altogether an unpleasant and annoying man to be around.

So last Sunday night, I was doing the dishes when I heard a knock at the door. It was my stepfather, who had left the house for whatever reason and had returned. However, as I neared the door, I noticed that it was unlocked. He could’ve let himself in, but for whatever reason he was still knocking. I suddenly got it in my head that he wanted me to open the door so he could yank me outside without having to drag me through the house first.

I know that sounds paranoid, but the man is disturbed. I don’t think I’ve gone a week without at least worrying once that I was going to come home to my stepfather having murdered everyone else in the house while I was out. Added to the fact that he and I really hate each other and I was the one to call the police on him two times, and I think you could forgive me for thinking that he might try to hurt me if given the chance.

Despite my fears, I still opened the door for my stepfather. He didn’t attack me. He just went back inside and did whatever it was that he did. But even though nothing happened to me, I was still wound up for about five minutes and it felt like all the nerves in my body (especially my arms) were somehow taut and weak at the same time.

Aside from my sister, who is my only bright spot in this house, I don’t want to live with or have anything to do with this family anymore. I would’ve left years ago if I could. But again, I don’t have the means to do so at the moment.

This is why I’m leaving Tumblr.

I know that it’s super hard and almost impossible to make a decent living off the arts. I know I could try and try for the next decade and still not get anywhere I want to be. But I need to try, because I’m tired of my life being the way it is right now and I’m scared that things will never get better if I’m too passive.

I currently work at Walmart. I’m on my feet during the majority of my shift and my legs and knees hurt so bad I think I might be doing long lasting (but hopefully not permanent) damage to them. I work evenings, so I only have mornings and the weekends to get my art and writing done, but I’m so tired that my artistic productivity tends to drop off after Monday morning.

It’s too easy to spend my mornings and weekends procrastinating. It’s too easy for my life to turn into sleep>eat>Walmart>sleep>eat>Walmart until the day I die. The fact that it’d be so easy for me to be an old woman and still be at a similar stage in my life, even if I work my ass off trying to get my art/writing career going, fills me with so much existential dread I can hardly stand it.

But I’m tired of being so poor I could only visit my biological dad once while he was in the hospital for cancer. I’m tired of living with student loans that never seem to end. I’m tired of working at a job that demands so much of my time and energy. I’m tired of living in an area where people keep getting murdered in a less than a ten minute walk from my house. I’m tired of being afraid that I’ll come home from work and see police outside my house and body bags being taken into an ambulance. So I have to try, even if my chances of success are low.

I know I chose a bad career path for someone who wants to be financially comfortable. “Starving artist” is a stereotype that exists for a reason. But aside from it being my passion, I know I’m not good enough at anything else to make a proper living doing anything else. If I can’t make my dreams a reality, I’ll just be stuck in retail for the rest of my life, and I would honestly rather die than live like that. And I don’t want to die. Despite my anxiety and depression issues, despite the fact that I sometimes struggle with suicidal idealization, I don’t want to die. I just want my life to get better.

So when I say I’m leaving Tumblr, I don’t mean I’m just leaving Tumblr. I mean I’ll be using the internet as a whole for mainly a research/resource tool for my art and writing. Which means I’ll be spending very little time for leisure on the internet. It also means I won’t be socializing much anymore, which sucks because I like having internet friends (even though I’m bad at keeping in touch) but if I want my dreams to come true, I can’t be distracted by anything, even other people. From this point onward, I’ll essentially be working (almost) nonstop, only taking enough breaks so my brain doesn’t melt from the stress.

I know this is all very extreme, but I really haven’t fully expressed how absolutely desperate I am for my life to stop being so horrible. Maybe if I grind hard enough, things will be okay someday.

If you made it this far, thank you. And I’m sorry if I ever did anything to make you uncomfortable or hurt you in any way.

Goodbye everybody.

[daisyxbuckley]

Only Human//Mitch Rapp series

A/N: Part 6 is here!!! I have one more part after this and this series is done. But if you think that I’m going to make another series because I have a really good idea…well you bet your sweet ass I will. this wont be the last you see of them. ANYWAYS. I love everyone and I hope that you enjoy this chapter. 

Description: Ophelia Lane has a past that most CIA operatives would hate to have. The 25 year old is sent back to The Barn to help Stan train the new batch of recruits, including one that is hell bent on getting revenge. Can she keep it together or will a secret that is hidden under the surface come back and haunt her?

@cxddlyash @xceafh @stiles-o-dylan24 @dylan-obrien-fanblog @n0rdicstar

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 Stan and Mitch quickly called in a cleaning crew and grabbed the physicist and got the hell out of there. The car ride was silent as they drove to the meeting place for Irene. Mitch realized how much Ophelia’s presence had taken up his life and how empty it seemed with her gone. 

Pulling over into a warehouse, Mitch stayed in the car as Stan got out and slammed the door. He popped the trunk and looked at the man in there, grabbing a tank of gasoline and pouring it on him. Mitch finally got out of the car and stalked over to him. “What now?” He asked crossing his arms as Stan emptied out the can of gas. Stan ignored him and lit a cigarette and smiled cruelly at the physicist. He looked up at Stan with wide eyes trying to move from the binds that held him. 

“We are going to play a game.” Stan said with his cigarette in his hand. “You tell me the truth and I won’t set you on fire.” He said shrugging. 

“Jesus Christ.” Mitch mumbled as he ran his hands through his hair and turned away. He wasn’t sure how Stan losing his mind would help them find Ophelia, but at that point he was willing to do anything to get her back. 

“I don’t know anything I swear. He just asked me to build this bomb and I did.” The man groaned. Stan glared at him before taking a drag of the cigarette and waiting a second to blow the smoke out. 

“Where is the warehouse? I want an address.” He growled. Mitch had enough by then and pulled his phone out to call Irene when she appeared from the dark. 

“Stan, get him to the safe house. We need him alive to figure out where the bomb is. “ She said walking in. Stan glared at her before slamming the hood shut and throwing his cigarette on the ground. Mitch got in following him and staying silent. The only thing he could think about was what Ophelia was going through. 

By the time they got back to the safe house, Stan had chained smoked an entire pack and Mitch was about to kill him for telling him to shut up every time he tried to speak. It took about 30 minutes for the physicist to talk about where the bomb was and where it was supposed to go off at. First Fleet was docked in the harbor for exercises and Mitch knew that if the bomb went off there it would cost mass destruction. 

“What about Ophelia?” Mitch asked as he walked in on Irene and Stan talking about a game plane. They both looked at him with the same pitiful look “Ophelia is an agent. She knows what happens if you go down in the field.” Stan said harshly. 

“That’s fucking bullshit and you know it!” Mitch yelled. He knew people were staring but he didn’t care. Stan stormed over and slammed the office door shut turning around and glaring at the enraged man. 

“What the fuck is your problem?” He shouted at Mitch. Irene stood there and watched the interaction knowing how tough it was on both of them. 

“My problem?” Mitch yelled. “My problem is Ophelia is out there with a lunatic and you’re not even going after her.” Mitch was seeing red at this point. “She is your fucking daughter.” Stan just stared at him with his mouth agape. 

“How do you know that?” 

“Because Ronnie said so. He was looking for you, Stan.” Mitch growled. “He took Ophelia because of you. So what aren’t you telling us Stan?” Mitch said stepping towards him spitting out the words. He was beyond mad at that point. The last time he felt that way was when he watched Katrina die. “Did you know he was alive?” 

It was Irene’s turn to speak at that point. “Stan..what is he talking about?” Stan looked between both of them and sighed rubbing his eyes. 

“I found out about Ronnie  about four months after the bombing.” Mitch and Irene just stood there with mouths agape and wide eyes. “It was when I went to Russia for that mission. He was there…but he was different. Full of hatred, for both the CIA and Ophelia for getting him shot.” Stan sighed and sat down. “I told him that he needed to figure his shit out before he drug my daughter down with him.” 

Mitch shook his head as he rubbed his eyes. “So if you would of put a bullet in between his eyes or had him come back with you, then Ophelia wouldn’t be in this position.” His voice was low and scary calm. His veins were popping out of his arms as he fought to control his actions. “This is fucking bullshit Stan!” He yelled as he punched the table. Both Irene and Stan stared at him, they had seen the videos of when Mitch lost control but neither had ever actually been present. This was a whole new side of him. “You can’t just expect us to fucking sit here while he kills her?!” 

“You really think I wanna lose my daughter?” Stan yelled standing up to meet Mitch. “No, but Ophelia knew what she was doing when she joined. She knew what being part of Orion meant.” Mitch scoffed and rolled his eyes. 

“What, that we are ghosts? Right, we don’t exist. Well guess what Stan..she fucking exists and its your fault that he has her in the first place.” Mitch clenched his fists so hard that he was drawing blood in his palms. 

“That’s it Rapp. You’re off this damn mission.” Stan said lowly. “You are too emotionally involved. I don’t know what happened between you and my daughter, but you made this personal. So grab your shit and go, you’re on the first flight out.” He said sitting down. 

“Fuck you Stan.” Mitch said kicking a chair over and walking out of the room. Walking past the analysts in the room, Mitch saw Annika standing by the door with a calm face. She looked like she was contemplating something and he wondered what.

“Let’s go.” Was all she said before holding up keys to Stan’s car. Mitch stared at them for about half a second before he grabbed them and they slipped out the door. Jumping in the car he started the engine and peeled out of there towards the address that Annika had acquired.

He just hoped that he wasn’t too late. 

*****************************************************

“You need to wake up, O.” Mitch was talking to her but his voice sounded distorted and too far away. “Ophelia, you need to wake up and fight.” She didn’t know why she needed to fight…they were in her hotel room and they were safe.

So then why did her arms hurt?

Ophelia’s eyes flew open as she looked around trying to get her bearings in the dingy tunnel. It looked like a warehouse but she honestly had no clue. Her arms were suspended above her in chains attached to the ceiling and her feet were barely touching the ground. Her shoulders were on fire and she was fairly sure one of her shoulders had been dislocated. 

“Well, look who’s finally awake.” Ophelia stiffened at the voice. Raising her head she glared at Ronnie while he was moving to stand in front of her. It was then that she noticed that her shirt had been removed, leaving her in a bra and jeans. Her feet were bleeding a bit and she realized that he had pulled off a few of her toenails. Smelling the strong scent of iron, Ophelia tasted the blood in her mouth as well as noticed the table that had a bloody knife, some pliers and what looked like fingernails. 

“Those are yours. Apparently your body can’t handle torture anymore.’ Ronnie scoffed. “You’re getting weak Ophelia.” 

“Why don’t you unchain me and I’ll show you how weak I am.” Ophelia said trying to fight against the chains. Ronnie stepped closer and put his hands against her waist, his contact with her skin made Ophelia want to vomit. Squeezing, he leaned into her, his nose trailing from the back of her ear down to her neck. 

“Oh Ophelia. Always so ready to rush into a fight.” He pulled back a bit, his hands still squeezing hard enough to bruise and stared at her. “You really have only gotten more beautiful since I left. I see why have the new me wrapped around your finger.” 

Ophelia jerked trying to move away but the chains prevented her doing anything more than hurting herself. “You leave him out of this.” She hissed as he chuckled. Ronnie stepped back towards the table picking up the knife. He walked over to her, trailing the blade down her stomach as Ophelia refused to take her eyes off him. 

“Oh, he had everything to do with this. I see how he looks at you, how he never takes his eyes off you when you are away from from.” 

Ophelia narrowed her eyes at his comment. “You have seen us together maybe two times..what are you talking about?”

Ronnie laughed. A maniacal look in his eyes. “Your dad didn’t tell you? Ophelia he knew that I was alive. He told me that I didn’t need to pull you down.” Ronnie scoffed. “I watched you. I watched you from that day. Stan never knew, he trained me that good.” Ophelia just watched him as he started pacing. “I was there the day HE showed up, and I was there the day that I saw you start falling for him. Of course he was taken with you since day one.” Ronnie looked up as Ophelia stared him down. “I don’t blame him honestly, I was the same way when I first met you.” 

The brunettes heart clenched as she watched her husband start pacing again. “Your dad is a piece of work. He trains the perfect killer and just because I decided that I was tired of doing the dirty work of a government that could give a shit about me, I’m the bad guy. All of a sudden i’m not good enough for his perfect fucking daughter.”

“You’re a fucking terrorist Ronnie. You’re literally building a bomb to sell to the highest bidder.” Ophelia yelled at him. “Why the hell would you think that I wanna be with you after that?” 

“See that’s the thing. You’re so damn good Ophelia, kind of ironic considering you and Rapp are trained to kill.” Ronnie said his eyes rolling. Ophelia didn’t hesitate. Spitting in his face, she saw him pull back and stare at her. 

“What I was trained to do was take down criminals, people like you.” She said calmly. Ronnie stepped close to her, snaking his arm around her neck, crashing his lips into her. Ophelia thrashed about trying to escape but he just pulled her closer. Before Ophelia could try to anything else, she felt a blinding pain in her side. Pulling away a gasp left her throat as Ronnie stepped back. The blade  in his hand glistening with a crimson color. Looking down she finally noticed all the cuts and marks that covered her torso and saw the blood slowly coming out of the fresh hole in her side. Ophelia looked up at Ronnie with wide eyes. She knew what he did, he made it so she would feel the pain but also so she wouldn’t bleed out instantly. 

“It’s been fun Ophelia..but I think your father and new boyfriend are on their way and I need you to play the perfect helpless victim for my plan.” He said stepping closer. Giving her one more rough kiss, he put duct tape over her mouth before punching her in the face, knocking her out. 

******************************************************

Mitch and Annkia drove to what looked like a subterranean bunker. The information that Annika had acquired pointed to this being where the bomb was being kept. Pulling out her phone, she sighed and showed Mitch. “No service, it’s a dead zone.” Mitch sighed and rubbed his eyes with his finger and forefinger. That would explain why Stan had stopped calling him so suddenly. 

“Come on.” He said to himself. He was looking for an entrance when he found one. Two men went in one side of the bunker as Mitch and Annika got out of the car and started following them. Getting to the door, Mitch had his gun drawn as they started to creep down the tunnel. Before they got any further though, Mitch felt a hand on his arm and saw Annika’s worried face. 

“Mitch before we go any further I need you to realize something.” She said quietly. “There is a good chance that when we find Ophelia it might be too late..I need to know that you can focus on what needs to happen if that does.” 

Mitch stared at her with a hard look. He liked Annika, he did, but her talking about Ophelia like she was already dead made his blood boil. “She’s not dead..I won’t let that happen.” He said as they started moving forward. They eventually came to a gate that was padlocked shut but Annika was able to get through it easily. Mitch looked around and knew that if they wanted to get Ophelia out of there quick, they needed to get the gate open. “Here…take this. Go find her but stay hidden. I’m going to get the gate open and meet you.” He said quietly giving her his gun. Annika nodded and Mitch watched as she ran out of sight before heading back the way they came. 

Annika crept down the tunnels as quietly as she could, trying to avoid the voices that had started getting louder. Looking in a room she noticed a figure hanging and had to stifle a gasp as she realized it was Ophelia. Running over, the injured girl started waking up when Annika approached. “Ophelia, thank god.” The woman said as she stuck the gun in the waistband of her jeans and started trying to get Ophelia down. O couldn’t really say much with the tape on her mouth, but the tears came to her eyes as she realized that she might actually be saved. If Annika was here…then so was Mitch. 

Annika managed to get Ophelia free from the chains and helped lower her down. Taking the tape off, Ophelia was about to thank the woman when there was a shot and Annika fell forward her blood covering Ophelia’s face and torso. Her arms were holding the stiff body but the shocked look on her face was enough to make Ronnie laugh. “Oh poor Ophelia..yet the cause of another death.” 

Mitch heard the gunshot and his head shot up. Running faster he abandoned his original plan and knew he had to make a big scene to get noticed by Irene and Stan. Jumping in the car, he floored the gas and drove through the tunnel. The men in front of him started shooting as Mitch accelerated and he paid no mind as he moved his head to the side as he kept going, running them over and busting through the gate. Finally the car couldn’t go anymore and he grabbed one of the guns off the men and started running noticing the fire that was starting. 

Ronnie’s head shot up as he heard the explosion and looked at Ophelia still shell shocked on the ground. Grabbing her by the hair he yanked her up as a cry left her lips from being jerked around with her side wound. “Let’s go.” He yelled at the other men in the room and started walking. 

“Let her go Ronnie.” Mitch said appearing in front of him. His eyes widened at the state that Ophelia was in and rage started pumping through is blood. He glanced over and saw Annika on the ground dead and looked back at Ophelia and realized that was where all the blood was coming from. “This is between us man. You don’t want to hurt you.” He said calmly. 

“Don’t I though?” Ronnie asked yanking Ophelia closer and putting a gun to her head. “I’m pretty sure I do man. Trust me when I say it will be better for you as well..you do not want her hanging around for the rest of your life.” 

Mitch watched as he wrapped his arm around Ophelia’s neck and she started clawing at him. “Let her go. I won’t ask you again.” He stated again. “Mitch..take the shot.” Ophelia gaped as she looked at him. The fear in her eyes was evident and it broke his heart. 

“Oh no honey, he won’t do that. He knows if he shoots me then you die too.” Ronnie said laughing. “How sweet..he really does care for you. Sad that you’ll both be dead soon.” Ophelia felt him loosen his grip a bit and took that as her chance. Throwing her elbow back, she caught him in the gut and managed to bite his hand. Ronnie yelled and threw her to the side as Mitch lunged at him. 

All she could do was sit there as she watched them fight. Due to the blood loss, she was way too weak to put up any kind of fight and Mitch was so enraged that she was afraid that if she got in the middle of it he wouldn’t be able to stop. Ronnie shoved Mitch up against the wall, his head bouncing off of it with a loud thunk. Ophelia crawled her way over to Annika’s body searching her back until she found the gun. 

“Oh Rapp. How does it feel knowing you wont be able to save her…..just like you couldn’t save that beautiful girl at the beach.” Ronnie sneered looking down at Mitch.  Before Mitch could say anything he heard Ophelia’s voice ring through the room. 

“Hey Ronnie.” She yelled. Both men turned to look at her as she leaned against the wall with the gun raised in her hand. The look on her face was straight murderous as she leveled  out and took aim. 

“I want a fucking divorce.” Ophelia said as she shot the weapon hitting Ronnie dead in the eyes. 

[heart-shaped-heart]

New Dawn [oneshot]

Fandom: Assassin’s creed

Pairing: Ezio x Fem!Reader 

Summary: You’re Spanish assassin, courageous and talented. Once you’re invited to Rome by what’s left of Italian Brotherhood to defeat your common enemy - Borgia. But even you, the avant-garde of assassins’ powers, have some secrets to keep.

Rating: PG-13

Word count: 1480

Warnings: none

Requested by: @ witch-of-letters

A/N: Once again thank you for your great request! I apologize for making you wait that long, but I hope it’s worth it and you will enjoy the story!~

It’s been a year. A year since you’ve arrived at Rome. A year since you’ve become one of the leaders of the rise, the new dawn of lately dying Italian Brotherhood.

A year since you’ve first met Ezio Auditore de Firenze.

...You still remember your first meeting, and it’s not that it was very pleasant. Monteriggioni was defeated, Ezio himself was defeated, and then here you are, strong and invincible, come to help - of course, deeply inside Ezio felt more vulnerable and offended by his weakness than he wanted to show, especially to a woman. 

But after some time of working together, side by side, he understood that you’re not the person that could ever make him feel ashamed. As spoked, you truly were ruthless with your enemies, but you turn out to be understanding, easy-going and jovial with him. You quickly got attached to each other.

You pulled the strings of underground with him, you found new recruits for him, you helped him with Leonardo’s machines, you was with him, when Caterina, who, as he thought then, he had a thing for, left. But with every shared moment you were getting more and more clear realization that your attitude to him went too far from working relationships. Of course it was against your principles, but at some moment you realized that you have neither will nor power to fight yourself.

And he... He was just Ezio Auditore, did you have any chances? Afraid of ruining your relationships, you were completely content by just being with him, working with him, helping him.

But one day something broke. Something changed. One day he looked at you, and his look wasn’t the same as always; there wasn’t usual smile, usual warmth in his eyes anymore. His look was absolutely empty, and at this moment something crashed inside your chest. 

And since that moment time began to flow more slowly than ever. It felt like if you got stuck in the middle of the still sea all alone, and you just float, and your thoughts are the only companions you have. You couldn’t get rid of them at all: what’s wrong? what did you done? why does he keep silence? After your every attempt to talk to finally find out the problem Ezio disappeared with some new excuse, and it did scare you even more. 

That silence between two of you was tense, but so numb, and after all you just gave up. You had no more energy to fight, you were too devastated, so you just let things slide. It hurt. It hurt even more then if he yelled, screamed; but he kept silence, and it was the worse. 

With every other day you found yourself more and more distant from people you called your family: assassins, Machiavelli, Claudia... Ezio. With every other day you felt worse; finally, you lost your sleep. 

Night streets of Rome were beautiful, truly beautiful. Empty and neat, with fresh air, they were the thing that could calm and distract your mind. You travelled through the sleeping city, no matter how - on the ground or from one roof to another, and then came back to the assassins’ base shortly before morning. 

Tiny fire on the end of the candle trembled, as you were looking at horizon, which already started to burn with a weak shine. Night silence covered you, letting you get deeply in your thoughts. And you’d already started to nod off when a sudden thud waked you from drowse. You flinched, and then quickly recognized the sound of the opening door. But before you could think of who could open it, the person who did in entered the living room, and in trembling light of candle you saw Ezio’s face. 

As he noticed you, he stood still, not sure what to do. 

“Why are you awake?” he finally asked non-emotionally, and this was the first time in a long time when he spoke to you first. 

Ezio walked across the room, put off some weapon and placed it on the table. 

“I could ask the same of you”. 

He didn’t answer - of course he didn’t; and suddenly you felt like if something burst inside you; a mixture of resentment, anger and despair filled your chest, and inability to keep silent burned your throat.

“Ezio,’ you called and stood up, “We need to talk, don’t we?”

He sighed with some tiredness and hesitated for a few seconds more - but these seconds lasted for ages.

“Y/n Y/S/n,” he finally turned to you and looked to your eyes, as if he was trying to find the answer in your face, and you shivered, “This name you said to me when we first met. But that wasn’t true, was it?”

As you realized what he was talking about, everything fell into place.

But you almost choked on how sudden and unpleasant was his question. This topic you would like to avoid the most of all. Not because you was afraid, but because you was ashamed, and also sorry for missing any opportunity to tell him the truth by yourself. Maybe if Ezio had learnt it from you, he would have not reacted so roughly?.. Anyway, you’ll never know.

You looked at him. Ezio was still looking in your eyes, and there was no any exact expression on his face; only a ghost of disappointed sadness and pursed lips could show his emotions.

He doubted. 

And you clearly understood, that it's his duty to protect the Brotherhood and eliminate any possibility of being betrayed, but... as much as you hated to admit it, the fact that he doubted about you was painful to accept.

“My mother was an assassin,” you started, sighed deeply and turned around to the window, “One of the most devoted members of the Brotherhood. Once she had a... quick romance with Rodrigo Borgia. But when she learnt who he happened to be, she left him immediately. I didn’t know my father’s name till my mother’s last day... She finally confessed me on her deathbed. I was ten.” 

After a moment of silence you turned to him again, but there is no sorrow or confusion in your eyes anymore - only strength and confidence.

“And then I was raised by assassins. I realize that hiding my origin wasn't the right thing to do and I apologize for that, but Borgia’s not my family, it never was. The Brotherhood is. And I would rather die than betray it.”

Ezio turned away a bit, and after a minute of tense silence you suddenly heard a soft nervous laugh. At the sound of it you suddenly felt both relief and confusion; you just stood still, not sure how to react.

“...You find it funny?” you asked.

“No. No, of course not,” he signed deeply and tiredly, a sad smile slowly disappeared from his lips, “I don’t laugh at you. I laugh more at myself. I’m such a fool sometimes. It is me who should apologize.”

You slightly stepped closer.

“What do you mean?”

“You know... All these wars, fights, betrayals... They can make anyone paranoid. When I heard about your origin, I... I didn't know what to think, the news swept me off my feet. You just... were the only person I thought I could trust, and...”

“You can.”

“What?” he finally looked you in the eyes with some kind of surprise as if he just noticed your presence.

“You can trust me, Ezio. I swear.”

His lips suddenly pulled into a soft, gentle smile as he slightly nodded.

“I know,” he whispered, and you felt a knot of warm forming in your chest.

...You didn’t really remember when did the distance between two of you disappeared - but it did. The only thing you could notice is his eyes, deep and dark, as if they were the only object that existed in the whole world, and at this moment you suddenly understood what does the phrase “to get lost in someone’s eyes” means.

“Ezio... Auditore de Firenze,” you whispered as your gaze travelled down to his scarred, but so pretty and kissable - this word came to your mind for the first time in your entire life - lips.

“Yes?” he answered in the same murmur, still smiling, and you felt his hands slipping up your back.

Some needed words formed on your tongue and slipped out quicker than you could weigh the pros and cons:

“Just... kiss me already.”

And he did nothing but obeyed.

...Warm morning took over Rome, slightly dispelling the darkness of the night and spreading through the narrow streets, but still harbouring the ones who wanted to be harboured, and hiding their gentle whisper in soft gust of wind.

“Never leave my side. Please.”

“I promise.”

And above the horizon the new dawn revealed its shine to the sleepy city.