#i just have so many feelings about Mark...

[shysuccubusstuff]

homicipher! men making it fit pt. 1:

Characters: Mr. Crawling + Mr. Scarletta - female reader

Content: non proof-reader; first time males + unexperienced LI + cunnilingus + breeding + unrealistic descriptions + slight obssession + overstimulation.

Note: I hope everyone who has found out about this game a great evening!! I'm so happy that so many people are interested on the game ♡. I'm sorry for those who wish for a neutral reader, I still struggle with it :((. Sorry for taking so long, I'm with uni stuff so this will probably take a while. Let me know if you have suggestions for the next part!! + Sorry if it seems rushed/short I've been letting this marinate for a bit too long...

Mr. Crawling:

Mr. Crawling who has no real idea of what he's doing to you, after all, it was your idea to do this, your hands running down his body as he started to feel something up with him, some strange feeling, like a heat starting to build up.

Mr. Crawling who keeps following your commands, his cold hands trailing down your body before getting rid of your clothes. His fingers tracing your nipples, his slightly warm breath hitting against your ear. His hands then move lower, starting to move towards your underwear, his fingertips tracing your clothed clit. He smiles as soon as he hears your soft moans leave your mouth.

Mr. Crawling who takes his time getting your body ready. He takes as much time as needed, kissing your mouth and using his tongue the way you taught him. At the same time, he uses his hands, one keeps playing with your chest, while the other keeps rubbing against your poor clit, not stopping even as your body was twitching from the overstimulation.

Mr. Crawling who is finally able to get his tip inside of you, his girth making you whine as you try to get used to his size. He keeps you in place, not moving an inch as he kept seeing your brows furrowed, his hands leaving handprints on your skin.

Mr. Crawling who keeps kissing your mouth, his tongue intertwined with yours as he tried to distract you, his cock slowly entering you until he finally bottomed out.

"You good?" Mr. Crawling asked, his hand rubbing against the small bulge that was forming in your tummy. He kept petting your head in slow strokes, almost as if he was trying to keep you as distracted as possible from the feeling.

"Too big, just... give me a moment, please." He nodded, his smiling face looking a bit too happy, for someone that was almost making you go dumb just from his girth.

Mr. Crawling kept you still for a second, just enough for you to finally get a bit more comfortable with him inside. As soon as you nodded to him, allowed him to keep going, his tip was already hitting your poor cervix on a rapid rhythm. Despite your attempts of telling him to slow down, it seemed that your brain was no longer working, perhaps too overwhelmed with the feeling of Mr. Crawling rearranging your insides., so you allowed yourself to be used by him, not caring even as he kept filling your insides once after the other.

By the time you were able to form a sentence, your legs were completely covered with marks, not only fingerprints, but also Mr. Crawling's hickeys, almost as if he was some kind of dog leaving his mark all over you...

Well, he was definitely able to make it fit, I suppose.

Mr. Scarletella:

Mr. Scarletella who almost explodes the second you let him approach you.

Mr. Scarletella who is able to (slowly) make you his, always making his way, even if it took him quite some time.

Mr. Scarletellawho is completely blissed the moment you allow him to become your one and only partner.

Mr. Scarletella who becomes more and more possessive as time goes on.

Mr. Scarletella who decides to try some of the ways he has seen other humans get "close".

Before you realised, he was already cornering you against the cold wall, his frame towering over you.

"Want take?" He is smiling, his hand signaling himself.

"What do you mean?... You want me to take you?" You look at him confused, but he simply answers with an energetic nod. Despite your confussion, you smile at him, not really sure about what he means, but you're sure it won't be dangerous... right?

Suddenly, he moves one of his hands towards his pants, unbuttoning them and lowering them just enough to let his member out, the size almost making you shiver in fear.

"I... I don't think that would fit, how about we leave it for some other time, yeah? Just---" Your words are stopped by his lips crashing against yours, as his hands gripped your hips, easily lifting you up in the air.

"Me want you. Know way to make you mine." He smiled again, although this time it had a slightly creepy undertone.

"I don't think you even know what this is supposed to be--- Fuck where did you even learn about this type of stuff?" You try to get him to put you down, but your attempts have no result, in fact, it's almost as if he tried arder, maybe because of his desperation of feeling truly close to you.

"Need you. Humans taught me, I saw them. Let me do it." His begging eyes end up convincing you, letting your body relax on his grasp and allowing him to start to rub the tip against you.

"Wait! You can't just shove it inside, you need to prepare... the place." He looks confused at you, which somehow makes you feel even more embarrassed. "You can, well, shove your fingers, some people prefer to use the tongue... There's stuff for that but I doubt we have that kind of thing here, you know? So we can just stick to--" Your sentence is once again shortened, as your position is suddenly changed, your legs now resting on his shoulders as he starts to use his tongue to pleasure you, not allowing you to escape from his grip.

"Good, so good. Love you." His words left him even as he kept using his tongue to prepare you, his tongue lapping on your fluids while his hands tried to keep you in place. As he started getting the hang of it, he gently introduced his fingers inside you, his mouth sucking on your clit as he made his way into you, your head starting to spin as the overstimulation became too much.

Mr. Scarletella kept going until you came a few time, devouring the fluids that you kept leaking. Then, he allowed you to rest for a few seconds, letting you breath as he hugged you, keeping you tightly wrapped around his hips. When he saw that your breathing was once again stable, he started to align his dick to your entrance, inserting little by little until he was finally able to thrust as much as you were able to handle due to your small size in contrast with him.

"Good, not afraid?" He petted you, using only one arm to keep you lifted as he started to move himself inside you, just enough to get you panting and bitting on his shoulder. "Too big? You can handle it." He (tried to) reassure you as he kissed your face, peppering soft kisses all over it as he started to move with more strenght, almost as if he was punishing you which forced you to keep your mouth open as lewd moans kept coming out. The sound of your skin hitting against his resonating all over the long corridor where you were, your face flushing just from the thought of being found by anyone of the other ghosts.

Mr. Scarletella was able to fit it, even if it was not the whole thing.

[gravegoer]

now that you mentioned pirate!sevika x siren!reader I NEED it omg

just thinking about it is making me go crazy

I hear your call ⋅˚₊‧ ଳ

THANK YOU !! ive been waiting for this one i also have a mermaid one, idk which I'm putting out first but ill link it when it here when it does come out but thank you for the asks! masterlist

You lured many crews to their deaths, men followed your alluring voice into the thrashing waves of the ocean. Willingly drowning themselves in the salt.

Once they heard your song, and saw your beautiful face their fate was already sealed. You were cunning and dangerous, not hesitating to go after any ship you saw.

This didn't change when you saw a wrecked ship on the shore of an island. The pirates were obviously disoriented, and fixing their ship to leave.

One tall, strong figure commanded them, voice booming and most definitely angry. When they walked off, you took this as your chance to strike, rising onto the shore, and from between your lips came a song.

The pirates in your vicinity turned their heads to admire you in awe, at that you smirked, beckoning them closer with a finger adorned in jewels.

Unexpectedly, a woman came out from behind the trees, you assumed she was the loud voice you heard earlier. Shit.

A woman being the captain of this crew was the last thing you expected.

She didn't hesitate to pull her gun from the holster and aim it in your direction. The bullet barely missed your side as you jumped away. The sharp sound made you stop your song immediately.

The men, previously in a trance, looked around. Their eyes eventually settled on you. You pushed away from the shore, but before you could swim, heavy hands grabbed you from under the arms.

The woman had managed to seize you in all your shock, and you thrashed and flailed in her strong hold. She pulled you from the water, metal arm clawing into your flesh, most definitely leaving red marks.

You could feel her warm chest against your back. It contrasted the cold that you usually felt on mens bodies when you pulled them overboard into the icy waves.

She held you up for the men to see, "We caught us a pretty one, aye?" A short, stout man spoke.

"She would sell for a lot, y'know."

"Nah, I think I wanna keep her. She's rather stunning."

"Are you serious she tried—"

"Enough."

The womans stern voice was loud enough to quiet the whole crew. You could feel the vibration of her chest when she spoke. It was a deep and gutteral hum.

"I want to be off this island by nightfall."

All the men scurried at her order, returning to their original positions. They spoke amongst themselves and murmured their complaints, now completely disregarding your presence.

She threw you into the sand, and you landed with a thump. You didn't skip a beat before you tried to claw your way back to shore, but were stopped short by her hand grabbing your tail.

"Now, what am I going to do with you." Her voice was surprisingly husky.

You let out a yelp and turned around to face her, holding yourself up on your elbows. You were now met with her smokey grey eyes and dark scarred skin that anyone would recognize.

Sevika.

She was a ruthless leader and led an even more unforgiving crew. Her reign was seemingly endless, ruling the seas for the better half of her life. Men and women that sailed the seas all respected her alike.

You parted your lips to start a song. But before you could even let out one note, she interrupted you, "That shit isn't going to work on me."

You knew that.

It was worth a try though.

She crouched over you, one knee digging into the sand beside you, and her other leg thrown over you, boot awfully close to your tail.

She reached out to your face with a warm hand, but you pulled back, baring your teeth to her in a snarl. Then she palmed your jaw more ferociously, smirking at your actions. She tilted your head from one side to another, eyes following the trail of scales down your neck.

Her lips were parted ever-so-slightly, and you could see the small gap between her teeth, showcased by her thick brown lips.

You had never been interested in humans, especially human men. Their sexual desire outruled any curiousity you had towards them. Men completely ruined the human race for you. In fact, they disgusted you. But you had never been this close to a human woman.

Usually, you targeted pirate ships, so coming across a woman was especially rare. At one point, you started to wonder if they even existed. But your doubts were disproven as the woman on top of you caused your breath to hitch in your throat.

"What are you going to do to me." You hissed.

"Oh, so she does speak," Sevika smirked before getting up and brushing sand off her pant leg, "I could chop you up and serve you to my men.. But that would be a waste. Plus, im not a fan of killing the local wildlife."

She was clearly amused by her joke, but you werent, you glared daggers at her, now crossing her arms as she towered above you. It was a clear display of her power and authority.

" 'M gonna have to keep you in my sight until we leave." She said, more in a teasing way than strict.

"I need water." You shot back at her, slightly grateful that she wasn't going to kill you, but the sun might just kill you itself if you didn't get back to the sea.

"Alright. I'll let you go to the shore. But if you even seem like you're going to swim away, I won't hesitate to shoot," She pulled her gun out of its holster again, flashing it to you as a warning.

At that, you turned to start clawing your way back to the rocks where you orignally resided. But you felt a large arm scoop you up instead. You were basically folded over Sevikas forearm, her hip balancing some of your weight as she walked you to your destination. You couldn't do anything but let your arms dangle over your head, fingertips brushing the ground. (maybe not if your short)

How embarassing.

When she plopped you into the water, you sighed deeply, feeling your gills thank the salt in the sea. The crew was now hidden from your view as the rocks were big enough to fill your vision. Sevika, on the other hand, was sitting atop one, eyeing her men.

You could take this perfect opportunity to swim away, but a part of you knew that she wasn't looking away because she trusted you to stay. She was looking away because she trusted herself to be able to shoot faster than your tail could hit the water.

So you opted to keep your place. You saw her shake her head at what you assumed to be the antics of the crew. Reaching into her pocket, she grabbed a zippo and lit a cigarillo that was now between her fingers.

You rolled your eyes at her, gills retracting when she blew out hot smoke in your direction. You rested your chin on your arms, laying against a smaller rock.

"What? Not a fan of tobacco?" She mused.

"I am not a fan of any human trinkets." Your lip curled in disgust at the smell.

She eyed the sparkly jewerly that hung from your limbs, "Doesn't seem that way to me."

You got defensive, "Enough. I found it myself."

That wasn't a lie. You kept a lot of the treasures you found in mens pockets, jewerly, watches, and compasses.

You didn't exactly fancy small talk, but Sevika insisted that they would be there for several more hours until her ship was fixed. So you would tell her some stories and let her look at your treasures.

The sun started to set on the horizon, and eventually, you were sitting on the rock next to her, her large hand tracing your scales with intrigue. You didn't feel disgusted by her touch or bored with her presence. This feeling was forgin to you, and you wanted to let your guard down.

But you also wanted to wrap your cold fingers around her throat and strangle her until her warm breath left her body. Leaving her there to swim back into the ocean.

You disregarded that and leaned into her touch, watching the sunset. Some kind of ease has settled itself into your bones, knowing that you couldn't control her with song or seduce her with melody.

And maybe you were finding yourself too much in thought, but you might have her wrapped around your finger without help from the sea. And maybe she was allured by your fantastical stories and airy laugh.

Suddenly, your train of thought was interrupted by a scraggly voice, "Aye, cuddling up to the captian?"

You jumped into the water, away from Sevikas side. She grabbed the handle of her gun with wide eyes before stopping when she saw you, unmoving and clinging to a rock.

She wasn't lying when she said she would shoot you at any attempt to flee. But a pang shot through your chest anyway.

She cleared her throat and spoke, "What could you possibly want."

He tilted his head to the now finished ship. "Told ya we could do it, cap."

She sighed, standing up from the rock and sparing you one last glance before walking back to her ship.

I guess this was your queue to leave, but after the day you spent with her, a part of you couldn't leave. She had piqued a feeling that nobody ever had before.

So you watched her speak to her crew from a distance, bobbing in the dark waters. Your lips were curled down in a pouty frown.

She let everyone board before her, patting a heavy hand on the last man's back. Just before she stepped onto the ramp, she caught your gaze. Her eyes widened, and you dipped back under the water, out of sight.

She sighed and started to ascend the ramp to the deck, but not before hearing a splash from beside her. It was you, your fingers grasped at the wood, head balancing just above the ramp. Your torso was completely out of the water, and it dripped from your skin.

Her heart lurched at the sight, and she reached towards you, bending down into the water. You lowered yourself back into the sea as she closed the distance between you now. Her hat barely balanced itself on her head when she stroked a thick finger down your cheek.

You held her hand against your face and closed the gap between your lips completely. Sevikas lips were thick and warm and tasted roughtly of tobacco.

She was so unlike you, but you yearned for her deeply. Her form was rugged and large compared to your swift elegance and shiney scales. But when she pulled away and you looked into her eyes, you didn't seem to care whether she had legs or a tail.

Only that she was yours.

"I'll follow you wherever you go."

can you tell that i love pirates, and this is my favorite trope.. ALSO, tell me why i rewrote this 3 times because tumblr kept deleting it.. and not proof read pls correct me on anything! and reposts + feedback is always appreciated <33 thank you for reading !!

[novvabee]

could you do one where there’s a girl who is really good, like REALLY good at divination and stuff, and meets the mauraders

hi love! this is so cute, it is a tad bit different from your ask but, here it is ❤️ i hope it fits your vision

She's Divine

Summary: poly!marauders x divination loving reader cw: swearing like once, predetermined poly relationship word count: 1.8k

“Y/N!” you heard Sirius sing throughout the common room. You were cozied up in one of the corners with a book you’ve been dying to read on the works and uses of prophecies. You finally had a moment of time, and now it was being interrupted, great.

“Yes Sirius,” you sighed, closing your book and looking up at him from where he stood. He smiled down at you and you knew you were going to be pulled into whatever scheme he was planning.

He batted his eyes down at you, smiling sweetly as he asked “Would you do me a small, well, bigger than small favor?”

“What kind of favor?” you asked, narrowing your eyes in suspicion. 

“Well, remember that assignment that was due last week? The one for divination?” he recalled.

“Yes?” you say, becoming annoyed.

“Well…” He trailed off.

“You didn’t do it?” you guessed, it would be just like Sirius to ask you to do his homework, even a week later.

He cocked his head and smiled. “How did you know? You must be psychic or something.”

You rolled your eyes in answer. Of course you didn’t want to help him with this. It was on a topic you learned last week, palmistry, and you had already moved on to dream interpretations. 

“Oh come on,” he grovelled, “you know I’m shit at divination, and you’re the top of the class. Just think about it as if you’re tutoring me.”

You rolled your eyes yet again, your book will just have to wait until later. “Fine,” you said, “sit.”

He sat in the armchair next to yours, throwing off his bag full of textbooks. He looked at you intently, on his best behavior as not to piss you off and tell him to do the assignment himself.

“Ok,” you started, “give me your hand.”

He obeyed your command and gave you his right hand. You took it in both of yours, pulling him closer to get a better view. You twisted it around to get the perfect lighting and make sure you didn’t miss any marks.

“Ok well, these little marks are ‘witch marks’ indicating that magic runs through your bloodlines but… that’s obvious, almost everyone in this school has them. However, you have quite a lot of them, meaning you come from a long line of magic.”

He nodded along seeming interested in what you had to say.

“Then this one here,” you said pointing to a deep line slashing through the bottom of his hand, “this one is the lifeline, it is pretty average, meaning you will live to a normal age but, it’s split. This probably means that your life will change in a drastic way.” you explained.

Sirius was listening, but he wasn’t listening. He was just staring at you, smiling. His hands were warm, soft. You were beginning to feel his stare.

“Do you want me to keep going?” you asked, not knowing if he was really listening to what you were saying, not taking any of it in. He was definitely not going to do well on this project.

“Yes please!” He said, dreamily. “I could listen to you talk all day.”

You giggled, squeezing his hand in between yours. “Is this just another way of flirting or do you really need help with this assignment?” you asked with a grin.

“Why can’t it be both?” he replied.

You shook your head but continued on reading his palm. “This one is the heart line. It stops right before your middle finger, which means you have difficulty expressing your emotions to those you love. It feathers out quite a bit, I think this may mean you’ll have many lovers in your life.” you said jokingly. This was obvious to you of course, Sirius shared his love three ways already between you, James and Remus.

“Lucky me,” he muttered, smirking over at you and winking.

✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦

“Hello sunshine.” you heard from beside you. Your attention snapped up to James making his way up to where you were sat under a shady oak tree in the gardens of the castle. It was a lovely day and you decided to take full advantage of the rare sunny weather. You were still on the book about the works and uses of prophecies, not finding the time to finish it.

“Hello James,” you said, smiling up at the tall, bespeckled figure. “What can I help you with?”

“Nothing at all!,” he answered. “Actually, I saw something in Hogsmeade and thought you would like it.”

“A present?” you asked, pretending to be shocked. In reality, it was very much like James to grab something for you while out in the town. He did it fairly often, always bringing you back candies or trinkets.

He chuckled and said “Close your eyes.”

You listened to him, shutting your eyes and holding out your hands for him to set the present in. You felt something hard and cold placed in your cupped hands. You didn’t peek until you heard him say you could look.

You opened your eyes to see a small amethyst tower laying on its side. You gasped and looked up at James. “Thank you!” you exclaimed. “I need to put one under my pillow! I’ve been sleeping awful lately.” you explained.

“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that,” he said, sitting down next to you under the tree, wrapping his arm around your shoulders. He traced his fingers along your upper arm in a sweet and comforting way. “Bad dreams?”

“Sorta.” you answered, resting your head on his shoulder.

“Well, what are they about? Sometimes it’s good to talk about them and analyze them.” he explained.

You looked at him sideways “Yes James, I too take divination.” you answered him sarcastically.

“Exactly! You should know that better than anyone else!” he chuckled.

“Fine, fine,” you laughed. “They're mostly about interplanetary rivalries, you know, Venus and Jupiter. And all the placements growing closer to conjunction, causing all sorts of chaos and interesting events here on Earth. Do you know what I’m talking about?”

He blinked at you. “No idea. I know about half of the words you just said.”

You laughed and shoved him gently. “Well that was no help, Potter.”

✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦

You were finally settling down, opening your book to the chapter you had left off on. You didn’t make it two seconds before you felt a presence beside you. You thought you would be safe in the library, you thought wrong.

You turned to see Remus setting up some parchment and his quill. He smiled at you and continued. You thought that maybe he would be engrossed in his work and maybe leave you to your reading. You were wrong.

“Hey Y/N, you have a moment?” he leaned over and whispered.

You shut your book yet again, looking over to him to continue.

“You read runes right?” he asked, still quiet as not to disturb the studying students around you both.

You nodded. “Yeah, I got an Outstanding in my OWLS.”

His face lit up as he said, “Great, well, I was wondering if you would be willing to tudor some students in my study group. There’s a few kids taking rune reading for the first time and they said they needed some help, so I wanted to ask the expert.” You suspected he was laying on the compliments to make you say yes to tutoring some younger years.

You laughed off his flattery, brushing a strand of hair behind your ear. “Well, I am no expert, not yet at least,” you said, “But I can help any way I can.”

He sighed in relief. “Thank you so much, Y/N. I really will owe you.”

✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦

When you agreed to help tutor for Remus, you didn’t expect two of the pupils to be both James and Sirius. They sat there, textbooks open and puzzled looks smeared across their faces. You didn’t mind terribly, they were your boyfriends after all, perhaps they would thank you with more presents and sweets. 

You figured Remus roped you into tutoring them because he did not have the patience for teaching both boys with the shortest attention span in probably the while school..

You helped them with a few assignments that they couldn’t quite grasp. Both boys struggled with rune reading, tarot card reading, and naval chart reading. You did your best to help walk them through it, but after about an hour, you could tell they were becoming frustrated with it all.

“But I’m a Scorpio,” Sirius said, “I was born in November.”

“I know that Sirius, but that is your sun sign.” you tried to explain. “There are many more signs. For example, your moon sign which is in Taurus.” 

“Ugh, this is stupid!” Sirius said, frustrated and tired.

“Honestly, divination is pretty much useless nowadays, it’s not even reliable, there is no proof it’s real.” James chimed in.

You were taken back by their comments. “Just because you two don’t automatically excel in it, doesn’t mean that it is stupid or useless.” you said, hurt that they felt that way about something you were very passionate about, something you loved and were good at, something you wanted to make into a career. You knew that a lot of people didn’t take divination seriously, that it was considered somewhat of an old wives tale. But you didn’t think that the boys, the people you thought cared about you the most, would think your passions were so miniscule and not as important as their own. 

“W-we didn’t mean it like that,” James said, starting to back peddle. “We just mean, we’re not good at it so…”

“So you think it’s stupid?” you ask.

“No!” James says, becoming pink in the face, not enjoying the outcome of this conversation at all.

“Don't listen to them,” you heard Remus say, wrapping an arm around your waist and pulling you into his side, seeing that you were hurt and wanting to comfort you a little. “They’re just upset that they have to finally work hard at a form of magic.”

It’s true, James and Sirius both were incredible wizards, it came easy to them. You often thought that they were just made of magic, that they didn’t ever have to try in any of their classes. 

“I might not be able to transfigure a barrel into a slipper on my first try, but you definitely couldn’t explain the difference between quartz and tigers eye and their respective uses.” you say to them.

“That’s why we want your help, Y/N. You know this doesn’t come easy to us. And to you, you're just so in tune with it, it’s like you have this rare, secret talent for it.” Sirius says. You’re still offended, but the compliments were helping.

“We don’t know how you do it, honestly.” Added James.

“Fine… I’ll still help you,” you said, they smiled apologetically at you. “But you have to do all my history of magic papers for the rest of the month.”

Sirius groaned but agreed, saying that it wouldn’t be too hard, just take a lot of time.

“Ok fine, but you have to teach us ovomancy and capnomancy too.” James bargained.

“Deal,” you said happily, excited to share your knowledge with the boys.

[briseroyawritingsblog]

𝑰 𝒄𝒂𝒏 𝒔𝒉𝒐𝒘 𝒚𝒐𝒖 — 𝑨𝑼

𝒑𝒓𝒐𝒇𝒆𝒔𝒔𝒐𝒓!𝒉𝒐𝒘𝒍𝒆𝒕𝒕 𝒙 𝒇𝒆𝒎𝒂𝒍𝒆!𝒓𝒆𝒂𝒅𝒆𝒓

• +21 minors do not interact. this is actually taboo, mutual flirtation, desire, inappropriate thoughts, large age gap, heavy kissing, professor is so horny in this (beware), darkish AU, light stalking (if you squint) mutual pining (little) mentions of rough sex, thinking of unprotected sex.

𝒍𝒐𝒈𝒂𝒏 𝒎𝒂𝒔𝒕𝒆𝒓𝒍𝒊𝒔𝒕 / 𝒎𝒂𝒔𝒕𝒆𝒓𝒍𝒊𝒔𝒕

dividers by @anitalenia

Yes it happened, he’d overwork so he didn’t have to return home. That home of his was nothing but cold, empty, and lonely. Another evening of sitting in his office and marking the last semester papers. He’d secretly drink some whiskey out of a coffee cup and remove his shoes to feel comfortable. Stretching his limbs he’d sigh and think what happened to his life. Children grown up and wife somewhere out there with a new man. Yes- divorce was messy but at the end the feeling in his chest could’ve been compared to elation, maybe freedom. Divorces ended up being messy because of the heartbreak but man in his age? He desired peace- adjusting the reading specs on the bridge of his nose and sighed coming across your semesters quiz. Naturally loving the way you curved the font of your name on his papers. Reading your essay only to the half way and marking it ‘excellent’ because to be truthful you were a very creative writer. Thoughts drifting to many places as he touched the coffee cup to sip on his whiskey. He could also definitely just retire because being a teacher in his late 50’s was quite challenging. Not because of the age range, he lost patience. Yes… it happened. Secretly hating his colleagues guts, but oh god when he saw you… there it was. The weak spot- what he liked the most that you’d always catch his gaze. Sitting at the back of the classroom leaning on your elbow and catch his gaze. Seeing you press your thighs together under the desk, at the praise he gave you for your test results. He liked praising you.

Being newly enrolled, finding new friends which you did instantly and they were cool people. Sharing mutual interests and forming a little study sessions in the library. It was honestly so good. But the moment you saw him passing by holding that green smoothie in his hand from cafeteria you loved so much. You caught yourself staring, goodness he was tall. That hair slicked back, and the specs, your chest felt like giving up. A breath caught in your throat as he locked his eyes with yours. Gripping the book against your chest you ran up to him “Mr..” stilling his feet he acknowledged you “Y/N” a smile greeting his features and you grew weak in your knees. Secrets… secrets again. You had tons of them. “Did they have any different flavors?” You pointed at his smoothie and he chuckled shrugging. “I’m not entirely sure, but this one caught my eye today.” You nodded “it’s pretty great. I get it all the time.” He moistened his lips as you spoke. “Oh don’t say, that good?” Bringing the straw to his lips he tasted it. The sweet flavors leaving his tastebuds dancing. “Very healthy, it’s sweet” he hummed. “Walk with me?” He motioned to his office at the end of the corridor. Your heart needed to calm down because god, you couldn’t stop the feelings. Holding the book against your chest forgetting about your study session and your friends soon finding yourself sitting in his office. Leaning back against his chair he sighed. Finally having you for himself- it’s been days since he last time saw you. “Read your essay, i must say it’s amazing” he praised. “Really? You think it’s good?” You relaxed your shoulders taking a breath. “I know it’s very good, you don’t have to study so hard in that library you already have it.” Answering you with so much confidence your attraction level towards him spiked off the roof. “Thank you Sir..” you smiled, eyes sparkling. “Most welcome” the Sir part definitely surged through his body and straight to his cock. You had no idea…

Throwing his briefcase on the passengers seat, it was time to go home but he didn’t want to. He really didn’t want to walk into that cold empty house alone. Maybe divorce was fine but he didn’t expect to feel so goddamn lonely whenever he was at home. He could eat out, join his awful work colleagues because they constantly invited him. About to start his car he noticed you running across the road, he leaned back in his drivers seat adjusting his specs, your skirt bounced as you ran flashing him a sight of your thighs. You got in the car with a man he figured it’s your father. How much he wanted to drive you home, maybe hold your inner thigh with one hands and maybe- only maybe touch that sweet pussy of yours. He would trace your little folds and make them wet. He wanted to fit his cock right between those folds and fuck it until you’d cry for him to stop. Maybe a little rougher- maybe causing you a little lust filled pain. Snapping his hips right into you, faster and faster gripping you around your neck. These thoughts ran through his mind, making his cock heavy in his dress pants. Hissing softly as he touched his growing cock through his pants shifting in his seat, god he hated this. He hated not having you for himself and pound that little pussy of yours at every chance he’d be able to. Fill you right up with his cum, and stuff it back in you as it would leak out of you.

Seeing your professor sitting in his car, on the other side of the car park you waved. He seemed to be looking down perhaps reading something- and in fact yes he was reading a book because what else he’d have to do to make his little ‘problem’ suffice away. You told your father that you’d rather walk, the car park was nearly empty and it was getting dark maybe it was your chance to tell your professor about your new story what you were writing. No harm in that right? Getting out of your father’s car waving him goodbye, you ran back across the road to your professors car gently knocking on his window. He looked up, and god his heart sunk in surprise seeing you there. Sliding his window down slowly you stuttered at first “I-I just saw you sitting here thinking you were reading and yes you’re.” He nodded slowly masking the awful need in the pit of his stomach. “Hop in.” You excitedly did- getting on his passengers seat. “It’s actually a novel by my favourite author.” Handing you the book locking the doors. You eagerly read the info about the plot and bit your lower lip. “Have it. It’s from my library at home, I really don’t borrow books from the campus.” Your eyes grew wide. “Really?! I can read it?” He smiled nodding. “Of course! Give it back once you finish.” Your heart thumping against your chest cavity not containing yourself anymore kissing his cheek telling him endless thank you’s. Closing his eyes the moment your lips touched his cheek his breath hitched. He chuckled lightly giving your hand a gentle squeeze. Then it hit you- you kissed your professor even though it was not allowed at all you felt like breaking the rules. “I can show you.. the book, umm- in my home.” He offered, and you swallowed. Was this happening? Really? “I - I cannot accept it Sir. Honestly.. you’re too sweet.” He hummed at your words but not saying anything. “What if I like being sweet with you?” He then answered. Your cheeks deepened in red, lord… what on earth was happening to you?

“First editions? First official printings?” You gazed in utter awe tracing the books in his library. He was leaning against his table, arms folded in his chest. “What’s this?” You asked innocently trying to reach for a book much higher not aware that your professor was sweet enough to sneak up behind you reaching for it your hands touching. Alone just you two in his house. Tilting your head towards him your faces inches apart, your heart was jumping and juddering in your chest as his cologne hit your nose. It was woodsy, hint of spiciness, perhaps even a little tiny bit floral. “Here” whispering taking a whiff of your hair. “I should go-” you realized that this hole you were about to fall into would be hard to get out of. “So soon?” He whispered giving you some of his warmth, his chest pressing to your back. Warmth radiating from his body- your lips parted. Dropping the book by your two feet turning around his large hands capturing your ribs. Leaning down his mouth was on yours kissing you fiercefully. You moaned gaining him the access to your tongue and he kissed the hell out of you. Wet kisses, full of cravings and desire paining your soul in reds and oranges. Your hands finding rest on his back as you indulged yourself in the warm feeling, his large body pressing you against the books his hand hiking your thigh around his waist. The way your tongues glided and touched in your mouths the saliva strings connecting your mouths as you both hungrily kissed again and again moaning in sweet lust. Tilting his face to one side as he devoured your lips, you couldn’t stop the mewls which escaped you making his cock possibly harder. Your panties getting in twist pussy leaking with wetness drenching your own panties you both found pace rubbing against each other. The rough material of his belt buckle giving your clit a cold touch causing you gasping for air against his lips and his large hand gripped the back of your neck. His grunts and groans, surged through you. “S-Sir” gasping at the neck kisses wrapping your arm around his neck pulling him down on you feeling his kisses on your soul. His arms wrapped around you “let me make you feel good angel, i wanna take good care of you” your brain was telling you to stop heart telling you to give yourself to the man who was so passionately ravishing your mouth. Your body betraying you- you were so lost. “Been needing you so much lately” admitting all these things while touching your body in ways hand on your breast kissing your chest sniffing you his thumb circling your hardened peak through your bra and blouse. Your hands holding his back, wanting him all over you. “M’so scared this is not allowed but I want you” admitting making him kiss you passionately touching your pussy through your panties. Those kisses and touches were unforgettable that’s why it took you everything to gently push him away and run out of his house with tears spilling down your cheeks because this was not allowed. You might’ve loved your professor yes and he might have loved you back- but this could not happen at all. Wiping your tears with the back of your sleeve you ran as fast as you could. Even though your heart hurt immensely- you both knew you’d steal moments to be together.

My secret lover… my secret- only mine. “To love or have loved, that is enough. Ask nothing further. There is no other pearl to be found in the dark folds of life.”

-

(Apologies for any mistakes and typos in advance)

[starlightkun]

⇢ word count: 37.8k total (22.7k & 15.1k) ⇢ genre & warnings: sci-fi/science fantasy au, soulmate au, alien!jungwoo, human!reader, slow burn, fluff and angst; blood/injury mentions (but like, alien blood, if that makes a difference?), a couple needle/injection mentions, if u get secondhand embarrassment this one might hurt in places, a couple crude jokes about alien stuff iykwim (reader’s friends r kind of the worst), this fic is just a rlly sweet soulmate au i swear idk why these tags look horrendous 😭 ⇢ extra info: released in two parts bc of tumblr’s 1000-block limit that was put in place to hurt me personally :)) BUT both parts are out RIGHT NOW ⇢ author’s note: rahhh this one has ALSO been a wip for like over a year and is finally finished!!! this is technically my first sci-fi piece bc i started it before frankenstein complex, but i finished fc wayyy before this one. anyway i loveee my alien!woo and i hope y’all do too ⇢ part two

“What? Did you imprint on me like a baby duck or something?” You joked, stretching and yawning.

“I don’t know what ducks are nor the imprinting habits of their young, but yes.”

“You don’t really need to know what ducks are, but baby ducks—Wait, what?!” Your brain finally processed the rest of Jungwoo’s words, and you stared at him wide-eyed.

“Here, Y/N,” Johnny grinned at you as he pushed another seltzer into your hand. “You’re a bit too sober, kid.”

“Thanks, dude,” you beamed back, popping open the tab one-handed and taking your first swig.

All of your friends were gathered around a firepit on the beach, relaxing and celebrating another friend’s birthday—Taeyong. Said birthday boy, a notorious lightweight, was already pink-cheeked and giggly as he chatted with some of the others. Someone had apparently given Doyoung access to the Spotify playlist for the night, as a ballad suddenly came over the Bluetooth speakers that had previously been playing upbeat tunes. A chorus of groans and jeers rose up around the fire from the other eight of you, while Doyoung loudly and passionately tried to defend himself.

“Give me the phone,” Johnny waved for Doyoung to hand over Jaehyun’s phone—the one connected to the speaker.

Doyoung clutched it protectively to his chest. “No! You guys haven’t let me play any of my songs tonight!”

“Because they either make us cry or put us to sleep,” Yuta scoffed, lunging for the device, but the other man jerked it out of his reach.

“If you two break my fucking phone, you’re buying me a new one and splitting the cost,” Jaehyun warned from where he was sat on the sand next to your feet, lazily leaning his head against your knee.

“Seriously, Doyoung, give him the phone,” Mark insisted.

Doyoung reluctantly handed the phone to Yuta, who passed it along to you, who firmly planted it in Johnny’s waiting palm. “None of you have any taste—”

“I thought it was nice, D—” Taeyong was cut off by a hiccup as he went to pat your friend’s head reassuringly. “It was a nice song, Doyoung…”

“Thanks, Yonggie,” Doyoung rolled his eyes, but didn’t shove him off as Taeyong drunkenly wrapped his limbs around him in what you were sure was supposed to be a comforting hug.

As Johnny went to put on more party-appropriate music and you took another sip of your seltzer, you looked up to the sky over the water. There weren’t as many stars as you would’ve liked, and it was a new moon, so there was no silvery light to come from there either. But it was still a nice night, the air was cool, the fire warm, you were the only ones on this stretch of beach this late at night and had enough alcohol to feed a medium-sized frat.

Then, one star started glowing even brighter than the others, and you realized it was moving across the sky. “Look, guys! A shooting star.”

“Ooh, everybody make a wish!” Donghyuck chirped.

Feeling a bit silly, you closed your eyes and made your wish in your mind, then opened them again to see the shooting star getting bigger, as if it was heading towards you all.

“Hey, are shooting stars supposed to do that?” You asked no one in particular.

“I… don’t think so,” Yuta squinted at it suspiciously.

“Should we like… move?” Mark suggested hesitantly.

“They’re just meteors being burned up in the atmosphere,” Jaehyun shrugged. “Most don’t ever reach Earth.”

Except it was very much getting closer and closer, hurtling even faster through the air than before.

“But some do!” Jaehyun added, rushing to his feet. “I think we should go.”

As everybody started scrambling to pack their things, the meteor was making its final approach, and you could hear the sound of it splitting the air as it took a sudden nosedive towards shore. It finally struck with a cacophony of snapping palm trees and thunderous boom of its impact with the ground. It had thankfully missed all of you, but you could see smoke start rising out of the thick foliage where it did land. You all looked around at each other, mirrored faces of shock.

“We survived,” Donghyuck breathed out, patting his front as if he didn’t believe it. His blanket was sloppily thrown over one of his shoulders as he had one hand on the cooler.

“Dude, you thought we were all going to die, and your first instinct was to save the drinks?” Mark pointed out in disbelief.

“I’m sorry, Mr. ‘Where’s my phone?’” Your other friend retorted back. “Going to lecture me on the sanctity of human life when you were about to lose it all for your iPhone?”

As they kept squabbling, you tentatively stepped over the back of your log, towards the trees.

“Y/N?” Johnny said your name questioningly.

“Don’t you guys want to go see it?” You knocked back the rest of your seltzer. “A real-life meteor. Come on, we can all get a piece. It’ll be like, the coolest birthday party souvenir ever.”

Doyoung and Taeyong exchanged uneasy glances. Doyoung spoke up, “I don’t know, that thing was huge…”

“What? You think it was a spaceship or something?” You snickered at the idea, pulling out your phone to turn the flashlight on. “Come on, anybody who’s not a wimp. We’ll bring back enough pieces for the wimps.”

Yuta, Johnny, Jaehyun, and Donghyuck turned out to be the only ones who agreed to come with you. You led the way into the trees, following the slowly thinning smoke trail and path of destroyed palms. The impact site wasn’t very far, and when you first caught a glimpse of the hulking size of its silhouette, you were so glad it had missed. A hundred meters or so over, and all of you would have been crushed by a giant space rock, which is certainly one thing to put on your headstone. Except, as all of your individual flashlight beams shone over it, and you got to see it piece by piece, you realized it was not a meteor. It was all smooth metal, matte chrome in varying colors. A vessel of some kind. From space. A spaceship.

“Holy shit…” You breathed out.

“Oh, we should get the fuck out of here,” Jaehyun said lowly.

“Yeah, no way should first contact be made with our stupid, drunk asses,” Yuta agreed, starting to back up.

“Y/N,” Johnny grabbed your arm to try to pull you back as well, but you stood rooted to the ground. “Y/N, seriously, this is not the rabbit hole to jump down.”

“Maybe she’s figured we’ve gotten plenty of practice with aliens with Mark,” Donghyuck snickered.

You kept staring at the ship, listening to the metal creak and groan. Except those groans weren’t all metallic.

“I think someone’s in there!” You exclaimed, taking off towards it.

Johnny swore as your arm slipped from his grip, and you heard two pairs of footfalls chasing after you. You’d just managed to get a hand and a foot on the ship before a strong pair of arms grabbed you by the waist and pulled you off of it.

“Yuta, grab her hands before she claws me!” Johnny yelled from behind you.

As Yuta went to do that, you haphazardly threw out your feet that were now fully off the ground as Johnny lifted you up. You impacted with something on Yuta, who let out a long line of expletives, his hands dropping to grab something low on his own body. You blindly reached back for Johnny, grabbing a fistful of his hair with one hand and yanking hard, while the other reached under his arm to pinch a pressure point.

“Fuck!” He dropped you. “Yuta! You were supposed to—”

“She kicked me in the balls, man!” Yuta groaned back.

Knowing that you didn’t have long, you raced up the side of the ship. Banging on every panel that you passed by, you yelled out, “Hello? Somebody in there? Are you okay? Hello?”

You finally got to the top-ish of the ship, and one of the panels there felt different than the others. Almost like glass. Pounding your fist against the side of that, hoping it was the cockpit or something, you shouted into it, “Are you okay in there?”

There was another groan that echoed from inside, and it definitely sounded like a person this time. Searching for some kind of emergency release from the outside, you felt around the edge of the whole glass panel. There was no release, but you found a part of the panel that it connected to on the outer hull that had a sizeable dent, big enough for you to get your hand under. Biting your phone in between your teeth to point the flashlight at the dent, you saw that it had exposed an inner latch of some kind.

The sounds of another body climbing up the ship came to your ears, and you whipped around to look at Johnny, already holding your hands up in a defensive fighting position. You took your phone from your mouth just to threaten, “I will bite.”

“I know. Let’s just get this over with before this thing explodes or something, okay?” He held his own hands up in surrender. When you’d relaxed from your fighting stance, he came over to squat down next to you. “So, what are you thinking, kid? We need to bust that?”

“I think?”

“Alright, give me a second.” He hopped back down.

There was another low sound of pain from inside, and you bent closer to the gap as you addressed them, “Just hang in there! My friends and I are going to get you out, okay? Really soon!”

Johnny clambered back up, a large rock now in his hand. You moved out of the way for him to swing the more angled edge of the rock against the latching mechanism. After several swings, you heard a crack of metal, then he was tossing the stone aside. “Jae!” Johnny called out, your other friend joining you two a few seconds later. They each grabbed a side of the glass panel, pushing and pulling it away from the hull.

“Guys?” Donghyuck’s voice suddenly floated up to you, but from the rear of the ship. “I think you should hurry up!”

“No fucking shit!” Jaehyun yelled back, straining as him and Johnny continued battling with the ship.

“I mean, I’m not a spaceship engineer or anything, but I don’t think any of this should be on fire!”

“God dammit!” Johnny groaned. “Yuta!”

“Yep! Recovered! Coming up!” Yuta joined the fray as well, and finally, you heard the last bit of metal holding the panel down snap and give way.

They all fell down as the glass dome now rose on its own, along with a hiss of air pressure. There were dozens of lights and screens inside, all flashing red, lighting up the figure of a man on one of the two seats there. His head was lolled back, arms hanging by his sides.

“Christ, there is someone in there,” Johnny exhaled in shock.

“A fuckin’ alien,” Yuta mimicked the sign of the cross over himself.

“Wrong way, dumbass,” you scoffed, moving along the rim to get closer to the man inside. “You’re not supposed to start on your shoulders.”

“Oh, excuse me, didn’t realize I was in the presence of the Pope herself.”

You shot him another glare as you kneeled down to hook your elbows under the stranger’s arms. “Anybody going to help me?”

“The fire’s getting bigger!” Donghyuck yelled, fear pitching up his voice.

The other guys grabbed the man’s arms as well, helping you yank him up and out. He was all long, lanky limbs and dead weight, which your friends complained about to varying degrees of intensity. With a final tug, you pulled him out to the hull with you, his body flopping back onto you.

“Seriously! I can’t read alien, but I think it’s spreading to the fuel tank or something!” Your friend on the ground shouted in a panic, running around to the side where you were. “Get off there!”

Just then, the spaceman’s eyes fluttered open, and he looked at you with concern, his lips parting for a moment.

“Sorry, introductions later, your ship’s about to explode!” You said, jerking him over the side with you.

Donghyuck half-caught the two of you as you slid down the smooth exterior. Really, he just broke your landing a bit, the two of you still crashing into him at far too high of a speed to be painless, all your limbs smacking each other. The man from the ship made another groan of pain, as you and Donghyuck swore up a storm at your bitten tongues, clocked elbows, and cracked heads. The other three jumped down after you, Johnny and Jaehyun taking the stranger from your arms like they were carrying their drunk friend home from the bar. His feet dragged on the ground between them as the six of you hurried away from the ship. As you came crashing through the foliage again back to your campsite, your other friends all got to their feet to greet you.

“Took long enough!” Mark complained. “Alright, where’s our—Holy shit!”

“You found some guy?” Doyoung asked, pointing to the stranger. “Why does nothing ever go normal and fine when we let Yuta, Y/N, and Donghyuck go off together?”

Before any of you could explain, there was a loud boom from behind you, and you whipped around to see bright, glowing, molten sludge being shot into the air where you just had been. Fire lit up the trees, the night no longer feeling so cold suddenly.

“What was that?!” Taeyong rushed to your side, clinging onto you tightly.

“Spaceship,” Yuta pointed at the fireball. He then pointed at the stranger, “Alien.”

“Seriously?!” Mark’s eyes were bugging out of his head. “Like, a real UFO? What did it look like?”

“I was too busy fearing for our lives to take pictures, sorry, Mark.” Donghyuck leaned his hands on his knees as he caught his breath.

Doyoung spoke up then, concerned look focused on the man from the ship. “Uh, I think your alien’s dead.”

The spaceman was entirely slack in Johnny and Jaehyun’s grip, head hanging forward as dark droplets fell from his mouth onto the sand. You rushed over, instinctually putting two fingers to the side of his neck, where you guessed a jugular would be if he had one. Please, please, please let him have a heart, and let it be beating. He felt warm, at least, and while you couldn’t find a pulse, you didn’t know if that really meant anything. Instead, you held your fingers under his nose, relieved when you could feel a slight, repetitive exhale of breath.

“He’s breathing!” You announced with relief. A drop of his blood fell onto your hand then, and as you jerked the limb back, not entirely sure what alien blood would do to you. The fleck caught the light of the bonfire and shone blue. A dark navy blue, so dark it almost appeared black at first.

“Definitely an alien…” Yuta crossed himself again.

“Stop that!” You hissed, grabbing a half-drank bottle of water to pour the contents over your hand, washing off the alien blood. “You’d burn up if you stepped foot in a church.”

“Should we take him to a hospital?” Doyoung asked.

“No!” You cried out immediately. “They’d dissect him or something.”

“Y/N, you’re not suggesting we keep him!” Johnny regarded with you wide, incredulous eyes.

“Like a pet alien?” Donghyuck added very helpfully.

“You’re a doctor!” You argued with Johnny.

“A vet! An animal doctor! I’m not even licensed to practice medicine on humans, I wouldn’t know where to start on an alien!”

“Exactly, you don’t need a license to practice on him, he’s not human!”

“Johnny, we all know you’re going to say yes,” Jaehyun grunted, readjusting his hold on the passed-out spaceman. “Come on man, he’s getting heavy.”

“Fine! Fine! I have my kit in my car,” Johnny relented with a big sigh.

“We can take him to my place,” you immediately offered.

The distant sounds of sirens caught your attention, and you all immediately rushed to shut down the campsite. Someone doused the firepit while the speaker was shut off, and the drinks, towels, and blankets were hastily packed up. You all made a run for the cars parked up on the side of the road, as the sirens got even louder. You climbed into Johnny’s backseat before he and Jaehyun pushed the stranger back there with you, then got into the front. The others loaded up into Doyoung’s van, and the two vehicles took off with roars of engines and squeals of tires. You pulled the man’s head up into your lap, wincing as you appraised the damage. His blue blood dripped from his mouth and a significant rip in his jacket on his side. He groaned in pain but didn’t stir otherwise. Aside from the blue blood, he looked human… hopefully Johnny would be able to do something.

At your building, Johnny and Jaehyun helped you drag the spaceman up to your apartment on the third floor, and you had them deposit him on your bed. Johnny brought his travel vet kit up from the car, and together, you managed to get the shiny silver jacket off of him. Underneath, he had a fairly plain white top, which was also torn and blood-soaked. Johnny snapped on a pair of gloves before he pushed the hem up to appraise the stranger’s side, where there was a huge gash in his flesh.

“Oh, Christ, okay,” Johnny sighed, inspecting the wound. “I guess I’ll disinfect and suture it up?”

“Just do it,” you mumbled, pressing a towel to the man’s sweat-sheened forehead.

“Jaehyun, mind assisting?”

“You do know the ‘Dr.’ I put in front of my name is just decorative, right? It’s in Poetry—”

“And now you can brag to all your colleagues that you’ve done real medicine like a real doctor,” Johnny snapped back. “Disinfectant, get it.”

With Jaehyun assisting him, Johnny made quick work of patching him up. Pressing the bandages down over the site so the adhesive would stick, Johnny then disposed of his navy-splattered gloves. He grabbed a stethoscope, putting the end up against the spaceman’s chest.

“I think he’s alive?” Johnny announced. “I don’t know. If he is, he doesn’t have a heart because I’m not getting anything.”

He shifted the placement, presumably to listen to his breathing, and an even more bewildered look overtook his features. Sliding the stethoscope over to the right side of the man’s chest, he sat there for a moment, just listening.

“It’s on the other side,” he breathed out. “His heart’s on the right side.”

“But he has a heartbeat?” You clarified.

“Yeah, he does. Faint, but it’s there. He’s breathing, too. A bit shallow, but otherwise normal. I think.”

You let out a sigh of relief. “Thank God.”

“I don’t think there’s anything else I can do until he wakes up. If he wakes up.”

“Right, thank you Johnny,” you smiled wearily your friend. “I’ll call you when he wakes.”

Jaehyun and Johnny looked at each other skeptically. Jaehyun spoke up, “You’re going to stay here alone with some rando we literally pulled out of a burning hunk of metal?”

“My couch only fits one person. So unless you two are offering to sleep on the floor to protect me or whatever?”

“Call us if anything happens,” Johnny sighed, packing up all of his supplies.

“Of course,” you nodded. “Thanks, guys.”

You heard the sound of your front door clicking shut as you stayed sitting on the edge of your mattress, wiping the spaceman’s face. He really did look human, two eyes that were now shut, lashes resting on his cheeks, a nose practically just like yours, with an elegant slope to the bridge, and a pair of plush, pouty lips. He let out a soft sigh, his head rolling over towards you. But then he went silent and still again. You finished cleaning up his face as best you could, then pulled the covers up over him. Readjusting his bangs that had been stuck together by the damp washcloth you’d used, you gave a final determined nod to nobody in particular before standing up. Grabbing a change of pajamas from your dresser, you got everything you’d need from in here for the night, then went to leave.

“Alright…” You stopped at the threshold of your bedroom, looking over the spaceman’s sleeping figure one last time. “Goodnight, I suppose.”

And with that, you turned the lights out, and quietly closed the door behind you. You were sure to leave it slightly ajar, though, just in case. After taking a much-needed shower and getting ready for bed in your bathroom, you headed out to the living room. You set up a few pillows and blankets into a comfy-enough makeshift bed, then tucked yourself in. Despite the exhaustion in your muscles, the excitement of the night hadn’t worn off yet, and you laid awake for another hour just staring at your bedroom door.

Waking up in the morning to sunlight streaming in through your living room windows, you covered your eyes with a groan and rolled over to bury your face in the back cushions. The sound of your phone buzzing incessantly from the coffee table came, however, and with a guttural groan, you flopped back over to pick it up.

“Yeah?” You mumbled, not even checking the caller ID.

“Y/N?” It was Yuta on the other end.

“Who the fuck else would it be? You called me at whenever-the-fuck-in-the-morning.”

“Someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed.”

“Couch,” you corrected him, swinging your feet over as you sat up properly. “I slept on the couch.”

“Gave E.T. your bed? Such a kind hostess.”

The mention of your guest woke you up more. You got to your feet, shuffling towards the bedroom with a yawn. “Yeah, you know me, I’m a fuckin’ peach.”

“So how’s the…” Yuta dropped his voice to whisper into the phone, “Alien?”

The door hadn’t moved since last night, and you cautiously pushed it open to peer inside. You could see the stranger exactly where you had left him, laying on his back under your blankets, chest shallowly rising up and down. Pushing further into the room, you hesitated on whether to try to find a pulse again. You settled for trying once around his wrist, and if it didn’t work, then you’d just have to assume he was fine. Surprisingly, you found his pulse in one go, and it felt steady.

“Fine, I think,” you answered Yuta quietly, walking back over towards your door. “He’s breathing, he has a heartbeat. He’s just not… ambulatory.”

“Still passed out cold?”

“Yeah.”

“Imagine if he was in one of those comas that you don’t wake up from, and we just had to deal with this comatose alien.”

“Stop, you’re going to manifest that or something!” You hissed.

“Not manifesting, just joking.”

“You’re hilarious.”

“Anyway, some of us went back to the beach this morning, because Mark really wanted to see the UFO—”

“Don’t touch anything!”

“We couldn’t. The whole place is locked down. Couldn’t even park on the shoulder, it was swarming with cops. They were still putting out the fire.”

“Do you think any of the ship survived?”

“I have no clue. Doyoung said he’d ask his dad about it.” Doyoung’s dad was the fire chief, making your participation in the conflagration last night even more dicey.

“Tell him to call me as soon as he finds out anything.”

“I think he was already planning on that, but I’ll make sure he knows.”

“Good. Also, I’m sorry for kicking you in…” You trailed off as you turned around to see two big brown eyes staring at you from your bed. “I’ve got to go, Yuta. I’ll call you back.”

“What’s hap—” You hung up.

The spaceman was looking around the room warily, regarding you with clear suspicion.

“Hey…” You offered him a smile as you kept your tone of voice soothing and calm. “You’re alright. I’m not going to do anything to you. My name’s Y/N.”

He kept staring blankly at you, and you were starting to fear that he wouldn’t be able to understand you at all.

“You got injured, last night. On your side.”

He pulled up the hem of his shirt, looking at it himself. He tentatively touched the bandages, but didn’t rip them off. There was a small dot of dark blue that had soaked through.

“I’m going to call my friend, to look at it, okay?”

He nodded.

Quickly dialing Johnny’s number, you chewed on your thumbnail anxiously at how long it was taking him to pick up. Finally, the ringing stopped, and a confused groan came from the other end.

“Hey, Johnny,” you greeted him, relieved. Johnny made another inquisitive sound. “Yeah, he’s awake.”

You could heard Johnny make a few more noises of exertion, presumably sitting up in bed. After a yawn, sniffle, and cough (which he thankfully pointed his mic away from), he said real words. “Has he… said anything?” Your friend questioned. “Can you even understand each other?”

“No, he’s not exactly talking… Just sort of nodding. So I think he can understand me at least.”

“Alright—good Lord—I’ll be over in like, thirty.”

“That long?!”

“You woke me up! I need to brush my teeth and shit. Make that forty-five, I still reek of alcohol.”

“Fine. Hey, can you bring some clothes for him, too?”

“What?!”

“I don’t have anything that’ll fit him. You guys are about the same size. Or steal some of Jae’s, I don’t care.”

“Yeah, I’m taking Jaehyun’s. I think they’re a bit closer in size.”

“You don’t want an alien to wear your clothes.”

“Excuse me for feeling weird about that! What if he bleeds on them? I’d have to burn them!”

“So you’re volunteering your roommate’s clothes instead.”

“Well—”

“Just get over here, John.”

“Will do. See you, kid.”

“See you.” You hung up. Turning back to the alien, you announced, “My friend will be here soon. He’s just going to look you over. Are you okay? Like, does anything hurt?”

He stared at you.

“Right, those were two different questions.” You shook your head at yourself. “Do you feel any pain? Anywhere?”

He indicated to the wound on his side.

“Makes sense, you got sliced open by something there. Anything else?”

He held his hands out, and you saw that his left wrist was slightly puffier and swollen than the other.

“Oh, looks like you… sprained your wrist?” You said tentatively. You had no clue how his joints worked or if they could even get sprained like yours, but that’s definitely what it looked like.

He nodded.

“Johnny should have something for that,” you assured him. After a few beats of silence, you tried introductions again. “I’m Y/N. I know I already said that, but uh, it’d be nice to know your name, too? I’m pretty sure you can understand me, since you’ve been answering my questions, mostly. So—”

“Did you capture me, then?” He finally spoke, his voice clear but uncertain.

“What? No,” you laughed, completely caught off-guard by the question. “You’re free to go anytime you want. Your ship crashed, and my friends and I found you. I just want to help, but if you want to go right now, I won’t stop you.”

“This is… not a human hospital?”

“No, it’s not,” you chuckled again. “It’s my bedroom. We uh, we weren’t sure if we should take you to a hospital or not. Didn’t want them taking x-rays of you and finding out you had two hearts or something.”

“Just the one.”

“Yes, and it’s on the right side of your chest, right?”

He stared at you with mild alarm.

“Johnny was listening to your heart last night. Had a difficult time finding it.” You tapped the left side of your chest, right above your own heart. “Ours is usually over here.”

He licked his lips, eyes flitting around before they landed on you again, and he finally said, “My name’s Jungwoo.”

“Jungwoo?” You echoed slowly, making sure you were pronouncing it correctly.

“Yes.”

“If you’re from space, why is your name… Korean?”

“It’s not. It can’t be pronounced by humans. You’re missing a flap.” He gestured to his throat. “I suppose that’s the closest approximation that it could get.”

“It?”

“My transcoder.” He picked up the pendant hanging around his neck, a simple rhombus of flat gold metal. “It’s a translation device. That’s why we can understand each other right now. Thankfully, it didn’t get busted in the crash. I don’t speak human.”

“We don’t all speak one language, you know? We have thousands.”

“Wait, really?”

“Does your whole planet speak one language? Speaking of, where are you from?”

“I’m from far outside this galaxy. I’m not sure telling you the name of my planet would be any help.”

“It’d be interesting.”

“Galaria.”

“So you’re… Galarian?”

“Galarii.”

“Ah, I was close. Never was good at conjugation in grammar class.”

“All Galarii speak the same language, to answer your question. We have some regional dialects, but all of us can understand each other. How does your planet hold conversations, come to agreements about policy or run the government at all?”

“We don’t have one government system for the whole planet, so usually we don’t need to. Everybody who lives near each other tend to speak the same language.”

His brow furrowed and his lips pulled down into a slight frown. “Then you must all be so… separated.”

You sat down on the corner of your bed in front of him, hoping this was still a polite, conversational distance for Galarii. “I don’t think it’s so bad. People can always learn more than one language if they want, learn about other cultures.”

“How do people from those different cultures even understand each other, though? You seemed confused about my transcoder, I’m guessing you don’t have anything similar here.”

“Translators. People who learn more than one language and interpret between people who don’t speak the same language. Not to mention computer programs will usually get you the gist of something if you’re in a hurry or don’t have access to a more authentic source.”

“How many governments do you have, then? Two? Three?”

You burst into laughter at the idea. “Sorry, sorry, I’m not laughing at you. It’s just… well, to spare you from any degree of human politics, let’s say there’s a debate about how many countries we even have, but people usually say about 200.”

“Two hundred?! How do you get anything done?”

“Very slowly,” you snickered, hiking a leg up onto the side of the bed to get comfier. “So, how does your transcoder work, exactly? Like, how is it getting in my brain? Because watching you talk, it looks like you’re saying the words I’m hearing, but you can’t be.”

“Low-level, short-range telepathic wave.”

“Telepathic?!”

“I’m not sure what word it’s picking to translate, but you seem very shocked.”

“For us, telepathy is magic. It’s a superpower, it’s not real.”

“I can assure you, this all has very sound science behind it. Though I’m more of a pilot than a neuroscientist, so I can’t really explain it...”

“Really good pilot, too. Spectacular landing,” you joked, crossing your fingers that Galarii understood sarcasm.

He seemed to, as he let out a cynical chuckle. “Not my finest work.”

“So what happened that made you crash in the first place?”

“Political assassination.”

“Excuse me?!”

“Attempted murder?” Jungwoo tried another phrase, looking down at his transcoder as if inspecting it for damage.

“Am I harboring a space fugitive right now?”

“No, I’m not on the run from anywhere. I was taking a joyride when suddenly the engines began failing. I presume it was meant to look like an accident. I’ll know more after I can inspect my ship.”

“Ooh, about that,” you winced.

“What?”

“Well, it exploded, for one.”

“Yes, that’s what I figured when you told me ‘your ship is about to explode’ and then I heard an explosion.”

“So you remember some of last night!” You pointed victoriously.

“Some,” he agreed mildly. “In a couple brief bouts of consciousness I had.”

“So, yeah, it exploded, and the explosion and resulting fire drew in a lot of attention. A couple of my friends drove by this morning and the whole place is swarmed with firemen and cops still.”

“I’ll just tell them it’s my ship.”

“No.”

“They should release it to the proper owner, what would the problem be?”

“You crashed here from space in a certifiable UFO. If you walked up and say that it’s yours, if they believe you, they’d probably ship you off for dissection, shoot you on the spot, or kill you then ship you off for dissection.”

“That’s not very polite.”

“Sorry, we don’t really get a lot of alien visitors. Or any, that I’m aware of.”

“Very well,” Jungwoo sighed, looking down at his lap dejectedly.

“So we’ll have to sneak in at night.”

“What?”

“If you want to inspect your ship, we’ll have to sneak in after everybody leaves for the night. And, after they’ve put out the fires.”

“You’re suggesting breaking the law?”

“Do you have a problem with that? It’s just light trespassing, and onto a ship that’s yours anyway.”

“No, I don’t have a problem with that.” Jungwoo’s face finally cracked into a smile. “Just clarifying.”

“So… who are you?”

“I’ve told you my name and species.”

“I meant, who are you on your planet? To have somebody trying to assassinate you. Here, usually people that get assassinated are like, politicians, rulers, activists, sometimes celebrities. Ooh, I’ve got it! You’re a pop star or something!”

“No, I’m not a… musician.” The way he said the word made you think the transcoder must have had a hard time finding an equivalent word in his language.

“Actor?”

“I’m not a celebrity. Well, not how you’re suggesting, I believe.”

“Okay, because you’ve got the look.”

“Look? How am I looking at you?”

“No, I mean you’re really pretty.” You gestured vaguely to his face. “You’d fit right in on a red carpet here.”

“I think I will interpret that as a compliment.”

“Maybe,” you grinned and shrugged. “So? What are you? If you’re not a celebrity, why did someone try to kill you?”

“They weren’t trying to kill me.”

“Who were they trying to kill?”

“My brother, presumably,” he said as if this were the most obvious, natural thing in the world.

You raised an eyebrow. “You sound unperturbed by this.”

“Really, this is what I get for stealing his ship.”

“So you are a thief.”

“With permission.”

“Then it’s not stealing.”

“Just like you didn’t want to bore me with Earth politics, I won’t bore you with mine, but let’s say my brother’s very powerful and very controversial,” Jungwoo explained. “He asked that I take his ship and publicly leave the planet on it.”

“So everybody would think he left.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“So he could get some paperwork done.”

“What exactly makes him so controversial?”

“None of his policies, really. But people don’t like some choices he’s made in his personal life.”

“Sounds familiar,” you mused, thinking of a few figures on Earth like that as well. “How long was your joyride supposed to take?”

“A few days.”

“Are Galaria days similar to Earth days?”

“I… am not sure.”

“Cool. So what’s going to happen if you don’t come back on time?”

“It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve run away,” he admitted. “Though he will be pissed that I diverted from the plan.”

“Well, hopefully we can get you back without getting in too much trouble with him,” you offered him a reassuring smile.

“We?”

“I’m not an engineer or anything, but I’ll help you however I can. Even if it’s just holding the flashlight.”

Jungwoo regarded you not with suspicion, but more-so fascination, like he wanted to put you under a microscope. “I take it not all humans are this helpful.”

“I like to think we all want to do good, but it might look different for different people. And some of us haven’t practiced doing good since we were taught to share as kids.”

“Well, thank you, Y/N. I suppose if we’re going to be sneaking in at night, I will need somebody to hold the flashlight.”

“I’m your girl,” you beamed, right as your doorbell rang, accompanied by a solid knock. “That’ll be Johnny. Wait here.”

“Johnny!” You opened your door, head tilting curiously at the extra figures that accompanied him. “And Mark and Donghyuck. What are you guys doing here?”

“Well—” Mark started.

“We want to see the alien, duh,” Donghyuck pushed past you.

You crossed your arms over your chest. “He’s not a freakshow here for your entertainment.”

“Alright, Ms. High-and-Mighty, excuse us for having natural human curiosity,” Donghyuck scoffed, looked around your living room as if you were hiding him somewhere.

“Let Johnny look him over first, then I will ask Jungwoo if he wants to meet you.”

“Sweet!” “Yes!” They high-fived each other.

“Jungwoo?” Johnny repeated with a suspicious eyebrow raised. “His name’s not like ‘Gorgluk’ or something?”

“It could be, for all I know,” you admitted with a shrug. “According to him, we—humans—don’t have the right… throat flaps to say his actual name. That’s the closest approximation his translating device could make, apparently.”

“Right. Cool. Alien named Jungwoo. We going to meet his brother Steve next?”

“You’re not funny.”

“I’m coping.”

Leading Johnny back down the hall, you gently knocked on your bedroom door as you pushed it open. “Hey, Jungwoo, I’m back.”

Jungwoo was right where you’d left him, sitting up in your bed, hands folded over his lap patiently. You saw him stiffen slightly when his eyes moved from you to Johnny as the taller man followed you into the room.

“Jungwoo, this is my friend Johnny. Johnny, this is Jungwoo,” you quietly introduced them.

“Hey,” Johnny nodded to him casually.

“I told you Johnny was going to check you out, remember?”

Jungwoo nodded.

“Does he talk?” Your friend looked at you with a skeptical eyebrow raised.

“Yeah, he’s just shy, or something,” you muttered, walking over to the bedside with Johnny.

Johnny pulled out his stethoscope first, awkwardly listening to the right side of Jungwoo’s chest, then motioned for him to lean forward to listen to his lungs from the back. Once he’d taken the stethoscope out of his ears, Jungwoo spoke.

“You’re a doctor?” The spaceman asked, watching as Johnny opened his kit again to put the tool away.

“Vet.” Johnny answered bluntly, pulling on a pair of latex gloves.

“Vet?”

“Veterinarian. I am a doctor, but my patients are usually on four legs.”

Jungwoo looked up at you in bewilderment. “There are four-legged humans?”

“Animals. I treat animals.”

“Johnny’s really good,” you assured him. “He’s the one that stitched you up.”

“Speaking of—” Johnny gestured to his side. “You mind?”

Jungwoo wordlessly pulled his shirt up to allow Johnny to inspect the wound.

“I’m going to change the dressings,” the vet declared, beginning to peel the bandage off.

To your disbelief, the wound was half the size as before, and looked almost healed up. The amount of blood on the gauze indicated much more damage than you were seeing.

“What the shit?” Johnny swore under his breath.

“Jungwoo, how’s your wrist?” You asked with wide eyes.

He lifted his left hand up, bending and flexing it with no visible reaction. It was a typical size again. “From your reactions, I take it humans heal at much slower rates?”

“Uh, yeah,” you gulped, still staring at the wound on his side in awe. “It would take us days to heal as much as you have.”

“I-I don’t think I need to change the dressing,” Johnny said, his face completely betraying how weirded out he was by what he was looking at. “There’s no blood or any other… fluids coming out of it. It’s entirely scabbed over, nothing should be getting in there. I can put a band-aid on it so the scab doesn’t catch on any clothes, I guess?”

“Do you have any morphine?” Jungwoo requested.

“It can’t hurt that much, it just looks like you bumped a countertop too hard.”

“I think my rib is broken.”

“What?!”

You looked at him incredulously. “Why didn’t you say anything before?”

“My skin heals quicker than internal parts. It should be fine in a few days, but it does hurt quite a bit now.”

Johnny looked to you for any sort of cue, at the same time that you looked at him for the same. He presumably thought you knew more about aliens than him, and you were seeking his medical opinion.

“Can you have morphine?” Johnny asked him slowly. “Like, is it compatible with your biology, or whatever?”

“Very much. My body naturally produces some, but I’m afraid the concentration of hydrogen in your atmosphere is inadequate for this level of injury.” Jungwoo looked the two of you over with confusion. “Why are you so hesitant to give me it?”

“Well, it’s sort of… addictive,” you tried to explain. “Doctors tend to try other stuff before jumping for the opioids.”

“My body must process it differently. We’ve never seen opioid addiction on my planet.”

You and Johnny met eyes again before Johnny reached back into his kit. He pulled out a small bottle and syringe. As soon as he took the cap off the needle, Jungwoo’s eyes went wide. “And what are you going to do with that?”

“Inject you?” Johnny replied, bewildered. “Unless you were planning on drinking it?”

“You don’t?”

“No! And I’m not going to let you!” Johnny was clearly at his wits end. “Either I stick you, or you don’t get any.”

“Okay, guys,” you jumped in, uncomfortable with the rising tension. Able to realize when Johnny was at his limit, you turned to Jungwoo. “Will it harm you if you get injected with it instead of drinking it?”

“No, but I would prefer not to,” Jungwoo admitted.

“Alien with trypanophobia?” Johnny scoffed.

At the returned stiffness in Jungwoo’s muscles, you looked at him sympathetically. “Is that it, Jungwoo? You’re afraid of needles?”

“I’m not afraid of them, he has one and I’m not running from the room—”

“But you don’t like them being used on you.”

“Y/N, I have a job,” Johnny sighed, checking his watch. “I can’t do this song and dance with him all day.”

“Jungwoo, are you going to let him inject you? Like I said, doctors avoid giving opiates out, we’re not going to be able to get you any from anywhere else.”

“Y/N will hold your hand, will that help?” Your human friend offered tersely.

“Johnny, don’t patronize him.”

“Very well,” Jungwoo cut Johnny off right as he had opened his mouth to respond to you. “That… is an agreeable compromise.”

Johnny gestured at him while staring you down very pointedly. Not having the energy in you to go back and forth with either of them anymore, you sat down at the head of the bed by Jungwoo and offered your hand out to him. His skin was surprisingly warm as he laid his hand atop yours, and you curled your hand around it, then put your other one on top, giving him a gentle pat and small smile that you hoped looked reassuring.

Jungwoo didn’t look at Johnny as he went back to preparing the injection, instead keeping his eyes trained on you. “I… didn’t realize that humans are so cold.”

“Just me,” you told him, squeezing his hand. “Cold hands. You’re about as warm as other humans I’ve met. My friend Jae is like a human space heater. Hates when I put my cold toes on him during movie night.”

Jungwoo opened his mouth to reply, but his face suddenly scrunched up. Johnny must have put the needle in. The alien squinted one eye open as he continued whatever he had been going to say in the first place. “I don’t mind how cold you are.”

“Done,” Johnny declared, quite literally slapping a band-aid over where he had just injected. “And I’m going to work.”

“Taking the other two with you?” You asked hopefully.

“You promised them an alien.”

“I promised I would ask. They’re not entitled to see him.”

“Whatever, I’ve got to go.” Johnny packed everything up quickly. He gave your hair a quick ruffle. “Bye, kid.”

“Bye, Johnny.” You watched him head for the bedroom door.

“Thank you,” Jungwoo called out to him.

The vet gave a final nod to both of you before slipping back out. You heard a sudden swell of noise as the two younger boys accosted him.

“Who else is here?” Jungwoo asked you.

You bit your lip ruefully as you heard the front door open and close, but the voices of Mark and Donghyuck were still very much audible. “Two more of our friends, Donghyuck and Mark. They were at the beach last night, too, when we found you. They want to meet you, if that’s okay with you. I totally get it if you say no. I’ll be more than happy to kick them out.”

“No, that’s alright. I would like to meet them. They’re your friends, right?”

“I guess I did say that,” you sighed, letting go of his hand and standing up. “Okay, be back.”

Out in your living room, the two younger boys practically assaulted you in their excited states, clinging onto your arms desperately.

“Don’t throw us out! We’ll be so good!” Donghyuck pleaded.

“Johnny told us he talks and stuff?!” Mark was buzzing.

“Cool it,” you chastised them. “He said he wants to meet you. Don’t make me regret this.”

“Fuck yeah!” They fistbumped.

“You two are so lame. Come on.” You stalked back over to your room. Jungwoo perked up when you came back in, regarding the two newcomers studiously.

“Jungwoo, this is Mark and Donghyuck,” you gestured to each in turn. “Guys, this is Jungwoo.”

“It’s nice to meet—” Mark’s polite greeting was cut off by Donghyuck.

“So are you from Mars? Jupiter?”

You slapped a hand over your face with a low groan. Jungwoo almost looked amused, thankfully. “No, I’m not from this Solar System. Or galaxy, for that matter.”

“How can you breathe our air?” Mark asked curiously.

“We have a similar composition on my home planet. Though there’s not as much free hydrogen here…”

“Oh!” You suddenly had an epiphany. “The hydrogen. Will water work? Uhm, dihydrogen monoxide?”

“Yes, that will be an apt replacement.”

“I’ll go get you a glass,” you patted his shoulder before hurrying from the room. The others were still talking as you filled up a cup of water, then walked back in with it. You held it out to Jungwoo. “Here.”

“Thank you, Y/N.”

“So what do you eat?” Donghyuck questioned. “Can you eat our food?”

“I quite like uhm, confections. Desserts.”

“Alien with a sweet tooth…”

“You all keep calling me that. You do realize that to me, you are the aliens?”

“Woah…” Mark breathed out. “You’re right.”

Jungwoo quickly chugged down the glass of water, and you took it back. “I’ll get you another,” you smiled down at him.

Donghyuck perked up, “Oh, Y/N, can I have a—”

“You know where the kitchen is,” you snorted, heading for the door. “I’m not your mom.”

When you returned and handed the cup to Jungwoo again, Mark eyed you with a pout and arms crossed over his chest. “You’re never this nice to us when we get hurt.”

“Yeah, you laughed in Yuta’s face when he broke his leg last year,” Donghyuck narrowed his eyes.

“Because he broke his leg trying to grind an ollie at the skate park at his big age,” you scoffed. “And then had to go into his grown-up job the next day. Tell me how that isn’t funny.”

They exchanged a glance before breaking out into snickers.

“Okay, that is pretty funny,” Donghyuck admitted.

“Exactly.” You glanced at the time on your phone. “Alright, I’m tired of human interaction, you two need to go.”

“But—” Mark gestured wildly to Jungwoo, who was calmly sipping his water.

“My apartment, my rules,” you clicked your tongue, shooing them towards the front door.

“Johnny brought us here, how are we going to get home?” Donghyuck tried to plead with you as you shoved them through your apartment.

“You have bus passes, don’t you?”

“Well yeah—”

“Then, bye!” You opened your door and pushed them out, slamming the door shut behind them. Turning back around, you noticed a stack of clothes on the arm of your couch, and recognized them as some of Jaehyun’s. You grabbed them and took them back with you into your bedroom.

“Ugh, finally,” you sighed, rolling out your neck. “Sorry about them.”

“They were… funny,” Jungwoo settled on an adjective.

You offered out the clothes to your guest. “Here, Johnny brought these for you. My shower is through there, too.” You gestured to your bathroom door. “And I can make something to eat while you freshen up. If you’re hungry. What do you eat? Other than sweet stuff? I don’t have any meat, but I can go get some if you need it—”

“We don’t eat meat, either,” he smiled up at you. “Galarii don’t.”

“Vegetarians?”

“Yes.”

“Well, easy for me, then.” You watched him as he swung his legs around. “You got it? You need any help?”

Jungwoo slowly got to his feet, and you winced as you watched him clutch at his side. Nevertheless, he stayed upright, and took a couple steps forward. “I’ll be alright.”

“Great. Uhm, let me just show you how the shower works and stuff, then I’ll leave you be.” You walked him into the bathroom, pushed back the shower curtain, pointing out the knobs and bottles to Jungwoo. “This one’s for cold water, this one’s for hot water. You have to turn them left to turn them on. Pull this thing up to turn the shower part on instead of the bath. This blue bottle is for shampoo, you do that one first, just on the roots of your hair. Purple one is conditioner, on your ends. Face wash, body wash. Yeah, I think that’s it.”

As you turned back to look at Jungwoo, you realized how close he was as he had leaned in to listen intently to you point out everything. Squinting, you looked closer at a faint smattering of freckles across his cheeks and nose that you hadn’t noticed before. “Hey, I never realized you have freckles,” you commented, blinking a couple times to make sure you were seeing this right. “Or that they were… rainbow? No, just pink? And purple?”

“They’re not freckles.” He touched them as if he were wiping them away, but they didn’t budge. “They’re iridophores, patches of cells that reflect light differently. I believe the fluorescents in here are making them more visible than the dim lighting in the other room.”

“They’re so pretty!” You exclaimed, shifting in another direction so that they were even flashier at this angle, revealing some blue and green as well.

Jungwoo’s hand hovered uncertainly over his face. “You think so?”

“Yeah, of course! What? You don’t?”

“They’re… I don’t know, they’re nothing special on Galaria,” he admitted, dropping his hand to give you a full view of the iridophores. He pulled the collar of his shirt to the side to show some of the top of his shoulder, where there were even more, then let it go. “I have them here too. Everyone does.”

“Well, we don’t have stuff like that here,” you informed him with an awestruck grin. “Anyway, I’ll let you shower, sorry. You’re not some specimen for me to gawk at.”

“No, it’s alright. I don’t mind you being curious about me.”

You weren’t sure what to say to that, so you gave him a nod and another smile before leaving the bathroom and heading into the kitchen.

By the time Jungwoo was done with his shower, you had made a couple hefty stacks of pancakes, cut up some fruit, and grabbed a jar of Nutella for good measure, remembering his comment about preferring sweets. You filled up two tall glasses of ice water before also making a cup of tea for yourself. You briefly contemplated running to the boba place around the corner, but it was exactly then that you heard the shower turn off, and thought better of it. Jungwoo emerged in a pair of Jaehyun’s jeans and a slouchy, grey crewneck sweater, looking startlingly human, except for the occasional glint of iridophores on his cheeks and nose. His hair was still a bit damp as he came over to curiously inspect the two plates you had placed on your kitchen counter.

“Pancakes and fruit. Grab a plate and sit wherever, I don’t have a table. I usually eat at the couch.” You gestured. Jungwoo followed your lead and sat in the corner of your couch as you plopped down in your armchair. You cracked open your jar of Nutella, offering it out to him.

“What is that?” He questioned, sniffing the air tentatively.

“Chocolate hazelnut spread,” you stuck a spoon in it. “It’s sweet. You’ll probably like it. Most people do.”

He put some on a small part of a pancake, and tried a bite, then immediately dove back in to slather the rest of his pancakes in it.

“Alien with a sweet tooth,” you chuckled to yourself, digging into your own breakfast.

“You don’t have to… stay with me,” Jungwoo told you between bites. “I remember you telling your friends that you were tired of human interaction. I believe that it’s a common human social nicety to entertain house guests, but you won’t offend me if you wish to be alone.”

“That’s… considerate,” you chuckled. “But the operative word there is human. You’re an alien, so I’m not tired of you yet, Jungwoo.”

“Really?”

“Yep,” you grinned at him, popping a piece of fruit in your mouth.

“May I ask… Why am I staying with you?”

“What do you mean?”

“From what Mark and Donghyuck were saying, it sounds like there were many of your friends there last night when my ship crashed. How did it happen that I ended up here with you?”

“Finders keepers, I guess,” you laughed. Jungwoo gave you a funny sort of look at that, which prompted you to further explain. “I’m the one who found your ship in the first place and wanted to look inside at all. I don’t know how much you remember, but I’m kind of the one who pulled you out. Some of the other guys helped me, don’t get me wrong, but if they had their way, you would’ve been left in there. So, I found you, you’re my responsibility. Finders keepers.”

“Ah, I see.”

Your phone buzzed then, and you saw that it was Doyoung calling. “Oh, that’s Doyoung, I’ve got to take this. Sorry, hold on.” Standing up, you didn’t go very far as you walked over to the living room window to look out over the city as you answered. “Hi, Doie, what’s up?”

“Y/N, hey. How’s your alien?” Your friend asked.

“Fine, all things considering.”

“He alive?”

“Alive, awake, eating, talking, the whole shebang.”

“Shit, really?!”

“Uh-huh,” you confirmed, holding your phone mic-out towards Jungwoo, “Jungwoo, say hi to Doyoung?”

Jungwoo covered his mouth as he quickly chewed and swallowed, then called out, “Hello, Doyoung!”

You brought your phone back up to your ear just in time to hear your friend react. “Holy shit!”

“So what’d you find out from your dad? How much of the ship survived?”

“A lot,” he told you. “They’re calling it a hoax, and they’re not letting news reporters get footage. Apparently they don’t want to encourage any copycats. After putting out the fire, they haven’t let anybody on board. They’re just keeping it cordoned off until the police chief and my dad decide what to do with it. Right now it’s a crime scene while they investigate it as an arson case.”

“But the fire’s been put out, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you know anything about how it’s being watched?”

“A couple cops at night, I think.” Doyoung’s voice was guarded. “You’re going to sneak the alien back there, aren’t you?”

“He has to get home somehow, Doyoung,” you insisted. “Unless you think we should steal a spaceship from somewhere else that’s fit for intergalactic travel?”

“Hey, I’m not disagreeing with the whole ‘get the alien back home’ idea,” he said defensively. “Just don’t get arrested while you’re at it, alright? Johnny would have a stroke.”

“Yeah, I know, he nearly had one last night and this morning playing alien doctor,” you sighed. “I don’t think he’d bail me and Jungwoo out of jail if it came to it.”

“Call Yuta for your one phone call if you need. He’s good for it.”

“Yeah, that’s what I was thinking. Or Taeyong, he probably wouldn’t hold it over my head.”

“Good point. Or, even better—don’t get arrested in the first place.”

“Plan A: Don’t get arrested. Plan B: Taeyong. Plan C: Yuta. Plan D: You. Plan E: Jaehyun, who would definitely bring Johnny with him.”

“Sounds like you’ve got it all figured out,” Doyoung chuckled. “I’ll leave you and Spock to it then.”

“He has a name, you know.”

“Yeah, but I don’t have all the right flaps, right?”

“Who told you? Donghyuck? Mark?”

“Johnny. He called on the way to work to ask if I knew anything about the ship.”

“Huh…”

“Anyway, I’ll leave you and Stitch be. Holler if you need something.”

“You’re hilarious. You’re fucking hilarious,” you rolled your eyes, hanging up. Plopping back down in your armchair, you relayed the pertinent parts of your conversation to Jungwoo. “According to Doyoung, a lot of your ship survived the explosion. They’ve put the fire out, but there will probably be a couple cops patrolling it at night, so we’ll have to be careful when we go check it out tonight. Until then, I guess we’ll just hang out. Sound good? How are you feeling? How’s your side? Do you need more bandages after showering? I can call Johnny up, probably swing by his office and get some more or see if he can come by on his lunch and take a look at you? Maybe bring some more morphine?”

“I don’t need any more bandages,” Jungwoo shook his hand, lifting the sweatshirt to allow you to see how he’s healed so far. There was still a considerable amount of bruising, but the skin had entirely mended itself, no evidence of a scab, only a dark, puffy scar.

“Does it still hurt?” You asked with a sympathetic grimace. “I know you said you take longer to heal internally than on the outside. I can probably convince him to bring some more morphine for you. I don’t know what your metabolism is like compared to ours, or even how much he gave you last time. I mean, are you in pain?”

“It is painful,” he admitted, dropping his shirt again. “But I don’t—I’ll be fine.”

“Jungwoo, if it hurts—”

“Not that bad.”

You felt a bit mean for this, but you reached out to poke his side, and he immediately let out a yelp, covering his wound and ducking away from you.

“What did you do that for?” He asked you, jaw dropped.

“You liar,” you scoffed, bringing your phone out. “I’m texting Johnny.”

“He will administer it the same way as last time, won’t he?” Jungwoo questioned quietly, stopping your typing.

You put your phone down. “Probably, yeah. He’s not… used to letting people drink that stuff.”

“Then I will be fine without it.”

“Even if I hold your hand again? You can’t do another one?” You asked. “I’ll talk to you, you can squeeze my hand like a stress ball—or we’ll get you a real stress ball, whatever you want.”

He was silent, and you let out a sigh.

“Jungwoo, I don’t like seeing you hurt, you know,” you shook your head, cutting off a piece of your pancakes with the side of your fork, lifting it to your mouth. “But it’s up to you, I’m not going to hold you down and make him stick you or anything.”

With a flash of iridophores, Jungwoo’s head turned, and his eyes were focused back on you, his hands wringing together. “I’ll do it.”

Your jaw stopped mid-bite. “Wait, seriously?”

“Yes. If Johnny agrees. I get the impression he doesn’t like me very much…”

“No, no, he likes you just fine, I promise!” You reassured him, reaching forward to pat his knee. “I just stress him out, that’s all. I’ll text him right now, okay? We’ll get you feeling better in no time!”

“Can’t believe he’s making us come to him,” you grumbled, pushing your way through the sidewalks with Jungwoo’s arm around your shoulders. “You literally have bruised ribs and fell from the fucking sky last night.”

“I don’t mind,” Jungwoo tried to be diplomatic, even as he held his side with his free hand. “He’s doing me a favor.”

“He’s being an asshole.” You tried to match Jungwoo’s slow, hobbling pace. “Making you come all the way across the city in pain. Risking you being out in public. Goddamn asshole.”

“I don’t mind,” your companion repeated, looking up past the visor of the baseball cap you’d put on him to conceal his glinting iridophore flecks as best as possible. “I haven’t seen much of Earth. Your sky is beautiful. Is it always blue?”

“During the day, yeah, usually. What color is Galaria’s?”

“A bright violet.” He was leaning more of his weight on you, and you stepped into the alcove of a shop door to rest for a moment. The crowd continued hurrying by you as you leaned against the wall and Jungwoo leaned against you.

“Purple sky?” You repeated, staring up at the crystalline blue expanse above you and trying to picture it.

“Yes, most of the time.”

“That sounds really gorgeous.”

“I suppose it is.”

You looked over at him curiously. “You don’t think so?”

“Well, I suppose I’m just so used to it… I don’t know,” he shrugged, looking back to the clear aqua sky above you. “I quite like your blue sky.”

“I think I’d like to see your purple sky someday,” you hummed thoughtfully.

“Really?”

“Yeah, as long as you could bring me back,” you shrugged. “Always wanted to travel.”

Jungwoo blinked down at you, and you shook your head with a chuckle.

“Sorry, that probably sounded like I was asking to run away with you or something. And you’re like, in a bunch of pain,” you laughed at yourself. “I should stop blabbing and get you to the man with the morphine. You ready to keep going?”

“Yes, absolutely.”

At Johnny’s animal clinic, you had to stay in the waiting room while he finished up with a patient. After he handed the dog back to its owner, and dismissed the front desk attendee for their lunch break, he finally gestured the two of you back. You helped Jungwoo up from his seat, wrapping his arm back around you so you could slowly follow your friend into the back. Johnny held the door open for you all as he led the way into the exam room. You could tell the morphine had been wearing off faster and faster, even though Jungwoo hadn’t said anything. He had been favoring his side more and more, and vocalizing noises of pain more frequently as the day wore on.

“How is it?” Johnny was nice enough to ask as you helped Jungwoo half-sit and half-lean on the exam table. You’d seen some pretty big animals on this thing, you were pretty sure it could handle him.

“Fine,” Jungwoo hissed.

“He’s not bleeding on the outside anymore, but everything’s still pretty banged up internally,” you answered honestly, shooting Jungwoo a pointed look. “Do you think you could like x-ray him while we’re here? See if anything’s broken?”

Johnny stopped where he had been getting supplies from some drawers. “Would x-rays kill him?”

“I mean, you traveled through space, right? Isn’t there a bunch of radiation there?” You asked Jungwoo hopefully. “Johnny can take some pictures of you with x-rays, right?”

“Yes, that will be fine,” Jungwoo nodded minutely.

And so Johnny moved around his portable x-ray machine to take a few images of Jungwoo’s side where the pain was most concentrated. You had to stand outside the room while it was being done, but as soon as Johnny gave you the thumbs-up, you rushed back in, helping Jungwoo sit back up. Johnny took the lead vest back off, leaving him in his white coat again as he went back over to the imaging machine.

“Okay, here we go,” Johnny muttered, clicking a few things on the computer to pull up the images. “Remember, I’m not a human doctor, and definitely not an alien doctor.”

“We know, Johnny,” you retorted.

The first image came up, and you yourself weren’t any kind of doctor, but that definitely didn’t look right. A dark line going right down what you assumed to be a rib, splitting it all the way through. “Yep, your rib’s broken,” Johnny declared, pointing to the severance.

Jungwoo’s brow furrowed with concern. “It shouldn’t—”

“Yeah, no shit. Remember, dude, you fell out of the sky twelve hours ago, I’m surprised you’re alive.”

“No, I should be more healed than that.”

“You said that the lack of hydrogen in the atmosphere was making it so your body couldn’t produce as much natural painkillers, remember? Maybe something is making you heal a bit slower, too,” you suggested reassuringly. “I’m sure you’ll be fine, it’ll just be a little longer.”

“That’s probably it,” Johnny agreed. “Are you eating enough? I know Y/N only has that vegan crap at her house, you probably need a real meal—”

“His whole planet is vegetarian, you dick.” You flipped him off. “You’d probably kill him if you gave him a steak.”

“Alright, damn,” he held his hands up with a laugh. “Let me just shoot him up with morphine and you two can get out of here, huh? I’ll do a double dose from last time.”

“I need to be able to get him home, John,” you said frankly.

“I’ll drive you.”

“Alright,” you nodded, then looked to the alien. “Sound good Jungwoo? Twice as much as last time? So hopefully it’ll last a bit longer?”

He nodded, his eyes fixated on Johnny as the human had gone back to getting the supplies for the injection. You grabbed his hand without prompting, flashing him a bright smile as you tried to come up with something to talk about to distract him. “So, how else are Earth and Galaria different?” You asked him. “The skies are different colors, we know that. What about the oceans? Do you guys have oceans?”

“Yes, we do.”

“Ours are blue, for the most part. Or, a blue-green.”

“We have—oh,” he wrinkled his nose, but didn’t look away from you. “Pink seas.”

“I think we have a pink sea too, somewhere!” You perked up. “I’d have to look it up, but I’m pretty sure somewhere has pink water. It might be a lake, actually, not a proper sea. Don’t quote me on it…”

Jungwoo smiled at that. “I won’t hold you to it, then.”

“What about like, glaciers? Do you have those? Really big floating chunks of ice in the ocean?”

“Galaria is mostly frozen tundra…”

“Damn, really?! How cold is it there? Wait, there’s like, no way we use anywhere near the same units of measurement for temperature. Your transcoder probably couldn’t help with that, huh?”

“No, we presumably don’t use the temperature scale.”

“All done,” Johnny announced, scooting his chair back and disposing of his needle and gloves. “I’ll take you two home now.”

“Thanks, Johnny.” You smiled up at him, helping Jungwoo up. “How are you feeling, Jungwoo?”

The Galarii took a couple slow blinks. “Mm… starting to feel better…”

“You said morphine doesn’t make you high, does it make you tired?” You questioned, following Johnny out towards the back where his car was parked in the alley.

“Not usually… but my body hasn’t been doing what it’s supposed to be doing the whole time I’ve been here…” he said slowly, narrowly missing hitting his head on the roof as you helped him into the backseat. You scooted in after him, encouraging him to lean against you after you’d buckled him up.

Johnny took off quickly through the streets, occasionally watching the two of you in the rearview mirror. Outside your apartment building, he helped you unload a half-awake Jungwoo, the alien rousing himself just enough to climb the stairs. Giving your friend a final thank-you and goodbye at the entrance to your apartment, you tugged Jungwoo back into your home, guiding him once again back to your bed.

“Come on, time for a nap,” you sighed, encouraging him to lay down. “You need to rest up, dude.”

“Y/N?” He murmured, grabbing your forearm as you went to walk away to leave him in peace.

“Yes?” You stopped, looking down at him attentively. “Do you need something, Jungwoo? Water? Food?”

“Will you just… sit with me? And talk to me? Until I go to sleep?” He requested. “I… find your company soothing.”

“Oh.” You shifted your weight uncertainly between your feet, but acquiesced nevertheless, scooting onto the corner of the mattress near his head. “Sure, Jungwoo. Here, I’ll look up those pink oceans I was talking about, see if I was right.”

And so you read some Wikipedia articles to Jungwoo about various pink lakes and beaches until his eyes fluttered shut, his breathing evened out, and you were more than certain that he was asleep. But even after you were sure he was fast asleep, and you stopped reading the article aloud, you stayed right there, silently scrolling on your phone and occasionally looking from your screen over to his face. Because for some reason that you couldn’t put your finger on, you sort of found his presence calming, too.

When it seemed as though Jungwoo was stirring, you quickly got up from your spot and scurried from the room, feeling a bit weird about sitting and watching him sleep the whole time. You had a feeling that he wouldn’t have minded, but you didn’t want it to be a fact known to anybody but you that you had done that. Truly, you didn’t even want to really admit it to yourself, either. And so, when Jungwoo finally wandered out of your bedroom some hours later, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes, he found you tucked into the corner of your couch, in the middle of an episode of a TV show, as if you had been doing that the whole time.

“Hey, sleepyhead,” you greeted him nonchalantly, pausing the episode. “How’d you sleep?”

“Mm, well,” his reply was punctuated by a yawn.

“And how are you feeling?”

“I’m still feeling the painkiller effect, but I am no longer tired.”

“So, do you think you’ll be up for checking out your ship tonight?” You checked the time on your phone. “We can probably eat dinner then head out after.”

“Yes, I would very much like to see it.”

“Cool, let’s do it.”

After eating another modest meal prepared by you, you and Jungwoo headed out. The streets weren’t as busy at night, and with Jungwoo moving fully of his own power again, the two of you were able to make your way through them much quicker. The intel you got from Doyoung was good, the entire expanse of beach was roped off with police tape, and one officer was stationed on either side of the shoreline. Because of how far the fire had spread through the trees, the officers were pretty far from where you remembered the ship being. Getting in and out would be the tricky part, but once you were in, you were certain they would be none the wiser that somebody was there.

Jungwoo followed you silently, and you finally found what you were looking for. The old public access to the beach. When you were little, everyone used to have to take a steep staircase that started right off the highway. After a particular heavy rainy season that brought rockslides from the mountain up above, it was deemed entirely unusable by the city, all markers for it taken away, left in disrepair, and a new, much safer one was made further down the road. There was a ‘CAUTION: ROCKSLIDES’ sign nearby, which is how you knew you were in the right place. The best part was that it was right in the middle of the thicket of trees, meaning that as long as you were quick, you should be able to drop right in undetected.

All boardwalks and rope that had been spared by rockslides and Mother Nature over the years were left untouched by the city government, and you were able to start the steep descent like normal. It was about a third of the way down that things started getting dicey, broken pieces of wood, large gaps that you had to step over, and several areas where you had to test the steadiness of rocks before putting your weight on it because there was no manmade material for you to step on at all. When you and Jungwoo got to the place where the path would’ve diverted to the beach instead of dropping you right into the trees, you bit your bottom lip and resisted cursing aloud. It was a steep drop from where you were. It was too dark for you to see where the ground was, but instinct and memory told you it was too steep for you to just jump down. Looking around desperately, you realized there was a much shallower incline further down the trail, but it was close to where one of the officers was patrolling. You were already too near him for your liking.

A distant voice humming got closer and closer, and you held your breath and held your position, keeping your eyes peeled in the direction of the noise for any sign of movement through the trees. You never did see the police officer, but eventually the humming got further away again, until you stopped hearing it, and you made a break for the shallow area, sliding down the mostly sandy, occasionally rocky hill on your butt. You heard the sounds of Jungwoo hurrying after you, but didn’t look behind you until you were sure you two were well concealed in the trees again. Glancing up at him, you saw his chest heaving, and motioned for him to keep quiet as you listened to the officer run back over towards the road end of his side.

The crackle of a walkie-talkie, then a distant voice. “Hey, I think I heard something. You hear anything?”

After a second, his buddy responded, his voice slightly garbled through the walkie-talkie speaker. “Yeah, you heard a rock fall down the mountain. Rockslide area. Been hearing them all night.”

“Damn, you’re right. Thanks.” And he was gone again.

You took off through the brush at a brisk pace, knowing that Jungwoo would be right behind you. The ship was easy to find, with the concentration of charred and blackened foliage getting greater and greater the closer you got to it. When you finally found it, the spaceship was mostly intact, which the size of the explosion from last night did not lead you to believe. Jungwoo let out a sigh of relief, and did a quick walk-around first. It was when you got to the tail that you saw why there had been such a huge fireball. Four huge canisters that must have housed something flammable were nothing more than metallic flowers now, the material burst open and curling over on itself from the force of the explosion.

“The reactors…” Jungwoo breathed out.

You chewed on your bottom lip, asking quietly, “Is it fixable?”

“I don’t want to say anything until I see the inside.”

You followed him around to the side, where he pressed a button that you had missed last night on account of it being entirely smooth and looking like nothing more than a random dot. A set of hand and foot rails emerged seamlessly from the surface of the hull for you to climb up with. Once the two of you were up at the cockpit, Jungwoo pressed another button up there, and the ladder seemed to melt back into the metal of the ship once again. The glass was still propped open, making it very easy for you to hop down into the ship. Whatever red flashing warning lights that were going off before had deactivated, leaving it in pitch black, and you immediately brought out your phone to turn the flashlight on.

“Ah, thank you,” Jungwoo said as you pointed it at wherever he looked.

“I told you, I’m your flashlight girl,” you grinned.

As he looked over many different panels and controls in the cockpit, you drank in every detail with fascination. While the button on the outside of the ship had functioned seemingly almost like a touchscreen, the ones in here looked analog at least, though you couldn’t figure out for the life of you what a single one was for. You kept your hands to yourself. Jungwoo finally pressed a button, and a screen lit up, one that quaintly reminded you of computers from the nineties in its size and resolution. As he navigated through the program, you watched with interest. He sat down in one of the two chairs, and indicated to the other one for you. You eagerly sat. It was remarkably comfy.

“You seem to be very close to Johnny,” he commented abruptly, spamming one button in particular with a bit of frustration.

“We’re all really close.” You nodded, and the program finally loaded the next screen. “But yeah, I guess John and I are a bit different. Our parents are all friends, so we’ve been friends since we were little. He’s had to deal with my bullshit for our whole lives. We even call each other’s parents Aunt and Uncle, that kind of thing.”

“He is… similar to your cousin?”

“Sort of? I don’t know, he was kind of like a built-in older brother.” A sheepish smile tugged at the corner of your mouth as you reminisced in childhood memories. “People in our neighborhood and at school did actually think we were cousins. He’s a few years older than me, and I was a bit of a troublemaker. I remember he’d pull me away from getting into fights with kids way bigger than me, or when I’d talk back to teachers, the head teacher always brought the both of us in for a scolding. Something about how he should be keeping his younger cousin in check, too. Poor guy. He took it like a champ. We came to an agreement that he wouldn’t tell my parents if I stopped getting in trouble so much.”

“You’re not so unruly anymore.”

“Oh, I’ve still got a bit of a rebellious streak,” you chuckled. “Johnny always says I’m going to make him go grey. I mean, you and I are literally on a crime scene right now. And I pulled an alien out of a spaceship that was about to explode last night.”

“I suppose that’s true…” Jungwoo trailed off, brow furrowing as what looked like a schematic of some sort came up on the screen. “Hm.”

“Something wrong?”

“Mixed results.”

“What?”

“There are some bad things and some good things.”

“Tell me the bad stuff first.”

“What?”

“When somebody says ‘I’ve got good news, and I’ve got bad news,’ they’re supposed to let you pick if you want to hear the good news or the bad news first,” you explained the small colloquialism. “I want the bad news first, so we can end on the good stuff.”

“I see…” he hummed, clicking a few more things. “The bad news is… I will need to reconstruct the reactors and make other minor repairs.”

“And how long will that take?”

“I do not know Earth measurements of time.”

“You’ve been on Earth for one day now. How many of those do you think it’ll take?”

He took a moment to think about this, then eventually answered, “Twenty to thirty? Maybe more, maybe less, I’m unsure, I was asleep for much of the ‘day’ that I experienced.”

You nodded. “Okay. And the good news?”

“There was no serious structural damage to the hull or critical systems of the ship. Once I reconstruct the reactors and make those repairs, I will be able to leave.”

“That’s great news, Jungwoo!” You beamed, holding up a hand for him. He uncertainly put his palm against yours and laced your fingers together, eyes flicking around the ship nervously. You burst into laughter. “I wasn’t trying to hold your hand again, sorry. It’s a high-five. It’s celebratory, friendly.”

“Ah. My apologies. How do you do that, then?” He took his hand back from yours.

“I put my hand up for you, and you hit your palm to mine pretty hard. You’re trying to make a—” you clapped your own two hands together “—sound.”

“I think I understand.”

“Okay, take two.” You held your hand up, and he gingerly tapped his hand to yours. Once again, you couldn’t help but giggle fondly. “Yeah, pretty much. A for effort,” you declared. “So, anything else you need to do right now? Or is that it for tonight?”

“I wish I could begin working right now, however I will need lots of materials for the reactors.”

“Let’s get out of here, we can talk about what kind of stuff you need and where to get it on the way home.”

“So is your brother older or younger?” You asked as you and Jungwoo took a more leisurely pace back to your apartment.

“I’m sorry?” Jungwoo tilted his head, as if he hadn’t heard you, which was weird, considering he was already looking at you when you turned to ask him that.

“Your brother whose ship you took. Is he older than you or younger?”

“I… don’t know.” He frowned thoughtfully.

You balked. “You don’t know?”

“No. It’s not something we’re told on Galaria.”

“But—” You laughed out of habit as your brain tried to process this information. “What? Why?”

“It’s not important.”

“I mean, I guess not. But like, it is!”

“Why?”

“I mean, some cultures here have entire systems of honorifics that you call people based on your age relative to theirs. But just—” You were still staring at him. “Don’t you know how old your brother is?”

“I know his birthday.”

“But not how old he is?”

“I… suppose not.” He shrugged. “That’s all kept somewhere.”

“I’m sorry, it’s just difficult for me to wrap my head around. You’re not allowed to know your brother’s age—”

“I’m allowed to know,” he corrected you. “If we were to learn somehow now, it would be fine. There’s no punishment for it. But it’s just not something that we grow up knowing. Nobody is referred to as the older or younger.”

“Do you remember your brother being born?”

“No.”

“Was he in a higher grade than you in school?”

“School is based on ability, not age.” It was his turn to look at you with bewilderment. “You move up in levels as your learning progresses, not your physical body. Is that how it works here?”

“We keep kids who are the same age together, yeah.”

“Fascinating.”

“What about siblings that have big age gaps? Where you can totally tell who’s older and who’s younger?” You asked. “Or step-siblings? Like, you already knew their age and then your parents got together?”

“Again, it’s not forbidden to know a sibling’s age,” Jungwoo reiterated. “It’s just not… important.”

“So if your brother is a controversial politician… What are you?” It felt like you could ask him questions forever and never run out. “You never did tell me that earlier.”

“My profession?”

“Yeah. What do you for work?”

“Specialized cargo transport.”

“Uh…” You blinked up at him. “You know that sounds really shady, right?”

“When people need things transported across galaxies, typically under time constraints, or with specific instructions, they come to me.” He tried to explain it further.

“What kind of stuff have you transported, then?”

“Anything from fuel, to an engagement comb, to produce from someone’s home planet that they were missing after moving elsewhere,” he shrugged.

“So you’re like an intergalactic DHL driver,” you laughed. “Sounds fun, I guess. You’ve been to a lot of places, then?”

“Yes, many different planets and cities and galaxies.”

“And this is your first time on Earth?”

“I haven’t had a reason to come to this solar system before. Your planet isn’t exactly involved in intergalactic trade. So, I might not have another chance to visit.”

“Nobody’s requesting any black market Earth commodities?”

“I guess… we don’t really know what’s here. Nobody’s ever put in the effort to find out, I suppose.”

You couldn’t help but laugh again. “We’re just not interesting enough, huh? Can’t even make it on the niche alien knickknack market.”

Jungwoo smiled a little. “That tends to be a good thing, in my experience.”

The two of you were walking through a night market at that point, and you perked up as you saw a particular stall. Your dinner earlier hadn’t included a dessert for Jungwoo. You stopped him, pointing to the ice cream stand. “Ooh, hey, you want something sweet?”

“Sweet…?” He peered over the crowd to try to see what they were serving.

“Yeah, dessert. Ice cream. Want some? They’ve got toppings too.” You pulled him into the line as you talked. “You can get sprinkles and candy, or even entire brownies as toppings. And they’ve got some really good flavors.”

“Which flavor do you like?”

“Peanut butter cup and green tea are my two favorites. But you can only get one flavor at a time here,” you sighed wistfully, getting on your tiptoes to look at their options again. “I think I’m going to do green tea today…”

With your own green tea cone and Jungwoo’s peanut butter cup selection in hand, the two of you started back down the streets together. You watched with interest as Jungwoo took his first tentative lick off the scoop, his face lighting up with delight.

“It’s good!” He declared happily. “We have something similar... on Galaria.”

“If your planet is mostly frozen tundra...” you paused to eat some of your own ice cream. “Is most of your food hot or cold?”

He seemed to contemplate this for a moment. “I don’t know...”

“It’s okay, Jungwoo,” you laughed at how hard he seemed to be thinking about it. “I wouldn’t be able to answer that about Earth food. It wasn’t a very fair question, I think.”

“Still, I feel bad that I can’t answer your question.”

“It’s fine, really,” you promised, squeezing his arm. “It’s not going to keep me up at night.”

The next day, after another injection from Johnny on the vet’s way into work, you took Jungwoo to Yuta’s garage. There was no way you would be of any serious help when it came to furnishing him with parts for his ship, nor did you really want him just walking into your local hardware store asking for alien spaceship parts. Today seemed to be a slow day, as only one of Yuta’s coworkers was there, firmly wedged under a car on the other side of the garage, loudly playing music from a speaker, so you weren’t worried about him eavesdropping on your conversation so long as you kept your voices low. Jungwoo and Yuta had a slightly rocky start, obviously using different terminology, but eventually got on the same page, leaving you in the dust as they started going over various specifications and parts. You zoned out, taking over Yuta's chair and kicking up your feet on his workbench as you let their words go in one ear and out the other.

“Hey,” Yuta’s hand came down on your head, catching your attention again.

You craned your neck back to look up at him. “Yeah?”

“I’ve given him everything I had in stock, there’s a few things you guys will have to pick up at a shop,” he explained, and you turned around to see Jungwoo loaded up with a duffel bag that he hadn’t walked in with. “I wrote everything out so you know how to ask for it in human.”

“Thanks, Yuta.” You stood up and got out your wallet. “How much do I owe you for the parts?”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“What? But—”

“Hey, we all want to help him get home.” He held his hands up, backing away from your money. “Just doing my part.”

You narrowed your eyes at him knowingly. “Uh-huh... very charitable... What’s the catch?”

“Well, I’m going on this date tomorrow, and—”

“Pass.”

“You didn’t even hear me out!”

“I’m assuming the girl wants to bring a friend, you’re trying to turn it into a double date,” you snorted. “The last time I went on a double date with you—”

“No, not you,” Yuta waved you off. “Jungwoo!”

“Excuse me?”

Your friend had already sidled up to the alien, throwing an arm around his shoulders. “What do you think? Date with an Earth girl? You’re only going to be here for so long...”

You rubbed your face in exasperation. “Yuta, you do remember that we don’t want people to find out that we have an alien here, right?”

“We can say he’s from out of town.”

“What is wrong with you?” You stared at him incredulously. “Just bring Johnny, or Jae, or any of your other ten million single human loser friends.”

“You’re not Jungwoo’s mom,” Yuta snorted.

“Well, no—”

“There we go, Jungwoo, do you want to go?” Yuta focused his question on Jungwoo instead.

Jungwoo’s eyes shifted nervously between you and Yuta. “Uhm, well...”

“Okay, I hate to be crude here, but keeping in mind how your successful dates usually look, Yuta,” you cut in again pointedly, “We can’t risk exposing what Jungwoo is. Doesn’t matter if we say he’s from out of town.”

Yuta raised an eyebrow at you. “Wow, Y/N, didn’t think you’d bring up the alien dick angle first.”

You groaned as your face burned. “You’re the worst. Why’d you have to say it?”

“Pretty sure you said it—”

“Will you drop it?!”

“I don’t want to go!” Jungwoo interjected loudly, stopping yours and Yuta’s bickering. “I don’t want to go. Uhm, thank you for the invitation, Yuta, really. But I’d rather not...”

Yuta shrugged. “Alright. I’m pretty sure Doyoung’s free.”

Your skin was still on fire as you left Yuta’s garage. He didn’t end up making you pay, despite neither of you fulfilling his need for a double-date partner. You were pretty sure the embarrassment of that conversation was payment enough in his mind. As you and Jungwoo headed for the nearest hardware store, you swallowed down some of your discomfort, unable to imagine how Jungwoo was feeling in that moment.

“I’m sorry about him, Jungwoo,” you sighed. “He shouldn’t have dragged you into all that.”

He looked down at you curiously. “Do you frequently feel the need to apologize for others’ behavior?”

You blinked at him, caught off-guard. “Uhm... What?”

“You apologized for Donghyuck and Mark being excited and a bit overzealous—in your opinion—when they met me. Now you’re apologizing for Yuta asking for a favor that was inappropriate—again, in your opinion. Do you do that a lot? Feel responsible for what your friends do or say to other people?”

“Well... I mean, no,” you stared down at the shopping list in your hand hard as you thought. “I guess... I’m embarrassed that they’re not behaving better around you.”

“You’re embarrassed of your friends?”

“No, I like them. I like my friends, or I wouldn’t be their friend.” You bit the inside of your cheek. “I mean... they’re not treating you like someone they just met. They’re treating you like they’ve known you for as long as they’ve known the rest of us. You’re supposed to ease into that stuff so you don’t scare people off.”

“That makes me happy,” Jungwoo declared, a soft smile on his face as he looked down at you.

“What? Why?”

“Both that your friends would want to be familiar with me and not treat me like an outsider, and that you’re afraid of their behavior making me uncomfortable,” he explained. “You don’t want me to leave. Of course that makes me happy.”

You felt your eyes widen as you looked up at him. “Well, I mean, I do want you to leave, eventually. Obviously, I want you to go home. But I mean, yeah, I want your time here to be nice, you know? I don’t want you to be back home on Galaria thinking about your time on Earth being bad.”

A strange look flickered across the spaceman’s face then, you could’ve almost sworn it was pained, before the same serene smile came back. “I think I’ll remember my time on Earth very fondly. Really.”

You looped your arm with his, trying to shake the memory of the odd look on his face from your mind, playfully bumping your shoulder into him. “Well then let’s get you off Earth so you can start looking back on it, hm?”

After getting your last few things at the hardware store, you had to wait for the sun to go down before heading back to the beach. The path down to the ship was even more treacherous now that the two of you were loaded up with supplies, but you finally made it there in one piece. Jungwoo didn’t stop in the cockpit this time, leading the way towards the back of the ship, through the narrow hallway. He pressed a button outside a doorway, then when nothing happened, pressed it again. Nothing. He banged his fist against it a couple of times, cursing under his breath.

“What’s in there?” You asked.

“It’s the crew quarters,” he sighed, running a hand through his hair. “There’s a desk in there. We’ll be a lot more cramped working in the cockpit, but apparently this circuitry got affected too.”

“But we can still do it, right?”

He nodded. “Yeah, yeah.”

You turned around to head back to the front of the ship. “Then let’s get started.”

Jungwoo seemed to be able to do much of the repairs on his own. You shone the flashlight on the work area, handed him tools and parts when requested, or held small pieces so they didn’t roll away from him. It was a bit cramped sitting on the floor of the cockpit behind the seats, it obviously wasn’t designed with this purpose in mind, and Jungwoo’s long limbs only made the space feel even smaller.

“Can you move the light here?” He requested, pointing to the side of the device that was facing him.

You scooted closer, trying to maneuver your phone around without blocking his vision with it. “How’s that?”

He shook his head. “I still can’t—”

“Hold on.” You scooted around behind him instead, pointing the flashlight from over his shoulder. “What about this?”

Jungwoo was quiet for a beat, and you peered around to try to look him in the eye.

“Jungwoo?”

“That’s perfect,” he answered, eyes focused down at object in his hands. “Is your arm getting tired?”

That was the first time you really noticed the ache in your limb from holding up your phone for so long. “Yeah, a little, I guess.”

“You can rest it on my shoulder, if you want.”

“Oh, thanks.” You lowered your arm until it was propped up by his shoulder, making sure you adjusted your grip on your phone to keep your light on the same place. “Light still good?”

“Yes, thank you.”

As he kept working, you quietly watched his deft fingers move over the pieces. “So how do you know how to do all this?”

“I fly a lot,” he answered, his attention held by the parts in his hands as he was trying to precisely line up two of them.

“Yeah, but I mean, I have a driver’s license and I couldn’t change a flat tire, gun to my head, much less fix up the whole car if I crashed it off the side of a mountain,” you scoffed.

“You’re allowed to pilot a vehicle that you’re unable to repair yourself?”

“We have mechanics and stuff for that. Are you saying you’re not allowed to get your spaceship pilot’s license or whatever on Galaria without knowing how to build one from scratch?”

“You’re required to have a certain engineering proficiency to get your solo pilot’s license, yes.”

“Ah, you have a specialty license, then.”

“Yes, I do. It’s a requirement in case you ever find yourself in circumstances like this.”

“Crash landed on an alien planet and stranded with a busted ship?”

“Yes.”

You noticed that he had paused his machinations as you were talking. “Sorry, am I distracting you?”

“No, this is all I can do tonight. The adhesive needs to cure for some time before I can continue working.” He carefully set the part down. “I should be able to resume tomorrow night, I believe.”

“Sounds good to me.” You yawned and stretched your arms over your head. “I’ve got work tomorrow anyway.”

“And what job do you do?” Jungwoo asked with intrigue as the two of you stood up.

“Reception at a law firm.” You could feel your nose habitually wrinkle with disdain.

“You don’t like it?” He immediately surmised.

Thankfully, the two of you were climbing out of the ship then, and had to stay silent through your trek up from the beach. You had time to think about how to answer his question as you climbed back up to the main roadway.

Finally, as the two of you started the walk down the shoulder of the highway, you let out a huff and said, “The work is fine, I guess. Except I hate being talked down to and belittled by people on the phone who think I’m stupid just because they’re attorneys and I’m not, or because I’m a woman, or I’m young, or because I’m just a receptionist or whatever. And I hate when they start yelling at me for no fucking reason, and I hate when people are in the office and start being fucking rude to me and I’m supposed to just sit there and take it. And I hate that in between all of that, it’s fucking boring. It constantly fluctuates between being so stressful and so goddamn boring I want to bang my head against a wall either way.”

“So... you don’t like it?” he asked again, head tilted with clear confusion on his features.

“It’s a job,” you replied flatly. “I need to eat. Do you like your job?”

“Yes, quite,” he replied quietly. After a pause, he questioned, “What sort of work do you want to do, then?”

“I wish I didn’t have to.” You let out a cynical chuckle, looking up at the sparse dotting of stars above you as the hum of the city streets started up around you again. “I mean, I’ve always wanted to see more of the world, just do more, learn more. And now that I know that aliens are real—” You looked over at Jungwoo wistfully. “I don’t think I’ll ever be happy behind a desk again. You know?”

Jungwoo met your eyes, his lips parted as he couldn’t seem to respond for a moment.

You shook your head at yourself, looking back down at your feet and the concrete below them. Forcing humor back into your tone, you apologized, “Sorry, sorry. Of course you don’t know, you’re criss-crossing galaxies all the time, huh? You’ve got enough problems of your own right now anyway, you don’t need mine too.”

A large hand grabbed yours, cool to the touch and surprisingly firm as it squeezed yours. You could feel the callouses on Jungwoo’s hand where his skin pressed against yours. Shifting your gaze from your shoes back up to the alien, you furrowed your brow curiously, but made no move to pull away.

“Please, give them to me,” he said. “And when I leave, you can imagine that I’m taking all your problems with me, to somewhere very far away from here.”

It was your turn to be speechless for a moment, and the only thing that kept you from skidding to a stop in the middle of the sidewalk was the sea of other pedestrians keeping your momentum moving forward. Your skin got hotter, and you wondered if Jungwoo could feel it where he was holding your hand.

In an instinctive bid to diffuse the tension that was currently squeezing all the air from your lungs, you gave his shoulder a friendly bump as you teased, “Alright, well here’s a new problem: That’s quite possibly the most romantic thing anybody’s ever said to me, and I’m 100% sure you didn’t even do that on purpose.”

“I—”

“And our next problem—” You plowed right past whatever Jungwoo was about to say, still fighting the prickle along your skin where you knew his eyes were. “Unfortunately, it’s not Bring Your Alien to Work Day tomorrow, so do you think you’ll be okay at my apartment by yourself all day? Or do you want me to see if some of the guys can keep you company?”

“While I don’t want to inconvenience anybody, if somebody has time, I wouldn’t mind seeing more of the city.”

“Sure, I’ll find someone.” You immediately took your phone out to text your top choice.

[you: are you busy tomorrow? i need someone to hang out with jungwoo while im at work]

[yonggie: i have a few errands to run and a few of us were talking abt seeing a movie in the afternoon. he’s welcome to tag along!]

[yonggie: unless the grocery store and stuff is going too be too boring?? i can do it another day and we can do something else!]

[you: i just feel bad keeping him cooped up in my apartment by himself all day. im sure he’ll have plenty of fun going grocery shopping with you. he’s never seen a human grocery store, after all]

[yonggie: sounds like a plan! let him know i’ll be by around 10ish!]

[you: thanks yonggie, i owe you]

“Taeyong is free tomorrow,” you announced to Jungwoo. “You haven’t really met him yet, but he was there when we found you. You don’t mind tagging along with him while he runs a few errands, do you? He’ll be going all around the city, I’m sure. Oh, and it sounded like some of the guys might be doing a movie later, too.”

“Thank you, Y/N,” Jungwoo smiled down at you. “For everything.”

You smiled and lightly elbowed him again. “Like I said, I want you to have good memories of Earth.”

A few more days passed by like that, with you finding various friends to leave Jungwoo with during the day while you went to your dreadfully boring job, then the two of you would eat dinner together before heading off to the beach to work on his spaceship until late. Tonight in particular, you didn’t have much to help with, as he was able to prop up a spare flashlight you’d gotten from the hardware store for illumination as he worked.

“When do you think we’ll be done tonight?” You asked, spinning the cockpit seat around as you unfocused your eyes, letting the colorful lights become hazy blurs and streaks in your vision.

“Soon,” he answered shortly as he usually did when he was focused. “Do you have something you need to do?”

“The guys are going out.” You read the texts on your phone as they streamed in. “They invited me and you, by the way.”

“Me?”

“Yeah, Jaehyun just got promoted to assistant professor, so we’re celebrating.” You stopped your spinning to watch him work again, but found that he had stalled his ministrations. “It’ll be at least two or three nightclubs; if you’re not up for that, that’s fine.”

“They invited me?” He repeated, brow furrowed as he had clearly not been expecting that.

You couldn’t help but laugh and pat the back of his head fondly. “Yeah, Jungwoo, they like you. It’s also definitely a bit of novelty, you know—‘Hey let’s see if we can get the alien shitfaced’—but I won’t let them mess with you.”

“Yes, I’d like to go with you.” He smiled, looking back down at the contraption in his hands. “It won’t be much longer.”

Knocking on the front door of a very familiar apartment, you bounced on your toes as you waited for one of the occupants to answer. It was Johnny who opened the door, eyes lingering on Jungwoo behind you before he went to give you a hug. “Hey, kid. How are you?”

“Good, good. How are you, John?” You patted his back them dropped back down onto flat feet.

“Same old, you know?” He grinned and shrugged, then finally addressed Jungwoo. “Hey, man. How’s your side?”

“Fine, good. Thank you,” Jungwoo answered hastily, offering a polite nod.

“Jae!” You called into the apartment, latching onto Jungwoo’s wrist and dragging him over to Jaehyun’s closed bedroom door. You banged on the door. “Jaehyun! Come on, it’s me, your favorite!”

The door opened a second later, Jaehyun looking at you stone-faced as he buttoned up his shirt. “You claim you’re everyone’s favorite.”

“I am! Aren’t I?” You grinned.

“Can’t a guy get dressed in his own apartment in peace? Bother Johnny.” He was about to close the door in your face when you stuck your foot in the way.

“Can Jungwoo borrow some clothes?” You requested sweetly, batting your eyelashes at him.

Jaehyun looked the alien up and down skeptically. “He’s already wearing my clothes.”

“He can’t go to the club in a sweatshirt and jeans!”

Your friend sighed and opened the door wider, jerking his head in a gesture for you two to come in.

“Thank you!” You squealed, pulling Jungwoo in with you.

Jaehyun sat on his bed as you started rifling through his closet for something for Jungwoo to wear. Pulling a couple shirts down first, you held them up to the spaceman, humming to yourself as you compared how they looked on them. You clicked your tongue and shook your head, putting one back and looking for another. With two new shirts, you held them up again, nodding in satisfaction. “Yeah, I like that a lot better.”

“He’s not a doll, Y/N,” Jaehyun snorted. “Go ahead, Jungwoo, you can tell her not to play dress-up with you.”

Jungwoo rubbed the back of his neck, the iridophores on his cheeks flashing as he shifted awkwardly in place. “I don’t mind it, really…”

“And that’s how I ended up as the first and only victim of Y/N’s Barber Shop when I was eight.” Johnny had joined the three of you, leaning in the bedroom doorway with his arms crossed over his chest.

“You say that like your hair didn’t grow back,” you scoffed. “I didn’t take your ear off or anything.”

“Just my dignity.”

“And who gave me the scissors?”

Johnny held his hands up in surrender, making his roommate laugh.

“Johnny’s always been a pushover when it comes to Y/N,” Jaehyun explained to Jungwoo, still chuckling. “Ever since they were kids.”

“Alright guys, listen up!” You called for their focus loudly. “This is going to be one of the most important questions I ask you in our entire lives.”

Johnny and Jaehyun gave you two very similar amused but attentive looks, while Jungwoo beheld you with absolutely rapt attention.

You held up the two shirts that you had narrowed your selection to for Jungwoo. “White lace or black silk?”

“He’s not wearing those jeans, is he?” Johnny cocked his head.

“God no,” you shook your head. “Or the sneakers. I’m thinking simple black pants and boots. His necklace will go good with both, right?” You pointed to the gold transcoder that rested below his collarbones.

“White.” Jaehyun pointed.

“Black.” Johnny shrugged.

“Helpful.” You glared at them. Turning to Jungwoo, you held up the tops. “What do you think? Do you even like them at all? These are just my favorites, you can pick something else if you want.”

“I like them,” Jungwoo reassured you, fingertips gently running over the front of one shirt, then the other. “Which is your favorite?”

“I think the black silk?” You appraised it again. “Yeah, I like the neckline, and I think the material will move really nice for a night out, you know?”

“That’s what I was thinking.”

You handed him that hanger and put the other back in the closet where you found it. Looking at the owner of the room, you prompted, “Jae, you’ll get him the right pants and stuff, right?”

“Sure,” he nodded and stood up, teasing glint in his eye. “It’s not like we’re meant to be celebrating my accomplishments tonight or anything. I’m just a butler, really.”

“Great, thanks!” You grinned back, traipsing out of the room with Johnny.

A few minutes later, Jaehyun joined the two of you in the living room, sitting down on the couch and pulling his shoes on. “So, anything new, Y/N?” He asked innocently.

“You mean, other than the alien living in my apartment?” You raised an eyebrow at him. “Not really, work’s the same.”

“You’re still at that shit place?” Johnny didn’t hide his distaste of your workplace.

“Yup.” You replied flatly.

“I thought you said you were looking for new jobs.”

“One, you said that. I didn’t agree to anything. Two, I am, the job market sucks right now, John.”

“Have you even interviewed anywhere? Submitted your résumé?”

“God, not this again…” Jaehyun groaned from his spot between you two on the couch.

“Not everybody can inherit a veterinary practice once their mentor retires and have their life made,” you snapped, turning to glare at Johnny pointedly.

“My life’s made? I’m still paying off my student loans, you know that, right?” He scoffed. “Not to mention how much free morphine I’ve been giving your buddy in there just the past few days.”

“I told you I’ll pay you back once he’s better, you said not to worry about it, and now you’re holding it over my head!” You said in disbelief. “God, this is just like you!”

“‘Just like me?’”

“Yes, you always nag me about shit like you think I can’t do anything, and insist on handling things for me instead of letting me do it, then just turn right around to use that as further proof that I can’t do anything on my own!” You were about to launch to your feet when Jaehyun caught your arm and urged you back into your seat.

“Woah, woah,” Jaehyun looked back and forth between you two. “Time out. You’re both right and you’re both wrong. Johnny, we get that you’re coming from a good place, but obviously Y/N feels patronized with the way you treat her. Y/N, Johnny has a lot going on too that you’re ignoring on purpose to make him seem like the bad guy, which also isn’t fair.”

Johnny pushed some of his hair out of his face as he stared ahead at the TV across the room, obviously refusing to meet your eyes now. You crossed your arms over your chest and flopped back against the cushions, not looking at either of them. You’ve never been great at apologizing first.

“You two aren’t making up before we go out, are you?” Jaehyun rubbed his face.

“No.” “Nope.”

Jaehyun’s bedroom door opened then, Jungwoo hesitantly stepping out, still fussing with the shirt. When he looked up, the searching look fell from his face as he obviously could sense the tension in the room, turning cautious instead.

“Is everything alright?” While his question was general, his eyes were focused on you when he asked.

“Yeah, Jungwoo!” You forced a cheery smile again, jumping to your feet as you appraised his outfit. “I love being right. It looks so handsome on you!”

“Ah, well…” He rubbed the back of his neck again as you walked around him, brushing off a spare piece of fluff from his back. “Thank you.”

“What do you guys think?” You asked the other two proudly, looping your arm with Jungwoo’s.

“Yeah, he looks—”

“Fine. Can we go now?” Johnny cut his roommate off, grabbing his keys and walking over to the door.

“Rude,” you muttered under your breath, but followed the other two with a roll of your eyes nevertheless.

“Congrats!” Everybody cheered in unison, clinking their glasses together.

“Thanks, guys,” Jaehyun beamed at you all, bringing his drink to his lips.

“So are you like tenure track now, or what?” Doyoung prompted him eagerly.

“Yes, I am,” he announced proudly. “I’m no longer instructional, I’m academic.”

All your friends let out a chorus of jesting but supportive ‘ooh’s at that, and you squeezed his arm from beside him. “Look at you, a real academic now. Knew that big head was good for something.”

“You little—” He went to tousle your hair. You let out an ‘eep!’ and jerked away from his hand, back into Jungwoo on your other side.

“Sorry!” You laughed through your apology to the alien, patting his arm as he hadn’t been knocked very far back at least. “You alright, Jungwoo?”

“Yes, I’m okay,” he reassured you with a fond smile.

“Now, are you absolutely sure you can have that?” You pointed to the drink that you had helped him order. After realizing that for some reason he immediately knew what morphine was, but his transcoder was failing on what alcohol was, you’d explained the drink—with some assistance from your friends and Google—to him to make sure it wasn’t going to kill him, but you noticed that he hadn’t yet actually taken a sip yet.

“Yes, yes.” He lifted the glass again.

“If morphine doesn’t get you high, I wonder if alcohol is even going to do anything to do you,” Johnny mused, slowly nursing his liquor.

“Take it slow, drink water, and even though we ate before we came, keep eating while we’re here, okay?” You told Jungwoo, shooting Johnny a glare over the spaceman’s shoulder.

He nodded, and with that, you grabbed your own drink, clinked it to his one more time, and drained half of it in one go. You watched his face carefully, both for any sign that he was in imminent danger, and in the vent that he was fine, if he liked the drink you’d picked. You’d chosen a cocktail on the sweeter side for him, a fruity, bubbly, unnaturally bright colored one that a couple of the guys had snickered at, which he either didn’t notice or didn’t care about. Jungwoo didn’t immediately go into anaphylactic shock, which you pocketed as a win. Just like when he tried Nutella for the first time, his eyes widened with delight before he went back in for more.

You couldn’t help but laugh and pat his head fondly. “Pace yourself,” you reminded him.

He set it down and smiled sheepishly. “Right. Thanks.”

Hyuck and Yuta had disappeared at some point, as they were now returning to your table with a round of shots for everybody. You shook your head, but picked yours up and knocked it back with everyone else. Jungwoo watched you, taking your lead. While the rest of you had various hisses and negative reactions to the tequila you were now realizing they had gotten you, Jungwoo seemed unaffected by the burn as he calmly set the shot glass down.

“Ugh, did you guys get motor oil or something?” Johnny pushed his glass away from him with distaste.

“Cheapest shit they had,” Yuta informed him smugly. “Afraid real motor oil tastes better than that.”

“I’m going to get us some waters,” you told Jungwoo before slipping off into the crowd.

You watched the bartender quickly fill up your two glasses with ice, then water. Right as he had pushed them over to you, you became aware of someone sidling up to you at the bar and grabbing your hip. You whipped around and jerked away to put distance between yourself and the newcomer, a complete stranger to you.

He chuckled at how he had startled you, stepping closer to you once again. “Woah, sorry, baby.”

“It’s fine,” you replied flatly, reaching for your waters to turn to leave.

“Hey, I did want to talk to you.”

“No thanks.”

“You don’t even know me.”

“I don’t want to.” You didn’t like that he had started shifting in front of you, putting himself between you and the rest of the club, blocking you against the bar.

“Y/N!” A familiar voice called your name as a taller figure pushed past the stranger, securing your arm in his hand. Johnny fixed the man with a hard stare before looking at you again, “There you are. Come on, we’re toasting Jaehyun again.”

“Right,” you smiled up at your friend, letting him half-pull you away from the bar. The other man didn’t say a word, letting you go as he disappeared into the crowd as well.

Halfway back to your table, you reluctantly mumbled a sharp ‘thanks’ to Johnny’s back. He must’ve heard you somehow over the thumping music, as he looked back over his shoulder at you, his eyes softening for just a moment as he nodded once, before continuing to clear a path for the two of you back to your other friends.

You wormed your way back into your spot between Jungwoo and Jaehyun, pushing Jungwoo’s glass against his arm. “Here.”

“Thank you.” His eyes didn’t leave you, seemingly scanning you over with worry. “Are you alright?”

“Huh? Yeah, fine.” You shook your head to clear away the memory.

“I’m sorry, I realized that man was making you uncomfortable, but I wasn't sure what to do. Johnny told me to stay here while he went over.”

“Oh, that’s okay, Jungwoo.” You assured him. “We can't have you getting punched defending me and bleed blue all over the place. Thanks for keeping an eye on me and telling Johnny, though.”

“But—”

“Hey, you know what?” You flashed him a smile, already starting to feel warm and airy from the alcohol. “I want to dance. How about you come with? Creepy guys should stay away if I’m already with someone.”

“Sure,” he nodded for you to lead the way.

You grabbed his hand and pulled him away from the table and into the outer edge of the dance floor. Putting your hands on his shoulders, you tilted your head, “Is this okay?”

“Yeah, should I…?”

You took his hands that were uncertainly hovering in the air and put them on your hips before returning your own to his shoulders. “There. Also, sorry.”

“For what?”

As soon as his question was out of his mouth, you inadvertently stepped on his foot, a sheepish smile flashing across your face. “I’m not a very good dancer,” you admitted. “Sorry.”

He chuckled. “That’s okay.”

“Hey, you’re pretty good,” you laughed as he kept up with the rhythm and also kept you from being a general hazard.

“Thank you.”

“Do you have places like this where you’re from?” You were careful not to say anything out of the ordinary to hint that ‘where he was from’ was actually outer space.

“Residents from elsewhere have brought similar nightclubs to our larger cities,” he informed you. “I’ve visited a few.”

“You a party boy?” You grinned.

“I’m not sure about that,” he was smiling as well. “But I’m enjoying myself with you, Y/N. Thank you.”

“I’m having fun too, Jungwoo,” you replied sincerely. Your toe caught on his shoe then, and you squeaked as you stumbled forward towards him, wrapping your arms around his neck to catch yourself from completely face-planting into his collarbone. His hands on your waist steadied you, and you smiled up at him sheepishly. “Sorry. Thanks.”

“You’re not usually this clumsy.”

“I’m a bit tipsy,” you whispered loudly. “Alcohol and motor function… not good.”

“Ah, I see.”

“Can I stay right here?” You requested sweetly, watching his patches of iridescent freckles flash and sparkle in the lights that pulsed across the dance floor. “You’re surprisingly sturdy, and your irido-irido—you know—are so pretty…”

“Of course,” Jungwoo readjusted to hold you more securely. “Do you want to sit down?”

“No.” You shook your head, starting to sway in his arms to the music. “I like this song.”

A warm puff of air washed over your ear as he chuckled. “I like it too.”

Sometime later in the night, you were sat in a booth at a different nightclub, slowly draining a water that Doyoung had pushed in front of you. Your other friends were somewhere in the club, only Jungwoo next to you. His cheeks were a little pink, but that could easily be from the body heat, as you were pretty sure you hadn’t seen him drink anything but water since your first stop of the night.

“Hey, Jungwoo?” You looked over at him with your cheek in your palm, supported by your elbow on the table.

“Yes?” He met your gaze without hesitation.

“Do—” You were cut off by a hiccup. “Do you think you’ll remember me? After you leave, once it’s been a while?”

“What?” He blinked at you, face turning oddly stern as he placed his hand over yours on the table. “Yes, Y/N. I don’t think I could ever forget you.”

“Oh. Do Galarii have photographic memory or something?”

“No.”

“But…” Another hiccup. “Don’t you go to all these places and meet so many people and do all sorts of stuff all the time? Like, of course I’m gonna remember the one alien I ever met, but why would you—”

Jungwoo turned to hold your hand with both of his. “Do you really think that you’re so insignificant? Or that I’m so… indifferent?”

“No, Jungwoo, I just—” You took your hand back to brush your fingertips over his iridophores under one eye. “I guess it’s kinda like how you don’t think these are anything special.”

“Y/N, if you remember only one thing from meeting me, please…” He shifted forward slightly, nothing but sincerity on his features. “No matter where I’ve gone, I’ve never met anyone who wasn’t special. Including you.”

You felt your bottom lip quiver, and regretted that last shot you let Yuta and Donghyuck talk you into. As soon as you blinked, the tears fell, rolling quickly down your cheeks. You buried your face in Jungwoo’s shoulder, grabbing a fistful of the silk material of his shirt.

“I’m… sorry?” He said quietly, gingerly patting your back.

“She crying?” Johnny’s voice came from behind you.

“Yes, I didn’t mean to—”

“It’s fine, she’s an emotional drunk after she’s partied herself out,” Johnny reassured the alien. A gentle hand landed on your head. “Hey, Y/N, time to go home.”

“That’s my shirt!” Jaehyun said indignantly, having also returned to your booth.

“I’ll clean it before I return it,” Jungwoo promised.

“Y/N,” Johnny called for you again in a sing-songy tone. “Come on, let’s go home.”

You lifted your head enough to sloppily wipe at your face, Jungwoo helping to push some hair back. Squinting at Johnny, you asked, “You’re taking me home?”

“Yeah, I’m taking you home,” he confirmed.

“But I thought you were mad at me?”

“I’m never that mad, kid, promise.”

“Do you need help, Johnny?” Jaehyun offered, then looked at Jungwoo. “Or are you going now too?”

“I’m going back with her,” Jungwoo immediately replied.

Johnny helped you scoot out of the booth, and on uneasy feet, you threw your arms around Jaehyun to give him one final congrats. Johnny took you back from your professor friend to half-guide, half-carry you out of the nightclub, Jungwoo following behind. Out front, Johnny cursed under his breath as he looked around.

“Jungwoo.” He waved the alien over. “Stay with her while I bring the car around, will you?”

“Of course.” Jungwoo immediately took your arm from Johnny’s grasp, steadying you as you swayed in place. Johnny gave the two of you one last uncertain look before taking off around the corner. You stepped closer to Jungwoo, leaning your weight against him as you let out a heavy sigh.

“I’m sorry about him…” You said. “He should be nicer to you.”

“It’s okay,” Jungwoo responded, shifting to support you with an arm around your waist as your knees buckled for a moment. “He’s concerned for you, which I’m glad for.”

“I wish he’d stop treating me like a kid, though,” you huffed. “He literally calls me ‘kid.’”

“Is this why you were so curious that I didn’t know if my brother was older or younger?”

“Does he treat you like a grown-up?”

“He had some concerns with my career path at first,” he informed you, some amusement in his tone. “But I also worry for his safety.”

“I worry about Johnny,” you insisted. “I just… don’t make him feel stupid for it when I do.”

Johnny’s car stopped in front of you two then, and Jungwoo helped you into the backseat. He gently brushed your hands away so he could do your seatbelt for you—which took a few attempts, admittedly—and let you rest your head on his shoulder for the entire ride back to your apartment.

After a lot of insisting, you finally got Johnny to leave your home. You were tucked into bed in your pajamas with a glass of water, and heard Jungwoo eventually close the front door behind Johnny.

“Jungwoo!” You called for the alien loudly, not really caring about the time or your neighbors.

“Yes?” His head immediately poked into your room, eyes focused on you attentively.

“C’mere.” You patted the empty space next to you. He walked over to sit down, but as soon as he had, you shooed him away, “Wait, no! You should get into your pajamas too.”

“Alright. One moment.” He nodded and smiled softly. A few minutes later, Jungwoo emerged from the bathroom no longer in Jaehyun’s nice clothes but in Jaehyun’s sweatpants and t-shirt. He sat down cross-legged on top of the covers. “Better?”

“I’m tired,” you rolled over onto your side towards him.

“I’ll let you rest, then.” He moved to get off the bed, but you grabbed his arm and stopped him.

“Wait.” You yawned. “Can you stay for a bit?”

“As long as you wish.” He acquiesced easily.

“Can you…” Another yawn. “Can you tell me some more about Galaria?”

He shifted the arm that you had grasped to hold your hand instead. “Sure. If you’ll close your eyes.”

“You’re trying to make me go to sleep.”

“Hmm, maybe,” he hummed.

You snickered, but let your eyelids flutter shut anyway. “Hey, Jungwoo?”

“Yes?”

“I’m really gonna miss you once you go.” You squeezed his hand as you shifted around to get comfortable under your covers.

There was a stretch of silence so long that you were almost tempted to open your eyes again, but before you could, he squeezed your hand back and spoke again, voice sounding slightly strained, “I’ll miss you too, Y/N. A lot.” He cleared his throat, then continued, “So, Galaria…”

In the morning, you groaned before you even had a single human thought. You instinctually rolled away from your window, where the faintest halo of light was coming in from around your curtains, burying your face into your pillow. And then your stomach lurched. Heaving yourself to your feet with some speed, you hurried into your bathroom, not even bothering with the light before kneeling at the toilet. Thankfully, nothing came back up, and after a few minutes, you got back to steady-ish feet. Looking back at your dim bedroom, you saw it devoid of anybody else, which you were mildly surprised about. You faintly remembered going to sleep with Jungwoo sitting next to you. He had no clue about human customs, for all you knew, Galarii wouldn’t have thought it strange to share a bed. You knocked back something for your stomach and the pounding in your head before treading out towards the living room. You were going to feel a little uneasy until you put eyes on your alien houseguest.

He was sitting upright on the couch, and stood up as soon as he saw you walking out, a relieved smile on his features. “Ah, you’re awake. How are you feeling? Johnny said I should make you breakfast—”

“That’s alright, Jungwoo, I’m not very hungry right now,” you admitted. “Maybe later. How are you? Anything from the alcohol?”

“I’m fine.” He frowned. “Are you okay?”

“Honestly, I’m not feeling well, Jungwoo.” You touched your forehead, giving him an apologetic smile. “I think I’m going to lay down for a bit. Will you be good out here?”

He looked at you anxiously. “What’s wrong?”

“Just a headache. I’ll be fine,” you reassured him. “Do you need anything before I—”

“Can I go with you?”

“…Into my room? That’s right down the hall? While I nap off a hangover?” You arched an eyebrow, pointing at your bedroom next to the living room.

He nodded.

“What? Did you imprint on me like a baby duck or something?” You joked, stretching and yawning.

“I don’t know what ducks are nor the imprinting habits of their young, but yes.”

“You don’t really need to know what ducks are, but baby ducks—Wait, what?!” Your brain finally processed the rest of his words, and you stared at him wide-eyed.

“I’m not sure if the term is used the same, but I imagine it’s a similar concept.”

“You think I’m your mom?!”

It was his turn to look at you with bewilderment. “No, of course not.”

You put a hand over your chest, relieved. “Okay, God, I had a heart attack.”

“You’re my mate,” he said matter-of-factly.

“Excuse me?!” And your blood pressure was back through the roof.

“Lover? I’m not sure the term…” Jungwoo scratched the back of his neck.

You held your hands out defensively, trying to calm yourself down more than anyone else. “Jungwoo, look, we just met like a few days ago.”

“Yes, I’m aware.”

“That’s not nearly enough time to say we’re soulmates or anything.”

His face lit up. “Ahh, soulmates? Is that the word?”

“No!” You immediately shot that down. “Don’t start calling me that.”

“Y/N—”

“What even is this imprinting? Like how do you know it’s happened? Do you do it on purpose? Because if you did, you’ve got to ask people’s permission before doing that kind of thing, dude.”

“It’s not something we have control over. So no, I did not do it intentionally.”

“Oh. Okay.” That only calmed you down marginally.

“It’s…” Jungwoo sank his teeth into his bottom lip as he tried to figure out his words. “I didn’t realize it at first. When you dragged me out of my ship and I first saw you, everything was different. I thought it was the new atmosphere, new gravity, that my body was just adjusting.”

“What do you mean, ‘different’? Different how?”

“Colors are brighter around you—”

“That’s just some cheesy pickup line. It was pitch black when I found you.”

“No, really. Our species’ senses are sharpened around our—”

“Don’t.”

“—when we’ve imprinted, around whoever we’ve imprinted on. To better protect them,” he explained cautiously. “Again, I thought I was just getting used to your planet, but I always know where you are—”

“I tell you where I’m going when I leave.”

“I don’t mean like that. It’s stronger the closer you are, but I just always have this feeling, of where you are. I know you left work yesterday afternoon to go down the street, then went back.”

“I went to the convenience store on my lunch break,” you confirmed with a huff. “Assuming you’re telling the truth and aren’t actively stalking me, I’m guessing that would be another… mechanism to protect that person? That you’re… you know.”

“Yes.”

“What’s even the point of imprinting on me? Or anybody that’s not another Galarii?” You crossed your arms. “My eyes work just fine when you’re not around, and the only way I’d know exactly where you were if I couldn’t see you would be chipping you like a dog.”

“I don’t know.”

You shook your head. “So… you all are just, what? Celibate? Until you eventually find someone to imprint on?”

“Casual relationships aren’t unusual, though many don’t see a point in having such a relationship before imprinting.” He immediately became even more serious. “I’m not inexperienced sexually, if that’s a concern.”

“Oh, God, no!” You covered your face with two hands and groaned. “I was just wondering like… How do you know this imprinting thing is for real? Like, you’re actually ending up with someone good for you, if you don’t have any sort of reference to draw from on what sort of person you like, what you want and don’t want in a relationship?”

“We don’t have to know before, because we’re not picking our… lifelong companion, like I understand you humans do.”

You blinked at him. “Marriage. You’re talking about marriage.”

“Yes. You have to have this set of parameters before you prepare for… marriage. We’re not choosing, so we don’t need such standards. We find.”

“Yeah, but why me? What is it about me that activated your imprinting or whatever the hell?” You couldn’t help the shiver that went up your spine when you said it. “Shouldn’t that be something that only other members of your species can do? Like, evolution-wise?”

“That’s something that my species is still investigating.”

“God, okay…” You rubbed your temples. “Well, my head fucking hurts. I’m going to lay down—alone.”

“Of course.” Jungwoo nodded and stepped back, sitting down on the far side of the couch from you.

Your bed smelled like Jungwoo. You couldn’t nap like this, or even rest your eyes. But you didn’t want to go back out there yet, needing time to let your brain turn over what you’d just been told. So you laid in your bed that smelled like Jungwoo and scrolled on your phone, absentmindedly chewing on the skin around your thumbnail.

⇢ part two

TAGLIST: @bee-the-loser @giirlfriendd @ppddpjdr @shaqs-oatmeal @sofipolii01 @tearinka @yoursyuno @yutasputa69 @winkeuu

[banquetwriter]

saw you asked for viktor x reader requestssss, may i ask for some fluffy modern au ones? love your blog!!

AN: tysm !! and yes i love for modern au!viktor bc maybe he has a chance to be happy :((

warnings: i mention the pandemic a lil and some sad stuff about his disability but over all fluff :), ooc viktor bc im not used to writing him rip

i feel like in any universe viktor has nightmares, in a modern world he would wake with a jolt of fear, drenched in sweat. eyes dark and sunken in. his leg is killing him and he sighs peering at the time. 2:34 am. ahh of course he cannot possibly get a full nights sleep.

he doesn’t want to wake you of course. you need your sleep, more than him but he just can’t handle it. the pain sometimes it’s just too much. he rubs his forehead reaching for his phone and dialing your number. to his delight and concern you awnser almost immediately. “viktor?” your worried voice says through the phone.

“are you ok? did something happen.” you ask, your voice isn’t tired- like it should be. “no- just another bad dream i’m afraid. why aren’t you sleeping?” he asked with a small amused smirk.

silence met him on the other end “darling you need to sleep-“ he tries to reason before you cut him off complaining about how he never sleeps.

definitely still a work-a-holic… can’t for a moment pull himself away from work. in a modern world he is definitely still a scientist… maybe working in the medical field? possibly! the tech world seems most likely….

he’d always have accesses to the newest gadgets and do-dads. stuff that blows your mind but for him? another tuesday. and for being as technologically advanced as he is he doesn’t care much for tv show or modern movies…

he’d like the classics of course but he strikes me more as a classic ligature guy… maybe just some self projecting but some gothic lit perhaps?

he also eats extremely healthy. and when he does eat it’s not to enjoy the food it’s purely to keep him going… and your snacking habits and fast food would amuse him slightly.

of course he’d get invited to speak at many tech (or medically i’m telling you i can see him in the prosthetic industry) events. jayce forcing him to get all black suit and tie fancy. which he would hate.

what he wouldn’t hate would be seeing you all done up pretty/handsome, wondering how he managed to trick you into falling in love with him.

viktor sat in front of his full length mirror (a space specifically for him to be able to down while getting ready) adjusting his tie before using his crutch to stand up. the only thought running through his mind was how much he didn’t wanna go

then he saw you rush out of the bathroom “ugh we are gonna be late” you said worried putting in your earrings or adjusting your own tie. but viktor didn’t here your complaint. he saw his beautiful partner. his love struck eyes followed as you rush to his mirror. he slipped a hand around your waist.

you turn to him finally done adjusting your outfit he just smiles back. “you clean up nice.” you whisper before planting a small kiss on his cheek. if you wear lipstick he admires the mark before regrettably rubbing the mark off.

and even if you don’t wear it he can feel the spot burn all night long as he watches jayce mingle through the crowd.

since his right leg is the leg he needs his crutch for i think it’s safe to assume he can’t drive. he most likely could when he was younger when he used the cane not the crutch but even then after a few years he most likely wouldn’t be able to

and even if it sounds a little uncharacteristic i think he would have a personal driver. he is definitely making bank in the tech (or medically yk yk) field, especially being an inventor.

so he wouldn’t have one to be an ass but simply because he cannot walk places and the modern world relies on cars… if you can drive he much prefers you to do it however.

during the pandemic since he is most likely immune compromised i don’t see a world where he goes out much before let alone after a global pandemic. which makes his anxiety worse.

it’s better for his pain to be able to run his business from home or a quarantined lab but his mental health suffers. when the band are lifted and your allowed to go out more he has a panic attacks a lot.

during zoom calls sometimes you’d be just out of frame holding his hand as you read or something. it took a while and a lot of convincing but he eventually started to go to therapy

ik big deal for mr i don’t deserve anything good in my life…

as his health declines and he is forced to stay home rather than choosing to stay home he becomes close to bed ridden. you quit your job to help care for him more full time. he hates it.

he hates the pitty looks from jayce and all the people that worked for hextech. he doesn’t have to worry about money of course… but he wishes the world would allow him more time.

i don’t know how modern the medicine is in piltover but i’m assuming it’s decently close to ours ??? and if so he would decline at about the same rate. if our modern world has better medicine than of course he takes advantage of it to a point

until having to pop 5 pills every three hours takes a toll and he slowly stops taking them.. but he always has you to remind him why he takes them. so after increasing his therapy sessions he starts to take them again.

i’d imagine he likes to spend every domestic moment he can. massaging your legs as they lay across his lap as you ramble on about whatever tv show your watching. chuckling at your reactions as he reads

being able to brush his teeth with you in the shower… just the pure domestic bliss he basks in. having a lonely childhood he is has never been more happy to experience a life with people he loves !!

[v-arbellanaris]

veilguard, to me, is what happens when you place all of the systemic issues in your worldbuilding on the shoulders of one single individual. because guess what? these issues will never get resolved - killing loghain didnt magically solve slavery, killing meredith and orsino did not magically resolve mage/templar issues, killing corypheus did not bring about any real change, because they were never the fucking issue. they were ALWAYS products of their systems, a product of thousands of years of sociopolitical histories and constructs that have made them the persons that they are.

with dragon age in particular, there are SO MANY really important stories rooted in representations of systemic oppression, of deep religious conflicts, of racism and classism and colonialism... but the writing room itself has little diversity that reflects that. so you have people are writing about issues they've never really experienced, and there are no voices of anyone who might be able to give any kind of insight. and it shows bc their writing is always noticeably stronger when it comes to queer stories (again, with glaring flaws, but it's important to note!!) compared to their stories related to being. well. any other kind of minority - religious or ethnic.

their solution to the quantum, their solution to the "problematic" writing around different factions - like the qunari, like the dalish, like the mages - is to essentially stamp out anything that previously existed without discussing it in any detail (HOW DID THEY LEAVE OUT THE MAGE-TEMPLAR WAR WHEN DISCUSSING THE DAIRSMUID ANNULMENT? THE CODEX ENTRY YOU GET ABOUT IT ISN'T EVEN ABOUT THE DAIRSMUID CIRCLE ANNULMENT?!) and then just gaslighting you into going 'well thats just not true' or 'no THIS is how it is', or to replace it with EVEN WORSE racist caricatures, like in the case of the antaam.

bioware has shown that they CANNOT write follow up on the story they've put down - they're not capable of it. they don't have answers to the big questions they've posed in the story around ideas of social justice, of war/peace, of social cohesion vs progression, of legal rights vs morals, etc etc, and i feel like that's deeply linked to the politics of the team that produces dragon age, and to the politics of western, white liberals, which bioware's writing room is populated with.

over the last decade, they've written themselves into a corner. i've described the situation to my friends where i've said bioware has this tendency to write these big structural issues of power and systemic oppression only to then turn around and bottle all these issues down to A Single Bad Apple. people will talk around the situation and factions and their culpability for whatever went wrong but then at the end of the day, they pin the "blame" or responsibility on a singular character - anders, lord seeker lambert, lucius corrin, corypheus, samson, calpernia, hell idk fucking sahrnia's mayor. there's always a single individual person to blame for things going wrong, rather than an entire system that failed - and even the few chances you have to suggest that the system is an issue is met with the most bullheaded, aggressive disapproval, even if your own pc was ostensibly affected by those systems. mark darrah also mentioned the narrative shift, and so i suspect that placing the "blame" for thedas being the way it is at solas' feet, rather than allowing the chantry or orlais or tevinter or literally fucking ANY systems to be held accountable for their actions, reflects their own understanding of "high fantasy", where there's a simplistic black-and-white, good-and-evil, with-us-or-against-us paradigm.

what this inevitably ends up leading to is... what i describe as kishimoto-ing lmao. where you need a Bigger Bad to uproot your Last Big Bad. and as long as you defeat that Big Bad, all your world's troubles will be over... but then they still need to keep making video games, so GASP, the next big bad is responsible for everything that went wrong. BUT WAIT. there's an EVEN BIGGER bad behind that guy. AND ANOTHER BIGGERRRRRR BAD. and so and so forth, until you get to a situation like kaguya having engineered everything that went on over the last thousand years of ninja history for her own goals, except we've never even heard of her before, and she feels disconnected from the story and it's central themes. which is the case in point with that fucking last secret epilogue slide - a story that apparently is centered around decisions, and regret, and big stories around personal responsibilities we have to try and do the right thing, which is supported by the fact that the REAL antagonist of the game is someone secretly manipulating everyone else to do evil things. MAKE IT MAKE SOME FUCKING SENSE.

it sucks. it really sucks. it's a failure to engage with the themes of your own narrative. bioware put the topics on the table to discuss, and in the last second, simply do not have the courage to actually address it in any way that matters.

most of anyone who worked on any of the previous games is gone - we have new writers who... don't really care about dragon age. i don't think they've played the previous games - they don't seem to recognise characters from the previous installments, don't seem to understand the themes or narratives or characters from previous installments - and that lack of deep, real love for dragon age - which is where my criticism and disappointment comes from, because i wanted this to be more - shows. everything from the endings of the game, to the character dialogue, to the characterisations of reoccurring characters, to the lore drops, to the scrapping of all of the worldstate decisions and the quantum, to the marvel-esque soundtrack and weird companion opening reminiscent of a marvel title slide when opening the game... you can feel it.

and i'm sorry for it. i think we all deserved better than this.

[lovelyyjun]

nerf this! - a lee haechan smau

── rainbowsweetiepie42 (written part !)

as your phone lights up with a call from haechan (cute ow guy), it hits you that,

oh shit i actually have to talk to him

…

oh wait i need to pick up first

you're instantly greeted with the sound of rustling, "hello?"

"hi haechan!!"

"hey, so i actually wasn't really thinking and still haven't made an off-stream account," he admits "so you have to help me pick a new username."

you let out an over the top gasp, "wow, what an honor," after thinking for a bit you ask, "do you have a theme in mind?"

"great question.. um maybe something cute, so then no one will ever suspect it's me."

"what do you mean?"

"y'know, since i'm the epitome of masculinity" he says it like it's the most obvious thing in the world.

the laugh you let out comes straight from your diaphragm.

"what's so funny??" haechan presses, you can hear the smile in his voice.

"nothing! it was a laugh of agreement, promise!" you fight down the giggles that try to bubble up, "umm, how about something like.." you take a beat to consider your options, at this point you are truly trying to come up with something to embrace the cutie-ness, "maybe like.. rainbowsweetiepie42? 42 just feels like a cute number and you're literally rainbow dash but boy so.."

"excuse me, man first of all, but that actually sounds perfect!" you hear rapid typing through the phone before haechan begins again, "rainbowsweetiepie42 is officially the name and i am fully ready to ruin so many 3rd grader's days with you." the delighted tone that comes with that sentence is probably something that should concern you, but you'd be a liar if you said you weren't just as excited.

"yay! okay let me just go get a water bottle and then i'll join your lobby."

…

previous - masterlist - next

notes: i was telling my friend today how i needed to check instagram to see if mark posted and he hadnt AND THEN I KEEP TALKING TO MY FRIEND, next time i check insta; onyourm_ark 18 mins ago...he wants me so bad its insane

taglist: @sibwol @hyucksunset @dudekiss3r @n0hyuck @xenneez @injunnie-lemon @chan-yeoldelling @mr1833 @joyfulstayzen @222brainrot @hyuksworld @bat-shark-repellant @awktwurtle @eighttens @multifandomania @iamsimplyasimp @sundamariis @hyucktion @gomdoleemyson @sinsgaybutthatsokay @sunghoonsgfreal @flamingi @t-102 @jaehyunando @snoopyjimin @cigarettesafterjae @sungsgirl @skepvids @defzcl @slayhaechan @yukisroom97 @haefelt @tynlvr @nctrawberries @dlin3 @hnmiyazu @neosonance @desssss-0 @theandypark @spacejip @sehunniepot

[valer1esgallery]

Can you do Lucifer head canons please?

Lucifer Head-Cannons

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Nightmares, Trauma, keeping everything to himself until he starts breaking down quietly in his room at night. Need I say more. Its mentioned multiple times throughout Obey me that he keeps to himself alot of the time and keeps up a mask, he sometimes struggles to keep himself composed and just breaks down quietly in his room. I also see him having nightmares and vivid flashbacks at the fact that Lilith died in his arms. He sometimes wakes up in a sweat thanks to these vivid nightmares, he doesn't let it slip to anyone that these happen, not even you or Diavolo

- I want to see that mask just fucking SNAP one day. Current day Lucifer breaking down infront of his brothers because everything is going wrong, your gone, your stuck in the past where it is almost lethal for a human, only Solomon can go visit you, his brothers worried out of their own minds, i just want to see his mask slip due to the fact his entire family are worried, scared, and confused

I feel like this man can speak so many different human world languages; Latin, Greek, English, Russian, Japanese, Chinese, Afrikaans, Nigerian, French, Germain, ect. The man is how many million years old, I feel like he would have had the time to study many different human world languages. He out of all of the brothers has the best pronunciation due to this skill. One day he found Satan starting to take up some languages, wanting to outdo Luci

I feel like he would be ambidextrous. One of the reasons I feel like he would be ambidextrous is because of the mountains and mountains of paperwork, and because Asmo likes to paint his nails. Every now and then, he comes into Lucifers room and just gossips with him while he does Luci's nails. Lucifer sometimes wants silence so Asmo gives him that, quietly doing his nails while Lucifer while works on his paper work. When its time to do the other hand, lucifer will just swap hands and continue his work while asmo starts on his other nails

Just like a bird, I feel like he needs to preen his wings every now and then. No one sees him while he does this, he is vulnerable during this time and does not like having people near people during. Depending on your relationship with him, he will have you near him while he continues to preen, eventually having you help him. He will guide your hands through his wings and show you how to do it properly. Once he can trust you enough with his wings, he'll have you do his base wings while he doesn't the tips

This man is the most prideful whenever he sees his pact mark on you whenever you have your hair up and or if you have short/no hair. His pact mark is on the back of your neck. When he does cuddle with you in the privacy of his/your room, he has his hand on the back of your neck, tracing the pact mark and placing with your hair. If you ever mention it, he would probably say something like "Yes, what about it?" "Its my pact, am I not allowed to examine such?", something like that. He isnt ashamed that he was caught, more prideful that his mark is forever on you, a small reminder of how much you mean it him

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I dont write for Luci often but i tried my best with this one!

What should I do next?

[catghoul31]

Best Present Ever

It's Wade's birthday, but he finds the one-year anniversary of meeting Logan far more important. Wolvie, however, isn't sure he needs to make a wish this time around...

(For @poolverine-week day 7: birthday!)

Content Warnings: exploration of worst!logan's past and the death and suffering that comes with it

Read it under the cut or on ao3!

Logan shot awake that morning, the blood of so, so many people still feeling fresh on his claws. It had been washed away years ago, but the memories still seemed to haunt him, no matter how many steps he took in this new world. Living still felt like a chore, and he still felt like a failure of a person no matter how many times Wade tried to convince him otherwise-

Wade. Wasn’t he in bed with me last night?

On mornings like this, his claws would normally wind up embedded inside of Wade. Logan was utterly distraught the first time it happened, but after months and months of sleeping together, he eventually grew numb to it with the knowledge that Wade had never gotten mad at him about it before, and for some reason, he never would. But there was none of his blood on his claws today, only shredded sheets and another pillow that needed to be replaced.

Where did he go?

—

In the back of his mind, Logan thought he knew a man named Wade once. Back before Weapon X, he probably would’ve fought alongside him in the secret forces, using his brutal nature for good just as Logan had been forced to do. There was a sort of peace in knowing someone as born for destruction as you were, so fucked over by fate that there was no way around your nature except through it.

At least he could control it. Fate seemed to have other plans for Wade, though- the head of Weapon X had somehow managed to find a way to rip that control away from him through forced mutation. When they saw each other once again, he couldn’t even speak, let alone think for himself. Logan’s claws had been the ones to end his misery after a long, horrible fight- at least, he hoped they had.

Those memories hadn’t been wiped- at least, not by Stryker. The only reason he remembered, in the wake of everything else, was that it marked the first time he’d heavily abused alcohol to drown out the memories of his muffled screams at his hands.

The first of many, many times to come.

—

“Wolvie!! Oh- good, you’re awake. You always sleep like a rock whenever I wake up before you- do you know how hard it is to get you off of me??”

Ah, there he was. Of course he hadn’t gone far, and neither had that mouth of his. Always having to talk about something… He’d take his droning on over his inner monologue any day, though. Ever since they’d finally stopped being emotionally constipated assholes and decided to get together, Logan kind of missed it when Wade wasn’t around. This world was too quiet and dull without him…

“Morning, Wade,” he responded, retracting his claws from the bed. Logan knew exactly what Wade was gonna ask based on that look in his eyes, so to prevent ruining his morning, he held a hand up and said, “I’m fine. Just… don’t worry about it.”

Unfortunately for Logan, this was Wade he was dealing with. “Too late for that. I will never not worry about you, babygirl- did you have another nightmare?? While I wasn’t around to hold you tenderly and tell you everything was okay… I have failed you, my dearest and one true love, and I am deeply sorry. How ever can I make this right by you?” he lamented as over-dramatically as possible, getting on his knees and everything.

Logan’s face scrunched up at Wade’s antics as he pretended to be annoyed- but fuck it all, he really couldn’t be. Those puppy eyes worked too well, and he hated it. Sure, he got nervous when Wade was gone for too long, but it wasn’t like he was some lost puppy when Wade was even just in a different room than he was for five minutes. He could handle himself.

“But you always miss me so much, don’t you~?”

“Stop reading my thoughts, Wade. Please.”

—

Logan was found by the professor not long after that. There, he’d discovered others just like him, with all sorts of different mutations- the X-Men. The family he’d found after he lost everything else. The defenders of mutantkind, the friends he could always rely on… that’s what he’d tried to believe, at least. Try as he might, Logan could never bring himself to feel comfortable around them… around anyone, really. 

Something deep within him had the sense that the greatest danger never came from those he expected, but from the people he thought he could trust- wanted, so badly, to trust. To love, and be loved in return, regardless of that love’s nature. Logan, though, never felt quite right around any of them. He never felt like he belonged- not even around… Scott. Jean. Kurt. 

(He hated those names now. Couldn’t fucking stand hearing them, in any context.)

Logan wasn’t a hero. At best, he was good muscle and an intimidating face to scare the bad guys with. Nobody had ever made him feel like he was anything more than that, try as they might. He’d had enough one night, when the cheap pot shots at his animalistic qualities were too much, scraping at his head when it was already sore from self-loathing and the few memories he’d retained of his past life…

They went on a mission that night. Logan went bar hopping instead.

He would never see them alive again.

–

“...Anyways!! Maybe these’ll help the horrors leave your head, peanut,” Wade chirped, holding a plate of… pancakes. Logan would know that smell anywhere- the agent of chaos he lived with always insisted on making them every other morning. 

Logam would be tired of them by now, if not for the infectious joy they always brought to their mornings. It was less about the food, and more about how much fun Wade always had making them… Fuck, it would’ve been nice if he woken up earlier. He could’ve helped out! Or maybe he’d just sit at the table, watching Wade hum a song he didn’t recognize, dance in place to the beat before he put some batter on the griddle. He’d ask for blueberries if prompted, mostly to hear another ramble about how chocolate chips were the only correct add-in-

“Hey! Earth to Wolvie?? These are only the special-est pancakes ever… c’mon, humor me here, will ya?” A light poke at his nose made Logan huff, snapping him out of his trance.

“Y-Yeah, sorry. I’m fine, just…” It always felt odd saying that when it… wasn’t entirely a lie anymore. “...Tired. I’ll get up soon, just… gimme a bit-”

“Ah-ah! Absolutely not, Logi-Bear!!” Wade set a hand on Logan’s shoulder, forcing him to sit still- he hadn’t even moved yet. “Today calls for only the most romantic things I could possibly treat my emotional support 2000s-era heartthrob to… and that means we’re having breakfast in bed. I don’t make the rules, babe!”

Immediately, the pancakes were set in Logan’s lap, complete with a fork and knife, and he had to move quickly to stop the plate from sliding around. “...Do you also think sticky sheets are romantic, bub?” As soon as the words left his mouth, he regretted them- mostly because of the way Wade’s face glowed with mirth upon hearing them.

“Of course I do! This bed’s gonna see a lot more sticky stuff tonight, though, and you know it…”

Logan hid his flushed face in his hands, cussing under his breath as Wade giggled uncontrollably. How immature was he…? The worst part was how right he was, of course. Taking a look at his pancakes… they seemed misshapen. No, not misshapen- it seemed like they were supposed to be shaped like his mask, with a few ‘snikt’ marks drawn into them with batter. They were even complete with blueberries, syrup, whipped cream, powdered sugar, and… a candle? Thank fuck it wasn’t lit yet!

“Well… we’re pulling all the stops today, aren’t we? I mean, thanks for the food, but- what’s all this about, babe?” As confused as he was, Logan couldn’t help but smile. Wade was always one for fun gifts and gestures, but this seemed like a lot, even for him.

When Wade pulled out a fucking lighter, Logan immediately flung the candle off of the pancakes. The sad look Wade gave him stung- but fuck if he was letting the house burn down over this!!

“…Happy anniversary? Damn, guess you didn’t want a wish after all…”

—

The mansion was burning down.

Logan was barely lucid as he staggered back to what was supposed to be his home. All at once, though, awareness flooded his mind again the moment he comprehended what he was looking at. His home was being destroyed right in front of him, and he instantly rushed over to try and help his comrades salvage what would be left.

As Logan got closer to the bonfire that was once his home, he heard shouting, chanting… cheering?? People were celebrating this vile display of hatred. Nothing he wasn’t used to. He’d just lop their heads off, and his family would-

…

They wouldn’t do anything.

Not with their bodies impaled in the middle of the crowd, paraded by masked individuals who were protected by a sea of people chanting, jeering, or screaming in outrage at the scene before them.

Many of those disgusted individuals… they’d left the mansion before this happened. 

But Logan didn’t care. Any shred of morality left his body in that moment, and his claws unsheathed so fast he thought he’d never be able to pull them back in again. 

It was a total bloodbath. Hundreds more people died that night- all of the perpetrators, sure, but not even those who were trying to fight against the X-Men’s killers were safe. Not even some of the very students he’d sworn to protect. In that moment, which went by in what felt like seconds to him, Logan had caused the greatest atrocity ever committed by mutantkind. No other mutant would ever be as notable as he was. 

How could they, if Logan was the only mutant the humans couldn’t kill?

—

“Oh, there’s lots of things I’ve got to wish for, bub. Burning this shitty apartment down ain’t one of them, though.”

Wade snorted at that comment, putting the lighter away safely and stepping closer to Logan. “Aw, c’mon, what’s a little arson between friends?” he asked, resting his head on Logan’s shoulder and shooting those puppy dog eyes at him, like a dog begging for a taste of water boiling on the stove. 

Logan laughed dryly at the thought. Wade was so ridiculous sometimes… did he still love his stupid ass? Of course he did. And he didn’t even feel stupid for it anymore, because honestly? He was being sweet this morning. Why kick the gift horse in the mouth? Or however Wade put it that one time… 

“I don’t want to celebrate our… anniversary? By becoming homeless, and I don’t think you want to, either.” Logan took a moment to think about what Wade meant by that. What was today an ‘anniversary’ of?? He had to glance back down at his pancakes to get the slightest idea of what that meant… and holy shit. “Has it really been that long since we’ve met each other?”

Wade, perking up instantly, nodded enthusiastically against him. “Of course I’d remember!! My phone started making those “1 year ago today” albums at 5 AM, and I- Logan, I almost cried. There’s so many cute pictures of us from back when you hated my guts…” 

Logan never hated him. He’d hated a lot of people in his time, but honestly, when his world came crumbling down, Logan lost the will to hate people, just as he’d lost the will to love, so he was just… mad at everyone, all the time. That was even true in that fucking car- he’d only called him all those nasty things because he was pissed. Mostly at himself, and- he still hadn’t fully forgiven himself for what he said. Or anything else, really. Forgiving Wade- hell, even choosing to love him- was way easier than that would ever be!

“…and OH MY GOD, the first picture I got of Dogpool!! Oh, Logan, you have to… are you even paying attention to me? Hey, don’t get all broody on me here, babycakes! This fic’s supposed to be fluffy, right? C’mon… hey-“ Wade guided Logan’s face to look at him, into that diseased-yet-kind soul of his.

“Eyes on me, now…” Logan’s nose scrunched up at the patronizing tone Wade took with him, but he obliged anyways. “Now. Look at this one,” The next picture on the album was Wade, after that “fight” of theirs, wrapped in seatbelts, covered in blood and making what looked like a kissy face at a passed-out Logan behind him, with the caption “noo don’t stab me you’re so sexy haha 😘.” “Doesn’t that make you feel better?”

Not really. But also… kinda. Yeah. “Maybe,” Logan shrugged, a slight smirk on his face. Even after a year, that was still the weirdest thing they’d done that Logan could accurately describe as “hot.” And they couldn’t ever recreate it!! No way for two people to have hot hate sex if they couldn’t even pretend to hate each other anymore…

Out of pure impulse, Logan moved his pancakes onto the nightstand, wrapped his arms around Wade, and rolled him over onto the bed with him. That squeak he always let out whenever Logan did this always made him laugh. Flustering Wade back was one of his favorite things in the world…

“If I’d known you were taking pictures, I would’ve grabbed that damn phone and taken some of my own that night,” Logan growled into his ear, grinning at how Wade shuddered in response.

“Mm… I don’t think you would’ve!” Wade whispered. “I think you would’ve been too busy f-wording me to focus on anything else, right?” he said, winking in… someone’s general direction- why’d he always do that? Some things about Wade were still completely lost on Logan…

“Well, you had time while you were trying to save the world, didn’t you?” he said, catching his album flipping to a selfie Wade took with Cassandra putting his fingers inside Logan’s face in the background- wait, what the fuck?

“Saving the world and saving you, peanut,” Wade corrected, a softer smile on his face now. “But… honestly, I think you might’ve saved me a bit more. I don’t know what I’d do if it wasn’t you I’d found…”

—

Logan deserved nothing. Not after what he did.

His fit of murderous rage had given the anti-mutes the ammo they needed to complete their genocide of every single mutant on the planet. They’d spent a while trying to kill him, but once Logan was the only mutant left alive, they figured it was punishment enough to let him live out the rest of his days in a world that hated him. 

And they were right. Logan was homeless and completely alone, obviously hated by the mutant killers, but especially loathed by everyone who’d fought against them, everyone who had lost a mutant loved one- especially at the Wolverine’s claws that night. Every single day, every moment he lived was a reminder of what he’d done, how he’d doomed his world.

He couldn’t bear to spend a second of his life sober. His alcoholism accelerated to a point where lethal levels of drinking barely affected him anymore, but it didn’t matter. It was better to relive his greatest crimes with a slightly foggy mind than to let the thoughts scream ceaselessly at him.

The obvious solution would be to let himself die, right? Just lie down in whatever shelter he could until his body finally starved to death… but Logan knew that would bring him peace. 

Something he would never have. Something he would never deserve.

Living was the only punishment fit for him.

—

Logan snorted, very much begging to differ. “At least you admit you saved me. I had nothing, Wade… Not until I met you.” Even after a year, Logan still meant those words. He no longer mourned the idea that there was nothing left for him in his old universe- at this point, it felt like a simple statement of fact. The memories of the events that ruined it still hurt, and he was far from healed… but Logan had no idea what he was thinking, wanting to go back after they’d defeated Cassandra. There wasn’t a life he could imagine living without Wade anymore…

As if he’d read his mind, Wade’s lips pressed against Logan’s in enthusiastic agreement. He returned the kiss softly, sighing in contentment. Much like the rest of him, Wade’s lips were scarred, textured with the physical manifestation of how much pain he’d suffered to get here. Every kiss he gave him reminded Logan how much pain Wade had experienced, and before, it’d felt like the tie that bound them. Now, though? After months of loving and being loved by Wade, thinking of their bond in terms of pain alone felt reductive. Maybe his existence in his old world was defined by how much he hurt… but not here. Not anymore.

When they parted, Wade leaned his forehead against him, staring at him with the softest eyes imaginable, a wordless declaration of love. Logan could only hope that the smile on his face conveyed the same sentiment.

Of course, the moment couldn’t last forever, and in true Wade fashion, he was the one to break it. “I think your pancakes are getting cold, sweetums… We can’t celebrate until you’ve had your breakfast!!” he insisted, dragging Logan up to sit again- as much as he stubbornly protested. He was very comfortable right there, why’d he have to ruin it? Over food?? He could always eat later.

But… sure. They could have pancakes. Logan had realized something very interesting about today, so… “You first,” Logan insisted, passing the fork to Wade, who seemed incredibly confused. 

“Nuh uh, Wolvie- it’s my turn to celebrate you right now!! Those were made specifically with you in mind-“

“Weren’t you having a party when you brought me home?”

It only took a few seconds for it to sink in. Logan watched with glee as Wade’s eyes widened, almost seeming devastated at the realization. He had to bite his tongue to keep from cackling when Wade yelled-

“I forgot my birthday again???”

[serbarris]

I'll Crawl Home to Her 

Dragon Age: the Veilguard, some spoilers for plot, spoilers for Emmrichs romance  Pairing: F!Rook (Mourn Watch) x Emmrich Volkarin  Rating: M   Summary: Eight significant times Emmrich Volkarin called Rook by her real name. 

Length: ~2500 words

Read on ao3 here! 

Emmrich Volkarin first called Calliope ‘Rook’ Ingellvar by her name before she went by Rook. 

“Miss Calliope,” Emmrich called over the heads of the handful of students leaving his classroom. At the sound of her name coming from her favourite professor, Calliope instantly flushed and motioned to some companions that they should go ahead without her. “A word if you don’t mind.”  

“Yes, Professor?”  She asked biting her lip. Professor Volkarin was her favourite, not just for his fantastic necromancy skills, or how eloquently he explained such fantastic concepts, but he was also very attractive. At age 35 his hair was greying at the temples, lending him to look even more distinguished than his carefully put-together clothing suggested.  

“I’ve heard from others about your certain... proclivity, to have some ‘adventures’ outside of the Necropolis,” Emmrich began, shifting her paper to the top of the pile, noticeable stains and grease marks littering the off-white sheets. A disapproving frown crossed his face. “I will ask that your future work be submitted with less detritus than the most recent assignment.”   

Calliope looked at her paper and a brighter red coloured her cheeks and chest, “Of course Professor, I’m so sorry. I swear I don’t usually do work outside of the library, but something happened with –.”  

Emmrich held up his hand to stop the ramble from leaving Calliope’s mouth. A soft smile graced his lips, “Not to worry, my dear, but your work is excellent and you should take pride in it. Now please, I have taken up so much of your time already, run along and join your friends.”

 

The second time Emmrich says her name it’s when they meet again, 15 years later. 

Rook had yet to admit to Bellara, or Myrna and Vorgoth, that she did indeed know Professor Emmrich Volkarin, and of his work. Luckily her time away from the Watchers had helped steel her emotions, calm her once easy-to-flush cheeks, and made lies flow smoothly, but she had been anxious all week in the lead-up to their Necropolis visit. Bellara even commented on her makeup that morning, making Rook flush and attempt to wipe some away with the back of her gloved hand.  

-  

“Rook! Lovely to meet a fellow Watcher,” Emmrich exclaimed as he gripped her hand, shaking it politely. “I must confess I apologise if I have you confused, but Myrna had mentioned a ‘Calliope’ to me?”    

Calliope’s face dropped from her measured welcoming smile to a startled expression. Letting go of Emmrich’s hand, she attempted to speak voice unsteady, cheeks flushed. “Uh, yes Professor, Calliope Ingellvar. My friends call me Rook. It uh, caught on in the year since I left the Necropolis.”  

“Ah, no worries, my friend. I shall follow suit.” Emmrich turned with a flourish, leading Bellara and Calliope to the Belfry. Calliope internally kicking herself over the interaction.  

The third time Emmrich said her name was after they shared tea in the Memorial Gardens. 

“Speaking of home, have we really never met around the Necropolis before? Even in passing?” Emmrich’s eyebrows raised as he asked the question. Rook’s eyes widened feeling like a halla in the lamplight. An uncomfortable feeling churned in her stomach as she debated how much of her past to reveal. Especially, how enamoured she was with Emmrich as a young adult.  

“Oh um, I don’t remember everything from my scholar days. I only took a few advanced classes. Got too... busy.” Rook’s mouth dried at the admission. It was a half truth, she remembered nearly every moment of her schooling, growing up with the senior Watchers as guardians, and more books for company than friends, she was in advanced classes at a younger age than many of the other Watchers her age. 

“You know, I’d heard we had a young Watcher getting into scrapes on the streets of Nevarra around then...” Emmrich mused, Rook could almost see the cogs whir in Emmrich’s brain as he searched his memories for a young Rook.  

“They weren’t scrapes! They were... extracurricular learning opportunities.”  

“Aha! That's it! Calliope, you were in my Advanced Fade Studies and Etheric Flows class!”  

Hearing her name from Emmrich’s mouth took her breath away. She had rather hoped he wouldn’t remember her from her scholar years. Calliope couldn’t deny the butterflies fluttering in her body as he remembered her, almost regressing to her 16 year old self, and she endeavoured to change the topic from herself as quickly as possible.  

“Yes, I... your class was most enlightening Emmrich, but I couldn’t help but hear you mention homesickness?”  

The Fourth time Emmrich says her name, it’s a revelation. 

Fighting on the beaches of Rivain always pissed Rook off. It was always too hot, and too sandy. She hated the sand in Rivain, it felt... so coarse compared to the finely milled sand that tracked through the Necropolis. Of course, the scenery of Rivain was stunning and the smell of the ocean air was refreshing, as long as the Antaam weren’t burning gaatlok in her general direction.   

Rook dove for the gaatlok-armed Antaam, pushing her body to flip and attack the hulking Qunari with her imbued daggers. Necromancy pulsing from her hands as she struck true. Pulling her weapons free she could hear Emmrich and Taash finish off the last of the Antaam soldiers who had ambushed them.   

“They just seem to be around every bloody corner here, don’t they?” she exclaimed, wiping her daggers on her bloodstained clothing.   

“Until we can get to the Dragon King,” Taash remarked. The team had tried to track down the Dragon King to no avail, however his poorly planned traps had to lead somewhere.   

“We’ll get to him soon enough Taash, then you can set him straight on Dragons having queens!” Rook stretched to pat Taash on their shoulder in consolidation. Suddenly a loud explosion pierced Rook’s ears, throwing her to the ground some distance away from where she stood. “Calliope!” Emmrich shouted over the ringing in her ears, she felt sand being kicked near her face as Emmrich’s familiar boots came into frame, and a distant squelching noise of an axe being buried into a body barely registered. “My darling are you alright?” Emmrich asked, sending his warming magic over her body to check for internal injuries.  

“I think I’m okay, can you help me up?” Emmrich slowly manoeuvred her to sit, taking stock further before helping Calliope to her feet. He gripped her waist tightly to keep her steady as she threatened to sway, waiting for Taash to make their way over. 

“Hey, Emmrich.”  

“Yes, Taash?” Emmrich was exasperated, whatever could Taash want at a time like this?  

“Why did you call Rook ‘Calliope’? She’s called Rook?”  

The Fifth and Sixth time Emmrich called her Calliope, she had a cold. 

Emmrich looked up from his desk to the sound of Manfred hissing and raising his tray, proud of his assortment of tea, soup and some bread. “Ah Manfred, have you prepared this for dear Rook?” A pleased hiss resonated through Manfred's skull, Emmrich straightened the papers on the desk and rose from his chair, peering through the windows above to where the sun was coming through the windows. “It is about time to give her another tonic. Thank you, Manfred, I can take this next door.”  

Emmrich gently knocked on Rooks’s door, hearing soft snores from behind, he quietly pushed open the door and rounded the middle of the room to the table closest to the sofa. The dim light from candles and the fade fish illuminating his path. Placing the tray down, he crouched down near Rook’s face, and gently rocked her, “Rook? My darling, it’s time to wake up.”  

A grumbling “Mmph” was the reply he received. “Calliope, I brought you some soup.” He drawled elongating her name, much like himself, he knew the food would rouse her from drowsiness. She was often second to the kitchen when food was served, her childhood in the Necropolis meant she often had to go without, and why she often picked up odd jobs around Nevarra City to purchase items that weren’t second or third hand.  

Calliope’s eyes slowly opened, blinking, she noticed even with her lying down and Emmrich crouching he towered over her. As she shuffled to extricate herself from the blanket and sit up there was a thud of a book dropping to the floor. On instinct Calliope reached for it, however Emmrich’s longer reach picked it up far swifter than her lethargic body could match.  The book read ‘The Obverse of Reality: Studies of the Fade in the Waking World.’ A soft gasp left Emmrich as he noticed the book as one of his very own works, Calliope’s copy was too well-thumbed and too battered to be from his own study in the Lighthouse. Calliope noticed his recognition of the title, her face becoming hotter despite the chill that cloaked her body after removing the blanket. “You never told me you have read any of my works, my dear.”   

A shyness crept over Calliope, her eyes darting away from Emmrich’s face as she replied, the congestion in her nose lending her voice a nasal tone, “Well, I was in this class, I had to get your book, it’s even a first edition!”  

“It must have been sixteen years since I published this ��” Emrich mused,” I'm sure I’ve published much more recent findings on the Fade, especially since it started to thin.”  

“I like it, I can hear your voice as I read it.” Calliope started, her voice slowly getting quieter as she admitted, “It’s um – comforting, to read a book I know so well.” Emmrich rose from his crouch, placing a gentle kiss on Calliope’s forehead and moving to sit next to her on the sofa. His earthy scent relaxed Calliope instantly. “Well, how about I read some passages aloud as you eat my dear, I also brought another tonic, it should keep your symptoms at bay and allow you to rest.” Said Emmrich, motioning to the tray on the side table.  

Emmrich’s voice was gentle as he read, often musing on additions he would make to the text, or discussing Calliope’s scrawled annotations in the margins. Making note that she used tiny skull shapes to punctuate her ‘i’s’ and exclamation marks. After Calliope ate, she leaned back against the sofa, her head resting on Emmrich’s arm as he continued reading. Emmrich turned the page to the next chapter and Calliope stiffened as she saw the doodle on the page, Emmrich let out a deep chuckle, noting the words written in a loosely drawn doodle of an anatomical heart. Calliope swore she could almost feel every blood vessel in her face expanding, a beet-red flush falling over her face as she scrambled to close the book. Emmrich moved to hold the book far out of her reach, a devious glint in his eye as he drawled “Calliope Volkarin, eh?”   

The Seventh time Emmrich said her name it was to give a gift. 

“My dear, please sit still or else I shan’t be able to give this gift properly.” Emmrich teased. Of course, he’d give her the present no matter what. But after finally acquiring a fitting token of his affection, his love, he wanted to give it to Rook exactly as he imagined.   

Stepping behind her perched on his desk, he opened the soft bag that contained her gift, he peered around to ensure her eyes were tightly shut, letting out an exhale of satisfaction Emmrich moved Rook’s hair to the side, holding it tightly in his hands he twisted her hair up and out of the way, a wry smile on his lips as he pulled lightly on the bundle. Rook let out a gentle hiss as heat pooled in between her legs. “If you could please hold your hair?”   

Satisfied, Emmrich proceeded to undo the clasp of the necklace, threading it around Rook’s neck, his fingers ghosting over her skin as he did so. After it was joined, Emmrich’s fingers lightly traced the chain over her clavicle, placing tender kisses on the back of Rook’s neck. Rook felt the cool weight of the necklace on her sternum, reaching up to feel the pendant, gasping as she raised it into her view. Finely detailed skeletal hands grasped a large garnet, it was hard to tell upside down but it almost looked like the stone was vaguely heart-shaped. “Emmrich, this is far too much! I can’t imagine what it must have cost!” Emmrich paused his careful mapping of Rook’s neck with his lips and moved closer to her ear, his light stubble scratching lightly at Rook’s skin.  

“I saw this when we were back in Nevarra and I couldn’t resist picturing how it would look around your neck, Calliope.” Added to the ministrations on her neck, he knew the reaction she had to Emmrich saying her real name, how a delicious red painted her cheeks and chest, creating the perfect trail for Emmrich’s fingers to follow. Calliope’s squirms brought herself closer to Emmrich, her back hitting his chest as he gently grasped Calliope’s neck with one hand, his other tracing the long line of her tattoo down towards her soft lower stomach. His cool rings icy against her heat.  

“Emmrich” she gasped, breath hitching, reaching for the back of his neck, bringing him closer, and kissing him deeply. Soft moans emanated from the both of them, Calliope broke away inhaling trying to extricate herself from Emmrich’s grasp, but he tugged gently, coaxing her back to her original position. “Calliope, this is about you, my love.” 

The eighth time, wasn’t really the eighth time. By then Elgar’nan had been dead for nearly a year. Emmrich and Calliope had returned to the Necropolis, Emmrich to his shaping of young minds, Calliope to the library, her younger self’s sacred sanctuary. On occasion they would jointly lecture on what they discovered during their time fighting against the Evanuris, careful to still keep some secrets. Manfred was flourishing under the tutelage of the Mourn Watch, his curiosity leading to amusing stories over dinner.  

On this particular evening, Manfred had delivered a sealed note to Calliope, asking for her to arrive in the Memorial Gardens when the dinner bell tolls. 

The flowers in the Memorial Gardens seemed to burst with fragrance as Calliope entered. A bouquet of lilacs stood on the table where Calliope and Emmrich had their first real date when they first started to truly get to know each other. A wisp danced across her vision guiding her past the ledge where a small table was set, taking Calliope back to when they first visited the Memorial Gardens together for the mourning rites, eventually the wisp paused at the steps that led towards the grave covered in snaking Shroud’s Kiss. Calliope thanked the wisp and continued up the steps, and onto the pathway which was littered in a cacophony of flower petals, lilac and yellow beckoning towards the figure at their juncture. Emmrich closed the gap, eager to reach his beloved. “Thank you for coming my darling, I admit it is poor manners on my part for such short notice,” he said entwining his hands with Calliope’s. “Emmrich this is quite the surprise, what’s the occasion?” 

“Well my love, I -.” Emmrich started, clearing his throat. “Calliope Ingellvar, my dearest Rook. Would you be so mad as to agree to a lifetime with a besotted fool of a professor, and do me the honour of becoming Calliope Volkarin?” 

And that was probably the most significant time Emmrich said Calliope’s name. 

[knarme-art]

@recom-week

RETURN TO PANDORA MONTH

DAY 1 - MOUNT DESIGN (1.12.2024)

Ikran Series - Ngulya, Kxasi's Ikran

Name meaning - 'gray air' Bonded to - Kxasi of the Kxayltirey people Age / sex - nearing an older adult's prime, female About - Ngulya's psyche has a calming, comforting effect on Kxasi. She enjoys complex tasks that require good memory, making her an ideal companion to Kxasi, who is very ambitious and energetic.

Under 'Keep reading', more images + earlier design drafts!

Above: Only minimally shaded, mostly flat color reference missing the glow effects on the bioluminescent markings.

Above: Ngulya's bioluminescence in dim lighting

Above: Ngulya's bioluminescense in night lighting

History of Ngulya's design

Above: February 18th in 2023 - Here you also see Kxasi's old design. The purplish-gray look and orangeish/reddish bioluminescense have been a part of my vision for Ngulya from the very beginning.

Above: March 9nth in 2023 - Here is my first take for a full reference for Ngulya. This is the point where the pale head and neck became iconic traits to the otherwise dark purple design.

I've always been torn between oranges/browns and actual purples for many of the color areas in this design, as you see from that earlier color draft.

Above: This year, I wanted to finally make proper ikran templates for the sake of more comfortable designing of all my ikran characters.

This is an early version of the final template set I created, and two different drafts of Ngulya.

Sadly I never saved these drafts, so these are just badly compressed screenshots from my Bluesky and Twitter accounts.

The one on the right is my last draft before beginning work on the final one, as I started to be happy with the markings.

The orange one on the left of the 2nd image is not Ngulya, but a draft for another ikran entirely.

Above: For a very long time, I could not make the bioluminescent highlight markings fit anywhere into this design, so I almost called it 'done' in this stage.

The color pallette was more brown than purple. It was a really hard decision to tweak the pallette once more, so I could make it all good-looking with the highlight color.

About my thought process...

I create my ikran OC designs entirely via body/emotional/visual synesthesia. This intuitive process doesn't contain conscious thought, but rather letting an 'inner eye' show me things.

This method lets me get ideas I couldn't otherwise get, unlike when combining my old clichés in a calculated manner etc. Instead of such calculated process, instead I succumb to a more dreamlike intuition where my brain can just fire whatever.

For these ikran, I must feel like I am them, to create their appearances. For the same character, like Kxasi, even for a long period of time, I've been getting the same results with this process...

I imagine the na'vi during their 'Iknimaya' (or equivalent), the type of feeling I would have about them as a person, as if they stood in front of me.

Then, I imagine I'm indeed an ikran looking at them, - what kind of a mental and emotional being would I be, to feel particularly drawn to this na'vi? I imagine the feelings.

These feelings inform me of the ikran's whole design, as well as personality.

Kxasi's ikran Ngulya is a character I can understand, put myself into, imagine her feelings and personality/temperament from the inside, and how she'd feel even when connected with Kxasi's consciousness via tsaheylu.

I can also imagine how Kxasi feels connected to her.

Their personalities contrast each other. Kxasi is hot-headed and energetic, while Ngulya is a calming presence. Usually, Ngulya even discourages Kxasi's antagonistic impulses when they're connected.

However, if overwhelmed by the need to protect, Ngulya's mind will be drunken on quite the berserker's adrenaline, - also affecting Kxasi that same way. Their minds will melt into one demonic entity with the sole goal of turning someone into minced meat. This can be triggered by putting their loved ones or personal home etc. in danger.

Ngulya resembles my favorite, now-deceased dog Lola a lot by her personality. Her 'feel' is very much like what Lola was, even though I did not intentionally create her in Lola's image.

She's funny and silly like Lola, obsessive and persistent in tasks like Lola, has basically endless energy to run (fly), hunt and play, - and there is a soft comforting energy to her. She's also fiercely territorial and protective, - just like Lola... I definitely see her as a Pisces, like that dog was, also.

[tomas-smoked-sasuage]

Out of this World

(Sun Wukong x GOW Freya! Reader)

WARNING: This shit might be cringe and stupid, violence, swearing (obviously), language barrier, reader might accidentally be out of character Freya, late post & poor writing (mb gng)

Bold and slanted words are Chinese speak (not written Chinese for those confused)

NOTE: I accidentally posted this... It was not my intention to post this, I was planning for next week but since some have already read this, I'll just add more to the story that I was planning to anyway, so if you read it already. More content! I guess... (Nov. 30, 2024)

REQUEST ARE OPEN AND LIST IS HERE

The veins in my brain spiked with pain, tapping and poking on my face in hoping I wake up. Opening my eyes, I see many small creatures in front of me. Sitting up, I scooted back but they statutes to run towards me. On my feet, I made my stance to attack.

“Falk-!” Before conjuring my spell, something landed in front of me. The creatures stopped running in front of me as they saw, a staff?

I walked and crouched down to the staff, examining it. I’ve never seen a staff of such a design. Before I could touch it, the staff moved before firing back, a hairy hand grasped the pole. Turning towards the individual, he see, he a bit flash in my opinion. He stood on top on branch of a tree, merely felt intimidated.

“Who are you?” He spoke, the language is not to my knowledge. He noticed my confusion and intimation. The pain from my head came back. I fell to my knees, feeling the sharpness of the twigs and sticks. I lost my consciousness as I heard a thump.

-------------------------------------------------

"What do we do with her? She's clearly from the outside world." Erlang spoke, gazing upon you. Wukong walked from walking scoffing and scratching his head.

"The hell am I supposed to do? She landed on my mountain, clearly rude if you ask me." Erlang chuckled at Wukong who was clearly pissed that you landed on his mountain unattended and rudely. Or so he says.

Erlang continues to examine you, he saw your tattoos on your arms, wondering if there were like you. But you, he wonders what your tattoos mean.

"Her attire is uncivilized. She's a fighter, her markings on her arms and she's barefoot. She looks human, but her soul is not mortal." He brushed a few hair strands away from your face, getting a better look at your face and to see you have any injuries.

Wukong quickly turned towards Erlang, did he hear him correctly?

"Not mortal? What do you mean? No human can be immortal!? Are you certain?" He walked over to you. A disdain look he gave. Exactly who were you?

The moment later, guards forced their way into the room, causing you to wake up. You got up quick, grabbing at your sword but then realized they aren't there. You hold your stance as the guard aimed their spears at you.

Erlang and Wukong entered the room, and Erlang came forward slowly. His hands raised up, preaching for peace.

"Reframe from violence, we are not here to harm you " He spoke. You furrowed your eyes and tilted your head in confusion. Wukong scoffed and rolled his eyes. "See, she's stupid. Doesn't even understand what's going on."

"I don't think it's stupidity, she just doesn't stand our language. A common thing. We'll teach her our ways, if she seems troubling to the balance, kill her if you must. If she was not important in her homeworld, she wouldn't be important here."

---------------------------------------------

Years have passed by and you managed to learn their language, they saw you were already a fight but peaked your interest in teaching you to different techniques.

Wukong realized how smart you are but he still holds criticism towards you and likes to boast about his ego. Of course, you didn't pay too much mind to him.

As much as he hates to admit, he does not like seeing you with Erlang, he usually sees the both of you spar and how he looks at you. Even the praises that Erlang gives you makes him irritated.

You arrived at Mount Huaguo seemingly to drop something off for Wukong. The announcement of your arrival scurry the Monkey King off his throne. He hurried out, spotting you with the young one. You smiled and pet them as they brushed their heads against yours and your hands.

Up in a tree, Wukong was going to haul you off his mountain but seeing how gently you were with the young one, he just kept watching you. What seemed to be long enough, you asked the little ones for their king.

Wukong cleared his throat catching your attention. You set some of the infants down before bowing towards the Monkey King. "Your Majesty, I've come to-"

"Who are you?" He interrupted.

"Huh..." He left a bit speechless, but you answered.

"Not sure if it mattered but, Y/N. I fell in your mountain a few years back."

"I know who you are.." he rolled his eyes, scoffing a chuckle.

You let out a hum, you knew interacting with him wasn't going to be easy. Nor fun. "Well, alright. I have this scroll from the Celestial Court and-"

"The Court!?!" He then groaned, "Now what do they want?"

"They're expecting an answer for your return." You held out the scroll. Visibility to his sight.

Wukong looked at you with an uninviting gaze. He sighed before jumping off the tree, walking up to you. Taking the scroll from your hand and looking at you, you were slightly taller than him.

He opens the scroll reading it. You felt a land at your shoulder appearing an infant, you rubbed underneath its chin. Without notice, Wukong stole a few glances here and there of the scroll and you. Pretty amazing how the infants took a liking to you.

He cleared his throat, catching your attention again. He then tossed the scroll behind him rolling his head and turning away from.

"Tell them I still decline. I have a life here and I wish to keep it that way." You nodded before turning around, the infant jumped off your shoulder.

"But then there's you." You turned back around as he continued, "Why be so naive to work under the Court, you're an Outsider. They thought you once dumb, but your bright, smarter even, but this isn't your smartest run. You'll see eventually that Courts want nothing but a lapdog." He turns away from you.

"And what exactly do you get off of this? Why tell me?" He appears right in front of you, you stumbled back but he grabs your arm pulling you closer.

"The Court is not what they all seem. They seem wonderful and prideful, but they'll use you to their advantage. You're strong, so they'll use you at any change they'll get." He then laughed madly.

"Don't be a fool!" Jump from one tree to another, he disappeared.

Leaving you in question and wonder, you think more about the Monkey King after returning to the Court.

Here's this, as I said before, I was NOT wanting to post this until next week but somehow I posted it anyways. It was in my drafts since like Tuesday, so I don't know what happened today, but yeah, here's this. I might make a part two, if so do expect it to be good. I'm not too good or knee in writing, but I do my best. So if you are interested in this story, let me know. I'll make a part two. And yeah.

REQUEST ARE OPEN HERE!!

[getmeoutofhell]

Ghostface WOMEN headcanons

MAJOR WARNING!!: these headcanons are toxic, showcasing a more evil approach. if you’re not comfortable please leave for your protection. does contain implies of smut.

a/n: i just randomly thought up some evil women headcanons…i think i did okay.

Amber Freeman:

she’s your #1 protector!! very protective over something she cares about. you especially. 🥀

keep in mind this means she’s very jealous of people in your personal space for to long. it makes her being ghostface so worth it so she can kill anyone she pleases.

hates when she can’t find you/have you in her sight. she’ll lock you away from the world if you keep this behavior up. you’ll never see your friends or family again…

but she’s so in love with you!! you’re her little star, her angel. she will end anyones life that makes her feel threatened.

“no! no going out today.” she storms out of the bedroom as she grabs her knife and leaves. amber hates when you ask her for to many things at once. you’ll make her mad, and you don’t want that. she can get very mean and aggressive with you.

“you stupid slut! who was that person you were talking to!!”

“it was just a old friend checking up on me. i haven’t been out of the house in days amber, people are starting to get worried.”

“let them get worried. you’re safe with me and that’s all that matters.”

hates when people talks to you without permission. her ghostface side comes out quick. but that’s how she shows her love to you. she will do anything for you. even if it means hurting you for you to keep quit.

Jill Roberts:

if she gets possessive with you, it’s because you forced her hand. she doesn’t wanna show you this side of her, but once you push her limits it’s all she’ll ever show. 🥀

“you’re not going anywhere. come back here.”

“i got invited to go out with my friend.”

“so?”

she’s so evil and full of evilness that stirs up when people are near by you. it’s a ticking time bomb with her, and it lights up. she’s like joker and your harley. she keeps you away from harm. you only go out if she goes. it’s rare any time you go out by yourself alone.

you try to reassure her that you’ll be fine, but she knows that’s not true. she thinks you’ll try to leave her, so she keeps you in with her darkness.

when you cry she’s there to comfort you, and kill the person who made you cry. unless it’s her that made you cry. if that’s the case, she’ll look at you and tell you she’s sorry but it has to be like this.

there’s no where to run or go, she’ll still end up finding you and bringing you right back to where you belong.

Quinn Bailey:

the worst fucking one. the most evil of all. she HATES people around you, and will get very very fucking mean. she doesn’t care if it’s in public. 🥀

“what’s your fucking problem huh? why are you all up on her?!?!”

“what are you talking about?”

“we’re leaving.”

she will drag your ass out any public place that makes her feel like your not obeying her. her hand with be wrapped around your wrist as she drags you to the car. her anger is timeless. you can feel it sometimes radiating off her body.

you’re her prize, no one else’s. so don’t even think you’re gonna leave her without a fight.

will drag her knife across your skin telling you how much she loves you and your body, how she cherishes the ground you walk on. how she wants to marry you once you start behaving right. she tells you the be grateful, and that you’re very lucky she loves you.

licks up your neck, leaves hickeys and bite marks to let the world know who you belong to.

[your-unfriendlyghost]

How I draw: Use of references

Second response to a few art questions from @johnny-and-clyde let’s gooo!

I love references! Like most artists I did have that phase where I thought I was better than everyone because I didn’t use ‘em, but lemme tell ya- starting to use references took my art from this

(Art from 2021-2022) To some better lookin stuff, and eventually to the stuff y’all know me for now lol!

Nowadays I do use references for almost every drawing, but the amount that I reference them varies Occasionally it’s pretty direct, like my drawing of Curly Shepard, in which I HEAVILY referenced a photo of myself for the pose and fit:

(I don’t dress like this on a daily basis the pic was taken at a Twilight-themed school dance ok) (I’m not cool enough to wear that many necklaces w/o a good reason 😔)

In drawings where I directly reference photos that don’t belong to me, I put the reference in the post under the drawing, so folks know I didn’t plan the concepts/compositions on my own. But usually I don’t directly reference things…

Usually I use a bunch of different references for a bunch of different things. This is for two purposes:

1- Making sure everything stays vaguely anatomically decent, that the fabric folds in the right places, that the perspective works, that the lighting looks good, etc…especially in tricker/unusual poses. Um I’m also pretty sure that I might have some form of aphantasia, or at least a really weak “mind’s eye”, which is probably why I struggle with composition/planning in art and why I do so much better with references

Like here, when I used this pic of Emilio Estevez’s character in Repo Man to make sure I was getting Mark Jennings’s face shape right- just glanced at it off to the side and (more or less) drew what I saw

Or here, in this pic of Steve Randle- I didn’t know how to even start to draw the angle I needed, so I took a pic of myself and used that

2- Capturing the likeness of a person. For most new characters I draw, I take a bunch of screenshots and roughly redraw them and occasionally trace them to build muscle memory, all while taking little notes about unique features they have. Then, once I have a feel for them, and enough odd-looking line drawings to look like a crazy stalker, I’m ready to start actually drawing post-able art yk?

Here’s an example from 2023 where I studied Nancy Wheeler. Final product ain’t fantastic, but this was two-school-years ago so it’s basically ancient in my book lol

I do still use refs often in the finals, but less directly and with less adherence

But I will say, for rougher/cartoonier drawings I don’t use as many refs. Like, I didn’t use references for these (although I did pose in the mirror to get the arm right in the self-portrait lol) :

Lastly, I also find it’s nice to have a mirror/window nearby to look at my own anatomy and reference that, although that’s mainly just useful for characters who look semi-like me/have similar builds to me lol. Like I can reference myself for drawing Steve Randle or Johnny Cade (at least his face lol), but not so much for drawing like…Dally or Evie or Marcia. Still, it’s useful, especially when I can’t find a specific reference I want, yk?

Anyhow, those are the main ways I utilize references in art! Hope some of this was helpful :))

[genderqueerdykes]

ALSO same anon that was asking about the amab transmascs and afab transfems: why are so many people who post about them tagged as transphobic on shinigami eyes? Like, I understand the idea how it could be misconstrued as transphobic, but from what i've gathered so far it doesn't feel transphobic at all??

thats a good question. i actually don' thave that plugin installed in my browser, i forgot to when i switched over to using this from my laptop. it never worked properly for me, i never saw anyone get marked, so i stopped using it. i think what has happened in recent years is people are just kinda using it to troll. it's kinda all over the place. i was green last i checked but i have no idea now. i think people are accusing amab trans mascs and afab transfems of being cishet people "invading" the queer community and it's just so stupid. that argument misses the mark by a country mile

that's my guess anyways!