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mimithings97 · 5 years ago

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How to Make Him Cum 101 (M)

Summary: You’ll love each other in sickness and health, hungover or hangry, sexless or… well, it’s becoming a little harder for the pants to stay on despite the calls of ‘let’s take this slow’ on the first date.

Pairing: Jungkook x Y/N

Genre: University AU, Smut, Fluff, Angst (tiny bit), Crack

Warnings: (Plenty my friend) Handjob, Fingering, Squirting, Sex without protection, Tongue fucking, Jungkook being whipped, Chocking (brief), Dry Humping, Jungkook cumming in his pants, lots of swearing, lots of alcohol consumption, consumption of weed

Word Count: 15k (it was meant to be 10k, but I fucked it)

A/N: I love Jungkook in this, he’s a sweetheart who has no fucking idea what he’s doing. Took me way too long to write this and I’m sorry if it drags, but I split it into little scenes to make it more manageable. It’s also pretty casual - no real storyline. Enjoy and suggestions always welcome x

“I swear to fuck, if he throws up my £2000 bourbon...”

And by some miracle, neither the end of Taehyung’s sentence nor the £150 shot Namjoon halfheartedly threw back makes an appearance.

“Nah big man can handle his shit right Joon,” is the mere drunken support offered by Jimin. It’s also accompanied by an all-too heavy hand to the back that has the elder spluttering on air, the shot well and truly burning a hole in his stomach by now.

You observe from the distance of the kitchen, fortunately barricaded from the testosterone fest by the island and several misplaced sofas. It was Jimin’s idea to upgrade the sofa scheme to one that was more ‘drinking and smoking friendly’ so he liked to call it, taking a sufficient 30 minutes just to manoeuvre several pieces of furniture into a circle that centred around all too expensive liquors and cheap weed - the irony of the contrast had most certainly dawned on you.

Your unexpected appearance to the gathering was on the account of boyfriends hazy state. He was all ‘come save me’ and ‘i’m dying’ over your texted conversation but upon arrival, the boy was all over that tequila bottle like he was downing chocolate milk.

Despite your best intentions of remaining inconspicuous and merely Jungkook’s driver for the night went to shit when Jimin, unapologetic and somewhere between happily stoned and confident drunk demanded you join their escapades.

“Booze or bud but not neither Y/N.” Nothing like a typical Taehyung to welcome you to the action.

“Well you didn’t say I couldn’t have both,” is your reply that’s laced with a brazen tone and paired with a smirk.

You’re met with Taehyung tonguing his cheek.

“That’s my girl,” Jungkook shouts mid-laugh and gives you a smack to the ass for good measure. You find comfort in the gesture, so following his drifting hand to the point that you settle in his lap.

Jungkook must have drunk his weight in alcohol because it’s all touches from behind you, cold hands finding their way under cloth and onto warm skin, lips clamping down on your neck and teeth unforgiving on your ear lobe. Your boyfriend’s a modest guy even at worst, so his provoking actions are met with raised eyebrows on your behalf.

Slowly but surely, with the burn of smoke in your lungs and the even harsher burn of rich whiskey (because £2000 bourbon is a harsh no), Jungkook’s hands roam freely.

“Jesus mate, if you’d have fucked her the second time you would’ve had that pussy on hold, swear down.” Somewhere between your silent touches and unauthorized smoking of all of Namjoon’s weed, the conversation had delved into the topic of Jimin’s overly privileged sex life.

“That’s exactly what I said but the bitch pussied out,” Hobi pipes up from the corner where he’d faded away from being too legit faded - boy never could handle his smoke.

“Fuck off did I pussy ou-”

“Nahhh she had you whipped babe, that second shag wasn’t even on the cards,” you mouth speaks for you. Or more like your high speaks for you at this point.

You feel Kook smile into your shoulder from where his head was perched.

“This’ll be good,” it’s under Taehyung’s breath but not inaudible.

“Fuck do you mean, ‘she had me whipped’, she was all over me that night at Joon’s...” Jimin swigs mid-sentence, flushed from the buzz of liquor and his overly defensive tone, “had her wrapped around my little finger.”

… the opportunity was too good to miss.

“What little finger?” You refrain from laughing at your own remark for dramatic effect but Jungkook’s squeezing your sides and the lightness of your head betrays you.

Jimin’s eye contact with your falters as if his ego broken, and the others pass around comments along the lines of ‘fucking brilliant’ and ‘unlucky mate’.

You take a final drag before passing it behind you to the already seeking hand of your boyfriend who’s still amused by your smart-mouth.

“Jimin, I’m just saying,” you elaborate in hopes of restoring his cracked masculinity somewhat, “from what Stephanie told me, Mina had four guys on hold at that party and wasn’t inclined to let any of them stick in on her cos she’s got a full-on guy waiting for her away from uni.”

He huffs, throwing himself and his bottle backwards onto the sofa, causing it to slosh around and out. You peer over at Taehyung, waiting for the boy to morph into an expression of disgust because god knows, this sofa cover costs more than your rent, but he never does - eyes glazed and a small smile instead.

“Fucking brilliant, I was fifth on a girls ‘need to shag’ list.” You almost feel bad for the sod, but one thing Jimin could never do was keep his mouth shut when it needed to be. “At least I’m doing better than you, Y/N, you can’t even get a fuck off your boyfriend and you’ve been together for months.”

Taehyung’s smile drifts, Hobi shifts in his seat and Jungkook stiffens from behind you - the air dries up.

“Jimin, mate, come on,” Joon tries to reason, but as per usual Jimin keeps his mouth moving.

“I said what I said.”

Yeh, he sure fucking did. And if one thing was known to be uncharted conversation between the lot of you, then that was your and Jungkook’s abstinence. But in true style, Jimin just had to pry.

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“Fuck it, maybe we should just have sex,” he finally says as you stall over wiping off your eyeliner to laugh at his exasperation. Jungkook wasn’t insecure but he was easily influenced when something hurt his pride - and you could tell, from Jimin’s comment, throughout the awkward air that lingered in the car, to just now, that he had been stewing on the dent to his ego from the moment it was spoken.

You want to tell him with all the sarcasm in the world how ‘romantic’ he’s being about it all, but you refrain to save further damage.

“Kook-”

“Nah, seriously Y/N, I’m tired of this shit…” you want to diffuse his state, but he persists, “and- I don’t really know what I’m waiting on now.”

“Baby,” you finally get a grip on his attention as he lets out a huff and welcomes you onto his lap. “You’ve had your reasons to wait on this, I’ve always respected that. But…” he groans and you lean into him as a warning to let you finish, “buttt, I’m not gonna respect any shit when you’re letting Jimin decide for you. Just cos the boy can’t get his dick wet doesn’t mean you have to.”

You feel him snicker against your shoulder as he lowers his head in frustration.

“You do this on your own time. Not mine,” you weave your fingers through his locks and anchor him to you, “not Jimin’s, not anyone but yours,” and finalise your sentiment by situating your lips on his temple.

With eyes fluttering shut into your touch and a heavy breath out he indulges in his insecurity. “I just can’t afford to lose you.” And you know it takes his booze-filled conscience to let you in.

You have to admit that there was some level of hurt you managed to hide at this point. That even after relishing in one another's company for 5 months, Jungkook still couldn’t find it in himself to trust you in that way. It was a mental thing, an emotional instinct of too many failed relationships where he was a victim to being cheated on, left after being used for sex and prayed on for good looks and unfortunate vulnerability. You knew within yourself you would never and could never do what so many have done before you. Fuck, you couldn’t even see yourself being sane and capable without him, ever, period. For that, you respected his decision - whilst frustratingly prolonged - because you knew he was worth the wait.

“I need you just as much as you need me.” You sense the slump in his shoulders, the heaviness of too many pressures and burdens weighing them down. That and his drug-induced state causing unwanted fatigue. “Hmm?” So you lift his chin and search his eyes till they meet yours, passing on a reassurance that he finally accepts with a curt nod.

“Yeh, I know.”

You press a kiss, or two to his lips and lean back to raise an eyebrow at him.

“Now are you gonna keep sulking to yourself like a bitch or let me make you cum?” His instant response is his eyes blowing out in shock of your statement before laughing into your chest. You know him well enough that he is using your chest to hide the blush in his cheeks but you don’t mention it.

Instead, you wiggle your hips with no subtlety into the twitch of his groin that seeks your mouth so desperately, laughing when he grabs you at the cheeks and pulls you away to say, “You’re fucking mental.” But against his lips you can’t help the, “-Nd you love me for it,” that is mumbled.

Yeah, this boy was definitely worth the wait.

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Weekends seem to roll around at a quickening pace when you have a needy boyfriend and even more demanding party schedule to fill the gaps. And by some freak of nature, you hadn’t managed to drop your education off a cliff in the meantime - in fact, you had begun to make a living off having beer in one hand and highlighter in the other.

University wasn’t a walk in the park, but you’d been enough of a devoted intellect in your first two years of it to allow yourself to drop off the map a little. So, after becoming a co-captain of the swim team somewhere into your second year, it was only a natural, human instinct kind of reaction that your fellow captain, the hunk of abs who graced poolside, would slip a few too many flirty remarks at you before you called him your boyfriend. He’d pined and you’d fallen - simple as.

He came with baggage though. Six boys and a whole lot of booze and weed. You were no saint before Jungkook, hell, you almost weren’t allowed swim captain because you’d slept in one too many of the guys beds. But as soon as you’d said ‘yes’ to the going out for drinks invitation he offered, you had also said ‘yes’ to the party on Saturday at Hoseok’s, and the one on Sunday down at the river, and for every weekend for the next 5 months. And slowly but surely, it was no longer, ‘this is my girlfriend’ as an introduction, but you asking the familiar face around the party with all urgency where the nearest bottle of tequila was.

It’s also how you’d landed yourself filthily hungover in your Monday lecture, listening to Professor Snape (nah, it’s his real name and all) with a noticeable shake in your hand and last nights mascara somewhere down your face.

“If you look that shit, then what the hell does Kook look like.” Mina, the best friend, the only one allowed to hold back your hair whilst you would throw up in a second-floor bathroom, and the roommate who made student life just a bit more bearable than the shit show it was.

She takes the seat next to you, her question probably rhetorical but you make the effort to reply, all the same.

“Still asleep in the bathtub I reckon.” Ah, yes, the boyfriend. At somewhere between 1 in the morning and blackout drunk you, Jungkook and your infamous competitiveness called for beer pong - minus the beer, add the vodka. So it was only gonna be a certain amount of time before both you and him were pushed into a cab on top of one another and drafted back to his flat so he could throw up in his bathtub.

“Jesus,” Mina mutters with a laugh, probably just relieved someone ordered your taxi to go to his and not your shared apartment - like hell was she listening to Jungkook throw up at 5 in the morning.

“Honestly, why does Yoongi host that shit on Sunday,” you groan into your laptop, turning down the brightness because you can already feel the afternoon hangover headache arising.

“He doesn’t have a 9am like the rest of us.”

“Fucker.”

Good host though, Yoongi. A postgrad, with his own two-storey apartment and too much time on his hands. You’d known him before the boyfriend too, working shifts with him in your first year at a music production company, both in the catering section because you had time to fill and tuition to pay and he was hoping to find his break into the industry. He fucked it though and has ended up with some crazy paid apprenticeship at a financial branch in the city centre.

“Oi, Bob’s this weekend?” Mina poses the question as the lights brighten in the lecture room and everyone starts shutting laptops - yours was shut ten minutes ago when you stopped listening and started wallowing in self-pity.

“Bob’s?” Bermuda Bobs. A club in the centre of town, and somewhat of a regular for Friday nights, when Hoseok had had just about enough of hosting. “Yeh. Yeh, I can do Bobs.”

Mina’s up and off before you can even open the zip on your bag, something about she’ll miss her lift to training, but you mumble that you’ll see her at the apartment later before you can see the back of her head.

All you can think as you conquer the steps to the exit of the hall is how much of a blessing a shower and a cup of tea would be - ‘so easily pleased’ Mina would say. So, when you look up from your phone to see Jungkook opposite where you walk out, a cup of tea in hand, you might just believe in fate.

“Aren’t you a sight for sore eyes,” he says, throat hoarse as he takes you bag from your shoulder and places the coffee into your welcoming hands. You laugh at him, a snort because it’s ironic considering the bloodshot eyes and beer-stained hair he sports.

“You were passed out in the bath legit an hour ago,” his hand finds yours despite your teasing and when you finally take the first sip of tea as you walk, anyone would think the noise you made was nothing short of an orgasm - Jungkook certainly takes notice. “Did you bring the car?”

He snorts, “Like fuck did I bring the car, I’m still drunk.”

“Babbbyy,” it’s a whine as you throw your head back and pull his hand to make your point into a tantrum.

“It’s literally a 5 minute walk babe, suck it up.” He continues ahead, but you go full 5 year old tactics on him, stopping in your tracks and whacking on your face the biggest pout your lips will allow.

He merely rolls his eyes and kisses it away before presenting his back to you, arms out, legs bent and you hop onto him like the spoilt girlfriend you are.

“You’re a brat, you know that.” Is all he says as he starts the walk out of the building and towards his, so you kiss behind his ear.

“Mmm, call me that again, it kinda turns me on.”

“Fucking filty,” but you see the crinkle in his eyes that lets you know that he loves you for it.

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Friday nights roll around quicker than you know when Bob’s is calling. They start earlier than most nights as well - lecture leads to swim training, swim training calls for afternoon drinks at Warehouse and then Warehouse blurs into Pre’s that blurs into Bob’s.

So with beer curdling in your stomach, trying to flick the wing of your eyeliner and failing for the fifteenth time is as funny as Jimin’s pinkie to you and Mina.

She is, of course, ready. Has been for almost 2 hours, so whilst you struggle to slip into your dress, she finishes your eyeliner for you.

The buzz of your phone has both of you looking to the vibrating device in confusion, having to double-take with each other because the taxi isn’t supposed to be here until Jungkook is and he isn’t supposed to be here for another half an hour.

Your fumbling with a zip so it’s Mina who reaches for it, and when the screen lights her face, her features go from confused to ‘for fucks sake’ in less than a second. She turns it and that god awful photo of Jungkook and his swimming goggles on lights up the display.

“I’ll get the door.” She’s exasperated. He’s early and she can’t stand that - all it took was him showing up at the wrong time on a Wednesday whilst she was naked on the sofa with a girl between her legs that caused the ‘come when you’re fucking asked to come’ attitude - poor boy didn’t even know she was gay.

You do a once over in the mirror before the door swings open, Mina has a scowl but your boyfriend has a lime in one hand and tequila in the other, so you don’t care.

“Shit, you look hot,” Fuck, so does he, but he’s pressing a kiss to your lips before you can drink him in fully, “s’that dress new?”

“I did the makeup, thank me.” Mina was always loud, and speaking at the wrong places and in the wrong conversations.

“Kindly fuck off, you did the eyeliner and shit all else.” You turn back to Kook, now leaning against your wall, eyes still trained on you, or at least, your legs, and he looks fucking thirsty that’s for sure. “And yeh, got it when I went in the city the other week.” He replies with a nod and a smirk. Those damn bedroom eyes, they hold your gaze, as you fiddle with the clasp on the side of your dress.

Mine pipes up from the sidelines, “God, it’s like I’m watching a fucking mating ritual or something.” Jungkook scoffs and his shoulders ease as though he’s calming himself down, “Well, I’m ready so shots it is.” She grabs the bottle of tequila from Jungkook’s hand and is off into the kitchen without looking back.

“Who put a foot up her ass then?” He only says it once the door is closed, knowing he’ll get a whacking if Mina heard him, so you scowl at him, albeit through a smile.

“Oi, watch it,” you’re in front of him now, leaning into the arm he stretched out to embrace you in.

“Sorry,” and he means it. He genuinely likes Mina, you’re sure of it, but they go at each other like cats in an alley when you’re not there to referee it.

He’s warm around you, his shirt with buttons undone at the top so that the cologne he’s wearing goes right to your head - and to your core - either one. The proximity does the same to him as he takes a handful of your ass, groping so that when you gasp and try to pull away, he administers a slap.

You can’t deny you’re horny for him, and the way his trousers frame his bulge perfectly - you lick your lips subconsciously at the thought - but you can almost hear the sadness of Mina pouring and downing Tequila shots by herself.

“Fucker,” you whisper and lean out of his hold almost, only to see that fire in his eyes.

“I love this ass,” hands now sneaking underneath the fabric of your dress - like it was covering much anyway, but that doesn’t change the way his cold fingers spread across your behind and almost make you moan out. It’s when he takes your bottom lip in his teeth and pulls back agonizing slowly until it pops back into place that the moan you were stifling releases, slowly, seductively, and his crotch stirs at the thought of you making the same noise around his dick.

But if Kook can restrain himself enough into denying you a fuck for 5 months, then you can be just as disciplined now - whether the wetness on your thighs tells you something different or not.

You toy with him though.

At a pace nothing short of tormenting, you lean your leg into the space between his, drag your lips across his cheek to his ear and let your fingers draw a line from the gap in his shirt, underneath and across his chest, “But you know what’s better than this ass, baby?” You play the seductress with you voice, and you know it does bits to him.

Your question was rhetoric, but when he doesn’t reply, you can’t help but grab at his belt with a hand and tug his crotch into your leg. He sputters out breathily into your neck, “W-what?”

You lean back, wait for his eyes to open and gage the lust and excitement brewing within them before opening your mouth against his…

“...Tequila shots.” You smack his thigh, turn and are out the door before his erection can say ‘shit’.

Two can play at his game of denial.

Your all kinds of worked up despite your best efforts, but Mina’s got lime in her mouth and her face crinkled into an expression of disgust as you eye the empty shot glass on the counter, so it’s not like she’s gonna be sniffing out your hormones any time soon.

“Fucking shit, rancid, I hate it, don’t wanna drink ever, absolutely not,” you laugh at her outburst as you refill her shot glass for yourself.

“Lightweight,” you tease her as you throw it all back, wincing internally as you feel the hole burn in your throat, but suck it up for the sake of your competitive streak. She merely scoffs at you as the bedroom door swings open, Jungkook - still a fine piece of ass right now - tucking his shirt into his trousers. No way did he just finish himself off in that time, but your eyes travel down to his hard on that is very much still there. You can’t help the smirk.

“Kook, get your shot down you then we’re off,” Mina announces.

“Taxi here already?” he questions but she shakes her head as she now sports a wine bottle in her hand, and clearly a mouth full of wine as she fails to verbalise.

Shots are down, wine is drunk, and heads are well and truly dizzy when you reach the club. The cab was early much to Mina’s dismay, but that didn’t stop her from grabbing the tequila bottle from Jungkook and downing a healthy portion of the liquid before collapsing in instant regret - ‘we’ve all been there Min’ was your only advice. As for Jungkook. Well, the boy never showed when he was drunk until he would take his shirt off and shout he was wasted, so the only way you could gauge his state was by the way his fingers dug into your thigh the entire journey - you just couldn’t work out whether it was the alcohol or his dick talking.

“Y/NNN!” you hear before see Jimin, despite the music that reverberates through the floor and up your body. As always, he has bottle in hand and a girl in the other, but he releases her to embrace you.

It’s a love, hate with Jimin, but he was Jungkook’s best friend, so there was and could not be bad blood between the two of you - much the same to Jungkook and Mina. Jimin swam as well, so you were no strangers to sharing situations that required great comfort with one alone - such as you in a swimming costume and him in his damn speedos. There was only one thing better than Jimin in speedos though, and that was Jungkook in speedos.

“Where’s your boyfriend, he owes me a fucking drink,” and you point to the bar, where he leans over the counter in all his glory and much to the fortune of your eyes. Jimin escorts himself and the girl he’s with over to the bar before you can catch her name - she’s pretty, though, which is no surprise with Jimin’s taste.

It takes the next 30 minutes, or possibly longer because alcohol tends to blur hours to minutes before you’ve made conversation with everyone there. It’s almost admin now, having to do the rounds when all the people from swimming go out - a swim captain apparently has certain obligations of seeing everyone had a drink in hand and a ride to go home in. Kook was doing the same too, across the club, slowly but surely making his way towards you as he talked to some of the guys. He’d winked one too many times at you for it to be coincidence, and the alcohol you’d been consuming was screaming out to you now to fuck the pointless conversation and grind on your damn fit boyfriend.

“Fuck Josh, Mel, the boy can’t even get it up, and you’re too much of a hot piece of ass to waste on him,” Mina’s on one of her motivational talks with the social sec, Mel - absolute sweetheart, heart of gold and awful taste in men. Also the subject of Mina’s subconscious flirting for the last hour or so, but you don’t have the heart to tell Mina to stop - she’s drunk and probably horny knowing her.

“Y/N,” you’re face first in your vodka red bull (double), to hear Mina, having zoned out from her pining after she started getting emotional. “Y/N!” You finally ease up on the drink when you hear her this time.

“Hmm?” mouth half full.

“Have you ever seen someone get eye fucked?” Her eyes flicker from you to something else, but you’re too caught up in the absurdity of her question to notice.

“The fuck?”

“Because I’m watching it happen right now,” and it’s a nod that finally directs your questioning gaze away from your best friend and to a figure at the bar, elbows tucked behind him, a bottle of beer at his side, legs to die for and eyes boring right into yours. He’s playing dirty tonight, is all you think. So despite the way your core tightens and the hair on your neck unknowingly rises, you feed into his game, the cat and mouse kind of thing he seems to be grabbing at, and put up your facade.

You're slow to get to him, but it’s deliberate. And instead of giving in to his gaze or his touch, you place your feet right beside his, leaning towards the bar and into the sight of the bartender.

It’s the raise of her eyebrows at you and the curt smile that prompts you to talk, “two shots of tequila please,” she begins to spin but you stop her, “oh, and plenty of salt and lime.”

It takes physical energy not to give in to human instinct - to touch and to grab him, to let go of the role play.

“Anyone would think you’re ordering for two,” his voice is gravely, and fuck if it doesn’t shoot straight down you. But his comment makes you smile, smirk actually.

“You say that as if I can’t handle my alcohol,” you raise an eyebrow to yourself, still feigning your confidence by not looking his way.

Two shots are lined up in front of you, limes perched on top, and a generously filled salt shaker to the left of them.

“Well tequila is a dangerous game to play,” you pick up either shot in your hand, and fight the urge to shiver as his words that are breathed against your ear. You round from the side of him, eyes finally lifting to his and filling some void that was there, but by no means lifting any tension between the two of you.

“Then let’s play dangerously,” you say, eyes sultry and him waiting on your every move, “the first one to have their salt, their shot and their lime gone first is the winner..”

“And what does the winning get?” Damn, he’s eager.

You lean in, but still don’t touch. “That’s for the winner to know, and the loser to find out.”

You can see a vague pick up in his breathing, a sheen of sweat forming against his brow and a vague smirk pulling at the edges of his mouth. Lifting the lime off your shot, he almost proceeds to do the same, about to take the shot to his lips but you stop him, instead pushing your shot into his vacant hand. The only explanation offered is when you take your lime down the column of your throat and down to your cleavage, before reaching to the salt that’s behind him. You pour a small mound of it onto your finger and follow the path that the lime drew. He eyes you like artwork, and doesn’t lift his gaze from your cleavage where you nestle the lime.

You pour more salt onto your forefinger, and his eyes finally lift in an expression of confusion, but words evade him - hell, he hasn’t taken a solid breath for the past minute. Slowly, tourturningly, you lean into him, carefully avoiding his shot, and catch his breath hitching as you press the point of your tongue into the base of his neck, dragging it upwards until you meet his jaw. You almost couldn’t stop yourself from proceeding further, drinking in the salty taste of him and eating away at his sanity with your tongue - but you refrain, all in the name of dramatic effect.

“Fuck,” is all he says as he keeps his breath hitched, and you push your finger down the line your tongue drew, spreading salt southwards.

He almost looks tapped out when you take his lime from between you, eyes completely glazed, and fortunately for you they blow out even further when you tug the belt of his trousers and place your lime in the waistband - like his erection wouldn’t have held it up anyways.

Retrieving one of the shots from his grasp, where his knuckles had turned white against the glass, you hold his gaze.

“I think you should go ahead,” you’re more breathy than you realised, even despite it being your game.

“I-I thought,” he has to clear his throat, “it’s who can do it the fastest,” it’s barely even a question with how quiet he mumbled the words - you’re not even sure he knew what he was saying.

“Who said I wanted to win, baby?” And he lets out a moan, a full blown moan before he encases your throat with his mouth, and he’s almost animalistic in the way he growls against your skin at the taste. He bites down when he reaches just above the lime and your eyes roll back unconsciously before opening to see him throw his head back with the shot, not a single wince in his eyes because they are so driven by desire. The shot glass is slammed behind him before he dives into your cleavage to retrieve the lime, and in some display of masculinity that almost has you keening he rips the lime from his mouth and tosses it behind you, juice rolling down his face and onto his jaw to linger with the line of salt that glistens there.

You don’t even realise you're on his throat until the overly salty taste pricks your mouth and you can feel his jaw tense beneath you. You're almost in a haze when the tequila sets your throat ablaze but you become fully conscious of the way he grabs a fistful of your hair, pushes you to the floor until your dress bunches and has you sucking at the lime that rests mockingly above his hard cock.

By some miracle you find yourself back up at eye level, chests heaving to the point of almost touching, and if you didn’t have a lime in your mouth right now you’d either be swearing obscenely in some gesture of saying ‘your so fucking hot’ or your lips would be around his dick.

With a gulp and a tilt of his head backwards, he gains a level of composure that allows him to ease the lime from your lips with his fingers, letting them brush at your skin to have you shivering.

It’s almost comical the way you both pant, eyes ablaze in each others, and completely oblivious to the outside world and how many, way too many people have seen your display. But there is nothing but the burn in your bodies right now as he grabs your hand wordlessly and drags you as fast as your heels will allow.

It’s like a switch had flipped in him somewhere back there. Even if this whole thing was roleplay, at least you knew how to play it with your boyfriend back there, knew the way he ticks and what would make his cock twitch - Jungkook’s normally easy to read like that. But when he almost breaks the disabled toilet door down with his hand, there is no game left to play - the restraints are off and the fire of lustful rage is fueled.

“You-” he slams you back against the door before its even swung shut and you can get a single word in. It’s carnal the way he’s latching onto your mouth, grabbing your hands that try to clasp at his neck and throw them up next to your head, and shoves a knee between your sopping thighs.

“I almost fucking came in my trousers back there when you got on your knees,” you don’t think you’ve ever heard his voice so low and rough before but it courses through you more than the heavy bass of the club music. “You had me stood there ready to fuck your mouth open, but you thought you’d fucking tease your way through it.”

He’s domineering and your completely and utterly keening for it. Even more so when the grip he has on your wrist tightens and brings it down to his crotch, forcing your latch onto the erection that strains sinfully, painfully in his trousers and you feel intimidated enough at his display that you don’t palm him, don’t give him a pleasureful squeeze like you normally would when you had more control of your emotions. But you're shocked and fucked out - beyond that even.

“You feel that shit. Fuck, I’ve never been this hard before,” you moan out lowly, finding it increasingly difficult to control your breathing, the nature of the lust in your body calling out for some friction on your body. But he stands there, eyes ablaze, panting his taunting remarks into your agape mouth. “You’re making it so damn hard not to fuck you.”

“Do it,” you whisper without even knowing and neither does Jungkook because the ringing in both of your ears is deafening.

“I’ve always wanted to see you fall apart around my cock… lose it as I fuck you,” his crotch starts riveting into your hand and you know he’s imaging what it would feel like with his dick nestled deep in your walls right now, “God I want to pound into you.”

“Fuck.”

Fuck, because never have his words been so dirty before.

“You’re so damn hot I actually can’t control myself right now,” and his dick follows his words. Your hand now acts as your pussy - in his head anyway - as the friction of his trousers begins sending him neck deep in pleasure.

You actually think you could come from watching it. How his head now bows into your neck and his teeth set into your skin because he can’t even control how slack his jaw has become. The way he’s getting harder and harder against your hand and his movements are constantly seeking more. Fucking hell, you’re both fully clothed, his dicks rock hard in his pants but he’s so pent up on you and the desire you’ve caused that he’s chasing an orgasm basically untouched.

“I- oh fuck.”

“Come on baby,” you feed him, words moaned against his ear and hand flattening more purposefully against him, “fuck me harder.”

“Argh- fuc-fucking hell,” he’s spurred on by the illusion you offer. His eyes rolled back in his head as he imagines the feeling of being balls deep in you.

“Think how good I’d feel. Fuck, you’d be so deep uhh,” you moan out at the end as the harshness of the way his hips snap into yours causes your hand nestled between you to deliciously rub on your clit.

You hadn’t realised that your dress had ridden up in the commotion of you sex driven states, that your ass was pressed up against the cool surface and gave you goosebumps despite the way you body oozes heat, that you panties were so wrecked by your arousal that your hand might as well be rubbing you raw. And with Jungkook’s quickening pace, the friction against your clit makes you all too driven to seek your end as well as his. It’s filthy.

“Ko-uh. Fuck, Kook, I need you fingers- ah,” your walls are throbbing at the thought, but his teeth remain deep set in the junction between your neck and shoulder, his hips still thrusting up and into your hand, so you think you’re desire has gone unheard.

But all too quickly, he forgets the end he was chasing.

Suddenly, he backs away from you, leaving you untouched and leaning forward into the air, whilst his cock screams in the confines of his trousers. He growls at the way he had to stop himself from cumming too soon.

“Baby,” it’s a whine from the back of your throat that you had no plan to release. But the way your chest heaves and your thighs cross one another for friction just spells to you and him just how inflamed your body is.

His eyes move away from your desperate ones, and his neck reclines back as he swallows - trying with all his strength to keep it together, to not cum from merely watching your cleavage, drenched in his and your sweat, rise and fall with the way your breathing staggers. Watching him is torture for yourself, but you don’t want to miss the way his cock throbs.

You have no idea how long you’re there, him grappling at his sanity and you watching him.

“Baby, I-”

“Fuck, don’t talk,” his face almost contorts in pain and his head lowers into his chest to halt his urge to look at you.

But, you’re horny and you're a brat, so you persist.

“Jungkook, I need you right now.”

Silence falls for a mere second.

Like a man possessed he lunges back towards your body, and before you can react he’s on his knees violently pushing the thin fabric of your dress up and ripping your panties down your legs.

“What don’t you understand about shut the fuck up.” And with that he’s on your clit, hands shoving your legs in opposite directions and over his shoulders so you lose your balance and end up speared on his tongue.

“Kook!” It’s a cry that’s shouted into the air when your head is thrown back - a reaction to both the immense feeling that tightens at your core and a warning to the man below you that you might just crush him.

But he’s devouring your pussy whole. He’s no longer tending to your clit, but lapping his tongue up and down the entire expanse of your slit, letting the muscle of his tongue slip into your entrance making your stomach drop every time. He’s hellbent on making you cum that’s for sure, because no matter the tug of your hands at his scalp to let up even just a little, he’s growling into you and plunging deeper.

You want to pull away, to finally take a break from the intense pressure on your core or maybe to breathe for the first time since he decided to drop to his knees. But you’re feet don’t touch the ground, literally, and he’s suspending you on his tongue.

His hands push you down further onto him and he growls into you, vibrations coursing through you that almost makes you cum then and there. But he breaks away.

“Fuck,” he sounds fucked out himself, taking in all the air he can, because god knows he was eating your pussy like it was oxygen. “Baby, you gotta cum on my tongue, please.”

He was the one eating you out, yet you had him pleading. Boy always did submit in the end, whether he liked it or not.

“Fingers then. Use your fingers,” and he obeys, releasing your thigh in favour of thrusting two of his digits deep into you. All your weight goes onto his shoulders and the two fingers set so far into your womb that you were crying out in pleasure. It wasn’t until his mouth resumed sucking on your clit that you lost all control of your tongue and rambled into the air like a mad woman.

“F-Fuckkk Kook. I want ah- fuck I want your cum inside me. I want your dick so bad,” he’s moaning with you and with your words, being spurred on by the image you paint. He curls his fingers deep inside you, and you lose yourself on the feeling - being so stimulated that you miss the fact you’re grinding on his face, thrusting up as if his fingers were really his cock. He’s moaning at it, at the way your pace picks up on his tongue and you’re seeking your end.

“Don’t stop, oh fuck, oh fuck, please- don’t stop.”

You’re driving yourself deeper and deeper into him and fuckkk if the pleasure hasn’t taken over your senses beyond belief. Your stomach pulls so tight with the need to release that you’re grappling at the strands of hair on the back of your boyfriend’s head and using them to anchor yourself. He’s purely a mouth and two fingers to fuck yourself on at this moment and you couldn’t stop yourself even if you tried.

“Shit, fuckk,” his fingers start going at a rate, not even your hips can keep up with, and he’s so deep you almost choke like the pressure inside you has reached up into your throat.

“Come on baby, fuck,” his gravelly voice seeks out for you to come all over him.

“Holy fuckin-” the feeling comes on so intense inside of you that you struggle to warn him, your breathing constricted almost into nothingness. You feel like you’re about to cum with such strength that you might die.

“I can’t Kook- oh fuckk.”

“Give it to me.”

His teeth clamp down on your clit at the same time as his fingers curl against that spot inside you that suddenly has everything spiralling at once.

“Don’t stoppp, don’t stop, oh fuck,” you sputter into the air as a band snaps in your lower stomach, blood pumping everywhere and anywhere in your body so that your hips begin spasming and convulsing on top of his mouth.

He whines into you as his mouth keep fastening all too strongly against your bud. It’s when the pressure that keeps falling in your stomach and Kook is forced to pull his fingers out of you that you feel your juices spill and keep spilling all over you and him.

“Holy fuck baby… Y/N shit.”

You tumble further and further and miss the noises that are pushed from your throat. In the intensity of the pleasure you also miss the way Jungkook’s body, his tongue on your clit, his fingers on your thigh and the ones lodged deep inside you, all tense up.

Shit.

You wonder if you’ve blacked out when the slump of your body takes over, the eventual air you take in in one large breath making your senses begin to come back all too strong. You’re broken from the waist down, legs numb to the point you can barely feel Jungkook’s teeth tight on your thigh and breath glazing the skin strongly. Shit, you can’t even feel how wet you are yet.

You know the weight he’s bearing on his shoulders, but you can’t muster the strength to move, merely loosening your hands from how tight they were wound in his locks and instead soothing down to his neck with your trembling fingers.

Finally, the spin in your head stops and your eyes are open enough so that you can look down at the sight below you.

He’s breathless and wet. Wet from sweat and the way you’d just squirted all over his tongue, fingers and trousers - well that’s what you figure anyways. His eyes are sewn shut though in the aftermath of it all, and your thoughts begin to piece together.

“Baby, you good?” you’re scared he has too much literal weight on his shoulders. You’re also scared he’s still painfully hard. “Kook?” and finally a coherent mumble of ‘yeh’ against your thigh tells you, no, you didn’t just kill your boyfriend by cumming on his face.

It’s a slow process the way he lets your legs down, and you wince as he does so because you swear his fingers just split you open. You also forgot about the heels practically taped to your feet, stumbling a little one foot at a time as he lowers you off his shoulders.

His eyelids still hang low, and he makes no move to join you at eye level, instead, pressing his face into your thigh and running his ragged breath there for too long.

“Fuck, seriously, you good baby?” your pussy still throbs, but your boyfriend is too still for you to take notice.

And suddenly he’s laughing. Wholeheartedly laughing into your skin, back, that’s slicked with sweat, raising up and down as he does so.

“Shit,” is all he says when his eyes, crinkled in laughter and exhaustion finally meet yours, peering up from his squat. It’s infectious and has you laughing too, albeit half heartedly because your throat hurts and you’re not sure if your lungs can take much more unnatural breathing.

“You literally just made me cum in my pants.”

Fuck. You’re eyes bulge and pass between the look of disbelief of his face, to the, now, very noticeable stain on his crotch, and back again. Boy literally just came untouched because you can still feel the imprint of one hand on your thigh and you’re pretty sure the other hand was occupied if you remember correctly.

“What the fuck!” Is all you can say.

“Yeh, I know ‘what the fuck!’ Sorry but since when could you squirt.” His legs are still shaking beneath him. “It made me just fucking shoot my load on sight.”

You’re laughing, bending at the waist to help the poor boy up to his feet, and he accepts the help as he finally towers over you and meets your eyes - both looking at each other with warmth and a vague emotion of disbelief, because as if he just came in his pants!

“Seriously, don’t know what the hell you just did to me, but I don’t think I’ll ever be that turned on ever in my life again,” he’s sputtering out now like a boy charged on drained hormones and ageing drunkness.

You laugh at his state and the way his eyes still bulge, grabbing the skin of his neck that’s thick with sweat and push a kiss to his lips. It doesn’t linger because you’re too spent and oxygen is like gold dust to you right now.

“So you enjoyed yourself I’m guessing?”

“Fucking hell did I!” You both can’t stop the way your laughter spills at the situation.

You see his shoulders eventually relax, his breathing less frequent and the look in his eyes turns soft.

“Fuck, I’m so in love with you.” Despite your heart still beating like it’s on steroids, you feel it skip a beat, equal to the way you can’t help the tug on the corners of your mouth.

“Cringy bastard,” you whisper next to his lips, a whole new warmth spreading through you at the way his eyes are filled with adoration.

“Only for you.”

“You make me sick.” But in your head, you’re saying the opposite, because you can’t fight the blush despite how generic his cringe worthy compliments hit.

With clothes vaguely realigned, you’re ready to join society once again, albeit hobbling, but your boyfriend refuses to break the bubble you’re in for just a second longer.

“Say it back.” And when you turn from the door to him, he’s actually pouting, eyes a little less bright as though you’re unspoken words have hit harder than you realised. “Please.”

Your relationship with Kook was built off backhanded compliments and competitive sarcasm, both equally easy-going people with a knack for not taking anything seriously. It was how you two worked. But there’s some things you can’t feign, and the way he said “I love you” with deliberate sadness was one of those things, because hell, you sure loved him too.

His cheeks nestled in both of your palms now as your soft eyes met his ones, vulnerable with the way he’d bared himself and pleaded after you, you spoke softly.

“I love you.”

---------------------------------------------------------

“Fuck you, Kook. Stop acting like you own me.”

“Then don’t try to sleep with the whole swim team.”

Dick.

This shit is rare. Fighting Jungkook is rare. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen. Because whilst you’re both too easy going for your own good and take most things on the chin, jealousy hurts like a bitch.

“Jesus you’re fucking testing my patience.” You settle yourself deep in his kitchen, long strides over there because his presence alone is making you want to rip hairs out of your skull. But he’s there soon after, leaning to try to get into your line of sight as you busy yourself with a glass and fuck, where’s that bottle of wine.

“Nah, don’t act like I’m pushing you. I asked you why Jimin’s asking to meet you, and you can’t come up with a damn straight answer or show me your phone.” You find the wine in the fridge, pretending Jungkook is background noise like the petty bitch you are, but his words are ringing in your head louder than you care for. “Don’t treat me like I’m delusional.”

You slam the bottle down a little too hard on the counter and his eyes jump to the sound. But your expression is dead set, angry, persistent, but he’d say stubborn.

“You’re actually dumb. The whole fucking issue is that I shouldn’t have to tell you why someone texts me or not.” His mouth opens to argue but you’re off on one, “Whether it’s Jimin, whether it’s my mum, whether it was your fucking maintenance guy, it’s my phone, don’t check it, and don’t pretend you’re entitled to.”

His eyes narrow and you almost think there’s something in him contemplating your words, maybe, just maybe trying to hear you out and understand where you’re coming from. But if you were stubborn, then Jungkook was competitive - he wouldn't stop until you thought he was right.

“Why the fuck did he text you.”

You want to scream. You want to smash his glass against the floor and scream fucking murder. But instead you find your body tensing and you face heating up with the need to cry. He’s getting in your head and you hate it, because he’s never like this. He’s easy. He’s such good company and probably your best friend but why is he making it so hard to like, let alone love him right now.

“Fuck it. Here,” you fish in your pocket, eyes still on his despite the feeling of them heating up and the wetness pooling. You unlock your phone and push it to his chest. “God knows, we were just trying to arrange something for your birthday without you finding out, but you and your fucking jealousy can’t take that, can they Kook?”

You have so much more to say. Your head is spinning with the need to empty your gut of all the words you want to throw at him. About how jealousy is certainly not a virtue in this case, about how you can’t bear that he doesn’t trust you despite all you’ve given up for him, about how damn unfair he is being right now. But you hit his shoulder with yours and are half walking half running to his bathroom before you can contemplate what you’re doing.

“Y/N, fuck,” and of course now he’s apologetic. Calling after you in a tone that screams innocence but to you, he is anything but that right now.

You close the door with haste and push your back against it even faster.

The worst part is you’re not even that angry anymore. The tears fall in sadness.

“Baby,” his knock rattles the door but only gently in an attempt to be sensitive with you. He’s fucked up and he knows that, but there’s a combination of not wanting him to see you cry and the need to be away from him for a minute that has you still sitting by the door, not making any attempt to open it.

“Baby, I didn’t know- I wouldn’t have.”

“Jungkook can you give it a rest for one minute,” you sound pained. You feel it as well. Maybe you’re overreacting, you think, as you hear him sigh and mumble an ‘okay’ before his footsteps peter out into another room.

You cry more and continue to do so as you begin to run the bath, and then more tears flow when you watch yourself in the mirror as you tug at your stained cheeks with a cloth. Your tears are still wet on your cheeks when you lower yourself into the warm water and become absorbed in the feeling of it, melting away until you fall into the slumber of sleep. It’s the same slumber that doesn’t cause you to be startled when the door creaks open, your boyfriend pausing to take in your state before he strips himself down to join you.

You know he’s there when he gently sinks into the water behind you, but you make no attempt to move out of the way his knees encase you. His touch is apprehensive and careful, and you can practically hear the thoughts in his head move at a thousand miles an hour.

You know Jungkook. You know all too well that right now, he’s cut up inside, thinking of every way possible to take back time and to undo the stupid shit he was spouting earlier. He’s thinking about how fucked up he was to let jealousy do that to him, to get the better of his, and he’s thinking of every which way to make it right to you. You know, because you’re the same. We’re all in the wrong at some point, and everyone is more than the worst thing they’ve ever done.

So you grab at his hands that still hover in the air with unspoken uncertainty and you pull them to yourself, tight, and on your neck there is a desperate sigh of relief.

“I’m so sorry,” his tone is so apologetic you almost start crying all over again, but exhaustion and the need to forgive are all too strong. “Y/N, I’m so sorry, I-”

You know there are more words he wants to say, maybe to show you how bad he feels, maybe he’ll try and justify himself, but either way, you’re pushover ass forgave him before the argument even happened. You also simply like the boy too goddamn much to see him splutter in your neck because he’s scared he’ll lose you.

With your lips pressed to the back of his hands that you’ve encased in yours, you mutter, “Shhh, I know you are.”

The water sloshes in the distance somewhere as he pulls you tighter to him like you’re an anchor and if he lets you go he’ll be lost. Kisses are placed down your neck gently and you let your eyes flutter shut again because you can’t lie in that he is the most comforting place to you right now.

Silence falls but not uncomfortably, fingers brushing skin like its china and breathing soft as you both give into each others touch.

“I don’t know what I ever did to deserve you.”

Maybe you are too forgiving Your mother always told you you were - ‘people won’t be so kind to your patience one day Y/N.’ - that’s what she’d told you. And she’s probably right that one day you’ll come to find that you’ve been used and abused for all the ‘it's okay’s’ and ‘I forgive you’s’ you’d uttered. But you didn’t use forgiveness as an easy way out, you used it when it was deserved. And Jungkook’s jealousy, whilst fucking annoying, was a human instinct - possibly more of a male instinct than female, you think - but it’s a natural reaction all the same. Compromise instead of conclusion.

“You have to start trusting me, you know.”

“I know,” a hasty response, maybe because he actually has realised he needs to trust you or maybe he just doesn’t want to prolong discussion. You hope and believe the first,

“You can’t keep this jealousy thing up. Particularly not with Jimin, I don’t want to be the reason your shit is ruined, it’s too good.”

The two of them best friends from the womb. But boys apparently will be boys and think any dick that goes near their girlfriend is aiming for one place and one place only, whether 21 years into friendship or not.

“I know.” The repeat of words makes you think he’s not listening to you, but then he sighs. “It’s just- I can’t- Fuck! He drives me up the wall, says all kinds of shit behind your back and mine about how fit you are because he knows it grills me.” This is new. “And then he sends you texts when I didn’t even know you had each others number and you won’t tell me what they are. It just fucked with my head and when you end up picturing the worst it’s hard to get that picture out of your head.”

It made sense, and he was getting angry with himself by the way his tone spiked, so you diffuse the tension.

“Hmm but if you weren’t so jealous your birthday wouldn’t have been ruined,” you feel his head slump and then he laughs, and you laugh, and then he’s squeezing you and forcing your eyes to his.

“You make me mental that’s why,” you’re close but he makes no move to kiss you, “and I’m sorry that I got like that when I had no reason to do so. I’ll change that I promise,” he sounded sincere, looked sincere, and you’re a sucker for the way he’s naked and so close his breath hits your smile that you’re kissing him before you can feign trust.

-------------------------------------------------------------

“You know you almost got me in big shit the other day,” the bell rings above your head as you and Jimin leave the cold in favour of the warmth of the bar. Thursday nights didn’t call for many people, so you found a seat easily at a booth, casual wear on and smile dancing across that idiots face.

“Kook told me.” Of course he did, “As if he got his dick caught between his legs because I sent you a text. Like does he really think I’d shag you.”

You scoff, “Cheers for that.”

“You know what I mean. If I got the chance I’d fucking take it, but Kook’s my brother,” and to be fair you did know what he meant. In fact it was a miracle Jungkook had been all calm and breezy when you’d told him you were meeting Jimin for drinks - maybe it was this new thing he was trying called ‘play it cool and let her do her own thing’ - even so, you liked it.

You end up ordering beers, after all, it is only a Thursday so that means no hard spirits, but it’s also the afternoon so that means alcohol.

“I’m glad to hear you’re not gonna pounce Jim.” He laughs, you laugh, thank god, because ever since you and Jungkook had shouted about the texting and Jimin issue, you were scared you’d have to keep a distance from the boy to prevent awkwardness. “How you been anyways?”

“Is that another way of saying who’ve I fucked since we last spoke,” his eyebrows wiggle like he’s got something to be proud about.

“Jesus, you only do think with your dick don’t you?”

“Come onn, ask me who I took home the other night,” he’s leaning forward with a smile that you want to smother, but you humour him for the sake of conversation.

“Which unlucky bird shared your bed the other night then?” You say it with a downward tone to express your distaste for the way your conversation has headed. You also nod a thank you to the waiter who’d brought beers over, pint on either side of the table.

“Well, maybe you should ask your roommate.”

Beer must fly out of your nose, mouth and ears with the way you choke. Literally, you’re spluttering everywhere and he’s laughing and you’re sure it’s a sick joke, but his smile says otherwise.

“She’s fucking gay!” That’s all you come up with. You know your roommate like the back of your hand, or so you think, and every part of you is wracking every part of your brain right now for some conversation where she said she’d shag Jimin, or shag a guy in fact. Nope, nothing.

“I thought so too, clearly she didn’t.” You’re angry at him by the way you scoff and take another long sip of your beer but you don’t even know why. Maybe you’re angry at her, but that also kind of feels invalid.

“As if she didn’t tell me.” He just shrugs. “... nah what the fuck man!”

“Listen, talk to her about it. I’m pretty sure I was mad drunk, so was she, and she left before I woke up so…” The last bit sounds about right, Mia was never one for sticking around for morning cuddles, but it’s all just wrong and it’s stewing in your head like a bad memory.

You're still questioning your entire existence it seems like when the conversation moves onto why you’re really here, or as Jimin says it, “So if the fucker knows we’re doing something for his birthday now, does that mean we actually have to do it?”

God, he’s hard to talk to. You find yourself for half your conversations with Jimin either saying ‘fuck off’ or your scoffing. You do the latter now.

“We were doing something anyway, don’t act like you don’t care. But yeh, he knows, so why don’t we just fucking put in money for alcohol and bud and hit up the beach or something at Hobi’s. Simples.”

Jimin downs his pint - it’s a Thursday and you don’t know why - and then nods, “Yeh, sounds like I can fuck with that. But let’s tell Taehyung cos he’s rich and loves weed more than the next person.”

----------------------------------------------------------

Like hell was there booze and weed. Taehyung had done the most, with Namjoon, and there was enough for 200 people to get fucked 10 times over, which with the 70 people that were apparently already at the beach, seemed like a mass death wish.

Hoseok, poor Hoseok, was hosting. You’d asked and he’d accepted like the selfless man he is and also because he loves Jungkook like a mother loves her child. It wasn’t his uni place, but his parent's beach house on the part of the coast where the beach stretched 20 yards deep and the water felt like the arctic on your skin, but even so, the parties out there were sick.

You can just tell by the boyish grin on your boyfriends face he knows exactly the way this route takes you, the taxi driver, however, keeps giving you evils through the mirror probably because this journey is long and you’re not even on a real road at this point. But the vodka already in your system means you don’t care and you hold Jungkook’s hand in full-fledged excitement.

You swear you’re not corny.

He keeps his hand in yours even when you pay the driver, and tightens it further when everyone around the back of the cabin rings out in a chorus of ‘surprise’. He even holds your hand when he’s handed both a beer and a joint, somehow juggling them both in his free one.

Somewhere along the line between sharing conversations and drinking yourself silly, he whispers a ‘thank you’ in your ear, and presses a grateful kiss onto your lips.

The sun had been low for a while, with the expanded horizon offering the perfect view to watch it set.

Still not corny, you promise.

But the smoke flowing through your system and the light hum of alcohol to accompany it just doesn’t allow for you to leave his side. Even through conversation after conversation, ‘happy birthday’ handshakes that made him switch which hand he was holding you with just so he didn’t let go, and even when the boys attempted a birthday bumps, you were there, glued tight.

“Fuck it, I wanna skinny dip!” Oh Jimin, oh that poor poor boy and his utterly delusional brain.

“Mate, that’s the high talking, leave it out.” You’re glad your boyfriend speaks sense when intoxicated because Tae’s there behind him clapping his back, encouraging him.

“Jim, legit 5 degrees right now, your dick’ll fall off if you go anywhere close to the sea.” And Namjoon, also ever with the straight head. Ah, you say that, but when you turn to the geez he chucks the small end of a lit blunt in his mouth and then swallows it down with beer - I guess his head will be going sideways now, in T-minus 5 seconds.

“You guys are pussys, my dick’ll just shrivel a bit…”

“Fucking rancid, don’t wanna hear it.” Throwing your half empty beer can also seems to do the trick of shutting him up about his dick as he hangs his jaw that’s dripping with beer, warm from being half finished.

“Bitch.”

“Oi! None of that, Park.” Jungkook’s tone is serious but he’s smiling all the same, content in the setting he’s in, not despite of but because of the deluded conversation, the weird dynamic you guys all have, the way he’s just himself, and the fact you’re there too, with a vice grip on his hand.

It’s all breathy laughs and the occasional pressing of lips on your neck from where you’re sat on your boyfriend’s lap, as the conversation delves from somewhere between Jimin’s sex life (surprise surprise) to what Hoseok would look like on steroids - the mutual group decision, so, so, wrong.

“Baby, I wanna get going.”

“Hm?” You were caught in laughter and didn’t think you heard him right, so you turn in his lap to throw an arm around his shoulder, all eyes and ears for your man.

“I kind of wanna get going home.”

You’re surprised, looking through the glaze in his eyes to see if he’s too stoned or not having a good time, but you just see him content gaze, boring adoration into yours. Leaving now would also make you the first to leave, and it was his party.

“You wanna go like right now, right now?”

“Mmm,” and there’s something you can't pinpoint in his expression, apprehension maybe.

“Okay, should I be worried? You’re good right?”

And his head drops to make you think ‘shit’, but then he’s laughing, shoulders shaking under your tense arms before he grabs at your face and places a kiss on either cheek. The blush creeps up on you before you can hide your face in his shoulder.

“I’m fine, so good.” It’s almost a shout of a confession as he throws his head back to demonstrate the emotion behind the words, but the way his smile lifts to his eyes tells you all you need to know. You’re still not quite getting why the happy boy you’re perching on wants to ditch his own surprise party, but each to their own, you think.

“Okay? You’re sure you don’t want to stay?”

Affirming you’re correct with a head shake, he leans in once again, squeezing at your sides ungraciously tight before smashing his lips to yours in a rough, open mouthed kiss that is neither something you were ready for or something you’re about to do with Jimin and Namjoon next to you.

So, you’re both laughing, him attempting to plaster his lips to your face and you swatting as his arm that fixes you in place to him.

“Kook fu- baby,” you begin to scramble away and he lets you, laughing out at the way you flatten your hair and fumble at you jeans as a means to compose yourself, “Time and a place, you dick.”

Stares and smiles are all you give each other as the ambient sounds of others continue around you. It’s like that with him - the world keeps buzzing around you but you’re not in that world, you’re somewhere too deep in his.

Please believe me, you’re not cringy!

“Come back,” hand out, legs spread wide to make room for you and you cannot help the way your feet appease his every word.

You’re eyes down on him, and his up at you, blown full with love, lust and everything in between and you settle in the warmth of his proximity and in the heat of his gaze.

“I love you.”

So you kiss him, because, “I love you too Kook.”

“Now order that fucking taxi, I wanted to go all of two hours ago.” And there he is, earning himself another smack to the arm.

“You bastard, you’re lucky I’m whipped.”

“Yeh you fucking are Y/N!” Jimin can suck a dick, the wanker. Throwing a final middle finger up to the offending boy and holding the other hand out for your boyfriend, you get onto the route home.

Silence is not always a bad thing. You’d told yourself that the whole way home. You especially knew how car journeys when inconceivably high and drunk could make the head spin and the voice mute, but neither of you were inconceivably high or drunk. His hand was still there on yours from beach to taxi, taxi to apartment, apartment to bedroom, but the smile was gone.

“Baby, what’s wrong, talk to me.”

“Mmm?” Playing it off, yet he still won’t look at you - the boy never could do confrontation or telling you what he wants.

He’s across the room, carrying the tea he’d made you to your side of the bed when you told him you’d felt a headache coming on. And you’re there just watching, the moping, the shrug and the way he now stops as you reach out your hand to tug at his shirt.

“Oi, look at me.” Eventually, and what looks like with effort, he does. “You gonna talk to me now, or what?” And you begin to worry at the way his gaze digs into your face, eyes pouring emotion that is scattered in so many different directions you can’t keep up. Is he sad? Nervous? Why would he be nervous?

“I love you.” There’s more to be said just in the way those three words come out, and it scares you.

“Okayy…”

“Like I really love you. So much sometimes I don’t know what I’m doing with you.”

“Koo-” He grabs at your neck and finally takes control of his voice, no longer apprehensive and filled with mixed signals, but so affirmative that it takes every word from your mouth.

“You’ve waited for me Y/N. So fucking long. I’ve been shit to you as well recently. I just can’t fathom that you’re here and you’re mine and it fucking scares me, you have to get that.” Eyes well on both his and your side, as words unspoken, are finally spilt. Maybe it’s the occasion or the alcohol but you don’t care. “Everything about you is everything I ever want and what happens if I fuck it up and lose it. I can’t lose you.”

“I can’t lose you.” It’s a mantra spoken by him on so many occasions, like if he says it, it’ll never happen.

“And what if I feel the same, Kook.” Forehead to forehead now and so deep into the caverns of his eyes, you’d give him your whole soul if he asked.

“You do?.. Feel the same?” You’re sure he knows you do. You’re sure he hasn’t been deaf to the thousands of ‘I love you’s’ and wholehearted confessions made by you. But he’s fragile to the extent that he needs to hear it. Needs to hear you say that you’re willing to lose everything here.

In a passing breath you whisper your confession, “yes,” and he squeezes at the hairs at the back of your neck that stand on end with every goosebump in your body.

The tears fall just as he puts his lips to yours and oxygen becomes gold dust with the way you’re so breath taken. But it’s the happy kind of breath taken, that feeling right before christmas as a kid when you know everything’s waiting for you on the other side of sleep, that feeling where the sinking dries up in your stomach and every fibre of you body buzzes uncontrollably, the kind of breath taken where you smile and laugh in full-fledged giddiness.

Pulling away, you do just that, laugh against his mouth, smile without thought, and despite the tears that drip onto your lips you keep kissing at him, peck after peck because he’s laughing and crying with you.

Fuck, this was the moment you were converted to cringe. You didn’t give two shits about it either.

“I thought you were about to fucking break up with me, you absolute knob!” He thumb scoops up the tears as he laughs at you, sniffling to himself in the emotion of the moment that you two were still somewhere swept up in.

“You’re an idiot.”

“Maybe.”

Before the last tear is swept away at the motion of his thumb on your cheek, Kook ducks down and sweeps you up, over his shoulder and then with a not so forgiving thump to your back, you hit the bed - looks like he forgot his bed was made of fucking rocks, great for sex though, no squeak. And suddenly it dawns on you as hard as you just hit that mattress. That look in his eyes, now, earlier at the beach, the entire strung out fucking monologue he just gave you. All in the name of sex.

“Can we- you want to- do it.”

Fuck, it’s actually happening.

You suppress the butterflies with a laugh that surfaces from the way he stutters.

“Well, what the fuck dyou want me to say. We’ve waited 5 months and you want me to just say, ‘oi Y/N, let me fuck you’.”

But the laughing doesn’t seize.

“I’m sure fucking not saying I want to make love to you, because imagine that gettin relayed to the boys. Instantly my dick goes from a 7 on hard to a 5.”

“Aw babe, give yourself credit, you’re at least a 5 and a half.”

“Bitch.”

And with that he presses his full weight into you, smiling into the kiss that sucks deep into your lips, harsh but tender in all the right places. It turns you on the way he goes slow with you, maps outlines on your skin with his touches, and it makes you even hornier when his boner slowly grows into the meat of your thigh.

It’s a moan in response to him biting your lip that has him off you and flipping the position so you straddle him. But tight jeans don’t accommodate for being on top, the fucking inconvenient bitch, so it’s with the slow teasing pace, that he seems to be going for, that you take as the jeans come off.

“Fuck,” is whispered somewhere between you purchasing yourself right on his crotch and the way you raise you crop top over naked breasts.

This is not uncharted territory. The two of you aren’t nuns who have abstained from everything and anything in your relationship. No, you’re far from holy. But the way your boyfriend gapes, eyes blown and breathing sharp, he’s like a virgin on steroids.

When you lean into his body, claiming his lips once again you notice the shaking, the way his body uncontrollable shivers underneath you despite the perspiration that soaks through his shirt.

“Baby, you’re shaking,” you whisper into his mouth, and he simply nods a frantic ‘yes’ against you. “Kook, calm down, relax, baby,” and after grasping gently at his chin to pry his lips off yours, you find his gaze, eyes blown in lust and fear.

“Okay? I’m all yours,” you take his hand and lead it to your breast, then ushering it towards the steady beat of your heart, felt beneath trembling fingertips. “All yours.”

Running your hands over the tension in his biceps, you attempt to put him at ease with the roll of your hips. His bulge hadn’t gone unnoticed for a second and it was perfectly place with the tip resting on your clit, that you could probably both go to town like that - who said romance was dead!

“Fuck Y/N.”

“There you go,” you push him on, sucking into the rift between his neck and his shoulders and strong arms now scoop over and round to your ass. The squeeze is convincing, hard enough that you don’t fight back the moan and hard enough that your hips move that little bit harsher.

Breaths are heavy in your ear as you find yourself slipping deeper into the pleasure of the moment, but you know he’ll never take the initiative and make the first move.

“You’re so hard Kook.”

A groan in all he responds as you hit that spot just on his tip that he loves so much.

“I want you so bad.”

“Fuck, me too,” and desperation for more than the slow grind you opted for overcomes him. Lips latch onto yours in a harsh display as he flips you once again.

You can’t help but smirk to yourself, pure filthy excitement taking over the fibres of your body as he stares down at you now, hungry and horny.

“Fuck, I’ve wanted this so bad for so long Y/N you have no idea.”

“Off,” and he gets the message with how his shirt is off and somewhere across the room without his dick leaving its place nestled in your crotch.

“I’ve been dying to have you, all of you.” His teeth are clawing at the skin of your neck as he pants out his dirty confession to the rhythm of his hips.

“You’ve been dying to fuck me, Kook?” It’s a teasing tone, but there’s no hiding the breathiness behind your voice.

“Fuck yeh.”

“Then go ahead and fuck me.”

When his gaze meets yours, his eyes are wide and disbelieving. But you’re more focused on the stain of his lips from sunken teeth and the way his hair sticks to his face from sweat. You also haven’t failed to miss the bare, toned torso pressed neatly onto your chest - abs to die for and v lines that leave the eyes wandering an unholy amount of southward.

“You want me to go in raw?” You feign laughter at how giddy he looks at the prospect.

“Birth controls a saint innit.”

“Fuck, I’m scared I’ll come in two seconds.” Great turn on. You think, you don’t say.

His trousers are off fast but when it comes to your panties, he’s calculated in the way he lowers himself to eyes level with your core, breathing haphazardly in his lust induced state into the material that he proceeds to run down the length of your leg and off at your feet.

Eyes trail up your body as he crawls his way back to your now exposed core, “Jesus, you’re so sexy.”

“Jungkook! What would God say if he heard you talk about his son that way!”

His head literally drops and he groans, as if the turn off button hadn’t already been switched when he told you he’d blow his load as soon as dick met pussy.

“I literally have no words Y/N.”

“Well, you better put that mouth to better use then baby.”

“Bitch.”

But his tongue is darted out and into your folds, no matter the reluctance, and he soon finds that same taste, bitter and sweet all at once that draws him in every fucking time.

“Fuck Kook.” The reaction is instant, spine arched away from the mattress as his tongue sets to work inside you, darting in and out so fast that your hips couldn’t keep up if they tried. It’s when he flattens it against your clit and the hand once pinning down a thigh pushes two fingers in so fucking deep that the moans spill.

“Shit that’s tight,” he mutters to himself more than anyone as his delving fingers reach that spot that has you stringing his name and curses into an aimless sentence. And the scene below you is even hotter than the feeling at your core, Jungkook, nestled between your legs with lips to clit, hand to pussy, and hips rutting desperately into the mattress. He’s a whole fucking view and it has you keening with your hands rooted in his hair that are telling him wordlessly not to let up.

When his eyes meet yours, you knows its game over, smirk overtaking his features as his fingers piston and fuck you open, thumb taking over the role his lips had on your clit just so he gets to watch you fall apart under him.

“That’s it baby, cum for me.”

“Holy fuc- shitt. Jungkook.” And your moans are the hottest things he’s ever heard as you tumble into a hell of a fucking orgasm. Shocks ripple through your body with the rate of his fingers and everything pulses as you cum, and keep fucking cumming.

Kook can barely help the way his cock seeks better friction against the mattress because of the bliss written on your face. And he almost forgets to let up on the frantic way his fingers still fuck you because your glistening chest lifting up and down in the light has his focus completely elsewhere.

“Kook, I can’t.”

“Sorry baby,” he lets up with one final kiss to your clit, the jolt of pain and pleasure causing you to whine briefly. His cock twitches at the sound.

“Y/N I’m so hard, please.”

You drag him up with the hand still woven deep in his locks so he’s eye level, and dick level with the place he wants it most. Wordlessly and still driven by the buzz from your orgasm, your hand guides him into you and fuck if the moan against your mouth isn’t the best thing you’ve ever heard.

“Holy fuck.” Nestling his head into the crook of your neck with deep breaths to accompany it, you can tell he’s trying to hold back the feeling of his balls tightening and ignore the way you still pulse from your orgasm. It’s tight and it’s so fucking bare because he’s never gone raw before. Fuck, neither of you have had sex in six months so the feeling might just make you both combust on the spot.

“Slowly baby, it’s been a while.” You’d known he’d reach your stomach just from the way he fucked your throat every other day - his girth is nothing far from impressive and it’s stretching you without even moving.

Light kisses press their way from neck to jaw to mouth as he pulls out to the hilt and then back in, slowly, tantalising slowly so that you both moan into the other's mouths, breathy and completely consumed by the feeling of each other.

“Fuck I’m never gonna get enough of this now.”

“Mmm,” you really hoped he wouldn’t.

“God I love you so much, your pussy is actual heaven.” And you hate to say the way the praise goes straight to your core, but your boyfriend can most certainly tell from the clench you hold his dick in. “Fuckkk, so good.”

It’s slow and it’s deep and he’s hitting your g-spot and clit with every roll of his hips. Throughout the murmurs of affection and sex filled admissions, you grasp at each other's skin, his hands pulling your hair so your mouth meets his and your hands across the muscles in his back that flex under your fingers with each thrust.

It’s when he drags one hand to your throat and grips at it to balance his sped-up movements that you’re finding yourself teetering towards the edge again, spilling words never spoken and sounds never heard but he’s saving every one of them to memory.

“Faster baby please,” and he obliges instantly as he dives into you hard and fast, “babyy oh shit.”

“Y/N you’re clenching so fucking hard right now,” but he’s left you breathless to the point of no reply.

Several punishing slams that also attack your clit have eyes rolling and you biting down into his shoulder, suppressing the scream that surfaced without your consent.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck, I’m gonna cum.” He keeps pounding away, forcing you deeper and deeper into a spiral of pleasure, until his lips are on yours and he ruts a final few times, grunting and moaning into your mouth. “So good, so good,” and he repeats this until he’s still above you and finally the hand wound into your neck lessens it’s pressure so the throb in your body and up to your head dies into a tingle.

It’s the most content and blissful silence, post orgasm, wrapped in the warm and wet body of your boyfriend. That is until he begins mumbling inconceivable words into the shoulder he decided to rest on.

“What baby?”

“I said,” lifting himself to eye level, and he’s a fucking sight for sore eyes. “Worth the fucking wait.”

And with a tired, fucked out smile, light kiss to his lips, you can most certainly agree.

Worth the fucking wait.

#jeon jungkook #jungkook #BTS jungkook #bts #bts smut #bts one shot #jungkook one shot #jungkook smut #BTS au #jeon jungguk #jungkook drabble #bts jeongkook #jungkook things

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rrrawrf-writes · 4 years ago

Text

retirement

this is for @gingerly-writing. it was supposed to be for her birthday. then i didn’t write anything for six months. but now here we are.

---

“If you’d wanted me to attend your party, you could have just sent an invitation.”

Suijade looked up, a bit startled, and then stood abruptly, his chair scooting back, as Gloria Delgado smiled at him. For a woman in her eighties, she looked elegant - and recognizable as none other than Morning Glory. She didn’t have to wear a suit. A long, slim white silk dress with the unmistakable prints of cherry blossoms and the creeping, flowering vine that gave her her alias, wrapped around a body that should have belonged to a younger woman.

A much younger woman. Gloria may have had laugh lines and crow’s feet, but she looked like she hadn’t aged past her forties.

Suijade instinctively reached out to his ropes, but stopped himself, as Gloria simply smiled at him. He hadn’t seen her in person in years. Very few people had. Her brown skin was a beautiful contrast against her straight, snow-white hair, cut in a bob that curved slightly around her face. Suijade stood in front of superhero royalty, and all that Gloria was missing was the crown.

“Please, don’t let me make you stand,” she said warmly, pulling out a chair across from him and taking a seat. She smiled and gestured towards his chair, as if this were her party. “Sit.”

Suijade sat.

Her brown eyes regarded him with a hidden laugh; her voice was warm and honey smooth as she spoke. “This is a wonderful event. And I quite appreciate the cause - a charity ball for the conservation of local wildlife. Tell me,” she drew one of the still-full winegasses from Suijade’s side of the table to hers, and took a sip; he resisted the urge to tell her that it was for his fiance. “Did you arrange this for the irony, or was that a happy coincidence?”

Suijade finally found his voice. “It’s rather brave of you to come here alone, Mrs. Delgado.”

She smiled at him over the rim of her glass. “As I said,” she pointed out, “you wanted me to come.”

“I would have preferred different circumstances,” Suijade admitted. He doubted he would see them, but he looked out over the crowd for any sign of the people he’d sent to fetch Gloria in the first place. His table was one of several on a balcony overlooking the celebration; it was otherwise empty, as the people in the hall below them chatted, danced, and ate their fill.

“Then you should have come yourself, Lariat,” Gloria chided. “I’m sure the end result would have been very different.”

If Gloria had been sixty years younger, Suijade suspected she would have rolled her eyes. The sarcasm still carried without the gesture, and he took a bit larger of a drink than he really should have.

“I believe that the end result will turn in my favor, now that you’re here,” Suijade said. “I appreciate how much easier you’ve made this for me.”

Gloria let out a soft chuckle, and propped her chin in her hand. “Oh, no, darling, it’s rather the other way around. You see, you’re trapped.”

Suijade arched his eyebrows. “Pardon?”

Gloria’s smile grew a touch wider. “You’re trapped,” she repeated, and gestured around them with her glass of wine. “By societal convention.”

“Please explain.”

Gloria gave him a warm look, took another sip, then set down her glass and straightened. “Everyone,” she said, “knows who I am. And those here who don’t recognize me yet, will soon. It’s rather expected for heroes - even retired ones - to kick up a fuss at these events. Though,” she added, “I really would prefer not to. I haven’t been invited to much of anything for years, and this is quite enjoyable.”

“I would prefer not to have a fuss at my party, either,” Sujiade said dryly. “Mrs. Delgado, you seem to have quite the monologue prepared.”

“Please be patient with me, my dear,” Gloria said. “As I said, I haven’t been out and about in years.”

Suijade couldn’t help a smile, and he tipped his glass towards her. “Well, then, please continue. I would hate to curtail your enjoyment.”

Giving him a maternal smile, Gloria reached across the table and warmly patted his hand. “Thank you, darling. I have no need to hide my identity, or my powers. You, however, cannot make a scene without revealing yours.”

That was true. Suijade observed her over the rim of his glass, straight-faced. “I have been known for my subtlety, Mrs. Delgado.”

“I am aware.” Gloria glanced around the room. “But it is a touch more difficult to hide ropes at such an event as this, isn’t it? Let’s see - you have the curtains, of course,” she waved her hands towards the fabric pulled back from the high arching windows. Suijade had, indeed, added ropes to hold them back, as much aesthetic decoration as a potential weapon; more ropes hung behind them. “If I were here to cause a fuss,” Gloria continued, “I would also suspect the vents in the room, and the high ceilings. I’ve had to use those hiding places for my own purposes, before.”

“You’re very observant.”

“I’m very old,” Gloria corrected with a smile, “and I’ve seen every trick in the book, Lariat. Even yours.”

Suijade gestured to the one server waiting on the balcony with them, though she was far enough away not to hear anything. He and Gloria waited for the server to refill their glasses, and Gloria thanked her warmly before the waitress stepped away again.

“Mrs. Delgado,” Suijade said, after a moment. He resettled himself in his chair. “I do not rely solely on my powers. I have always considered that a weakness.”

“And so you would like to tell me that my focus on your powers is a similar weakness,” Gloria guessed with a smile. Suijade nodded, once. “This is true, and very wise of you, Lariat. Though you should be cautious of your use of the word always,” she added, a twinkle in her eyes. “I remember when you thought that your only strength.”

“Would it be inaccurate of me to suppose that you are focusing on your own strengths at this moment?” Suijade said. This evening was taking an odd turn, but he found the conversation refreshing - and, admittedly, somewhat flattering. There were not many these days who had the opportunity to speak so frankly with the woman who had been the first to show superpowers - and become the first superhero.

“It would not,” Gloria confirmed. “But, it would also be accurate to say that you, Lariat, are outgunned.”

He frowned.

Gloria straightened with a smile. “You have done me the wonderful favor of ensuring that I have more than enough ammunition, Lariat.”

Her eyes drifted towards the vase of flowers in the center of the table. Suijade shifted slightly. It was only a single vase of flowers -

A single vase of flowers on every table in the large hall. Several clustering end tables. Displays along the wall showing realistic dioramas of the local environments they were trying to save. Small indoor, decorative trees and plants that were real, because if Suijade was going to sponsor an event, he wasn’t going to use plastic for anything.

He had arranged his own trap.

“I presume you had all of these roses dethorned, of course,” Gloria mused, reaching a hand out to the vase. Her fingers curled around a soft green rose, and the smooth stem sprouted slender, sharp thorns as she pulled the flower away from its fellows. “That’s really a shame. You can’t properly appreciate something without experiencing all aspects of its creation.”

“They came that way,” Suijade said numbly. He hadn’t really paid much attention to the flower decorations. He had people for that. He suppressed the urge to look around for his security, to check again just in case Gloria had brought someone with her, and shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “Mrs. Delgado, my associates - ?”

“Ah.” Gloria set the rose aside. “They’ll have been arrested, by now. I was vague on the details when I called the police. I tried to avoid hurting them as best as I could.”

Of course she had. “I appreciate that. They were only doing their jobs.”

Gloria smiled. Her gaze drifted over the celebration below them, following the attendees in their suits and gowns. It was hardly a news-worthy event, simply some of the local rich folks around the state that Suijade and his fiance had convinced to back the charity.

“Lariat, if you’re going to send others out to do what no one else can do better than you, you really should retire.”

He startled, looking up at her. “I’m sorry?”

She set down her glass, a slight smirk touching her green-coated lips. “Oh, you could join my book club.” Gloria’s expression brightened at the thought.

Suijade stared. “Your… book club.”

“Yes. We just met last week, and we’re starting a new book. This is the perfect time.” She straightened. “I think you would enjoy it. We’re reading one of Robin Kimmerer’s books this month. Braiding Sweetgrass.”

Had she gone senile? She was eighty years old, at least, and Morning Glory had taken a lot of hits during her career.

Judging by the slight smile on her face, Gloria could guess at what Suijade was thinking. “Well, at least consider the idea,” she said, and finished off her glass of wine. “Who was it, Lariat?”

Suijade blinked, and shifted again. “Who was who?”

Gloria looked at him. “I know that there is no reason for you to hold me ransom, Lariat. I have no riches, and I’m not that valuable a public figure any more.”

“You shouldn’t sell yourself so short, Mrs. Delgado.” Suijade flagged the server down again, asking her to refill Gloria’s glass as he regained his feet in this odd conversation. “We would all be poorer without your presence.”

She gave him a fond smile as the server left them again. “Except you. How much richer would you be?”

Suijade smiled back at her. “Quite a bit, Morning Glory.” And considering the money Suijade already had, that was certainly saying something. He could retire their server’s father, the poor man. Suijade knew he worried about her university tuition.

“Mmm. And who will be to blame for your sudden increase in charitable donations?” Gloria asked with a smile. Suijade sat back in his chair, but before he could think of a non-answer to give her, he spotted his fiance over Gloria’s shoulder.

Jesse, of course, had the worst timing, as always.

He stood up with a smile regardless, and he didn’t even have to fake it - seeing Jesse enjoying himself was a pleasant contrast to the work Suijade had to deal with. Jesse had his hearing aids in, but Suijade still signed a greeting to him.

“Oh, Jesse, hello again,” Gloria said brightly, getting to her feet a beat after Suijade. He shot her a startled look, and bit his tongue. “I’m sorry for disappearing on you earlier, I found an old friend I wanted to say hello to.”

“That’s all right, Mrs. Delgado,” Jesse said brightly, his voice just a touch too loud, the words just a touch too close together. Suijade still hadn’t heard anything he loved more. He pressed his lips together when Jesse offered a hug to Gloria first, but he really couldn’t blame either of them - Suijade had always been the one with more reservations about displays of affection.

Jesse at least broke away to come over and kiss Suijade, very briefly, on the corner of his jaw. “I didn’t realize the two of you knew each other,” Jesse said brightly. He reached down to steal Suijade’s glass, and Suijade let him.

“Well, it’s been quite a while since we’ve seen each other,” Gloria said warmly.

“I’m more surprised the two of you know each other,” Suijade remarked, though at this point, he really shouldn’t be. Jesse somehow always knew the oddest people, but tonight, Jesse shook his head.

“We only met tonight,” he said. “I wish we had known each other before, I absolutely would have invited you.” Jesse gave Gloria a bright smile.

Of course he would have.

They all took a seat again, Jesse sitting as close to Suijade as he could manage it. The server appeared without being asked, bringing another glass and refilling the others before she ghosted away again. Suijade had hoped this would be the last event she’d have to play caterer at, and then she could simply focus on her studies, but with Morning Glory here as a guest, rather than a captive, Suijade supposed he’d have to find some other source of a bonus for her father.

Well. He could still find a way, he was sure. He was Lariat, after all, even if Gloria was right.

Sorry for not being down there with you, Suijade signed briefly to Jesse, under the edge of the table. He didn’t know if Gloria knew sign language, but he wouldn’t be surprised. Work came up.

That’s all right, Jesse signed back, before taking one of Suijade’s hands and leaning against him. “Are you enjoying the party, Mrs Delgado?”

“It’s lovely,” Gloria assured him. “I especially adore the decorations. You’ve both truly outdone yourself tonight.”

“Have you seen the gardens?” Jesse asked eagerly. “The people who own this place have been working on them for decades.”

“No, not yet,” Gloria said, though she perked up just as eagerly as Jesse. “But I would like to.”

“Jesse,” Suijade started, but Gloria had already swept to her feet; Jesse bounced up, too, like an eager puppy. Suijade started to stand.

“Let me show you,” Jesse said excitedly, before Suijade could make any attempt at heading off this adventure. Turning, Jesse gestured for Suijade to stay seated, adding, “No, Suijade, it’s fine. I’ll be right back, I promise.”

Gloria slipped her arm through Jesse’s, and smiled past him to Suijade. “You should really consider my invitation,” she told him warmly. “Jesse, hold on juuuust a moment.”

She hovered her hand over the flowers in the vase, deliberating a moment between colors before she pulled another of the pale green roses. Suijade shoved down the urge to leap across the table as Gloria fussily slipped it through Jesse’s lapel, cooing over how well it matched his shirt.

Jesse, of course, was delighted, and he half-turned to show Suijade with a grin. Suijade did not miss the single thorn on the stem.

“Who was that friend of yours you wanted me to meet, Suijade?” Gloria asked, the lines around her eyes crinkling with a warm smile.

Suijade’s grip wrinkled the tablecloth. Jesse looked to him, and Suijade forced himself to relax, pushing a tense smile onto his face. Looking good, he signed quickly to Jesse. His fiance beamed.

Suijade knew that Gloria wouldn’t hurt Jesse. Of all the capes he’d ever dealt with, Morning Glory was the one he trusted most not to make good on a threat against a civilian. But it wasn’t about whether she’d hurt Jesse or not - it was about whether Suijade was willing to take that chance, miniscule though it may be, with the man he loved.

He wasn’t.

“Ah. Percy Banks,” he said, glancing past them to the people below. “He is very keen to make your acquaintance.” And all of Banks’ money in the world wasn’t enough to make endangering Jesse worth it. Suijade did not want to make the mistake of trusting Morning Glory’s public reputation. She was not one of the more predictable superheroes.

“Thank you.” Gloria beamed at Jesse. “Shall we?”

Suijade watched the two of them go, then sighed. He drained his glass, then wearily waved over the server to refill it, again. She looked at him, then just set the bottle on the table. Suijade let out a soft laugh.

“Thank you, Maria,” he murmured, and rubbed the bridge of his nose. He was sure no one would notice if he dipped his hands into the charity till for her tuition. If she kept him supplied like this, he would.

With a sigh, he sat back in his chair. Retirement. He’d thought about it for some time, and he knew it would make Jesse happy. And Suijade carried out his own plans less and less these days. Maybe Gloria was right - it could have ended very differently if he’d gone after her himself, instead of trusting to his employees.

It could have ended with him hurt, or worse, and Jesse left alone, waiting for him to come home. Suijade closed his eyes for a moment.

Then he pulled out his phone, and looked up Robin Kimmerer.

#iwrite #morning glory #lariat #superpowerverse #gingerly-writing #og idea was to start off with the attempted kidnapping #just to show off gloria still kicking trash at eighty-five #but this was honestly just more fun

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jaskierswolf · 4 years ago

Text

You Set My Heart Ablaze (19/25)

Previous ________________________

Yennefer pulled up to the school gates in her car. It was two weeks into the summer term at Dol Blathanna and three weeks since she’d last seen Ciri. She rolled her eyes at her own sentimentality. She’d always adored Duny and Pavetta’s daughter. She’d been dating Geralt when Pavetta had announced her pregnancy. It had been a strange moment for Yennefer. She’d never thought of herself as particularly maternal and children had never been something she’d craved in life, but when Pavetta had shown them all the photos of the tiny baby growing inside her womb, something had changed irrevocably.

She wanted that.

She’d always thought her career and financial security would be everything for her, but how could it be everything when she was missing a family.

She scoffed. She’d been naive at the time. She’d thought that her relationship with Geralt would last that time, that it would be the time when they didn’t crash and burn. She’d even considered asking him to marry her. She had loved him and they’d been on and off for years already at that point. Geralt and Yennefer, the romantic saga that would put fairytales to shame. Duny and Pavetta had even asked them both to be godparents.

A month later Geralt and Yennefer had split up… again.

But now, seven year old Ciri was bringing back all those old wants and aches. She’d spent a week with the girl in Cidaris before handing her back to Geralt in Posada, just in time for the girl’s birthday. Yennefer had stuck around long enough to help Geralt wrangle Ciri’s classmates for her party and then she’d made her way back home.

Only it didn’t feel like home anymore.

She hated that she was always the one to leave her family behind. She hated that she had almost become an outsider to the most important people in her life. She was terrified that they would move on without her. Triss seemed to rather taken with Eskel, and Yennefer felt a twinge of regret for not introducing her own friends to the family sooner. Geralt’s family had become her own, but Yennefer had never quite managed to allow Geralt into her own life. The only person he had met had been Istredd, and that was because Is had confronted Geralt just after she’d started dating him at University.

She didn’t want to miss out anymore.

She’d already started looking for flats halfway between Cidaris and Posada, she’d even thought about moving her gallery to Vengerberg. Her family had originated from there generations ago and she’d always thought it would be a little on the nose to move there but there was something poetic about it that intrigued her, that was after all why she had chosen Aedirn out of all the galleries offered to her at a young age. A Vengerberg canvas in Aedirn Gallery. The irony had been too good to resist.

Vengerberg was also much closer to Posada and to Ciri.

For now she had to be contented with ferrying back and forth across the Continent whenever she wanted to see Ciri, the girl she had come to love as a daughter.

She groaned when she noticed Jaskier standing amongst the children. Of course it was his turn on after school duty. Nevertheless she stood tall and glided towards the gaggle of children. She’d texted Coën from the petrol station on the way to Posada to let him know that he didn’t need to pick Ciri up from school tonight. Vesemir would be over after work to look after Ciri this evening. Yennefer and Geralt would have the delight of summer parents’ evening. Yennefer was rather looking forward to being on the other side of it for the first time. Poor Buttercup didn’t stand a chance.

Ciri screamed excitably when she saw Yennefer approach and Yennefer soon had her arms full of her daughter as she knelt down to hug Ciri.

“Auntie Yen!” Ciri laughed. “But I only just saw you!”

“I know, Princess,” Yennefer hugged the girl tightly “but I couldn’t stay away.”

“Are you staying this time?” Ciri asked, looking up at her with wide emerald eyes.

Yennefer sighed with a heavy heart. “Not this time, Ciri, but I’m working on it, alright?”

Ciri pouted and scrunched her nose up. “But…”

Yennefer bopped her nose. “Patience, Ciri.”

“Yennefer, what a delight.” Jaskier drawled sarcastically.

Yennefer looked up at the teacher with a smirk. Oh the things she would say if they weren’t in front of the children.

“Buttercup, pleasure as always.” Yennefer returned his sarcasm.

It wasn’t that she hated the teacher, quite the opposite in fact, she actually admired him in some ways but at this point the scathing remarks and barely concealed loathing was just a part of their routine.

“Mr Rivia didn’t mention that you would be picking up Ciri this evening.” Jaskier tilted his head, tossing his fringe away from his eyes. “It really is common courtesy to let the school know.”

“Geralt doesn’t know, Buttercup. It’s called a surprise which requires subtlety and discretion, neither of which you possess.” Yennefer smiled at the teacher.

He glowered at her with blue fire dancing in his eyes.

“Oh I can be very discreet, I’m more discreet than, than a Redanian spy!” Jaskier huffed with his hands on his hips. “Oh no.” His jaw dropped at some unspoken realisation. “No no. No!” He pointed at her accusingly.

“What’s wrong Mr Jaskier?” Ciri asked.

Jaskier blushed and stammered. “Oh, nothing. Nothing’s wrong, little Buttercup.”

“Mr Jaskier!” Ciri gasped. “Are you lying to me?”

Jaskier froze and Yennefer cackled. “Yes, Jaskier, Are you lying to her?”

He stammered unintelligibly before clearing his throat. “Right. Yes, Sorry Ciri. I meant that there is nothing wrong that you need to worry about, I just remembered something.”

Ciri put her hands on her hips, looking a little too much like Jaskier’s mini-me for Yennefer’s liking. “About Auntie Yen?”

Yennefer smirked. She could see the litany of curses Jaskier was saying in his head. He smiled brightly down at Ciri, though Yennefer could see the anger still dancing in his eyes when he glanced back at her. “I had just forgotten it was parents’ evening tonight. Yennefer reminded me, that’s all Ciri, I promise.”

Ciri scowled up at her teacher, scrutinising his words and then broke into her own dazzling smile. “Ok!”

Jaskier visibly relaxed. “So, Yennefer, will you be looking after Ciri tonight?”

Yennefer shook her head. “Not this time, Buttercup. I will be joining Geralt for parents’ evening.”

Jaskier raised an eyebrow at her. “Oh?”

Ciri squealed. “Are you and dad getting back together?”

Jaskier’s face lost all colour. “An… unexpected development.” His voice cracked.

Yennefer sighed. She didn’t want to get Ciri’s hopes up. She had no intention on getting back together with Geralt, she’d just been trying to get a rise out of the teacher, which had absolutely worked. “We can discuss this in the car, Cirilla. Come now.”

It took a while but Yennefer eventually managed to convince Ciri that she was, in fact, not dating Geralt again. The young girl seemed a little disappointed by this.

“He just gets lonely.” She sniffed. “He tries to hide it but I see it, when he doesn’t realise I’m looking.”

“I know, Princess, but Geralt and I,” Yennefer sighed “We weren’t a good match.”

Ciri scrunched her nose up. “I just thought, if Geralt’s my dad and you were dating then… that would make you my mum.”

Yennefer almost crashed the car. As it was she had to pull over, her hands were shaking too much on the steering wheel.

“Auntie Yen?” Ciri asked quietly.

“I wouldn’t mind if you called me mum’” Yennefer took Ciri’s little hand in hers and squeezed tightly. “I can be that, with or without Geralt.”

Ciri grinned and unbuckled her seatbelt before clambering into Yennefer’s lap.

“Ok, Mum.” Ciri mumbled as she hugged Yennefer tightly. Yennefer felt like she couldn’t breathe, like a single breath would shatter the moment and she’d wake up back in Cidaris and this would have all been a dream.

She settled for holding the girl in her arms in blessed silence, holding onto the feeling for as long as she possibly could and praying to the gods that the moment would last forever.

___________________________________

Yennefer had just about managed to find something edible enough to feed Ciri for dinner. She’d been disgusted at the amount of tins in the cupboards compared to the fresh vegetables in the fridge. Luckily, Geralt seemed to have a better stock of frozen vegetables to make up for the lack of fresh produce. Ciri had grumbled about it and said that Coën and Geralt usually let her have pizza and chips.

Yennefer challenged this proclamation with a stare and eventually Ciri mumbled something about pizza and chips being a Friday or weekend treat.

Ciri was now scowling at the plate of chicken and vegetables in front of her. Yennefer rolled her eyes.

“Ciri, you have got to eat something.” She sighed. “You’ve even got chips.”

“I don’t like spinach.” Ciri pouted.

“You ate it in Cidaris.” Yennefer stated cooly. “What’s changed, Princess?”

Ciri scrunched up her nose. “Slimy, tastes funny.”

Yennefer narrowed her eyes at the greenery on Ciri’s plate. “Let me try.”

Ciri pushed the plate towards her and Yennefer took a forkful, it tasted exactly the same as when she’d made it for Ciri back at her flat in Cidaris. She pursed her lips together and told Ciri to close her eyes.

“Why?” Ciri asked.

“The magic only works if you have your eyes shut, Princess.” Yennefer said calmly, allowing herself a small smile when she noticed Ciri trying to peek from behind her hands. “Eyes shut, Ciri.”

“Fine!” The young girl huffed.

Yennefer moved the spinach around on her plate and whispered a low fake incantation under her breath, just loud enough so the girl could hear. Ciri giggled and wiggled excitably in her seat.

“Now, Ciri. You must understand that Geralt can’t do this and it takes a lot of power so I can’t do it every meal time, alright?” Yennefer stated firmly, her hand hovering over Ciri’s plate.

“Yes, Mum.” Ciri drawled and Yennefer knew if the girl’s eyes were open she’d be rolling them.

“Good, now open your eyes and eat your dinner.” Yennefer said, pulling her hand away just as Ciri opened her eyes.

Ciri wolfed down her dinner without another word and Yennefer let out a small sigh of relief. After dinner, Yennefer plopped Ciri down in front of the TV to watch that pony show that she was so fond of, Geralt’s influence no doubt.

She sat down beside Ciri, scrolling through her social media on her phone. She shared a few posts from upcoming artists that she wanted to promote and tapped out a few biting remarks on replies that were from sensitive assholes who didn’t like that a woman was successful in their industry. She vaguely tried to follow the plot of the episode that Ciri was watching but she’d never understood the talking ponies.

She looked up when she heard keys in the door.

“Dad!” Ciri jumped up and ran to the front door. “Uncle Vesemir!”

Geralt picked Ciri up as she jumped at him. “Hi Princess, good day at school?” He asked before noticing Yennefer lounging on the sofa. “Yen?”

“Geralt.” She smiled and made her way across the room. “Vesemir.”

“Hello Yennefer.” The older man nodded.

Geralt shifted Ciri into one arm and pulled Yennefer in for a hug.

“I didn’t know you were visiting?” He asked gently.

She kissed his cheek and the pulled away to ruffle Ciri’s hair. “I was hoping to join you for parents’ evening. She’s my goddaughter too. I want to be a bigger part of her life, Geralt.”

Geralt scowled and glanced at Vesemir. “Yen.” He sighed with a sad smile. “I don’t think—”

“Not like that.” She swatted his arm. “I’m doing this for Ciri, Geralt. Not for you.”

Geralt visibly relaxed. “Right.”

“Mum can do magic!” Ciri shouted, a little too loudly judging by the way Geralt winced.

He raised an eyebrow at Yennefer. “Mum?”

“Obviously, Dad you never told me Mum was magic!” Ciri pouted.

Geralt hummed and put Ciri down on the floor, kneeling next to her. “Well she never told me, cub.”

Ciri covered her mouth with her hands, her emerald eyes went wide. “Was it meant to be a secret?” She mumbled behind her hands.

Yennefer shook her head. “Not at all, your father just never noticed.”

Geralt grumbled.

“Only the wisest of people realised, little sparrow.” Vesemir chuckled and moved further into the living room. “Ciri, are you going to show me what you’ve learnt on that instrument of yours? Geralt says Priscilla has been very impressed with how quickly you’ve picked it up.”

Ciri grinned and ran to the corner of the room the pick up the small ukulele case. “Mr Jaskier helps me during lunch sometimes! He says that practice makes perfect and even Mr Jaskier needs to keep practicing to learn new things all the time!”

“Does he now?” Yennefer smirked at Geralt who had suddenly gone very still.

“Yup!” Ciri grinned and pulled out a small plastic whistle. “This helps to make sure the strings sound right.” She explained and then started to blow on the whistle, and plucking at the strings of the small instrument.

“That’s very clever, little sparrow. Show me, how do I hold it?” Vesemir asked warmly.

And just like that the old man had Ciri’s full focus.

Geralt leant against the wall with his arms cross. His hair was pulled into a messy bun at the back of his head today, not his usual look but one that was rather handsome. Yennefer felt a pang of regret and yearning at the loss of their relationship but it passed quickly. They’d both moved on for a good reason, and things were going well with Istredd, slowly but well.

“Why are you here, Yen?” Geralt asked quietly.

Yennefer rolled her eyes. “I already told you that, Geralt.”

He shook his head. “Nothing is ever so simple with you.”

“Can’t you just trust me for once?” Yennefer asked, bristling a little at his accusation.

He was right, of course, she did have an ulterior motive for being here. She wanted to watch his interactions with the teacher, perhaps plant a few seeds of jealousy so they’d have to act on their feelings. This was her first plan. Jaskier knew that Yennefer was Geralt’s ex so he would no doubt be envious to see them co-parenting Ciri. She just needed to make sure she didn’t overdo it and put the teacher off.

If this failed then she had another idea. She wondered whether Jaskier knew that Geralt was attracted to men. Geralt didn’t exactly radiate queer vibes and passed very well as a straight man when it suited him. Therefore she’d been in contact with another one of Geralt’s exes, an older man that he’d dated briefly when they’d been broken up. Regis and Geralt’s relationship hadn’t ended badly and the two were still friends. They didn’t see each other very often due to work commitments but they had the kind of friendship that lasted regardless of time and distance. Regis had been delighted to hear about Geralt’s little infatuation with Jaskier and had agreed to help out should it be required.

But that was Plan B. Plan A was tonight.

He narrowed his eyes and then nodded with a low hum.

“We have about an hour before we need to leave. I have the last slot with Jaskier. Vesemir will be here to put Ciri to bed.” Geralt explained.

Yennefer nodded and pulled her friend over to the living room where Ciri was patiently trying to teach Vesemir how to play a nursery rhyme on her ukulele. “Come on, White Wolf, what have I missed?”

______________________

“You don’t have to do this, Yen.” Geralt grumbled as they strode into reception together.

Yennefer rolled her eyes. Geralt had said the same thing at least a dozen times on the drive to the school. At least he’d had the common sense to let her drive instead of going in that disgusting truck. “I want to do this, Geralt, and your whining is not going to change my mind so shut up and try not to look like I’m leading you to the gallows.”

“Feels like it.” He muttered.

At this rate her eyes would be stuck in the back of her head. She linked her arm with his as they entered the foyer. Triss greeted them with a wave.

“Yen!” She called happily. “Geralt.”

“Hi Triss.” Yennefer smiled at her friend, a little envious of her easy going nature. There wasn’t a single person that didn’t adore Triss, she just had this way about her that made you want to be her friend, made you want to be better. Yennefer was not immune to this. It was one of the reasons they had remained friends for so many years.

“Do we need to sign in?” Geralt asked, straight to the point as always.

Triss passed him the register. “Just like before.”

Geralt hummed thoughtfully. “Hopefully not.” He gave Triss a sheepish smile.

“No.” She agreed with a laugh. “I would really prefer it if we didn’t have to call the police.”

Yennefer frowned as she looked between her ex and her best friend. “The police?” She asked haughtily.

“A misunderstanding.” Geralt grumbled. “If you’re staying the night I’ll tell you later.”

“Staying the night?” Triss asked, taking back the register with a raised eyebrow.

“School hall?” Geralt asked, ignoring Triss’s look of surprise.

“Umm. Yes. That’s right.” Triss was still eyeballing them.

“I’ll text you later.” Yennefer murmured and followed Geralt towards the main hall.

There were tables stationed all around the room, just like she remembered from her time as a teachers. Fuck she hated Parents’ Evening. It had been hell on earth. She caught Istredd’s eyes across the room and gave him a small smile. She was grateful that Geralt had book the last slot of the evening, it meant that there was a chance she could see Istredd when he was done. Luckily it was a Friday which meant that even if she didn’t get to see him tonight, there was always the weekend.

“Ah, Geralt!” Jaskier waved them over with a smile as another couple stood up to leave. “Yennefer.” He added more cooly.

Yennefer frowned. Triss and Eskel hadn’t been lying when they’d said that both Geralt and Jaskier had stopped moping around, but she hadn’t been expecting Jaskier to act so friendly towards Geralt, especially after weeks of supposedly avoiding him.

What the fuck was going on?

She glanced over at Geralt to see his reaction.

The man was fucking blushing.

“Mr Pankratz.” He shook Jaskier’s hand, smiling far too fondly for Yennefer’s liking.

Now, many people said that Geralt Rivia was hard to read. He had a habit of not saying much, especially when he was feeling overwhelmed, but Yennefer had always found him to be an open book. His face didn’t hide much and she had learnt to read even the smallest twitch of a smile dancing on his lips. So the way he smiled so openly at Jaskier told Yennefer everything she needed to know.

“Geralt,” She whispered in his ear, gripping his arm tightly. “Tell me, exactly how long have you two been fucking?”

Geralt growled and pulled away from her. “What the fuck, Yen?”

Jaskier laughed nervously. “Geralt? What’s going on?”

Geralt’s face was like thunder. “Nothing. Right Yen?” He asked pointedly, glancing over at Tissaia’s table.

Ah yes. Tissaia was currently headmistress, she’d heard all about that from Triss and Is.

“Oh no one is supposed to know!” She said a little too loudly.

“Shut up, Yen.” Geralt grumbled.

“Know what?” Jaskier asked. Geralt’s eyes flashed to Jaskier dangerously. “Oooh. That. Right. Yes.”

Yennefer smiled sweetly at the two idiots in front of her. “So, how long?”

“How long have I been teaching Ciri?” Jaskier asked pointedly.

Yennefer smirked but decided to it go. They were here to discuss her daughter after all. “Ciri, right yes of course. Since September I assume.”

“That’s right.” Jaskier said firmly. “The whole class has made excellent progress with learning sign language, one of my Buttercups is deaf,” He explained “but young Ciri is leaps and bounds ahead of the rest of them. She has the amazing ability to absorb new information and a wonderful dedication to her class work and friends.”

Yennefer smiled, genuinely for the first time since they’d entered the hall. She knew Ciri was special but hearing Jaskier confirm it warmed her usually icy heart.

“I am concerned that she’s throwing herself into her work instead of learning to process the trauma in her life.” Jaskier added. “Did you think anymore about what I said, Geralt?”

Geralt nodded. “I’ve been looking. I just…” He paused and frowned as he tried to gather his words. “I don’t know how to talk to Ciri about it.” He admitted.

“About what?” Yennefer asked. “Maybe I can help?”

Jaskier looked at Geralt with a tilt of his head. Geralt gave a small nod.

Yennefer scoffed, apparently they were communicating non-verbally now as well. What a fucking delight!

“I suggested that Ciri might benefit from some therapy.” Jaskier said quietly. “She’s been through, gods, she’s been through so much.”

“But she’s fine.” Yennefer interjected.

“On the surface” Jaskier agreed “but we don’t know, we can’t know, how much she’s bottling up underneath.”

“It’s a good idea, Yen.” Geralt said softly.

Yennefer sighed. She hated it but they were right. She remembered her own therapist from her childhood, they weren’t happy memories and the thought of Ciri having to go through the same thing made her want to scream, but in the end it had helped her. It was just a difficult process with no clear step by step journey, some days it felt like the therapy just made it worse before it got better again.

“Yen?” Geralt took her hand and squeezed gently.

“I’ll talk to her” She agreed “but the decision is hers.”

“That’s all we can ask.” Jaskier smiled sadly and then immediately brightened up. “Pris tells me her ukulele lessons are going wonderfully! She might even want to consider getting a guitar soon, it will be a little difficult for her to hold an adult guitar but there are smaller sizes that she can look at, it will be more challenging than the ukulele. There are six strings rather the four on the ukulele. My lute has thirteen so we don’t recommend that one for a while.”

“Not everyone wants to learn every stringed instrument in existence, Buttercup.” Yennefer said dryly.

“Which is a tragedy!” Jaskier laughed. “And I’ll have you know, I bought a flute the other day. I’m branching out.”

Yennefer smirked. “Practicing your blowing skills?”

Jaskier raised an eyebrow at her with a playful smile. “Oh, darling, I don’t need any practice with that.”

Geralt cleared his throat and blushed vividly. “Let’s stay on topic shall we?”

Jaskier and Yennefer, surprisingly, laughed in unison at Geralt’s discomfort.

Well wasn’t that an unexpected development?

Perhaps Jaskier wasn’t as bad as she thought. They shared a smile before Jaskier delved deeper into Ciri’s progress and work at school. _____________________

#the witcher #geraskier #modern au #fireman!geralt #teacher!jaskier #Yennefer of Vengerberg #yennefer #Geralt #Jaskier #you set my heart ablaze #wolfie's witcher writing

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autolenaphilia · 5 years ago

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A review of the Nostalgia Critic’s review of “The Wall”

A while ago, The Nostalgia Critic released a long video review of The Wall by Pink Floyd, or rather the movie version by Alan Parker. I’m aware this is two months after the review was released to a very negative reception. But I only recently watched it and wow, it is so terrible that I have to write something. This might be the off-the-cuff and rambliest thing I have ever written, but it is so bad that it doesn’t deserve the effort to write something more polished. This ended up long, so the rest is under a cut.

Personal note: I must admit that I love Pink Floyd, even if the Wall isn’t my favourite thing by them. I used to like the Nostalgia Critic too, but that was a decade ago. I have outgrown him, my standards for both comedy and film criticism are a lot higher than my teenage self. But this is probably why I watched this terrible thing, even if he was never as close to my heart as Pink Floyd was and is.

First thing that needs saying is that the Critic and co. sings almost the entire review, but hasn’t included any subtitles. That makes it hard to understand what he sings (his diction is not the best). So, if I misunderstand anything the NC says, it is probably because of that.

Note that Pink Floyd hasn’t got this problem. The LP and CD versions of the album have lyrics sheets and the dvd of the movie has subtitles. Big plus to Pink Floyd and a big minus to the NC right off the bat.

In the beginning, NC actually has a legitimate point: he sings that the movie is “devoid of even the slightest bit of subtlety”. and yeah, you could argue that. The metaphors and imagery are fairly obvious. However, he spends the rest of the review misunderstanding even the basic plot points. Nevermind the subtext, he doesn’t seem to understand the text, as his complaining about WWII stuff proves, but we’ll get to that.

The first major problem is the sequence about schools. NC makes the point that “we don’t need no education” is a grammatically incorrect double negative, which proves that the children singing apparently do need some education. That is a valid interpretation, but it is one that is probably intentional. Pointing out that irony it is not the big gotcha against Pink Floyd the NC seems to think it is.

The big misinterpretation however is when NC tries to parody the story by sarcastically singing “welcome to high school, where all the teachers are monsters”. And this goes on for minutes, with more over-the-top sarcasm about how all teachers are evil, as if this is what “The Wall” is saying.

Problem is that is not what Pink Floyd is arguing. Even the lyrics says that “ “There were certain teachers who would hurt the children”. “Certain”, not all.

And in an interview at the time, Roger Waters said this: “ I want to make it plain that some of the men who taught (it was a boys school) some of the men who taught there were very nice guys, you know I’m not… it’s not meant to be a blanket condemnation of teachers everywhere, but the *bad* ones can really do people in “.

And I don’t know why The NC brings up high school, when this is a album/movie about the British school system. The NC does this several times, btw. The only connection is his caricature of the album’s fans as angsty (USAian) teenagers.

Worse is how dismissive of other people’s bad experiences with school this whole sequence is. The NC literally sings “LOL, so school sucks, grow a damn pair of balls” This is disgustingly callous. The Wall is about the time when teachers in UK schools could physically hit children. And of course, teachers both then and now can bully children in horrific ways. This is a fact that the NC never even acknowledges.

Anyway, on to Goodbye Blue Sky. The big problem here is that the NC clearly doesn’t understand why the film has so much imagery from WWII. He seems to think the songwriter Roger Waters is comparing his “high school” (sic) (again, wtf??) problems to the horrors of WWII. He makes many jokes based on this.

But the real reason is because the main character’s father was a soldier that died in the war and the story is about him dealing with the trauma from that. The WWII imagery is not a metaphor, it is literal. The song is about the horrors of the bombings. btw.

The NC doesn’t seem to get any of that, the whole sequence is just him asking “why wwII?”. And in the light of the fact that this is based on Roger Waters life and the death of his father, the NC’s mockery comes across as uninformed and callous.

Also, he calls “Goodbye Blue Sky”, a oscar bait song, which is just bizarre. The song wasn’t even written for a movie, even if the album got adapted into one. Also, it is a far more low-key tune than most songs that go for the Oscar.

The next sequence is about how he finds the next part of the album boring, because there is several “slow, mopey songs” in a row. Ok, valid opinion. If someone just says “I’m bored”, you can’t really argue against that, even if you disagree. His parody of “Comfortably Numb” is a hilarious and unintentional self-own though: The NC: “I have become comfortably dumb”. That perfectly sums up his entire existence.

After that we have a commercial break (literally). After some words from his sponsors, NC points out that they made a full album from this review. He calls it a “love-letter” to Pink Floyd’s music, which is just incredible. What a boldfaced lie. People just watched half the review, they know that is not remotely true.

And now to the most baffling sequence: “In the Flesh”. You know, when the main character holds a fascist rally at a rock concert. NC has turned this into a confusing parody of self-righteous twitter mobs, for some reason? What has this to do with The Wall? The album was made almost 30 years before twitter was even created. And even without the wall connection, the parody is confusing in itself. The NC seems to be in charge, but he is also the guy the mob hates? What?

What the fuck?

Is the connection that twitter mobs supposedly call everyone they don’t like nazis? Like is the NC in moviesque fascist regalia and “person you hate” literally written on his forehead supposed to sarcastically represent their victims? The NC claims the movie calls Thatcher a fascist. I don’t think the movie actually does that, but is that why The NC connects it to the idea of “sjws calling everyone nazis”? But again, he is also the person in charge of the mob. So is he comparing twitter mobs to nazis? Isn’t that hypocritical? It is just confusing. If what I just wrote didn’t make any sense, then it is because the NC review doesn’t make any sense.

Also, I should note that the Nostalgia Critic and his Channel Awesome website was under a lot of social media fire in 2018, if you didn’t already know that. Many of the people who had worked with that site revealed many instances of mismanagement and even outright abuse. It had his own twitter hashtag “#changethechannel”. All this nonsense is almost certainly the NC trying to respond without mentioning them. It is not convincing, to say the least.

Next he parodies “bring the boys back home” with “Bring the runtime down”. This is not as bizarre as the preceding segment, but still weird. He thinks The Wall is too long? The movie is 95 minutes long, which was about average for a movie back then. It is not that long, especially not nowadays when movies regularly go over two hours. And that criticism is really weird coming from a man who made “To Boldly Flee”, a movie that is a soulcrushing 209 minutes long. 3 and a half hours!

Next is the trial sequence. I could barely even get his point here, it is so muddled. I must give some praise to the animation of the fantasy creatures (made by Fennah, an animator on youtube) here though, they actually look decent. Pity that the rest of the review is so shoddily made and that the sequence makes so little sense. I guess the point is that the movie needed to develop the plot and characters from the album? Ok, that is a valid opinon, but why should they? I think the movie works just fine as a visual companion to the music.

She is kinda cool, but this whole sequence is very much wtf

Let’s end it here. As you might have guess, I didn’t like this video review. There are barely any criticisms made of The Wall worth taking seriously here. Instead, we get long self-indulgent rambling from Doug Walker, loosely inspired by the movie it is ostensibly reviewing. His frequent criticisms of The Wall as a self-indulgent ego trip for Roger Waters are ultimately hypocritical. The whole “In the Flesh” sequence is the nadir of this, a confused response to his own critics shoved clumsily into the review.

I haven’t talked much about how the video presents itself, but it is actually an attempt at a full-on musical parody. It doesn’t work, at all. It It is incredible how much effort clearly went into this, yet it still looks and sounds awful. The NC has several guest artists on, but their talents are almost all wasted. Corey Taylor, the lead singer of Slipknot is in it, but he doesn’t do much except sit in a chair and look bored. As said, the only one who comes off well is the animator Fennah.

This ended up much longer than I wanted it too, but this video, as terrible as it is, gave me lots of thoughts and I had to write them down.

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major-fukkup · 2 years ago

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would you mind telling me about your ocs? what are your favorite and least favorite traits of theirs? what songs fit them best? what’s their sense of humor like? this might get long lol but i want you to ramble to me

I am answering for Agent Aitch, Victor, Paradox, Raven, and Aseroth because they are my favorite little bastards (at the moment lol)

Agent Aitch (from Another World) (not a little bastard, still a favorite)

My favorite of her traits is her kindheartedness. She's the sweetest person you will ever meet. She lives to help others and will stop at nothing to defend the innocent.

BUT my least favorite trait is her tendency to blame herself when things go wrong. She feels like she should have done more. She's a real sweetheart though and she deserves the best.

Aitch's theme song is It's Time by Imagine Dragons. Other songs I associate with her include Second Chance (Shinedown), Whatever It Takes (Imagine Dragons), Bruises (Train), and Everything Moves (Bronze Radio Return).

Aitch has a fairly NORMAL sense of humor (which is somewhat strange compared to most of my other ocs). It's not edgy or dark, it's not exactly "dad joke" humor, it's pretty down to earth and I suppose probably more ironic than anything else.

Victor Stevens (originally my Cyberpunk 2077 character, but an oc now I stole him and haha age regressed him)

My favorite trait of Victor's is his childlike innocence (well. That's a debatable term lol). He believes that the world is a safe and happy place, bad things just happen sometimes, and that people as a whole are basically good, some just. Aren't. He knows nothing of safety and happiness, or course, but he thinks he does because he doesn't have anything to compare his own life to. He trusts his sister to take care of him and he doesn't really have an innate desire for anything he doesn't have (he does have kleptomaniacal tendencies but it's only ever spur of the moment and also mostly because he has no concept of personal belongings. When he takes things he doesn't consider the fact that they might belong to someone else. To him they are just there).

I suppose my least favorite of his traits is his hotheadedness. He has a one-track mind and never thinks anything through before acting. Though I think that's funny for him it's not really a great trait to have.

Victor's theme songs are You Only Live Once by Suicide Silence and Glitch by Parkway Drive.

Victor doesn't have much of a sense of humor as a child. He tends to take things pretty literally and at face value. As he gets older his sense of humor turns to basically straight sarcasm. But not really in an offensive way (unless you've made him angry). And it's actually funny sometimes.

Paradox (from Last One Standing)

My favorite of Paradox's traits is his conviction that he MUST make the world a better place. Even though that's what lands the entire population in the mess HE made of the world. His broken paradise.

He knows that with great power comes great responsibility but he doesn't realize that he has no right to the power he took over everybody.

My least favorite of his traits is probably his inability to admit that he messed up and turn around. He will fight to the bitter end to fix his mistakes, but HIS WAY, which only ends with him digging himself into a deeper hole. And of course taking everybody else with him.

The song I most associate with him is Bad Liar by Imagine Dragons. Other songs that fit his personality and life story are Viva la Vida (Coldplay), Bright Eyes (Art Garfunkel), Wrecked (Imagine Dragons), What I've Done (Linkin Park), New Divide (LP), Another Illusion (Major Moment), Demons (Imagine Dragons), Me In My Own Head (Beartooth), Dead (Major Moment), Living Your Life Like This (Major Moment), and Nothing Left To Lose (The Alan Parsons Project). Yes I have a whole playlist for him. There's more.

Paradox's sense of humor is in subtlety, irony, and sarcasm. Often at someone else's expense because he can't admit to being wrong.

Raven (from Box Factory)

My favorite trait of Raven's is their determination and courage and unwillingness to back down even in the face of danger, regardless of the personal cost.

My least favorite of their traits is their inability (or unwillingness) to process or feel their own emotions (they just repress them). They're a great listener and give good advice and they're generally happy and outgoing and makes a great friend but they make people worry about them. A lot. Sometimes. The weirdest thing about it all is that they are actually legitimately fine.

Their theme song is Harder Better Faster Stronger by Daft Punk.

Their sense of humor lies mostly in sarcasm (like Victor, not in a rude or offensive way), and irony. They make basically everything into a joke (actually that's probably how they deals with their emotions). Unless it's something that affects others negatively. They take others seriously but are lighthearted and goofy themselves and prefer to be taken as such.

Aseroth (also from Box Factory!)

My favorite trait of his is his genuineness at attempting to fit in with the earth-dwellers while he's on earth (he's a part-time soul reaper who has free access to earth, the afterlife, and the realm between and spends his off time in whichever plane he wants).

And of course his addiction to coffee is always funny. Does that count as a trait?

My least favorite of Aseroth's traits issssss I don't know I love him but I guess I'd have to say his feeling like he should have done more at times because, like Aitch, he deserves only the best.

Aseroth's theme song is If Today Was Your Last Day by Nickelback. There are other songs that could be associated with him but they relate to specific times in his life.

Aseroth has a pretty deep sense of humor, having been around for generations. A lot of the time his humor revolves around things he forgets humans have no way of knowing about. So when everybody turns to stare at him he just shuts up. (After he makes human friends they introduce him to the internet though and his sense of humor probably deteriorates a lot lol)

Ironically enough, one of the things he never jokes about is death. He knows the pain death brings to those who still live and takes it very seriously.

#thank you for the ask!#thank you so much this was so fun #oc asks #Agent Aitch #Another World #Victor Stevens #Home Street Home #hsh #Paradox #Last One Standing #Raven Jones #Aseroth #Box Factory #oc stuff

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antialiasis · 7 years ago

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Dear Evan Hansen

So I developed an interest in this musical during my semi-recent Groundhog Day obsession, when thanks to following everything posted about GhD on Tumblr, I ended up on the periphery of the general Broadway/Tony discourse. Everyone was talking about Dear Evan Hansen, either how good it was or how overrated it was, and I stumbled across some post suggesting it involved teens with issues and suicide, at which of course my ears perked up because I am me.

I listened to the soundtrack and read a basic plot summary on Wikipedia. The songs weren't amazingly up my personal musical alley for the most part, but still pretty good, and I was quite intrigued by the character work in them - the increasingly obvious wish-fulfillment of Evan's story in For Forever, culminating in the choked-up repetition of "He's coming to get me", suggesting without having to say directly that actually no one came to get him; the repeated "falling in a forest" motif never quite saying he let go but making it clear this moment was more meaningful than one would expect long before the plot summary indicated we'd find out he'd been suicidal; Zoe's subtle denial in Requiem; the tragic irony of Evan inspiring everyone with a speech about how you will be found when he knows better than anyone that sometimes you won't. This was good shit! I wanted to try to see it on the same trip as Groundhog Day, but the tickets were all well sold out, and ultimately I more or less gave up on the possibility. (I'd actually missed that there was a lottery for the show, but we tried it when we were in New York and didn't win.)

It just wouldn't quite leave me alone, though, so with no prospects for being able to see it legitimately at any point in the foreseeable future, I ended up giving up and watching a bootleg.

(Excessive overcritical rambling about characterization, subtlety, etc. under the cut! It is very critical, so by all means scroll on by if that’s not your jam.)

After all the mental buildup, I ended up sort of underwhelmed by the actual show, unfortunately. When I listened to the soundtrack I'd filled in blanks, imagining all the rich development that might be happening in between the songs - Evan slowly growing closer to Connor's dad before To Break In a Glove, say. But actually watching it, it felt like there was a lot less development than I'd imagined. There isn't really anything about Evan growing closer to Connor's dad other than the song itself, or a lot of development for Connor's dad at all outside of it. Zoe's conflicted feelings about Connor, legitimate fear and hatred coupled with a strange, paradoxical longing for him to really have had a better side to him that actually loved her, are fascinating, but aren't really explored outside of what I'd already heard in Requiem and If I Could Tell Her - Zoe's role ends up being mostly about being the target of Evan's dubiously ethical romantic interest, without really tackling the things about her that were actually interesting.

When I first listened to the soundtrack, I didn't actually pick up on Jared or Alana existing as characters. I'm not great at discerning voices on a first listen, so while for example Sincerely, Me was a bit confusing, I parsed it just as a dialogue between Evan and the imaginary Connor in his head, with "Connor" making the sardonic suggestions to ridicule Evan's pathetic efforts in between theatrically reading out what Evan was typing. They were in the plot summary, though, so I figured it out eventually, and the Tumblr fandom was full of posts about Jared and Alana - how complex they were, how much people related to them, everyone shipping Evan with Jared (of course). So I looked forward to seeing more of these characters that the soundtrack didn't really show off.

As it turned out, though, they weren't much in the way of characters, really. There are a couple of lines about Alana's anxiety and how she also feels like she's alone and doesn't matter - but they're ultimately throwaways. Alana is mostly just a plot point, as the person who's invested enough in the Connor Project to care but still detached enough to start to notice and question the discrepancies in Evan's story. Her dialogue is almost entirely either pure plot advancement or jokes; she may be secretly troubled and anxious, and eventually she spells out that she originally latched onto the Connor Project because of that, but the show just keeps kind of making fun of her - the most prominent characterization she gets is the running gag where she acts like she was so totally close to Connor while making it obvious she actually barely knew he existed - and she doesn't really get to act out the complexity the show wants to imply. We never see the Connor Project affecting her life, or get a real sense that it's giving her meaning that she was lacking before; it's told and not shown. That makes sense for a minor character who's mostly there to play a role in the plot, but the fandom had made me expect a lot more, and I really think she could have been done a lot more interestingly if they'd just spent less time making jokes about her.

And Jared... is desperately unlikeable. A lot of people on Tumblr were criticizing the play for not punishing Evan enough for his actions - but at the same time everyone was in love with Jared. This is baffling, because as far as I can see, it's pretty much Jared who ropes Evan into this in the first place. Evan originally tries to tell the Murphys that Connor didn't actually write the 'suicide note', but they dismiss him and Cynthia acts extremely upset, and Evan is too timid to try to be firm and argue with these grieving parents in order to explain to them that actually their dead son had no friends. After this he's panicking and anxious about having to clear up the misunderstanding, but it's Jared who convinces him he absolutely can't tell them the truth and has to just smile and nod and keep up the pretense. After this, Jared relentlessly mocks and bullies Evan as the lie spirals out of control, makes a silly attempt to insert himself into it, gets mad when Evan says they must stick to the established story where Jared necessarily wasn't involved, then gets hurt and complains when Evan stops hanging out with him once he's got something else to do and other people who like him. Obviously Evan is in no way an innocent party here - he does start to latch onto the fantasy of this imaginary friendship with Connor and this doting family that wants and likes him, and soon he's clearly keeping up the charade for himself and not to make Connor's family feel better. But none of this would have happened if it weren't for Jared convincing him he absolutely needed to keep up the lie, yet what Jared says when it's all gotten out of hand isn't "Look, I'm sorry, this is wrong, I was wrong, you should have told them the truth from the start", but "You should remember who your friends are." Maybe Evan would remember who his friends are if you'd ever been anything resembling an actual friend to him, Jared! I gather stage directions and cut songs and so on show that Jared actually has a very low self-esteem and is covering up his insecurities with sarcasm and bullying behaviour, which is great, but I wish any of that really got through in the actual play, because in the actual play Jared is just intensely unsympathetic. As it stands, his narrative function is to show how friendless Evan is (the best he's got is this guy, who freely tells him he only hangs out with him because he's literally being paid for it) and to be the person who's callous enough to think lying to a grieving family about being friends with their dead son to save face is okay, because Evan is actually better than that and wouldn't have done it otherwise. Like with Alana, I'm sure there's something interesting there, in theory, that the actor taps into while playing him. But within the actual show, the way he acts by and large isn't interestingly informed by his insecurity; he's just being a mean-spirited, bullying, opportunistic asshole. He has no real redeeming qualities and then just kind of vanishes abruptly from the story towards the end, before he gets the chance to even react to the lie being (partly) exposed (which could have been a nice opportunity to show him being a non-dick for once).

I was also sad to discover that in the actual play, things that were subtle and interesting on the soundtrack are just spelled out. Evan explains in so many words near the very beginning, before we even hear For Forever, that he broke his arm because he fell out of a tree and the funny thing is nobody came to get him so he was just lying on the ground alone for a while. That beautiful, emotional repetition in the song - And I see him coming to get me. He's coming to get me. And everything's okay. - isn't using Evan's emotion as he makes up a false wish-fulfillment narrative to implicitly tell you about something that really happened; it's just a straightforward lie contradicting something established explicitly earlier on. There's nothing wrong with that, but man, I thought it was something sublime. Even stuff like To Break In a Glove - on the soundtrack, Evan says, "Connor was really lucky to have a dad who... who cared so much, about... taking care of stuff," and it establishes nicely, implicitly, that Evan's own dad never cared and never played baseball with him, which Connor's dad clearly understands in the pause that follows even though he doesn't remark on it directly and just reiterates his instructions about the glove. But in the actual thing, they spell it out. A moment that wasn't a big crowning moment of subtlety or anything but still nicely understated, trusting the listener to get the implied meaning without stating it outright, isn't even that. That's a bit disappointing.

I wonder if in some previous iteration of the story it used to be subtler, but they later made it more explicit to make it easier to follow. That or, you know, I extrapolated subtlety simply from having incomplete information. One of the two. (If it's the latter, though, I'm amused at how coincidentally good that incomplete information is.)

I was also surprised by just how little we learn about the actual Connor, even after seeing Tumblr jokes about Mike Faist being nominated for a Tony for spending fifteen minutes onstage. I expected fifteen minutes meant we'd see just enough of Connor to be able to form a reasonably complete picture along with the stuff we'd learn second-hand - but we don't really get to form any clear picture of Connor at all. We see that he smokes weed, that he suffers from severe paranoia, that he has violent episodes. There's, I think, pretty much exactly one scene giving real, subtle, humanizing insight into his character - the one in the computer lab, where Connor talks to Evan and signs his cast despite his outburst earlier (showing that he awkwardly wants to make up for shoving Evan but is still unwilling to directly apologize or address it), and he jokes about how they can both pretend they're friends (implying he too might be lonely and wishes he had friends, and if things had gone differently perhaps they could have become friends for real), but then when he sees Evan's letter referring to Zoe, he lashes out with sudden intense paranoia again and pushes him away (implying he does care about his sister on some level, as well as showing just how bad his mental health issues are and giving an idea of why he's not exactly popular). This one scene really is very good and exactly the sort of thing I wanted from this musical! But this is his last scene before he dies, and the majority of Connor's time onstage is as the imaginary version of him in Evan's head, which isn't very well developed and doesn't have very much to do with the real Connor. Moreover, we don't end up learning very much from Connor's family after his suicide at all. They used to have picnics at an apple orchard; Connor once had an episode where he screamed he was going to kill Zoe; that's pretty much about it. I was expecting imaginary Connor to kind of be developed as a character in his own right, based on Evan's perception of what the actual Connor was like at school, but imaginary Connor doesn't end up getting much in the way of characterization, instead serving more as a mouthpiece to manifest some of Evan's inner monologue as it pertains to how he relates to Connor and projects his own feelings and experiences onto him. That kind of makes sense, since Evan knows basically nothing about Connor, but just the same, it feels like a missed opportunity to flesh out Connor's character in general. When Connor and the made-up fantasy of him that Evan creates are such a huge part of the story, it seems natural to make use of the real Connor to compare and contrast Evan's fantasy Connor, but the show ultimately doesn't really go there, and Connor remains kind of just the potential to be a character more than a real character. I think that's a shame; it'd be fascinating to get a good look into the mind of someone with Connor's kind of severe mental health issues (as opposed to Evan's anxiety, which is much easier for an average person to grasp and relate to), and I think it'd strengthen the show's commentary on teen suicide if the kid who took his own life were a real, developed character that we can properly understand and empathize with.

All that having been said, though, it's still a good show. I might have appreciated it more if I hadn't spent weeks making up my own version in my head before I gave in and watched the bootleg, but there are still a lot of things it does do really, really well. Evan's anxiety and general self-hatred and character progression is well portrayed; he's relatable and sympathetic while making hugely misguided, horrible choices, with real, intriguing psychological depth actually driving the things he does. And some things really are good and subtle in the final product, like Evan relating to Connor and projecting onto him because he'd been suicidal himself, the general hints at that fact before it actually comes to light. So Big / So Small is genuinely one of the best-done tearjerker songs I've ever heard; the truck story is kind of cheesy but it's so cute and childlike and tragic and spaced out in the perfect way with Heidi's feelings of being helpless and overwhelmed. Heidi in general is such a good character; she's trying so hard, and loves him so much, but she has to get by and just doesn't have the ability to be there for him as consistently as someone like Cynthia. And with how hard she works, and how much she loves him, of course it hurts her to learn her son has found this second family behind her back, a family of rich strangers that feel sorry for her and want to give her handouts. She's so flawed and I love her.

(After Anybody Have a Map?, where Cynthia and Heidi's experiences of trying their hardest for their sons when they don't really know how are compared, I was hoping they'd both be getting similar levels of development, but alas, Cynthia definitely gets the short end of the stick. She gets more development than Connor's dad, and the way she unlike the rest of her family unreservedly loved her son in spite of everything is interesting, but again, without actually getting much insight into Connor, it's hard to gain a complete understanding of why she feels that way, or of her mental state in general.)

Requiem is a really beautiful song and my favorite in the show, although the aforementioned So Big / So Small kind of needs its own scale because damn. Sincerely, Me is very catchy. The "To disappear, disappear" chorus of Disappear was one of the first bits that stuck with me on the soundtrack, particularly the way the quiet abruptness of the latter "disappear" actually conveys the feeling of disappearing. Good for You and Anybody Have a Map? are both good.

And the performances are very good in general. Rachel Bay Jones as Heidi may actually be my favorite because as I explained above I really like Heidi, and Ben Platt's anxiety as Evan is palpable and believable. I may not like Jared the character, but Will Roland does nail the role, I think. And of course, I'm sure the show is much better live than watching a bootleg. Live theater is a whole different experience, and if I ever do get a good chance to see it properly, I'll go for it.

(But I liked Groundhog Day better.)

#dear evan hansen #review #ramble #characters #incredibly long overanalytical rambling about characterization in a musical involving suicide: the most Me thing(tm)#suicide

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