#i said a couple weeks back that the instant coffee I bought tasted bad I think I just put too much coffee in it that first time

[tepli-mravenci]

Buying my own instant coffee was the best investment in my adult life, you mean I don't have to pay for every cup of coffee I drink and it's always made exactly the way I like it???

Let's fucking GO

[asterroidd]

cotton sweatshirt

↬  College AU

↬  Pairing: Levi Ackerman/Reader

↬  Word count: 2.6k

↬  Synopsis:  Fatigue was slowly consuming you, luckily your roommate is there to save the day

↬  Notes: Thank you so much for the request anon! I apologize it took so long before I wrote it. Anw, I hope you enjoy it!

↬  no proofread whatsoever, capn’

5th and 12th prompts: “Give me back my keys! I’m fine!” and “Did you know that you talk in your sleep?”

    It was too much. All too much; the endless tasks, the studying, and numerous all-nighters that you had pulled by now.

    It was so taxing that your body couldn't keep up; eyes blood shot red from restless staring at the laptop screen, sunken cheeks due to the insufficient meal you are getting, and dark bags under your eyes that are evidently visible even from afar. If one would see you in such a state, one would assume you are a zombie or the living dead.

    Chewing your bottom lip, fingers anxiously taped against the wooden desk. Drained yes boring into the laptop screen as you tried your best to understand the text displayed in it. Your professor just had to be missing in action that week due to health reasons and as such couldn't attend most of the classroom session to teach. The replacement is just as worse—having no mastery over the lesson at hand that it only made it more confusing than before. So, you had to self-study for the sole sake of having a passing grade this semester. Finals weeks is looming around the corner and it's best that you understands the lessons beforehand so that you wouldn't have difficulty in studying once again later on.

    Your study session was supposed to be done before noon, yet here you are still hunched over the desk. A pencil at hand in attempt to take notes in the filler notebook. Your other hand curled up a fist full of hair, then ever so often tugging it in frustration. True, you did try to search online for other readings and videos that could potentially help you in your dilemma. Alas, you find yourself scratching your scalp and pulling your hair in frustration as you failed, yet again, to grasp the concept of the topic.

    Perhaps a book, you thought to yourself. There is a local library nearby—suppose a ten minute walk, could be even seven if you walked fast enough. For sure there are a handful of books there that could finally help you in understanding the lesson. And so with a drained sigh, you closed the lid of the laptop and stood up.

    You took in your surroundings; which was an utter mess. Eraser shards littered on top of your desk that some even fell to the floor due to you hastily sweeping them off. Mountains of books scattered around—some opened with a random item on top to act as a makeshift paper weight. Sticky notes plastered all over the walls and stacks upon stacks of paper everywhere. In short, your room looks like a battleground.

     Which it is; an academic battleground, that is.

    That said, you swiftly stuffed a handful of notebooks and pens into a small backpack so you could continue the study session at the library. Perhaps a change in environment would ease you off and clear your mind. When you exited from your room, you were surprised to see Levi lounging off the living room. A bowl of popcorn on his lap whilst lazily popping one in his mouth every so often. His eyes glued to the TV screen as it played a series, The Confession Tapes you presumed. Ever since you showed him the first episode a few days ago, he was so intrigued and thus became so hook with the story line.

    Oh, to have freedom and time for leisure activities like Levi. You would willingly kill just to have that.

    "I'll be heading off to the library for a while," you uttered under your breath. Levi turned his head towards your direction, slowly munching on the popcorn. "I might come home late so I'll bring the keys with me."

    He paused the movie momentarily to narrow his eyes at you. Levi looked at you from top to bottom, assessing and processing the current state you are in. Which was hell. You looked like a vampire that crawled out of your coffin after decades of isolation. Of all the years he and you had been roommate, Levi had practically memorised most of your mannerism and behaviour so much. And at the moment, he knew all to well that you would be, yet again, working yourself to the grave.

    With a sigh, Levi placed the bowl of popcorn on top of the coffee table before approaching you. "Can't you see yourself, idiot?"

    You scrunched up your nose in confusion. What does he mean by that?

    "When was the last time you ate?"

    You racked your brain for answers. When was it truly that last time you had a proper meal besides energy bars that you bought from the convenience store. You went silent for a moment, eyes cascading down.

    "I had instant noodles I think? Last night," you answered after a pregnant pause.

    "Then that means you have not eaten anything since this morning?"

    You only nodded in response, all too tired to argue back with him. All you wanted to do was to finally leave the apartment and resume your study session in the library. Where, in hopes, you could finally progress in.

    Levi clicked his tongue. No wonder you look like a living dead. You are barely getting any nutrition in your body at all! Being studious is a great thing—but being all too unforgiving and torturing one's body too much is an unacceptable habit.

    As swift as a fox, he snagged the keys from your hands. You, in your drained state, reacted poorly and sluggishly. Though, you gave him one ferocious glare.

    "Give it back, Levi." You held out your hand.

    "No. You should rest. You look like shit."

    "Give me back my keys. I'm fine!"

    Levi, much to your surprise, had a hint of worry in his eyes. Silence fell between you and him, eyes focused on each other. You thought of kicking him on the shin, then took the chance to grab the keys. But you find yourself unable to as your body slowly slumped over.

    You let out one tired sigh, eyes closing every now and then in drowsiness, but you can't give in. Not now. Not at least you'd finally understand and finish writing your notes. Still, exams is a couple of weeks away. Surely a brief break wouldn't hurt?

   You groaned, the floor beneath your feet swaying as you struggled to keep yourself upright. It was only then did you notice the ever growing itch in your throat which signifies tonsillitis, mucus flooding your nasal passages, and increased body temperature.

     "I'm fine. . ." you inhaled sharply. "Just—" you continued but was caught short when your knees buckled under your weight, causing you to lean forward. Luckily enough, Levi caught you just in the nick of time before you fell face first into the wooden floor.

     "Tch. Look at what you got yourself into," he huffed, palm pressing against your forehead. "You also have a fever, dumbass."

    Did you now? You let your head rest into his touch, relishing his cool touch against your flushed ones. Maybe you really need a rest.

   "How about you take a seat on the couch while I brew you a cup of tea?"

    "Sounds good. . ." you uttered under your breath.

    That said, Levi practically dragged your body towards the couch and helped you settle on it. Making sure that you are comfortable enough by placing pillows behind your head. The male crouched down to your level, bringing a hand up once again to your forehead to properly estimate your temperature this time.

    "Looks like a bad one. . ." he muttered.

    "You tell me. I feel like shit," you've managed to crack a joke despite your conditions. Levi rose his brow at you, shaking his head at your idiocy. Then you watched him as he removed his cotton sweatshirt that hung loosely on his figure. Suffice to say, you were beyond perplexed when Levi placed the article of clothing on top of your lap.

    "You're cold aren't you?" he shrugged his shoulders. "Wear that for the time being to keep you warm."

    That said, he soon disappeared inside the kitchen to perhaps brew you a cup of tea much to your delight. It is practically known that the male had an immense skill in brewing and perfecting the art of tea. And as his roommate, Levi practically forced you to learn how to brew yourself; mainly because he doesn't want you wasting precious tea leaves that are far too expensive to be wasted. You recalled the time spent with him, hours upon hours inside the kitchen while trying your best to not burn your hands as you, yet again, try to perfect boiling tea. Levi stood beside you, a scowl present on his face as he frowned at your blend.

    Do it again, he snarled. The temperature is not right.

    It was little moments such as those reminds you of how much of a stuck up bitch Levi is. Nonetheless, the male still have a special place in your heart as your roommate and perhaps crush.

    Gingerly holding his sweater in your hands, you took one deep whiff of his scent—despite mucus flooding your nose—relishing the soft floral scent of the detergent that he bought about a week ago. Yet, Levi's natural aroma gradually overflows your nasal cavity; refreshing and clean with a hint of musky scent. It was pure heaven.

    Blood rushed to your cheeks as you let his sweatshirt hug your body, encompassing you more with his scent. Truth to be told, it was your long time dream to wear one of Levi's clothing. Suppose it was the thought of you in his clothes that brings butterflies to your stomachs, or the pure concept of his smell flooding your senses. Either way, you liked it.

    "Hey. . ." Levi's voice boomed which slightly startled you. The male placed a mug full of tea on the coffee table before kneeling down and opening a pack of fever patch.

    "What flavor did you brew?" you mumbled.

    "Chamomile," Levi replied, brushing your hair away from your forehead. For a brief moment, he stopped to stare at your glossy eyes due to the fever. Small patches of sweat that peppered your skin that glistened slightly under the light. Not to mention your lips that he oh so long to get a taste of for months—but he wouldn't tell you that out loud. Red dusted his cheeks ever so lightly that you would've missed if it weren't for your keen attention to detail.

    Levi bit the insides of his cheeks, slapping himself internally to focus at the task at hand which it to place a fever patch on your forehead. That said, he carefully set it against your temples. Making sure that it is adhered on firmly as to not fall in case you tossed and turn in your sleep. A smile adorned your features as soon as the cool hydrogel rested against your skin. You mumbled a quick gratitude towards the male before snuggling deep into his sweatshirt.

    "Levi. . ." you started to which he hummed in response, helping you sit up. Then, the male gave you the mug with hot tea. Its heavenly aroma making you sigh in relax. "Come sit with me?" you asked, patting the space next to you.

    The male opened his mouth to argue; to refuse your request because he doesn't want to catch your germs and be sick himself. Though, with one look at your puppy-dog eyes and pouting lips, Levi knew that he wouldn't be able to resist you. "Fine. . ." he begrudgingly replied.

    You let out a small cheer of victory. Placing your head on top of his shoulder the minute he sat beside you. Even for just a moment—just for this day—you want to delve into your fantasies and revel in the company of the male. Levi looked at you from the corner of his eye, admiring how his sweatshirt that embraces your form. Due to him being quite short in stature, his clothes were not too big. So, naturally, most of his wardrobe would probably fit you. Which he has no complaints about.

    "Can we watch Kitchen nightmares?" you asked, taking one small sip of tea as to not burn your tongue.

    Levi shrugged, "Why not?" That said, he adhered to your request. Playing that one episode in the series that he knew you enjoyed watching despite the countless times you've already seen it.

    You relaxed back into the couch, letting more of your weight press against Levi as your hands cupped the warm mug in between. The brutal and fierce howls of criticism of Gordon Ramsey brings a small smile to your lips, and oddly enough, as well as Levi's. Watching Kitchen's Nightmares (as well as other shows that the iconic chef starred in) was a guilty pleasure, so to say, of both yours and the male's. There is just something so satisfying how the chef makes people humble down and admit their mistakes.

    One great thing that comes from watching his series was that Levi could learn a thing or two in cooking. Even though he was already great from the start. The male picks up a recipe or two just by watching the series, much to your satisfaction. Between you and Levi, he is the mother of the household, if you will. While you're just one lazy couch potato who would receive an ear full of scolding every now and then.

    Soon enough, you felt your eyelids closing involuntarily, yet you fought to keep them open. It was getting into the good part—the climax—of the episode and you didn't want to sleep through it. Though, you find yourself giving in and finally letting your eyes rest for once. You exhaled, rubbing your cheeks against Levi's shoulder blades in attempts to get more comfortable. The male shifted on the couch, allowing you to be cozy and warm with him beside you.

    In your dazed state, you swore that Levi slowly rest his head on top of yours. Nevertheless, you couldn't conclude if it was true since the sweet embrace of sleep consumed you. For the first time in that week, you finally had a good night's rest.

    Levi relaxed under your touch, finally relieved that you gave in and let your body get the rest it deserves after days upon days of continuous work. He contemplated whether to turn off the television so that the noise wouldn't bother you in your sleep, or keep it open since a part of him wants to finish the episode. Though, his thoughts were caught short when you murmured.

    "Levi. . ." you mumbled in your sleep, hands gripping his sweatshirt.

    "What?" he humored, despite knowing that you are in deep slumber and is probably sleep-talking.

    Then to his surprise, you whispered a phrase that he never anticipated would slip past your lips.

    "I love you. . ."

    He was taken a back, eyes wide while his mouth slightly hung open. Levi blinked once, then twice, trying to process if what he heard was real or was his imagination deceiving him.

    "Did you know you talk in your sleep?" Levi said, testing to see if you were truly asleep or was just toying with him. When he concluded that you were—in fact—knocked out and catching some Z's, he breathed lowly the three words he oh so wanted to tell you for months.

    "I love you, too. Brat." He snaked his hand around yours, intertwining his fingers around your hand.

    Little did Levi know, you were half-awake during his confession.

[pcychedelic]

Purple Rain (Part II)

Relationship(s): Kim Junmyeon/Reader

Tags: Professor-student relationship, college AU, slowburn; angst, smut

Rating: Explicit (mature themes, strong language, and sex)

Synopsis:  After a fateful encounter that results in the trunk of your car getting wrecked, the handsome stranger responsible for it turns up in your lecture hall and introduces himself as the professor.

Chapters [Word Count]:

Part I: Chapters 1 to 5

Chapter 6 [3.6k]

Chapter 7 [3.8k]

Chapter 8 [3.4k]

Chapter 9 [6.0k] + Chapter 9.5 [4.2k] ᴺᴱᵂ

Next update to be determined

Click on the links above to read the latest chapter on Asianfanfics (AFF).

Friendly reminder that mature words are censored when you’re reading as a guest on AFF, so make sure to log into your AFF account and turn off the content filter to read the chapters without censors.

Read Chapter 6 below.

Chapter 6

The urgent knocking on your apartment door interrupts you in the middle of making dinner. You glance at the wall clock, the time reading 9:01 p.m., and you wonder who could possibly be at the other side of the door at this hour. You aren’t expecting anyone this late at night.

You pad toward the door in your bare feet. A familiar face greets you when you peek through the peephole, though the sight of him standing outside your apartment door isn’t familiar at all. It’s so strange that you have to remind yourself that you aren’t dreaming.

You open the door.

“Junmyeon?”

“Hi,” he smiles. “Can I come in?”

“Uh…”

“Were you studying?” he asks, already taking off his jacket. “I hope I’m not bothering you. I should’ve texted first, but I kinda came here on a whim.”

You shake your head. “No, no. I was just making dinner.” You open the door wider and let him inside, bringing him house slippers to change into.

“What’s for dinner?” He looks around your apartment, his eyes eventually settling on your kitchen counter. A smirk creeps into his lips when he sees the pot of water over the stove and the noodle packs. “Instant ramen,” he says. “How very… college student of you.”

“Hey!” you protest. “I happen to like instant ramen, thank you very much. It’s delicious and it’s cheap.”

Junmyeon scoffs as he sits on the couch. “You’ve deluded yourself into liking it because it’s cheap,” he corrects. “Stop eating that garbage. Your body will thank you in ten years.”

“I’m sorry, what are you doing here again?” you ask, because you’re pretty sure that he isn’t there to just criticize your dinner choices. “And how did you come up? Mr. Bong just let you?”

You’re not sure if you’re seeing things, but you can swear you just saw Junmyeon’s cheeks blush a little. “Oh, your doorman let me up because… um, because he saw us…”

“Oh.” Now you’re blushing, too. “Right.”

You know that he’s talking about the night of your birthday, the night he drove you home from Esperanza, the night you kissed.

You still remember everything about that kiss, even the tiniest of details. You still remember how Junmyeon’s lips still had a faint taste of strawberries because of the ice cream the two of you shared before he drove you home. You still remember how his perfume smelled like lavender, warm and comforting. You still remember how soft his lips were, and even now, about a week later, a phantom of that kiss still lingers over your mouth.

It had been everything you imagine it would be, and more.

Definitely more.

“Water’s boiling,” Junmyeon says, reeling you back into the present. You head toward the kitchen and put the noodle squares into the pot. Junmyeon follows you, this time settling on a seat at the dining table. “I came here because… Well, I wanted to talk about that night.”

Your heart suddenly feels a bit too heavy on your chest. He’s here to lecture you again, isn’t he?

“I’m sorry,” you tell him.

Junmyeon doesn’t say anything. But you feel him stand up from his seat and walk toward you, coming closer and closer until he’s close enough that the skin on your neck tingles from his proximity.

“I’m not,” he whispers.

“You’re not what?”

“I’m not sorry.” You turn around, and the first thing you see is Junmyeon’s chest. He towers a couple of inches over you, so you have to look up to meet his eyes. “I’m not sorry,” he repeats. “God knows how many times I’ve imagined that happening. I know it’s a wrong thing to imagine, but it’s true. And I’m not sorry.”

“Jun—”

“But,” he cuts you off, “that doesn’t mean we can be reckless now. I like you. A lot. Maybe more than a lot. And I don’t want anything bad to happen to you, which is why we have to be careful.”

“I understand.” Truly, you do. Junmyeon has said it over and over again, that he doesn’t want you to get in trouble because of him and especially now that you’re just a few exams away from graduating.

After all, you know now how Junmyeon feels about you. I like you, he had said. That’s a guarantee you didn’t have before, and now that you do have it, it makes the complications more bearable.

“You only have about a month and a half left,” Junmyeon says. “After that, we’ll talk again. If our feelings haven’t changed, that is.”

You shake your head. “I’m afraid my feelings aren’t going anywhere. Not sure about yours, though…”

Junmyeon laughs, his cheeks beaming as he does. “My feelings don’t change so easily, either.”

“Are you staying for dinner?”

“I can’t,” he says. “I have to grade a bunch of term papers. I still haven’t read and graded yours, to be honest. Besides, I’m not really a huge fan of instant noodles.”

You playfully slap his arm. “Stop making fun of my dinner.”

“Alright,” Junmyeon laughs again, and you can swear that it’s the sweetest sound you’ve heard all your life. “Good luck on the rest of your finals.”

Before you can stop yourself, you blurt out, “Don’t I get a kiss? For good luck?”

The smile dissolves on Junmyeon’s face. He steps toward you, walking until his face is only a couple of inches away from yours. He cups your cheek in his right hand, the pad of his thumb brushing your lower lip. An electric jolt races up your spine.

But he pulls away.

“No more kisses until graduation,” he says.

You had expected this, but it was worth a try. “And after graduation?”

“We’ll see,” Junmyeon says. You catch the corner of his lips curling into a smirk once more before he suppresses it.

* * *

On your way back home from your last final exam, you run into an old friend at the convenience store you always go to after school.

You almost hadn’t recognized him. The last time you’d had a good look at him had been a couple of months ago, and that hadn’t exactly been a friendly encounter.

“Chanyeol?” you call incredulously as you approach him by the beverage section of the store.

The last time you’d seen him, his dark mop of hair had been long and unruly, almost covering his eyebrows. Now it’s bleached strawberry blonde and cropped short, like a military haircut that has grown a bit longer, the undercuts fading from the crown. Chanyeol has always been handsome, but the clean hairstyle has accentuated his features even better.

“Long time no see,” he says in that deep voice that used to tie your stomach in knots. It still does, actually, but maybe not as much as before.

“Your hair… Wow.”

You can’t stop staring at him. He doesn’t quite look like the Chanyeol you knew, but at the same time, seeing him look so differently floods your brain with so many memories, and surprisingly, none of them are bad.

Perhaps it’s because he looks like a better version of himself, the version you’ve only seen in the happy memories you have of him, the version you would’ve enjoyed to get to know more back when you still loved him.

You still feel something, especially now that he’s standing right in front of you, but you’re sure that it isn’t love. It’s more of a what-if. No other term can encapsulate Chanyeol better. What if.

“Is it bad?” Chanyeol asks shyly, running his hands through his new hair. The dimple that you had always found adorable appears on his cheek as he smiles.

“No, no. It’s good. It’s very good.”

Chanyeol laughs. “That’s a relief. I thought it looked horrible on me since everyone can’t stop staring.”

“Well, it’s just that… You look so different.”

“Yup,” he says, “that was the idea. I wanted to be different. Figured I should look the part while I’m at it.” He looks down at his feet, and swallows nervously. “Listen, um… I’d like to talk about a few things, if that’s okay with you.”

You stare at him for a while, trying to gauge his expression. He looks apologetic — sad, almost — and you can tell which direction this ‘talk’ would be veering toward.

But there are still some loose ends to tie up, and you figured that this conversation is long overdue.

You nod. “Sure, Chanyeol. Let’s talk.”

  The afternoon is relatively cool for an April one. The streets are filled with college students going out to eat and whatnot, filling the air with the buzz of chatter and laughter.

You and Chanyeol have taken a table outside the convenience store, a rectangular umbrella sticking out of its center and hanging over the two of you. Wisps of steam rise from the cups of coffee you’ve bought from the store. Neither one of you has drank.

The tension in the atmosphere is thick, not with resentment, but with awkwardness. It’s as if the two of you have forgotten how to talk with each other. You want to ask him, How did we end up like this? but you already know the answer to that.

Finally, when you can’t stand the silence any longer, you say, “What did you want to talk about, Yeol?”

The nickname feels strange as it rolls off your tongue, like it no longer belongs there, but you say it anyway to show Chanyeol that you no longer harbor bad feelings toward him.

You’ve forgiven him, even if he hadn’t apologized properly, because that’s the only way for you to stop hurting. And it has worked. So far, at least.

“Right,” he says. “I’ve talked to Kyungsoo and Jihyun, too. About the, um, way I’ve been acting for the past months. I’m sorry about ghosting you guys suddenly. It’s just that… I needed a lot of time to myself. To think about the shit I did. I’m sorry if it took so long for me to figure out.”

“I understand,” you answer.

Not It’s okay or It’s fine or any of that. I understand. That’s the best you can give him — your understanding. You’ve forgiven him based on that, but that doesn’t erase the pain he’s caused you.

Chanyeol continues. “I’ve apologized to Kyungsoo and Jihyun about those things, and you’re the last person I wanted to apologize to because… well, you’re the one I hurt the most.”

The cups of coffee have gone cold on the table, and so has your heart.

“I know that apologizing doesn’t cut it, but still, I’m sorry,” says Chanyeol. There’s no question about the sincerity of his tone. It’s the most genuine sentence you’ve heard from him in all the years that you’ve known him. “I’m sorry that I led you on, that I took advantage of how you felt for me, that I didn’t think my actions through when I was with you. I just want you to know that it’s not your fault. None of it is. It’s me. It’s all me. I was too afraid of my own feelings. That’s the truth.”

You stare at him, your throat beginning to tighten.

Chanyeol’s eyes are traveling everywhere except on you. You’re not sure if you’re just imagining things or if his eyes have really turned watery.

“I know that nothing’s gonna change what happened before, and I’m not even entirely sure if it’s gonna change anything now, but I’m sorry. I’m sorry for all the things I did, the things I’m doing right now that I may not even be aware of, the things I’ll do in the future. I’ll never do anything intentionally that’ll hurt you, I just fuck up sometimes. I’m pretty sure I’ll fuck up in the future, too, but I’ll try to be better. I’ll try if it’s the last thing I do. I care about you. A lot.”

The awkwardness seeps back into the air. Chanyeol picks up his coffee, which probably doesn’t taste that good anymore, and takes a small sip from it.

“I’ve forgiven you a long time ago, Yeol,” you say after a few seconds of silence. “There’s nothing else to forgive. But I appreciate your apology.”

It’s true. What’s done is done. Neither of you can do anything about the bad memories you have of each other now. All you can do is move past all that.

Chanyeol may have done a lot of hurtful things, whether intentionally or not, but it’s not his fault that he didn’t love you the way you loved him.

“I know I’m not in the position to ask for favors, but can I ask one all the same?” Chanyeol asks.

“Sure.”

“Can we be friends again?”

You smile. “I’d like that. Yeah, let’s try again as friends.”

Chanyeol’s lips curl into a smile as well, his dimple making another appearance. “Thank you. For hearing me out. And for the coffee,” he says. “See you around?”

“You can’t stay for a while?”

Chanyeol regretfully shakes his head. “I have to study for my major demo prod final.”

You can’t help but laugh. “You are different,” you say. “You never studied before.”

“Never too late to start again, right?” Chanyeol laughs. “See you around.”

You nod. Chanyeol stands up from his seat, gives you one last smile, and then disappears into the fading afternoon. Your heart feels the lightest it has been for a while, and you wonder until when this happiness will be good for this time around.

Apparently not for long.

Your phone dings, displaying an e-mail notification from the last person you’d expect it from. The message reads:

  From: CCU Department of Literature (literature@ccu.edu)

  Good day.

  You are respectfully invited to the department chair’s office for a dialogue regarding a sensitive matter. Kindly reply promptly with the schedule that works for you.

  Best,

  Lee Yeong Hoon, PhD

Chair, Literature Department

* * *

Your heart feels like it’s about to burst inside your chest any minute now.

You’ve never been personally asked into the department chair’s office in all your four years in college, and the churning in your gut tells you that your first visit isn’t going to be a pleasant one.

Students only ever go to their department chair’s office for either one of two reasons: (1) to ask for recommendation letters, in which case they go willingly, or (2) they fucked up and are in trouble, in which case they’re asked to go whether they like it or not.

You definitely aren’t there to ask for recommendations, so the only other logical option is that you’re monumentally screwed. As far as you’re concerned, you haven’t done anything to warrant the department chair’s attention.

Well, there is one thing…

No, you tell yourself. That’s impossible.

How could Dr. Lee have known? How could anyone have known? You and Junmyeon have been careful enough around campus. Heck, you haven’t seen him more than once outside of campus since the night he drove you home from Esperanza. It just isn’t possible that you’re in trouble because of that.

The shrill, robotic sound of a telephone snaps you back into reality.

The department secretary immediately picks it up. “Sir? Yes, sir. Right away, sir.” She turns to you, placing the handset back on the hook. “Dr. Lee is ready for you, sweetie.”

You can’t quite place the secretary’s expression. Is it distaste? Pity? Nevertheless, you thank her, and then hesitantly make your way toward the office.

The second you open the door and see who’s in the room aside from Dr. Lee, your heart sinks right through the floor. The other man is sitting with his back facing you, but he doesn’t need to turn around for you to know who he is.

Junmyeon.

He’s already occupying one of the two chairs in front of Dr. Lee’s desk, so you naturally go for the other seat. Your entire body has gone cold.

“I suppose you already know why I asked you here this morning,” Dr. Lee says, talking to no one in particular. Neither you nor Junmyeon respond.

Dr. Lee brings out a small, dark brown envelope from one of his desk drawers. He pulls out a single sheet of glossy paper — a photo, you realize — and places it gingerly on the table, as if mishandling it will make it explode.

Junmyeon doesn’t move an inch, perhaps because Dr. Lee has already shown him the photo while you were waiting outside just a few minutes ago. You straighten in your seat, craning your neck to see what’s on the photo.

It’s a bit dark and grainy, like it was taken on a phone from a distance, but there’s no doubt that the two people in the photo are you and Junmyeon. It was taken on that night, the night you sometimes still can’t believe ever happened. There it is, the first kiss you and Junmyeon have shared, immortalized in a photo meant to destroy the both of you here and now.

“This was dropped anonymously into my pigeon hole about a week ago,” says Dr. Lee. “The only people that have seen it are the people in this room right now, and my secretary. She opens my letters, you see.” He takes the photo, puts it back in the envelope, and then returns it inside his drawer. “No one will ever see it again.”

That takes a huge chunk of weight off of your chest, but it doesn’t remove all the dread.

Despite the anxiety simmering in your stomach, you manage to say, “Thank you, sir.”

Dr. Lee simply nods. The neutrality of his features is a bit unsettling, but it’s better than him being angry. Or maybe this is how he naturally is when he’s upset? That’s even more unnerving.

“As Chair of the Literature Department, it’s my responsibility to make sure that… things like this do not spill over to the entire Liberal Arts College.” He said ‘things’ with such dismay that you know he said it not because of the lack of a better term. Dr. Lee continues, “We have to deal with this on our own. Our department cannot have any more attention toward it, especially not after the scandal last trimester with Ms. Jeon. We have to cut off this problem’s head before it bites anyone else. Do you remember your Greek mythology?” he asks you.

The sudden question causes your brows to furrow in confusion. “Sir?”

“You were my student in World Literature 1. Do you remember your Greek mythology?” Dr. Lee repeats.

“Uh, I g-guess, sir.”

“Good. You will understand my analogy, then. You see, problems are like the Hydra — cut off one head, two more take its place. How did Hercules kill it?”

The answer comes naturally to you. “He burned the stumps before they grew back.”

“Good,” Dr. Lee says, his tone void of any emotion. “We have already cut off the head by not telling anyone else, and this is how we will burn the stump of this problem so that it remains beheaded.” He leans back on his chair, folding his arms in front of him. “I have already discussed this with Mr. Kim earlier, but for your sake, we will discuss it again.”

You turn to look at Junmyeon — the first good look you’ve had of him since you entered the room. His face is as rigid as a rock, his eyebrows scrunched together. He hasn’t spared you a glance, not once, since you sat down. He hasn’t talked, either.

Dr. Lee sighs. “Given your father’s position in the university and the fact that you are merely awaiting graduation, I am inclined to grant you the utmost leniency regarding this matter. Personally, I do not care about other people’s relationships, especially if they are of legal age, but unfortunately, my personal bias is suspended when I am acting as department chair. Because of that, I have no choice but to not invite Mr. Kim to teach at the university next trimester, or in the trimesters to come.”

Did you hear him correctly?

“You’re firing him,” you sum up. Your voice doesn’t feel like it’s coming from you; it feels like it’s echoing from someplace else.

Dr. Lee leans forward, propping his elbows on the wooden table. “My dear, I am not terminating Mr. Kim’s contract. I am simply not renewing it. There is a difference.”

“Well whatever you call it, it isn’t fair, it isn’t—”

“Don’t,” Junmyeon’s stern voice cuts you off. He throws you a pointed glance, silently saying, Please stop talking right now. He’s angry; that, you are sure of. What you aren’t sure of is if his anger is directed at the whole situation or simply at you.

He has the right to be furious at you, doesn’t he? After all, all of this wouldn’t be happening if you just hadn’t let yourself get swayed by your emotions and kissed him that night.

The fault is yours alone.

“It is settled,” Dr. Lee says with such finality that it’s hard to argue.

Unfortunately, you’d never been one to know when to give up. “Dr. Lee, please. It isn’t his fault, it’s mine. Please don’t—”

“Enough,” the department chair says. His tone has gone from neutral to venomous. “The only reason I am not taking your diploma away from you is because your father is the president of this university. One more outburst like that and I will no longer hesitate to forfeit your degree.” That shuts you right up. Dr. Lee then turns to Junmyeon. “It is settled,” he repeats. “Thank you for your time in this university, Mr. Kim. I wish you good fortune in all your future endeavors.”

Junmyeon stands up from his seat and offers his hand to Dr. Lee. “Thank you, sir,” he says. After the handshake, Junmyeon walks out of the room, and all you can do is watch.

What you don’t know is that it’ll  be a while before you see him again.

If you enjoy my work and want to send a bit more love, you can buy me a coffee! Donors will receive a small gift from me. ♡

< Part I (Chapters 1 to 5) • Chapter 6 • Chapter 7 > Chapter 8 > Chapter 9 > Chapter 9.5 >

[vipclifford]

Fireflies and Make-Believe

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Nothing was charming about the small town Calum had been exiled to. He didn’t like the small diner his pessimistic uncle Drew ran, the persistent smell of grease driving Calum up the walls. His uncle’s studio apartment sat right above it, a measly twenty-four metres squared room with a tiny bathroom tucked into the corner. The constant buzzing from downstairs since the early hours of the morning was enough to make Calum go insane.

Leaving the two-storey building was the worst mistake Calum had ever made. All the villagers looked at the man with question in their eyes, hushed whispers shared between them as they tried to figure out who he was. Clearly nobody seemed to stop by the town often, which didn’t surprise Calum since there was nothing interesting to do. There were only around three restaurants, including his uncle’s 50s themed diner, but he didn’t want to draw even more attention to himself by sitting alone. He was told there was a movie night each friday in their makeshift cinema, but they only played the scratched DVDs from the public library. Apparently, every so often the townspeople gathered at the square for an event the mayor organised, but his uncle’s words didn’t portray these in the best light. Perhaps because he detested the mayor with a passion, or because they were genuinely bad. Calum thought it might be both.

Drew usually needed a helping hand at the diner so Calum didn’t really have much time to explore the town. His inability to cook predisposed him to become a waiter, the only highlight of his not so voluntary work being the tips he received.

The other highlight was the girl who drank way too much coffee. She was there every morning for breakfast, occasionally popping in during the evening to grab a burger. A book was always in her hands, ranging from Jane Austen novels to Michael Morpurgo. The girl always gave him a cute little smile that he couldn’t help but return when she walked through the door. She was also quite pretty, not that he had noticed.

“That’s Y/N,” said Luke, the friendly waiter at the diner, after he had noticed Calum staring. He immediately snapped his attention back to the black coffee he was pouring into white mugs, pretending he never even realised she was there.

“Who?”

“You know exactly who,” Luke chuckled, wrapping an arm around his coworker’s shoulders. He quickly shrugged it off. “She just graduated from Yale. Journalism, I’m pretty sure. Heard she wanted to spend her last summer here in Hurstford before going off to live life in the city.”

“Good for her,” Calum muttered monotonously, walking over to the stoves to make some pancakes. The blonde followed, amused with his behaviour. He leaned against the wall, watching him struggle on his first pancake before taking over.

“Not that you care, but I heard she pops into Nate’s on Friday nights,” Luke informed the brunette with a wink. Calum rolled his eyes, arms folding over his chest, his reaction making Luke laugh. “It’s a bar on the left side of town. Most people around our age like to go there, including myself, so if you’re into making new friends for the time you’re in Hurstford, I can definitely introduce you to people,” he offered with a small smile. “Or you can chat Y/N up. Your choice mate.”

“I don’t fancy Y/N,” Calum huffed, stacking the pancakes Luke made neatly onto a plate.

“We’ll see after we get a couple drinks in you.”

Drew had pushed him out the doors after his second week secluded in his uncle’s apartment, telling him it was “unnatural for a twenty-three-year-old to lock themselves up all summer” and to “go do whatever young people do at the weekend.” Thousands of things ‘young people did’ flashed through Calum’s mind in an instant, although he knew his uncle meant to go to Nate’s.

Walking down the empty roads was when Calum finally felt bliss. No strangers greeted the man they now recognised as the moody worker at the diner. Sodium lampposts lit the streets in a yellowish glow as though they were trying to replicate sunlight, something he didn’t realise he craved. He missed how peaceful silence was, and just how therapeutic it was to be alone with your thoughts every once in a while. He thought that maybe he would start up running again in the early morning, just before the average person gets out of bed. When the streets were still bare.

The bar was easy to spot when it finally came into view. A small crowd stood outside with drinks and cigarettes in their hands, enjoying the warm weather. The sound of chatter and 90s hits could be heard from twenty metres away. He walked into the premises cautiously, slowly making his way through the room as he searched for a head of golden curls.

“You came!” Luke grinned, appearing suddenly behind Calum. The two men chuckled after Calum visibly jumped, not expecting Luke to be behind him. It was strange to see the blonde out of his work clothes and dressed up, the usual off white apron with stains all over replaced by a bright red shirt. It suited him. Luke wrapped an arm around his shoulders, dragging Calum towards a table at the back of the bar. Four pairs of eyes snapped to him in confusion.

“This is Calum. We work together.” Everyone nodded in understanding at Luke’s clarification as Calum sat down on the metal chair, mentally cringing at the uneven legs. “That’s Ashton, Michael, Caitlin and Summer,” He introduced, smiling when the dark haired girl pulled him in for a kiss. Calum nodded along although he had already forgotten their names.

“Hey,” he spoke with a tight-lipped smile, hand raising awkwardly in a small wave. A low chorus of greetings followed shortly after.

Waves of questions about him and how he ended up in Hurstford washed over Calum, who answered as vaguely as he could muster. He didn’t want to share things about himself with strangers he’d forget in a couple months. He didn’t want to become acquainted with villagers. He wanted to be in Los Angeles getting drunk and high every night like he had planned.

He leaned back on the chair when everyone diverted into their own conversations, analysing the room. Unpainted brick walls had large posters of Elvis Presley hung on every corner, small pictures of other artists filling the gaps between them. Tables were scattered unevenly through the room, leaving the far right and centre untouched. A row of slot machines and dart boards stood on the right hand side. People crowded around the jukebox and pool table, desperate to have a turn. The middle of the room seemed to be reserved for dancing. Groups of friends and couples pressed against each other together, jumping to the beat of the music. On the outskirts stood Y/N.

Her hand held what looked like a glass of vodka and cola, although he could never be sure. She was bouncing to the beat of the music with her friends, careful not to spill her drink but still wanting to let loose for the night. A small smile stretched his lips as he watched the girl whip her hair, not caring about how she looked. Calum had to physically restrain himself from from picturing what it would look like to have her dark red lipstick staining his neck.

A shoulder pushed into Calum’s, his annoyed look being met by Luke’s knowing one, eyebrows raised. He had been caught red handed.

“Don’t fancy Y/N, huh?” Luke chuckled.

“Can’t fancy someone I don’t know,” he countered, bringing the glass of beer to his lips. The blonde shook his head, curls bouncing at the movement.

“Guess we should do something about that,” he grinned.

Luke stood up suddenly, dragging the brunette and who Calum presumed was his girlfriend with him on his way to the dance floor. He felt his chest constrict with anxiety as he watched the blonde approach the girl he did not fancy. Calum watched as she wrapped Luke’s girlfriend up in a hug, shooting a friendly smile at Luke. He watched as she chuckled at whatever words he spoke, eyes crinkling with nothing but joy. Calum yearned to always see that expression on her face.

“This is Cal,” Luke introduced, pointing at the man as he wrapped an arm around his girlfriend’s waist. “He’s new to town, might’ve seen him around at Drew’s.”

Y/N began to nod, a look of realisation washing over her features as she smiled at Calum.

“I knew I recognised you,” she grinned, giving Calum a quick hug. He was taken aback by the suddenness of the action, still not accustomed to the friendliness of the townspeople. It only lasted around a second, yet it left him wanting more. “I’m Y/N,” she told him with a smile.

“Nice to meet you.”

Calum hated small talk. He hated the forced questions and uninterested replies. He hated the many awkward silences in between. He hated how slowly time seemed to pass. But there was none of that with Y/N.

Conversation flowed easily between the two, almost not leaving any room for breath. Time flew by, Calum not even realising the minute Luke and his girlfriend walked away. He learned about her passion for writing over the drink he bought her, and her dream of living in New York City. He learned that her music taste was very different to his, surprisingly making the girl appear more intriguing in his eyes.

He wasn’t sure of how they got to her doorstep, didn’t even realise when they left the bar, too consumed by her presence and chat. He was sure he didn’t want their night together to end, something inside of him urging Calum to spend more time with her.

Instead he told her ‘good night’ and walked slowly down the empty roads, a small smile on his lips as he thought of the girl who dreamed of New York.

Tags: @aftermidnightclifford @alongcamethedevil @5sobsessed

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[codyfernaesthetic]

Patreon preview

Hi everyone! You’ve probably seen my patreon page linked on here before, and I wanted to give you guys a taste of my work outside of fanfic. This is part one of my short story entitled “Don’t Feed the Strays”. I’ll be posting the next part on my patreon today. Hopefully this will convince you to pledge a $1 and see where the story goes?☺️ You can find and pledge at Lovely Little Writings on Patreon.

(P.S. I think you Millory stans in particular will like this story)

October, 2018

The coffee shop quietly buzzed around Rachel as she sat at the small corner table clicking away at a ten page research paper she had neglected to start on for her English class until three days before the deadline. She had Beethoven and Mozart pumping through her earbuds for the sole reason that she heard they helped you concentrate better. She found it relentlessly boring but did find that being unable to find pleasure in the music forced her to focus on her task. Some employees of the shop had taken to teasing her when she walked in that she should grab an apron and work overtime, one of the main ones being a creepy 16 year old barely out of braces who apparently thought she was just as interested in him as he was her; so perhaps there were two reasons why she had earbuds blasting loud dead guy music. Her furious typing was interrupted by a notification at the bottom bar of her laptop screen. She hovered and clicked over red “1” on her mailbox to bring up a new tab to add to the other 7 she had open. It was one of those automated emails from a website. Someone had replied to her roommate ad.

Kelly her previous roommate had moved out a month before she got married. She’d invited her to the wedding but Rachel didn’t go. Kelly was nice and a good roommate for the most part, but not her friend. There’d only been a night or two when she and her girlfriend had woken her up with drunken sex, it wouldn’t have bothered her if one of those nights didn’t end with a leftovers left on the kitchen counter and an unidentifiable liquid spilled on the floor; much to her clean-freak dismay. She skimmed through the reply and saved it for a later time.

She jumped and gasped as something tapped her shoulder. She plucked the earbuds from her ears and looked in the direction of the disturbance. She met the artificially white smile of a stocky young woman around her own age wearing a bright blue tracksuit; her blonde hair was tightly pulled into a ponytail, perfectly plucked eyebrows framing smiling hazel eyes.

“Hey, Rachel!”

Her voice wasn’t unpleasant, but it was an annoying spotlight of sunshine in a perfectly quiet rainy sky. Rachel smiled half-heartedly, rubbing the earbud cord between her fingers, “Hi, Macy. How are you?”

Macy fluidly pulled out the other chair and sat across from her, “I’m good, how are you?”

“Fine,” she lied.

“Homework?” She playfully indicated toward the laptop.

“Yep...I have to finish an English paper. It’s due Monday and I didn’t start on it til yesterday.”

Macy nodded knowingly, “I get it. I have a Chemistry project due next week and I haven’t even taken one look at it—“

Macy continued for another two or three sentences; Rachel kept eye contact while wondering why we spill details about our mundane failures, but then felt entirely pretentious and pushed the thought away.

“But anyway,” Macy finally said, “I’m sorry to bother you-“

“Oh, you didn’t,” she lied again.

“But I really wanted to ask what you were doing for Halloween?”

Rachel blinked slowly with a blank expression, her mind whirring to life to comprehend her question, “Halloween?”

“Yeah!” She chipperly exclaimed, “There’s a carnival coming into town that’s gonna set up in Washika Park for that weekend and me and a couple others were gonna go! You wanna come with us?”

She scratched the side of her nose and shifted the laptop, stuttering, “I, well, I...I mean I don’t know.”

“Ok, well if you want to just let me know! I’ve got one spot open in my car, we’d be leaving at seven, we’d love to have you!”

“Thanks.”

“I’ll let you get back to your paper. Have a good day!”

“You too.”

Macy left the table with a cheery little wave and went off to order from the counter. Macy was a very sweet girl who had decided that Rachel was her project lonely shy-girl that she assumed had a either a bad home life or depression and needed someone to save her. Rachel could already envision the graduation speech where Macy would name drop her as a testament to her heavenly kindness. And the worst part about it was that her assumptions weren’t necessarily wrong.

She returned to her paper, wondering how she could come up with an excuse to not go to the carnival.

Unfortunately, no valid excuse came up. She didn’t have the heart to tell Macy no; and besides, she told herself, it’s no fun to stay at home alone. She kept telling herself to get out with people more, to try and make friends. This was her attempt.

She didn’t have much in the way of costume ideas, especially not in her own closet; which was composed of neutral sweaters, t shirts, and leggings. She decided to keep it simple and bought a modest black dress and a witch’s hat splashed with purple designs. She watched a few tutorials online to figure out how to do a smokey eye and concluded that makeup was far too messy for her to use in any consistent capacity. She felt like a raccoon with all the black powder smudged around her eyes, but now she had committed to the look. She sent Macy a message that she was walking out the door. At least she had convinced her to let her drive herself there. There was no way she’d be out in public without an escape plan.

The group that Macy invited consisted of a couple of her friends, tall and buff athletes who gave off an air of superiority along with their boyfriends of the same type; all of them dressed in matching Superman/Supergirl and Batman/Batgirl outfits, Macy’s boyfriend Lance, a lanky English major dressed as Edgar Allan Poe, and a friend of his who Rachel had never met. She was told he was Lance’s next door neighbor and childhood friend Carson, who was a Doctor, apparently; which one Rachel couldn’t say. Macy herself was a raven, complete with homemade wings and beak. Which Rachel found adorable. The night went by at an agonizingly slow pace. She tried to find interest their conversation, but found herself drifting off more often than she wanted to. Playing games was pretty fun, she didn’t win anything, but she enjoyed not being forced to talk. She hated heights, so she told them she would stay on the ground while they went up on the Ferris Wheel. She was grateful for the chance to be alone. Macy and her friends were fine, they weren’t rude or mean, she just didn’t connect with them. She wanted to go find someplace quiet.

She spotted a beacon in the crowd. An instant photo booth. She noticed the other patrons passing it without a glance and watched it for a moment to see that no one entered or exited from the red curtain. It would maybe provide a moment to gather her thoughts alone. She fast-walked as naturally as possible to her salvation and pulled the curtain back with a quick step forward to step inside.

“Oh, I’m sorry!”

She froze at the wide-eyed stare of the young man sitting in the booth. He was dressed in all black with a pair of fuzzy cat ears on his head. He scratched his arm with a light chuckle, “You trying to hide too?”

She blinked wordlessly for a moment before returning his awkward mirth, “Yeah, is this the escape pod?”

He smiled, “Unfortunately it’s not mobile,” he paused then scooted over with an awkward glance, “But there’s room for two.”

Rachel would have normally refused and found somewhere else, but nothing about his body language suggested that he was hitting on her; in fact he looked just as people shy as she was, almost curling up into himself. She sat down silently and kept to the other edge of the booth, more so for his comfort than hers.

After a beat of quiet and listening to the ruckus outside their sanctuary, he asked knowingly, “Who’re you escaping?”

She looked at him and bit her lower lip with a suppressed smile, “Acquaintances. You?”

He sighed heavily, looking at the bottom of the booth, “Everything.”

Her heart clenched slightly at his tone of voice.

“You not having fun with these acquaintances?” He continued.

“Not really.”

He finally looked at her, “Not your usual crowd?”

“I don’t do crowds usually.”

“Me neither,” he smiled knowingly.

A beat of silence passed. They returned to their respective staring at the ground or the wall of the enclosed box. The silence was sprinkled with nervous throat clearing or sniffling.

“Are you here with anyone?”

“Nope.”

She opened her mouth then bit down on her lip, as if to stop herself, but let out a breathy chuckle,

“So, I guess that makes you a stray?”

His brows furrowed and he scrunched up his nose as he glanced her way. She awkwardly indicated to his cat ears, earning her a small, but genuine laugh as his confusion melted away.

“Yeah, that sounds like a good word for me.”

She shrugged, words tumbling out of her mouth faster than her mind could keep up with, “Well, maybe it’s fate then. Witches are supposed to...like, come in contact with spirit guides that take the form of animals. The most popular is cats. They’re called familiars. I read an article once.”

He paused, and she mentally scolded herself. But he smiled and looked her in the eyes, “So, I’m not a stray, I just hadn’t met you yet.”

This was her first chance to get a good look at him. Though his shoulders were slumped, they appeared toned through the black shirt, his smile was charming, through his slightly parted lips she could see a single sharp canine close to scraping his lower lip, his button nose slightly red from the cold, a shaggy mess of dark brunette hair swished over blue eyes that held a sort of pained kindness.

“I guess so.”

She kept staring at him. She couldn’t help it, though she knew how creepy it must’ve been. She was usually loathe to maintain long eye contact, it made her far too uncomfortable. However, she found herself captivated, never wanting to look away from those eyes. He wasn’t a chiseled jock like Macy’s friend’s two boyfriends, but there was an odd beauty to him; his jawline was sharp, but his cheeks were round, his lips were full and soft, but his hands looked slightly calloused and strong, he was blooming with feminine grace, and bursting with male ferocity. Or perhaps Rachel was sleep deprived; which was not unlikely.

The curtain of the booth slid back, and they stared at a guy dressed as a video game character that Rachel only recognized from a few conversations she’d had at school. The guy apologized and quickly closed it again.

She stood, straightening her dress, “We probably shouldn’t be staying in here.”

“Do you wanna take a picture?” He asked suddenly. He met her surprised gaze, “I mean, just so you’ll have something from your not so fun night? Then you can tell your great grandchildren about the weird cat guy you met on Halloween.”

She answered, barely thinking of what she said, “Sure.”

She sat down closer to him and leaned on him as the pictures were taken. Two of them were normal, and he suggested two silly ones, which she obliged. He radiated heat. Their clothes shoulders were the only thing really touching, but their fingers were mere centimeters apart; a fact that Rachel desperately wanted to find uncomfortable, but only felt an excited thumping in her chest.

They exited the booth, allowing the couple outside to finally enter. They took a short, silent journey a few feet away. He lifted the strip of photos,

“You wanna split them?”

She nodded as he looked the photos over, a little smirk creeping onto his features, “Ok, just from knowing myself, I think I’m sillier of the two of us. I’ll keep these.”

She chuckled softly as he tore the photo strip and handed her, her half.

“You gonna reunite with your acquaintances or find another hiding spot?”

She gave an awkward laugh, “I think I’ll text their leader and tell them I’m not feeling well.”

He nodded, “Classic.”

She pocketed the photos, “What about you? Are you gonna face everything or hide from it some more?”

He flourished his right hand over his chest, “I am a hide and seek champion, it’ll never find me.”

The tug at her heart returned and kept her feet firmly planted. She pursed her lips and looked away from him at nothing in particular.

“I don’t wanna be presumptuous or anything,” he offered quietly, “but you seem like you could use a place to hide for a while.”

She turned her head, a bit wide-eyed.

“And I am your spirit guide after all.”

A shy smile pushed its way onto her lips. They looked at each other for a quiet moment, ignoring the noise around them. She took a breath, paused, and asked, “Where were you thinking?”

She saw his chest heave out as if he just released his breath. He rubbed the back of his head, “Are you new in town at all?”

She’d only been at the university for 6 months, and hadn’t taken the time to explore.

“A little.”

His smile lit up, “You ever been to the beach a little north from here? It’s honestly the most peaceful place at night.”

She shook her head, “I’ve never been.”

He drew into himself slightly, his voice quiet, yet inviting, “You’re welcome to join me.”

She spoke again, before her mind could catch up, a pattern seeming to emerge with this stranger, “Ok.”

[harrisonstories]

RTE Radio 2 Ireland - BP Fallon interview with George Harrison (18 Oct. 1987)

Photo by: Brian Roylance, Genesis Publications

This is an interview I’ve edited and uploaded to youtube because it’s quite long, and it was in two parts, so I’ve combined them together. You’ll notice at about 14:52 there’s a slight jump in the conversation which is where the second part begins. 

I really love this interview. It’s one of - if not my favourite interview he ever did. I strongly suggest you give it a listen. Similarly to the Swedish Fan Club Tape, George is extremely calm and open, and Irish DJ BP Fallon asks refreshing questions. BP Fallon has himself had an interesting life, and at one point worked at Apple for Derek Taylor (You can also see him miming the bass in the Instant Karma Top of the Pops video). I’m guessing this related to why George felt relaxed. I hope you enjoy it.

Below I’ve included the written version of this interview by BP Fallon for The Sunday Tribune. It has some information not available in the audio (not sure if it simply wasn’t recorded, or if there’s another version which includes the full conversation):

"Sometimes it feels like another world, another life, some previous incarnation," George Harrison says. "I view it a bit through a haze but, y'know, people don't ever stop talking about it so it's hard to got too much distance between myself and The Beatles." 

George Harrison doesn't mind that, not anymore. "I used to," he admits. "I used to not like it at all. I wanted to be free of it. Now I've learned to live with it. And also, don't forget, there was a period when The Beatles split up and there were all kind of court cases and bad vibes and stuff and that left a bad taste in the mouth for a while but after the years it's all cleared up, everybody's friends again." 

He's sitting in a little office in the house owned by his company Handmade Films, just off Cadogan Square in Knightsbridge in London, a few streets behind Harrods. Fourty-four-years old this man is, he has a bit of a beard and his shortish hair is swept back and there are new lines on his face. He drinks coffee and smokes ciggies and when you sit talking to the geezer you can't help but feel warmth for him. 

As one of John, Paul, George And Ringo, The Fab Four, as a member of the most popular, the most inventive, the most influential rock group of all time, he has gone through one of the strangest trips ever. They were Gods once, The Beatles. And sitting here now, George Harrison comes across as a normal bloke.

He was born in Liverpool, the fourth child of Harold and Louse Harrison. George's father was a bus driver - before that, he had been a ship's steward on the White Star Line for ten years and from one of his travels in America had returned with an old wind-up gramophone and records by bluesman and yodeller Jimmie Rodgers and country singer Hank Williams. Young George was smitten. He listened to skiffle, people like Lonnie Donegan and songs about the Rock Island Line. And then he heard Elvis Presley singing Hearbreak Hotel. "It came out of somebody's radio," George Harrison says, gazing out the window at the autumn light fading behind the trees, "and it lodged itself in the back of my head. It's been there ever since." 

At the age of 13, for £3, he bought his first guitar. Two years later, Paul McCartney introduced George to his friend John Lennon (George - "this snotty-nosed kid" as Lennon recalled). George joined John and Paul in their skiffle group The Quarreymen. In 1962, when George was 19, John, Paul, George and their new drummer Ringo Starr made their first record together. It was a fresh-sounding bluesey pop record called Love Me Do and they now called themselves The Beatles.

They changed the world, these four Scouse moptops making new noises and singing about wanting to hold your hand and about walruses and about revolution and all you need is love. 

And for eight years The Beatles were bigger than Jesus.

For a while, The Beatles - at very least by example - endorsed smoking dope and taking LSD. John, Paul and George were each busted at least once for breaking the cannabis laws. "A lot of the stuff that happened..." - and then George brings himself up to the present tense - that happens, it's just like when Prohibition was on. If they make a big deal about stuff it becomes bigger than it actually is. In moderation... you have to have moderation in everything. The worst drug of all is alcohol... it actually kills more people then heroin." He says he was fortunate as a kid to see a film about the trumpet player Chet Baker, about Baker's heroin addiction, "and that and maybe something else made me aware that this thing was just too much. 

"Of course, the other things, the psychedelic drugs, are much different because they don't put your body in a stupour, they sort of..." and now he's laughing... "they sort of catapult you out into the universe. It's a totally different perspective." Then his voice is serious again. "These things obviously can be very dangerous too. I'd hate to have some right now because I don't think I could handle it. It just gives you too many things to think about all at once."

Love and peace went out the bathroom window when The Beatles split in 1970, with Paul McCartney publicly announcing he had left. George says he realised The Beatles weren't shaking a couple of years before that. "Everyone was just getting all uptight with each other. The new wives were coming in and, y'know, living under the piano and there was no privacy anymore for us as far as the group was concerned in what was normally the only privacy we ever had, the four of us when we got into a studio. And we'd just grown away from each other. One time or another every one of us left that group before we finally stopped." 

George left during the making of what would be Let It Be. Ringo left another time "and went on holiday, and John was always wanting to leave and Paul too. You know, it was too much pressure and we'd been through those years. It was just too much.”

He emphasises that the remaining three Beatles are good pals, now. "Paul and I went through a shaky period but we're okay, now. All the old aggravations have passed a long time ago. There's no reason not to be friends."

By 1971 George Harrison was the most successful solo Beatle, with his triple album All Things Must Pass and the enormous hit My Sweet Lord. Four years later his single Ding Dong Ding Dong - a record even worse than McCartney's Mary Had A Little Lamb - was the first release by a solo Beatle to fail to enter the charts. Several years later a court ordered him to pay £260,000 damages for plagiarising the Chiffons' song he's So Fine with My Sweet Lord. That Harrison had modeled My Sweet Lord on another song, the gospel Oh Happy Day by the Edwin Hawkins Singers, was bad enough. That he had to pay the money to his former manager Allen Klein - "a looney who didn't take care of business" George describes him now- because Klein had scooped up the publishing of He's So Fine... that rubbed salt into the wound. 

His career and also his marriage to his first wife Patti Boyd were in pieces. Patti had gone to live with George's close pal Eric Clapton, who had written Layla about his best friend's wife. George started drinking heavily, contracting a serious liver complaint that his friends feared might be the end of him. 

George's chum Eric Idle had found it impossible to raise the necessary finance to make the Monty Python film Life Of Brian, so George chipped in with half the required money, £2,250,000. It turned out to be one of the best investments George had ever made, reaping a profit of more than £30,000,000. Since then, Harrison and his film company Handmade Films have scored with another Monty Python film The Meaning Of Life - banned in Ireland - and delivered films like Time Bandits and Mona Lisa as well as Shanghai Express, a disaster for its stars Sean Penn and Madonna and its producer Harrison. But what the heck. George isn't short of a few shekels.

In 1978, George married Olivia Trinidad Arias, a 27-year-old who had been born in Mexico and had been working as a secretary in A&M Records in Los Angeles. George's health had been desperate. He was fading away. Olivia contacted the Chinese acupuncturist Dr. Zion Yu and within weeks of treatment George had regained his energy and his spirit. 

They have a nine-year-old son named Dhani - the Indian for wealthy - and the other day he asked his father to make him up a cassette of Chuck Berry songs. After George appeared at the Prince's Trust concert in London five months ago with Ringo, Eric Clapton and Elton John, Dhani came backstage. George had sung his own Beatle compositions While My Guitar Gently Weeps and Here Comes The Sun. "I asked him 'What did you think?' and he said 'Uh, you were alright Dad, but why didn't you do Chuck Berry songs like Roll Over Beethoven and Johnny Be Good and Rock'n'Roll Music?'" 

He has a new LP out any day now, his first in five years. It's called Cloud Nine. "Have you heard the album?" he asks solicitously. "No? I'll see if someone's got a copy." George Harrison wanders off, and returns with a young woman who says "It's a bootleg I taped from the CD." George flips the cassette into the music system and spins it through, looking for a specific track. "I think you might like this one," he says in his dry Liverpudlian drawl, settling himself into another chair as he watches for reactions. 

Ringo's drums with cellos straight from Lennon's I Am The Walrus lead into George singing with fondness for former Beatle times. It's a track that could fit on a Beatle record and it's called When We Was Fab. "Fab... but it's all over now baby blue" George sings, and at the end there's sitar sounds like George cosmicing out on Sgt. Pepper. It's... well, fab.

When John Lennon was murdered in 1980, George Harrison didn't suddenly lock himself away from the world in his Gothic mansion. Near the riverside town of Henley-On-Thames, this bizarre 70-roomed palace called Friar Park was remodeled a century ago by the eccentric Sir Frankie Crisp and is set in 33 acres of parkland with three lakes with secret stepping stones so one can appear to walk on water, underground caves linked by a river and a reproduction of the Alps that includes a perfect 100 foot high replica of the Matterhorn. George was already in hiding.

"I was already trying to hold onto some sort of privacy. I think everyone needs to have a bit of space, y'know. I mean, if you were just being mobbed and on the TV and that all your life you just turn into a loony, and long before John got shot I was already just digging in the garden, planting trees and just trying not to go on television, just having a bit of peace. 

"But what it did, it affected me probably like anyone who loved John and who grew up with him and his music. And it was a very sad thing and, um, it didn't make me feel..." Harrison's voice trails off, and for a moment his eyes look away and he's lost in private thoughts. He looks back. " It made me wonder about ever gettin' into situations where there's fans, although at the time you can't blame fans for that. There's one loony in every crowd, I suppose. But I go on living normally. I don't panic unnecessarily."

There was talk that for Live Aid Paul, George, Ringo and Julian Lennon might let it Beatle together, but George dismisses any idea of reunions. "I don't think we'll play together. The Beatles certainly can't play again and I think it's best left as it is, y'know." 

Long before Live Aid, George Harrison's Concerts For Bangladesh raised £45,000,000 for the starving. He didn't appear at Live Aid but says if he'd known more about it "maybe I would have done it but they did alright without me." George talks at length about the planet, his concerns about destruction. Last year he participated in an anti-nuclear rally in Trafalgar Square, and he's a member of the ecological organisation Greenpeace. "I love those people because they go out and actually do it. I mean, if it wasn't me that's the kind of thing I'd like to be, out there on a ship getting harpooned by Russians and Japanese."

At the turn of the Seventies, George became a benefactor to the Hare Krishna movement. He not only made records with them and talked about them publicly but also forked out a quarter of a million pounds to buy them a 15-room Elizabethan mansion with 17 acres of land. 

Since then, George's friend His Divine Grace Guru Bhaktivechanta Swami, the leader and founder of the International Society For Krishna Consciousness, who was 77 when they met, has died. George feels that some of the remaining Krishnas have at times abused his patronage, and he cites letters from people who wrote saying that they were hassled at airports by devotees using Harrison's name. 

Nevertheless, he still subscribes to "the Swami's ancient Vedic way of having God consciousness. The technique of chanting, just like the monks and Christians, they do it too really but it's just using beads and chanting these ancient mantras... they do have great affect. I wouldn't knock them at all. I am always a bit dubious about organisations and since the swami died it does seem to be chaotic, with all kinds of guys thinking they're the gurus. To me, it's not important to be a guru, it's more important just to be, to learn humility." And George still chants. "I've still got my bag of beads and they're really groovy now, all polished up."

Is he a happy chap? "Yeah, I'm okay. Sometimes I get depressed. It's a constant battle, isn't it? You have to consciously make an effort to be happy and considering everything, I've come along quite nicely. There's always room for improvement but, um, I have a laugh and I feel quite good about things." He believes in reincarnation. "The only reason we're actually in these bodies is to learn and develop love of God and liberate our souls from this round and round, the Memphis Blues." He reckons he'll come back again. "Well," he says laughing, "by the look of things I'll probably have to... but I'd like to give it a pass one of these incarnations!"

And, George Harrison, what would you like to be remembered for? 

He pauses. "I don't know... I don't know." And then he smiles and looks you directly in the eyes and you see the face of a man still searching, still looking to extend his gentle vision for all time. He'd like to be remembered, he finally says, "just as somebody who's not bad, not that bad”... 

"That'll do, yeah."

Fair play to you, George.

[mybiasisexo]

Unrequited

Genre: Angst | Fluff | College!au

Pairing: Sehun x Reader

Length: 9.7k

Warning: Mature language

Summary: Being in love with your best friend is never easy, especially when you’re positive he doesn’t feel the same.

Author’s Note: Hello everyone! I’m back with another scenario. I know that the past week has been tough on a lot of us and we need some good vibes, so here is a gift to you all. It’s the longest scenario i’ve ever written T T. I hope you all had a merry Christmas and that the new year brings all kinds of wonderful change~. It’ll get better, I promise (and i’m not just talking about my writing lmao)!! 

MASTERLIST

Chapped lips sucked harshly on the tender flesh of your neck, drawing out a moan. Your fingers clawed hair, desperately needing to grab ahold of something—to grip something solid to prevent falling when you were already so close to the edge.

“Sehun.” You whimpered wantonly as his hands slithered down the sides of your stomach, lower still until he gripped your ass painfully. Being this close to him was unbelievable. Having his body flushed with yours like this, him touching you like this, being with you like this was something you had craved for so long. And by the way he clawed at your leggings in an attempt to rid of the barrier, you could tell Sehun was just as needy for you, just as desperate.

Hands still firmly on your ass, he hiked you up, encouraging you to wrap your legs around his slender hips, pulling each other impossibly closer. Lips met hungrily, the want too strong to further prolong and with his attention solely on your delicious mouth, Sehun was somehow able to carry you into his bedroom with ease. His knees hit the end of his bed and you both went tumbling down onto the mattress, causing you both to break the kiss with a giggle.

Sehun used the lack of contact to gaze down at you with a tender expression. It was a look you had longed to be the recipient of for ages, and all you could think about was how quickly you could get used to it. Get used to all of this.

“This is nice,” he murmured, reading your mind. He lifted a hand to brush some hair out of your face and tucked it behind your ear. The smile that tugged at his lips was as soft as his fingers and you resisted the urge to bite his plump bottom lip. Instead, you wrapped your arms around his neck and combed your fingers lightly through his short light brown locks, softly scratching his scalp.

“It is,” you agreed. “What took us so long?”

He chuckled. “I’m not sure, but it’s way overdue.”

“And it can’t wait any longer,” you whispered, using your arms to drag his intoxicating lips back to your needy ones. He didn’t protest, instead moaned with pleasure as he allowed your tongue to slip into and explore his warm mouth. The kiss was long and languid, you both reveling in the new aspect of your relationship.

Once you separated to catch your breath, Sehun rested his forehead on yours. “Before we go any further, there’s something I have to tell you.”

“Okay,” you allowed breathlessly.

He lifted his head again, gently cupping one of your cheeks. Again, you couldn’t get enough of the fond expression on his face, your breath caught in your throat with anticipation. 

The hand that wasn’t on your face came up, tracing your bottom lip as he said your name confidently.

You flinched, blinking with confusion.

It wasn’t his voice.

He said your name again, your reaction causing his eyebrows to furrow. Your heart began beating rapidly in your chest as fear crawled up your throat. It wasn’t his. The voice that came out of his mouth didn’t belong to him....

Your eyes sprang open as someone yelled your name, jerking you into your harsh reality.

Your good friend, Do Kyungsoo, was frowning down at you across the wooden table you were currently sitting at, as unpleased as ever.

“You drooled,” he deadpanned. Quickly, you wiped at your face and tried to shake the sleep off of your body. The two of you were in the school library, studying for your shared final. You must’ve dozed off while writing your notes. 

As you caught your bearings and woke up completely, your dream came back in full force and you groaned as if it hit you. You had yet another fantasy about your other friend, Oh Sehun. You hid your face in your hands, feeling your cheeks bloom red with embarrassment.

But, God, it had felt so real.

You swear you could still taste his mouth on your tongue and that alone further pushed the need to kick yourself. This intrusive dream had been recurring sporadically throughout the year. It was always the same: passionately making out and sweet confessions that would lead to something more… naughty. Luckily, you’d wake up before it could get to the X rated stuff. Unfortunately, the dreams further deepened your feelings for him and that was anything but good.

Oh Sehun was your best friend.

Not to mention, he’s been in a relationship for the past year and a half.

But that apparently didn’t stop this dream from bombarding you every chance it got, causing your heart to ache more painfully the next time you hung out with him.

But you knew Sehun very well, and have come to terms with the fact he didn’t see you in that light and never would.

It was undeniably hard, the situation you were in.

And that was why, as damaging as it was, you sometimes allowed yourself to succumb to your deeply hidden fantasies. Allowed yourself to dream of a future where Sehun did love you in that way. Where he would gaze down at you so fondly you became shy. Where his love for you was so fierce and strong that being away from you for even a second drove him insane. 

Where he realized that you were the one for him after all. 

But you stopped believing in happy endings around the same time you stropped believing in Santa Clause.

So whenever you fell into the trap of imagining a life with Sehun as you lover instead of your friend, you quickly shook the thoughts away, finding a distraction.

At that instant, the distraction went by the name Do Kyungsoo.

“Hey!” You hissed at Kyungsoo, well aware of your surroundings. You lifted a hand threateningly at him and he just blinked. “Why didn’t you wake me up sooner?”

He rolled his large eyes. “Because you look adorable laying in a pool of your own drool.”

“I swear to god!” You lurched over the table in an attempt to strangle your content friend, but he scooted his chair just out of reach, causing you to fall on the tabletop. Awkwardly you laid, your limbs and head dangling off the table in defeat and you wondered—not for the first time—why you befriended the man in the first place.

His phone vibrated beside you and he checked the message. The amused smile plastered on his face slid off as he scanned his screen, concern taking its place and that was enough of a reaction to pull you into an upright position, sitting crisscross applesauce on the table’s cool surface.

“What’s wrong?” You asked anxiously after the silence dragged on and he was still frowning at his now black screen.

He dragged his eyes up to yours. “I…. Sehun needs us. Now.”

~*~

“I just don’t understand,” Kyungsoo admitted softly. His eyes swam as he tried to figure out what he was missing. You didn’t understand either. Sitting stiffly in your chair, all you could do was blankly stare ahead in shock. 

Directly to your right sat Sehun. He was resting on his hand, his posture falling into an uncharacteristic slouch. He distractedly twirled his tiny straw around the mug of coffee he had bought and sighed.

“What’s not to understand?” He asked Kyungsoo in his soft-spoken way. “We’re no longer together. Joy and I broke up.”

That sentence made your stomach flip.

“But….” Kyungsoo let his sentence carry. His thick eyebrows furrowed with concern and he bit his lip as he contemplated whether to continue, but he wasn’t known for holding back. “The two of you were just fine this morning.”

You would’ve agreed if you weren’t in such a catatonic state. The four of you always met up for breakfast on Wednesdays, it was routine that semester. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary between them. They were just as affectionate and teasing as they ever were. You remembered because it made you lose your appetite, but you digressed.

Sehun scratched the back of his head uncomfortably. “Well, I mean, we’d been having some problems for the past couple weeks and I guess it just all bubbled over today. Anyways, I thought you guys needed to know since you’re my best friends.” 

“Can you tell us why at least?” Kyungsoo urged. It was obvious how truly irked he was by the whole situation. 

Sehun shrugged. “School’s getting really tough and I just don’t have the time to juggle school, work, and a girlfriend right now. She understood. It was amicable, Kyungsoo.”

That seemed to be enough for Kyungsoo as he simply took a sip of his steaming hot tea. Sehun’s answer was a bit too casual to you and Sehun himself didn’t appear that affected by the news. He appeared a bit too nonchalant if you were to ask yourself, but you didn’t comment on it.

You were too damn ecstatic to really think about anything else.

You felt bad because, well, Sehun just broke up with his girlfriend and yeah that sucked, but you couldn’t fight the relief that flooded you as soon as the news left his lips.

His pink plushy lips that you have always wondered would feel like against your own….

Now you’re getting distracted. The point was, you never felt better and wouldn’t let the guilt from your joy—no pun intended—hit you until you overanalyzed the whole situation in the shower later on in the night.

Sehun calling your name pulled you out of the trance you were in and you blinked for the first time in who knows how long as hands cupped your cheeks, gently turning your head until you were staring into the deepest pools of melted chocolate you’ve ever seen and, damn, they looked delicious.

Sehun said your name again as if he were trying to wake you up and you observed his serious expression. “I’m fine. Really. You don’t have to worry about me, okay?”

He threw you a reassuring grin and you sunk into his grip unconsciously. His body was merely inches away and you could feel the heat radiating off of it comfortingly, like a fire during winter. Flashes of the dream you had only minutes ago came crawling to the surface and your cheeks heated up again as his gaze lingered on you, watching you intently.

Quickly, you tried to think of something to say before he realized just how head over heels you were for him, but he beat you to the chase.

“I’m fine,” he whispered again, but this time sounded like he was reassuring himself more than he was you.

Sehun always put on a strong front for you. Since the two of you met your freshman year of high school, he made a point to act as if everything was always fine—even when it wasn’t. It worried you in the beginning, made you think you weren’t as close as you could be because of the wall he had built. But, over time, you’ve learned how to peer through the cracks, to push the bricks out of the way and expose Sehun’s true colors. This time was no different. His mouth was saying one thing, but his body said otherwise. You noticed the way his eyes wandered around the café every once in a while and how his broad shoulders hunched as if he carried a heavy weight. His actions revealed that, without a doubt, he was hiding vital information about his breakup. The wound was still super fresh, so you didn’t want to push him at the moment, but you feared that he would eventually shut you out completely if you allowed him and you didn’t want him to suffer alone.

He was anything but fine.

Knowing this, you forced a smile and lied back. “I know. You always are.”

~*~

A week had passed since the breakup and Sehun appeared all right. There wasn’t much time for him to dwell in his newfound freedom, what with finals coming up, so instead, he threw himself into studying. You supposed it was an easy distraction, but it made you worry. 

Not as much as the fact that he’d been avoiding you also. It was little things, like him canceling on Wednesday breakfast for the first time that semester or the fact that he took hours to reply to your texts and his answers were usually excuses of how busy he was with school and work. You brought it up to Kyungsoo during one of your study dates, his reply was just shrugging and telling you he was just dealing with the breakup his own way, but you weren’t buying that justification.

This wasn’t the first breakup you had to watch Sehun go through, and it honestly wasn’t the worst. You’ve seen what a horrible breakup can do to Sehun, and if anything it made him even clingier to you, claiming you were the only woman besides his mother he trusted, but for some odd reason this time was different. This time he was pushing you away instead of holding you closer.

By the time the weekend rolled around you had enough of his games.

Snow was steadily falling as you climbed up the icy steps leading to Sehun’s apartment. You nearly ate shit four times and that put you in an even worse mood.

Without bothering to knock, you used the spare key he gave you when he first moved and invited yourself in. The massive apartment was a second home to you so walking in unannounced was common, but for some reason, as you crossed the threshold, it felt very intrusive, as if you were no longer allowed access. The gray and dark brown apartment was eerily silent being there were three adult males that called it home and you wondered if anyone was here as you took off your shoes and slipped on some slippers they kept just for you—Joy probably used then also but you didn’t linger on the thought—and tiptoed to the main part of the house.

“Hello?” You called. Your voice bounced loudly off the walls. “Anybody here?”

You crept further into the building, closer to Sehun’s bedroom.

“I almost died on the steps! I’m buying you all ice melt for Christmas!” Still no reply as you stopped in front of Sehun’s bedroom door.

You pressed your ear to the cold wooden surface but didn’t hear anything. With a shrug, you pushed the door open and entered as if you owned the place. It’s mid-afternoon and his blinds were open, allowing the sun to illuminate the otherwise dark room. The blankets on his bed were strung around haphazardly and his computer desk was riddled with half empty chip bags, crumbs, empty bowls of ramen, and giant textbooks. At least the floor was clean.

“Sehun?” You called and then you heard a muffled voice coming from the closed door of his bathroom. With a gulp, you made your way over to it and shakily gripped the doorknob.

I shouldn’t be doing this. I shouldn’t be doing this. You took a deep breath and slowly began to turn the knob, but suddenly, the door swung open and you go tumbling forward with it, only stopping once you slammed into a slightly damp solid object.

Time stood still as you caught your bearings. You gulped down rising panic and lifted a shaky hand, touching the wall your head was still pressed against. Your fingers rubbed a lumpy smooth surface that definitely wasn’t a wall.

“Uh…” A voice rumbled through your chest and your heart rate spiked with fear. If this wasn’t a talking wall, that must mean….

Slowly, you raised your head, meeting familiar delicate eyes. High-pitched screams left your mouth as your stumbled, slipping on the wet tile floor and falling painfully on your back.

Sehun was knelt beside you instantly, his arms reaching for you to help, but you were in a panicked frenzy, desperately hitting his hands away as screams still rang around the room.

Your eyes were tightly closed in an attempt to hide from his shirtless glistening broad chest, but even behind your lids, his firm pecks bounced menacingly, an image that was now burned into your mind.

Finally, he was able to snatch your wrists and you froze straightaway. The silence was almost deafening, but you used that time to calm down.

“What are you doing here?” He finally asked. He didn’t sound upset, just curious and a tad amused. You were sure he was trying to hide a shit-eating grin, but you were afraid to open your eyes.

“Why aren’t you wearing a shirt?” You spit back dramatically.

“Cause I just took a shower?” He replied as if you asked a dumb question, which you were positive you did, but you were also too stressed to care.

“Well can you please put on a shirt?” You begged. His chuckles at your visible distress rocked your ribs as he stood, pulling you up with him. As soon as he was sure you could stand on your own he let you go, walking past to probably fulfill your wish.

The distance allowed you to fully come back to your senses. You let out a big breath and finally opened your eyes and turned around just in time to see Sehun pull a plain gray shirt down his long abdomen. You gulped at the shock of skin he quickly hid and tried not to drool and expose your infatuation.

He glanced at you and the corner of his lips quirked up in a private grin and for a split second you thought he knew, but before you could get frantic, he headed over and plopped onto his bed with a sigh.

He crossed his legs at the ankle and rested his head on his arms, the ultimate relaxed pose. “Now, I’ll ask again, what are you doing here?”

“I practically live here,” you replied. You joined him on the bed via belly flop. “Also, I missed you.”

Some would be surprised by how affectionate the two of you were with each other. Saying sappy things such as ‘I miss you’ were common phrases the two of you shared with one another frequently. It was normal. That being said, the reaction you got from the simple phrase surprised you.

“I—you—what?” Sehun sputtered. You watched in fascination as he turned his reddening face away from you and coughed, sinking deeper into the mattress.

“Are you alright?” You quipped, a slow grin spread across your face. You loved the reaction you got from him. It was a side he didn’t show often and it was refreshing to see him so lost.

“Of course I am!” He nearly yelled and you winced from his volume. He must have noticed, because when he spoke again his voice was noticeably lower. “I just…wasn’t expecting that, is all.”

“But I do miss you!” You admitted with a pout. To further prove how much you did, you began rolling around on the bed, throwing a fit and quickly got tangled in his blankets and legs. You latched onto his exposed leg and fought the electric currents that shocked your fingertips down to your stomach, making your skin all tingly. “You’ve been avoiding me all week!”

You’re prepared for him to kick you away and say something sassy that lowkey hurt your feelings, but what he did say caused your eyes to widen with surprise.

“I’m sorry.”

There was a beat of silence as you realized what he said. He apologized to you. Apologized for avoiding you. Honestly, you were amazed that he even confirmed the fact that he was avoiding you, usually he would deny something like that until his death, but he was acting bizarrely at the moment, and you weren’t sure if you enjoyed this side of Sehun or not.

You lifted your upper body to face him properly. His sharp features were soft, his eyes wide with sincerity and for some reason, you had the sudden urge to cry. You cleared your stinging throat and tried to find your voice.

There it was. “Promise you’ll stop avoiding me?”

There is a pause and you caught a glimpse of the old Sehun, the sassy boy you grew up with, but he held back, only nodding in agreement.

Feeling slightly childish, you lifted a pinky up to his face and he rolled his eyes at the gesture. A small smile crept onto your face, there was the man you fell in love with. You shook your hand slightly, telling him without words to hurry before you started yelling and he chuckled lowly before grudgingly lifting his own pinky out to meet yours. You wrapped your significantly smaller limb around his to seal the promise and maybe it was the sparks that flew from the contact, but it really felt as if it were being made in stone.

You expected Sehun to pull away, but he didn’t. Instead, he watched you with deep controlled breaths, as if waiting for you to make the first move. You concentrated on the contact, reveling in it as if you were being starved and you guessed in a way you were. Starved of having Sehun like this, having him close to you in a way that felt surreally intimate.

Too intimate.

It dawned on you that the two of you had been holding pinkies longer than deemed friendly and you jerked your hand away, scooting as far away from your best friend as the bed allowed.

Why had you held on for so long? What was that? Confusion filled you as you thought about how strange Sehun had been acting since you got there. An awkward silence formed around you both like a giant bubble and the only way you could think to pop it was by pulling out your phone to ‘read’ messages you weren’t getting. You used this time to force your heart to calm down, to force your brain to stop overthinking things and just relax for once.

“So,” Sehun began and you nearly sighed with relief. “The semester ends this week. Kim Junmyeon is throwing an end of the semester party on Saturday.”

You hummed a reply, eyes still glued to your screen even though you couldn’t tell him what you were looking at. You were trying to remain cool, as if he wasn’t controlling the beat of your heart like an orchestra conductor. 

“I was wondering if we could go together?”

All logical thought flew out the window. Your body stiffened at his words and the confusion you were already feeling grew. What was his reasoning for this? Didn’t he just breakup with his girlfriend? Was he hinting that he wanted to go with you as something more? There you went again, reading too much into things, but still….

“I mean,” he backtracked. “I’m not with Joy anymore and I kind of don’t want to go alone and you’re my best friend, so it only makes sense if—”

Of course! You are his best friend. That’s all you’ll ever be to him. He’ll never see you as a lover; never see you in the same light you see him. You’ve told yourself this repeatedly, like a mantra, yet he held your pinky for two seconds longer than normal and you’re now mentally planning your wedding. Your mood changed dramatically and you just wanted to go home, regretting coming in the first place. This was a mistake. You should’ve just let him continue ignoring you for reasons unbeknownst to you. You should’ve just let him deal with his breakup the strange new way he wanted to.

“Alright,” you cut him off, not wanting him to continue throwing knifes into your chest. He stared at you with his mouth hanging open. You slid your phone back into your jeans with a sigh, already going to gather your belongings.

“Alright?” He repeated in confused confirmation. 

Irritation awoke within you and you nodded stiffly. “Yeah, it makes sense. We can even drag Kyungsoo along. It’ll be fun.”

You could hear how dead your voiced sounded, how tired, but currently didn’t have enough energy to care. 

His perfectly shaped eyebrows furrowed, he knew just as well as you that Kyungsoo disliked parties and him going wouldn’t lead to ‘fun’. He opened his mouth, probably to question you, but you were done with the situation.

Still annoyed, and honestly wanting to hurt him like he did you, you asked a question. “Speaking of Joy, how are you feeling?”

“I….” he shook his head, trying to keep up with the turns the conversation was taking. You almost felt bad for the man. Almost. He remained quiet for a moment, thinking carefully about his answer. You held your breath in anticipation. He hadn’t brought up Joy or the breakup since first mentioning it a week ago and you were curious. Curious about how he was holding up, about his mental state, about him. Breakups were never easy, no matter who was breaking the heart, and despite outward appearances, Sehun was tender hearted and always prayed for everyone’s happiness.

“Okay,” He settled on and you exhaled with disappointment. He was shutting you out yet again. “I’m getting over it.”

“Yeah?” You questioned, hoping he would get the hint and be more honest with you. He didn’t take the bait and you smiled sadly. “Well, this party should help you with that.”

“I hope so,” he replied, gazing at you intently as if he’s trying to convey more with his eyes.

“Well, I’m glad we’re talking again,” you said. Getting off the bed, you grabbed your belongings and head to the door. “I’ll text you for more details about the party okay?”

“Okay. Good luck on your finals.”

“You too. Goodbye, Sehun.” 

You leave without looking back.

~*~

“Would you stop pouting?” Kyungsoo asked. You glanced at the rearview mirror, locking eyes with the man through it. “It’s not our fault you lost at straws!”

“But you don’t even drink!” Your frown deepened and your fingers tightened around the wheel of the vehicle you were driving.

You all were on your way to Kim Junmyeon’s and all you were looking forward to about it was drinking away the pain of finals and Sehun, but those plans diminished as soon as you lost at straws and became designated driver. What made matters worse was that out of the three of you, you drank the most.

“All I had to look forward too was drinking until I passed out in an attempt to make up for the hours I lost studying, but now all I can do is watch others do that while completely sober!”

“If you want, I can DD for yo—”

“No!” Both you and Kyungsoo shouted, silencing Sehun immediately. He was sat beside you in the passenger seat, distracting you with his effortless beauty. Even though you were still angry with him, you understood that it was yourself you were actually angry with. It wasn’t his fault he wasn’t in love with you and he was still going through a breakup.

“This night is all about you,” Kyungsoo pressed in a calmer tone.

“Yeah,” you chimed in. “If any of us need a drink, it’s you, Sehun.”

He scoffed. “I told both of you I’m alright, but if you two insist.”

He patted your head fondly and the affection drew out a smile.

Junmyeon’s driveway was already crowded when you finally pulled in. He came from a well off family and also modeled on the side, so he had a lot of money and his home, as modest as he tried to make it appear, showed it.

This was a hang out spot for your friends, but no matter how many times you’ve been here, the shock never wore off. You noticed a bunch of familiar cars as you got out of yours. Junmyeon decided against throwing one of his infamous college ragers, instead settling on a Christmas get-together with his close friends and you were thankful for that. Kim Junmyeon did have a lot of friends though.

“Alright, let’s go.” You wrapped your arms around one of Kyungsoo’s and he lifted an eyebrow questioningly. Instead of answering his gesture, you pulled him towards the house, ignoring the hot gaze focused on your shared contact with Kyungsoo.

Kyungsoo yanked the heavy wooden front door open and dragging you in. The foyer was littered with friends and you greeted them happily as you stepped deeper into the house. Kyungsoo’s forest green sweater was itchy to the touch and you wondered how he wasn’t scratching, but the thought left you as a hand pressed firmly against your hip. Your head snapped up to see Sehun closing in beside you, trying not to get lost. With his skin burning you through your ugly sweater, you thanked the lord you weren’t drinking cause God only knew what alcohol would convince you into doing when it came to your best friend.

“Sehun!” The three of you spun around and saw one of Sehun’s roommates, Park Chanyeol, waving a hand to catch his just as tall roommate’s attention. You made your way over to Chanyeol and he led you to the kitchen.

“Nice to see you all finally made it,” he said and you could tell he was already pretty buzzed. He poured two cups and handed one to Sehun, which he politely took, but Kyungsoo and you declined the other one. With a shrug, Chanyeol chugged the entire cup and burped loudly when he finished. Kyungsoo scowled at the action. He wasn’t that big of a fan of the rest of your friend group and that was probably a reason.

“This place is pretty packed for a small Christmas party,” Chanyeol stated, glancing around. Not a corner was empty. At least forty people were present and you heard the door open again as others entered. It looked like it wasn’t going to be that small after all.

“Where’s Junmyeon?” You asked.

Chanyeol smirked and wiggled his eyebrows. “Why? Do you have a meeting with his mouth later?”

“She doesn’t like Junmyeon like that!” Sehun snapped before you could unleash something witty. You pouted with disappointment because it was a great comeback before turning to your best friend, eyeing him as he made a point to glare at Chanyeol. His eyes squinted with more disdain at what left his roommate’s mouth after.

“Oh, so you’re with Kyungsoo then?” At the mention of his name, Kyungsoo slid a foot away from you.

“Are you?” Sehun asked, staring at you intently.

“What? No! Kyungsoo and I aren’t dating, you weirdo!” The urge to hit the top of his head was strong but you refrained because he looked rather crestfallen.

“We would definitely have told you if we were…which we’re not.” Kyungsoo added logically.

“So then, you’re on the market?” Chanyeol stepped closer to you and you took a step back, hitting a brick wall that held your hips lightly.

“Chanyeol, please leave her alone,” Sehun ordered behind you, sounding tired.

“But—”

Sehun slid from behind you and grabbed Chanyeol’s arm, leading him over to the bar where bottles of various liquors twinkled temptingly under the kitchen lights.

With Chanyeol gone, Kyungsoo felt safe enough to stand beside you again. Your arms touched as you leaned in so that you could hear him over the blaring music. “Sehun didn’t seem to like that so much.”

You shrugged, trying not to read too much into what just happened. Instead, you watched Sehun throw back a shot. His back muscles rippled underneath his tight long sleeve shirt and it made your mouth dry.

“He looked sort of jealous, huh? At the idea of you and me.”

You laughed at Kyungsoo’s words. “Sehun? Jealous? I don’t think he even knows what that word means.”

You shook your head at the ridiculousness he had implied. He shrugged. 

“Doesn’t seem that hard to believe.” He muttered lowly. The bass of the music swallowed his words before you heard them.

“Come on,” you nudged him, needing a distraction that wasn’t alcohol. “I saw some cards on the dining table. Let’s try to have some fun.”

An hour passed and Kyungsoo and you had been keeping yourselves soberly busy. It was tough, the need to drink strong as Sehun came in and out of the kitchen. For the most part, he remained by your side, but then Junmyeon finally revealed himself and kidnapped Sehun. You weren’t too worried though. In fact, you were relieved. Sehun needed this. Needed to let go of his troubles and allow himself to have fun. He held a lot inside and seeing him carefree made you happy, despite not being on the same level.

“Oh shit,” Kyungsoo said, straightening up in his seat. He was looking at something right behind you, so you turned around and froze at the sight.

Joy had arrived.

She wore a sparkling red dress that ended mid thigh, her glossy, long, dark brown hair blew in a wind you knew wasn’t there, her make up was perfect and she looked utterly gorgeous, there was no denying that. You could see why Sehun was so infatuated with her. 

She glided into the kitchen as if she was floating, a flirty smile sat on her face and you wondered how she appeared so unbothered.

“Her and Sehun are more similar than I thought,” you voiced aloud. Joy didn’t seem to notice her ex boyfriend’s best friends as she made her way over to the bar and a boy rushed to get her and her four friends drinks. She winked at him before sipping the warm liquid, bopping to the music nonchalantly.

“Shit,” Kyungsoo swore again.

“What now?” You asked, turning yet again in time to see Sehun frozen in the threshold of the kitchen. Your heart stopped at the blank expression on his face as he stared at Joy.

“Sehun!” You recognized Joy’s sweet voice over the music and caught her waving him over. When he remained in place, she rolled her eyes and pushed away from the counter she was leaning on, heading over to him.

He exited the area, but she was on his tail, following him out of your sight.

“What just happened?” You asked breathlessly. Kyungsoo must’ve shrugged because he didn’t answer verbally. You felt like throwing up suddenly. “Should we go after them?”

“Nah,” Kyungsoo answered. You sunk into your seat with a pout. You hoped they weren’t going to hook up. It was selfish of you, but you honestly didn’t believe that you could handle Sehun getting back with Joy. Your heart would shatter to pieces so fine they’d turn to dust dare you try to touch them.

Kyungsoo leaned over the table, ruining your discarded game and studied you intently.

“What?” You snapped after a long silence.

As if that were the reaction he wanted, he smirked knowingly. “You love him.”

“As if.” You denied, but your voice was thick with hurt, a dead giveaway.

“I can’t believe I didn’t see it earlier. You’re so obvious.”

“Shut up,” you whined, throwing a card at him.

He sunk back into his chair, crossing his arms over his chest so that you were in identical positions. “Why haven’t you confessed?”

“Because.” You began with an eye roll. “Sehun doesn’t love me. Not like that. I’m sure of it, so why ruin a good thing?”

There’s a brief pause and you found yourself shaking from nerves. You hadn’t told anyone about your feelings for Sehun, and doing so now made you feel exposed in the worst way. 

Finally, Kyungsoo whistled lowly. “No wonder you wanted to drink.”

“Wow. You’re such a supportive friend,” you said sarcastically, causing him to chuckle.

“Seriously though, I’m sure Sehun does fe—”

You’re attention was brought elsewhere when Joy reentered the kitchen. You caught her eye and she smiled at you knowingly before returning to her friends. They chatted briefly before heading out into the party, not giving you a backwards glance.

“I…I need some air,” you informed Kyungsoo. Ignoring his calls for you, you quickly made your way out through the living room where double French doors lead to a patio. There were a few people outside, but none you were close to, so you were alone. The winter chill woke you up and you took a shaky breath, trying to reign in the tears threatening to fall. You hated how easily Sehun could affect you without trying. You hated how easily you let your imagination dictate your emotions. Nothing could’ve happened between Sehun and Joy. Maybe they were just catching up. Maybe Joy was asking him if he could give her back some things she left? Maybe they made out in a closet? Who knew? You sure as hell didn’t and that fact ate you alive. Also, why the hell did Joy give you that smug look? As if she knew how you felt about him and wanted to make you suffer? 

You wanted to go home.

You stayed outside for a long while. You weren’t sure for how long exactly, could’ve been mere minutes, could’ve been over an hour, but someone called your name, drawing you out of your sorrow and you blinked blankly at a wider than the usually wide-eyed Kyungsoo.

“I’ve been searching everywhere for you!” He said, clearly out of breath. He held your shoulders and studied your tear-stained face. “You’re freezing.”

You only shrugged in reply. He bit his lip briefly before taking a deep breath. “I talked to Joy.”

“So?” You asked.

“So she told me her side of the story.”

“Okay?”

He let out an exasperated breath. “Sehun lied to us. He didn’t break up with Joy, she broke up with him.”

That seemed to wake you up a little. “What? Why would he lie about that?”

“Because.” A small smiled formed on his face. “Because he was probably hiding the reason as to why she dumped him.”

You waited for him to tell you but he just remained smiling creepily. “So, are you going to tell me or…?”

His hands dropped from your shoulders and he straightened up. “I think it’s best if you heard it from him.”

You narrowed your eyes. “I’m really not in the mood for games, Kyungsoo. Just tell me.”

“Nope.” Kyungsoo said stubbornly. “Go find him. I haven’t seen him since he talked to Joy, who knows what condition he’s in now.”

As much as you wanted to pry the truth from him, and as much as you didn’t want to see Sehun, the fact that he’d been M.I.A. for a while left you concerned. With a groan, you shoved past Kyungsoo and stomped back inside the party. The booming bass quickly swallowed his chortles. The get together was now a full-blown party and you fought through the crowd. You had no idea where to start searching for Sehun, but luckily, once you returned to the kitchen, you spotted the host himself.

You quickly made your way over to Junmyeon, whose lovely face was bright red and eyes were permanently closed.

“Kim Junmyeon!” You shouted. You swore the music was somehow louder than before you went outside.

He asked if it was you and you nodded with confirmation before questioning him. “Have you seen Sehun?”

“Yeah, he’s there,” he slurred, pointing up. He was so drunk that he stumbled around even though he was just standing there.

“Where?” You hollered, almost positive you were going to lose your voice the next day. Again, he just pointed up in no particular direction. With a sigh, you grabbed an empty cup and filled it with water, handing it to him. “Drink this.” 

He chugged it without a fight, smiling warmly at you and for a brief second, you were struck by his adorableness, but you really needed to find your best friend. You thanked him before rushing out. As soon as you left the kitchen, you noticed the stairs and realized what Junmyeon’s pointing meant.

Taking two steps at a time, you made it to the second floor in a flash. The long hall was sprinkled with people coming in and out of rooms. There were three doors on each side and one directly across from you. This could take a while.

The bathroom was preoccupied and the first three rooms you entered were also—and you were going to be scarred for life now, so there was that. You entered a room you knew was Junmyeon’s bedroom and saw it was empty. You went to close the door when you heard a noise and paused.

It was singing.

Really bad singing but only because the person was really drunk. You crept further into the massive room and spotted another closed door with light coming from underneath it.

You nearly died laughing from the scene.

Sehun was almost passed out in the tub, at least three empty bottles of beer were surrounding him and he held another bottle, pausing his singing to take a quick swig of it before continuing his off key tune.

He finally spotted you and once he did he smiled so brilliantly bright you had to close your eyes. He cheered your name; clearly glad you were there.

“You found me! You found me!” He cheered excitedly. He was beyond drunk, beyond intoxicated. You were surprised he was still awake, that was how drunk he was.

“You alright?” You asked, heading over and kneeling beside the tub.

He caressed your face with a nod. “I am now.”

“Come on, it’s time for you to go home.” You reached for him, but he pulled you to a stop.

“Wait! There’s…there’s something I need…tosay.”

He struggled to sit straight. “I—I lied to you. I lied to me too.”

“We can talk about this later, Sehun. Right now, we need to get to the car. Can you walk?”

“I learned howto w—alk as a kid. Of course I know how to…. walk.” He rolled his eyes and you grinned, glad his drunkenness didn’t diminish his fire.

It took some time, but Sehun eventually stumbled out of the tub. With one arm slung over your shoulder, the pair of you wobbled out into Junmyeon’s empty hallway, slowly traveling towards the stairs.

“This is all Joy’s fault,” Sehun slurred in your ear with a pout.

“How so?” You asked, straining to prevent your jealousy to leak into your voice.

“Cause she had to bring up the—” He hiccupped “—the breakup. She’s stressing me…out.”

“You’re this fucked up because Joy brought up the break up?” You confirmed. He must’ve taken it way harder than you thought if this was how he reacted to her bringing it up.

He nodded furiously. “She keeps pressuring me to confess. But! I don’tthink I can.”

“Confess?” You asked. You were now at the stairs. With a deep breath, you tightened your grip around Sehun’s middle and braced yourself, taking one step at a time carefully.

“Yeah.” He let out a long tired sigh. “She’s sure I’m in love with someone else. That’s why she broke up with me.”

You nearly dropped him due to your shock. Luckily, you were quick enough to catch the both of you. Your heart sunk at his words. It was bad enough having to watch him be with Joy, but knowing that there was somebody else? That you had lost the race before even getting the chance to play crushed you. Your breathing was labored and you had to stop on the step to get your emotions in check.

“I—I thought you were the one who ended things?”

“Nope. It was all her.” He rested more heavily on you and you struggled more as you started walking again. “She’s right, of course. She always is.”

Tears sat precariously on your water line at his words. You were so done crying over this man, but he obviously wasn’t done hurting you. What made it worse was how clueless to your pain he was. He inflicted it, but was oblivious to what he was doing.

“I’m in love with you and she somehow knew that before I did. Isn’t that weird?”

“What?” You asked in shock. You passed the last step and got thrown into the party. You’re entire body went numb; you couldn’t feel anything around you. His words weren’t registering in your head. They kept replaying over and over, but you didn’t understand them, it was is if he spoke in another language.

“Kyungsoo!” Sehun squealed as your friend somehow found you both. Without saying a word, he grabbed Sehun’s other arm, slinging it around his neck.

“Let’s get your drunk ass home,” he said, leading you out of the party. You unconsciously follow along, not really paying attention. Sehun was still talking, mumbling under his breath so lowly you couldn’t make out anything he said. You did catch your name a time or two.

The walk to the car seemed to take forever, you were so immersed in your thoughts you weren’t aware that you made it until Kyungsoo said your name, waking you from your trance. You slipped from under Sehun and went to open the passenger door for him. He huffed as all of Sehun’s weight was distributed to his shoulders and practically threw the man into the vehicle before bending over to buckle him in. You barely made out Sehun cupping Kyungsoo’s face affectionately, but it did gain a small grin from you.

Kyungsoo pulled away and closed the door before turning to you. “Are you alright?”

You quickly nodded your head but the action seemed forced and he caught it, opting on not commenting on it.

“Can you drive?” You asked, not really in the right state of mind to be driving. Kyungsoo gazed at you intently, but still remained silent. Without a word, he reached for the keys, which you handed over graciously before diving into the backseat.

Sehun was already passed out and you were relieved. You didn’t think you could handle anything else he had to reveal.

You made it to Sehun’s house in no time. Kyungsoo helped you carry him in and get him into bed. Kyungsoo left the room to get some blankets so that you both could sleep in the living room, but you lingered, watching Sehun for a moment in awe.

Had he really confessed to you?

It felt like a dream, like you made the whole thing up. Shaking you head, you took a step away from the bed, but his hand came up to clasp your wrist.

“Stay,” was all he said. Eyes still closed.

“Sehun,” you whispered. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

He grumbled. “Please. I don’t want you to leave me.”

With a sigh and a quick glance to the door, you slid under the blankets, joining him. Sehun instantly wrapped his arms around your waist, pulling you closer to him so that your head was tucked under his. His sighed with content and murmured your name quietly before dozing off. It felt nice, natural, being in his arms like that and you hated how easy it was.

Your mind was too awake for sleep to hit.

Oh Sehun, your best friend, just admitted to having feelings for you, and you didn’t know how to react.

For one, he was drunk. But the saying did go that drunken words were sober thoughts, right? It explained his odd behavior towards you the past couple weeks. Maybe he had to come to terms with the reality of being in love with his best friend. Maybe, like you, he assumed you didn’t reciprocate those new found feelings of his. You could feel your heart racing, you felt breathless and frightened, but also relieved. Oh Sehun was in love with you. That thought as well as his calming breaths allowed you to drift away and join Sehun into dreamland.

~*~

It was Christmas Eve.

It had been a full week since Junmyeon’s party and you hadn’t seen Sehun once since.

You were avoiding him.

Mostly due to embarrassment because the morning after the party, Sehun didn’t remember anything he said, didn’t remember confessing to you, and the content smile that hadn’t left your face since you fell asleep melted like ice in the sun as your heart cracked.

Maybe he didn’t love you after all?

That sentence had been haunting you since then and you couldn’t bring yourself to see him. Kyungsoo had been chastising you the entire time, practically begging you to stop being paranoid and just confess already, but you couldn’t. Your biggest fear, the one holding you back the most—besides him being with Joy—was being the only one that felt anything and forever changing the dynamic between the two.

You would rather live a life of one-sided misery than lose him completely.

“I already told you, Kyungsoo! I’m not going!” You yelled into the receiver of your phone. You were currently nestled in blankets on your couch, watching cheesy Christmas romcoms and crying into a bowl of caramel popcorn.

A deep sigh left his lips. “It’s our annual Christmas Eve party! We’ve been doing this for four years now and suddenly you don’t want to go?”

Guilt made you mute. He was right, but you just couldn’t bring yourself to see Sehun. You were currently dealing the heartbreak and didn’t need the one that caused it near you; it would only make it worse.

“I’m sorry,” you were finally able to muster.

“You’re stronger than this. At least, I thought so.” He sighed. “I’ll come by later, okay? We can watch some movies and drink hot chocolate. Sound good?”

“Thank you. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

You could practically hear his eyes roll. “Yeah, yeah.”

After hanging up, you immersed yourself in self-pity. Bailing on a Christmas tradition left you feeling so guilty it was eating you alive and you hoped your dear friends were enjoying themselves without you. 

It felt bitter. Here you were surrounded by sparkly Christmas decorations during a time to be with those you cherished most, but you felt so alone. It was all your doing, you knew, so you tried not to wallow in your loneliness. 

Hard banging caused you to jump and you froze with popcorn dangling out of your mouth. The banging started again and you yelped, wrapping a blanket over your head for safety. 

The knocks were angry and you had no idea who they could belong to. Kyungsoo didn’t seem that upset, but maybe you were wrong.

You fearfully tiptoed to the front door; the vibrations from the knocks could be felt under your feet. With a gulp, you opened the door, but the person on the other side noticed and ripped it open, a tall figure hovered menacingly over you.

“How could you?” Sehun wailed. You blinked in confusion, not expecting him at all. His breathing was labored and you could feel the chill of outside still clutching onto his body. His cheeks were red from the cold and his eyes were wide with anger.

“Sehun?” Was all you could get out. You had never seen him like this and it frightened you.

His wide eyes narrowed into slits. “You honestly were going to ditch our eve party? We do this every year, how could you?”

Oh, so that’s why he was mad. The guilt rose in your throat again as you lowered your head in shame.

“I’m sorry,” you apologized. He didn’t even allow you to get the whole sentence out before he slammed the front door shut with rage, causing you to jump again.

“Oh, you’re sorry? That’s all you have to say for yourself? Will you at least tell me the reason why you’re not going?”

You had never seen him so livid. You scrambled for an acceptable excuse, but was so distracted by his fury aimed at you.

“Save it,” he snarled. He crossed his arms over his chest and looked at you mockingly. “It wouldn’t have anything to do with the fact you’ve been avoiding me, has it?”

You were amazed by how well he knew you. It was almost comical because despite that, he never knew the abundant love you carried for him.

“What? You think I wouldn’t notice? I have no idea what I did to make you mad at me, but this is a tad ridiculous, don’t you think? This holiday means a lot to me, this party means a lot to me. You mean a lot to me, and if you’re not there then what is even the point of going?”

Tears sprang into your eyes at his words. Despite what you feel for him romantically, Oh Sehun was your best friend, and not taking part of this event made you a bad friend, because this meant so much to him. The guilt you were feeling overwhelmed and crushed you like a tsunami wave, drowning you as you stared up at Sehun who was waiting for you to respond.

“Sehun…. I’m so sorry. It really wasn’t my intention to make you think that. It’s not you I’m mad at it’s myself. I…” You swallowed some courage and let your heart talk. “Lately, I’ve been feeling different towards you to the point that it physically hurts me to be around you. I just need some time, some distance so I can figure it all out. That way, I can be the best friend you deserve. I can’t be that right now and I’m sor—”

Sehun cupped your face and suddenly his mouth was on yours. You completely froze in surprise, and he pulled away to shift his head, kissing you again, much softer this time and you melted.

Your lips separated and he pressed his forehead to yours. “I don’t want you to be just my friend. I want so much more than that.”

His thumbs went to work, wiping the tears that fell from your cheeks and you whimpered.

He grinned at you. “I’ll admit I’m a little late to realize this, but I want you close to me. I’ve always needed you near me, but for years made myself believe it was only because you were my friend. I’ve always got upset whenever you talked about other guys and I even started to not like Kyungsoo because I thought you were secretly dating. I told myself it was because I was hurt you didn’t trust me enough, but I realized it was because I didn’t want any guy with you.”

“But Joy?” You asked.

He lifted his head thoughtfully, though his hands never left your face. “I think I was using her. I hate to admit it, but she liked me and you didn’t. I thought she would be a good distraction from…whatever it was I was feeling. But she caught on also. She broke up with me, telling me that there was somebody else in my heart and I was being too stubborn to admit it to myself. She told me it was you. That she always knew it was you and that I needed to just ask you out already.” He rolled his eyes. “She supports us one hundred percent and has been nagging me since the breakup to do something about it.”

“What about the party?” You pressed.

“She was asking if I had confessed yet. I was so nervous, so sure you didn’t feel the same way and I guess the nerves and doubt got the best of me because I drank way more than I should’ve. I didn’t hurt you, did I?”

“No, actually….” You bit your lip in an attempt to hide your smile. “You confessed.”

His eyebrow rose. “I did?”

“Yeah, you told me you were in love with me.”

“Well,” he scratched his neck nervously. “I—I am.”

He squared his shoulders and gazed down at you seriously. “I’m in love with you.”

You finally allowed your smile to shine at his confession. “I love you too, Sehun.”

His smile matched yours. “You do?”

“Of course I do! Why do you think I’ve been avoiding you? You confessed and forgot about it the next day! I thought you had lied to me! I was crushed!”

“Well, let me make it up to you.” He smiled knowingly as he pulled something out of his coat pocket. He held out his palm and a small black box sat on it.

You opened it and gasped as a sparkly silver necklace with a small dog tag with his initials engraved on it shown brightly against the Christmas tree lights. You picked it up, gazing at it in wonder.

“Here’s a token of my heart, which I give fully to you.”

You were overwhelmed with your emotions and a wave of relief hit you. You hopped around excitedly asking him to put it on you. He laughed at your reaction and gently clasped the necklace around your neck. The dog tag sat firmly against your chest, right on top of your heart and you felt it’s weight.

Once you turned back around to face Sehun, you wrapped your arms around his neck, pulling him down so that you could kiss him again. His once cold lips warmed up instantly from the sweet contact as his hands held you at the waist, drawing you nearer.

You both were still kissing when a small knock was heard and your front door opened.

“Thank god!” You recognized Kyungsoo’s voice and pulled away. He was leaning against the doorframe, smiling at the two of you fondly. “It’s about time!”

“Shut up,” you said, though it lacked any hostility.

“Well now that you’re both together, let’s go downtown. We have just enough time to catch some Christmas lights!” He exited the house and you stared up at Sehun.

“Do you want to go?” He asked, dropping a quick kiss on your forehead.

“I do now,” you revealed, rushing to grab a coat before taking his outstretched hand.

He was the greatest gift you had ever gotten.

[superleeleehipster]

“Rest and Relaxation” Pt. 3

So here we are, another chapter. I liked the setting of the story so I wanted to expand and play with it a little bit.

And don’t worry, some good loving in this chapter too because Caryl deserves as much loving as possible after all the bullshit they’ve been through... in my opinion at least.

Rated M, for sexytime and language. Enjoy guys!

Carol squealed quietly as she stepped foot in the cool ocean for the first time, trying to take advantage of a beautiful hot day at the beach. She slowly made her way to where it was waist deep before dunking herself in the water. She came back up in a gasp as the cool waters sent shivers through her body, but it felt good with the heat of the day. 

The area in which the house was in seemed to not be affected as much with the tide, for the largest waves she had seen weren’t even above her head. But she didn’t mind, for the calm waters failed to stir up the bottom, and she took her time peering through the clear water as she tried to see any shells or fish. 

She leaned back up and had to chuckle to herself at the thought. Finding seashells? Now that’s something she never thought she’d ever think of doing again. The idea of taking her time to find shells after everything they’ve gone through to this point, and everything she’d done, it almost seemed kind of stupid. 

But this was her vacation dammit, and if she wanted to do stupid trivial things then she was going to do it!

She stretched her arms out and smiled before falling backwards into the water as she reveled in the memories of her time here. These past few weeks have been absolutely amazing to say in the least, to finally be with Daryl like she’d wanted for a long time. Being with him made her feel beautiful and desired, and she couldn’t help but feel a bit prideful that the gruff and intimidating, yet attractive hunter had chosen her to be with. But being at the beach house also made her realize that he was right, she really did need a break from everything. She was just so used to putting her needs on the back burner for others that she didn’t even realize it herself.

It wasn’t just their love life she enjoyed though, it was just finally being able to spend some time with him. He was still her best friend, and it was nice just to take a moment and talk about anything. Sometimes they’d talk about before the turn, random things about childhood. Other times it was on sadder subjects like Sophia or their shared history of abuse. But it was nice to strengthen that friendship they already had together.

She turned towards the house for any signs of Daryl before being disappointed again, missing him already despite only seeing him 4 days ago. He had left in the morning to go on a hunt for them, and he’d warned her that it might take him a couple days to get back, but she couldn’t help the need for him to be close by. It wasn’t like they needed food, for they were stocked to the max with shelf food. But you could only eat so many cans of food before you start to crave anything but the same thing for dinner. 

Still, neither of them liked leaving each other, but it was even worse now that they were finally together. She had assumed it would be like that of course, but it was also different than what she expected. It was like she was missing a piece of her, something that only he could put back once he was around. It sounded cliche and somewhat cheesy, but that was the best way she could describe it to herself.

She squatted under the water and massaged her upper thighs, trying to soothe them as the cool waters helped the remaining soreness from her body. If there was anything good she had to pick out from his absence, it was the fact that her body was given a break from the action. Since their first night together, they had sex pretty much twice a day, morning and evening, and it probably would’ve been more had he not had a body in it’s forties. But what he lacked in recovery time he sure as hell made up in stamina.

One day it was even more than that, for somehow his body had forgotten it’s real age that day, but in hindsight it might’ve been the cup of instant espresso coffee she had given him when he asked what it tasted like. 

She loved being with him, loved having his arms around her as they joined together. But her body was not young either, and part of her thanked the universe that he went on a hunt to give her a break. She knew she couldn’t say no to him, for she wanted him as much as he wanted her, but she was grateful to have at least a few days off from their now favorite activity.

She waded in the waist deep water, looking down as the small fish swam by her legs and found something shining back at her. She deftly picked it up with her toes and brought it to her hand before washing the sand off the conch shell . It was small enough to fit in one hand, but it was stunning none the less. It was a sandy color on the outer edge with beautiful red strips and the opening of the shell had a smooth texture with a mixture of a coral and white coloration. 

She got out of the water and moved her towel to an open area close to the water, just in case a walker came out of the treeline, before sitting down and looking at the shell dreamily.

She was taken back quite a few years ago to the beach vacation she had with Sophia. She had always told herself growing up that when she had kids, she’d take them to the beach every chance she got, just so that they had the same experience she had with her parents. But of course, things seldom worked out the way she planned them.

But there was one time, when Ed had gone away on a business trip for a week, a rarity even for his job, and she knew it’d be their best shot. She knew it would be risky, for there’d be hell to pay if he found out she went without his permission. But she wanted to give Sophia something to look back on with a smile, and that was worth any beating she would possibly get from her husband. 

So she gathered up her daughter, who was 8 years old at the time, and a cooler of snacks before heading out in the early morning hours to spend the day at the beach. She bought the lawn chairs and the towels once she was there, planning to throw them away after since she didn’t want to worry about Ed finding any sand in the car or in the house somehow. 

Once on the beach, she and Sophia had the best time of their lives. They were only there for part of the day, but it was one of those rare moments in time where they could pretend what was happening at home wasn’t their life. Carol saw her daughter come out of her shell completely and run around laughing as they did whatever they wanted, catching sand fleas, finding seashells, or just playing in the water. 

It was the first time Carol really had a moment of resistance towards Ed, even though he wasn’t there to witness it. For once, she didn’t allow her fear of him to play it safe, and her daughter had a wonderful time because of it. Thankfully, he never did find out, and her and Sophia were able to find some joy at having a wonderful secret kept between the two of them. 

Sophia kept some of the shells they found in a shoebox under her bed and had it very well hidden from her father so he wouldn’t find out. And at one point, Carol had come into her room after Ed passed out in his drunken stupor, making sure her daughter was okay after the ‘fight’ they had downstairs. It was then Sophia told Carol that she took her shells out often when she wanted to forget about the monster they lived with. Carol never felt more of an urge to leave than at that moment. But it was only a few weeks later when they all had to pack up and flee the city...

Carol sniffed and felt a few tears run down her cheeks as she looked at the seashell, thinking about her daughter. If she had the choice, of course she would want Sophia to be there with her and Daryl. The thought of him being her role model as a father figure brought a new wave of sadness, and she couldn’t help but mourn at all the things she dreamed about for her daughter. 

For the longest time she blamed herself for her daughter’s death, naturally. She welcomed the pain from it because she thought she deserved it. But somehow, through healing, she came to understand that it wasn’t on her, and that she accepted what happened to her, as well as the actions she’s done along the way. 

At first, it seemed more difficult to deal with the pain once she accepted herself than when she felt guilty. When she was at fault, her pain was there to punish her for her wrongdoing. But once she forgave herself, she no longer understood why it still hurt so much. She no longer deserved it, so why did she still have it? But soon, she began to move forward from it, thinking back to her daughter’s memories with joy and happiness instead of anguish. 

She allowed herself to have moments like these though, whenever they came, giving herself some time to mourn for her daughter so that she could continue healing. 

“I miss you baby girl,” she whispered to herself, rubbing the conch shell with her thumb. 

She was so focused on her memories that she barely heard the faint whistling from a distance. She turned around to see Daryl waving at her from the house with a small doe slung on his shoulders. She smiled brightly and waved back before hugging her knees to her chest and biting her lip, trying to contain her excitement as her core came to life again.

“Damn traitor,” she said to herself as her core began to heat up in anticipation.

It was true that things seldom happened the way she pictured them, but Daryl Dixon was a good example of that being a good thing. He showed her that you can have a life after so much death, you can find happiness despite the world ripping you to shreds again and again. For a reason she did not know, her daughter wasn’t supposed to be on this earth anymore. But the universe was at least gracious enough to give Carol unconditional love to help her through the bad times, and help her find the good again.

A few hours she realized he was cleaning up the deer, a good decision considering how the smell could attract some unwanted attention. So she decided to head in the water one more time to cool off her body. But after she dunked herself, she heard the whistle again, this time much closer, and she smiled before peering behind her to see him walking down the beach. She could tell he had just showered, most likely cleaning up the aftermath of skinning the deer. But she couldn’t help but groan at the sight of him strutting towards her.

Why did he have to look so good walking towards her? 

When he got to her section of the beach, he shrugged his shoulders. “You gettin’ out? Or am I gonna have to chase ya down?” he yelled to her.

She bit her lip trying to stifle a giggle. “You’re just going to have to get in and get me.”

He narrowed his eyes but smirked before undressing himself down to just his pants. He calmly walked into the water towards her, and she felt a shiver run up her spine, for he was looking at her like she was prey. 

He glanced down at her top and smirked. “Like the bathing suit.”

She looked down and rolled her eyes as she tried to fix her boobs that kept threatening to burst free. She had found her closet stocked with different styles of bathing suits, but the sizes weren’t exactly matching what she needed.

“Whoever was on bathing suit duty failed miserably.”

He snorted, slowly coming closer to her. “I think that was Sherry.”

She sighed. “Well apparently Sherry got every size imaginable for bottoms but was very confident I was a small for a top.” She looked down at her very tight tankini top. “I know I’m short, but that doesn’t mean everything else is small.”

He huffed. “Well, in her defense, it sure as hell surprised me when I saw them.”

She gasped in mock outrage and tried to splash him but he dove under the water towards her, and she squealed when she tried to run away from him. His strong arms wrapped around her waist and he hauled most of her body out of the water. She yelped and laughed as he peppered kisses all over her face before hugging her tightly against him. 

“Missed ya,” he whispered into her neck.

She smiled and wrapped her arms around his neck. “I missed you too.”

He leaned back and pressed his forehead against hers, sighing in content. This was a new habit they’ve developed where they’d rest their foreheads against each other in a sort of intimate ‘greeting’. It reminded her of how cats greet each other, but she didn’t mind it at all. It made her feel safe, it made her feel loved

She leaned back to look at him. “Where’d you put the deer?”

“Freezer. Didn’t take long to get the meet off so I stored it in there. Then chucked everything else a few acres from here.”

“Where did you clean it up?”

“Outside and away from the house. Don’t worry, I covered the area in deer piss.”

Her eyes became wide and had a disgusted look. “You covered it in deer piss? Since when did you have deer piss?”

He laughed. “Found a bottle of it in a hunting store nearby. It’s good to use if ya wanna mask your scent and attract a buck.”

Her face scrunched up in disgust and he laughed. “I didn’t even know you could buy deer pee in the stores.”

“It’s a little hard to find, but you could usually find it in areas where hunting’s popular.”

“Huh... so it will mask the scent of blood but we might wake up to a buck in front of the house tomorrow morning?”

“Hey, makes my job easier,” he quipped, making her laugh. He placed her back on her feet but chuckled lightly when he looked down to her chest. 

She followed his eyes and huffed loudly in aggravation. “Dammit!” She tried to pull her top up again.

“Just take the damn thing off. It’s obvious they want freedom,” he said with a smirk.

She swatted his arm. “No, I am not freeing them in public.”

“What public are ya talkin’ about?” he huffed, looking around them like he was looking for something.

“I know I know,” she sighed. “I’m just not a fan of showing off.”

“I don’t mind,” he purred as he reached for the knot in the strings.

She quickly grabbed his hands. “No, no. They’re only coming out indoors.”

He sighed in mock frustration before giving her a loving kiss. “Nothing but perfection in that body of yours sweetheart. Don’t ever think anything different.”

She smiled and rested her head on his chest, hugging him tightly as he stroked her back. 

But the moment was cut short when she yelped and grabbed his arm in a panic. “Fish!”

He burst out laughing as she tried to climb him like an opossum. “Woman, you’re not afraid of psychopaths but you are with fish?”

“I’m not afraid of fish!” she hissed as she hung from his flexed arm, trying to keep her feet lifted from the sandy bottom. “I just hate the slimy feeling of them.”

He snorted before picking her up bridal style and heading out of the water. 

“My hero,” she said, giggling into his neck.

He huffed out a laugh. “Stop.”

The logs cracked a few times as the fire grew in the fireplace. She and Daryl were lounging on the couch with a blanket draped over them as they let their amazing dinner settle in their stomachs. 

With a working oven, she decided to slow cook the venison and make it similar to pulled pork. It would take longer for it to cook through, but she knew it would be worth it. But due to the beach day, Carol had forgotten to eat any lunch, so she was practically drooling by the time the venison was finished in the early evening hours.

“Best damn meal I’ve ever had,” Daryl quipped, dragging his fingertips over her shoulder. 

“I must admit, I did really good.” 

He huffed. “How’s your back?” 

“Not as bad now,” she replied, her mild sunburn calming down after he applied some aloe on her. 

She was quiet for a while so he turned his head towards her. “What’s on ya mind?” he asked.

She sighed. “I’ve been thinking about her a lot today.”

Daryl tensed slightly, for talking about her daughter was still a little touchie for him too, although he was feeling better about it. But he got himself together and tugged her closer to him.

“In what way?” he asked.

She smiled softly. “She and I went on a day trip to the beach when she was younger. It was the first time I ever went against Ed, and even though I could’ve gotten a beating, I don’t regret it. She had that one day where she could be by herself.” 

He nodded and brought the other arm around her, the temptation to get angry at her dead husband still alive and well. 

“It’s just hard sometimes, especially with moments like these where life isn’t all that bad... I can’t help but wonder what it’d be like for her to be alive right now... she would’ve loved having a life without Ed.”

“You’re forgettin’ how much shit we’ve gone through between then and now... even if she did live through all of it, who knows how this life could’ve effected her. She could’ve gotten cold... Carl almost did at one point.”

She nodded. “Yeah I know. I shouldn’t think about the what if’s. But every now and then it gets hard.” She sat up and looked at him. “You would’ve been a great father figure for her.”

He huffed. “Nah, ain’t good with that kinda stuff.”

“Well how do you know, you’ve never tried.” When she saw his insecurities she grabbed his hand. “You’re nothing like him Daryl. Knowing the man you are now, and the way you treat me, she would’ve loved you.”

His face softened and nodded. “Glad you think so.”

She smiled and moved the hair out of his face. “Thank you.”

“For what?”

“For being who you are... for showing me that life is still worth living, that there is still something to live for.”

His expression changed into a conflict between being grateful for what she said and not feeling he deserved it. But he cupped her face and kissed her lovingly, showing her what she meant to him. She positioned herself to straddle him and kissed him back, his arms coming around her in a big bear hug as they made out like teenagers on the couch. Soon, things began to heat up quickly as the pent up desire from not having each other for a few days became too overwhelming to bear.

“Need ya,” he panted between kisses.

She smiled and nodded before getting off him and giving a hand to help him off the couch. But before she could turn for the bedroom he gently picked her up bridal style and carried her to the bedroom himself as she tried her best to keep the nervous giggle from coming out of her body.

They took their time, savoring the moment as they slowly undressed each other. He no longer showed much nervousness when it came to loving her, for he learned that this was a safe place, that he could express himself without humiliation or embarrassment. So even if there’s a slight hick up, like their heads colliding, they simply laugh it off and continue. Even the notorious bra clasp, which wound up being a formidable foe, was no longer a match for him as he nearly perfected the technique of unclipping it. 

When they were fully naked, she tried to get on top of him, for that was his favorite position. They really hadn’t explored that much when it came to different positions to try because she was waiting for him to be ready. But she never complained, for she really enjoyed the angle as well. But he stopped her this time and laid her back down on the bed before kissing his way down her body. 

“Daryl,” she panted as she watched him kiss lower and lower. “What are you-”

“Wanna treat ya right,” he whispered, kissing around her navel before looking back up at her, sensing her tense up. “What’s wrong?”

She sighed shakily. “No one’s ever...”

He nodded, his chin resting on her stomach. “Want to.”

“You sure?” she asked, unable to hide the fear in her voice.

“Only if you’ll let me,” he whispered before kissing below her bellybutton, making her shiver. 

They had definitely explored each other the last few weeks, trying to find each other’s erogenous zones to please their partner. But for the most part, it was their hands roaming each other’s bodies. She was merely waiting for him to be ready for the next step, but now that it was here, she couldn’t help the insecurity of what if he didn’t like it, or what if he became less interested somehow because he didn’t like it.... But God help her, she wanted to try.

She gripped the sheets and nodded. “O-Okay.”

He smiled softly before wasting no time and giving her folds one slow lick, groaning into her heat as she gasped above him. He did that a few more times before exploring her heat, loving the whimpers and moans she was making as he pleased her with his tongue. He wanted to try this due to curiosity more than anything, but he soon became drunk with lust from the smell of her, of the taste of her, and he couldn’t get enough of it. 

Carol raised herself on her elbows and looked down to see him ravishing her like his life depended on it, and she fell back and grabbed his hair as she moaned from the intense pleasure. She couldn’t believe how good this was making her feel, and the familiar fire within her core was escalating quickly. Her body began to shake as her panting became louder, and she kept a firm grip on his hair, making sure he stop what he was doing.

“Daryl,” she pleaded, whimpering as he played with her bundle of nerves.

“Mmm?” he moaned into her heat, making her yelp from the sudden vibrations.

“Please don’t stop.”

Suddenly he rose up and glanced at her with a mischievous grin, an expression she wanted to smack at the moment. “No! Wha... what are you doing?” At the nonchalant shrug of his shoulders, she whined shamelessly. “Why did you stop?!” She knew she was begging but she didn’t care, she was too damn close to care.

He dipped two fingers inside her and she gasped, some of her frustrations mixing into pleasure as he fingered her closer to the edge. But just as she thought she was about to tip over, he removed his fingers from her with that same stupid smirk on his face.

“What the fuck?!” she hissed, her eyes filling up with tears of ultimate frustration. 

But just as she was deciding whether or not to punch him, he dove back down between her legs and she yelped, grabbing his hair instantly as he devoured her. 

“P-Please,” she whimpered, tears running down her face. 

Luckily for his own safety, he didn’t stop this time, and she moaned shamelessly as she finally felt her core ignite, sending waves upon waves of pleasure all over her body. The more pleasure she felt, the louder she got, and she couldn’t give a rat’s ass on the choked scream she let out at one point. Her body convulsed as he lapped up her arousal again and again, moaning into her heat as she twitched from his vibrations. 

After a few minutes she finally calmed down, and he gave her one more lick before kissing his way back up her body. He leaned on his hand that was propped up by his elbow and looked at her with that same old smirk which looked like he owned the earth.

She shook her head and rolled her eyes. “You’re an asshole.”

He snorted, running his hands along her breasts. “Liked hearin’ ya beg.”

She sighed. “That was just mean though.”

“Didn’t think ya minded after a certain point...” he smirked.

The glare she gave him was enough to send a shiver down his spine, and he knew that she was going to make him suffer from this. But for now, she leaned up and kissed him passionately, pulling him down so as he hovered over her. He kissed down her neck as she kissed his shoulders, and she pulled his body down closer to hers.

“Please,” she whispered in his ear. “Please no more teasing... I need you.” 

He couldn’t deny her plea even if he tried, for he needed her as much as she needed him. He trailed his hands up her thighs, signaling her to spread her legs for him before he moved into position. Filled with both nerves and excitement of being at a new angle, he slowly pushed inside of her and groaned at the amazing feeling of being surrounded by her warmth.

When he was completely sheathed inside her, he let out a moan of relief, grateful to finally be with her again. He got on his hands and peered down at her, waiting for her to be ready as she panted heavily below him. After a few minutes, she thrusted her hips up to tell him she was ready before he began to slowly thrust into her. 

He had loved seeing her on top, being the confident woman that he loved. But being the one on top was strangely enticing, where he had an up close look at how he was affecting her. He was controlling the power and the speed, and there was something primally arousing to see those big beautiful eyes of hers peering up at him as she moaned and squirmed below him while he pleasured her. 

Her brow furrowed and leaned back agains the bed as he picked up the pace, her hands gripping his arms next to her as she tried to hold onto something. She looked down between them and raked her hands down his back, unfazed by the ridges as she tried to pull him towards her. 

“Please Daryl,” she cried as he thrusted faster, knowing exactly what she meant. He couldn’t tease her now, this was too good, too intimate of a time to be a tease to her.

He leaned down on his elbows and cupped her head with her hands, pulling his knees in before thrusting harder into her, burying his face into her neck as he struggled to hold on. She held onto his back as he gave her more and more pleasure, loving their union. 

“So close,” she moaned into his neck.

He leaned up just enough to stare daggers into her eyes, the intensity of his gaze taking her breath away. This wasn’t just a good fuck or a scratch to be itched for neither one of them. This was two people giving themselves to one another as they throw all their fears and insecurities out the window. 

And she could see through his eyes, just how he felt about her...

Her eyes filled with tears as he began to grunt with each thrust, signaling he was close. She wrapped her legs around his waist and used him to gain leverage and meet his thrusts. The new angle let him hit her sweet spot, and she became dizzy with pleasure as she felt her walls begin to contract around him. 

“I’m coming,” she whimpered before throwing her head back and holding on for dear life as her body shook with intensity. 

Tears ran down her cheeks as she squeezed him tightly again and again as he continued to thrust inside her, and her eyes rolled in the back of her head as she smiled with the amazing euphoria of her climax. 

“Oh fuck... oh... oh god,” he gasped as he felt himself tip over. 

He buried his face in her neck and pumped into her as fast as he could, making her yelp a few times through her lasting orgasm as he reached his. He held onto her as he growled and moaned through the delicious waves as he released himself inside her core with each thrust again and again. And as he felt the intensity of his orgasm ripple through him, his filter completely shut off...

“I love you,” he whispered in her ear as he thrusted his hips a few more times before stilling his body as he tried to catch his breath. 

If she had hit her peak any later, she would’ve assumed she imagined him saying that. But she didn’t, and he did. Now she can feel him recoil ever so slightly, realizing his possible ‘mistake’. He clung to her tightly, almost like he was afraid she’d move away, and he hid his face in her neck to try and enjoy this moment before whatever happened next. 

“Daryl,” she whispered, raking her hands through his hair. He shuttered at her touch but said nothing. “Daryl, it’s okay... I love you too.” 

It took him a few moments before moving off of her and facing her, relief and doubt mixed in his eyes. “Really?”

“Yes,” she said as a few lingering tears ran down her face. She grazed her fingers over his cheek. “I love you Daryl... so so much.”

He sighed in relief as he wiped the tears from her face, and if she noticed his lip quivering from him trying to contain his own emotions, she didn’t let on. He leaned his forehead against hers and wrapped his arms around her, trying to keep her as close to him as possible. 

“Love ya,” he whispered again, kissing her cheeks lightly over and over as he repeated the words a few more times, making sure she heard it and felt it. 

“I love you,” she said again before the pull of sleep began to drag her under. And the last thing she could remember was his light kisses across her face as he nuzzled his forehead against hers. 

[christophertheodore-org]

Chapter 5 - 1984 By George Orwell

In the low-ceilinged canteen, deep underground, the lunch queue jerked slowly forward. The room was already very full and deafeningly noisy. From the grille at the counter the steam of stew came pouring forth, with a sour metallic smell which did not quite overcome the fumes of Victory Gin. On the far side of the room there was a small bar, a mere hole in the wall, where gin could be bought at ten cents the large nip.

‘Just the man I was looking for,’ said a voice at Winston’s back.

He turned round. It was his friend Syme, who worked in the Research Department. Perhaps ‘friend’ was not exactly the right word. You did not have friends nowadays, you had comrades: but there were some comrades whose society was pleasanter than that of others. Syme was a philologist, a specialist in Newspeak. Indeed, he was one of the enormous team of experts now engaged in compiling the Eleventh Edition of the Newspeak Dictionary. He was a tiny creature, smaller than Winston, with dark hair and large, protuberant eyes, at once mournful and derisive, which seemed to search your face closely while he was speaking to you.

‘I wanted to ask you whether you’d got any razor blades,’ he said.

‘Not one!’ said Winston with a sort of guilty haste. ‘I’ve tried all over the place. They don’t exist any longer.’

Everyone kept asking you for razor blades. Actually he had two unused ones which he was hoarding up. There had been a famine of them for months past. At any given moment there was some necessary article which the Party shops were unable to supply. Sometimes it was buttons, sometimes it was darning wool, sometimes it was shoelaces; at present it was razor blades. You could only get hold of them, if at all, by scrounging more or less furtively on the ‘free’ market.

‘I’ve been using the same blade for six weeks,’ he added untruthfully.

The queue gave another jerk forward. As they halted he turned and faced Syme again. Each of them took a greasy metal tray from a pile at the end of the counter.

‘Did you go and see the prisoners hanged yesterday?’ said Syme.

‘I was working,’ said Winston indifferently. ‘I shall see it on the flicks, I suppose.’

‘A very inadequate substitute,’ said Syme.

His mocking eyes roved over Winston’s face. ‘I know you,’ the eyes seemed to say, ‘I see through you. I know very well why you didn’t go to see those prisoners hanged.’ In an intellectual way, Syme was venomously orthodox. He would talk with a disagreeable gloating satisfaction of helicopter raids on enemy villages, and trials and confessions of thought-criminals, the executions in the cellars of the Ministry of Love. Talking to him was largely a matter of getting him away from such subjects and entangling him, if possible, in the technicalities of Newspeak, on which he was authoritative and interesting. Winston turned his head a little aside to avoid the scrutiny of the large dark eyes.

‘It was a good hanging,’ said Syme reminiscently. ‘I think it spoils it when they tie their feet together. I like to see them kicking. And above all, at the end, the tongue sticking right out, and blue — a quite bright blue. That’s the detail that appeals to me.’

‘Nex’, please!’ yelled the white-aproned prole with the ladle.

Winston and Syme pushed their trays beneath the grille. On to each was dumped swiftly the regulation lunch — a metal pannikin of pinkish-grey stew, a hunk of bread, a cube of cheese, a mug of milkless Victory Coffee, and one saccharine tablet.

‘There’s a table over there, under that telescreen,’ said Syme. ‘Let’s pick up a gin on the way.’

The gin was served out to them in handleless china mugs. They threaded their way across the crowded room and unpacked their trays on to the metal-topped table, on one corner of which someone had left a pool of stew, a filthy liquid mess that had the appearance of vomit. Winston took up his mug of gin, paused for an instant to collect his nerve, and gulped the oily-tasting stuff down. When he had winked the tears out of his eyes he suddenly discovered that he was hungry. He began swallowing spoonfuls of the stew, which, in among its general sloppiness, had cubes of spongy pinkish stuff which was probably a preparation of meat. Neither of them spoke again till they had emptied their pannikins. From the table at Winston’s left, a little behind his back, someone was talking rapidly and continuously, a harsh gabble almost like the quacking of a duck, which pierced the general uproar of the room.

‘How is the Dictionary getting on?’ said Winston, raising his voice to overcome the noise.

‘Slowly,’ said Syme. ‘I’m on the adjectives. It’s fascinating.’

He had brightened up immediately at the mention of Newspeak. He pushed his pannikin aside, took up his hunk of bread in one delicate hand and his cheese in the other, and leaned across the table so as to be able to speak without shouting.

‘The Eleventh Edition is the definitive edition,’ he said. ‘We’re getting the language into its final shape — the shape it’s going to have when nobody speaks anything else. When we’ve finished with it, people like you will have to learn it all over again. You think, I dare say, that our chief job is inventing new words. But not a bit of it! We’re destroying words — scores of them, hundreds of them, every day. We’re cutting the language down to the bone. The Eleventh Edition won’t contain a single word that will become obsolete before the year 2050.’

He bit hungrily into his bread and swallowed a couple of mouthfuls, then continued speaking, with a sort of pedant’s passion. His thin dark face had become animated, his eyes had lost their mocking expression and grown almost dreamy.

‘It’s a beautiful thing, the destruction of words. Of course the great wastage is in the verbs and adjectives, but there are hundreds of nouns that can be got rid of as well. It isn’t only the synonyms; there are also the antonyms. After all, what justification is there for a word which is simply the opposite of some other word? A word contains its opposite in itself. Take “good”, for instance. If you have a word like “good”, what need is there for a word like “bad”? “Ungood” will do just as well — better, because it’s an exact opposite, which the other is not. Or again, if you want a stronger version of “good”, what sense is there in having a whole string of vague useless words like “excellent” and “splendid” and all the rest of them? “Plusgood” covers the meaning, or “doubleplusgood” if you want something stronger still. Of course we use those forms already. but in the final version of Newspeak there’ll be nothing else. In the end the whole notion of goodness and badness will be covered by only six words — in reality, only one word. Don’t you see the beauty of that, Winston? It was B.B.‘s idea originally, of course,’ he added as an afterthought.

A sort of vapid eagerness flitted across Winston’s face at the mention of Big Brother. Nevertheless Syme immediately detected a certain lack of enthusiasm.

‘You haven’t a real appreciation of Newspeak, Winston,’ he said almost sadly. ‘Even when you write it you’re still thinking in Oldspeak. I’ve read some of those pieces that you write in “The Times” occasionally. They’re good enough, but they’re translations. In your heart you’d prefer to stick to Oldspeak, with all its vagueness and its useless shades of meaning. You don’t grasp the beauty of the destruction of words. Do you know that Newspeak is the only language in the world whose vocabulary gets smaller every year?’

Winston did know that, of course. He smiled, sympathetically he hoped, not trusting himself to speak. Syme bit off another fragment of the dark-coloured bread, chewed it briefly, and went on:

‘Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. Every concept that can ever be needed, will be expressed by exactly one word, with its meaning rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten. Already, in the Eleventh Edition, we’re not far from that point. But the process will still be continuing long after you and I are dead. Every year fewer and fewer words, and the range of consciousness always a little smaller. Even now, of course, there’s no reason or excuse for committing thoughtcrime. It’s merely a question of self-discipline, reality-control. But in the end there won’t be any need even for that. The Revolution will be complete when the language is perfect. Newspeak is Ingsoc and Ingsoc is Newspeak,’ he added with a sort of mystical satisfaction. ‘Has it ever occurred to you, Winston, that by the year 2050, at the very latest, not a single human being will be alive who could understand such a conversation as we are having now?’

‘Except ——’ began Winston doubtfully, and he stopped.

It had been on the tip of his tongue to say ‘Except the proles,’ but he checked himself, not feeling fully certain that this remark was not in some way unorthodox. Syme, however, had divined what he was about to say.

‘The proles are not human beings,’ he said carelessly. ‘By 2050 — earlier, probably — all real knowledge of Oldspeak will have disappeared. The whole literature of the past will have been destroyed. Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Byron — they’ll exist only in Newspeak versions, not merely changed into something different, but actually changed into something contradictory of what they used to be. Even the literature of the Party will change. Even the slogans will change. How could you have a slogan like “freedom is slavery” when the concept of freedom has been abolished? The whole climate of thought will be different. In fact there will be no thought, as we understand it now. Orthodoxy means not thinking — not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.’

One of these days, thought Winston with sudden deep conviction, Syme will be vaporized. He is too intelligent. He sees too clearly and speaks too plainly. The Party does not like such people. One day he will disappear. It is written in his face.

Winston had finished his bread and cheese. He turned a little sideways in his chair to drink his mug of coffee. At the table on his left the man with the strident voice was still talking remorselessly away. A young woman who was perhaps his secretary, and who was sitting with her back to Winston, was listening to him and seemed to be eagerly agreeing with everything that he said. From time to time Winston caught some such remark as ‘I think you’re so right, I do so agree with you’, uttered in a youthful and rather silly feminine voice. But the other voice never stopped for an instant, even when the girl was speaking. Winston knew the man by sight, though he knew no more about him than that he held some important post in the Fiction Department. He was a man of about thirty, with a muscular throat and a large, mobile mouth. His head was thrown back a little, and because of the angle at which he was sitting, his spectacles caught the light and presented to Winston two blank discs instead of eyes. What was slightly horrible, was that from the stream of sound that poured out of his mouth it was almost impossible to distinguish a single word. Just once Winston caught a phrase —‘complete and final elimination of Goldsteinism’— jerked out very rapidly and, as it seemed, all in one piece, like a line of type cast solid. For the rest it was just a noise, a quack-quack-quacking. And yet, though you could not actually hear what the man was saying, you could not be in any doubt about its general nature. He might be denouncing Goldstein and demanding sterner measures against thought-criminals and saboteurs, he might be fulminating against the atrocities of the Eurasian army, he might be praising Big Brother or the heroes on the Malabar front — it made no difference. Whatever it was, you could be certain that every word of it was pure orthodoxy, pure Ingsoc. As he watched the eyeless face with the jaw moving rapidly up and down, Winston had a curious feeling that this was not a real human being but some kind of dummy. It was not the man’s brain that was speaking, it was his larynx. The stuff that was coming out of him consisted of words, but it was not speech in the true sense: it was a noise uttered in unconsciousness, like the quacking of a duck.

Syme had fallen silent for a moment, and with the handle of his spoon was tracing patterns in the puddle of stew. The voice from the other table quacked rapidly on, easily audible in spite of the surrounding din.

‘There is a word in Newspeak,’ said Syme, ‘I don’t know whether you know it: DUCKSPEAK, to quack like a duck. It is one of those interesting words that have two contradictory meanings. Applied to an opponent, it is abuse, applied to someone you agree with, it is praise.’

Unquestionably Syme will be vaporized, Winston thought again. He thought it with a kind of sadness, although well knowing that Syme despised him and slightly disliked him, and was fully capable of denouncing him as a thought-criminal if he saw any reason for doing so. There was something subtly wrong with Syme. There was something that he lacked: discretion, aloofness, a sort of saving stupidity. You could not say that he was unorthodox. He believed in the principles of Ingsoc, he venerated Big Brother, he rejoiced over victories, he hated heretics, not merely with sincerity but with a sort of restless zeal, an up-to-dateness of information, which the ordinary Party member did not approach. Yet a faint air of disreputability always clung to him. He said things that would have been better unsaid, he had read too many books, he frequented the Chestnut Tree Cafe, haunt of painters and musicians. There was no law, not even an unwritten law, against frequenting the Chestnut Tree Cafe, yet the place was somehow ill-omened. The old, discredited leaders of the Party had been used to gather there before they were finally purged. Goldstein himself, it was said, had sometimes been seen there, years and decades ago. Syme’s fate was not difficult to foresee. And yet it was a fact that if Syme grasped, even for three seconds, the nature of his, Winston’s, secret opinions, he would betray him instantly to the Thought Police. So would anybody else, for that matter: but Syme more than most. Zeal was not enough. Orthodoxy was unconsciousness.

Syme looked up. ‘Here comes Parsons,’ he said.

Something in the tone of his voice seemed to add, ‘that bloody fool’. Parsons, Winston’s fellow-tenant at Victory Mansions, was in fact threading his way across the room — a tubby, middle-sized man with fair hair and a froglike face. At thirty-five he was already putting on rolls of fat at neck and waistline, but his movements were brisk and boyish. His whole appearance was that of a little boy grown large, so much so that although he was wearing the regulation overalls, it was almost impossible not to think of him as being dressed in the blue shorts, grey shirt, and red neckerchief of the Spies. In visualizing him one saw always a picture of dimpled knees and sleeves rolled back from pudgy forearms. Parsons did, indeed, invariably revert to shorts when a community hike or any other physical activity gave him an excuse for doing so. He greeted them both with a cheery ‘Hullo, hullo!’ and sat down at the table, giving off an intense smell of sweat. Beads of moisture stood out all over his pink face. His powers of sweating were extraordinary. At the Community Centre you could always tell when he had been playing table-tennis by the dampness of the bat handle. Syme had produced a strip of paper on which there was a long column of words, and was studying it with an ink-pencil between his fingers.

‘Look at him working away in the lunch hour,’ said Parsons, nudging Winston. ‘Keenness, eh? What’s that you’ve got there, old boy? Something a bit too brainy for me, I expect. Smith, old boy, I’ll tell you why I’m chasing you. It’s that sub you forgot to give me.’

‘Which sub is that?’ said Winston, automatically feeling for money. About a quarter of one’s salary had to be earmarked for voluntary subscriptions, which were so numerous that it was difficult to keep track of them.

‘For Hate Week. You know — the house-by-house fund. I’m treasurer for our block. We’re making an all-out effort — going to put on a tremendous show. I tell you, it won’t be my fault if old Victory Mansions doesn’t have the biggest outfit of flags in the whole street. Two dollars you promised me.’

Winston found and handed over two creased and filthy notes, which Parsons entered in a small notebook, in the neat handwriting of the illiterate.

‘By the way, old boy,’ he said. ‘I hear that little beggar of mine let fly at you with his catapult yesterday. I gave him a good dressing-down for it. In fact I told him I’d take the catapult away if he does it again.’

‘I think he was a little upset at not going to the execution,’ said Winston.

‘Ah, well — what I mean to say, shows the right spirit, doesn’t it? Mischievous little beggars they are, both of them, but talk about keenness! All they think about is the Spies, and the war, of course. D’you know what that little girl of mine did last Saturday, when her troop was on a hike out Berkhamsted way? She got two other girls to go with her, slipped off from the hike, and spent the whole afternoon following a strange man. They kept on his tail for two hours, right through the woods, and then, when they got into Amersham, handed him over to the patrols.’

‘What did they do that for?’ said Winston, somewhat taken aback. Parsons went on triumphantly:

‘My kid made sure he was some kind of enemy agent — might have been dropped by parachute, for instance. But here’s the point, old boy. What do you think put her on to him in the first place? She spotted he was wearing a funny kind of shoes — said she’d never seen anyone wearing shoes like that before. So the chances were he was a foreigner. Pretty smart for a nipper of seven, eh?’

‘What happened to the man?’ said Winston.

‘Ah, that I couldn’t say, of course. But I wouldn’t be altogether surprised if ——’ Parsons made the motion of aiming a rifle, and clicked his tongue for the explosion.

‘Good,’ said Syme abstractedly, without looking up from his strip of paper.

‘Of course we can’t afford to take chances,’ agreed Winston dutifully.

‘What I mean to say, there is a war on,’ said Parsons.

As though in confirmation of this, a trumpet call floated from the telescreen just above their heads. However, it was not the proclamation of a military victory this time, but merely an announcement from the Ministry of Plenty.

‘Comrades!’ cried an eager youthful voice. ‘Attention, comrades! We have glorious news for you. We have won the battle for production! Returns now completed of the output of all classes of consumption goods show that the standard of living has risen by no less than 20 per cent over the past year. All over Oceania this morning there were irrepressible spontaneous demonstrations when workers marched out of factories and offices and paraded through the streets with banners voicing their gratitude to Big Brother for the new, happy life which his wise leadership has bestowed upon us. Here are some of the completed figures. Foodstuffs ——’

The phrase ‘our new, happy life’ recurred several times. It had been a favourite of late with the Ministry of Plenty. Parsons, his attention caught by the trumpet call, sat listening with a sort of gaping solemnity, a sort of edified boredom. He could not follow the figures, but he was aware that they were in some way a cause for satisfaction. He had lugged out a huge and filthy pipe which was already half full of charred tobacco. With the tobacco ration at 100 grammes a week it was seldom possible to fill a pipe to the top. Winston was smoking a Victory Cigarette which he held carefully horizontal. The new ration did not start till tomorrow and he had only four cigarettes left. For the moment he had shut his ears to the remoter noises and was listening to the stuff that streamed out of the telescreen. It appeared that there had even been demonstrations to thank Big Brother for raising the chocolate ration to twenty grammes a week. And only yesterday, he reflected, it had been announced that the ration was to be REDUCED to twenty grammes a week. Was it possible that they could swallow that, after only twenty-four hours? Yes, they swallowed it. Parsons swallowed it easily, with the stupidity of an animal. The eyeless creature at the other table swallowed it fanatically, passionately, with a furious desire to track down, denounce, and vaporize anyone who should suggest that last week the ration had been thirty grammes. Syme, too — in some more complex way, involving doublethink, Syme swallowed it. Was he, then, ALONE in the possession of a memory?

The fabulous statistics continued to pour out of the telescreen. As compared with last year there was more food, more clothes, more houses, more furniture, more cooking-pots, more fuel, more ships, more helicopters, more books, more babies — more of everything except disease, crime, and insanity. Year by year and minute by minute, everybody and everything was whizzing rapidly upwards. As Syme had done earlier Winston had taken up his spoon and was dabbling in the pale-coloured gravy that dribbled across the table, drawing a long streak of it out into a pattern. He meditated resentfully on the physical texture of life. Had it always been like this? Had food always tasted like this? He looked round the canteen. A low-ceilinged, crowded room, its walls grimy from the contact of innumerable bodies; battered metal tables and chairs, placed so close together that you sat with elbows touching; bent spoons, dented trays, coarse white mugs; all surfaces greasy, grime in every crack; and a sourish, composite smell of bad gin and bad coffee and metallic stew and dirty clothes. Always in your stomach and in your skin there was a sort of protest, a feeling that you had been cheated of something that you had a right to. It was true that he had no memories of anything greatly different. In any time that he could accurately remember, there had never been quite enough to eat, one had never had socks or underclothes that were not full of holes, furniture had always been battered and rickety, rooms underheated, tube trains crowded, houses falling to pieces, bread dark-coloured, tea a rarity, coffee filthy-tasting, cigarettes insufficient — nothing cheap and plentiful except synthetic gin. And though, of course, it grew worse as one’s body aged, was it not a sign that this was NOT the natural order of things, if one’s heart sickened at the discomfort and dirt and scarcity, the interminable winters, the stickiness of one’s socks, the lifts that never worked, the cold water, the gritty soap, the cigarettes that came to pieces, the food with its strange evil tastes? Why should one feel it to be intolerable unless one had some kind of ancestral memory that things had once been different?

He looked round the canteen again. Nearly everyone was ugly, and would still have been ugly even if dressed otherwise than in the uniform blue overalls. On the far side of the room, sitting at a table alone, a small, curiously beetle-like man was drinking a cup of coffee, his little eyes darting suspicious glances from side to side. How easy it was, thought Winston, if you did not look about you, to believe that the physical type set up by the Party as an ideal — tall muscular youths and deep-bosomed maidens, blond-haired, vital, sunburnt, carefree — existed and even predominated. Actually, so far as he could judge, the majority of people in Airstrip One were small, dark, and ill-favoured. It was curious how that beetle-like type proliferated in the Ministries: little dumpy men, growing stout very early in life, with short legs, swift scuttling movements, and fat inscrutable faces with very small eyes. It was the type that seemed to flourish best under the dominion of the Party.

The announcement from the Ministry of Plenty ended on another trumpet call and gave way to tinny music. Parsons, stirred to vague enthusiasm by the bombardment of figures, took his pipe out of his mouth.

‘The Ministry of Plenty’s certainly done a good job this year,’ he said with a knowing shake of his head. ‘By the way, Smith old boy, I suppose you haven’t got any razor blades you can let me have?’

‘Not one,’ said Winston. ‘I’ve been using the same blade for six weeks myself.’

‘Ah, well — just thought I’d ask you, old boy.’

‘Sorry,’ said Winston.

The quacking voice from the next table, temporarily silenced during the Ministry’s announcement, had started up again, as loud as ever. For some reason Winston suddenly found himself thinking of Mrs Parsons, with her wispy hair and the dust in the creases of her face. Within two years those children would be denouncing her to the Thought Police. Mrs Parsons would be vaporized. Syme would be vaporized. Winston would be vaporized. O’Brien would be vaporized. Parsons, on the other hand, would never be vaporized. The eyeless creature with the quacking voice would never be vaporized. The little beetle-like men who scuttle so nimbly through the labyrinthine corridors of Ministries they, too, would never be vaporized. And the girl with dark hair, the girl from the Fiction Department — she would never be vaporized either. It seemed to him that he knew instinctively who would survive and who would perish: though just what it was that made for survival, it was not easy to say.

At this moment he was dragged out of his reverie with a violent jerk. The girl at the next table had turned partly round and was looking at him. It was the girl with dark hair. She was looking at him in a sidelong way, but with curious intensity. The instant she caught his eye she looked away again.

The sweat started out on Winston’s backbone. A horrible pang of terror went through him. It was gone almost at once, but it left a sort of nagging uneasiness behind. Why was she watching him? Why did she keep following him about? Unfortunately he could not remember whether she had already been at the table when he arrived, or had come there afterwards. But yesterday, at any rate, during the Two Minutes Hate, she had sat immediately behind him when there was no apparent need to do so. Quite likely her real object had been to listen to him and make sure whether he was shouting loudly enough.

His earlier thought returned to him: probably she was not actually a member of the Thought Police, but then it was precisely the amateur spy who was the greatest danger of all. He did not know how long she had been looking at him, but perhaps for as much as five minutes, and it was possible that his features had not been perfectly under control. It was terribly dangerous to let your thoughts wander when you were in any public place or within range of a telescreen. The smallest thing could give you away. A nervous tic, an unconscious look of anxiety, a habit of muttering to yourself — anything that carried with it the suggestion of abnormality, of having something to hide. In any case, to wear an improper expression on your face (to look incredulous when a victory was announced, for example) was itself a punishable offence. There was even a word for it in Newspeak: FACECRIME, it was called.

The girl had turned her back on him again. Perhaps after all she was not really following him about, perhaps it was coincidence that she had sat so close to him two days running. His cigarette had gone out, and he laid it carefully on the edge of the table. He would finish smoking it after work, if he could keep the tobacco in it. Quite likely the person at the next table was a spy of the Thought Police, and quite likely he would be in the cellars of the Ministry of Love within three days, but a cigarette end must not be wasted. Syme had folded up his strip of paper and stowed it away in his pocket. Parsons had begun talking again.

‘Did I ever tell you, old boy,’ he said, chuckling round the stem of his pipe, ‘about the time when those two nippers of mine set fire to the old market-woman’s skirt because they saw her wrapping up sausages in a poster of B.B.? Sneaked up behind her and set fire to it with a box of matches. Burned her quite badly, I believe. Little beggars, eh? But keen as mustard! That’s a first-rate training they give them in the Spies nowadays — better than in my day, even. What d’you think’s the latest thing they’ve served them out with? Ear trumpets for listening through keyholes! My little girl brought one home the other night — tried it out on our sitting-room door, and reckoned she could hear twice as much as with her ear to the hole. Of course it’s only a toy, mind you. Still, gives ’em the right idea, eh?’

At this moment the telescreen let out a piercing whistle. It was the signal to return to work. All three men sprang to their feet to join in the struggle round the lifts, and the remaining tobacco fell out of Winston’s cigarette.

[christophertheodore-org]

Chapter 5 - 1984 By George Orwell

In the low-ceilinged canteen, deep underground, the lunch queue jerked slowly forward. The room was already very full and deafeningly noisy. From the grille at the counter the steam of stew came pouring forth, with a sour metallic smell which did not quite overcome the fumes of Victory Gin. On the far side of the room there was a small bar, a mere hole in the wall, where gin could be bought at ten cents the large nip.

‘Just the man I was looking for,’ said a voice at Winston’s back.

He turned round. It was his friend Syme, who worked in the Research Department. Perhaps ‘friend’ was not exactly the right word. You did not have friends nowadays, you had comrades: but there were some comrades whose society was pleasanter than that of others. Syme was a philologist, a specialist in Newspeak. Indeed, he was one of the enormous team of experts now engaged in compiling the Eleventh Edition of the Newspeak Dictionary. He was a tiny creature, smaller than Winston, with dark hair and large, protuberant eyes, at once mournful and derisive, which seemed to search your face closely while he was speaking to you.

‘I wanted to ask you whether you’d got any razor blades,’ he said.

‘Not one!’ said Winston with a sort of guilty haste. ‘I’ve tried all over the place. They don’t exist any longer.’

Everyone kept asking you for razor blades. Actually he had two unused ones which he was hoarding up. There had been a famine of them for months past. At any given moment there was some necessary article which the Party shops were unable to supply. Sometimes it was buttons, sometimes it was darning wool, sometimes it was shoelaces; at present it was razor blades. You could only get hold of them, if at all, by scrounging more or less furtively on the ‘free’ market.

‘I’ve been using the same blade for six weeks,’ he added untruthfully.

The queue gave another jerk forward. As they halted he turned and faced Syme again. Each of them took a greasy metal tray from a pile at the end of the counter.

‘Did you go and see the prisoners hanged yesterday?’ said Syme.

‘I was working,’ said Winston indifferently. ‘I shall see it on the flicks, I suppose.’

‘A very inadequate substitute,’ said Syme.

His mocking eyes roved over Winston’s face. ‘I know you,’ the eyes seemed to say, ‘I see through you. I know very well why you didn’t go to see those prisoners hanged.’ In an intellectual way, Syme was venomously orthodox. He would talk with a disagreeable gloating satisfaction of helicopter raids on enemy villages, and trials and confessions of thought-criminals, the executions in the cellars of the Ministry of Love. Talking to him was largely a matter of getting him away from such subjects and entangling him, if possible, in the technicalities of Newspeak, on which he was authoritative and interesting. Winston turned his head a little aside to avoid the scrutiny of the large dark eyes.

‘It was a good hanging,’ said Syme reminiscently. ‘I think it spoils it when they tie their feet together. I like to see them kicking. And above all, at the end, the tongue sticking right out, and blue — a quite bright blue. That’s the detail that appeals to me.’

‘Nex’, please!’ yelled the white-aproned prole with the ladle.

Winston and Syme pushed their trays beneath the grille. On to each was dumped swiftly the regulation lunch — a metal pannikin of pinkish-grey stew, a hunk of bread, a cube of cheese, a mug of milkless Victory Coffee, and one saccharine tablet.

‘There’s a table over there, under that telescreen,’ said Syme. ‘Let’s pick up a gin on the way.’

The gin was served out to them in handleless china mugs. They threaded their way across the crowded room and unpacked their trays on to the metal-topped table, on one corner of which someone had left a pool of stew, a filthy liquid mess that had the appearance of vomit. Winston took up his mug of gin, paused for an instant to collect his nerve, and gulped the oily-tasting stuff down. When he had winked the tears out of his eyes he suddenly discovered that he was hungry. He began swallowing spoonfuls of the stew, which, in among its general sloppiness, had cubes of spongy pinkish stuff which was probably a preparation of meat. Neither of them spoke again till they had emptied their pannikins. From the table at Winston’s left, a little behind his back, someone was talking rapidly and continuously, a harsh gabble almost like the quacking of a duck, which pierced the general uproar of the room.

‘How is the Dictionary getting on?’ said Winston, raising his voice to overcome the noise.

‘Slowly,’ said Syme. ‘I’m on the adjectives. It’s fascinating.’

He had brightened up immediately at the mention of Newspeak. He pushed his pannikin aside, took up his hunk of bread in one delicate hand and his cheese in the other, and leaned across the table so as to be able to speak without shouting.

‘The Eleventh Edition is the definitive edition,’ he said. ‘We’re getting the language into its final shape — the shape it’s going to have when nobody speaks anything else. When we’ve finished with it, people like you will have to learn it all over again. You think, I dare say, that our chief job is inventing new words. But not a bit of it! We’re destroying words — scores of them, hundreds of them, every day. We’re cutting the language down to the bone. The Eleventh Edition won’t contain a single word that will become obsolete before the year 2050.’

He bit hungrily into his bread and swallowed a couple of mouthfuls, then continued speaking, with a sort of pedant’s passion. His thin dark face had become animated, his eyes had lost their mocking expression and grown almost dreamy.

‘It’s a beautiful thing, the destruction of words. Of course the great wastage is in the verbs and adjectives, but there are hundreds of nouns that can be got rid of as well. It isn’t only the synonyms; there are also the antonyms. After all, what justification is there for a word which is simply the opposite of some other word? A word contains its opposite in itself. Take “good”, for instance. If you have a word like “good”, what need is there for a word like “bad”? “Ungood” will do just as well — better, because it’s an exact opposite, which the other is not. Or again, if you want a stronger version of “good”, what sense is there in having a whole string of vague useless words like “excellent” and “splendid” and all the rest of them? “Plusgood” covers the meaning, or “doubleplusgood” if you want something stronger still. Of course we use those forms already. but in the final version of Newspeak there’ll be nothing else. In the end the whole notion of goodness and badness will be covered by only six words — in reality, only one word. Don’t you see the beauty of that, Winston? It was B.B.‘s idea originally, of course,’ he added as an afterthought.

A sort of vapid eagerness flitted across Winston’s face at the mention of Big Brother. Nevertheless Syme immediately detected a certain lack of enthusiasm.

‘You haven’t a real appreciation of Newspeak, Winston,’ he said almost sadly. ‘Even when you write it you’re still thinking in Oldspeak. I’ve read some of those pieces that you write in “The Times” occasionally. They’re good enough, but they’re translations. In your heart you’d prefer to stick to Oldspeak, with all its vagueness and its useless shades of meaning. You don’t grasp the beauty of the destruction of words. Do you know that Newspeak is the only language in the world whose vocabulary gets smaller every year?’

Winston did know that, of course. He smiled, sympathetically he hoped, not trusting himself to speak. Syme bit off another fragment of the dark-coloured bread, chewed it briefly, and went on:

‘Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. Every concept that can ever be needed, will be expressed by exactly one word, with its meaning rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten. Already, in the Eleventh Edition, we’re not far from that point. But the process will still be continuing long after you and I are dead. Every year fewer and fewer words, and the range of consciousness always a little smaller. Even now, of course, there’s no reason or excuse for committing thoughtcrime. It’s merely a question of self-discipline, reality-control. But in the end there won’t be any need even for that. The Revolution will be complete when the language is perfect. Newspeak is Ingsoc and Ingsoc is Newspeak,’ he added with a sort of mystical satisfaction. ‘Has it ever occurred to you, Winston, that by the year 2050, at the very latest, not a single human being will be alive who could understand such a conversation as we are having now?’

‘Except ——’ began Winston doubtfully, and he stopped.

It had been on the tip of his tongue to say ‘Except the proles,’ but he checked himself, not feeling fully certain that this remark was not in some way unorthodox. Syme, however, had divined what he was about to say.

‘The proles are not human beings,’ he said carelessly. ‘By 2050 — earlier, probably — all real knowledge of Oldspeak will have disappeared. The whole literature of the past will have been destroyed. Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Byron — they’ll exist only in Newspeak versions, not merely changed into something different, but actually changed into something contradictory of what they used to be. Even the literature of the Party will change. Even the slogans will change. How could you have a slogan like “freedom is slavery” when the concept of freedom has been abolished? The whole climate of thought will be different. In fact there will be no thought, as we understand it now. Orthodoxy means not thinking — not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.’

One of these days, thought Winston with sudden deep conviction, Syme will be vaporized. He is too intelligent. He sees too clearly and speaks too plainly. The Party does not like such people. One day he will disappear. It is written in his face.

Winston had finished his bread and cheese. He turned a little sideways in his chair to drink his mug of coffee. At the table on his left the man with the strident voice was still talking remorselessly away. A young woman who was perhaps his secretary, and who was sitting with her back to Winston, was listening to him and seemed to be eagerly agreeing with everything that he said. From time to time Winston caught some such remark as ‘I think you’re so right, I do so agree with you’, uttered in a youthful and rather silly feminine voice. But the other voice never stopped for an instant, even when the girl was speaking. Winston knew the man by sight, though he knew no more about him than that he held some important post in the Fiction Department. He was a man of about thirty, with a muscular throat and a large, mobile mouth. His head was thrown back a little, and because of the angle at which he was sitting, his spectacles caught the light and presented to Winston two blank discs instead of eyes. What was slightly horrible, was that from the stream of sound that poured out of his mouth it was almost impossible to distinguish a single word. Just once Winston caught a phrase —‘complete and final elimination of Goldsteinism’— jerked out very rapidly and, as it seemed, all in one piece, like a line of type cast solid. For the rest it was just a noise, a quack-quack-quacking. And yet, though you could not actually hear what the man was saying, you could not be in any doubt about its general nature. He might be denouncing Goldstein and demanding sterner measures against thought-criminals and saboteurs, he might be fulminating against the atrocities of the Eurasian army, he might be praising Big Brother or the heroes on the Malabar front — it made no difference. Whatever it was, you could be certain that every word of it was pure orthodoxy, pure Ingsoc. As he watched the eyeless face with the jaw moving rapidly up and down, Winston had a curious feeling that this was not a real human being but some kind of dummy. It was not the man’s brain that was speaking, it was his larynx. The stuff that was coming out of him consisted of words, but it was not speech in the true sense: it was a noise uttered in unconsciousness, like the quacking of a duck.

Syme had fallen silent for a moment, and with the handle of his spoon was tracing patterns in the puddle of stew. The voice from the other table quacked rapidly on, easily audible in spite of the surrounding din.

‘There is a word in Newspeak,’ said Syme, ‘I don’t know whether you know it: DUCKSPEAK, to quack like a duck. It is one of those interesting words that have two contradictory meanings. Applied to an opponent, it is abuse, applied to someone you agree with, it is praise.’

Unquestionably Syme will be vaporized, Winston thought again. He thought it with a kind of sadness, although well knowing that Syme despised him and slightly disliked him, and was fully capable of denouncing him as a thought-criminal if he saw any reason for doing so. There was something subtly wrong with Syme. There was something that he lacked: discretion, aloofness, a sort of saving stupidity. You could not say that he was unorthodox. He believed in the principles of Ingsoc, he venerated Big Brother, he rejoiced over victories, he hated heretics, not merely with sincerity but with a sort of restless zeal, an up-to-dateness of information, which the ordinary Party member did not approach. Yet a faint air of disreputability always clung to him. He said things that would have been better unsaid, he had read too many books, he frequented the Chestnut Tree Cafe, haunt of painters and musicians. There was no law, not even an unwritten law, against frequenting the Chestnut Tree Cafe, yet the place was somehow ill-omened. The old, discredited leaders of the Party had been used to gather there before they were finally purged. Goldstein himself, it was said, had sometimes been seen there, years and decades ago. Syme’s fate was not difficult to foresee. And yet it was a fact that if Syme grasped, even for three seconds, the nature of his, Winston’s, secret opinions, he would betray him instantly to the Thought Police. So would anybody else, for that matter: but Syme more than most. Zeal was not enough. Orthodoxy was unconsciousness.

Syme looked up. ‘Here comes Parsons,’ he said.

Something in the tone of his voice seemed to add, ‘that bloody fool’. Parsons, Winston’s fellow-tenant at Victory Mansions, was in fact threading his way across the room — a tubby, middle-sized man with fair hair and a froglike face. At thirty-five he was already putting on rolls of fat at neck and waistline, but his movements were brisk and boyish. His whole appearance was that of a little boy grown large, so much so that although he was wearing the regulation overalls, it was almost impossible not to think of him as being dressed in the blue shorts, grey shirt, and red neckerchief of the Spies. In visualizing him one saw always a picture of dimpled knees and sleeves rolled back from pudgy forearms. Parsons did, indeed, invariably revert to shorts when a community hike or any other physical activity gave him an excuse for doing so. He greeted them both with a cheery ‘Hullo, hullo!’ and sat down at the table, giving off an intense smell of sweat. Beads of moisture stood out all over his pink face. His powers of sweating were extraordinary. At the Community Centre you could always tell when he had been playing table-tennis by the dampness of the bat handle. Syme had produced a strip of paper on which there was a long column of words, and was studying it with an ink-pencil between his fingers.

‘Look at him working away in the lunch hour,’ said Parsons, nudging Winston. ‘Keenness, eh? What’s that you’ve got there, old boy? Something a bit too brainy for me, I expect. Smith, old boy, I’ll tell you why I’m chasing you. It’s that sub you forgot to give me.’

‘Which sub is that?’ said Winston, automatically feeling for money. About a quarter of one’s salary had to be earmarked for voluntary subscriptions, which were so numerous that it was difficult to keep track of them.

‘For Hate Week. You know — the house-by-house fund. I’m treasurer for our block. We’re making an all-out effort — going to put on a tremendous show. I tell you, it won’t be my fault if old Victory Mansions doesn’t have the biggest outfit of flags in the whole street. Two dollars you promised me.’

Winston found and handed over two creased and filthy notes, which Parsons entered in a small notebook, in the neat handwriting of the illiterate.

‘By the way, old boy,’ he said. ‘I hear that little beggar of mine let fly at you with his catapult yesterday. I gave him a good dressing-down for it. In fact I told him I’d take the catapult away if he does it again.’

‘I think he was a little upset at not going to the execution,’ said Winston.

‘Ah, well — what I mean to say, shows the right spirit, doesn’t it? Mischievous little beggars they are, both of them, but talk about keenness! All they think about is the Spies, and the war, of course. D’you know what that little girl of mine did last Saturday, when her troop was on a hike out Berkhamsted way? She got two other girls to go with her, slipped off from the hike, and spent the whole afternoon following a strange man. They kept on his tail for two hours, right through the woods, and then, when they got into Amersham, handed him over to the patrols.’

‘What did they do that for?’ said Winston, somewhat taken aback. Parsons went on triumphantly:

‘My kid made sure he was some kind of enemy agent — might have been dropped by parachute, for instance. But here’s the point, old boy. What do you think put her on to him in the first place? She spotted he was wearing a funny kind of shoes — said she’d never seen anyone wearing shoes like that before. So the chances were he was a foreigner. Pretty smart for a nipper of seven, eh?’

‘What happened to the man?’ said Winston.

‘Ah, that I couldn’t say, of course. But I wouldn’t be altogether surprised if ——’ Parsons made the motion of aiming a rifle, and clicked his tongue for the explosion.

‘Good,’ said Syme abstractedly, without looking up from his strip of paper.

‘Of course we can’t afford to take chances,’ agreed Winston dutifully.

‘What I mean to say, there is a war on,’ said Parsons.

As though in confirmation of this, a trumpet call floated from the telescreen just above their heads. However, it was not the proclamation of a military victory this time, but merely an announcement from the Ministry of Plenty.

‘Comrades!’ cried an eager youthful voice. ‘Attention, comrades! We have glorious news for you. We have won the battle for production! Returns now completed of the output of all classes of consumption goods show that the standard of living has risen by no less than 20 per cent over the past year. All over Oceania this morning there were irrepressible spontaneous demonstrations when workers marched out of factories and offices and paraded through the streets with banners voicing their gratitude to Big Brother for the new, happy life which his wise leadership has bestowed upon us. Here are some of the completed figures. Foodstuffs ——’

The phrase ‘our new, happy life’ recurred several times. It had been a favourite of late with the Ministry of Plenty. Parsons, his attention caught by the trumpet call, sat listening with a sort of gaping solemnity, a sort of edified boredom. He could not follow the figures, but he was aware that they were in some way a cause for satisfaction. He had lugged out a huge and filthy pipe which was already half full of charred tobacco. With the tobacco ration at 100 grammes a week it was seldom possible to fill a pipe to the top. Winston was smoking a Victory Cigarette which he held carefully horizontal. The new ration did not start till tomorrow and he had only four cigarettes left. For the moment he had shut his ears to the remoter noises and was listening to the stuff that streamed out of the telescreen. It appeared that there had even been demonstrations to thank Big Brother for raising the chocolate ration to twenty grammes a week. And only yesterday, he reflected, it had been announced that the ration was to be REDUCED to twenty grammes a week. Was it possible that they could swallow that, after only twenty-four hours? Yes, they swallowed it. Parsons swallowed it easily, with the stupidity of an animal. The eyeless creature at the other table swallowed it fanatically, passionately, with a furious desire to track down, denounce, and vaporize anyone who should suggest that last week the ration had been thirty grammes. Syme, too — in some more complex way, involving doublethink, Syme swallowed it. Was he, then, ALONE in the possession of a memory?

The fabulous statistics continued to pour out of the telescreen. As compared with last year there was more food, more clothes, more houses, more furniture, more cooking-pots, more fuel, more ships, more helicopters, more books, more babies — more of everything except disease, crime, and insanity. Year by year and minute by minute, everybody and everything was whizzing rapidly upwards. As Syme had done earlier Winston had taken up his spoon and was dabbling in the pale-coloured gravy that dribbled across the table, drawing a long streak of it out into a pattern. He meditated resentfully on the physical texture of life. Had it always been like this? Had food always tasted like this? He looked round the canteen. A low-ceilinged, crowded room, its walls grimy from the contact of innumerable bodies; battered metal tables and chairs, placed so close together that you sat with elbows touching; bent spoons, dented trays, coarse white mugs; all surfaces greasy, grime in every crack; and a sourish, composite smell of bad gin and bad coffee and metallic stew and dirty clothes. Always in your stomach and in your skin there was a sort of protest, a feeling that you had been cheated of something that you had a right to. It was true that he had no memories of anything greatly different. In any time that he could accurately remember, there had never been quite enough to eat, one had never had socks or underclothes that were not full of holes, furniture had always been battered and rickety, rooms underheated, tube trains crowded, houses falling to pieces, bread dark-coloured, tea a rarity, coffee filthy-tasting, cigarettes insufficient — nothing cheap and plentiful except synthetic gin. And though, of course, it grew worse as one’s body aged, was it not a sign that this was NOT the natural order of things, if one’s heart sickened at the discomfort and dirt and scarcity, the interminable winters, the stickiness of one’s socks, the lifts that never worked, the cold water, the gritty soap, the cigarettes that came to pieces, the food with its strange evil tastes? Why should one feel it to be intolerable unless one had some kind of ancestral memory that things had once been different?

He looked round the canteen again. Nearly everyone was ugly, and would still have been ugly even if dressed otherwise than in the uniform blue overalls. On the far side of the room, sitting at a table alone, a small, curiously beetle-like man was drinking a cup of coffee, his little eyes darting suspicious glances from side to side. How easy it was, thought Winston, if you did not look about you, to believe that the physical type set up by the Party as an ideal — tall muscular youths and deep-bosomed maidens, blond-haired, vital, sunburnt, carefree — existed and even predominated. Actually, so far as he could judge, the majority of people in Airstrip One were small, dark, and ill-favoured. It was curious how that beetle-like type proliferated in the Ministries: little dumpy men, growing stout very early in life, with short legs, swift scuttling movements, and fat inscrutable faces with very small eyes. It was the type that seemed to flourish best under the dominion of the Party.

The announcement from the Ministry of Plenty ended on another trumpet call and gave way to tinny music. Parsons, stirred to vague enthusiasm by the bombardment of figures, took his pipe out of his mouth.

‘The Ministry of Plenty’s certainly done a good job this year,’ he said with a knowing shake of his head. ‘By the way, Smith old boy, I suppose you haven’t got any razor blades you can let me have?’

‘Not one,’ said Winston. ‘I’ve been using the same blade for six weeks myself.’

‘Ah, well — just thought I’d ask you, old boy.’

‘Sorry,’ said Winston.

The quacking voice from the next table, temporarily silenced during the Ministry’s announcement, had started up again, as loud as ever. For some reason Winston suddenly found himself thinking of Mrs Parsons, with her wispy hair and the dust in the creases of her face. Within two years those children would be denouncing her to the Thought Police. Mrs Parsons would be vaporized. Syme would be vaporized. Winston would be vaporized. O’Brien would be vaporized. Parsons, on the other hand, would never be vaporized. The eyeless creature with the quacking voice would never be vaporized. The little beetle-like men who scuttle so nimbly through the labyrinthine corridors of Ministries they, too, would never be vaporized. And the girl with dark hair, the girl from the Fiction Department — she would never be vaporized either. It seemed to him that he knew instinctively who would survive and who would perish: though just what it was that made for survival, it was not easy to say.

At this moment he was dragged out of his reverie with a violent jerk. The girl at the next table had turned partly round and was looking at him. It was the girl with dark hair. She was looking at him in a sidelong way, but with curious intensity. The instant she caught his eye she looked away again.

The sweat started out on Winston’s backbone. A horrible pang of terror went through him. It was gone almost at once, but it left a sort of nagging uneasiness behind. Why was she watching him? Why did she keep following him about? Unfortunately he could not remember whether she had already been at the table when he arrived, or had come there afterwards. But yesterday, at any rate, during the Two Minutes Hate, she had sat immediately behind him when there was no apparent need to do so. Quite likely her real object had been to listen to him and make sure whether he was shouting loudly enough.

His earlier thought returned to him: probably she was not actually a member of the Thought Police, but then it was precisely the amateur spy who was the greatest danger of all. He did not know how long she had been looking at him, but perhaps for as much as five minutes, and it was possible that his features had not been perfectly under control. It was terribly dangerous to let your thoughts wander when you were in any public place or within range of a telescreen. The smallest thing could give you away. A nervous tic, an unconscious look of anxiety, a habit of muttering to yourself — anything that carried with it the suggestion of abnormality, of having something to hide. In any case, to wear an improper expression on your face (to look incredulous when a victory was announced, for example) was itself a punishable offence. There was even a word for it in Newspeak: FACECRIME, it was called.

The girl had turned her back on him again. Perhaps after all she was not really following him about, perhaps it was coincidence that she had sat so close to him two days running. His cigarette had gone out, and he laid it carefully on the edge of the table. He would finish smoking it after work, if he could keep the tobacco in it. Quite likely the person at the next table was a spy of the Thought Police, and quite likely he would be in the cellars of the Ministry of Love within three days, but a cigarette end must not be wasted. Syme had folded up his strip of paper and stowed it away in his pocket. Parsons had begun talking again.

‘Did I ever tell you, old boy,’ he said, chuckling round the stem of his pipe, ‘about the time when those two nippers of mine set fire to the old market-woman’s skirt because they saw her wrapping up sausages in a poster of B.B.? Sneaked up behind her and set fire to it with a box of matches. Burned her quite badly, I believe. Little beggars, eh? But keen as mustard! That’s a first-rate training they give them in the Spies nowadays — better than in my day, even. What d’you think’s the latest thing they’ve served them out with? Ear trumpets for listening through keyholes! My little girl brought one home the other night — tried it out on our sitting-room door, and reckoned she could hear twice as much as with her ear to the hole. Of course it’s only a toy, mind you. Still, gives ’em the right idea, eh?’

At this moment the telescreen let out a piercing whistle. It was the signal to return to work. All three men sprang to their feet to join in the struggle round the lifts, and the remaining tobacco fell out of Winston’s cigarette