#i spent a bit less than an hour on this (maybe 45 minutes) which im writing here for personal reference

[sporesgalaxy]

tghis is crazy but iccan draw pitchures

[quokkacore]

with great power I [lee jeno]

summary: there are two things jeno loves most about his life. one being spiderman, the other being you, his best friend. there’s just one issue: after your father’s death, you decide you hate both spiderman and yourself.

pairing: lee jeno x reader

genre: superhero au, high school au, coming of age, best friends to strangers(ish) to lovers, fluff, ANGST, minor crack

warnings (for this chapter): language, violence, gun violence, the mafia, parental death, police presence, sexual references, bullying (ily san im sorry), the dreamies being dicks to each other, police corruption, towards the end jeno experiences something similar to sensory overload, americanized names, pop culture references, VERY jeno centric

song rec: we go up - nct dream // any song - zico // 21 questions - waterparks // talk (remix feat. megan thee stallion & yo gotti) - khalid // sunrise - ateez // i really like you - carly rae jepsen // dare - gorillaz // stray kids - the tortoise and the hare

word count: 10.5k

a/n: this is so late...... i blame attack on titan. but hey!! better late than never :] a huge thanks to @doderyscoffee​ for beta reading <3

main masterlist // story masterlist

chapter one: jeno and the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad week

Jeno despised Tuesdays. He was pretty sure that Tuesdays despised Jeno as well because all of his worst days just so happen to be Tuesdays. He was 96% sure that, if there was a god, his day off was on Tuesdays, or that the planets aligned in such a manner on Tuesdays that it caused universal despair and misery. If he was to take Donghyuck's word for it, his chakra attracted negative energy the most on Tuesdays.

When Jeno was 5, his goldfish Pippin had died on a Tuesday. When he had his ass handed to him on the playground by San Choi in the third grade, it was a Tuesday. And in the seventh grade, he'd failed his Spanish test, missed his bus and walked home in the rain only to find out that his Aunt Sunny was at work, he'd left his keys in his locker and that had to wait an hour before she got home to unlock it for him, all on a Tuesday. 

And wouldn't you know it, here he was, late for the first day of senior year, which was, of all days, a godforsaken Tuesday.

In his eternal wisdom, he'd stayed up gaming with Renjun until two in the morning, and because of it, slept through his three alarms, one set at six-thirty, the other at 6:45, the last one at 7:00. 

He'd woken up at 7:17, to the sound of his elderly neighbor's pet chihuahua barking at a pigeon, checked the time, immediately panicked, sped into the shower, gotten dressed in a haste, grabbed a few granola bars from the pantry, and ran out the door while trying to jam his backpack closed, and managed to catch the train at 7:40, which took about twenty minutes to get to his stop, plus a ten-minute walk to school, and class started at 8:10. Not to mention he’d have to stop by the office and pick up his schedule. At best, he’d be five minutes late to his first class. But tardies were tardies, regardless, and the last thing he needed was to lose his perfect attendance streak. 

He fished out his phone while standing on the train, waiting for his stop, scrolling through Instagram, and liking random pictures. A ping! from his phone caught his attention, then two, then a third. He smiled softly when your name popped up on his screen.

[7:48 AM]

y/n: pssst

y/n: shithead

y/n: where r u ????

[7:49 AM] 

y/n: i can sEE u online on ig u know

jeno: …… i'm on the train

jeno: woke up late

y/n: YOURE GONNA BE LATR

y/n: LATE*

y/n: ON THE FIRST DAY OF SENIOR YEAR

[7:50]

jeno: probably, yeah

jeno: it's the school district's fault, why would they make the first day of school on a fkn TUESDAY 

y/n: ohhh yeahh its terrible tuesday

y/n: [sent an attachment!]

[7:51 AM]

jeno: SHUT UP

jeno: you're not funny >:(

jeno: how dare you laugh at my misfortune

y/n: au contraire im hilarious

jeno: meanie :(

jeno: im gonna be late i hate it here

jeno: it'll end up on my permanent record and i'm not gonna get into college and then i'm gonna die,,,

[7:52 AM] 

y/n: sometimes ur worse than hyuck i swear 

y/n: FIRST OF ALL permanent records dont even exist !!!!!! its propaganda duh

y/n: also ur literally never late 

y/n: im sure o n e tardy wont do anything chill

y/n: dont be stupid youll be fine

Don’t be stupid. Too little, too late, he thought, already having got off the train at a previous stop. Now, he was looking for an unoccupied street or alleyway, which, for once, was easy, taking a deep breath before he did the exact opposite of what you’d told him not to do. Don’t be stupid. 

The buildings are low, he thought to himself, it’ll be easier to see me. 

Don’t be stupid.

Too late!

Thwip!

Jeno didn’t hesitate to use the web fluid to pull himself up onto the wall, climbing in a haste, before running and jumping onto the next building. He quickly built up a quick pace, using the web fluid occasionally to swing onto a building slightly out of jumping range. 

Signs in English, Chinese, Korean, and Spanish flew past him as he seemingly flew over the Queens traffic, leaving Flushing behind and crossing quickly into College Point quicker than he would if he took the train. He glanced to his left and caught a view of the bay, and far across it, the LaGuardia airport watchtower.

Jeno had lived in New York City his entire life. He knew Queens like the back of his hand, knew every dingy alleyway, every sketchy street, which restaurants to avoid if you didn’t want to get food poisoning, which convenience store aunties were the nicest and didn’t pinch his cheeks too hard. It was his home, and most likely would be for the rest of his life. 

But seeing it like this, flying past him below as he glided with ease from building to building would never cease to be a sight to him. It was like watching from the perspective of an outsider, seeing people in their cars, walking along the street gave him a brand new perspective. A Jeno’s eye view, he called it, since he was pretty sure he was the only one in New York City.

Another noise from his phone brought him back to reality. He shook his head, stopping briefly to catch his breath and fish out his phone briefly. 

[7:57 AM] 

y/n: let me know when u get here !!!

No time to respond, he put away the phone and continued his trek to school. He had less than ten minutes to get there. But he knew he was already at least five minutes away, much quicker than he would be if he had decided to stick to the train. He smiled a bit to himself, feeling ever so slightly smug.

The hustle and bustle of the city definitely proved challenging to find a place to land without many eyes, but he figured it out eventually, landing behind a dumpster in an alleyway behind a restaurant that he knew was about three or four blocks from the school. He figured it would be a lot better to take it on foot from here. The notebooks he was carrying in his backpack bounced up and down with every step he took. 

After what seemed like forever, the gates to the school appeared in his view, and Jeno felt a joy in his heaving chest, something he would have never thought would happen upon seeing the absolute hellhole that was Samuel Morse High School. 

[8:06 AM]

jeno: just did >:D

Picking up his schedule was both quick and insanely long. He couldn’t stop himself from tapping his left foot while the secretary found his schedule and handed it to him. “Kibum, please hurry,” He muttered, and Kibum raised an eyebrow at him, but his gaze was teasing. “That’s Mr. Kim to you, in school at least.” 

He handed Jeno his schedule a few seconds later. “Tell your Aunt to come pick up her casserole dish, by the way. She left it at my house after my last viewing party.”

“The Bachelor?”

“Please. We’re too classy for that. Drag Race.”

“Ah. I see.”

“Jeno,” Kibum said, staring up at him from his desk, his gaze now much more serious, “Get to class. Happy first day of senior year.”

“Thanks, Mr. Kim.”

He managed to make it to chemistry class at 8:09 with seconds to spare. His eyes quickly scanned the room upon entering, hoping his friends were in the class with him. He caught a few familiar faces, most of which, like San Choi's, he wished to avoid. No one paid him any mind. Everyone was still speaking to the people next to them, no doubt exchanging stories of summer vacation. 

  A hand shot up towards the back, waving at him. A smile stretched across his face as he registered your face, feet not hesitating to carry him towards the empty seat next to you. His heart skipped a beat at seeing your smile, and he tried his best to ignore it.

“Hey,” You greeted, “That was fast. I thought you said you were gonna be late.”

Jeno shrugged, eyes landing on the dark shade of the lab table. “The train was a lot faster than I expected, apparently.”

You wrinkled your nose. “Why do you smell so bad?”

“I, uh… ran a little.” 

You grimaced, and Jeno tried to casually sniff at his slightly sweaty clothes. It’s not that bad. “I still don’t understand why you won’t let me drive you to school. You’re literally next door.”

“I don’t know,” He answered, rolling his eyes, “Maybe it’s because when it comes to that truck, you are absolutely insane. You won’t even let me drink water in that thing.”

The truck in question, a faded red 1998 Chevrolet S-10, had been your gift to yourself for your 17th birthday. You’d spent two summers saving up to buy yourself a truck, and that was what you were able to get for what you had. To say it was a huge piece of junk on wheels was an understatement. 

The thing smelled like mothballs no matter how many air fresheners you bought it, the engine sounded like an old man having a coughing fit, and there was a very suspicious stain in the backseat that wouldn’t go away no matter how many times you scrubbed it. But for some reason, you treated it like it was your own baby. The amount of times you’d yelled at Jaemin for trying to put his feet on the dashboard was too high to count.

You mirrored his movement, eyes rolling as you sighed. “At least let me drive you home after school today. Maybe you can stay and we can finally watch Blade Runner.”

You’d been trying to get him to watch the film for almost a month now, begging and pleading because you insisted that he’d love it. He offered an awkward stare, before opening his backpack and pulling out a notebook. “Can’t,” He mumbled, “I’m headed into Manhattan. I have my internship afterwards.”

“Oh, yeah,” You said nonchalantly, eyebrows shooting up as you remembered, “Park Industries.” 

He was about to reply when Mrs. Baker, the chemistry teacher, finally entered. She’d been working at SMHS for 30 years and had never, apparently, been nice, if his Aunt Sunny’s stories were anything to go by. However, she had apparently always spoken as if she smoked two packs a day. She was rambling about the importance of making the most of senior year academically, adult responsibilities, college, and whatnot. You and Jeno exchanged glances often throughout the monologue, hoping it would end soon. 

“Enough of that,” She said after what seemed like an eternity, “Everyone quiet down, I’m going to call roll.”

Names were quickly called, and Jeno was ready to pull out a pencil and start working with you until Mrs Baker demanded a switch in seats, beginning to call on random names in an effort to deter everyone from speaking. 

"Please not with Choi, please not with Choi," Jeno muttered under his breath, glancing warily at San, who was staring ahead, looking bored. 

San had had it out for Jeno ever since day one, in first grade. For some reason, everything Jeno did seemed to annoy the other boy. He wasn't funny enough, or too nerdy, or too quiet. Jeno was always too much or too little for him. 

You touched his forearm, and he looked towards you. 

“You’ll be fine,” You said softly, trying not to alert the teacher, “You’re not gonna get paired up with him, and you can take it to the office if you need to.” “Yeah, because I’m sure Coach Peralta would be thrilled if someone tried to get his precious midfielder in trouble.”

“Choi, San,” Mrs Baker’s voice rang throughout the room, and Jeno braced himself for the worst, eyebrows furrowing with worry. 

“You’ll be sitting with… L/N, Y/N.” 

Jeno’s shoulders slumped, but your face remained impassive. You picked up your stuff, and pouted silently at Jeno in apology, before making your way to the front. 

“Lee, Jeno,” Mrs Baker called a few minutes later, “You’ll be sitting with Jang, Yeeun.”

He breathed out a sigh of relief. Yeeun is nice, Jeno thought to himself, I could sit with Yeeun. She wasn’t part of his main friend group, but he had tutored her in math during sophomore year in exchange for her helping him with Spanish, and they’d been pretty friendly ever since. 

“Hey,” Yeeun greeted as Jeno sat down, and Jeno smiled at her. 

“Remember, these will be your assigned lab partners for the rest of the semester. No changes, no exceptions.” Mrs. Baker sat down at her desk, before beginning to talk about something Jeno didn’t really pay attention to.

You exchanged glances with Jeno, and he gave you a look of sympathy as you gestured at San with your eyes. San was talking to you about something—probably bragging about some soccer achievement—but you weren’t paying him much attention. Jeno swallowed something growing in his throat as he looked at how your hair looked today. 

It was nothing relatively new, the same hairstyle you used on most days. But still, there was a bit of a shine to it. He wondered vaguely if you had changed your shampoo, the other day you’d been complaining about how itchy your normal shampoo made your scalp—

“You still haven’t told her about how you feel?” Yeeun asked quietly, and Jeno’s head snapped back to look at her, eyes wide.

“W-what? Me. Like Y/N…” He laughed nervously, trying to keep his voice down. He scratched the back of his head, avoiding Yeeun’s accusatory stare. “You’re hilarious, Yeeun. Tell another one.”

Yeeun shook her head. “You’d better hurry before someone else snatches her up, Jen. She’s not gonna wait around for you forever.”

 “I don’t like her, Yeeun.” 

“Keep telling yourself that.”

“Hey! Jeno Lee!”

“Hey! Jaemin Na! What do you want!” Jeno answered as he sat down, mimicking Jaemin’s tone next to him.

“Well, for starters, a million dollars, and second, a date with Yiren Wang, but I doubt you can help me with either of those, so...”

Jeno glanced at the rest of the table. Along with Jaemin, Mark,  Renjun, Donghyuck, and you were watching the interaction between the pair. “Where are the munchkins?” Jeno asked, noticing Chenle and Jisung’s absence. No one could really call them munchkins anymore. That nickname dated back to middle school, before the two underclassmen had gone through growth spurts.

“Eh, they should be here soon,” Renjun said, chewing on a french fry, “How’s your day been?”

“Pretty good so far, I guess. I got AP Calc with Mr. Washington later, though. That man wants me dead.”

You rolled your eyes. “He doesn’t want you dead. I’m telling you, you and Hyuck have been spending way too much time together. You’re being more dramatic than usual and Hyuck’s being more… weird than usual.”

“And just what is so weird about being enthusiastic about senior year, Y/N?” Donghyuck asked, shaking his head, “It’s our last year in this hellhole, I’m excited that we’re finally getting out of here. And besides—”

“Please don’t bring up the fact that you’re abandoning us next year.” Chenle seemingly appeared out of nowhere, sitting next to Renjun, Jisung following quickly behind him.

“Hi, Sungie,” You said with a smile, and Jisung smiled back. “Hi, Y/N.”

“What were you saying, Hyuck?” Jaemin looked at Donghyuck, who had taken the quick interaction as an opportunity to take a bite of his sandwich. His wide eyes darted to the slim boy, cheeks stuffed with chicken. 

“Oh,” He replied after swallowing, “This is gonna be my year. I’m getting male lead for the winter musical and no one is gonna stop me.”

“Do you even know what musical you guys are doing yet?” Mark asked, “What if it’s like… Shrek?”

Jisung made a face. “There’s a Shrek musical?”

Mark nodded, and Renjun laughed.

“I don’t know about male lead, if it’s Shrek. You should try out for Donkey,” The Chinese boy joked, “With those front teeth, you’re a shoo-in.”

The entire table was silent for a moment, before snorts and chortles started pouring out from everyone except Donghyuck.

“Fuck you, Huang.” 

Renjun flashed the friendliest smile he could muster. “Not if you paid me a million dollars.”

The subject remained on extracurriculars, everyone in your group except for Chenle and Jisung now wary of college applications. Donghyuck had been in theater ever since middle school, Renjun was in the robotics club and the debate team with Jaemin, who was also in the student council. Mark was on the math team with Jeno, and you had founded the film club. 

"You're not gonna believe who asked to sign up for film," You huffed, looking kind of confused. The rest of the table looked at you expectantly, and you pursed your lips, almost as if you were trying not to laugh.

"San Choi."

Renjun scoffed. Jaemin raised his eyebrows before letting out a single, humorless laugh. Jeno made a face, poking his plastic fork at you. 

"What is San Choi doing asking to sign up for film?"

"Fuck if I know. He said he needed one more extracurricular if he wanted to get into some college in Florida and he liked going to the movies, so he wanted to try out film."

Mark rolled his eyes. "I swear there's nothing in that guy's head but hot gas. It blows my mind."

"He's a dick," Chenle grumbled, "I'm still not over how he and Wooyoung taped Jisung to the flagpole last year."

Jisung scowled. "I thought we agreed to never bring that up again."

“Do you think they’ll finally calm the fuck down this year?” Jaemin wondered, looking wistful.

You took a sip of your coke and shook your head. “Doubt it. They’re not the hateful eight for a reason.”

The mood at the table turned tense, until Jaemin frowned at his french fries, before sighing and clapping his hands together dramatically. “I would like to hear,” He mused, “About the nuance that theatre gives the cinematic masterpiece that is Shrek when converted into musical form.”

Donghyuck beamed. “Oh, it’s amazing. You see…”

If it was difficult to get Donghyuck to stop talking in general, it was impossible when it was about theater.

The conversation continued on until the bell rang, and the eight of you had to go your separate ways. Jaemin and Jeno had the same class, so they both walked together down a relatively calm hallway. Jaemin looked both ways, before finally lowering his voice. 

“So, you’re going to see Mr. Park today?”

Jeno nodded, looking down at his shoes. “He said he wanted to give me an assignment. Says there’s something big going on.”

Jaemin’s eyes lit up with curiosity. “Did he say what kind of something?” 

Jeno shook his head, pouting slightly. “I’ll let you know tomorrow.” 

Once school was out, Jeno was getting ready to get onto the subway once again, this time heading towards Midtown. It was only day one and, as Jeno had predicted, Mr. Washington probably was out to get him, because he’d swamped the class with homework.

As he left the school, he spotted you in the parking lot, leaning against your car door, texting someone. He glanced at his phone. He still had plenty of time, he figured. He walked over to you, and when you looked up, you smiled. 

“Hey!” Your voice had that signature tone of enthusiasm to it, and Jeno smiled back immediately. 

“Hello,” He sing-songed. “So, I was thinking… are you free on Friday night?”

You looked somewhere above his head, furrowing your eyebrows before you perked up again and nodded. “Yep! Why?”

“I’m free after nine. Maybe then I could come over to your house? So I can finally get you to stop harassing me about Blade Runner.”

You grinned, pumping your fists enthusiastically. “Hell yes,” You answered, “Do you want me to get like, some frozen pizzas or something?” 

“Pizza sounds good,” He said. “Who are you even waiting for?” 

You made a face that made it seem as if you’d just gotten a whiff of rotten milk. “Well—”

Your response was interrupted when the school doors slammed open, and eight figures poured out, carrying themselves with confidence Jeno both envied and despised. He frowned, trying not to react at their loud whooping and laughing. The Hateful Eight.

“Oh.” Jeno averted his gaze, meeting your eyes again.

“Yeah. If you don’t hear from me later it’s because I jumped out of my truck because I don’t wanna work with—”

“Well, hello, gorgeous!” San’s voice filled the parking lot, and Jeno took a deep breath. Your mouth stretched into a tight-lipped smile at the unwanted ‘compliment’. 

“Hey, San.” Your friendly passive aggressive tone almost made Jeno smile. “I’ve been waiting here for like, fifteen minutes. You could have just given me your number and asked me to send you pictures of my notes, you know.”

He shrugged, turning his body so that his back was turned to Jeno. “Sorry, babe. Coach wanted to talk to us about the upcoming season. When he gets going, it’s hard to get him to stop. And besides, where’s the fun in just asking for pictures when I could come here, talk to you, and take the pictures myself?”

You didn’t respond, but rather pulled out your backpack and began digging through it. When you pulled out your notebook, you handed it to San, who flashed a wink at you. You barely held back a gag. 

“Thanks, Y/N. I’ll just be a minute.” 

He walked over to the hood of your truck, and just as you were about to continue your conversation, two figures slung their arms around both of Jeno’s shoulders, causing him to flinch. 

Out of the fifteen soccer players on the team, San and his best friends—seven of them, to be precise—were the worst. The others were pretty nice. But right now, seeing two of those seven surround your best friend made you uneasy. 

Wooyoung was loud. He was also a temperamental brat. His dad owned three used car dealerships over in Brooklyn, so naturally, he thought he owned the entire world. He wasn’t someone who would get too physical in fights, like San, or Jongho, or Yeosang. But when he was angry, he could easily get you to jump into the stratosphere by yelling at you once. Over the years, he’d made several teaching assistants and substitute teachers cry, only getting let off with a slap on the wrist every time. 

 Yunho was terrifying for completely different reasons. He was friendly, but a little too friendly to the people he wanted to control. He could read people like books and could easily manipulate whoever he wanted. But he wasn’t afraid of getting physical either, especially not when he was built like a goddamn Power Rangers Megazord. 

All in all, they definitely weren't anyone you wanted near you, near your friends. Especially considering how much they had it out for your friends. 

"Hey, buddy," Yunho said, looking down at Jeno with a wide smile. "How was summer vacation?"

Jeno gnawed on the side of his cheek as he considered his answer. "Um, it was okay." He looked at you to catch your eyes darting between San, Yunho and Wooyoung, like you were analyzing the situation. "I kinda stayed in and played video games most of the t—"

"Cool, cool," Yunho answered, carding his free hand through his bleach blond hair. "What about you, Woo?"

"Oh, dude, it was so cool," He bragged, "I went to Brazil for like, a month. I went clubbing with Instagram models and shit, it was wild."

You stared at him as he patted Jeno on the back rather aggressively. "Where did you go? Have you ever even left New York?" 

You knew the answer. Only a few times when the debate team went to compete in different states. Jeno spoke up again. "Well, yeah a few t—"

"Doubt it," Yunho scoffed. He craned his head back. "San, you done yet?"

"Almost!" San answered. Yunho turned to face you, and for some reason his smile seemed genuinely kind. “What about you, Y/N?”

You never understood why it was that the soccer team hated your entire friend group, but seemed to tolerate you. It made no sense.

So you shrugged. “Not a lot, I guess. Did my summer reading. Hung out with my friends.” You flashed a reassuring smile at Jeno. “Right, Jen?”

Immediately, he relaxed a little bit. “Yeah.”

San appeared from behind Yunho, Jeno and Wooyoung. “Thanks, Y/N. I owe you one.”

You waved your hand, wanting them to get rid of them quickly. “Don’t mention it. But next time, just text me for my notes. I have to get to work, so…”

“Oh! My bad,” He answered with fake remorse, before unlocking his phone and handing it over to you. “Here. For next time.”

You stifled a deep sigh, punching in the numbers hesitantly. “Just for homework, got it?”

San took his phone back, holding a hand over his heart and raised his head. “On a gentleman's honor,” He declared, and you bit back a laugh. Jeno looked like he was going to hurl.

“San!” The team captain—Hongjoong—called from a few feet away, “Are you guys done yet or what?”

“Coming!” San yelled back.

“Alright, we’ll let you go,” Wooyoung said, patting Jeno on the back again, a bit too harsh for comfort. “Bye, Y/N! See you around.”

 The three of them stalked off, leaving you and a very frazzled Jeno. “Dicks,” You muttered once they were out of earshot. “You good?”

Jeno shook his head, waving his hand dismissively. “I’ll be fine.”

You tilted your head, frowning. “Jeno—”

“I gotta go,” He said quickly. “I’ll see you later?”

You nodded, offering a lopsided smile. “Yeah. Be careful!” 

Jeno offered a deep bow, fluttering his eyelashes. “On a gentleman’s honor,” He sighed, adding a very bad British accent to it. You burst out laughing, eyes squeezing shut.

You didn’t catch the way Jeno’s shoulders relaxed at the sound.

I want you to know now

Baby, it could go down

I don’t wanna talk about it

Baby, let’s just go now

The train ride into Midtown didn’t take too long. He spent it digging through his backpack for his Park Industries lanyard, listening to music and thinking about you.

When you talk right to me 

You gon’ have to do me

Every time you think you’re leaving 

You running back to me

You’d met Jeno when you were six. Truth be told, he didn’t really remember. For him it was like you weren’t there at one point and by the time you were, you were thicker than thieves. It was a difficult time for him. He had just lost both of his parents, and was moving in with his Aunt Sunny and his Uncle Jinki, who were barely out of college at the time. He’d had to move to a new school and basically restart his entire life. You were the first sense of stability in his life for months. 

Your mom lived next to his aunt and uncle. So naturally, you went to the same school and went on the same bus. And somewhere along the way, you two clicked. You’d introduced him to Renjun, Jaemin and Donghyuck. You were there to comfort him whenever he got pushed off the slide by San or Wooyoung. 

He was there for you when your stepdad and stepbrother moved in when you were nine and you weren’t sure how to deal with it. He was there when your mom died when you were thirteen. He’d introduced you and your friends to Mark, Chenle and Jisung. 

And you were there when his Uncle Jinki got killed when he was fifteen. And because fate had an especially cruel sense of irony, it had happened on a Tuesday. You didn’t know, but at the time, he had just gotten his powers. Your comfort and words unknowingly had a secondary effect: he made the decision to use them for good, and… well. The rest was history. 

Can we just talk? Can we just talk?

Talk about where we're goin'

Before we get lost, lend me your thoughts

Can't get what we want without knowin'

Just like when he met you, he didn’t recall an exact moment where he realized he’d fallen in love with you. He knew there was a world where he loved you, but wasn’t in love with you. And he knew that there was a world here he’d fallen in love with you—he was living in that world now. He realized he was living in that world maybe when he was sixteen, and had been stuck in it ever since. 

You were it for him. He’d had crushes before. But never something like this, where he was so aware of your presence around him. It wasn’t the way he was hyper aware of someone like San, or like Yunho or Jongho. It wasn’t out of anxiety or fear, where a shift in mood activated his fight or flight. He was aware of you in a way that only people who truly know each other do, where he could pick up on subtle changes in your behavior, but not out of fear. Rather, out of a desire to take care of you and to not have you worry about anything. 

I've never felt like this before

I apologize if I'm movin' too far

Can we just talk? Can we just talk?

Figure out where we're goin'...

As the train rolled into the station that was a fifteen minute walk from Park Tower, Jeno put away his headphones and took a deep breath.

The “Jeno Tingle” as his Aunt Sunny called it—Jeno hated the term—had taken him a few years to gain control of. And while he could never truly turn it off, he could at least tune it out enough to be more at ease. The only time he did so was at school or when he was studying, just because he wanted to feel normal, and because being aware of everything going on around him really messed with his concentration. 

Jaemin didn’t understand. “If I was able to tell whenever Seonghwa was behind me because he wanted to scare me into doing his chemistry homework, I’d never turn that shit off,” He’d said once. But truthfully, Jeno didn’t really care. Because while yes, he was still slightly scared of the “hateful eight”, he knew damn well that if things got to be too much, he could kick their asses if he wanted to. 

It was his friends he worried about. He couldn’t be around them 24/7. You, not so much. He knew you knew how to fight. Even worse, he knew that San had the hots for you so you were off limits to the rest of them, be it bullying or flirting. But for everyone else… Well. He couldn’t hover over them like some guardian angel. 

Now that the “Jeno Tingle” was on, it allowed him to sense everyone within a certain range around him. He could zero in on certain sounds with ease, and his reflexes became heightened. Halfway on his walk up Park Avenue, he jumped away from a chihuahua on its leash a second before it started barking at him.

When he entered the first floor lobby of the Park Building, he scoured the crowd of employees and visitors until he landed on one familiar face. 

He'd met Doyoung about a year after his dad started dating your mom. Things between your parents were starting to get serious, and Doyoung was four years older than you were. When they moved into your house, Doyoung as your new stepbrother became the de facto chaperone and babysitter. If you wanted to go to the mall with Jeno, he had to take you. Every time you dragged Jeno to the movies, Doyoung had to go also. 

To an extent, it wasn't that bad. Doyoung was cool, and he was smart—he was the one who got Jeno interested in computers and chemistry. He graduated high school at 16, and finished his bachelor's degree at 19. He'd also interned at Park Industries, and secured a job there almost immediately after college. 

To an extent, he was the whole reason Mr. Park knew who he was, because of one incident. It was relatively soon after he started the whole vigilante thing. Jeno, still figuring out how to maneuver on the webs that shot out of his wrists, had accidentally crashed into your backyard late at night, when only Doyoung was awake. He was standing in the back door while he was waiting for his dog to finish peeing. 

Initially, the older boy had freaked out, thinking that it was a burglar or something. When he yelled out that his dad was a cop and was asleep in the house, Jeno panicked, and pulled off his mask, holding up his hands.

“Woah, woahwoahwoah! Doyoung! It’s me, it’s me!” 

Doyoung’s eyes had widened to the size of saucers, paying no mind to the dog as it sauntered up to Jeno, before turning onto its back in a request for belly rubs.

"You're the spider guy everyone's been talking about!?"

"Spider man," Jeno had answered, voice cracking as he dusted himself off. He cringed at the sound of his voice. "...and yes."

Of course, his cover was blown, and he'd begged Doyoung not to tell anyone, especially not you. And while Doyoung had promised not to tell you, it didn't stop him from telling his boss. 

That had been almost three years ago now. The rest was history, and after that Jeno didn’t have to run around in bright red sweatpants and dollar store swimming goggles. Now, he had a nanotech suit that allowed him to activate protocols of the suit through voice commands using something top-secret Mr. Park called D.R.E.A.M technology. Direct Response Engaged As Machine—yeah, Jeno didn’t get it either. 

Doyoung offered Jeno a smile as he escorted Jeno past security, showing them his employee clearance pass. "Hey. How have you been?"

Jeno shrugged, recounting his day in minor detail as he was led into an elevator labeled authorized personnel only. 

This elevator only went up to the 35th floor, seeing as everything past that was only cleared for a certain list of people approved by Mr. Park and his security team, and everything past the 90th floor were Mr. Park's private living quarters. 

Now, as Doyoung led him to another elevator to head up to the 85th floor, which was always where Jeno got to meet with Mr. Park—which wasn't often, maybe once or twice a year—he wondered where he would be if he hadn’t surprised Doyoung that night. He would probably still be using those ugly red sweatpants as part of his disguise.

"How's Y/N?" Doyoung asked. 

"Oh, she seems okay. That guy who hates me keeps coming onto her though. He's a huge douchebag."

Doyoung frowned. "He's not harassing her, is he? Because if he is—"

"He just won't stop flirting, even though she clearly isn't interested," Jeno said bitterly, "He isn't physical or anything. Trust me, it wouldn't end well for him if he was."

Doyoung wasn't quite sure how to respond to the younger boy's dark tone. He looked down, clearing his throat awkwardly.

“So… how’s the apartment?” Jeno asked. Doyoung perked up instantly.

“Oh, now that Taeyong’s moved in and did his interior design thing, it looks great. He’s really done a great job at it.”

“When am I gonna meet this guy? He sounds cool.”

“He’s really cool,” Doyoung hummed, cheeks heating up. “Things are getting really serious.”

Jeno smiled at how flustered Doyoung, who was normally so level headed and calm, became at the mention of his boyfriend.

“You guys sound like a really good couple,” He said. Doyoung chuckled, waving his hand. “Oh, well—” 

 The elevator dinged, and Doyoung sighed. “I’ll tell you later. C’mon.”

The hallway it opened up to was lined with pictures of the company's history, starting from pictures of black and white of people in vintage clothing, to pictures in sepia tones to finally pictures of the current CEO at locations around the world: Chanyeol Park.

Jeno walked behind Doyoung as he led him down the hallway, before stopping in front of a door, and a friendly looking man in a suit. 

Junmyeon was a part of Chanyeol’s Security and Intelligence team, and often sat in on these meetings with Jeno. The chain of contact also included him. If Jeno couldn’t contact Doyoung (which rarely happened), he’d contact Junmyeon. And if he couldn’t contact either of them, or it was an emergency, only then could he contact Chanyeol. So far, that had only happened once.

"Hey, Junmyeon," Doyoung said, "Mr. Park's 4:30 is here." 

Junmyeon nodded, before smiling at Jeno and giving him a wave. "Hey, kid."

Jeno offered an awkward grin. "Hi, Mr. Kim."

Junmyeon rolled his eyes sarcastically. "Kid, you're making me feel ancient. I've told you a million times, just call me Junmyeon."

Jeno shuffled awkwardly, before nodding at the older man, watching as he pressed a button on his earpiece. "Hey, Yeol. Jeno's here."

The muffled response was barely heard, but Jeno automatically understood what Mr. Park said. Junmyeon turned to open the door, and let the pair inside. The “office”—if it could even be called that—opened up to more of a lounge, than anything. A wall of glass overlooked the Manhattan skyline, but Jeno knew that from the outside it looked only like a wall, due to camouflage technology developed by Mr. Park himself. As Doyoung and Junmyeon stayed back, closer to the door, Jeno took a few steps toward the man in question.

Chanyeol was standing a few feet in front of the glass window, working on a holographic model of a new piece of tech. His face was turned downward in a concentrated frown. He barely spared the teenager a glance as he said fondly, “Hey, kid.”

Jeno was used to this. Chanyeol wasn’t cold per se, but he wasn’t warm at all. He knew that Chanyeol cared about him, even if he didn’t really show it in a conventional way. Chanyeol was a very… eccentric man, so he had his own way of saying and doing things. 

“Hi, Mr. Park. Um… you wanted to talk to me?”

“Yep! Needed some help from the friendly neighborhood Spiderman… A little birdie told me about something going on in Queens.”

“Queens?” Jeno asked, gripping the straps of his backpack. “You mean, other than the usual stuff?”

“Other than the usual stuff,” Chanyeol repeated, nodding. With a wave of his hand, the hologram disappeared, and another one appeared in its place. This time, instead of a 3D model, a few pictures and another, smaller 3D model appeared. Chanyeol turned to face him, frown deepening. He pointed at the model—a long, shiny oval-shaped purple stone. It reminded Jeno of an amethyst, but instead of turning white at the base, it turned to an iridescent jade tone. “You know what this is, right?”

Jeno nodded, remembering seeing the rocks all over the news when he was a kid. “That’s… that’s a Chitauri stone. From the invasion a few years back.”

Chanyeol nodded, standing up straight. “These stones have the potential to power weapons with no need to recharge, or change them out. They’re an infinite, extremely strong power source, Jeno, and in the wrong hands can be very dangerous.”

Jeno took a deep breath, feeling his stomach sink slowly. Chanyeol sighed. “Cleanup of the city after the invasion was long, and difficult, and obviously the government and the company weren’t able to get everything. It caused a black market to pop up. Now, the NYPD has been investigating it for years, but they have their limits… that’s where you come in.”

“M-me, Mr. Park?”

Chanyeol gave him a crooked, reassuring smile. He pointed at one of the pictures, which was of a man who most likely didn’t know he was photographed. He was walking somewhere, face looking angry and stern.

“You don’t know who this is, right?”

Jeno shook his head, and Chanyeol turned his head to nod at Junmyeon. “You’re up, tough guy.”

Junmyeon huffed, before walking up to Jeno. He put his hand on Jeno’s shoulder as if he could tell that he was growing anxious. 

“Jeno, that’s Henry Duke. From what we understand on the intel team, he’s one of the cornerstones of the alien tech black market. He’s one of the top dogs. From what we understand, he likes to be present for all major negotiations that his group makes. A source of ours told us that there’s going to be a negotiation on Friday night not too far away from LaGuardia. We want you to go out there and just get a feel of what’s going on.”

“Just watch them, right?” Jeno looked at Junmyeon, who patted his back reassuringly. “Just watch. Don’t engage unless you absolutely have to.”

“You can do that, right?” Chanyeol said quietly, crossing his arms. “Because if not, then it’s totally—”

“Yeah, of course I can! Friday—shit, Friday. At what time are they supposed to be meeting up?”

Junmyeon furrowed his eyebrows, before answering, “Around eight or nine.”

Jeno bit his lip, thinking about the promise he’d made to you. It would just have to wait, he supposed. Chanyeol rarely asked anything this big of him.

“Alright,” Jeno agreed, “I’ll do it.”

Chanyeol grinned, clapping his hands together. 

“Perfect.” 

They discussed logistics briefly after. Doyoung would be on call with Jeno, his custom made suit allowing them to communicate, letting Doyoung see everything Jeno was seeing via a video feed coming from the ultra thin lenses placed in the white eye sockets of the mask. Doyoung would then report to Junmyeon, who would report to Chanyeol, who would probably report to the FBI. Jeno was only to engage if absolutely necessary.

After that, he set out on patrol. He usually found some discreet place to hide his backpack, and then went all over Queens looking for trouble, quite literally. Around five thirty, he stopped a robbery in Murray Hill. Then, around seven, he stopped a man from stealing a woman’s purse in Elmhurst. Nothing too much.

Around eight, he finally headed home, this time dressed normally, using the train and not web fluid. He walked home, tired, knowing that he’d immediately have to do that cursed AP calc homework. When he got home, he opened his backpack pocket to look for his keys, rummaging between his notebooks and other things. 

Shuffling through his stuff, he furrowed his eyebrows as he couldn’t find them. Thinking back, he remembered this morning, when he’d left in a rush… and had very obviously left his keys on his desk.

“Shit,” He muttered to himself. He rubbed his eyes tiredly, remembering that Aunt Sunny had said she’d be working overtime tonight. He could very easily sneak in through his window, but he was pretty sure he’d locked it the night before, and it was too early. People’s lights were still on—anyone could see him if they just looked up, and then he would be screwed. 

Huffing and zipping his backpack up, he marched up to your house, before ringing the doorbell. He shifted his weight back and forth, from his heels to the balls of his feet, until the door opened up. A familiar man with a face just like Doyoung's, but older, with graying hair and arms scarred and muscled from years of working on the police force stood in the doorway.

“Jeno?” Your dad offered him a warm smile. “Hey, kiddo, what’s up?”

“Hi, Mr. Kim,” Jeno said, smiling back. He shifted nervously. “I, um… I left my keys in my room this morning, and my aunt’s working late, so… could I… maybe wait here? Y/N’s home, right?” 

The man nodded. “Of course, of course. Come in!” 

Your dad had always been super friendly, even from the day Jeno had first met him. You'd told Jeno once that he was the only real father figure you'd ever had. Once everything settled after him and your mom got married, you started calling him dad altogether. And since you and Jeno were practically glued at the hip, he got along with your dad almost as well as you did.

“Okay.” Jeno stepped in and set down his backpack at the base of the coat rack next to the door, as he’d done a million times before. Jeno stepped into the living room, and sat down on the couch. He folded his hands in his lap and looked up at your dad.

"I think Y/N's in the shower, but she should be done soon. You can just wait here if you want… have you eaten anything yet?”

“Uh, I had a granola bar on the train, but that’s it.”

“We have some leftover pasta here, if you want—”

“Thanks, Mr. Kim, really! I’m fine.”

Your dad nodded, sitting down on his recliner. “So, have you started your college list, yet? Y/N said you wanted to stay here in New York.”

Jeno nodded, pushing some hair out of his face. “Well, yeah. It would make things a lot easier, I think. I might want to apply to NYU, but I think I’ll just go to community college, or something.”

Your dad shook his head. “You’re a pretty smart kid, Jeno. I think you could get into Columbia if you set out to. Plus, Chanyeol Park doesn’t give out internships to anybody. That’s your secret weapon.”

Jeno smiled. “Well, you’ve got a point.” 

Your dad gave him a friendly punch on the shoulder. “Come on, trying won’t hurt!” Your dad made a face, and then rubbed his knuckles. “Have you been working out? Those muscles weren’t there the last time I did that.”

Jeno laughed, trying to think of an excuse. “Oh, a little bit? The house needed some fixing up over the summer, and I wanted to help Aunt Sunny, so…”

“Jeno?” 

He turned immediately, eyes landing on you at the base of the staircase. You’d changed into an old t-shirt and pajama pants. Your hair was slightly damp. “What are you doing here?” You asked, with a curious smile.

His shoulders slumped, and he grinned sheepishly. “Terrible Tuesday strikes again. I forgot my keys.”

You grimaced. “Brutal, dude. You wanna come up?” Your eyes moved to your dad. “Or am I interrupting guy time?”

“Oh, definitely,” Jeno answered, playing along. He took a cocky tone as he rested his hands on the back of his neck. “Your dad was just telling me about how much the NYPD needs me.” 

You stifled a laugh. You dad seemed to be holding back a laugh too. "Hey, you're joking, but if you keep working out like that, and if by some impossible chance, the college thing doesn't work out… We might just be able to catch Spiderman if we finally got some brain cells on the force."

"Ugh, dad," You groaned, unaware of Jeno's gut twisting, "Not again."

"Yeah, Mr. Kim," Jeno said, scratching the back of his head, "He's not that bad."

Your dad shook his head. "Look, I don't hate the guy. In all honesty, crime rates have dropped since he started doing his thing. But he thinks he's above the law, and his methods can be a bit… unorthodox sometimes. He’s been undermining us for years and his tech is state of the art. Makes me wonder about what we should do to modernize the force."

Jeno looked downward, wondering what would happen if your dad knew the truth.

"Well, I guess we may just never find out. Jeno'd make a horrible cop. He couldn't hurt a fly if you paid him a million dollars."

But you came to the rescue as you grabbed his backpack, and soon enough he was up the stairs with you, heading into your bedroom, laughing to yourselves when you heard your dad jokingly call out, "Fifteen inch distance, you two! Door stays open!"

He sat on your desk chair while you lay on your bed, limbs splaying out. 

"So you left your keys."

Jeno groaned. "Don't remind me. I was in such a rush to leave, that I… I forgot. I'm so stupid."

You rolled your eyes, rolling over onto your stomach to look at him. "You're not stupid, Jen. You made an honest mistake because you were in a hurry." 

Standing up, you walked over to him and leaned against the desk. "Seriously, Jeno. What's gotten into you, lately? You freak out about every little thing. It's starting to worry me." 

Jeno shook his head. "I don't know," He admitted. "I think I'm just scared about how after this year, everything changes. Renjun’s headed upstate. Jaemin’s going to Boston. You want to go to LA. I think Hyuck and I are the only ones who want to stay here. I just… I don't want things to change." 

Your expression turned sad as he continued. "Everyone is expecting great things from me. You're smart, Jeno. You can get into an Ivy. Or, you have a Park internship, you'll be fine. What if I don't want things to be fine? What if I want them to just stay the same?"

You stayed silent for a few moments, trying to think of what to say. Jeno was relatively level headed for someone your age, but even he had moments of doubt and panic. It made moments like these difficult.  You sighed before grabbing him by the hand. Wordlessly, you tugged him over to the bed, sitting him down and leaning your head on his shoulder. He could feel the dampness in your hair seeping slowly into his shirt.

"I guess I understand what you mean," You mumbled, trying to reason with him, "But come on. You wouldn't really want everything to stay the same. You can't tell me you want to keep getting AP calc homework. And I definitely doubt that you'd want to have your ass kicked by San for the rest of your life."

Jeno looked at the floor. "You're right. But you know that's not what I mean—"

"I know," You huffed, "I'm just saying. Change… it's inevitable. The longer you fight it, the harder it is."

Jeno nodded. "This sucks."

"It does," You agreed, taking his hand in yours. "But at least we have each other's backs, y'know?"

Something of a smile appeared on his face. You were so close to him, leaning on him, stroking his knuckles with your thumb. He hoped you couldn't hear his heart pounding in his chest. 

"We really do, huh?" His voice turned quiet, with a bit of a sleepy lull to it. He allowed his head to rest on yours. "You're so comfortable. Can I like, use you as a pillow for the rest of my life?"

You giggled. "I'll consider it on two conditions."

"Oh, you'll consider. How generous of you."

"Yes, I'll consider. Now, do you wanna hear my terms or not?" 

Jeno raised an eyebrow. "Go ahead," He said, before putting on his best Marlon Brando voice, "Make me an offer I can't refuse."

Snorting, you lifted your head off of his. "Okay. One, you finish your calculus homework here before Sunny gets home."

He pursed his lips. "Okay, I could probably do that. What's the other one?"

"Let me drive you to school for the rest of the year." 

Jeno stared at you, and you nodded, eyes wide. "Trust me, Jen. You wouldn't need to wake up so early! And plus, you can't text the guy manning the subway asking him to give you five minutes because you need to find your keys."

Jeno gnawed on the inside of his cheek. You did have a point, and to be honest, he could probably refrain from putting his feet up on your dashboard.

"Deal." 

You grinned. "Awesome," You answered, before nodding towards his backpack. "Now get to work, Einstein."

The rest of the week wasn't that bad. Yes, you were absolutely batshit insane about your truck in the morning, but he soon realized he didn't really mind. Not when it allowed you both to spend some twenty extra minutes together in the mornings, and they were spent joking around and listening to your extremely varied playlist. 

On the other hand, he was saddled with more and more homework, greater and greater expectations. The looming threat of Friday's mission rolled around, and it made Jeno feel like time was passing much too slowly but also way too quickly. There was so much on his mind. He had chemistry with you on Thursdays in the afternoon, which also meant that San was there. Which also meant that sometimes, his heightened senses would pick up on San dropping a tacky pick up line which made Jeno want to punch him in the jaw.

Finally, finally, Friday afternoon rolled around. As he bid you goodbye and promised to see you later, he tried to ignore the feeling in his stomach. The feeling that something was about to go very, very wrong. He went out on patrol, ready for Doyoung to set up the call and tell him where he needed to go. It didn’t help that there wasn’t a lot for him to do that day. Crime had seemed to slow down altogether. 

When the time finally came, and the sun was beginning to set, Doyoung rang in at about 7, telling him the location. An old warehouse near LaGuardia airport, hidden from prying eyes. Jeno made his way to the place, avoiding security cameras Doyoung warned him about, and found a place to hide. There was a hole in the warehouse roof, which allowed him to peer right into the building without being seen. It was about thirty feet from the ground.

“Why is it always old, abandoned warehouses?” Jeno grumbled. He heard Doyoung laugh quietly. 

“Beats me,” Doyoung sighed. 

And so they waited. Jeno wondered vaguely if you were still working. He wasn’t sure. They made time talking quietly, until a black SUV rolled into the warehouse. “Woah, Doyoung,” He murmured, “Hold up.”

Jeno leaned forward, but quickly realized he probably wouldn’t be able to hear what was being said. “D.R.E.A.M, activate Heightened Intelligence Protocol.”

Activating Heightened Intelligence Protocol.

The protocol allowed Jeno to use the lenses over his eyes to zoom in on specific targets, as well as use a microphone embedded in the suit to pick up audio from far away and feed it directly into his ears.

He watched as three figures got out of the car, a fourth remaining in the driver’s seat. The trio stood in front of the car, and Jeno recognized the man in the middle as the man Junmyeon had been talking about.

“Alright, there’s Henry Duke,” He said, “The one in the middle.”

 “Got it,” Doyoung replied, sounding satisfied. “Now all we have to do is wait for the other party.”

“Did Junmyeon’s sources say anything about who it would be?”

“No. They weren’t able to find that out. Guess we’ll just have to wait and see.”

Jeno’s eyes never left the man. “Do you think it’s something international?”

Doyoung sighed. “I’m not sure. If it is international, then you need to be even more careful.”

“Got it. I think—Wait, here they come.” 

A second vehicle, this one another black SUV, rolled up not too far away from the first car. The lights turned off and the engine sputtered to a stop, and four men stepped out of the vehicle.

Jeno’s stomach dropped, and of its own accord, his mouth let loose a quiet, “What the fuck,” as he registered the person leading them. 

“What?” Doyoung asked, before realizing what—who—he was looking at. “...Is that my dad?”

“I think it is,” Jeno whispered, fingertips suddenly numb. Who was he kidding? They both knew who it was. 

“So,” One of the men next to your dad said, “You show us yours, we’ll show you ours?”

Henry Duke clapped his hands together with an impish grin. “I suppose. Reagan, get the case.”

One of the two men standing beside him started off toward the trunk of the car. “It caught me off guard when I heard that the force wanted to purchase these. Almost made me wonder if this was your attempt at a sting operation.”

“What made you change your mind?” Your dad asked. Jeno swallowed at how cold he sounded. This wasn’t your dad, and it didn’t seem like Officer Kim either. This was someone Jeno had never met before. 

“Honestly, Kim?” Duke raised an eyebrow, shrugging. “It was you. Your cooperativeness and willing to feed us information, as well as your… insurance agreement. And besides, you made a very interesting point when you said that the Avengers Initiative and Park’s alum Spiderman is ruining the way the law operates around here. That type of bitterness… hard to fake.”

Your dad huffed. “We’re fucking tired of it.”

The man leaning against the car your dad had stepped out of scoffed. “If this helps us catch the little asshole, then so be it.”

Jeno frowned. “I’m not little—”

“Jeno, shut up!” Doyoung snapped. 

“—Alright, then.” The man holding the briefcase—Reagan—clicked it open, as if it were a prize reveal on The Price is Right. Five guns, all modified to hold glowing Chitauri stones were placed carefully together side by side.

“You know the basics. No radiation. Keep it away from security scanners and x-rays. They will blow up. And second of all, these are at half the price, along with the promise from the chief of police that my business won’t be touched, and will only be distributed to officers in on the operation and have agreed to turn off their body cameras when they decide to use these weapons. Should this not be a sting operation, we’ll be back here to negotiate.”

Jeno leaned forward, watching anxiously.

“Yes, sir,” Your dad answered, nodding. “We have the money here.”

“Hand it over, then.”

That was when Jeno made his mistake. He leaned forward too much, and proceeded to fall right through the hole, bringing down some scraps of the roof with him. As he tumbled through the air, the zoom on his lenses caused him to grow dizzy as he had no idea what he was looking at. He caught himself before he could fall, clumsily commanding D.R.E.A.M to go back to turn off the current protocol. His vision returned to normal, and he swung up onto a rafter holding the warehouse up.

“So, we have company.” Duke didn’t sound as amused as he had before. His face turned into a sneer. “Get him.”

In less than a second, before Jeno could say anything, five guns were pointed directly at him. He managed to swing away before any bullets could hit him. 

“Jeno, get out of there now,” Doyoung ordered. 

“What about the guns?” Jeno asked, swinging to another rafter. “They know I’m here, I might as well get them before I go—”

“No! Jeno, listen to what I’m telling you. You’ve done more than enough, and you need to let it g—”

Your dad aimed, and a bullet fired right at Jeno’s chest. For a second, he forgot that the chest area of the suit was lined with bulletproof material. While it didn’t shoot into his chest, it ricocheted right off him, and since he was in motion, it somehow caused the bullet to bounce back in the direction in which it came. 

The wind was knocked out of Jeno, but it was nothing compared to watching the bullet land in the middle of your father’s chest. On the other line, he heard Doyoung yell, followed by the sound of something falling. And then, as he made his way back towards the hole he’d fallen out of, he couldn’t rip his eyes away from the body as it crumpled to the ground. 

The others around him scrambled to get back into their respective cars. Jeno was back on the roof now, trying not to hyperventilate. “I’m sorry,” He gasped, “Do—Doyoung, I-I’m sorry, I didn’t want to—”

“Jeno, you need to get out of there, now,” Doyoung said, voice raspy. “GO!” 

So he did, and Doyoung cut off the call once he was out of the vicinity. Jeno didn’t blame him. He swung across buildings, feeling numb as he looked for the apartment complex roof where he’d decided to hide his backpack.

When he finally did, he changed in a hurry, before slumping against the wall and forcing himself to take deep breaths. 

Doyoung’s dad—your dad—was dead. And it was all his fault. 

He cried on the way down the staircase. He cried on his way to the subway. The entire time, he ignored people’s stares. Suddenly everything was too loud, and if he met someone in the eyes he’d just about break down in the middle of the station. 

As he got onto the train, Jeno thought about all of the things your dad had done for you, and for Jeno. All the times he'd taken you both to Coney Island in the summer when you were younger. The year Pokemon Go came out he took the both of you driving around in his car so you and Jeno could catch as many Pokemon as you could. 

He’d formally adopted you when you were thirteen. You were his daughter in nearly every sense of the word, regardless of blood. And now he was dead, because of a stupid mistake that Jeno had made.

What would you say if you knew? He didn’t want to know. Checking the time on his phone, he saw he’d gotten a message from you just three minutes ago.

[8:36 PM]

y/n: lemme know when ur outside!! :)

“Fuck,” He murmured, wiping his eyes. He knew he needed to stop crying before he got to your house, and he had about ten minutes before he got to his stop, and then another five minute walk to the neighborhood. He focused on taking deep breaths and taking long swigs from his water bottle in the meantime, trying to tune out the sound of other people talking and the sound of the train on the rails.

The walk was the longest five minute walk he’d ever taken. The flashing lights of convenience stores did nothing to calm him down. As the stores in his peripheral vision began transitioning into suburban homes, he felt his heart speed up again. The constant movement as he walked meant he missed his phone vibrating in his backpack as you rang his number.

After what seemed like an eternity, two familiar houses came into his line of vision, and his shoulders slumped as he spotted you on your porch, looking small and teary, curled up into a little ball. In one hand, you were clutching your phone.

His stomach twisted as he put on a confused tone, even though he knew damn well that you knew. “...Y/N?”

You stood up, running to him and burying yourself into his chest, crumpling into his arms. You would have fell over if Jeno hadn’t held both of you up. 

“Jeno,” You sobbed, “You’re n-not go-onna believe it.”

He brought a hand up to caress your hair, holding back tears of his own as he asked a question he already knew the answer to.

“Y/N, what happened?”

taglist: @decembermoonskz @itsapapisongo @lenaluvs​ @crescentjen​

[turtle-steverogers]

Sand Dollars- a Ralbert War Story

heheh hi guys im in college now and im posting a thing hello

also i know I KNOW that fugitives and titanium need some love

they will GET that love, i promise

ok ok now for the lowdown on this story-

warnings: none for this chap, but OH BOOY will there be some warnings in the future.  this is not a happy story

ship: ralbert, some kinda spalbert (but not romantic. its like,,,,platonic ish)

word count: 3228

editing: no, so plz excuse any shit

-

CHAP 1

June, 2006

Albert tugged at the collar of his uniform, inwardly cursing the stifling heat of the shaky boeing aircraft he’d been trapped on for the past fifteen hours.  A thin sheen of sweat covered his entire being and he pushed a hand through his hair, wrinkling his nose a little at the short length of his regulation cut.  He usually liked to keep his hair on the longer side when off-duty, framing his face and curling at the nape of his neck.  And even though he supposed he should be used to the short, crew cut by now, he didn’t have to like it.  Besides, the longer hair suited his face better.  Or so that’s what he was always told.

The announcement of their descent echoed through the plane and Albert sighed, vaguely wishing he’d pissed one more time before the fasten seatbelt sign flashed on again.  The eclectic mix of uniform service members that surrounded him began shifting around, readjusting their seats back to their original positions and stowing their tray tables. 

Albert rolled his eyes minutely, realizing that he should probably do the same before some asshole called him out for it.  Everything always needed to be perfect around these people.  Dress right dress and all that crap.

But as much as all this shit gave him a headache, there was no place he’d rather be.   

His circumstances growing up had been less than ideal.  A dead mother at nine and an absent father at eleven had gotten him dumped into the foster care system with his two brothers (who he eventually got separated from and hadn’t heard from since.  Which he definitely wasn’t still fucking devastated about.  No, he was good at moving on and dealing with his shit.  Yeah, very good).  No less than fourteen homes later, he turned 18 and finally, finally, he was done being some fucking ward of the state.  

But fourteen homes meant just as many, if not more, schools.  And when you’re being shoved from household to household with nothing but a couple bags filled with clothes and other absolute essentials, you don’t really have time to do well in school or apply to colleges.  

The National Guard had sounded like a blessing at the time.  An absolute saving grace with health and financial benefits to last him a literal lifetime.  He always had been good at listening to directions and taking orders, so he figured he’d be a perfect fit.  And he had.  

Those first few years between enlisting and basic training had been some of the best of Albert’s life.  He’d made bonds to last him a lifetime, felt the thrill of having something that was his and he was good at.  He had found purpose where he previously had none.

Then three planes had gone and crashed into the Twin Towers and Pentagon and everything went to shit.

Albert and one of his buddies from Basic, Sean (who went by Spot, but nobody knew why.  Albert had asked once and Spot had just smiled and kicked him in the shin) were living in New York at the time, having moved into a little apartment on the Upper East Side.  The morning of September 11 had yielded one of the clearest, bluest skies Albert had seen in his entire life. 

He remembered waking up to a call from his squad leader, barely able to comprehend the situation through his killer fucking hangover.  He and Spot really hadn’t planned on getting hammered on a Monday night, but sometimes life in your early 20s just happened like that.

The next four days had been a blur of smoke, sirens, debri, and dust.  So much dust.  It had taken weeks for Albert to feel like the damn stuff was finally out of his lungs and if he still thought about it too hard, a phantom tickle would creep up in his chest.

He tried not to think about that week too much.  Spot and him had returned home around the same time, both in varying states of exhaustion and dissociation.  They didn’t discuss what they had individually been through, but an unspoken understanding of the nightmare they’d both witnessed had led them into the same bed that night, the need to forget shrouding everything else.

Albert and Spot’s relationship wasn’t anything that could be truly named.  They weren’t best friends.  They weren’t boyfriends.  They weren’t fuckbuddies.  But they understood each other better than anyone Albert had ever known in his 27 years on this god forsaken earth.  And in that understanding, the knowledge that sometimes you just need to feel good for a night went without having to be spoken.  Feeling good didn’t just mean sex, though.  They cuddled a fair amount too, which was strange considering how touch averse Spot was with other people.  During their first deployment, though, several long days had led to quiet nights spent in each others arms, where they allowed themselves to forget the horrors they were subject to witness and just be. 

They were basically inseparable.  So when the heavens happened upon them and they were to be deployed into the same battalion again, despite Albert climbing through the ranks and surpassing Spot by a fair deal, he had silently thanked a god he hadn’t prayed to since eight years old.

Leaving home was easy, mostly because Albert didn’t have anyone to leave behind.  Spot was already overseas, having left a couple weeks earlier while Albert finished up some things down at the Pentagon.  While being deployed sucked, Albert at least had Spot to look forward to.

The plane jolted, tilting a little as it made it made its final descent into the Tal Afar Airport.  Albert leaned back against the headrest, closing his eyes and white knuckling the armrests.  He was a fine flyer once the plane was up in the air, but taking off and landing fucked him upside down and sideways. 

He was just beginning to count his breaths, clamping down the rolling waves of motion sickness, when a low voice spoke next to him.

“Are you alright, sir?” Albert cracked open an eye, glancing sideways at the person next to him, “Not a fan of flying?” 

The guy looked...rugged.  There was no other word for it.  His black hair was cut close to his head, well within regulation and looking a little patchy at the sides.  His wide set eyes were sharp and calculating, glinting with something like mischief that would unsettle Albert if he hadn’t seen that look a million times over in the mirror.  He looked younger than Albert by a good few years and the lack of shadows in his gaze and on his face cast a look of innocence over him.  Albert remembered those days- when naivety led him to a false sense of security.  He had been untouchable; indestructible.  

“Only take off and landing,” Albert said, clearing his throat and putting on what had to look like a strained smile.  He pried his right hand off the armrest and held it out for the guy to shake, “First Sergeant Albert Dasilva.  Good to meet ya.”

The guy had a firm handshake and he didn’t seem to mind that Albert’s palm was a little sweaty from nerves, “Private Elmer Kasprzak.”

Albert smiled, “First time in the Sandbox?”

Elmer smiled, looking a little self deprecating, “That obvious, sir?”

Albert shook his head, aiming for comforting, but still sounding vaguely choked, “I just know the look.  Way too excited.”

“Oh,” Elmer furrowed his brow, looking like he was trying to decide whether to be offended or not, “I’m just happy to finally be on the frontline, sir.”

“I commend you,” Albert said, wistfully, “It’s a brave thing to be doing with such a strong attitude.”

Elmer blushed, “Thank you, sir.”

“You don’t have to tack ‘sir’ onto every sentence,” Albert assured him, “Some guys are really strict about that, so keep in the habit, but I’m not too picky.”

“Oh, okay s- uh, okay,” Elmer flushed deeper and Albert chuckled a little bit patting his knee.

The plane touched down with a jerk and Albert closed his eyes again briefly while it slowed.  Eventually, it came to a stop and the fasten seatbelt sign flashed off.  Albert reopened his eyes to see Elmer staring out the window, awe and apprehension noticeable through the look in his eyes and the crease between his brows.

“C’mon, Private,” Albert said, unbuckling and clapping the younger man’s shoulder, “we got places to be.”

XXX

Getting assigned last minute to a completely new battalion and then being shipped overseas two weeks later was not how Race suspected he’d be spending his first year out of West Point.  He didn’t mind really.  He hadn’t really had any true connections to his old squad and after his little incident with Oscar Delancey, a new start was appreciated.

That didn’t make the whiplash of deployment any less bittersweet.  

His nerves hadn’t stopped twisting since General Kelly had informed him of his new assignment, going back and forth between excitement and paralyzing anxiety until his gut was furling with both simultaneously.  But now that he was here, things were starting to settle within him.  This was his life now and it was going to be his life for the next twelve months.  Better get used to it.

He put the last of his shirts in one of his dresser drawers, casting a cursory glance around his side of the room, before eyeing his cheap, Walmart alarm clock.  09:45.  The next wave of soldiers should be arriving soon and with them, his roommate.

A wave of anticipation rolled through Race’s stomach and he grimaced.  He had yet to make any meaningful connections with his soldiers so far, many of them wary of having a new CO.  But he was a people person and this alienation was killing him, even though he understood their hesitation.  Part of him hoped that whoever his roommate ended up being wouldn’t hold the same vigilance towards him.  Maybe he could even make a friend.  Someone he could theoretically get a drink with.  Completely hypothetically, of course.  Drinking wasn’t allowed on base.

Sighing, Race grabbed his patrol cap, cramming it onto his head and grabbing a pack of cigarettes from his desk.  He bounded down the stairs to his trailer and made his way over to the coffee line, nodding his greeting at a small clique of soldiers as he passed.  He only got a couple nods in return, and every single one of them wore matching, judgemental looks.  Race tried not to take it to heart.

The line for coffee took forever and Race hummed a little to himself, toying with the pack of cigarettes in his pocket while he waited for the cue to move at a snail’s pace.  Once he held his little styrofoam cup in hand, he ventured off to the smoking pit, draining his coffee along the way.  

Soldiers were beginning to arrive and Race lit up a cigarette, watching with casual curiosity as groups flooded into camp.  He eyed them, vaguely wondering who each of them was.  Who he would get along with.  Who he would despise.  Who would despise him.

He quickly got overwhelmed again and stomped out his finished stub, lighting up another to kill a few more minutes.

An indiscernible amount of time passed and Race kicked his last cigarette to the dust, pulling back the sleeve of his ACU jacket and checking the time.  11:15.  Damn, that coffee line really had taken forever.

Deeming his little break long enough, Race wandered back towards his trailer, heart rate kicking up a bit when he noticed that the door was propped open.

Steeling himself, Race climbed the stairs, knocking once on the door jamb, before ducking inside.

The person inside turned his head, peering up from where he was folding a few grey, regulation workout pants on his recently made cot.

He was wearing his ACU pants and boots, but his jacket had been discarded and with a quick glance around, Race found it draped over the back of his desk chair.  The guy was attractive- a sharp jawline accentuated by his pale skin and dark red hair, which was trimmed attractively, fading up the sides.  It was as if the guy knew from experience how to make the most of the look without pushing regulation.  His arms and chest were muscular, highlighted by the stretch of his tan, liner t-shirt.  

A charming smile stretched across the guys face as he straightened up, crossing the small expanse of their room and holding out a hand, which Race took firmly.

“First Sergeant Albert Dasilva,” He said, his voice smooth and a little gravelly, “Pleasure to meet you, sir.”

Race smiled back, “Lieutenant Antonio Higgins,” he said, hoping he sounded a lot more confident than he felt, “I’m honored to be working with you and your squadron and I’m looking forward to getting to know everyone.”

Albert dropped his hand, turning back to continue unpacking his things.  He only had one large duffle and two small carry on bags and suddenly, Race felt self conscious about his two duffle and impressive assortment of other luggage.  

“Honestly, we’re just lucky that you were available to serve with us, sir,” Dasilva said, straightening his shoes by his closet, dress right dress, “Everyone was really bummed and pretty panicked when Lieutenant Morris fucked up his leg, so it’s great that General Kelly was able to get you on board so quick.”

Race crossed to his side of the room, tossing his cap back onto his cot and slumping into his own desk chair, “I was pretty eager to get overseas, but I wasn’t expecting it to happen so quick.”

Dasilva hummed, sounding a little surprised, “This is your first deployment?” He asked, looking over his shoulder and raising his eyebrows a little.

“Yeah,” Race said, ducking his head a little as he flushed, “Just got outta West Point last May.”

Dasilva whistled, looking impressed, “You musta done damn well if you’re already a Lieutenant,” he said, smiling a little challengingly, “and add the fact that Kelly sought you out directly,” he shook his head, bemused, “Damn, sir, you’ve got quite the rep.”

Race wrinkled his nose, “My so called ‘rep’ ain’t really getting me anywhere with your men.”

Dasilva shrugged a shoulder, waving his hand dismissively, “Don’t take whatever they’re doing to heart,” he said, “They’re all still upset about Lieutenant Morris.  He was a great Lieutenant and a lot of the guys are still feeling his absence.  They’ll warm up to you, sir.”

Race grunted noncommittally.  He knew that Dasilva was trying to make him feel better with his little pep talk, but the knot in Race’s stomach only grew.  It seemed like he had pretty fucking big shoes to fill.

“Aha!”

Race was pulled out of his spiraling worries by Dasilva’s voice and he looked up to see him holding a toothbrush and toothpaste.

“Finally found them,” Dasilva said, triumphantly.  He waved them a little in Race’s direction, “I’m gonna go freshen up.  That fifteen hour flight always makes me feel grungy as shit.”

Race nodded his acknowledgement, watching as his new bunkmate exited the room and traipsed down the steps, leaving the door open behind him.  He could see him greeting other soldiers with a level of enthusiasm and charm Race could only dream to match.  His jealousy spiked even further when he got equally happy greetings in response.

Blowing out a measured breath, Race flipped open his notebook, toying with the pristine patch on the front as he vaguely studied the Arabic terms he’d been practicing on the plane ride there.

He was pretty good already, if he said so himself, with an impressive language proficiency score of 3+ under his belt.  But solidifying knowledge was always beneficial, no matter one’s skill.

A few minutes later, Dasilva bounded back through the door to their trailer, finally easing the door shut behind him.  He stuck his toothpaste and toothbrush back into his little hygiene kit and tucked the thing neatly into the top drawer of his dresser.  

Race kept his eyes on his notebook, not entirely sure how to progress with their conversation.  He was out of his depth- usually being the loud and confident one, but somehow rendered socially inept in this completely foreign environment.

Dasilva didn’t seem to notice his internal battle, though, and a moment later, he spoke up.

“You fluent yet?”

Race startled a bit, looking up, “Almost, I’m still working on conversational communication, but I’ve got all the basics in the bag.”

Dasilva grinned, seemingly not jarred by the sudden change in language, “That’s good.  Already something you have over Lieutenant Morris.  With him, we almost always needed a terp on site.”

“No need for one of those here,” Race said, switching back to english.

“Obviously, sir,” Dasilva agreed.  There was another lull in conversation, but Dasilva didn’t seem uncomfortable, “Do you like running?”

Race felt his stomach flip excitedly, “Yeah, actually, I love it.  Did track all through middle in high school.  That’s actually where-”  He cut himself off hastily.  Dasilva did not need to know about his little adolescent nickname that he still used unironically.  Not yet anyway.

Dasilva gave him a funny look, but didn’t push, “Great.  I go running every morning with one of my buddies before call.  You’re welcome to join us if you want.”

“That sounds nice,” Race said, “I’d love to.  Who’s your buddy?” He added out of curiosity.

“Sean Conlon,” Dasilva stated and Race hummed, recognizing the name, but not having a face to put it with, “He and I go way back.”

The weight of the words seemed to hold something heavy, but Race returned Dasilva’s courtesy and didn’t push.

“Sounds like a good guy,” Race said, “What time should I wake up?”

“We usually go around 04:45,” Dasilva said, leaning back into his regulation pillows, “You’ll probably hear my alarm anyway.”

Race nodded, “I’ll set one on my clock, too, just in case.”

“Good plan.”

A knock at their door had both of them exchanging a curious look.  Race stood to get it and found a taller man with straight, cropped brown hair and a rigid nose standing at ease outside the door.  He smiled cordially when Race looked up at him and offered him a hand.

“Lieutenant Higgins?” Race nodded and the man shook his hand firmly, “Excellent.  Captain David Jacobs, it’s nice to meet you.”

“You too, sir.”

“General Kelly would like to see you over in his office,” Jacobs continued, sounding a little warmer.  His eyes flicked over Race’s shoulder to Dasilva, who hastily stood at attention.

“First Sergeant Albert Dasilva, sir,” Dasilva said, his voice hardening as he saluted.

“At ease, soldier,” Jacobs said, “Pleasure to meet you.”

They all stood in silence for a short pause, before Race awkwardly turned and grabbed his patrol cap.  

“General Kelly requested for me now, sir?” He asked Jacobs.

“Yes,” Jacobs confirmed.

“Alright,” Race placed the cap on his head and looked back to where Dasilva was still standing, “I’ll see you later, Sergeant.”

“See you, sir,” Dasilva smirked, “Good luck.”

Race resisted stating that he’ll need it as the trailer door swung closed behind him.

-

thanks for reading, chiefs

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[cometeclipse-crafts]

There are a couple of you who have been following this story with the man, and so I finally wrote it all up so I can share it once, and then don’t have to individually type this behemoth several times. @sewluscious @im-not-great-at-making-up-names @uriellactaea

So. Things with Jordin. 

It started back in March. I have known this guy through the Ren faire for a couple years. And he lives with Kyle and Blue, who are married (Blue is a woman). The three of them have a house together; I always wondered if they were in a poly relationship. I went out to Kyle’s birthday party, and we got to chatting there a little bit. The next day, he asks me out. At the time I was still stuck in the realization that I was probably asexual, and trying to figure out what that meant for me. So I turned him down, and explained why. He said that sex for him wasn’t as important as spending time with people he liked, so he left the coffee date open on the table, whenever I wanted to change my mind. We saw each other a few times after that, but never picked it up. (I did think he was cute and liked him just... not enough to get over my fears).

In June, he was vacationing in Europe, and I was seeing pictures of him frequently and realized that I did still like him, enough that I was willing to be brave and try dating him. So this time I asked him out. He said he would love to, but he was just getting back from Europe, so he would get a hold of me when things calm down. I waited to hear from him for almost 2 weeks, then he tells me that things got crazy busy for him, and would it be okay if we sorta waited till life calmed down. He said he thought he would want to ‘dedicate time’ to whatever was between us. I was disappointed but not overly so. I was just proud of myself for being brave, and frankly we were coming into the Ren faire season, which was why we were both super busy. So that ended there again.

Week before Ren faire, he is performing at the Highland Games, so I go to see him... and the games, but mostly him. He seems happy enough to see me, but not overly so. And there is a girl there who seems really interested in spending time with him. He definitely seemed more into her than me... so I thought, okay, well, that sucks, but he just isn’t interested anymore. First weekend of Ren faire passes, and same thing. Same girl there talking with him after hours. I was sitting in the group of seats in front of him, and I don’t think he even saw me. End of the night, and I was gonna leave, so I kinda interjected myself a little to give him a hug and say Hi, but then I continue on. I wasn’t going to throw myself at him, or pine or whatever. If he didn’t want to spend effort on me, I wasn’t going to waste away, lol. So, I thought friends, nothing more, he just wasn’t interested. 

The next Monday, two days after that, he sends me this: 

“ Hello. All that has been going on there is something that has been going through my head....You came up to me in the pub and you smiled....your smile made me happy. Yours is the only one that does that. I thought you should know”

So, obvious that is a bit of a warm, thrilling statement! But at this point, I am a bit warry. I don’t know if he is a ninja-slut, getting with girls whenever he can... but I also made it obvious to him that I am asexual, so that isn’t the reason right? So, warily, I start talking back with him:

“Me: :) that's nice to hear. You seemed busy, so I didn't want to butt in, but I did want to say hi

Jordin: Umm, I'm sorry, I'm not really sure how to say this without sounding weird but....you showed up and everyone else kinda went away. Is it too late for coffee?

Me: Lol, it sounds kinda like a line, but cute  and no, not too late. I was also slammed earlier so it was a good call, but things are calming down now.

Jordin: I've grown quite weary of lines. What I AM aware of is who I hope to see and that you, and you're usually in slow motion....with theme music. But seriously, I think you're amazing and I would be a damn fool to not want to see you. If that makes sense. Are you available in the morning? Like tomorrow or some time this week?

Me: Hehe  that's awesome. Unfortunately my job kinda sucks with its rigidity. I have no mornings available”

blah blah blah. So I was running by his house to pick up something from his male roommate the next day, randomly. So we said we would see each other then. I saw him on Tuesday, and they all invited me out to dinner. I don’t think Jordin told Kyle and Blue that he had asked me out, just the impression I got from it all. And during dinner, again, just didn’t feel like he was all that interested. But I just figured maybe he was playing it down from his roommates. 

So, as far as I knew, we were still in this predate limbo thing, and I didn’t hear from him the rest of the week. Friday rolls around, and I go to the pub, and there he is, his arm around another girls waist. Cue sinking stomach and disappointment again. Spent a little time while there, ignored them as much as possible, but waved once. They end up sitting on a bench, facing each other, his legs over hers. Like... people were telling them to go get a room, they were so all over each other, although I don’t know if they ever kissed. So, I went to leave, and I had to pass by them. As I did, he called out my name and held out his arms for a hug... like... what? So I hugged him, her (I know who she is from faire and everything) and then leave. Thinking it was over, I felt played and hurt by it all. Next morning I woke up in a much calmer frame of mind. I think my feelings are/were completely valid, but I also didn’t have any claim on him. We hadn’t been on a date, and yes, I think it is kinda shitty for how warmly (dare I say romantically) he talked to me then was all over someone else. But... I don’t know, I was willing to see how it all went. 

So next night, go to the after hours pub again, and he is there, not with some girl, just with Kyle and Blue. We kinda are around each other, but no one on one conversations. Then, without me asking, he tells me that the girl from Friday had asked Jordin to save her from an over-eager patron, and then found out they had similar religious upbringings and so spent the next two hours talking religion. Also, Blue was pissed at him for being all over this girl. 

Now, I’m super confused. Was it a good thing or a bad thing that he volunteered this information without me asking? Did he want to set me at ease because he liked me and didn’t want me to get the wrong impression or because he is trying to keep all options open? Why would he tell me about Blue being pissed? He never told me he was in a poly relationship, which I think is something that he should have been very clear about from the very beginning... or was she for some reason pissed on my behalf? even though I didn’t think Jordin had told them that he had asked me out. So I left confused, cautiously optimistic. I sent him a text the next day, asking how the day went, he said “SO good,” and that was it. Sooooo, yeah, thoroughly confused. 

When I still didn’t hear from him on Tuesday I sent him this:  “ I am pretty awful at dating stuff... completely oblivious. So I am not really sure if you are trying to tell me you are not interested anymore. I have been getting a lot of mixed messages, and I am confused about what you want. “

To which he replies: “ Hehe that's fair, there was a lot of confusing things flying my way as well from Blue so.... honestly I need to get some answers before I can proceed in any direction as far as dating goes. Hope that made sense despite being pretty vague.”

So, at this point, kinda pissed. (Seriously? Hehe?) Cause... first of all, pretty sure this means you are poly, and never told me. And if you need to get some answers before you start dating, why did you ask me out THREE TIMES? Why didn’t you do that BEFORE all this?!?! So, I am pretty much done. Close the door, whatever. It wasn’t like we had even been on a date, and I had been through some serious highs and lows with him, and I am tired of being jerked around. So I sent this back ” I hope things get less confusing for you, whatever that may end up being. I'm just gonna keep being me, but I'm not really going to expect anything. Hope whatever your end works out to we can still be friends.”

Jordin:  Absolutely!!  I would definitely hope so “

And that was the end of it. I didn’t expect anything from him, it was done, I’m not going to wait for him. 

I saw him on Saturday, gave him a hug, said hi, but wasn’t spending much effort to hang with him. 4 different times that night, line probably less than 45 minutes, he called me over to join his conversation. So... he is making it real hard to turn off the feelings, but unless there is some big changes, I’m just not going to let it go anywhere. 

So yes, there is my novel length story of Jordin and my fleeting potential dating life... sigh. Stupid boys. 

[kremlin]

here's an oldie (probably 2/5 stars imo)

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

i've never worked a night shift before. it's been about three weeks and i am only starting to get in the swing of things being wide awake and ready to wind down with a beer at 7:30 AM on a tuesday is a strange place to suddenly be. living in a suddenly frozen desert swamp sort of adds to that uncanni-ness. it has frozen in texas and my pipes are cracked and broken there is almost no part of this shanty house that isn't elligible to join the AARP. it's one of the last ranch style ramblers left in montrose, all of the others have been replaced by bizzare brutalist white cube apartments which i assume house pod people our ballbusting 900 year old landlady (slum lord) sent out the handyman steve. steve is not a plumber which is a point expressly made to me, by steven, several times we were not forewarned of this & steve's arrival came unexpectedly 8:00 AM thursday morning is now my time to furiously discuss drugs, on drugs, with internet strangers soon to be nebulous internet acquaintances, then friends, then perhaps even those friends from the internet you've known for a decade suddenly from my desk, if the door is open, i catch about a half-degree of the window facing the backdoor. a full degree if i lean back. i lean back as to kind of avoid the bizzare reality that the other players of the space game seem to deal with the same problems i do at an alarming frequency. i lean back There;s a fucking guy back there angry at the fact that i have to now deal with this, i find our friend steve in the back yard, sauntering around, muttering to himself in a way that's between mumbling but below speaking "surely that man has a blue tooth head set" but i was already smiling wide knowing he didn't. if you're going to appear in my backyard unannounced, milling around babbling to yourself is the way to do it steve doesn't really speak english. you'll read that and think he's like any other non english speaker but that is not the case with steve. steve will get out about four or five sentences in perfectly spoken english before switching to (hindi?) for a bit. you'd think that if 80% of his communication was clear, that'd be enough for mutual understanding, but steve is all over the place steve was furiously pacing around the broken pipe when i got to the back door. that is a fact i'm only coming to realize is important now, writing this, because the person standing near a broken pipe with a wrench is a plumber, someone who is allowed in my back yard in this circumstance HEY YO i tried to whistle but made a stupid faring noise with my mouth he swings around at the perfect moment to make my sudden departure all the more awkward as i realized how waistbanding a pistol in sweat pants was extremely not working. remember where we are by the time im out of my room steve has his head poked through the back door YOU COULD NOT WITH YOUR FINGER POINT A WORSE PLACE FOR PIPE BREAK and boy howdy he was right. if you're going to break a pipe, don't make it the one between your meter and a valve, and especially don't make it one on the ground next to the garage you keep all your weirdo electronics and "vintage computers" you "collect" i sort of like plumbing. i've done some plumbing. there's an illegal stipulation in our lease that lets the landlord, you know, just not maintain the place. with my engineering background i am of course compelled to think i am somehow qualified to solve these problems. i'd like to use the expression "dive into with full force" to describe my approach but combine that with the imagery of a blind person gracefully swan diving into an empty concrete swimming pool but this is not about me, i am not particularly interesting. -- steve. steve is sort of interesting. his murmuring grew to a breathless combination of words which i thankfully mostly understood (individually, not collectively). steve was upset with the pipe situation to be described later in this document's best paragraph. he was upset at the last person to work on the pipes here because they fucked up. he was amused by how preposterously

inconvenient the broken pipe lay. this amusement was not anger what followed next was clearly anger. perplexed, astounded anger ice on the ground is something you see once every 4 years in (excellent) swamp i live in. it's a pretty reasonable assumption that a broken pipe after a freeze/melt cycle is due to the freeze/melt cycle this was not the case the pipe had ruptured due to a sequence of truly insane and utterly nonsensical choices made by the previous plumber who almost certainly kicked the bucket in the reagan years as suggested by the lead solder used to seal joints and lead paint used to, well, just hold on the pipe burst because a large metal rod was inserted *through* it. the details on exactly what went down are a little fuzzy as my simian mind was preoccupied with thoughts about some weird software that started as a fluid dynamics simulator and is now a physics simulator and an insane person simulator. i would digress and expound on this but my thoughts aren't yet settled on the space game the rod went through the pipe and into the ground, on the other end were rusty wires. it is a grounding rod, you know, for electricity. i unfortunately know a litle bit about this. you can ground a circuit through a cold water tap, like when you're lining the fence with copper wire to create a makeshift shortwave antenna with your weird kind of racist dad. water is conductive. more commonly the rod goes into the ground, which is also usually conductive so, this grounding rod, sitting between a 3 foot gap between the back of the garage and fence, an overgrown mess of decades of detritus and weeds that had grown into vines that had grown into weird anemic trees. this grounding rod was painted. it didn't come painted. it was painted. it was painted the same color as the garage. paint is not conductive. the circuitry in my house was not grounded. thankfully there is no ground pin on the outlets in this ancient home besides the one i strangely installed one day. the amp plugged into it now gives a hum where it didn't before. the ground was subsequently disconnected to eliminate the ground loop as we are in our early 20s and cannot die, especially not in an electrical fire it's sort of nice to know that even back in the 1940s people screwed up as royally and maximally as possible, employing such a degree of backwards demented logic as you'd expect from a home owner's association bylaws handbook or normal computer software anyways, steve, ohoho. oh boy. steve did not fuck with this at all. steve, the man who is self purportedly not a plumber, immediately took to the valve between the city's water main and our house with the wrong implement. an implement used to unwrench joints around a u-bend underneath a sink. it worked perfectly `I just use this for many valve. It works mostly. No need for heavy T` (steve's parlance doesn't transcribe to text very well) steve continued, `Too many tools is too bad. I use this one for tiling and for drywall and for ducks` (ducts?) he spoke while gesturing listlessly at nothing in particular. it became clear that steve's limited, nebulous tool set was carefully chosen. when you are the un-fuck-it man for an ice queen landlord you sort of have to be a plumber and an electrician and a roofer and sometimes a debt collector. the arcane set of tools used to approximate all of these trades made a bit more sense the lack of a monkey wrench did not make sense. none of steve's esoteric implements could wrench like we needed them too. i offered to purchase one from the nearby hardware store which was a great excuse for me to go to the nearby hardware store and purchase a monkey wrench, *my* monkey wrench. steve objected but i was deadset. i was buying a wrench today. the newly purchased wrench calmed two agitated souls: one was drowning in thoughts about drugs and space and coincidence. the other was angry he couldn't wrench down a pipe joint a few hours passed. several trips were made to the hardware store by my roommates and the new tennant in the garage apartment, less than $20 was

spent. i sort of farted around not helping while getting jawed at by steve who had permenently changed the subject to grand life philosophies. i'm about the last person that'll tolerate some windbag wasting my time, but between the fun of trying to decipher what the fuck steve was saying and what language (or nonsense utterances) he'd conclude thoughts with, i realized that his sensical words actually, uhh, rang true steve believes in doing a good job. read that last sentence without the disinterested, vaguely-trying-to-be-funny style this document has maintained so far this hit me on a deeper level than i was expecting i'm young and do not really understand the world very well. i'm not so young that i'm blind to the depths of what there is to understand about this world, i'm allegedly content with the resignation that for the time being i'm sort of a dumbass and will continue to be a dumbass in the future, although less so hopefully i'm going to tell you that i believe in "doing a good job", "doing things properly", "taking your time to properly solve a problem", or "solving a problem for the sake of solving a problem and nothing else". i am going to tell you that these are some of strongest and earnestly compulsions i feel. i'm not lying when i write this but i wasn't lying when admitted to how little i understand anything at all, so maybe weigh those two facts against each other nearing 200 lines, i realize i have spent the hours meant for sleeping writing a truly innappropriately verbose wall of text all because of how stoked i was that an angry muttering tom bombadil character spent an extra 45 minutes to fix a pipe properly the new pipe was measured and cut, threaded. steve's measuring tape is interspliced with further, smaller graduations he hand-scratched into a long measuring tape. the previous graduations on the tape presented steve with an unsuitably low resolution of 1/8th of an inch i'd guess this was a 12 foot measuring tape. i never saw the end of the graduations, i don't doubt for a second they extend the entire length of the tape. do you know how many notches you'd have to painstakingly scratch on to a 12 ft measuring tape to change it from 1/8" -> 1/16". well, don't: 1152 steve might be a little nuts but holy shit a master plumber could not have done a better job. the dude fuckin laid on his back, in the small pond of pipeleak water, so as to see up a length of fixed pipe so he could better lay teflon tape on the *inside threaded surface of the pipe joint*. i challenge you to try and imagine what such a manuever would be like, considering the damp slimy pipe surface, the fucking hell that is teflon tape (fuck teflon tape) all while laying in a pool of possum water at the impossibly cold temperature of 45 F my pipes don't leak anymore. there is no longer a bizzaro steel rod puncturing the most critical pipe on this property. i own a monkey wrench when i did not this morning. i am thinking less anxiously about the space game, still. me and steve sat around smoking cigarettes and communicating with each other through a method i can't describe but wasn't reliant on words. we talked about the virtues of work ethic and then we talked about those that have broken our hearts. the conversation, as well as this text, ended with a solemn mutual acknowlegement of how terrifying electricity is and how terrified of electricity we are

[jodounzebulon]

My Real Deer Story

By Jedi Foun Sive

----- Any and all names and locations have been changed or screened out. If you happen to know who I am please keep it to yourself. Thank you. -----

I had been riding a bicycle to and from work all year. An eight-mile round trip, opening the store around 4 A.M. five-six days a week. After a hot and humid summer, the ride had gotten to be a breeze even over all the hills. On Oct. 13th while leisurely riding along I made the four-mile ride to work in roughly 12 minutes, and thought to myself, “Oh damn, I wasn’t even trying, I could probably make that ride in 10 minutes!”, I then spent the rest of the day bragging about my time and how I was going to beat it! I had to stay late so I just rode home at my normal pace, 12 hours on my feet had left me exhausted. As I got to my home hill I hopped off my bike and walked it to the top sweating, and eager for a shower.  

2:45 AM Oct 14th, 2014

I go through my morning rituals but leave all the haste out of my actions. “If I can leave just a little late today that’s all the more motivation to make this ride in just ten minutes”, I tell myself as I futz around for a bit longer. Several minutes before I must leave, I grab my backpack, and march down stairs to get my bike from the garage. I remember I’d gotten in trouble several days before with my grandmother. She was worried because I’d ride through the early morning darkness without a light of any kind. It had never been anything I’d been worried about, but I bought a light for my bikes handle bars and I’d remembered to grab my blaze orange hunting beanie which also had a light. Affixing and turning them both on let me light up my drive way with its trees claustrophobically reaching from my left and the open yard to my right.  

Wheeling out onto the road, I steadied myself for a hard ride. I checked my watch, 3:48 A.M., it was time. I started powering downhill with all my might. It was exceptionally steep with a slight hump around the middle and over a quarter mile long. It ended with a sharp turn south at its base to get to my work. I could knock off a whole quarter mile easy by just pushing as hard as I could to get it out of the way. I could feel the wind stinging my eyes at the corners, and my legs pumping below me. I’m unsure of how fast I managed to go, but I am a pretty big guy, and I had been riding all year, whatever speed I was going it was too much for me to react more than a slight jerking of the handle bars to the left, as I reached the bottom of the hill and a Deer came careening into my right side.  

I remember quite vividly his head went under my leg and I was thrown leftwards, the bike ripped out of my hand as it traveled away from me. I wasn’t aware of my spinning, but my right hip hit the ground first dragging on the road. With the next roll my forehead slammed the asphalt and grew warm, I pulled my arms up defensively and with the next roll my major joints began taking the remaining hits and slowing me down. As I came to a stop I thought, “Are You F@#$!ng Kidding Me!”, then the pain washed over me. The lights on my bike and beanie had gone out. I lay in the dark swearing for several moments, screaming obscenities into the night, until I heard something breathing over my left shoulder. It was right there next to me. I’d seen the videos and pictures, I knew what kind of damage those hooves could do. I would be damned if I’d be on the ground when he got up!

I rolled onto my stomach, everything in me protesting any movement at all. Pushing myself to my feet I realized I couldn’t put any weight on my left leg. It didn’t matter, if he got up, I was going to be ready, I pulled out my pocket knife. My eyes still hadn’t adjusted to the darkness as I began backing away from the grey form on the road. I was lucky that morning, when the deer began making a sound I’d only heard when they had been hit by cars. Hearing that grotesque flopping and scraping sound of the deer struggling to get up for about a minute set my mind at ease and killed the flow of adrenaline pumping through me. The pain renewed as I placed my knife back in my pocket and realized I’m no longer wearing my backpack. Limping in the dark I managed to find it and retrieve my phone. I dial my then roommate.  

Ringing... answered.

<Me> Ted... (pained breathing)

<Ted> (barely audible mumble) What.

<Me> I need you to come and get me from the bottom... of the hill... (more pained breathing, and scrabbling sounds)

<Ted> Okay –Click-

-Several minutes later-

As I see the lights at the top of the hill pull out of our driveway, they flash down the hill and the deer began desperately dragging itself to the tree line, the truck approaches much too quickly down the hill and comes to a screeching halt as Ted swings open his door exclaiming, “What the hell was that!”. Seeing me awash in the headlights covered in road rash, blood, and dirt, disheveled and limping towards the truck with my back pack clutched in one hand my phone in the other. Ted steps to the edge of the road to get a better look at the deer now laying in the brush exhausted from trying to escape after our collision and now dragging itself into the woods about 15 feet. “Did you hit a deer?!?!”, he asks, I pull myself into the passenger seat of the truck as Ted spots my bike a ways down the road, he returns with it and places it into the bed of the truck. Hopping into the driver's seat he asks, “Do you need to go to the hospital?”, I replied with a shaky, “yeah”, and we made our way back up the hill to wake my sleeping niece since she couldn’t be left home alone. As we descend the hill on the way to the hospital Ted suggests I let my boss know I won't be coming in to work today.  

Ringing... answered.

<Boss> (barely audible mumble) hello

<Me> (pained breathing) Boss you have to open the store I got hit by a deer and I'm going to the hospital.

<Boss> (still not really understanding) You what? Ok, I’ll head in then.  

<Me> Thanks Boss. -Click  

Thankfully a new hospital had been built not too far from our home just a couple years earlier, and the ride was short, “Do you need any help in?” Ted asked. Feeling a little more in control of my faculties and able to grit my teeth to the pain I said, “Nah I got it, but we may want to call the wardens and check out that deer, it may have broken it’s neck.” I open the door and ease myself onto the sidewalk of the emergency entrance. After I close the door Ted drives away and I limp into the hospital where the woman behind the counter was seemingly unconcerned by my appearance and posture. Looking up from her reading material for a moment she pointed and said, “Take one of those and fill it out someone will be with you shortly”, she then returned to her magazine. Filling out the card I sat down and had a moment to come to grips with the situation. I began drilling myself for memory to be sure I hadn’t sustained a concussion in the fall.  

After several hours of doctors and nurses poking and prodding me and finding and treating the sore spots and road rash. I was sent into a room to get some images of my knee which was pained with each movement. While I was laying on the table, I found myself explaining my circumstances for the first time at length to someone that morning. He reacted differently, more human. He said, “So maybe not today or tomorrow, but give it about a week and this’ll be about the funniest story you’ve ever told!”, and right then I cracked up. I love a good joke and I take life's hits as they come, and I remembered the humor to be found in such a ludicrous situation. I found out not long after that Ted had called the wardens and they determined that the deer would not have survived due to its injuries. To save it a slow death by exposure he terminated it, and let Ted keep the animal. It was gutted and at the butchers by the time I made it home a couple hours later.  

I’ve told this story countless times since then. There is a little more I’m leaving out for another time. It has been added to my repertoire of stories I can tell of my life that no one else can say they have done, I became known as the Deer Slayer after that, and most hear the tale and think I’m full of it. I really couldn’t care less what they believe. I was there I felt the road, the pain. I was approached several days later by a neighbor on that road who had cleaned away my blood, so the kids wouldn’t get curious, or worse some coyotes or something coming to our neck of the woods sniffing for trouble. This is the story I chose to start this off. I hope to add more regularly, as I have lived an eventful 28 years. Given the nature of human memory I will never say that my recollections are 100% accurate, but I will try to recall them as accurately as I am able.  

May the Force Be with You.

[comicteaparty]

September 20th, 2018 CTP Archive

The archive for the Comic Tea Party chat that occurred on September 20th, 2018, from 5PM - 7PM PDT.  The chat focused on The Hunter of Fenaur by CalimonGraal.

Featured Comment:

Chat:

RebelVampire

COMIC TEA PARTY- THURSDAY BOOK CLUB START!

Good evening, everyone~! This week’s Thursday Book Club is officially beginning! Today we are discussing The Hunter of Fenaur by CalimonGraal~! (http://hunter.fenauriverse.moe/)

Remember that Thursday discussions are completely freeform! However, every 30 minutes I will drop in OPTIONAL discussion questions in case you’d like a bit of a prompt. If you miss out on one of these prompts, you can find them pinned for the chat’s duration. Additionally, remember that while constructive criticism is allowed, our focus is fun and respectfully appreciating the comic. All that said, let’s begin! NOTE Disclaimer about today’s questions: Questions have been written with the assumption at least some people have only read The Hunter of Fenaur and not Cali’s other comics. Keep that in mind with your spoilers.

QUESTION 1. What is your favorite scene in the comic so far and why?

Superjustinbros

HELOO

Draco Plato

Hiiiii~!

I really enjoyed the restaurant scene, the facial expressions were adorable and I enjoyed the back and forth between the characters~!

RebelVampire

i really enjoyed iris being like whatever to how ever much money he was spending.

Superjustinbros

http://hunter.fenauriverse.moe/comic/43

This page gave me a good laugh

CalimonGraal

watching

Draco Plato

hahah I enjoyed that too

Superjustinbros

take it offfffff

RebelVampire

i actually think scene wise ivan getting to the place where thistle is dancing is my favorite. theres a lot of great illustrations and good energy.

Draco Plato

loooooooool

his little cameo in the back

ivan always showing up in the pervy places

Kabocha

I actually really liked chapter 3! http://hunter.fenauriverse.moe/comic/28 I relate so much to "holy crap everything here is expensive"

Iris, though... I mean, it's nice that he ordered what Thistle wanted, but... :| I feel like in some ways that's crossing a line

but he's trying to win Thistle over, so... I dunno, it's just something that makes me slightly uneasy.

CalimonGraal

haha i worried about that

RebelVampire

its okay for me i also wondered if thistle even wanted a pansket. cause thistle couldve just been looking for that under the assumption itd be the cheapest

Kabocha

Well, from a comic side, it's fine. It shows their personalities. But if it was me on that date, I'd be like... "wait what"

Draco Plato

i wondered that too rebel, lol

Kabocha

Thankfully it ended up being that's what Thistle wanted.

Draco Plato

yeah i felt like if that had been me i'd have been a bit offended, like iris was coming on way too forcefully(edited)

RebelVampire

nah personally im with you. i would be pissed if iris did that and would probably leave XD

Superjustinbros

http://hunter.fenauriverse.moe/comic/46 The bottom of this page

Draco Plato

what about it?

Superjustinbros

Oh wait, it was the one before it

Silly me

But good to see we got a dance lover in this story

Kabocha

Iris strikes me as wanting to unsettle thistle just a smidge. "Don't get too comfy"

RebelVampire

tbf i think that might be true. cause you dont want your persons of interest to be too comfy when youre getting ready for an interrogation

although alternatively, iris might just not get out much

and just thinks its normal

secretly this is iris' first date and he spent 2 hours deciding what to wear

Mharz

I have to say the restaurant scene. Thistle is so adorable eating those fancy food.

Draco Plato

takes two hours to decide what to wear and shows up in the same outfit XD

Superjustinbros

@RebelVampire Great, now I'm thinking of all the ways you can make someone comfy during an interrogation.

^That's me on a busy day

Mharz

Lol

RebelVampire

clearly iris decided that he should look casual and not come off as overly eager O_O

CalimonGraal

maybe iris did it this way so many times he thinks this is how a normal date is like

RebelVampire

iris is the victim of the gold diggers

which to be fair

fenaur is probably full of them

cause fenaur is a terrible planet /shot

Draco Plato

iris just showing off his rich fancy pants self

Superjustinbros

Iris and his pants

Draco Plato

Waiter, I'll buy the whole menu

actually surprised he didn't do that XD

Superjustinbros

"That'll be one million dollars."

Mharz

Ask the person to go on date. 5mins later... "Hey, are you the dude I'm looking for?"

Kabocha

LOL

"This is all business, no pleasure. That'll be in a few days."

RebelVampire

wait wait wait

http://hunter.fenauriverse.moe/comic/45

iris you cant wait till then to ask if youre making thistle uncomfy XD

that ship sailed at dinnedr

Draco Plato

riiiiight?

Superjustinbros

"This aint uncomfy at all"

Kabocha

"So you're wasting my time" No, hes getting paid

Draco Plato

I'm sorry is my stalker nature uncomfortable

Kabocha

the questions are less work aren't they xD(edited)

Draco Plato

i did wonder why iris didn't just pay for him and only talk

I thought it was kinda a jerk thing to actually use him as a whore by actually sleeping with him based on what his ambitions are

especially knowing that thistle isn't that into him atm

granted thistle said it was fine

but maybe that was just to shut iris up too

Kabocha

Honestly, it wasn't until chapter 4 page 15 that I actually imagined Thistle having a deeper voice. I'd imagined he was putting on a falsetto to sound demure and then on this page he's all like: "Hmph. I highly doubt it" And Iris is all like "Dropped the bass too soon"

Mharz

Thistle said his boss would be mad if he didn't do his job

Draco Plato

true but i mean sleeping with someone seems like a big deal, but that may just be me too

especially if you're mainly just trying to use them for something, it seems dishonest

RebelVampire

sleeping with someone can be a big deal but might be a better option than getting beaten.

Mharz

Fair

Kabocha

Iris was kind of trying to demand that he do what he paid for or gtfo

Draco Plato

yeah, and I think it works in story, but from a personal level I wouldn't consider it romantic at least

Kabocha

His boss could make a ton more money by treating these as therapy sessions tho

Mharz

Lol yeah

Kabocha

I mean, there's an entire industry based on cuddling

Draco Plato

riiiight?

and unless the boss is filming it he doesn't really know wtf they're doing in there

Superjustinbros

Oh yeah, Kabo's right

Gotta milk out all them monies

Kabocha

...I mean, they live in fenaur. ....................Therapy would be useful.

Draco Plato

truth

Mharz

There might be cctvs. The world may never know

RebelVampire

no no the planet has to be fixed first. cause otherwise therell never be enough theapists for the planet.

Superjustinbros

what about ciropractors

Kabocha

at the risk of being gross -- I would think the boss is happier with clients that talk instead of have sex -- means less to clean up...

Draco Plato

oh that's a good point

Kabocha

You don't have to pay for laundry or cleaner or anything!

THISTLE, MAKE THIS A BUSINESS PLAN ALREADY

Draco Plato

on fenaur i doubt they'd do that anyway

Superjustinbros

True.

Kabocha

ew, ew ewwwwww

Draco Plato

omg that room is probably so filthy

Superjustinbros

Sex can be fun sometimes but good god it's messy as hell

Kabocha

never enter a Fenaurian brothel. Or at least don't--- take a black light in there

........rip

Draco Plato

rip PG chat

Mharz

Lol

Kabocha

Realistically, the bigger problem is people who fall asleep and drool on the pillows

THISTLE

Superjustinbros

UGH I HATE WHEN I DO THAT

RebelVampire

thistle now owes the boss an extra $10,000 for the pillow

Superjustinbros

That's why I always sleep on my back

Draco Plato

they didn't even spoon, gosh

Kabocha

http://hunter.fenauriverse.moe/comic/50 These pillows are probably just covered in drool.

Mharz

Omg

RebelVampire

to iris' credit, he at least commented what he did felt wrong

Draco Plato

drool and sweat

Mharz

And some other unmentionable stuff

Draco Plato

Iris: I feel so wrong, if i stay longer maybe there'll be a round 2

CalimonGraal

loooooool

Mharz

Pft

If I stay longer, maybe I can examine him more.

/shots(edited)

Draco Plato

gotta look over his body again

for "clues"

RebelVampire

jokes on you thistle has all the answers inked on his back

Mharz

Lmao

Draco Plato

liiiiies

Kabocha

cough

RebelVampire

QUESTION 2. Though Thistle and Iris grow close rather quickly, much is left to mystery. Who exactly do you think Thistle is? Is Iris right in that Thistle is connected to Dezar in some way? Alternatively, do you think the resemblance is a red herring? Whichever the case, do you think Thistle knows more about Dezar than he lets on? If so, why would he keep it secret? What do you think Thistle’s past is, especially in regards to the pain that Iris keeps mentioning he sees? Do you think Iris will be able to help Thistle in regards to his past, or is Thistle going to be forever haunted?

Kabocha

Thistle didn't let him see his back, so

I think Thistle is Dezar. But we'll see!

Mharz

I like Thistle's reaction when Iris mentioned the name Dezar

Draco Plato

I think Thistle is some kind of plant

Kabocha

Thistle doesn't want his rap as a monster gettin' out, so he's like, ooph, gotta look cute! MAGIC, GOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Superjustinbros

Did someone say rap

Mharz

Thistle is a flower literally iirc

RebelVampire

draco no

Mharz

Lol

RebelVampire

thistle was a planet monster all along

Superjustinbros

EPIC RAP BATTLE START

D:

Kabocha

I have thistles in my yard

should I pull them up

Mharz

Clearly the solution to heal thistle is to give him fancy food

Draco Plato

maybe Thistle is his missing uncle

in disguise

Mharz

Gasp

Draco Plato

and that's why thistle was like no this is bad but then was like well okay, for my cute nephew

Mharz

It is high likely that Thistle is Dezar tho becos it was mentioned Dezar can shapeshift.

RebelVampire

draco no

bad draco

Mharz

Altho by that logic Dezar can also be one of thistles pillows.

Draco Plato

and then he becomes his wife

and it's beautiful

RebelVampire

but i am going to post a theory draco stated yesterday elsewhere

“maybe thistle is a sleeper agent

and was ordered to kill iris, and this is all a trap he set up to entice him”

CalimonGraal

a pillow that thistle drooled on

Draco Plato

oh thank you cause i couldn't remember the real theories I had XD

Kabocha

So thistle is Dezar XD

but Dezar is the sleeper agent of DESTRUCTION

Draco Plato

gdi

thistle cannot be dezar

Mharz

Gasp

Draco Plato

madness

Kabocha

Why's that

Draco Plato

because one has black hair

Kabocha

So? XD

Draco Plato

and their face markings are different, gosh

and they have different clothes!

RebelVampire

another of draco's darker theories

“they just happen to be the same height

maybe dezar brainwashed iris into loving him

and replaced thistle in his mind”

Mharz

He's one of the pillows

Draco Plato

ah okay that was the better theory

RebelVampire

even tho that tech be psychteria spoilers but w/e

Mharz

Lol

Draco Plato

flails over multiple story confusion

RebelVampire

cause atm i think most of us here have read psychteria anyway

XD

Mharz

Yas

Draco Plato

true

Kabocha

Yep.

RebelVampire

wait @CalimonGraal have you read psychteria? /shot

Draco Plato

looooool

Tenor | Shinavar

Gasp Such spoilers how dare

Mharz

Pft

Tenor | Shinavar

(I'M SLOW SORRY EVERYTHING HAPPENING AT ONCE WILL ANSWER Q'S IN A BIT)

Kabocha

Zage had been changed, but. I mean like. ................Why can't Dezar have been changed to Thistle and then back?

Draco Plato

cause OvO;;;

Tenor | Shinavar

Would explain a lot tbh - serious mental damage

Mharz

<.<

Draco Plato

internal screaming

Kabocha

we know almost nothing about Dezar aside from him being a super murderer

I'll never forgive him for what he did to Jamie's mooooooooom

Draco Plato

it's sad the song Stacy's mom started playing in my head(edited)

Mharz

Kabocha no spillerz

Tenor | Shinavar

-Holds back my own screaming about Jamie's mom-

Kabocha

Hunter takes place AFTER Chronicles, so...

are they spoilers?

are they really

Mharz

Lol

RebelVampire

dezar couldnt live with what he did to jamie's mom either so said "plz employers i want to forget." so they made him into thistle. but then thistle regained dezar memories anyway cause employers sucked.

Tenor | Shinavar

THat's fair

CalimonGraal

hunter does indeed take place a lot of years after chronicles

lol

Tenor | Shinavar

Wait why just Jamie's mom tho

and not like the whole neighborhood he nuked/moved

Draco Plato

cause she baked cookies

and we like cookies

Tenor | Shinavar

-Snert-

Fair

Mharz

Lol

Tenor | Shinavar

We need dem cookies

Draco Plato

what's life without cookies

come back mom

RebelVampire

fenaur clearly doesnt have cookies

Tenor | Shinavar

...Does Iris make some fine cookies?

RebelVampire

its like the most luxury item

Mharz

Dezar actually just want cookies

Draco Plato

Iris certainly does some fine baking in the bedroom

Mharz

Pretty sure Iris can do anything

:3

Draco Plato

except be tall

Mharz

Rip

Draco Plato

Iris brings a box to stand on from now on

RebelVampire

im so glad i was not drinking anything in that moment.

Mharz

No workout will save him from that

Sorry Iris

RebelVampire

i like the sleep agent theory because it makes iris bumping into thistle less of a coincidence

Draco Plato

I do too

Superjustinbros

Lol, yes.

Tenor | Shinavar

Saaaame

Draco Plato

cause it puts thistle more in control than it seems like

thistle laying in bed like all according to keikaku

Tenor | Shinavar

kasjdhLKASJDH.

Mharz

OwO

Tenor | Shinavar

New level of Voyuerism right there

RebelVampire

as long as thistle is still drooling while thinking that

Draco Plato

well he's thinking about jamie's mom's cookies then

Tenor | Shinavar

Or exhibitionist. Or both. \

HHH-

Mharz

He's drooling about food and other stuffs

Tenor | Shinavar

LOL omg

BL doesn't stand for boy love it's Bake Love

Mharz

Pretty sure he wished Iris brought more strawberry cakes

Superjustinbros

I heard strawberry cakes

Mharz

Yas

RebelVampire

ya know iris really should have

Superjustinbros

strawberry cakes for everyone

Mharz

Right?

RebelVampire

cause bribery is another option for getting ppl to talk

Draco Plato

Iris: I know you're not happy to see me, but- BUT- I brought cake, so

Mharz

"Hey uh I brought you strawberry cakes, tell me, are you Dezar?"

Draco Plato

Thistle: eating the cake MMmmmmph?

Mharz

Lol

Draco Plato

Thistle: Man you're focused on this Dezar guy, just go sleep with him then fume fume

Mharz

I heard Dezar likes strawberry cakes too

Draco Plato

Thistle: Who told you that???

Thistle: I mean.... cough I don't care, who cares, who's Dezar, who's cake

RebelVampire

thistle and dezar are really brothers. and the pain iris is always seeing is thsitle remembering that time dezar stole his cake

Draco Plato

inwardly he's just cursing him in his mind

Mharz

He stole the entire thing

Draco Plato

maybe dezar is his split personality

Mharz

Not even a morsel was left

Draco Plato

maybe they're conjoined twins

in their soul

RebelVampire

split personalities opens hilarious doors

iris and thistle sleep together

iris wakes up

surprise dezar is in bed with him

Mharz

Lol

Superjustinbros

"Wake up, sweetie"

Draco Plato

Oh no, I was supposed to capture him but instead I captured his heart

Mharz

Or rather his heart was captured

CalimonGraal

loooool

iris is a pokemon trainer

catches hearts

RebelVampire

hey the king just wanted dezar contained. iris is choosing to contain dezar with love.

Draco Plato

Iris: It's okay, I've contained him in my bedroom sparkles

Mharz

It still works in a way.

Tenor | Shinavar

(I admit minor disappointment in Iris no having candy crush on his phone)

Mharz

Pft

Draco Plato

loooool

RebelVampire

hey maybe we just didnt see it

Mharz

He already finished it

Superjustinbros

>Candy Crush

Eww(edited)

RebelVampire

thats what he did after buying thistle's time

Mharz

So he deleted the app

xxbonecrusher

Hello

Kabocha

he probably had sailormoon drops if he wanted suffering

Draco Plato

Hi Bone~!

Mharz

Hi bone(edited)

RebelVampire

hello bone~!

Superjustinbros

eey Bone~

Tenor | Shinavar

“1. What is your favorite scene in the comic so far and why?”

THe dinner scene: Because Iris comes off so much like a sugar daddy it's killing me.

“2. Though Thistle and Iris grow close rather quickly, much is left to mystery. Who exactly do you think Thistle is? Is Iris right in that Thistle is connected to Dezar in some way? Alternatively, do you think the resemblance is a red herring? Whichever the case, do you think Thistle knows more about Dezar than he lets on? If so, why would he keep it secret? What do you think Thistle’s past is, especially in regards to the pain that Iris keeps mentioning he sees? Do you think Iris will be able to help Thistle in regards to his past, or is Thistle going to be forever haunted?”

I wasn't under the impression they're close at all. Just because you pay to do the deed don't mean jack and neither have been very forthcoming without having serious strings attached/one hell of a mental game of chess going on. DUE TO SPOILERS I can't answer some of this but yeah I like the secret agent idea going around.

Superjustinbros

Seems like the dinner scene is a fav

Draco Plato

it was a good scene

full of emotion

RebelVampire

sorry thistle, no one cares about your dancing. your performance calling is eating(edited)

Tenor | Shinavar

I'm just hooked on the idea Iris is SO USED to being rich any concept around it is kjust mind boggling to him

Draco Plato

thistle was showing much leg

Mharz

Rip

Tenor | Shinavar

To the point he's forgoing so many social norms apparently hhhh

Mharz

Iris is secretly a prince

Superjustinbros

legs

Iris is now our price

RebelVampire

iris was the king's son all along!

Superjustinbros

it's all in the l e g s

Tenor | Shinavar

I'd believe it

Draco Plato

le gasp

RebelVampire

the king just wanted an excuse to meet his son

Tenor | Shinavar

Boi gotta earn his lavish lifestyle

Mharz

Becos he can probably get anything with cash

CalimonGraal

looool

i imagined iris in a prince outfit now

Mharz

Yes

Tenor | Shinavar

Next time he pays for Thistle - meet him in the room already dressed

Superjustinbros

yessss

CalimonGraal

prince iris's actual plan; make thistle into one of his concubines

//lolno

Tenor | Shinavar

IDK I'D BELIEVE IT

Draco Plato

i'd buy it

RebelVampire

nope this is the new canon

iris is a prince

its how he got his sassy walk

Tenor | Shinavar

SO MUCH IS EXPLAINED

RebelVampire

iris also intends to overthrow his father

which explains psychteria

all the pieces fall into place

Superjustinbros

and then we put them back together?

RebelVampire

??? not sure what your meaning is?

Mharz

Fnaf ref(edited)

Draco Plato

if it wasn't in a song I won't get FnaF refs

RebelVampire

QUESTION 3. In recent times, Iris seems to more or less have convinced Thistle to help him. Do you think Thistle will indeed help Iris, or will Thistle throw in the towel for some reason? Similarly, will Iris still want Thistle’s help after they’ve been together for some time? Besides information, how do you foresee Thistle might help Iris? Given Thistle’s fear of his boss, do you think Thistle and Iris will suffer consequences for Thistle trying to leave? Assuming the two manage to find Dezar, what do you think will happen in that case? Lastly, what events in general do you foresee might bring the pair closer together?

Draco Plato

so many questions

Mharz

Somehow I think Thistle will mislead him

Draco Plato

i think foreshadowing has been set up for the boss being hard to get away from

so it seems like he'll be an obstacle at some point because of that

if Thistle were Dezar why would he be so afraid of the boss

what is the boss's secrets

is he a titan

CalimonGraal

the boss is scary

Draco Plato

he don't look scary

Tenor | Shinavar

I'm waiting for Thistle to like; milk Iris dry. "Do you like this?" "SLip me a $20 and I'll tell you" /shot

Draco Plato

he totally should, LOL

Tenor | Shinavar

But nah; the way things sounds there's gotta be a conract on Thistle or something that money alone would prevent him from being able to escape - though with Iris' penchance to just kill and ask questions later in case he was heavily mistaken <_< He's gotta be a top grade A badass for that to just not happen either

THe boss I mean being a badass

RebelVampire

thistle agreed to help cause hes like "clearly this dude wants to be my sugar daddy. time to leave and get to wear jewels and fine fabric outfits all the time."

Tenor | Shinavar

Exactly

Draco Plato

buy me a penthouse sugardaddy

Mharz

Lol

RebelVampire

i would assume the boss has minions so maybe it doesnt matter if the boss is scary or not if the minions are scary

and secretly titans

Tenor | Shinavar

True

Draco Plato

i wonder how strong thistle is

Tenor | Shinavar

Either way something has to exist to prevent Iris' murder itch

strong enough to fireman carry Iris when he's being a shit

Draco Plato

cause if he were dezar on that hypothetical than why would an immortal fear anyone

Tenor | Shinavar

Hm.

THat would fall into the sleeper agent idea, wouldn't it?

If he doesn't know he's immortal-

Draco Plato

true

or if he's a sleeper agent for an organization and not dezar than it could all be a ruse

Tenor | Shinavar

Tho TBF - if you were immortal would you still want to go through pain and live your life on the run?

RebelVampire

if this is the case, thistle is gonna get stabbed, almost die, but then not die and be like "wtf is going on"

Draco Plato

maybe he's trying to have the boss kill iris

Tenor | Shinavar

OH GOD REBEL

Draco Plato

looooool

Tenor | Shinavar

Iris holding him sobbing hysterically in a pool of blood

Thistle just coughs and sits up like "who died wtf iris"

Draco Plato

stop blubbering like a baby you loser, i'm fine

Tenor | Shinavar

-choke- "tis but a flesh wound"

Draco Plato

omg XDD

Tenor | Shinavar

I was about to cheer I didn't feel old

then I remembered we're the same age

OTL

Draco Plato

it's okay, we're old together

kabo and rebel got it too i'm sure

Tenor | Shinavar

wheeze

mathtans

I liked the scene where Iris was all "I will buy all of your knives ... also I will take a couple right now because evil is afoot!"

Draco Plato

i wondered why iris didn't bring his own weapons

after he'd been preparing for days

but then didn't bring weapons XD

mathtans

Left them in the last person he killed. Can always buy more.

Tenor | Shinavar

I want to pretend he did

Draco Plato

pulled a deadpool and left them in the car

Tenor | Shinavar

but left them in the bike

Draco Plato

YUP

Tenor | Shinavar

Cause he's kinda 'derp' about social norms - so I like to think he's one of those people who never failed a lot?

Cause he acts like someone who doesn't know much failure in life <_<

mathtans

Tried spoons on the last mission, they didn't go so hot, needs to buy his knives back.

Mharz

He never picks the knives once he threw it

Superjustinbros

what about forks

mathtans

Had watched 'The Tick' too much.

Draco Plato

when in doubt use cutlery

mathtans

But get the cake to go.

Tenor | Shinavar

hhhhhh

RebelVampire

yes i concur with tenor, that iris isnt well adapted to failure

minus whatever might have happened with his uncle

thistle is not helping iris' ego

Tenor | Shinavar

YeAH

THistle's gonna make it worse I bet

mathtans

Thistle finds Dezar, Dezar says "I am your father", and Thistle helps him escape from Iris.

Draco Plato

oh that could be

dezar could be his dad

cause there was the orphan comment on thistle's end

mathtans

Yis. Dezar gave him up for adoption because people were trying to kill him.

Dezar that is, not Thistle.

Tenor | Shinavar

Would Dezar know tho, bc mom and all that?

mathtans

Don't want to give assassins someone who's a relative to target.

Draco Plato

men give birth a lot on fenaur

Tenor | Shinavar

OH RIGHT

I forgot that

RebelVampire

especially shape shifter men

Tenor | Shinavar

...WHat if the original Dezar is gonna die thanks to Iris but then Thistle changes his identity to Dezar to escape his boss?

Mharz

I ended up thinking of seahorse

I was thinking the boss know who dezar is

Iris shouldve bribed him first

Tenor | Shinavar

Fffft

RebelVampire

i like it cause its ironic, that this immortal dezar actually wasnt so immortal after all

i mean really

where is the king's info coming from

Draco Plato

ponyville

mathtans

Dezar isn't really immortal, it's just he keeps giving the title over to another shapeshifter. Thistle is next Dezar.

Draco Plato

O_O

Tenor | Shinavar

This is true. And look at how rumors/legends get around

Draco Plato

that'd be neat tho if it was just an assassin name or something

Mharz

Gasp

mathtans

It's like that pirate king in "Princess Bride".

Mharz

Dezar is the avatar

mathtans

Roberts.

Draco Plato

yus, that's who i was thinking of too

Tenor | Shinavar

Superjustinbros

Robertsons?

mathtans

Or maybe Iris is the next Dezar. Takes on the mantle to protect Thistle from people who think Thistle is Dezar.

Draco Plato

that'd be neat

but iris so short

mathtans

Stilts.

Draco Plato

they're like storm troopers, gotta be 6ft

RebelVampire

guy who knew the last dezar meets iris dezar, is like "hey did you get shorter"

Draco Plato

then iris pulls out his box and stands on it and says call me short now O_O

mathtans

More like pulls out knives.

Draco Plato

real question is does iris' stature hint at him being the uke

in the future that is

RebelVampire

only if we apply the anime ruleset

mathtans

That means he plays the ukulele in bed?

Draco Plato

now that i know zage is pronounced like mage I feel like anime logic is lost

that's exactly what it means math

mathtans

Problematic if there's no strings attached.

Draco Plato

LOL

noice

CalimonGraal

omg

Draco Plato

awww wouldn't it be cool if Thistle were a living doll

Mharz

I always thought it's pronounced like that

mathtans

I think I ship.... the booth bunnies in Panel 2 here. http://hunter.fenauriverse.moe/comic/9

RebelVampire

i cant unpicture iris playing a ukulele in bed now. and thistle waking up being like wtf im trying to sleep

Draco Plato

oh no i didn't even notice them before, they're cute

CalimonGraal

thistle would make a pretty doll

Draco Plato

Iris: It's because I'm the Uke, this is what I do

RebelVampire

yeah cali's background characters are actually pretty interesting and cute if you take the time to look

Draco Plato

They are, it's true

mathtans

Rebel: Thistle can play the seme instrument.

CalimonGraal

looooooool

RebelVampire

QUESTION 4. Despite the comic’s infancy, there are several mini mysteries that have been hinted at throughout. Who do you think was the mysterious stranger who glared at Thistle and Iris on their “date?” Is it no one, someone from Thistle’s past, someone from Iris’ past, or someone tied to the story in a different way? What do you think the stranger wants from Thistle and/or Iris? Further, Iris has mentioned a missing uncle. What do you think happened to Iris’ uncle? Do you think hunting Dezar will help Iris find him? If so, how? If not, do you think Iris will give up the search or suffer through it for years to come? Lastly, who the heck is Dezar? How do you think he became immortal, and do you think there is an actual way for Iris to defeat someone so dangerous?

mathtans

Let's hear it for background characters!

RebelVampire

aww ukelele duets

mathtans

Like duelling banjos but with more gay.

RebelVampire

rubs hands together cause some of those questions you cant have answers to just from reading cali's other comics

Mharz

I thought it was the boss

Kabocha

I step away to get dinner and come back to conspiracy theories and avatar talk!

Superjustinbros

welcome back~

Kabocha

I'm proud of you all. Anyway, who glared at Thistle and Iris? Probably Iris' boss.

mathtans

The stranger wants to know where to get cool knives and birthmarks like them.

Kabocha

Iris has probably been told not to sleep with his marks.

Repeatedly. AND THEN IT HAPPENED AGAIN.

CalimonGraal

iris pls

mathtans

Or possibly the stranger just wants a nice cake, like Thistle got.

Kabocha

Iris is a walking HR complaint.

Thistle was seduced by cake. :3

Superjustinbros

Seduce the cake back

RebelVampire

gonna give some help http://hunter.fenauriverse.moe/comic/25 glare-y person http://hunter.fenauriverse.moe/comic/43 who we can assume is the boss

mathtans

The missing uncle is actually the guy who was selling gym equipment at the sales day. Disguised. Been tracking Iris for a while.

While the Glare-y person is Thistle's ex-boyfriend.

Or maybe that's the other way around.

RebelVampire

just watched them at the restaurant the whole time thinking "how dare you buy thistle cake you date stealer"

Kabocha

WAIT IS THAT GLARING PERSON............................................ Whatishname

Sen

mathtans

"how dare you go to the one restaurant I cannot afford"

CalimonGraal

i'm not sure if sen was born yet when HoF happened

RebelVampire

no shush cali

its sen

Kabocha

Sen's father! Or grandfather!

mathtans

Sen is also immortal now.

CalimonGraal

loooooool

Kabocha

Sen's memories of his sister are fake.

RebelVampire

maybe it is sen's father tho

Kabocha

She was ACTUALLY his handler and the mastermind of the Psyc/ --cue Kabocha being dragged off for spoilers

RebelVampire

rip XD my theory is its iris' debt collector. iris isnt rich, he just maxes out his credit cards

Superjustinbros

Good idea

Kabocha

GASP! He's gonna break Iris' knees

CalimonGraal

iris trying to impress everyone how rich he is

mathtans

I like that one. Collects debts by taking Iris' boyfriends.

CalimonGraal

has trashcans full of dead cards

mathtans

Or maybe it's a ukulele salesman. ducks runs

Kabocha

What if it's really Dezar with some foundation to cover up his eye marks

mathtans

Or it's Thistle's makeup specialist/manicurist.

RebelVampire

or both O_O dezar quit being a murderer and switched careers but had to hide lest the past follow him

Kabocha

"If he eats cake he's going to ruin his lipstick!!"

Superjustinbros

r.i.p. lipstick

RebelVampire

after thistle ran out he approached thistle and said how dare, now we have to go redo all your makeup

Superjustinbros

what color lipstick does he wear

Kabocha

Black.

Like Iris' heart.

CalimonGraal

like his soul

or that

mathtans

On the topic of how do you trap a person who's immortal... maybe pin them to a wall with knives? Or dig a pit and put tasty cake on top as a trap? (Does Dezar like cake too?)(edited)

Superjustinbros

that sounds brutal

RebelVampire

iris has black everything. black heart, black soul, etc.

CalimonGraal

he likes to paint it all black

mathtans

Black beard?

RebelVampire

i mean tbf being immortal doesnt auto mean youre super invulnerable

Superjustinbros

Black lipstick

RebelVampire

so maybe they just pin dezar to the wall

leave him

CalimonGraal

he still feels pain

RebelVampire

and dezar is just trapped forever

mathtans

Dezar's the pin-up boy.

CalimonGraal

omg

RebelVampire

ppl stop by every tuesday to throw tomatos at him

mathtans

Or cake.

Kabocha

His feelings can be hurt.

CalimonGraal

hes secretly quasimoto

RebelVampire

Iris: You have split ends and your skin is dry. Dezar: cries forever

CalimonGraal

looooooool

RebelVampire

on a diff note, maybe iris' uncle is the king O_O and iris just doesnt realize it cause the king looks like a kid

Superjustinbros

Maybe

mathtans

Oh, right, the King. Hmm, maybe Dezar and the King have a bet going, that's how the whole thing started. It's why Iris had to swear to the consequences and all.

RebelVampire

the king and dezar are teaching iris a lesson about failure

since iris doesnt know about failure

mathtans

That's actually a pretty valid point. They already tried to do it through the debt collector and it didn't work.

Superjustinbros

lol

mathtans

Iris does seem to be rethinking things towards the end there though. That's interesting.

RebelVampire

yes, iris does have a conscience

maybe during his journey iris is going to find out dezar killed his uncle, thus giving him personal incenetive for his hunt. only to find out that his uncle was a terrible person.

mathtans

That would be an interesting twist.

Superjustinbros

ye

mathtans

Or it was an uncle-Dezar duel, and they both attacked, except for the immortality thing guaranteeing a win.

(Or is Dezar the uncle?)

RebelVampire

gasp

Superjustinbros

Anyways I guess since time's almost up, I'd like to say good luck with the rest of the comic, Cali. You have a great story going on here and it's backed up with some cool art (and cute bois).

Draco Plato

I think it's a fun read and the dialogue is well written

mathtans

Yeah, big universe there, much going on!

RebelVampire

but that is an interesting point. dezar can just always win by challenging to duels and then surprise, hes immortal

can never lose

try try again O_O

CalimonGraal

thank :"3

mathtans

Maybe that's why the King wants him dead. Accidentally accepted a duel next month.

CalimonGraal

looooooool

Kabocha

Cali - I look forward to reading more!

Superjustinbros

You're welcome

And I second Kabo~

RebelVampire

COMIC TEA PARTY- THURSDAY BOOK CLUB END!

Sadly, this wraps up this week’s Thursday Book Club chat for now. Thank you so much to everyone for reading and joining us! We want to give a special thank you to CalimonGraal, as well, for making The Hunter of Fenaur. If you liked the comic, make sure to support CalimonGraal’s efforts however you’re able to~!

Read and Comment: http://hunter.fenauriverse.moe/

CalimonGraal’s Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/CalimonGraal

CalimonGraal’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/CalimonGraal

CalimonGraal’s Discord Server: https://discord.gg/pAjPAfu

Comic Tea Party- Thursday Book Club

Next week’s Thursday Book Club will be about Heart of Keol by keiiii. For participants, you have the next week to read as much of the comic as you would like~! We hope to see you on Thursday, September 27th, from 5PM to 7PM PDT for the chat in #thursday_bookclub! @keii4ii Comic’s Main Site: http://www.heartofkeol.com/

Comic’s Tapas Mirror: < https://tapas.io/series/keol/%3E

Comic’s ComicFury Mirror: http://keol.webcomic.ws/