#i tried to post them a while ago actually and the formatting got all fucked and i couldn't fix it

[kissingarthurclaus]

Finally drawn all of my fankids with Rex! 🥺💖💖 It took me a while to get them just right, but I think I've got them looking how I want and WHO I want them to look like!!

From left to right we have the oldest, Kaiza! Quinn, and his twin sister Kiara in the bottom left and finally Mirri the Rodian me and Rex somehow found ourselves adopting x3 I love them all very much and I have SO much lore thought out for them and even arcs going through the Rebels series!! Mainly for Kaiza and Quinn, the others are unfortunately not as developed yet but they will be soon, for now I'm just glad I can show them off hehe!

[micah-nicholas]

I was dissociative-misinfo, and I want to apologize.

Hi, I'm Micah, previously known as the tumblr user dissociative-misinfo. That username has since been taken by another person, whom I am not affiliated with.

For those unaware, during around Sept-Nov(?) of this year, I ran an "anti-misinfo" blog that was involved heavily in syscourse. I was staunchly anti-endo, I posted to r/systemscringe, and I personally attacked a lot of people. Like most people, I joined syscourse because I was angry, and I wanted to get my opinions (that I thought were facts) out into the world. I had a few sources, but much of what I said was fuelled by anger and my own individual ideas of what was "real" or "fake" in regards to CDDs.

So why am I back? Well, I don't know if I am. I didn't have intentions of making a sysblr blog again or returning to the community in any way. But I was informed a little while ago that people were theorizing about me being back under new usernames, and for the sake of honesty and not wanting to "become an urban legend," I sent two users anons letting them know that I am not back, and I would appreciate it if they not spread that I am.

One user didn't publish the ask, and I respect that decision. The other person, @okiimii , did publish my ask. She's actually the reason I decided to make this post at all. She responded to my ask very kindly and made me feel hopeful about returning to sysblr, if I ever decided to.

https://www.tumblr.com/okiimii/769848302226292736/okay-this-is-the-second-time-someone-has-assumed?source=share

There's the link and her response, for anyone curious.

So, this post. Am I back? Not sure yet, to be honest. But I wanted to make at least this one post to publicly apologize to the people I was rude to. I can't dig up every username, since my old tumblr (and reddit) account is fully deleted, but I've searched my old username and found everything I could so I know exactly who deserves apologies and for what.

Disclaimer that I am not very good at apologies. I'm doing my best with this post, but I understand if nobody wants to accept my apologies and if the people who were affected feel like these aren't satisfactory. You're all well within your rights to feel anyway you want about me.

@theapollosystem (regarding this interaction: https://www.tumblr.com/spot-the-ableism/762538026752770048/im-so-sorry-theapollosystem-they-do-this-a-lot?source=share ) As the reblogs to this post pointed out, I should not have personally reblogged you to make my point about introjects. Even ignoring that my point was stupid, it was disrespectful and rude for me to single you out like that. The post has gained a lot of traction, most of which I've seen is positive, which I was happy to see. I was worried when I was 1k+ notes that it would be people siding with me, or attacking you further.

As I said, my original point of argument was really fucking stupid. I was being ridiculously pedantic and petty about a joke, and I remember making multiple posts bitching about that same joke format, because I had some sort of fixated hatred for it. I'm sorry for reblogging you with that, and for indirectly fakeclaiming you.

@sysmedsaresexist (regarding this interaction: https://www.tumblr.com/sysmedsaresexist/763234703319908352/omg-lmao-okay-no-i-cant-this-is-hilarious-this?source=share ) This was NOT my proudest moment, and thinking back, this is when I first knew my blog wasn't going to last. I... have no idea what possessed me to say OSDD isn't a system-related disorder, I really wish I knew how the fuck I got there. This interaction is why some people seem to think my misinfo blog was bait.

The apology here is multi-faceted. I shouldn't have been giving OOP advice, I was not in a headspace to do so and I came across as very fakeclaim-y the way I went about it. Also, obligatory many of my points were fucking stupid. I also shouldn't have tried to veer off in that wild direction with OSDD. I wanted to have the one-up on you, SAS, because you were known for being a large pro-endo blog, and during my time running dissociative-misinfo, I didn't think pro-endos could be right about anything. It was a very binary way of thinking, and really fucking dumb of me.

My entire argument was extremely biased, I was trying to narrow down who was a valid system so I could gatekeep CDDs from people who gave me the ick. I'd also like to apologize for my series of posts following that interaction, about how I was convinced you had a groupchat with SophieinWonderland and that the two of you were sending people after me. OBVIOUSLY, THAT ISN'T TRUE, and you pointed out that you don't even like Sophie. So, I'm sorry for that entire flaming mess.

A blanket apology to anyone else I reblogged who I was rude to, EVERYONE I posted to r/systemscringe (my old username was runaway_convoy, for full transparency), and every system who has introjects because I was really shitty to the lot of you. I'm sorry for behind a cunt to everyone I disagreed with, for fakeclaiming a lot of people through my posts, and for bothering a lot of people who were just existing on sysblr, not even in syscourse, with my bullshit and rants. None of you deserved that.

Next I want to massively apologize to the community of organized abuse survivors as a whole, particularly those with DID/OSDD. I'm not going to touch on the RAMCOA term discourse, I haven't thought about my opinions on that in a while now, and I don't have a stance anymore. It's not something I have personal experience with, so I will be staying the fuck out of that discourse, where I belong.

This apology is for my bait sideblog I ran called snowchester-system. This blog was, frankly, an insult to the system community as a whole. For anyone who wasn't there to see the posts I made: snowchester-system was a bait blog I ran where I pretended to be a 15 year old (later retconned to 27, which was dubiously believed) diagnosed with HC-DID (among other labels that aren't diagnosable), who had been programmed in 2020 by a Dream SMP cult. Obviously I was playing into the systemscringe stereotypes of what makes someone look fake, and I was making myself look as fake as possible.

I didn't interact with many other blogs from snowchester, and the ones I did were fellow bait blogs ran by people in my now-deleted discord server. One of those people was a former owner of r/systemscringe, which is why the subreddit now has a pinned post stating they are not affiliated with the DSMP bait group.

I want to make it abundantly clear that the former owner I was working with is not currently affiliated with the subreddit, nor were they when snowchester was active. It was their idea that I incorporate their old reddit user, u/pomme-pommes, into the bait lore because it would be funny, or attract the sub to post my bait blog more, or whatever was going through our heads at the time.

The fake "lore" I created for my bait blog was extremely offensive to survivors of organized abuse, and it didn't benefit anybody in the system community. That blog only benefitted a few redditors who got karma by posting screenshots of it. For someone who was claiming on my misinfo blog that I wanted to "fix" the system community, I was doing a whole heaping lot of harm to it.

(A side note about the racism allegations part of snowchester's run: One of the fake alters I created for the blog was supposedly hispanic and spoke broken google translated spanish. That was not intended to be racist, I myself am Puerto Rican and I speak some spanish. I thought at the time that an alter who claimed to be fluent in a language he clearly wasn't would be funny from a "this is a syscringe stereotype" perspective. The fake alter was a Quackity introject, and Quackity is a hispanic content creator. The running jokes the fake alter made were the same ones the real-life Quackity has made. With all this in mind, I disagree with being called racist for that fake alter. Was it a shitty thing to do? Of course, faking DID for syscringe bait is shitty. But it was not racism.)

And that's my apologies, with a few clarifications. I definitely didn't cover everyone I affected, but to those I did, I really am sorry. I don't hold the same opinions I did when I ran my blogs, and I have no intentions of being so hateful in the future. If I do start using this blog, it won't be "informational." If anything, I'll post about my personal DID stuff.

Thank you to anyone who took the time to read this. I don't want to leave the system community forever, I've been here in different forms since 2021, and this community means a lot to me. My DID is a big part of my life, and with that so is being in the community surrounding it.

-- Micah

[usagifuyusummer]

Just sharing my recent sketches here... If the formatting is fucked up, I will separate my yapping session on a different post...

So update, I've recently watched until season 2 of the original Fairly Oddparents, and oh boy, am I enjoying it immensely lol. I can't watch everything in one go, since I'm actually still so busy with university and... as usual with unavoidable family matters...

Still, at least I've noticed some people shared the same sentiments as myself on the original FOP. If they ended the series properly, then I won't have these lingering feelings of..., a void I guess about where FOP ended. Hm, I think this void feeling also got my creative drive going overdrive on how FOP would have ended, while also speculating on what Timmy's best fate would be from the show. I guess being reminded of the lackluster way original FOP ended made me sad angry that I wanted to go back into drawing again lol.

About the sketches, some of these were actually inspired by an FOP au by @cubbihue. A few days ago I've stumbled upon a post of theirs talking about the fairy species system and I got inspired lol. Their AU kinda helped me get the hang of how to draw the FOP characters in my own way (my artstyle is a chameleon so, my art will look somewhat different every time lol). So yeah, I do have a lot of questions regarding their AU, but I think I'll just observe them quietly for awhile. Still, if the creator of the AU is reading only this part of my yapping session, I think your AU is neat and cool! I want to read and see more of your AU when I'm able to. Have fun!

Other than that, I still can't get a handle on the FOP artstyle lol. I'll try until I get it.

Besides that, oof, I've also noticed something really upsetting (for me) on FOP. It seems some people blame Timmy for Cosmo and Wanda's relationship decline in the show? Blaming a depressed 10-year old (plus somewhat 50 year old but mentally 10 year old, the original does have some fucked up timelines lol) for that is just... kinda sad and shallow in my opinion? I think it's the people who handled the show and made the decisions were to blame. Heck, even Cosmo and Wanda's character writing and everything feels off in the later seasons. To me, this series has the same problems as Spongebob. As both series do suffer some kind of writing problem and seasonal rot.

Because of the new FOP series, it seems people who hate the original FOP and especially Timmy lmao came out of the woodworks to raise their pitchforks and burn Timmy at the stake for being an insufferable hellspawn hahahhaha. I mean, he is a little rascal hellspawn, but he's just that way? That's what his character is meant to be. Someone who does outrageous things because they didn't get enough attention and care from the people around them, especially from their birth parents. He's 10, of course he's going to make mistakes in his wish making decisions. He's a kid. That's the point of his character.

With his many flaws, that doesn't mean a child is the reason for a romantic relationship failings... I don't think anyone should blame a child for something like that at all. That's just fucking common sense. Adults are more mentally developed than children. Why are the children to blame for something that they don't even understand yet? It is the adults responsibility to nurture and care for the child, so that they grow up knowing their responsibilities and be happy with their lives. Why blame them for something that is out of their control like the relationship failings between two adults??? God fucking damn, look in a mirror first before blaming others, especially a child. (Sorry for the swearing, the Timmy hate made me depressed thinking about it.)

Timmy's not a saint, but he tries y'know? Can't you see that? That's what makes the original FOP so compelling to me. Is that, they are so fucking brave to put someone as depressed with many flaws as Timmy as the MC.

I think that's all I want to say... For now, I'll be observing quietly in the background. Thanks for reading my yapping session.

The Fairly Oddparents Unfinished Sketches Boogaloo 2

[daisies-and-buttercups]

“Love and War / Chapter II″ - Luca Changretta x reader

Summary: Waking up to an empty bed and the words that Luca left for you, you soon realise that everything is going to go down today, and you’ll soon have to pick a side. 

A/N: I swear that this post took me at least three tries, tumblr kept deleting and/or messing up the formatting so I’m really hoping that this is worth it lol 💕

Words: 2.7k

Chapter I Chapter III

⋆﹥━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━﹤⋆

The next morning you shifted in bed, stretching your arms in search of your lover’s body, but all you felt was the crumpling sheets, still warm from where his body was not too long ago. You groaned, sitting up and scanning the room, eyebrows scrunched into a tired look. If you had to guess what had happened the night before just by looking at your room you wouldn’t have had any clues. Your clothes were neatly folded by the chair and there was no other evidence that anything had indeed happened. No clothes abandoned on the floor, no man lying next to you. 

You walked down the stairs almost second guessing yourself, thinking over the night's events while you prepared a cup of coffee that you so desperately craved. Taking a big sip your eyes landed on the small table by the door, only usually adorned by a small plate for your keys and some letters that you hadn’t gotten around to opening yet, now decorated by a beautiful bouquet. You never had flowers around, the item useless and expensive, not something that you could afford with your paycheque, but just with their presence they lit the room up, their delicate perfume filling your lungs. You smiled and walked up to them, lifting the small card up to read it. A simple phrase full of adoration and love, with a few words in Italian, made you blush at the love you felt, but the final sentence made your heart drop. 

If today is kind with my soul, I shall meet you in your dreams tonight, mio amore.

His handwriting was smooth and elegant with each word, but the last sentence was slightly messy, revealing his feelings maybe more than he was used to. His fear. He didn’t think he’d make it back.

So today was the day. 

You scurried over to the phone, picking it up and calling the Shelbys, hoping that someone, anyone, would answer, but no one did. There was no point in leaving the house, you wouldn’t know where to find them and you had no way of knowing where Luca was either. There were many places where this showdown could happen, and even if you found it, what were you going to do? You couldn’t just waltz in hoping not to get shot. Still, the mix of emotions in your chest made you dizzy. Why didn’t he say anything? You dreaded the images that flashed before your eyes, first that of Tommy’s lifeless body, still clutching his gun, then that of Luca, tumbling as a bullet hit him square in the chest.  Tears fell as you pictured those scenarios, but knew that that was all they were. They weren’t real. But even knowing that, you couldn’t stop pacing around the room, counting the minutes and going over the events of the past few weeks.  You didn’t know how to feel about this whole ordeal. You never forgot how Tommy and his family welcomed you when you had been left with nothing, giving you a job, food, inviting you over for drinks and celebrations, but as much as you dreamed of it, you’d never be part of them. You fit in, but not fully. You weren’t part of their circle, but you were part of their “clean” life. Tommy made sure to to leave you out of the dirty deeds, even if you gathered what happened behind closed doors, and by doing so he shut you out of the only part of their life that would make you fully fit in with them. Then Luca arrived, and the calls, on the phone that Thomas brought just for you, since you couldn’t afford one in any other way, started becoming less frequent, with less news. No more talking about the business, no more working by their side, no more gossiping with Ada or Polly on Saturday evenings. You still got your salary, somehow left by your door with nothing else attached to it, not even a note, but that didn’t change the stark difference in your routine. You barely felt like family, or whatever you had ended up being, anymore. You felt even more left out now. So when Luca came around and actually listened to you, and talked to you, and shared his interests while asking about yours, you felt appreciated, loved. You had found somewhere where you fitted.  And now here you stood, weary of whose death you’d have to cry at the end of the day.

It took hours for the phone to ring with news, which made you jump into alertness, rushing over to answer. “Where is he?” You stayed quiet for a moment, fully expecting to hear Polly’s or Ada’s voice, not Tommy’s. He was alive, and clearly Polly had told him about your meeting with the Italian. “Where is-” “Where is he?” he raised his voice in unison to the loud sound you heard not far from him, probably his fist banging against the table.  So they still were both alive. You let a breath out that you were unaware you had been holding, gripping your clothes tightly, adrenaline running in your veins from the news.  He didn’t usually raise his voice, so his anger was evident, yet you weren’t sure if it was directed at you or at Luca. He clearly had gotten away, and the thought of that was enough to lift that weight off your chest. “I don’t know, Thomas.”  “You knew last night, though, didn’t you? When he was in your bed? Bet it felt good, eh, fucking the enemy?” You didn’t answer, your face blushing in shame and anger. He had no right to spy into your personal life. You knew that in his books you were on the wrong side of the war they were fighting, but his words were harsh, cutting through you without any of the warmth they once held. “Don’t defend a fucking wop. Tell me.” “I don’t know where he is. But this has to end, Thomas, this war you’re-” “Why don’t you tell that to your friend?” He pronounced the last word with sarcasm and hatred, but what hurt him was the betrayal he felt when you made it clear that you cared about him.  “I already did. I told him I support neither of your ways. Just stop, someone’s gonna get hurt.“ “And it would be a shame if you got caught in the crossfire.” he spat out, the silence ringing in your ears as if his threat were a slap. “Goodnight, Thomas.” You replied, slamming the phone down, not even sure if he was still there to hear you but not willing to argue anymore. You didn’t stop walking around the halls, hoping that someone else would tell you more about what actually went down, still in the dark, but no one did. 

That night you laid in bed, thinking over everything that had happened, or at least what you knew. The fairytale routine you had fallen in with Luca, the fancy restaurants, chivalrous words and tender kisses were taken away from you so soon after they started, leaving you desperate for what you had started growing so used to. Had it not been for the vendetta, he’d probably be here next to you right now, drawing circles on your shoulders with his fingertips, kissing you softly. But he wasn’t here, and all you knew was that he must’ve been alive somehow, since Tommy had no idea as to where he could’ve been.  Standing up you took a few steps towards the small balcony, desperate for some fresh air. There was barely enough space to stand on it so you leaned on the window frame, spotting someone moving away just as you glanced down towards the back street. Had you been in a less emotional state you’d have never chased after them, but right now all you wanted were answers.  You turned the corner, losing your balance as you slammed into someone, but their hands held you up, pulling you against them.  “You shouldn’t have come out here, principessa. You never know who might linger in the dark.” With your mouth agape you stood still for a moment, realising who was standing in front of you and finally wrapping your arms around him, colliding with his chest once more. He let out a low chuckle, melting into your embrace and holding you, feeling your heartbeat calm him down, a natural remedy that only you could provide. Your tears fell freely, wetting his coat while you shivered against him. “Well, lucky me then.” you joked, breathing in his scent, the notes of sandalwood surrounding you. “What happened?”  “Nothing. The police got in the way.” he shrugged lightly, his hands still around your waist, pulling you against him. “Thomas was looking for you. He called me.” he nodded, looking around the street for any signs of someone spying on them, but no one was around at this time, but he didn’t care either way. “I’m leaving for Camden Town. I won’t be back for a few days, so you won’t see me for a bit.” “And what are you going to do in Camden Town?” You asked, although you already knew the answer. He wouldn’t stop, and there was only one man in London that had a strong connection to Tommy, and not always a good one. You had never met Alfie Solomons, but you knew enough about him to know where this was going. “Not important. I came to get a goodbye kiss.” his eyes crinkled as he smiled, lifting your chin with his fingers and finding his mouth, kissing you with an initial softness, growing into a hunger that he couldn’t afford right now. He groaned, breaking the kiss, resting his forehead to yours. “What are you planning, Luca?”  “Goodnight, dear.”  “It’s not gonna end well.” “Goodnight, dear.” He repeated, kissing your forehead and lingering for a moment more, before urging you to walk back home, waiting until you were out of sight to slip away, walking towards the car that would take him to London. 

You spent days waiting for something, but there was nothing. No calls, no letters, no news.  You picked a few books off your bookshelf, books you had never had the time to read, and scanned the pages, not managing to focus on more than a few pages. It was that dark feeling in your chest that you couldn’t ignore, and the lack of news only made it worse, feeding your mind with the most horrible scenarios.  It felt like a blessing, if only for a short moment, when a call arrived shortly after dinner. You were resting your head on the sofa, singing along to some old songs while you stared at your hands, the concept of time slowly slipping away, when you received the news, making you sit up in disbelief. Polly had been brief, delivering the news and nothing more, leaving you clutching your telephone and staring into thin air for what felt like hours. She hadn’t said anything more, leaving you with the feelings that surrounded you. Sadness, rage, hopelessness… everything was bubbling in your chest, a feeling of guilt coating everything, making you feel like you were somehow at fault here, like you hadn’t prevented this.  You paced around for most of the night, only pausing your wondering when the realisation hit you again, big tears slipping past your eyes as you recalled the memories of the times shared, stopping your incessant actions at the faint knock at the door early in the morning. “I saw your light on.” he looked behind you, his lips twitching up for a short moment, only to fall back into a stoic look when he met your gaze, clearly seeing the tears that you tried to wipe away before opening the door, your eyes red with sadness and rage. “Tell me you didn’t.”  It was a whisper, one that made his heart break. It wasn’t just your expression, nor the redness under your eyes, but your moving away from the door, as if you feared him.  “Alfie Solomons-” he started, willing to offer an explanation for his deeds. “I don’t care about Alfie! I asked you to stop this after the vendetta happened!” you shouted, getting closer just to throw punches at his chest, yet no matter your anger you were nothing but gentle, barely making him flinch.  “He didn’t stop either.”  “Because he’s stubborn. He’s-” “I am too. He killed my men. Just ‘cause you were closer to Arthur doesn’t mean that the death of my men means nothing.” “I don’t want to be part of this anymore.” you announced, slipping from his grasp and moving away, putting as much distance between the two of you as you could. “You never were a part of this.”  “Maybe not, but with how things are going I’m going to end up as collateral damage.” “You know I’d never let anything happen to you. Even if you stood by him, I wouldn’t-” You turned and walked up the stairs, ignoring his words and grabbing your traveling bag from the wardrobe as he made his way up, scoffing but following you into the bedroom nonetherless.  You picked your clothes and folded them quickly, placing them in the bag and throwing a couple other belongings in.  “What are you doing?” He asked, sitting on your bed and stopping your movements by holding your hips, his touch delicate, in harsh contrast with his look. He always felt so… different around you. Delicate, careful, loving. Little things, like the way he remembered what wine you liked, or some of your little quirks, or the softness of his touches when he was near you. After the night where you both fell into your bed, he’d become more open with showing his affection, but before that he never really shied away from it either. His hand gently cradling the small of your back when guiding you into a restaurant, or the brush of his fingers against your cheek when a stray hair got away from behind your ear. “I’m ending it tomorrow.” He announced, avoiding your gaze. “What?” You turned to face him, not fully understanding his plan of attack. “I called a meeting with Thomas.”  “To apologise?” “To make a deal.” He corrected you. “But it might not work. So…” He took one of his rings off, holding your hand and placing it in your palm, closing it around it. “To remember me by. Or not. Maybe it’s better to forget me, after all.” He brought your hand to your lips, as if to seal a deal, smiling. “I won’t have to remember you. You’re not going.” Your hand on his arm was supposed to stop him, or slow him down at least, but he just smiled at you as you would with a child that doesn’t fully understand the state the world is in.  “I have to finish what I started.” “Luca, don’t.” you tried to give it back, but he shook his head, moving away from you and down the stairs. “Arthur didn’t deserve it.”  “He’s the one that pulled the trigger.”  You didn’t speak, not knowing what to add. You knew he was referring to the death of his father, but what Arthur had done was almost out of mercy. Tommy wouldn’t have stopped, so he intervened. There were many mistakes he had made in his life, but dying because of an act of mercy wasn’t what he deserved.  “Ti amo, bedda mia.” And with a final look he left, not waiting for an answer, exhaling when the door closed behind him. He saw the way you looked at him, the tears that escaped your eyes, feeling betrayed by his actions, but he did what he had to do.  “Luca, we’re not finished talking.” Your words had no effect on the man, just like you knew they wouldn’t, but you couldn’t stop yourself from speaking them. It wasn’t only grief that was holding you back now, but fear. For a moment you saw the man just as he had been painted since the beginning: a gangster, a killer, nothing more but a heartless man. You fell back against the wall, clinging on to the ring he had gifted you, the only thing that felt certain right now. You watched as he stepped out, closing the door behind him ever so gently, to avoid making noise, and wondered what hid behind those eyes. How much could you risk for him?

He could feel you looking at him as he made his way out, knowing just how disappointed you were, but he wouldn’t back down. He knew what was going to go down tomorrow, what he’d say, how he'd move, and he’d do anything to have you by his side. 

After all, all is fair in love and war. 

[makeste]

BnHA Chapter 308: VIBE: CHECKED

Previously on BnHA: Lots and lots of Shindou idk what else to tell you.

Today on BnHA: Tired Nomad Deku rescues Shindou from Muscular, and us from Shindou. Muscular is all “OH BOY I SURE CAN’T WAIT TO FIGHT DEKU AGAIN AFTER HE TOTALLY KICKED MY ASS THE LAST TIME!! I’M SURE THIS TIME WILL GO DIFFERENTLY SEEING AS HE’S HAD ALMOST AN ENTIRE YEAR’S WORTH OF ADDITIONAL TRAINING, AND ALSO HAS SIX FOURQUIRKS NOW, IN ADDITION TO THE CONFIDENCE THAT COMES WITH HAVING EIGHT OTHER PEOPLE’S SOULS CHILLING OUT INSIDE HIM OFFERING MORAL SUPPORT AND ENCOURAGEMENT.” Deku is all, “[kicks Muscular’s ass effortlessly].” Muscular is all, “[gets his ass totally kicked].” I for one am very satisfied with this, and with respect to all, I would like to hereby declare this post a discourse-free zone. I’m just happy to see my son out here making good use of his FOURQUIRKS, and more importantly beating Muscular in less than seventeen pages so we can all go on with our lives lol.

damn Deku since when were you allowed to look this cool

from this perspective and with the smoke, cape, backpack, and mask more or less obscuring his actual profile, he looks less like a sixteen-year-old boy and more like a grownass man

OH SNAP

we got a glimpse of this in the cleaned-up scan of 307, but seeing both of his eyes looking so distinctively All Might-esque here is... whoa. I mean we know that his face still looks pretty normal underneath the mask and he doesn’t actually have the black sclera, but still, this is an awesome look. mini-Might

lol Muscular

you and me both. I mean no offense, but yeah

so Deku is just standing there silently

typical Deku. tight-lipped and expressionless. mum’s the word. quiet as a mouse. silent as a grave

okay no but seriously this is so weird and creepy though you guys. Deku please say something or else I’m just gonna mindlessly say whatever stupid things come into my head in an effort to make things less awkward

so Muscular is all “I should probably make a cool speech about revenge but Horikoshi couldn’t think of anything good so I’m just going to stand here clenching my fist real slowly”

“I’m not here to go on a monologue” he says, as he monologues about not monologuing

okay you guys I confess I have only read through/watched the Deku VS Muscular fight once because the arm-breaking is just way too uncomfortable for me to revisit. and so as a result, I have completely forgotten Whatever The Deal Is with Muscular’s eye lmao so let me go look it up real quick

okay so it’s a prosthetic, obviously, and he changes it out according to his mood. that part does sound familiar. I just can’t remember which eye is supposed to indicate which mood. don’t tell me I actually have to go back and reread this shit

lol I’m skimming through chapter 75 now and remembering/realizing that I hardly paid any attention to this the first time around because as soon as I found out the villains were after Kacchan my brain was like “TIME TO FOCUS ON THIS AND ONLY THIS NOW AND FOREVER” and yeah. ah memories

anyway so he started out with the flower-looking eye, and then later on he was all

which begs the question, how on earth could I have ever forgotten the most ridiculous panel I’ve ever read lmao

anyway, but so after all of that, I'm only just now realizing that this isn't one of his previous eye prosthetics in the current chapter; this is an ACTUAL FUCKING ROCK that he's just randomly shoved into his eye socket fkdsjlk

so basically (1) I did all of that painstaking research for nothing, five whole minutes of my life wasted THANKS A LOT, and (2) what, and I have never meant this more emphatically, THE FUCK

anyway so now he's leaping at the building that Deku is standing on top of. but he’s not aiming anywhere near Deku though, wtf

(ETA: HAHA YOU BROKE ALL YOUR MUSCLES YOU LOSER.)

...huh

lmao okay then. I hope those annoying citizens in the building next door are watching this go down and rethinking their life choices

dlkdkljk

just keep standing there pressed right up against the window, why don’t you. “WHAT’S GOING ON THIS SUPER CLOSE COLLAPSING BUILDING IS BLOCKING OUR VIEW.” well, folks, we’ve long since known there’s a critical shortage of hero and villain brain cells, but what we’re learning now is that civilian brain cells are also in short supply

OH THANK GOD DEKU IS FINALLY TALKING THAT WAS ACTUALLY UNSETTLING AS FUCK

SO HE’S STILL OUR GOOD, POLITE, WORRIED, CONSIDERATE DEKU UNDERNEATH THAT COOL AND MYSTERIOUS VENEER. for real, thank fuck, because I swear to god if he suddenly started acting like the Dekus in all of the vigilante AUs my interest in this series would have dropped something like 50% lol. just because he dropped out of school and ran away from home and is currently dressed like the physical manifestation of a Linkin Park playlist doesn’t mean he’s not still the WORLD’S BIGGEST DORK okay

I MEAN, THIS RIGHT HERE. THIS IS WHAT I’M TALKING ABOUT. HE’S APOLOGIZING FOR THE DELAY

PLEASE FIND THE ATTACHED SHINDOU YOU REQUESTED. BEST REGARDS!!!

OH MY GOD WHY IS HE SUCH A BADASS

something about making bold, confident statements while obscured in smoke?? idk but damn it fucking works

ffjkkl

more importantly, should you tell him you actually need your copy of Shindou in excel format and not pdf?? on the one hand you don’t want to sound ungrateful, but on the other hand what are you even supposed to do with this

this chapter so far consists of like 50% smoke, but on the other hand Deku VS Kacchan 2 had a lot of cinematic smoke too so who am I to complain

OMG IS IT HIS ARMS

IDK DID YOU?! TELL ME YOUR SECRETS. PLEASE, AT SOME POINT THIS FIGHT HAS GOT TO ACTUALLY ADVANCE THE PLOT

OHHHHHHH

IT’S EN’S QUIRK!! OH MY GOD OKAY THAT’S ACTUALLY AWESOME

I CAN HEAR THE SOUND OF DISCOURSE RUMBLING IN THE BACKGROUND BUT I DON’T CARE LOL. WON’T CATCH ME EVER SAYING NO TO ANOTHER SIXQUIRK. GO AHEAD, BRING THEM ON, I WANT TO SEE THEM ALL but take it easy though Deku. don’t want to give yourself lung cancer or anything

also it’s good to see that in a very real sense he’s not fighting alone. the Vestiges really did mean it when they said they could appear more easily now. this is on a whole other level

so is this whole next page still En talking, or someone else? because whoever it is sure is chatty

okay, several things

pretty sure it is En, because he keeps saying “I suppose.” for someone who never said two words until one page ago, this guy sure never shuts up. we can’t all follow Muscular’s lead I suppose. oh my god now I’m doing it too

really like the suggestion of Deku using the SIXQUIRKS like tools in an arsenal, because that’s what he’s good at! it’s almost like he’s been training for this his entire life. “you value quirks too much” LOOK HE JUST THINKS THEY’RE COOL OKAY IS THAT A CRIME

where the fuck did all this rope come from

not gonna ask what the fuck that thing is sticking out from the back of his utility belt. Horikoshi will surely explain this

is that a fucking jetpack. I’m sorry Deku were six fucking quirks not enough for you. you can fucking float??? but JUST TO BE SAFE, LET’S STRAP A PAIR OF ROCKETS TO OUR SHOULDERS IDK

-- or wait, is this all supposed to be like a visual representation of En’s metaphor?? OH MY GOD AM I JUST STUPID LOL, DON’T ANSWER THAT. NEVER MIND. NEW LIST!!

rope = blackwhip

jetpack = float

radio = danger sense

and so I’m guessing that this ridiculously phallic thing is supposed to be a flare or something?? and that = the new quirk, smokescreen. well that was a fucking ride lmao we now return you to our regularly scheduled chapter

so now Deku is floating to his heart’s content and thinking that he’ll just sneak up on Muscular and vibe check his ass or whatever

WOOOOOOOO DANGER SENSE YESSSS I LOVE THIS FOR HIM

okay guys, I'm gonna press pause here for a sec to make a serious note, because I am loving the shit out of this, but tbh I'm having trouble enjoying it as much as I want to because I keep getting anxious thinking about the discourse. I know that a lot of the fandom has very strong opinions on Deku's character development one way or the other, and I want to respect that. but I also really have no spoons to debate this topic at all beyond what I’ve already weighed in on. so if it’s all the same to everyone, I plan on staying out of this discussion, at least this week

anyway! that said, YEAH BOI GET HIS ASS

VIBE: CHECKED. CURB: STOMPED. HOTEL: TRIVAGO

-- OF COURSE HE’S STILL FUCKING FINE LOL HE CRASHES INTO BUILDINGS FOR FUN IDK WHAT I WAS EXPECTING

dammit Muscular. how many fucking quirks does it take to beat you?! the annoying thing is that even with all of his cool new powers, Deku is still something of a mismatch against him. anyway r.i.p. to all these poor buildings

OOOOOHHHHH

you guys have no idea how intrigued I am at the prospect of watching Deku try to play both good cop and bad cop here lmao

anyway so Muscular says he doesn’t know, go figure

“I’m not here to make small talk or anything” he says as he small talks about not small talking

OH MY GOD DEKU

are you really gonna talk no jutsu all of these villains from now on?? that last battle really did have a profound impact on you, huh! interesting

you guys he’s really doing it omg

Deku this guy tried to murder a five-year-old literally just for fun. I mean more power to you, but holy shit you’re really gonna try to defeat Muscular with anger management therapy huh

I MEAN

WHO COULD HAVE SEEN THAT RESPONSE COMING dlkjslkjk

FUCK’S SAKE DEKU, I KNOW YOU MEAN WELL BUT THEY CAN’T ALL HAVE TRAGIC PASTS KIDDO

but. I have to admit, I do still like that he tried. probably knew just as well as we did what the end result was going to be, but still. he made the effort in good faith and I respect that

uh oh

why do I get the feeling Muscular just got a whole lot deader

oh my god oh my god he’s doing the “powering up” stance ffff don’t fucking tell me you can still use your fucking arms here, Deku

BUT MORE IMPORTANTLY WHAT’S THIS??

okay so basically he’s saying that whatever it was he sensed in Tomura, he doesn’t sense from Muscular. which, yeah, that sounds exactly right. good judge of character here lol

AHHHHAHAHA YESS

WHOOPS, GET FUCKED I GUESS

WOOOOHOOOOOOOO

lmao so apparently this is the belated result of Shindou’s attack from chapter 307?? I’ll be damned. good for you Shindou!! I always liked you buddy. please just take my word on that and don’t fact check that statement

okay lol the one tiny bit of discourse I will allow is that it’s bullshit that he just did that with his right arm. like, I’ll fully acknowledge that. that makes no fucking sense, and I demand an explanation from the Great Plot Hole Filler himself. he’s never let us down before when it comes to continuity so I’m trusting him not to suddenly start now

that said, we love to see a rematch against a boring guy settled quickly and decisively within the span of a single chapter. THANK YOU

I like that Deku implies that his power is being a smart nerd who battles villains using the power of ANALYTICS. he basically didn’t do anything except restrain Muscular and wait for Shindou’s attack to take effect while halfheartedly checking to see if he regretted any of that murder and stuff

(ETA: and almost forgot to mention, he made excellent use of all four of his active SIXQUIRKS. it’s like the chapter title said; this is basically him fighting all-out, and it’s a sight to see.)

also, as cool as the mask was, this just feels right. like, we had our fun, now let us see his face, yes good

anyway, I think this was a good start towards establishing What’s Up With Deku Right Now! so if it’s all the same to Horikoshi, I would next like to take some time to explore Why’s Up With Deku. that, and What’s Up With Everyone Else, Especially Kacchan. por favor

[n7viper]

I posted 7,039 times in 2022

That's 7,039 more posts than 2021!

342 posts created (5%)

6,697 posts reblogged (95%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@hawkeshep

@moss-flesh

@commander-krios

@plisuu

@alongtidesoflight

I tagged 6,845 of my posts in 2022

Only 3% of my posts had no tags

#art - 2,806 posts

#dragon age - 2,385 posts

#other - 1,527 posts

#mass effect - 1,319 posts

#shepard - 745 posts

#lavellan - 443 posts

#cullen - 315 posts

#garrus - 307 posts

#solas - 293 posts

#hawke - 229 posts

Longest Tag: 134 characters

#for the piercings - i wish i had some artistic talent because i would die to see her with some extra piercings i can't see in the game

I sent 3 gifts in 2022

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

my friend just sent me this video and I just -

those are some pretty crazy rock formations

51 notes - Posted September 12, 2022

#4

Random OTP Asks

I scraped a random assortment of questions from this mega post so that I could answer them in a very self-indulgent way. I didn't originally number them, and it turns out I ended up with an odd number. Sorry to all Increments of Five enjoyers out there.

Who is always horny and will have sex, at any place and at any time?

Who slides their arm around the other’s waist?

Who tops and who bottoms?

Who acts tough but actually is really submissive?

Who is louder in bed?

Who does some crazy stunt to try and impress the other and who ends up driving them to the ER after it backfires?

Who likes to give the other hugs from behind followed by a kiss?

Who causes the tomfoolery and who has to try and stop the tomfoolery?

Who’s ready for marriage first?

Who wants kids first?

Who’s the first to break down because they’re going to be parents?

Which one has more insecurities? Over what?

Would they hate-fuck if they were mad at one another? If they had a falling out?

Which one stubbornly tries to pretend they aren’t sick?

Who initiates PDA the most in public?

Who is your OTP’s unofficial/official child?

Who pulls the other closer while sleeping?

Who likes to sit in the other’s lap?

Who still blushes when their partner compliments them?

Who asks the other’s father/father figure to marry their son/daughter?

Who sleeps on which side of the bed?

Who would be a lovey dovey drunk?

Who do they ask to be their bridesmaid(s)/best man/men?

Who distracts the driver by being a bit too provocative in the car?

Favorite canon moment of them?

Least favorite canon moment of them?

Which one fixes up the other one’s outfit in the morning (adjusting a tie, putting hair in the right spot, etc)?

What theme would their wedding be, if they were going to get married?

See the full post

76 notes - Posted September 16, 2022

#3

A few months ago, I was l lucky enough to receive the most amazing commission of my girl from the lovely @lilithkb (LilithKBArt on Twitter) 💖

I have been absolutely obsessed with this since I got it back. The amount of detail that Lilith put into this blows my mind. I love the tweaks that they made to the armour to make it more Mihri, the colours that we worked together on to make it more meaningful*.

I'm never good at words when it comes to these things because I feel like words can't really convey the love I have for this. If you're on Twitter, please go give them and their amazing art some love!

*green is Mihri's favourite color! However, I tend to associate her with turquoise for some reason. The armour colors are a lovely blend of both of us.

78 notes - Posted September 4, 2022

#2

I was lucky enough to snag a commission slot from the lovely @jentrevellan, so you know I had to get a bust of Mihri 💖 I can’t get over how she looks in her little dress, and the FLOWER CROWN! Thank you again, Jen! 💖💖

160 notes - Posted August 16, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

Cullen's pretty sure he's gonna go grey by 35

722 notes - Posted May 26, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

[fandomscombine]

Heartbreak Woman [Cho/Cedric Ending]

Warning: Angst! Brokenhearted!Reader

WC:1454

I proposed 3 varying endings and the response was across the board so I decided why the heck not write ALL 3 choices!

a/n: I haven't been active on tumblr this past month. Motivation to read & write wasn't really there. Feelin pretty crap. I don't think it's my best work- I actually wrote this ending last month but delay posting it since I promised to post all 3 endings back to back- but with the recent burnout, my progress is slow. Proofread it and push the insecurities & anxieties away and here we are. Love was put into this, I hope you enjoy it! Don't worry, the other 2 endings are on the way.

I tried posting this 9 times now and it keeps saying error. this is me testing it with mobile so formatting is hard but I hope it posts

BG: You were hoping that your best friend, Cedric to ask you to the Yule Ball. Instead you were roped into helping him ask Cho out. It broke your heart, but at least this way while helping him out you could pretend that he was doing all the sweet things to you. On the other side of the picture, Harry was too heartbroken upon learning that Cho is going out with Cedric.

Read the main story before it diverges ending here!

>>>Heartbreak Woman [Main]

>>>MASTERLIST<<<

 

Did Harry Potter really just ask you out and you said yes?

Touching your forehead, it wasn’t bleeding anymore but there is still a slight sting to it from the collision with Harry’s broom. Yes. That definitely happened. You thought to yourself, this isn’t some delusion from the injury.

 This is good. This is good. Hyping yourself up. You enjoy his company and that should be enough to stop your thoughts from going about a certain Hufflepuff boy. The same boy you had abruptly left alone in the greens. It’s not his fault nor it is Cho’s for wanting to date each other. You have nothing against them, they are both such lovely and kind people and not to mention popular- it was only a matter of time that they got together, Hogwarts’ Power Couple.

No, it’s just you and your stupid feelings falling for your best friend and agreeing to help with the courtship.

‘Y/n? Hii.” The voice reels you back to reality.

You blinked. “Cho! Hi!” Greeting her loudly had been taken by surprise. You dial down your volume. “What can I do for you?”

“It’s actually what you did, really… I just wanted to say thank you.”

You were confused, why was she thanking you?

“For helping Cedric I mean” She clarified. “He mentioned that you helped him with the picnic idea. It was very sweet. It was what made me finally say yes.”

“That’s awesome.” You force yourself to smile. “I’m glad you guys are together, I can finally get that git to stop bothering me with date ideas. That’s 3 weeks of my life I’m not getting back!” There was some truth to that statement, now that she and Cedric are together you don’t have to go through the pain of practice dates with Cedric.

“You y/n are the absolute wingwoman! Legend material!” Cho praised. “You're like my fairy godmother!” She continues, wrapping you into an embrace.

“yayyyy….That’s me…” You mumble into her luscious hair. Grateful that Cho couldn’t see your face.  Pulling apart, you don’t let her go quite yet. With hands on her shoulder, you stare unwavering. “Just don’t break his heart yea? He’s really smitten by you, promise you won’t hurt him.”

Cho is taken aback a bit, your words clearly coming from a strong emotional bond with the boy.  Thoughts of love, Eros, passed through her mind but brushed it away - It can’t be y/n help them get together. Y/n’s words must come from Philia love, y/n and Cedric had been best friends since before they could talk! Everyone knows that. They have a soul connection that can’t be replicated.  “I promise.”

~

14th February.

Valentine’s Day.

This holiday sucks.

No, not for the reason that you’re single. Nah.

Today is a downer as you won’t be able to do your annual tradition.

See every since 3rd year you and Cedric would be in a pink ensemble outfit complete with red heart sunglasses. Spreading chants of self love and showering fellow single students and professors with compliments. This all started out when your roommates teased you for not having a date for Valentine’s day.  When Cedric had heard about it, he went all out. The boy basically made sure that every single person knew how wonderful, beautiful and intelligent you are.

It was this day onwards that 2 things happened.

Complementing and advocating for self love, Philautia, in a pink get up became an annual Valentine’s tradition. (Even a couple of students joined the cause, expanding from you just both into an association/group of sorts.)

 You started to see Cedric in a new light. In other words, you were falling in love with your best friend.

Scanning the Great Hall for pink cladded pupils, you were glad that the group had saved you a seat however a certain Hufflepuff was out of sight. Taking a deep breath, you cleared your head. Get it together y/n. Today is about sharing love and do NOT think about Cedric and Cho going on a romantic date in Hogsmeade.

You were about to take a step forward when-

“Argh!” Shutting your eyes as the hall spun around.

“Relaxx!! Relax! It’s just me.”

Feet back on solid ground, you turned towards the perpetrator, the one boy you did not want to see right now. “What the fuck Ced! Don’t scare me like that!”

“I’m sorry…” Cedric raises his arms in surrender. “Is everything alright?”

“Yea everything’s fine.”

Cedric raises a brow. You forget that this boy can see through your bullshit.

“Only had a couple hours of sleep, that’s all.” It wasn’t a lie, in fact you’d only gotten 3 hours of rest last night, it was just the case of omitting that his upcoming date with Cho was the reason for your restlessness. You don’t want to blame it on jealousy, but it is.

Grabbing hold of your hand, he pulls you towards the group. "Alright then, I've got some spare sleeping potion if you need."

You wave to your fellow singles as you sit down."uh..thanks Ced." You couldn't stop vocalizing your confusion as to why Cedric is still right next to you. Normally you wouldn't complain, but today was Valentine's Day.

"Ouch y/n!" Cedric sassed, eyes focused on piling food onto his plate." Just because I have a girlfriend now doesn't mean I would disappear on my best girl."

My best girl. It hurts to be called that in another context than you wanted.

"Don't you have a date with Cho today?"

"Yea but Madam Puddifoot’s Tea Shop  doesn't open until 11am. Which gives me time for our annual Valentine's tradition!"

"But you're taken."

"Yes….but I could still help spreading the love!" Cedric glanced around. "No one minds that I come to join you right?"

A murmur of Nos filled your eyes.

"Haha! See I told you!" Cedric brags, wrapping an arm around your shoulder. Looks at you straight in the eyes, those gorgeous grey irises melting away your defenses."You can't get rid of me that easily." He whispers, loud enough only for you to hear. You could feel the heat filling up your face due to his closeness. Too busy lost in the rapid beats of your heart, you failed to notice his face getting even closer.

A softness like cotton grazes your cheek.

Cedric kissed you!

Your mind is close to being short circuited. The area of where Cedric's lips were a nanosecond ago is cold as ice. The cold contrasted with your now burning hot, blushing face.

You could live in this forever. All external environments quiet, blocked out of focus. Cedric's arms around you while the butterflies in your stomach bursts out, occupying your whole body with sheer giddiness from having his lips on you.

But the daydream breaks.

"Hey Love! You ready?"

"Morning!" He greets, kissing her. "Uh…" It's only 9:34am. You nod, silently telling him that it was okay to miss your annual tradition. You weren't expecting any quality time today, yet he managed even if it was just for breakfast. "Yea.. give me 10 minutes to go change and I'll pick you up at the courtyard?"

"Sounds great. Be quick cause I miss you already!"

"Sure will sweetheart." He pecks her lips again then waves goodbye to the table and he's off, running.

The tension changes once Cedric is gone.

"Can I talk to you outside y/n?"

"uh yeah" Once outside. "What's up?" Trying to sound casual. Cho inviting you to speak privately isn't usual-seeing that you were the couple's go to accomplice for surprises.

"I see the way you look at him."

"I'm sorry?"

"I know.you like him. y/n. I know you like Cedric."

"Cho.. you can't be serious, he's my best friend!"

"I wasn't sure then.but just now..the way you act around him. the way you look at him. y/n is undeniable. It’s  so obvious-I had assumptions then but everyone just brushes it off as your childhood friend with each other. heck even both of you say that."

"Cho…."

"I didn't bring this up before because I felt insecure, jealous even that I can't live up to the standard of relationship you and Cedric have.”

You couldn’t believe what you were hearing. There were too many revelations bombarding you all at once, that you are having trouble processing what is going on.

“But I am tired of what ifs and worrying.” Voice quivering, she continues. “You've got to tell him, y/n."

The words snap you back into place.

"Cho… I can't. I can't ruin your relationship."

If you love someone and they love someone else, you let them go.

~

Everything Taglist :@gruffle1

HP Taglist:@onlyfreds

Heartbreak woman Tagist:

@joalinbenefits @the-natureofme @romanoffs-heart @justmesadgirl @plumso @gleefulleve @wolf-phoenix-lover @ceofcedric @savvy7392 @cedricsfluffyhair @thewayilookatbacon @LIONLIKEWOLFLIKE @mellifluous-cosmos

[yourturntosimp]

safaranger headcanons? i love them sm...

A/N: yes hello i had this formatted so long ago i js couldnt get myself to log in and post it JHGFDFGHJ neways my head got too full and i needed smth to do so here it is!! these were rlly fun to write ngl TWs: none tbh theyre js vibin- mention of toxic traits (overstepping boundaries), safalin drugs the valentines chocolate but it’s for the sake of creativity ok, ig they're kinda yandere if you squint? idk i felt like their canon personalities speak for themselves in terms of yan JHGFDCFVGH, not much besides that

♡ "nerd" /r

♡ they call eachother saffy and ray bc it's CUTE OKAY-

♡ they go out at like 4 in the morning and get 7/11 slushies

♡ safalin gets her blue raspberry and just watches as ranger tries to fill up his cup with every flavor of slushie

♡ this is their usual date as in it happens like three times a week

♡ they go on nicer dates sometimes

♡ like eating awful cardboard pizza in a parking lot

♡ or sitting on the edge of a highway bridge together

♡ taking turns shoving or scaring eachother to see if they could actually get the other to fall off of said bridge and into oncoming traffic

♡ they're so romantic, i know--

♡ safalin is generally very mousey when she's not being murdery, obv, so they can't go on many loud dates, or dates where talking to other people is a must

♡ ranger is generally very loud, so they can't go to many quiet dates either

♡ like. study-date at a library? he's already been banned bc he won't shut up and insists on yelling while he's there

♡ okay, how about the movie theater? wouldn't that work for both?

♡ no.

♡ the answer is no.

♡ he will either watch the movie by himself or just google the ending and twists, just so that he can yell EVERYTHING out in the theater when the movie's about to start

♡ it's awful, and he relishes in the absolute anguish of the other movie-goers

♡ but it's also kinda cute how he grabs safalin's hand and absolutely books it to the exit to avoid the onslaught of popcorn and drinks being thrown at them

♡ and safalin is a sucker for soft shenanigans, so needless to say, this happens often

♡ "but zuzu," i hear you asking because i am omnipotent and i know all, "wouldnt they get banned after a couple times?"

♡ and to that i say,

♡ yes

♡ they are banned from every movie theater in the city, actually-

♡ this is no problem, however

♡ and it ties into another one of their dates

♡ roadtrip time!!

♡ they take turns driving, but they mostly take off-road, probably-illegal paths

♡ why? they both get awful roadrage

♡ and also ranger likes to gas the car to the fastest it can go

♡ they also take turns with songs from their playlists, though ranger sings very loudly to his

♡ when safalin's not driving, she's either asleep, talking to ranger about bizarre medical cases off the top of her head, or rambling about the human brain

♡ that was just me being excessively roundabout in saying that the poor girl has motion sickness </3

♡ ranger's medical knowledge only goes as far as "haha funny advil go brr brr brr", so uh

♡ damn, ig safalin's just gonna have to deal with it for the next 3 hours until it's time for a bathroom break

♡ ranger will stop the car for a quick break if it gets too bad, but saf would personally rather not risk being flung through the fucking windshield-

♡ remember how this all started by them getting banned from all the cinemas?

♡ yeah they rlly drove all the way out just to do that same shit at a different one in a whole other town

♡ ranger is a surprisingly good cook, and safalin is limited to cooking different types of noodles

♡ but ranger, as a good chef, uses his powers for evil

♡ hot sauce. hot sauce everywhere

♡ safalin has her knife collection, ranger has his hot sauce collection. they are hazards.

♡ one day he may just.

♡ get bored and fuck around, yk?

♡ "babe i made you a sandwich!"

♡ "...honey ily but why are there jellybeans in the middle of this ham & swiss sandwich?"

♡ valentines day is a mess.

♡ they divide off the sides of the kitchen and refuse to speak with eachother

♡ you'd think they're fighting but no, they're just making surprise chocolate

♡ safalin sticks with normal chocolate ♡ until she mixes different types of sedatives and medicinal ingredients in them.

♡ for the sake of creativity!

♡ and then she decides that she wants them to be flower-shaped

♡ and she can't go out to the store and buy molds, no, that would make it too easy for ranger to see when he's being terribly un-stealthy at peeking over the cardboard barricade separating the two of them

♡ homegirl starts just.

♡ using piping bags to make petals. no words for this tbh--

♡ her hands are limp the next day, she can't even turn on the lights

♡ ranger is...also creative with his

♡ there are lots of chocolates, but they're all....weirdly shaped

♡ and when safalin finds out that a good half of them have sour gummy worms and skittles inside, that's ample explanation

♡ the rest? hot sauce

♡ this may seem like an unfair tradeoff, but i raise to you an opposition:

♡ ranger eats a single one of safalin’s chocolates and fucking explodes in hives- ♡ he insists on continuing to eat them, but he passes out after the third one is down his throat-

♡ safalin's chocolates were sharp and also drugged

♡ the weird flavored chocolates and the drugged chocolates balance eachother out in terms of awfulness, so it's a fair match-

♡ and also it's the thought that counts, yadayada they're hopelessly in love, whateverrr

♡ they don't fight too often, but when they do it's usually over one thing

♡ boundaries, yayyyy

♡ ranger wants to do everything fast, loud, and spontaneous

♡ this means things like suddenly running up and tackling safalin, or a short trip to walmart turning into a drive to the next state

♡ safalin has alot of problems with stuff like this

♡ she doesn't like sudden impact, she doesn't really like sudden anything

♡ she wants at least a warning beforehand, but ranger being ranger says "lol ok" and proceeds to completely forget within the next 3 seconds

♡ this sets safalin into a place of "you're saying ok but you keep doing it, do my boundaries not even matter to you or what?"

♡ so this is in fact a problem

♡ safalin's end of fault arises with bad communication and clingyness

♡ if she wants a hug, she'll want it immediately, but she won't say anything about it for fear of being a bother

♡ and then she'll get sad about it, because "i want a hug so bad rn but what if im being annoying aaaaaaaaaaaaa"

♡ and then ranger will just have to sit there trying to figure out why his gf is sulking

♡ so if/when he figures it out, he gives her a hug, right?

♡ but then she wants to be like that all day

♡ and ranger can deal with like....an hour, two hours tops

♡ but,,,,,,all day???

♡ safalin doesn't care about things like eating and using the bathroom

♡ "can't you just wait? just like...5 more minutes, please?"

♡ and when he can't bc

♡ bro's hungry, or he has to pee, cmon dude-

♡ she gets all sulky again, and it repeats

♡ for basically all day, every day, 24/7 all year long-

♡ it’s at a point where safalin gets sad when ranger wants to go somewhere else that isn’t with her

♡ so this is also a problem

♡ they're working on it

♡ they're both struggling, but they're trying

♡ ranger yells as a warning while he's charging at safalin, and safalin recognizes the importance of an eating schedule and needing the bathroom. healthy habits, people-

♡ yk if you consider their personalities without the opposites attract ship trope, it could be tough to see how they work together

♡ and honestly, yeah, they don't even know how they started dating eachother, one day they just said uwu at the same time and then they were a couple ig--

♡ but they balance eachother out pretty well

♡ ranger is good at conveying how he's feeling through body language but less with actual language it comes out as just a string of profanities

♡ safalin's body language is also reserved so you can't rlly read her, but her actual language is pretty good at conveying things

♡ so the combination of the two means that safalin is usually the one to help ranger articulate his words, while ranger is the one to clarify the connotation safalin's trying to convey in her words

♡ their communication is (mostly) smooth, and they can read eachother pretty well

♡ AND they're a sadistic murdercouple who also happen to be a pair of the two absolute biggest nerds you could find

♡ so really, what's better than that?

♡ nothing.

♡ they are the peak.

♡ they have an entire cult dedicated to them.

♡ viva la safaranger

[r0zyp0zy0zy]

✿D.K.- trying, and succeeding?✶☼⚠︎

Master list 

Words: 1760

Warnings/kinks: fluffy smut, POTENTIAL TRIGGER WARNING {mentions of puking, mentions of being disgusted about yourself etc. Nothing super intense}

Pairing: Kaminari Denki x FEM!reader

Summary: Denki finally figures out you have an eating disorder

(I wasn't sure to write this as if y/n was underweight or not, so I opted for a neutral, average, build)

Just to preface, I do not have an eating disorder, so some details might be skewed. Please, please, please make sure you're in the right mindset to read this fic, I would hate it if someone got triggered by this :(

**posted on mobile, sorry for the format**

=== NSFW AND POTENTIAL TRIGGER WARNING UNDER CUT ===

It had only taken Denki what, four months, to become suspicious of your eating/puking habit. He wasn't the smartest fella, nor a very self-conscious one either, but after he found your 'calories diary', a book where you wrote down what not to eat, his brain finally slotted the pieces together. His immediate thought was 'why? You’re so beautiful?' and 'why would you do that to your body?'. But after some research, he had a loose understanding of what you had. He was now hyper aware of when you were refusing to eat, and how you were doing it.

"Oh, I ate an hour ago, I'm fine."

"I just have a stomach ache is all."

"I'm feeling sick. I have to go use the bathroom."

Denki was determined to 'make your sickness go away', but he really struggled trying to help you. He tried locking the bathrooms to prevent you from going in, (he failed to realize that you could puke outside, or in a bowl), he tried making you something himself (thinking that you couldn't refuse to eat something that he made. Turns out he was the one that puked that day). He even set alarms on your phone for every few hours telling you 'don't forget to have a snack :)'. Truly, he really was trying to help. Keyword; trying. He was probably better off just calling a doctor or something for you, (which you would've hated).

Denki finally decided to confront you, pulling out your diary as proof. You yelled at him about your privacy, but you softened your stance when he told you that he was concerned about your health, which was a lot coming from Denki.

"I just want you to be happy in your own skin," Denki pouted, a hand on your knee as he sat with you. His eyes glittered with concern, trying his best to not just shake you and yell 'BEGONETH, POISONOUS THINKING! THOU DOTH BAD!'

"I want to be, too," your lip quivered, holding back tears.

"Can I hug you?" Denki pleaded, pouting his lip. You gave him a stout nod, and he wrapped his arms around you. You turned and sat on Denki's lap, hugging him back.

"I can't describe to you how beautiful you are, y/n," Denki murmured. "I'll admit that I'm not the greatest at comforting, but I'll try my best for you."

The two of you sat there for awhile, tangled in an embrace, tears wetting his shoulder. He soothed his hand over your shaking back, trying to calm you. He didn't know what to do, currently. You had never sat on his lap and cried.

"Thank you for trying, Denki," you sniffled, curling your fingers through his hair. "I just feel so disgusted whenever I see myself in the mirror, or in pictures. I hate how I look, and I constantly feel like you're only dating me because you're desperate."

"Fist of all, you aren't disgusting, I love how you look," Denki began, "Second of all, hey, I wasn't that desperate. I actually had a crush on you all throughout middle school, and I was scared shittless asking you out. You're so beautiful."

"Thank you, Buzzy," you sobbed, hugging him harder. "It's just so hard to believe when I have this body."

"Y'know you're not just a body, right?" Denki pulled back, looking you in the eye. "I would never date someone just for their body, despite what everyone thinks. But I have to admit-- Damn, you are one smokin' woman, baby."

A shy smile fitted your face, and you wiped away your tears, "I just want to be happy with myself and how I look."

You sat and cuddled for a bit longer on the bed, Denki whispering praise into your ear. He felt so content with you in his arms, feeling comforted from him.

"...Denki," you said firmly, turning to face him. "Way to ruin the mood."

He looked down to where you were staring, and blushed deeply. Oops, "I'm sorry! I couldn't help it!"

"It's alright, Denki," You giggled, "I get it, I'm just so smokin'"

You attempted to flip your hair while laying down, and winked at the golden haired boy next to you.

"You are," Denki protested, trying to hide his face in a pillow.

"I'll try," you sighed, turning to stroke Denki's hair. "I'll try and be healthy to my body. But god, is it hard."

"D'y'know what else is hard?" Denki said smugly, grinning dumbly.

"Denki! I swear, we can never cuddle without you getting horny," you giggled.

"I'm sorry," Denki replied, hiding his shame in a pillow. "Just making you feel better makes me feel good."

"Oh? Then feel free to make me feel much, much better," you purred, rolling on top of him.

"F-fuck," he whispered, hands catching your waist, "this- this was supposed to be a wholesome m-moment."

"Says you," you snorted, rolling your hips to grind on his erection.

"I-I know but," Denki bit his lip, "I- uhg. I dunno."

"C'mon, Denki-Chan~ please~~?" You hummed, batting your eyelashes at him.

His eyes wandered down to where you were seated, and he felt his dick twitch, "ok. But, I wanna make this about you. So, uh, make sure you tell me if I'm being too selfish, kay?"

You nodded, smiling brightly before leaning in to place a fat kiss on Denki's lips. He whimpered under your touch, fisting your shirt tighter. He excitedly bobbed his tongue against your lower lip, initiating his favourite way to kiss you. Denki gently turned the two of you over, laying you on your back.

"I'm gonna make you feel so good, Beautiful," Denki mumbled, hurrying to remove your shirt. "Oh fuck, you're hot."

You were blushing underneath him and trying not to protest his praise, loosely holding onto his thighs. Denki continued to remove your bra, only taking a few tries, and threw it somewhere on the floor. His Cheshire grin made you wriggle in embarrassment, and you managed to grind up into his crotch.

"Babe, your tits are amazing," Denki drooled, leaning down and trying to grab as much flesh as possible. He attached his mouth around one nipple, sucking and nibbling slightly before moving on to the next one.

"D-denki," you gasped, knitting your fingers through his hair. "Just fuck me, please."

His whole scheme to have a nice, soft, all-about-you night, went out the window when he heard you say that. How could he say no to you? He leaned up again and gave you a sloppy kiss, "ok, baby. Remember, tell me if I'm being too selfish."

You nodded excitedly, readjusting your position. Denki pulled down your pants with ease, groaning at the sight of you in just your panties. You were amazing, and he couldn't believe that he was on top of you, about to make you feel good. He peeled off your panties and threw them beside him. He licked his hand and reached down to your pussy, giving your clit a quick rub before he put a condom on.

Denki sighed with delight as he rubbed his cock between your folds, lubing himself up with your juices, "can't wait to fuck you, y/n."

"Just do it, Denki~" you chided, rolling your hips impatiently.

"Fffuck, you're so hot," Denki hissed as he inched himself into you. "M' so lucky."

You bit your lip through a moan, and guided your hands to your boyfriend's shoulders. You could feel your face heating up, a red hue igniting your cheeks. You were too focused on Denki dipping into you to realize that, oh god, the lights were fully on.

"—wait. The lights..." you mumbled, tempted to push Denki off of you so you could flick them off.

"Nuh-uh, babe," Denki tisked, leaning closer to you. "I hardly ever see you like this with so much lighting. Makes me so much more turned-on for you."

You let out a small moan at his embarrassing words, Denki quickening his pace. You could only groan and tighten your grip on his shoulders, pulling him closer to you. Denki's breath was ragged from the way you clenched against him whenever he went deep enough, trying to trap him inside of you.

"D-denki~~ feels so good," your eyebrows furrowed, bucking with his rhythm.

"Y-you deserve—," Denki struggled, sweat dripping from his forehead, "you deserve to f-feel good, baby. You deserve to feel amazing."

Through your stupor you could tell that he was on the edge of his orgasm, his jaw clenching, and his words coming out jumbled. Denki started rutting into you harder, with more intensity, and tried to swallow his groans.

"Thought you weren't gonna be greedy and cum before me, hm?" You ribbed as he fucked into you wildly.

"It's—," Denki huffed, "—hard when I haven't had sex with you for awhile."

Your pleasure came back to you as Denki struggled to rub your clit, lurching his hips faster. You brought your hand down to do it yourself, saving Denki from a very sore left arm. The mix of the penetration and touches to your clit made you moan out pleas, encouraging Denki to fuck you harder.

"Oh god, oh fuck. Oh fuck your so attractive. Shiiit, you're so sexy, babe," Denki blabbered as he grabbed one of your tits. "Shitshitshitshitshit I'm close—."

"I-I'm gonna cum," you whimpered, failing to give yourself slow, sensual rubs. It was almost vicious how you were touching yourself, desperate for release.

"God, cum for me, y/n," Denki choked as he drooled.

"Yes, yes... yes!" You chanted, throwing your head back and yelling out Denki's name.

"Oh my god—," Denki groaned, eyes rolling back as he filled the condom with his semen. "You are... the bestest thing."

"Thank you, Denki," you smiled, sitting up weakly as he dropped the used condom in the trash. "Thank you."

"Of course!" He yelled, skipping back to you and giving you a hug.

"Denki Kaminari, don't you ever skip towards me naked ever again," you scolded, shoving a finger to his chest.

"What?!" He grinned. "What's wrong with a little flippy-floppy?"

"Kaminari!!"

[bean-na-farraige-agus-foraoise]

Druids ain’t shit and here’s why.

Straight from the Pond- here’s a lesson from your friendly neighborhood historian.

It’s a long post so the history lesson is under the cut. 

Druidic “history” (or pseudohistory rather) actually begins with early renaissance politics. 

Basically Italy is dominating politics and religion by being able to call back to an ancient history that led directly into the formation of the centralized Catholic church. Surprising nobody who's familiar with European history- the German states want in on that action but they don't really have that direct line linking them to antiquity beyond their conquering by Rome- so, like any good 15th century academics, they create that link by just making shit up. 

So they look back at ancient roman writings, and see mention of druids, and also realize that they actually don't know fuck all about them, there's no records of them beyond a few classical authors- and for the record, classical authors are NOTORIOUSLY unreliable, there are entire graduate level seminars dedicated to teaching people how to read through ancient Roman propaganda, almost every druid I have ever met has taken classical authors at face value, anyway I digress, they just start making up a history of the druids, German lands used to be populated by Celts, and they create these mystical druids who serve as the direct precursor to The Church in these areas, like they forge documents and everything so when Italy goes "oh yeah since when?" they have something to hold up as a "gotcha" - they fashion statues and hide them in crypts as further evidence. It’s wild. 

So, France sees that the German states are becoming more politically popular within the HRE (Holy Roman Empire) because of these druid stories, and so they go "Hey Celts used to live in France too... we should have druids"- and they create druid stories. Scotland at the time is very close with France politically and they go "Hey us too, we're still Celts,” and then it spreads to Wales, and then England. Ireland is mostly staying out of druid nonsense- like in this period of the OG pseudohistories Ireland is like "this is disgusting we don't want druids" so like all the writings in Ireland in this period on druids are like "yeah the Church HATES druids"

Things quiet down for a little bit, because the stories are established, the cards have been played, whatever, but then Neo-Classicism and the Enlightenment- and now suddenly it's cool to have ancient history again - but like... Britain has "we got conquered by Rome" or "hey a few centuries ago people were saying we had druids?”; so naturally the more nationalistic go with druids....which is how we get, Iolo Morganweg.  Iolo's real name is Edward Williams but he insisted on going by his "bardic name"- bc druids.  Williams was a Welsh antiquarian- who is in some scholastic circles considered the father of “modern” druidry.  Williams literally named his son Taliesin after the bardic poet behind the Poems of Taliesin which is frequently in association with the Mabinogi in Brythonic texts. To pull from the wiki on this asshole: 

[he made] claims that ancient Druidic tradition had survived the Roman conquest, the conversion of the populace to Christianity, the persecution of bards under King Edward I, and other adversities. His forgeries develop an elaborate mystical philosophy, which he claimed as a direct continuation of ancient Druidic practice. Williams's reportedly heavy use of laudanum may have been a contributing factor

Yeah.... just... yeah. So not only did he forge like hella documents, which today in the 21st century, over 100 years after he was revealed as a fraud, are still more popular than the originals- but he also is the reason that ogham is like that. Williams created a ‘bardic alphabet’ based on combining Scandinavian runes and extant ogham - we are still wading through his bullshit trying to fix ogham. 

And this brings us to the Celtic Twilight...... 

To quote @liminalblessings​, “And a bunch of noodle fuckers decide "hey, we didn't bastardize the Irish enough for the last however long.... We should do more of that."” But for those of you not familiar with the term, it's a nationalistic pan-Celtic movement that wanted to like, make the Celts in vogue again? but like their idea of the Celts as "noble savage” - because the modern era was scary. At this point, Pan-Celtic Nationalism is starting to rise as pushback against British colonialism in Celtic nations. Unfortunately it's heavily reliant on the Druid myth as like.... A foundational shared cultural history between the surviving Celtic nations. The point largely is, though, "look at us. We should all be sticking together because we're the same / cousins / brothers". Which leads to a L O T of Celtic culture from various countries kind of getting.... molded into one singular idea- which is USUALLY what we think of today when we think of Celts. Basically everything gets branded as Irish because the Irish were “pure” and a “separate racial identity” as opposed to the Scots and Welsh. It took that idea of a pan-Celtic singularity, and then went ham with it mostly on Irish pre-Christian stuff, and as it occurred not too long after Williams’ fuckery, it really cemented those forgeries and psuedohistories in the cultural memory. And Williams wasn’t exposed as a fraud until after the Celtic Twilight had died down.

Now... Yeats, we all know Yeats- some people recommend his writings for learning about the fairies. DO NOT LISTEN TO THOSE PEOPLE. Yeats makes up an entire tree calendar, and also files all Scottish fairy lore under the “Irish” tab because he’s part of the Celtic Twilight and didn’t you know that everything Celtic is actually Irish? Fuck this guy. #yeetyeats

Enter... Robert Graves- destroyer of histories and all around fuckwit. Graves maked up an ENTIRE religious notion around a mother goddess and shit. And like, the irony of that is the people he supposedly went to originally were like lol dude you're a fucking idiot none of this is real. But he published it anyways and of course it got taken seriously. And then there's a lot of reverse etymology at this point which is just.... really bad linguistics. And because of Graves’ white goddess + said bad linguistics by others, you get Danu.(Danu is a whole thing, please shoot me an ask if you want a post about all of that nonsense). 

So.... Gerald Gardener.... to quote @liminalblessings​ again- “didn’t have a direct role in druidism, except he kind of did.”  See, Gardner had a good friend who was hella interested in the Celtic twilight. Said friend was hella inspiried by Gardner's "recreation" of old British trad witch traditions... But he didn't jive with the old British trad witch traditions. HE jived with Irish Druidry. So while Gardner's doing HIS thing, his friend's doing the modern Druid thing- heavily drawing from Gardner's own work but "making it more historically Druid" Except, as you may have picked up- there is no such thing as “historically druid” that can be reconstructed. Basically he can only pull from Williams, but because he had issues with with the old 15th century on stuff, up to the Twilight era (despite those being his sources) so he tries to distance himself from the earlier movements and leans hella heavy into Gardner's work as a result. Which is, if you've ever wondered, why Wicca and Druidry have such incredibly similar ritual structures and beliefs.

SO, this guy starts the Druid Order, decides that he’s gonna like pull his teachings from Williams- but he's also gonna say that Williams has nothing to do with his druidry because y'know, Williams has relatively recently been revealed as a fraud. This guy goes through the grueling process of ripping off his best bud gardner founding Druidry, right. So The Druid Order has this rebranding in 1951, that lauds the “history of the druids” as written by Williams but simultaneously rejects Williams saying “yeah we have nothing whatsoever to do with that guy.” Mix into this narrative, Gardener’s “burning times” bullshit, and now not only do we have mythical pseudohistorical druids, but a rewrite of Williams’ “the druids survived conversion” which then turned into - “The druids were heavily persecuted by the church and survived a horrible burning times but despite this there’s a tradition of continuous druidic belief.” Here begins the bullshit known as “vestiges of pagan thought”- which took actual historians not even a decade to disprove, and yet still circulates in pagan circles, because nobody picks up a fucking book.  Theoretical Folkloric archaeology became very popular at this time, which postulates (incorrectly) that all folk traditions and folklore absolutely stems from Pagan times and is 100% the Christianization of pagan practices and thoughts- which is not at all true. (Not-so-friendly reminder that Eostre? DOESN’T FUCKING EXIST. STOP FALLING FOR A JOKE MADE BY A MONK)

Td;lr so far- the druids went from 

the Catholic clergy before the Catholics existed 

to 

a religious group that survived conversion

to

druids survived an intense and violent persecution 

And now? In this our 21st century? 

Well.... druidic organizations today tend to still push these ahistorical narratives, that buy into the pagan persecution complex.... and several of these organizations also have known racists and terfs on their recommended reading lists. And while some organizations have made attempts to become more historically accurate- but the end result is usually.... bad. It tends to result in them using a source from like 1960 that’s been disproven 1000 times since by other historians to go “look a historian agrees with us!” rather than like... keep up with current research trends and academic standards. Druids also tend to be hostile to the syncretism of the Irish church which is just..... so fucking dumb. Don’t worship gaelic deities if you can’t accept that our lore are Christian texts about pagan beliefs. 

So yeah..... druids ain’t shit and I can prove it historically. I am also more than willing to send anyone links to full length books on the history of druids if you want to learn more. 

[astraeass]

[4] start once again;

[cross-posted in ao3 • fem reader]

previous chapter

pairing: levi ackerman/reader

warnings: cursing, violence

words: 4018

Summary:

Erwin assigned your squad a rare inside-the-walls mission. Ending up being successful, you also try to end up successful on warming up your cold behavior.

You currently stood with Mike besides you in front of your captain's door office, who asked for your and some members of your squad assist's for a 'mission' inside the walls. You had no idea of what it could be about, never being apart of these type of unusual assignments that required the help of the Scouts, probably just some dumb shit the Military Police was either not able to do so or simply were too lazy to care of, at least that was Mike told you since he actually went to help Erwin with a pair of them.

"Hey [L/N], you there?" Mike's fingers snapping mere inches away from your face brought you back to reality. You blinked a few times and then looked up to the blond who was growing impatient "Don’t worry too much, you midget. It’s probably the same as always, a little thief that drunk Garrison members can’t get a touch of" Ignoring his little comment about - his enormous height - your height you sighed and nodded. You weren’t worried about that at all, it was just infuriating that the Scouts, the regiment that already has weight upon their shoulders are assigned for simple but annoying tasks that the two remaining regiments couldn’t take care of.

Mike knocked the door and without receiving a answer at all, he just opened the door and stepped inside with all the comfort as if he was the captain himself, you understood though, Erwin and Mike were almost always seen together attached by the hip and your own experiences with them said that they were pretty close. You didn’t like to include yourself, but you trusted both of them plus the members of your squad with your own life.

"Finally both of you came, we were waiting for you" Erwin said after releasing a sigh when he saw both of your forms coming from the door, he already knew it was Mike when he didn’t even had the time to reply the knock in his door, and knowing Mike, he probably brought you with him since you were still as forgetful as always "Take a seat, you’ll know what we’re about talk about, right?"

"Yeah, that infamous mission inside the walls, huh? Isn’t it [Y/N]?" Said Mike with a teasing smirk adorning his lips while nudging your side with his elbow, you were so close to hit his fucking face. Already tensed thanks to your thoughts before about the incompetent military. Erwin arched one of his physically surreal brows and looked up to your still standing form. Seeing how you looked away, Mike decided to annoy you a little bit more.

"Just this little midget who could make a Titan scurry away with her glare is a bit scared of an insignificant mission" He was starting to hit your more impatient nerve but with a deep breath you answered him "First, I’m pretty sure the mission is not insignificant if Captain didn’t ask for half of his squad's help. Second, you can’t call everyone a midget just because you’re a fucking tree and three, I’m not scared!" Your tone got louder for the more you talked, and your face was getting even more red than before. You could have continued if it wasn’t that Erwin were looking at your bickering with Mike in disappointment, so you limited yourself on sitting on a random chair.

"Now that everything is resolved, I’ll explain what are we doing inside the royal capital" Erwin finally was able to start. Bringing what it looked like three pieces of paper, he spattered them on the table so we were able to have a look at them. On the papers, it was written information of three different persons, their physical description, how the currently lived and a large list of antecedents. But what it caught your attention is that all of them were part of the Underground, the city that surrounded the Royal Capital beneath its floor.

You didn’t knew a lot about the Underground, jus a few things you remembered reading from David's various books. Humanity tried to live underground to escape the deadly threat Titans brought, however the exodus was called off and the ruins of the old attempt of humanity's safety is not populated and formed of criminals and vagrants. The deepest sections were now slums, abandoned by the royal government, David told you that even the Military Police were always hesitant to step inside and now you understood everything.

"Are we really doing the MP's dirty job by catching these thieves? That’s pathetic, we have better things to do Captain!" Your anger coming to get you back again made you complain and stand grabbing the end of the table with force. You weren’t someone’s maid to take their shit off by doing jobs like these. Erwin lifted a hand, palm facing your face, making you frown in confusion and growing irritation "You didn’t let me finish, [L/N]" with that, you just sat down again, looking away in embarrassment.

"Yes, we’re catching them, but not for the Military Police's benefits, but for our own" He pointed the three papers that were situated on the table, the sudden sound making you glare at them "We'll tell them that they’ll have to joint the Surver Corps if they want some type of freedom. If they’re refuse, that I doubt, we will turn them over the MPs, that’s all. So read the information in the papers carefully so we can start and end this assignment as fast as possible"

It was a group of three, two males and a young female. Furlan Church, a medium-sized male with dark dirty blond hair and bright grey eyes. The other male, Levi who was rather short is apparently their leader, has short black hair styled in an undercut curtain, pale grey colored orbs and the only female, Isabel Magnolia a young woman with light green eyes and shaggy auburn locks that were usually styled into two pigtails. For what the reports said, all of them were exceptional using the Maneuver Gear, Levi however stood out the most of the three. So that’s why Erwin wanted a bunch of us then.

"As you all know, Shadis' and my request of changing the expedited formation was approved not long ago. We’re planning to use them for the next expedition, so if we capture them soon, they’ll be able to try it out too"

"We’re going to the Underground tomorrow morning, be ready by then" Erwin moved his own orbs to your, deepening his glare "And I don’t want anyone to be late, got it?" Clicking your tongue, you nodded and stared at the floor when you felt his intense glare on you. Tomorrow's gonna be long day

;;

You currently stood - again - besides Mike, however, this time you weren’t in the usual boring walls of the HQ but walking down the dark streets of the Underground. You knew the journey to find those thugs wouldn’t be easy, but didn’t expect to be this complicated. Firstly, you learn that being woman here is not easy, you hated the disgusting looks filthy men were sending your direction. No, of course their glares didn’t scare a woman part of the Survey Corps, but you couldn’t help but imagine how a defenseless young woman could survive down here, and it send chills down your spine.

Then, there’s children literally starving begging for food or even fighting for it, you never heard that living in the Underground was this hard. Sadly you couldn’t help them at all and this for a reason left a feeling of guilt down the pit of your stomach and it didn’t help that the thieves you were supposed to catch could appear in any moment, right now is a perfect situation, when you’re lost in your thoughts.

Just then, a mysterious harsh breeze of wind made you jump in your spot, aggressively interrupting your thoughts and when you looked for what or who provoked the rush of wind inside a closed space like this your eyes widened when you met your objective "[Y/N], I’m pretty sure it’s them! Let’s just chase them with a low profile like Erwin told us, they probably saw them already" Mike said to you with a low tone and you just nodded and followed no far away from him.

They situated theirselves by attaching their 3DMG on the roof of the city and not far behind, you could see that Erwin was already keeping a track. Following Mike's movements, you regrouped with the rest of your squad. You were sure that the group of three already took notice of all of your squad so you just waited for Erwin's orders. About 50 meters separated your squad and the thugs so you weren’t able to hear if they were talking among themselves or not, but their rushed, annoyed looks and frantic mouths moving confirmed that they were planning something out.

Not long after, the shorter male of the group took the lead and attached his hooks to a bridge nearby and flew forwards the bottom part, passing through it with speed followed by his companions. It was impressive, to say at least, but not hard enough to keep the rest of us behind and actually, we were able to be nearer them this time. Once again, the leader this time decided to double back a rock pillar that was in front of us. You deduced they were trying to confirm if all of you were actually Military Polices, since usually your skill levels suppressed theirs.

Suddenly, the group of three separated themselves. Fortunately, Erwin always had a step towards and already assigned each of you other one of the thugs, with yourself chasing after the taller man, Furlan Church. He gave a sharp turn to your right. Erwin looked back to meet your eyes with determination, knowing what it meant, you just nodded and started to chase after the blond thug.

For the next two minutes, he didn’t seem to have the opportunity to escape at all. There wasn’t any type of obstacle that could slow you down and you already could feel the state of irritation coming from his presence when seeing that you kept coming closer. In desperation, he aimed his piston-shot towards a random house you hoped it was inhabited and fired the grapple hooks. You weren’t far behind so it wasn’t difficult to determine what he was about to do from your camp of vision. For the time you rolled inside the house through the glass-less window, the grey-eyed man was the near the other entrance that would lead to his run out.

However, you had other plans for him, and before he could even lift up his arm, you fired your grapple hook to the wall, mere inches away from his face. That apparently startled him and since he wasn’t far away from the other window, he fell backwards the ground outside. You cursed lowly, and ran towards the window looking down when you heard a loud crash downwards and eyes widening by the sight, a messy Furlan laying on heavy looking wood boxes, eyes tightly closed in pain, it seemed that the rammed into them when he fell down. Not wanting to lose this advantage, you quickly stepped down besides him and grabbed his much taller form by the hood hanging from his neck and ready to tie his hands behind his back.

"Ah.. I never expected to be caught like this" you just scoffed, ignoring his comment. When you were sure that the rope was tightly wrapped around his wrists, you forced him to stand up and began walking towards an uncertain direction. Uncertain until you heard various thuds and more crashes that sounded just like the infamous blades resting on your thighs. It wasn’t far away and by Furlan's irritated look, he seemed to recognize the other sounds as well. You just tugged his tied arms forwards and walked where you thought the sounds came from.

Minutes after, without barely blinking since you were keeping eyes open for any movement Furlan could make, you both finally reached the commotion and no far away another woman part of your squad, Lisa, managed to catch the younger girl, Isabel. You both crossed paths and saw that Mike and Erwin, both cornered Levi "Squad leader, are you alright?" You said with a loud to me once both of you were close enough. Erwin looked at our direction and just nodded "Yes. You both did well"

;;

The three thugs were captured, each of them had their wrists tied up with ropes plus sodden cuffs, to maintain their already blocked way to move and obliged to kneel in front of your squad leader. Erwin looked down, expecting o meet their glares, you stood no far away with Mike, in case any of them tried to do something, which right now seemed like impossible "I have some questions to ask you" He lifted the piston-shot of one of the maneuver gears you were able to detach from their bodies and started his interrogation "Where did you get your hands on this?" Silence.

"Your vertical maneuvering skills were excellent. Who thought you?" Erwin’s words meet even more silence, however, in you opinion their glares were more than sufficient. You sweared that if Levi's glare could kill, he really would have done it... for about six times already. Erwin walked towards the latter mentioned, and you certainly worried a bit about his safety "You are the leader, right? Have you ever received military training?" The deadly state of the grey-eyed man just deepened and that seemed that it was enough silence for Erwin, he looked towards Mike who just nodded in affirmation. You knew what he will do, using force is the only way.

Mike grabbed Levi's hair and yanked him towards the filthy floor slamming his face into a puddle of mud in an aggressive manner. His other two friends gasped in surprise, their already hateful gazes just increasing with worry for their friend. Levi just winced a bit and looked up to Erwin once again "I'll ask again. Where did you learn vertical maneuvering?" Silence just covered the ambience, and you noticed how Erwin was losing some of his massive patience, Levi didn’t seem way too well neither.

"We didn’t learn it form anyone! You think we’re gonna let a civil servant push us around?!" Isabel suddenly said. You jumped in surprise and moved from were you stood to walk near Isabel and Furlan, you would expect anything front those two "We figured it out so we could survive in this dump! Anyone who doesn’t know what sewage tastes like couldn’t understand!" You were keeping a somewhat low likeness towards the three of them, but Furlan's words made you remember how these people lived and growled up, how much of the kids starved to death before even thinking of having a childish dream and you felt compassion invading your body for them. Mentally slapping yourself about how heartless you have been, even if you never voiced out loud the thoughts lingering your mind mere seconds ago.

"My name is Erwin Smith. What are your names?" The blonde, satisfied by their answers, tried to ask Levi again, but he didn’t receive something much different. Mike taking the sign and repeated his last actions, this time you felt bad seeing how the raven struggled to catch his breath and how his ego is being broken in front of his own friends and strangers he didn’t want to know about "I applaud your determination. But keep it up, and we’ll move on to your comrades" you knew what you should do now, but still hesitated a bit. With shaky hands, you grabbed Isabel's shaggy hair softly and neared one of your blades into her small neck. You knew that you wouldn’t kill them, but it still left an uneasy feeling.

"If you’re gonna do it, do it!!" The girl exclaimed in anger, making your eyebrows frown, was your compassion that obvious? Was it that obvious to make Isabel risk her life knowing that she’s actually not doing so? Where is your usual cold behavior towards thugs like them? And Levi’s surprised and worried look that you were able to catch from the corner of your eye didn’t help at all however it lasted seconds since he moved his eyes to Erwin, hatred covering his orbs "You bastard..."

"What’s your name?" Erwin tried again. You still didn’t understand why he asked for it, when you remember he was to one that handled all of you their information papers. You just assumed that he wanted to keep a low profile and brushed the thought aside.

"... It’s Levi" His voice still sounded raspy and you could see how kept struggling when catching his breath.

"Levi, would you make a deal with me?"

The man looked up in surprise, eyes widened and confusion adorned his face. It was nice to see a different expression on his sharp features "Deal...?" Erwin nodded and continued with his proposition "I won’t ask about your crimes. In return, you will lend me your strength, and join the survey corps" Levi's confusion turned into a more incredulous one, and somehow, you understood dumbstruck state "If I refuse...?" He asked lowly, probably knowing what Erwin's answer will be "I turn you over the military police. Considering your crimes, I don’t think you or your comrades can expect decent treatment"

"Choose whichever path you wish"

Levi looked at his side, meeting Isabel's and Furlan's determination. His pupils looked up to you, and you felt your body freeze on the spot. He only growled moving his gaze down the puddle of mud with irritation only to meet Erwin back again.

"Very well, I’ll join the Surver Corps"

;;

Tray in hand, you stood in middle of the room. Eyes searching for a certain brunette and they’re usual companion to sit with, but finding no one instead. Alone, you sat in a random empty table, and waited for Hanji and their squad.

It wasn’t that you weren’t fond of your own squad. But as usual, they weren’t there neither. Erwin passing most of his time inside his office or training. Mike whenever the fuck Erwin is at the moment and the rest had more friends they are bonded with.

Hanji Zoë is an enthusiastic person, it was hard to not know or have talked with them. Is like they have a goal to befriend everyone joining the Survey Corps. And at first, you thought you would have never want to have any type of friendship with them since they’re way too loud for liking but look at you, impatiently waiting for their arrival.

Then there’s Moblit Berner who is a total sweetheart. You suppose that he’s a close friend of Hanji, since they spend most of their time time together and neither of them being here eating dinner with you, reinforces that question.

"They’re probably in that closed library where no sunlight hits and lost their control of time... again" you murmured. It wasn’t unusual that you are sitting alone by yourself, your hard capacity to maintain conversations with anyone is enough to make you give up on that. And the little amount of persons that managed to get on your heart are always occupied with someone or something.

You always stood like a sore thumb in any pair you went and spent your ridiculously large amount of free time with. Erwin & Mike, two tall as fuck blue-eyes blondes and then Hanji & Moblit, their conversations always being about trivial topics you barely knew about. However that didn’t mean you didn’t fully enjoy your time with them. Hanji always tried to make you laugh once a day, since 'you won’t be able to show any expressions if you kept having that resting bitch face' and somehow, they succeed every time.

But you really did want to have a larger comfort bubble with a larger amount of friends. You’ve been a scout for several years already, and haven’t found no one as close as your previous mentioned friendships, mayhap two or three acquaintances and a few talks with your squad companions but that’s all. You urged of human communication.

You waited for Hanji and Moblit with your cold and now empty plate under you for nearly an hour, you were growing impatient of the looks some new cadets were giving you since you literally had no reason to stay in the room if you finished your food or maybe is your R.B.F scarier than usual?

You sighed standing up and walked towards the headroom you shared with most of the women, ready to call it a day but stopped when you heard rushed and low voices down the hall. Moving your head slowly to take a peek, the thieves you captured a week ago were standing in the middle of the narrow hall with irritated expressions.

"I’ll go! You’ll probably make a mess if you even think about entering his office"

"Huh?! You’re saying I’m not capable to do so?!"

"..."

"Levi!! Who do you think will do a better job?"

"We don’t even know if that damn paper is there, but-"

"Levi's opinion doesn’t matter here, he’ll probably just say me anyways"

Paper? Office? Are they talking about the Commander’s office? Why would they enter though...?

"Hey! Of course it matters, if I wasn’t here you two would probably rip your heads off"

A silence with a deep breath.

"Furlan’s going"

"Aw, c'mon! I wanted to see if he used a comb to style his brows!"

Not the Commander’s, but Erwin's office

"If I found something like that, I would have told both you, dumbass"

You heard them walking towards your hiding position, so hurriedly you passed in front of them as if you didn’t heard nothing, just in your way to have a deep sleep in your hard as a rock bed.

They easily got startled by your presence, and you couldn’t stop feeling their sharp gaze on you "Everything okay?" You decided to ask, maybe showing a kinder side helps them feel more comfortable.

"Yeah, we just... just got lost!" Isabel said with a nervous grin, still looking stiff thanks to your surprise appearance second ago.

"Ah, really? I know the headquarters from head to toe, I can help you" You answered with sincerity, waiting for them and if they’re willing to ask you.

"Eh, uhm... yeah of co-"

"No, we'll manage" Levi interrupted Isabel's affirmation, irritation starting to form in his expression, narrowing his eyes in suspicion and cold eyes meeting yours. You would have lied if you said you didn’t feel chill down your spine but you just nodded, waved goodbye at them and restarted you walk to your now changed direction.

;;

Furlan huffed, closing the door behind him in a slow movement "Damnit... there’s nothing"

"Nothing?"

The young man standing in front of Erwin's door office jumped in surprise and for you amusement a high pitched shriek. But his scared expression didn’t last long "W-what around you doing here! Wasn’t it enough to make my caught pathetic?"

You just chuckled and smiled at him, Furlan just scoffed, but you were able to see the little light of confusion adorning his light grey-orbs "Shouldn’t I be asking that? Erwin is my squad leader after all" Furlan limited himself to blush in embarrassment after his realization "I just wanted to talk with him, is that wrong?"

"It is not, but you shouldn’t enter his office without permission" and before he could answer you back, you started to talk again "But it’s okay, this happened my first time too, y’know?" Furlan just laughed awkwardly and nodded "haha.. yeah"

"I gotta go but um, if are here to talk to Erwin you should go back" He said turning around and walking out as fast as he could without looking suspicious.

"They’re so awful at hiding it.. maybe asking Erwin to watch their training tomorrow is a good idea"

Next Chapter

[spaceskam]

From A Whisper To A Scream (1/10)

(if the beginning looks familar, it’s because I posted the first 1k before I realized I was going to make it a full story)

ao3

The viola stayed under Alex's chin even as his bow slowed and his fingers fell limp against the neck.

Maria kicked him to tell him he was fucking up, but he couldn't fix it. He was far too busy watching as Michael Guerin, quarterback of the football team who was being scouted by five different universities, slipped into the band room with a note in his hand. He had that award-winning smile on his face as he strolled towards Mr. Richard. Alex couldn't take his eyes off him; he never could.

Two months ago, he'd been assigned to tutor Michael Guerin because he was failing English. He'd been annoyed at first. While everyone else found him charming, Alex found him annoying, arrogant, and chronically heterosexual at best. However, two conversations with him later, he discovered he was a goddamn math genius and he wasn't actually bad at English either, he just didn't put in the effort. Alex had just made himself a personal pest rather than a tutor, breathing over his shoulder until he did his work. That hovering turned into something a tad unexpected...

"Alex," Mr. Richard said, not stopping as he waved the paper in the air, "Mrs. Doyle needs you, bring your bag."

Alex nodded, ignoring Maria's confused look as he quickly packed up his viola and headed towards the door of the band room. Michael was leaning against the wall beside the door, flashing that mischievous grin.

"Don't worry, you're not in trouble," he teased, speed walking down the concrete pathway that led to the virtually abandoned old gym that was only used during volleyball season. Michael had swiped his coach's key and made a copy, letting both of them inside.

"You can't just take me out of class whenever you're bored," Alex scolded, following him through the dimly lit gym towards the locker room without question. As much as those butterflies in his stomach were going crazy, he never let that show. It was easier to pretend he didn't really give a shit about him if he acted like it at all times.

"Who said I was bored? You can't make assumptions like that, Manes," Michael said, still grinning wildly as he unlocked the office that was used as storage more than anything. There were stacks of extra chairs and two old desks.

"I'm not making assumptions, I know you," he said, carefully putting down his case and his bag, "But seriously, our concert is in a month and I have a solo."

"Ooh, violin solo? Look at you," Michael teased. Alex rolled his eyes, standing up and looking at Michael who was waiting patiently for him with his hands behind his back.

"Viola," he corrected. Michael shrugged like the difference didn't matter, rolling from his heels to his toes and then back again. Alex stared at him blankly. "So what’s so important that you couldn't wait until after class?"

Michael's grin became entirely childish as he took a step closer. Alex leaned his hands back on one of the desks, lifting himself to sit on it easily.

"I had a dream about you last night," Michael said. Alex raised a lazy eyebrow despite his genuine interest.

Whatever they did wasn't real. It was something Alex had found to be very useful for bribery whenever Michael needed to do homework or a stress relief tactic, all born out of Michael's innocent questioning if the rumors about Alex were true. Alex was nothing more than a step in Michael's coming out process. But that didn't mean he couldn't have fun with it.

"You were in that sexy little concert uniform, playing me a song, kept me distracted all day," Michael said. Alex furrowed his eyebrows.

"What are you talking about? My black slacks and white button-up? That's not sexy," Alex said. Michael bit down on his lip, eyes scanning over him anyway.

"Don't forget the bowtie," Michael breathed, taking another step closer, "Can I touch you?"

"Depends," Alex said, watching Michael snap his eyes up to meet his to wait for the permission he needed, "Did you finish that book report that's due tomorrow?"

"Yes," Michael answered.

"Mhm, what was it about?" Alex asked. Michael gave a soft sigh of disbelief, his shoulders dropping.

"Really, Alex?" Alex didn't budge. "It was about the roles the different women in Okonkwo's life played."

"Length?"

Michael gave a soft, pathetic whine. Alex leaned back against the wall, thighs spread wide, and letting Michael continue to bounce up on his toes.

"1,534 words, double spaced," Michael answered.

"And?"

"And MLA format, c'mon, Alex," he groaned. Alex allowed a small smile and raised his hand, gesturing him forward. Michael broke out in a smile, barrelling forward to fit between his thighs and his lips meeting Alex's.

Alex locked his legs around his hips, holding onto the back of his head as he kissed him without thought. It was slow, deep, deliberate as Michael pressed in as much as he could. Alex leaned his head against the wall, Michael holding his hips at the edge of the desk to keep them close to his.

Touching him made it obvious how pent up with unused energy he was. He didn't have practice this morning, leaving him extra antsy and needing an outlet. Alex started to push off his letterman jacket with one hand, leading his head to the crook of his neck. Michael shook off the jacket and audibly sighed in relief as Alex touched his arm, slipping under the short sleeve.

"That why you couldn't wait?" Alex asked, voice breathy as Michael skillfully kissed and bit at his neck without leaving a mark. He pulled up the bottom of his shirt to touch more of his skin, feeling the way it helped him relax.

"I just," Michael whispered, pausing just for a second to speak as he squeezed Alex's hips, "There's so much fucking chaos in my head, sometimes I just need you to make it shut the fuck up."

"Sex is really that distracting for you?" Alex asked, laughter in his voice. To him, sleeping with people definitely didn't make his brain stop. If anything, it made him think more.

"No," Michael breathed, his face still in Alex's neck, "It's just you."

Alex felt his entire body go rigid and he thought about pushing him away. It felt like he crossed some sort of unspoken line, but he hadn't. Not really. It was just... A lot.

"Dreaming about you was actually kinda nice, sexy outfit aside,” Michael admitted, huffing a laugh, "Woke up feeling well rested for once."

"Um," Alex breathed, swallowing harder than he meant to. He let his legs drop from where they were locked around his hips. "Maybe we should..."

"Nah, I'm good, sorry," Michael said, lifting his head and kissing him again. Alex pushed away his concerns probably a little too effectively, focusing on his lips as he grabbed a handful of his hair.

They kissed and touched until the bell rang. That part was unintentional and they had to be each other's mirror, fixing up each other's hair and their clothes to make sure they looked normal whenever they went to their next class. Alex deliberately avoided eye contact, not ready to face the weird admissions that came up.

"So, uh, you'll come over after you get out of band practice?" Michael clarified before they left.

"Do I need to? I mean, you already finished your paper," Alex pointed out. Michael's eyes flickered over his face.

"Uh, yeah, right, nevermind," Michael said, putting some space between them until his back hit a stack of chairs and he jumped. Alex furrowed his eyebrows. That was easily the least smooth he'd ever seemed.

"Are you okay?"

"Yes," Michael said firmly, "Sanders is just working late and I had some math homework, but yeah I'm good."

"You're good at math, Guerin," Alex laughed.

"I know," Michael said, a smile slowly coming to his face, "Which is why I said I'm good. Let's go, don't wanna be late."

Alex left first, waiting outside the gym as Michael locked up both the office and the gym. His better judgment told him to put more space between them, let Michael take some space so he could realize whatever he was feeling wasn't real. It'd be gone as soon as he gave it some thought and Alex needed to avoid hurting himself.

But, as Michael locked the gym door and the bell rang telling him he was late for class, Alex didn't budge.

"So, I'll see you after practice?" Alex said. Michael looked at him with wide eyes, but it slowly bled into a sweet smile and he nodded.

Alex headed to class, knowing he was making a mistake and refusing to have any regrets. 

“Why did Mrs. Doyle need you?” Maria asked when he took his seat beside her. He looked at her with furrowed eyebrows.

“Huh?” 

“The art teacher? The one who called you out of class?” Maria filled in, but she soon realized something and her eyes widened, “Wait, you don’t even take art, Alex, what‒”

“Shh, class is starting.” 

He avoided her questioning looks and changed the subject when she tried to bring it up. Eventually he’d probably have to talk about it, but it was much more fun to completely avoid that. He didn’t think he ever wanted people to know he was hooking up with Michael Guerin, at least not while he was in high school. Maybe he’d brag about it in a few years.

After practice, he quickly headed to the car that had been passed down through all of his brothers and started his drive to the back of junkyard where Michael lived in a trailer with Old Man Sanders. Halfway through, his phone started ringing. The only reason he answered it was because of the name across his screen.

“There better be a good reason you’re calling because you interrupted a really good song,” Alex said playfully. His brother’s laugh was clear on the other side of the call, clear enough to tell Alex he was actually somewhere with good reception.

“I can hang up and leave you to it, but I had a small window and I wanted to make sure you were all good,” Flint said. Alex smiled easily. He missed Flint more than he ever thought he would. Their relationships got better once he was out of the house and they weren’t being directly put against each other anymore. 

“Yeah, Dad’s been chill lately,” Alex said.

“Good, good,” Flint said softly.

“Where are you now?”

“Uh, can’t say, you know how it is,” he said. Alex rolled his eyes.

“What’s the point of it being called the family business if you can’t tell family?”

“You know how it is, Alex, you’re not quite a Manes Man yet.”

“I turn 18 in super soon and Dad is already trying to talk to me about the Air Force which means that eventually he’s going to have the whole Family Business talk with me,” Alex said, annoyance in his voice. He was always stuck in this weird middle ground where he both felt left out and wanted nothing to do with it. The idea of being under his dad’s thumb  for his whole life sounded like hell, but there was something kind of cool about their multi-generational dynasty of researchers. He didn’t know too much about exactly what they did, but he knew rich people paid them a lot of money for it. Alex was pretty sure they were spies. “I should get to know where my own brothers are.”

“Well, you know where Greg and Clay are, isn’t that close enough?” Flint teased.

“Clay is boring and Greg gives me history lessons every time I ask him where he is,” Alex groaned, “At least you go cool places.”

“It’s because I’m the coolest,” Flint bragged. Alex rolled his eyes. “Here, I’ll give you a hint: it’s really fucking cold.”

“Canada?” Alex guessed, “Somewhere in Europe? You promised if you went back to Europe you’d get me something.”

“Good thing I’m not in Europe,” Flint laughed, “Not in Canada either. But, hey, look, I gotta go, I was just checking in.”

“Sounds like you’re trying to get out of talking to me before I can figure out where you are.”

“You got me,” Flint said, “But I also have to actually go. I’ll try to come see you soon.”

“Bring me something cool when you do.”

“I’ll do my best. Alright, love you, bye, weirdo.”

“Bye!”

Alex ended the call just as parked behind Michael’s truck and it wasn’t long before he found himself in his kitchen, mixing together ingredients to make cookies as the oven preheated and forgetting all about Flint. Michael had been the one to offer to make the cookies, to give them something to eat while they did homework, but it quickly turned into Alex doing all the work and neither of them was surprised by that.

Nor were they surprised when Michael still wanted something to do. Alex let himself focus on the kisses Michael was putting on his neck, his eyes slowly closing as he completely forgot what he was doing and rough hands slid beneath his shirt. He didn’t know what the hell had gotten into Michael today. He was always touchy, but today he’d brought it to an all new level. Alex didn’t say anything. He liked how desired it made him feel.

However, that only lasted up until the moment they heard his dad’s truck drive up. Alex pushed him off and pulled up the collar of his shirt to wipe his neck dry. Michael quickly hopped up to sit on the other side of the oven, effectively putting a few feet between them by the time Old Man Sanders walked inside.

“Boys,” he said, putting his keys on the hook beside the door.

“Sanders,” Michael said, mimicking the gruff tone of his voice. 

“Hi, Mr. Sanders,” Alex said, giving the most respectful smile he could manage. Sanders was probably used to him being here at this point considering Alex found himself at Michael’s at least twice a week. He was a very dedicated tutor, after all. However, Alex was taught nothing if not to give the best impression to adults as possible.

Sanders, however, never seemed to put up the same over the top act. He walked closer, peering into the bowl of half mixed cookie dough with a raised eyebrow.

“Y’all planning on making dinner or just desert?”

“Haven’t decided,” Michael answered. Sanders nodded.

“Alright,” he said. He looked at Alex and then over to Michael. “Make sure you leave that door open, you know this trailer has thin walls.”

Alex held his breath and Michael’s eyes widened. “Dude!”

“Don’t act like that, I know you.”

“Alex is my tutor,” Michael pointed out. Alex wanted to laugh. As if that would stop him.

“Well it ain’t Alex I’m worried about,” Sanders said. Michael watched him with an unreadable expression until Sanders reached up to ruffle his hair. “Relax, I’m messing with you, boy. You know I trust you more than my own eyes. But I still don’t need Sargent Jackass thinking you corrupted his boy. No offense.”

“None taken,” Alex laughed, letting himself relax when he realized he didn’t care. Sanders suspected something and he didn’t care. That was kind of nice.

“Good kid,” Sanders said, taking a deep breath, “Well, make sure you feed that dog. Alex, you can stay as late as you need.”

Sanders shuffled back to his bedroom and shut the door behind him. Michael leaned his ear against the wall, holding a finger out to Alex to tell him to wait. Alex just rolled his eyes and went back to stirring. Seconds after the shower turned on, Michael was back to being pressed up against him and taking his ear between his teeth.

“Oh, I’m gonna corrupt you alright,” Michael said, voice rough as he pulled Alex’s ass as close as he physically could.

Alex gasped playfully, grabbing his wrists and easily flipping them so Michael’s back was the counter. Michael’s eyes widened and his smile was borderline filthy as Alex pushed up against him. He leaned in close and Michael’s eyes drifted down to his lips before meeting his eyes again.

“You know better than anyone that there’s not much left to corrupt,” Alex said softly, “And what happened to asking?”

Michael nodded, still grinning as he looked at him with those dopey eyes.

“Right, sorry,” he said, “Can you please spit in my‒”

“I’m gonna finish these cookies,” Alex said, gently pushing him out of the way. Michael laughed softly, but he stayed put as Alex did just that.

He eventually found himself on the floor of the living room as the cookies baked. Michael was reading his essay and Alex laid, cuddling their old dog that only answered to the name Dog even though Sanders tried to give him a million names that never stuck. So he cuddled Dog and listened to Michael read and smelled the cookies that were baking. It was nice and homey in a way that made him never want to leave.

It stayed nice as they went over the physics lecture while eating cookies. It stayed nice when Michael fed Dog and suggested they go to his bedroom so they didn’t have to listen to him eat. It stayed nice when his books ended up on the floor and Michael ended up in his lap. It was even nice when Michael bit into his shoulder to keep quiet.

“Okay, so we have 4x²+12x=135, so how does that factor?”

Alex was laying in Michael’s bed, half naked and body still a little hazy as he focused on the homework that he came over to do in the first place. Michael was distracting, but he was going to at least pretend to help with his homework.

“Hmm,” Michael hummed, flopping down beside him after replacing his briefs, “Both factors start with -2x, right?”

“Right,” Alex confirmed, smiling a little to himself. Michael was a math genius and algebra was his specialty, but Alex quite enjoyed when he was able to fog up his brain to the point he had to actually think. “So factors of 135 are 3 and 45, 5 and 27, and 9 and 15, so which of those pairings help you get the factors of the equation?”

“What was it again?” Michael asked, voice genuinely a little lost. Alex rolled his eyes, but he was still smiling as he felt Michael roll closer to peer over his shoulder.

“4x²+12x=135,” Alex repeated. In the middle of his reading, though, Michael had gone back to kissing on his neck. “Hey, pay attention.”

“I am, I am, keep talking,” Michael urged, his hand sliding down until it started to edge past the waistband of Alex’s unbuttoned jeans.

“Keep talking?” Alex laughed, playfully nudging him before squirming a little as Michael's thumb pressed against the hickey he'd left on his ass that was still a little sensitive, “Are you getting off on me reading you equations?”

“You’re just so hot,” Michael breathed, but Alex wasn’t too stupid to hear the concealed yes in his words. He laughed and rolled onto his side, shoving Michael gently.

“You are! You fucking weirdo,” Alex teased, still laughing as Michael rested his head on the bed now that Alex had rolled away. He had that endlessly fond smile that he only gave when they were alone, his curls flopping towards the bed because of gravity. He was ridiculously gorgeous and overwhelmingly sweet. But that was too close to feelings, so Alex looked back to the math. “And you say that I’m a nerd.”

“What if I read you some Shakespeare, would you get turned on then?” Michael questioned. Alex just rolled his eyes and did his best to focus. Michael settled against his back, peering over his shoulder. “Okay, where were we?”

“Yeah, where were we?” Alex echoed.

Thirty minutes passed as Alex talked over Michael's homework. A few minutes in he'd resigned to the understanding that Michael wasn't really listening. He'd rested his head against Alex's back, his eyelashes brushing his skin as they closed and didn't reopen by the time Alex reached the third question. The only reason he knew he hadn't fallen asleep was because, at some point, he'd begun to play with Alex's fingers and he hadn't stopped.

It was weirdly peaceful between them. They didn't do this. They didn't cuddle or touch unless it was leading to something else. That made it feel less like convenience and more like he actually wanted to be here. It made things blurry in a way Alex wasn't prepared for. So why wasn't he putting a stop to it?

After a moment, he found himself not even focusing on the math anymore. Instead his eyes stayed on the way Michael's rough fingers rubbed against Alex's precise calluses that came from playing a stringed instrument every day for years. It was a drastic contrast, similar to the one that came with Michael's torn up nails and Alex's neatly painted ones.

"You need to stop biting your nails," Alex told him softly. Michael breathed in heavily like he was being woken up, lifting his head off Alex's back and leaving him cold.

"Paint them for me and maybe I'll stop," he said, voice rough and sleepy in a way that struck Alex in his chest.

"Wouldn't you get made fun of?" Alex asked.

"Fuck 'em," Michael said. That paired with the cuddling and the whole dream comment from before was... a lot. Alex cleared his throat.

"Okay."

Within a few minutes, Alex found himself perched on Michael's lap and a bottle of nail polish balancing on his math homework. It was a pretty compromising position, both of them shirtless and disregarding the homework he was here for, but Alex couldn't bring himself to mind.

"I wish I could see the look on Valenti's face when he sees this," Alex said, painting the black varnish over his nails. They were short and torn up, the skin around them just as bitten, and Alex knew his work would be messed up within a couple days, but he kept on nonetheless.

"Nah, he won't actually care. The dude tries so hard to fit in that he forgets to have his own opinions. He won't react until someone else does first," Michael told him. He looked dazed and sleepy, his cocky walls thrown to the wind. It was Alex's favorite version of him.

"Still. I don't know how you deal with all of that shit."

Michael shrugged. "It's not like I'm out or anything, so it’s not at me."

"Yeah, but doesn't it bother you hearing them say homophobic shit? I don't think I could stay quiet all the time," Alex said, raising Michael hand closer to his lips. He blew on his nails gently before swapping hands. His freshly painted one rested on Alex's thigh.

"It's easier to stay quiet," Michael admitted. Alex raised an eyebrow.

"Then aren't you just doing the same thing Kyle does?"

"I don't conform so much that I lose myself," Michael said, shifting a little bit as his eyes focused somewhere to Alex's left. "I, uh, I just spent so much of my life in foster care and bouncing around to shitty houses where silence was the best option. It's not an easy habit to unlearn."

"Oh," Alex said, eyes widening a little, "I didn't know that."

"Yeah," he said, shrugging his shoulders, "Once you hit a certain age, they just start putting you in group homes because most families don't want to foster teenage boys. I get it, I guess, but the one I was in last was hell. Everything I did was wrong and I paid for it."

"How'd you end up with Old Man Sanders, then?" Alex asked.

"Long story," Michael said, "But basically he found out I was sleeping in one of the abandoned trucks in the junkyard and instead of sending me back, he went through all the work to get certified to foster and went through hell to get me in his care. I basically just got really fucking lucky."

"Sounds like it," Alex agreed. He didn't have the right words for it and, honestly, he wasn't sure he'd say them if he did. Michael was sharing more than he usually did. They were still in this weird middle ground of doing things they didn't do and Alex didn't want to pop the bubble.

"But my point is that it's not as easy as just speaking your mind," Michael said. Alex nodded, switching hands again to put a second coat. He thought about doing a third coat just to have an excuse to stay in his lap.

"Reminds me of my brother," Alex admitted. Michael laughed and Alex glanced at his face for a second, that easy smile on his lips.

"Your brother? That's a funny way to say you don't think I'm hot," Michael teased. Alex rolled his eyes.

"I meant the whole conformity thing. He used to have a personality, I think, and sometimes he’s still cool, but somewhere along the line he just stopped fighting. It was easier to keep his mouth shut and do what my dad said. Even now he does that, goes where my dad tells him to. I never really got it, but I guess you have a point," Alex said, “I’m just not a fan.”

"You've just got massive balls, dude," Michael said, shaking his head, "Seriously, I know I joke that you're just a band geek, but it takes balls to be you and refuse to conform no matter what. It's... It's really impressive. Sometimes I wish I could be like you."

Alex stared at him for a long minute. He didn't know what earned him this version of this man but he didn't want to go back. He let himself be a little reckless; he let himself fall just a bit.

He leaned in for a kiss and it was welcomed. Michael wrapped one arm around Alex and placed his free hand on his cheek. It felt so natural to be with him in this way and that in itself was overwhelming. But, in the morning, they'd go back to normal. Tonight was a fluke.

Michael tightened his grip on him and moved so Alex's back was pressed into the mattress. Alex weaved his hands into his hair and wrapped his legs around his hips. Michael was warm and relaxed, just comfortable with being with him. Alex had an unhealthy attachment to it. He needed to put space between them before he got his heart broken. 

He pulled Michael closer.

They shared breath as Michael kept the pace slow, each kiss seeming to hold their own distinct and equally important purpose. Alex's heart was slamming in his chest and he didn't mind. 

He dragged his hand over his back. Michael had scars all over him, almost as much as Alex, and he kept them covered with clothes as often as possible. But here he was bare and Alex could feel them. He put his hand flat against the small of his back, pulling him down even more. Michael smiled.

It was all ruined by Alex's alarm going off.

"What the fuck is that?" Michael asked, lifting his head just barely. Alex shoved his shoulders gently. 

"I gotta go," Alex said, sitting up and reaching for his shirt after he turned his curfew warning alarm off.

"Go? Dude, it's late, just stay," Michael urged softly, that same voice from earlier that day when he asked Alex to come over despite not needing his help. A hand crossed over the front of his chest, trying to push him back into bed. Alex pushed his hand away, hoping it would also push away the butterflies that filled his stomach at the request to just stay.

"My dad would freak out if I did that," Alex said. 

"What happened to not conforming?" Michael asked. Alex rolled his eyes.

"Not the same thing," Alex told him. Michael still had that look on his face like he actually didn't want him to go. And Alex really didn't want to. "I gotta go."

"But…" he said, his eyes darting around the room as if it would give him an excuse to make Alex stay. "At least let me drive you home."

"I drove here," Alex laughed. Michael scowled and gave an irritated pout. Alex made the questionable decision to kiss it off his face. When he pulled away, Michael's eyes were still closed and he signed.

"This is torture, you know that, right?" Michael groaned. Alex stood up and Michael collapsed onto the pillow. It was only then that Alex realized the bottle of nail polish hadn't spilled. He didn't comment on it as he reached over to grab it and closed it.

"You already got off tonight and you have two whole hands, so I don't consider it torture," Alex said decidedly, slipping the bottle into his pocket. 

Michael wrapped the pillow up in his arms, cuddling into it as he stared up at Alex with those eyes that were hard to deny. Part of him wanted to cave and crawl back into bed, but a much bigger part knew that would only be bad for him. He needed to take a day or two away from him and reset so he didn't end up catching feelings. Or, more feelings.

"You're so mean to me."

"Shut up," Alex laughed, stepping into his shoes. He picked up his bag and pulled it over his head. Michael still looked utterly pathetic. "You know, for a jock, you're pretty whiny."

 "Fuck you."

"I know you want to," Alex teased. Michael breathed in deep.

"God, I really, really do."

"I'll see you whenever," Alex laughed, grabbing his keys.

"Tomorrow," Michael corrected. Alex smiled and opened his bedroom door.

"Tomorrow."

[ultadachi]

pentagon mafia au headcanon: how you met them

a/n: hi so this was requested buuuut the new tumblr fucked the formatting really bad when i tried to post it with the ask so i’m just gonna do it in a regular post lmao. but shoutout to the anon who requested this!!!!

Warnings: mafia stuff, and mentions of violence and murder

(these are based off of these mafia!ptg headcanons btw!!!)

-

Hui (The boss/leader)

You met him when your father wanted to make a deal with Hui’s group. In exchange for a treaty and some protection for his group, he’d give Hui your hand in marriage. You obviously weren’t happy about it but there wasn’t really anything you could do. But during your time before the wedding when you’d go off on dates with Hui to get to know him better, you found that he seemed to actually put in effort to get to know you, and he did seem to care -- even though he knew you clearly didn’t want to marry him. So to get you out of the deal, he ‘got rid’ of your father, knowing his mafia was too small and weak to do anything to himself or his own. In the end, you broke off the engagement, but you stayed with Hui because you had truly fallen for him. But this time, you’d go at a slower pace.

-

Jinho (The strategist)

You’d known Jinho for a while since you were apart of Hui’s mob. You were lower ranked than the main 9, but you tended to get called to the field a lot, which meant you had to work with Jinho quite a bit. Thankfully for him, you were a lot more competent than a lot of the field workers -- including some of the higher ranked guys like Hyojong. But you did tend to go against his orders just because of what you claimed was a “gut feeling” which really pushed his buttons. But your plans always worked out, which seemed to only annoy him further. But for some reason, you getting on his nerves while still being able to get your job done was what really intrigued him. You’ve had a ‘thing’ for a bit, keeping it a secret from Hui.

-

Hongseok (The medic)

Originally, you were the enemy. You worked for someone they were trying to catch, so they needed you back alive -- so maybe sending out Hyojong and Wooseok to do the job wasn’t the right move. You were immediately brought to the medical ward where you woke up to see Hongseok. At first, you didn’t tell anybody anything, and they couldn’t send you off to Changgu because you were still too badly injured. But after spending enough time in Hongseok’s care, you started to warm up to him. Somehow you managed to make a deal that if you could work for them instead, you’d tell them whatever they wanted to know. Now you go out in the field for Hui, and Hongseok can’t help but get especially worried whenever you leave or are brought to him after a mission.

-

Hyojong (The close combat/weapons specialist)

You’ve been his target for a while now, but the two of you seem to play this weird game of cat and mouse where he gets so close to catching you before you slip right through his fingers. Neither of you can tell if you’re letting him catch you for just a moment or if he’s letting you get away just to keep the chase going. But it’s definitely an unconventional way to flirt. But both of you know that at some point, he’ll have to either capture you or face serious consequences. But for now, you enjoy your childish little game.

-

Shinwon (The spy)

You had met him a year ago when he was undercover, and truthfully, he’s been partly undercover since he met you. He’s too afraid of telling you what he really does, so he’s been lying to you ever since you started dating. You simply think he just works awful work hours since he comes home late and leaves early. He knows he can’t lie to you forever, but he wants you to live in blissful ignorance for as long as possible.

-

Changgu (The torturer)

There really isn’t any cool story of how the two of you met. You worked as a bartender and he talked to you all night once when he came in with his rowdy friends. He asked you on a date and left you his number, and the rest is history. When you both wanted to get more serious, he was very upfront about being in the mafia, but he didn’t specify what he did -- which was good because his might’ve been one of the most fucked up jobs, but you wouldn’t be able to believe the soft and kind boy would be capable of capturing and torturing people -- and he promised to give you a better life than what you had. True to his word, you’ve been happy with Changgu for a while now.

-

Yanan (The sniper)

You quickly climbed the ranks in Hui’s group, and you’ve been avidly trying to take Yanan’s spot for months now. He’s the best sniper out there, and you’re about equal with him -- though Hui would never give up Yanan because it’s not just the fact he’s the best, but the fact he knows he can trust and rely on Yanan. But you’re out to not only outdo Yanan, but be the biggest pain in the ass you possibly can be. He might’ve even tried to take you out himself once, but if he’s the best sniper, you’re the best dodger.

-

Yuto (The hacker)

As a hacker, Yuto spends a lot of his time on his computer. And when he’s waiting around to do communications and recon from home while the rest of the group is out, he gets really bored. So he often plays video games, which is how he met you. You’ve had somewhat of a long distance relationship for about half a year, but you’ve been friends for over two. The only thing is that he has you convinced that he works as a video game programmer which is why he’s always so busy. But he figures since you’re so far away, his little white lie to protect you won’t be too bad.

-

Hyunggu (The versatile)

Kino’s always been a troubled kid in the sense that he got involved with the wrong people. That being said, he’s also always been sweet and kind, which was why you became friends in school and eventually high school sweethearts. You’ve been with him ever since, always well aware of the business he got himself into, but still staying by his side no matter what. Not really the most interesting story out of the bunch, but definitely one of the sweetest.

-

Wooseok (The hitman)

You were one of Changgu’s victims after your brother became one of Wooseok’s. Being the hitman, Wooseok doesn’t usually show much sympathy, but having heard you for days locked away with Changgu, he couldn’t help but start to feel sorry for you, and he genuinely believed that you didn’t have any more information on their target -- you weren’t even aware your brother was involved in the mafia. After that, Wooseok became like your personal bodyguard while they kept you at HQ because now you knew too much.

[veliseraptor]

a kindness you can’t afford

[READ ON AO3]

Written for the anon prompt above, originally tried to post it as a response to an ask, then Tumblr fucked up all my formatting and I deleted the post, forgetting that I cannot just recreate an anon ask. Anyway! It’s a fic! It’s for an idea that I’ve been meaning to write eventually and ended up doing for this!

I wrote more rambly notes the first time I made this post but it’s probably for the best they’re gone. Thanks to @ameliarating​ for edits, as always, and to the Tumblr user who kindly indulged my request for “Chinese obscenities that could pass for a name.” The one Xue Yang uses here is literally “chrysanthemum” but also “anus.” This may be anachronistic, but I’m going with it.

content warnings: none, actually?? I don’t think??? other than, you know, the knowledge that this ain’t going anywhere good

What Xue Yang thought when the first sword went in was motherfucker finally did it.

It wasn’t like he hadn’t seen it coming. He’d known for a while that sooner or later Jin Guangyao would decide he’d outlived his usefulness and try to get rid of him, or else Xue Yang would decide he was done playing Jin Guangyao’s game and cut out his tongue to feed it to him. And then kill him.

Until then he’d just figured he’d enjoy the luxury of Lianfang-zun’s boundless resources, access to the Yiling Laozu’s notes, and willingness to provide Xue Yang with the opportunity to experiment.

But with the old man dead, and Chifeng-zun in pieces, he’d figured that probably sooner rather than later Jin Guangyao would decide he was too much of a security risk and not enough of an asset to keep alive. Jin Guangyao still beat him to the punch. And he didn’t even have the courtesy to do it himself.

Bastard.

The Jin assholes cut him up pretty bad before he managed to get away; least he managed to make sure at least three of them wouldn’t walk away, and a fourth was going to be down a hand. So that was something, even if he was bleeding pretty badly, feeling it in the cold heaviness of his limbs and the spinning of his head. The wound in his leg was the worst, cutting deep into the thigh.

There was a distinct possibility that he was well and truly fucked.

Well, he thought when his body finally gave out and all he could do was slither into the grass on the side of the road so he wasn’t quite so exposed, it’d been a pretty good run, all things considered. Still sucked, and he would’ve really liked to show Jin Guangyao the color of his own intestines right about now, but you couldn’t get everything you wanted.

It wasn’t the death he’d imagined for himself. But it was better than some he could’ve anticipated. Hopefully he’d make a nasty fierce ghost and could go torment Lianfang-fucking-zun for backstabbing him.

Even if that was exactly what he’d expected him to do.

Xue Yang fought losing consciousness for a while, but there was only so long he could hold out before his body surrendered for him.

**

He didn’t expect to wake up alive.

When he did, still fucking hurting and with someone touching his face, at first he was just too tired and sore to try to move like he should, still feeling wrung out and half-dead and figuring maybe playing helpless would be better than trying something when he didn’t have the strength to back it up. Then his vision cleared a little and he recognized who he was looking at.

You, he thought, eyes widening in alarm, and tried immediately to scramble back regardless of the fact that his body screamed furiously at him, because some random stranger who was either trying to help or trying to loot his body was one thing, but Xiao Xingchen-

Who was assuring him that he wasn’t going to hurt him. That he didn’t mean him any harm, and was just trying to tend his wounds.

There was a white bandage over his eyes.

He didn’t know. He didn’t know.

Well, Xue Yang thought, staring at him. Well, well, well.

We’re fated to meet again, he’d said, years ago, but he hadn’t figured for it being like this.

You aren’t going to ask me my name? he asked warily, and Xiao Xingchen smiled at him, utterly clueless, and said I have my own things I’d rather not talk about.

Fucking shit. Unbelievable. The blind idiot, just taking in someone he’d found on the side of the road who he knew nothing about, not asking any questions, tending his wounds…

Xue Yang had never believed much in good fortune. Not for himself, anyway. But this opportunity just getting dropped in his lap, and when he needed it most-

It certainly seemed to qualify.

Good. Fucking fantastic.

He could work with this.

**

He could work with this.

There was something funny about the girl with Xiao Xingchen - a-Qing, or whatever her name was. At first he’d thought she was just pretending to be blind, which would’ve been a problem, but she seemed to really not be able to see. She certainly wasn’t a threat of any other kind. A nuisance, it was becoming clear, and for whatever reason she didn’t like him, but she wasn’t actually dangerous.

And Xiao Xingchen... Xiao Xingchen would be dangerous, was dangerous, but he was also blind, and nice, and didn’t ask questions. Xue Yang had worked out a whole story, an elaborate lie he’d use, but Xiao Xingchen hadn’t asked. He nursed Xue Yang, helpless and useless, like he was a friend.

Motherfucking idiot.

At least it was serving him well. Xiao Xingchen took good care of him. Perfectly solicitous. Admonishing him when he tried to get up and walk too soon. You’ll make it worse, he said, with that sugar-sweet smile. Be careful with yourself. If you want to heal cleanly you need to rest.

It was all working great, absolutely perfect, he couldn’t’ve asked for better.

It wasn’t going to last.

It couldn’t, obviously. Xiao Xingchen would get sick of this magnanimous act and kick him out, or he’d figure out who Xue Yang was somehow and one of them would have to die. There was always a flip side, a catch, a trap, and that it hadn’t shown itself here yet just meant it hadn’t shown itself yet.

It would, sooner or later, and Xue Yang just had to be ready for it.

It’d be easier to feel ready for it if he could stand for longer than half a joss stick without feeling like he was going to collapse. His leg hurt like hell all the time and while he was clawing his way back to his usual strength, as far as he was concerned it couldn’t happen fast enough. It was fine, though. For now, he was safe. For now.

If he kept telling himself that maybe he’d stop feeling like he was going to crawl out of his skin.

At least it gave him plenty of uninterrupted time to watch Xiao Xingchen. He was nice. He was patient. He didn’t raise his voice or lose his temper, as far as Xue Yang could tell. He was so impossibly, infuriatingly good and it couldn’t possibly be real.

“What is it?” Xiao Xingchen asked, and Xue Yang realized he’d been staring at him for a while, congee forgotten and getting cold.

“Nothing,” Xue Yang said quickly, and then narrowed his eyes and said, “you’ve got something on your face, by your nose. Big smudge of dirt.”

“Oh,” Xiao Xingchen said, and laughed a little. “Thank you for telling me. I can’t exactly check in a mirror.”

That was something Xue Yang found very interesting. It wasn’t Xiao Xingchen he’d blinded, and yet here he was. He hadn’t asked any questions about it, but he did wonder what he’d missed while he’d been working on rediscovering the secrets of demonic cultivation and creating a fierce corpse for Jin Guangyao.

“Yeah,” Xue Yang said, and then on a whim, “here, let me help you get it off.”

A-Qing scowled at him. “Xiao-daozhang can clean his own face, asshole.”

“A-Qing,” Xiao Xingchen said, and then smiled at Xue Yang. “She is right, though. I don’t need the help.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Xue Yang said. “Whatever. Come on, it’s bugging me.” He got up and limped over, dropping down next to him and reaching out, using his sleeve to scrub at an imaginary smudge. Xiao Xingchen reached up and caught his arm, but he didn’t knock him away, and he didn’t seem angry. His grip was firm but not hard; Xue Yang just kept himself from yanking violently away or lashing out.

“Stranger,” Xiao Xingchen said, “Please. I can attend my own appearance.”

Xue Yang pulled back slowly. He glanced at a-Qing, who seemed smug, and then back at Xiao Xingchen, and held up his hands.

“All right,” he said. “Didn’t mean to offend you.”

“I’m not offended,” Xiao Xingchen said. He smiled, the expression warm and fuck, he really was intolerable. “But it should be clear that even though I am blind, I’m not helpless.”

“Guess that’s obvious,” Xue Yang said after a brief pause. “If anyone’s helpless here it’s me. I’m the one you had to scrape up off the side of the road, huh?”

That made Xiao Xingchen laugh. For some reason Xue Yang found that sort of satisfying; for some reason a-Qing glared at him.

“You’re not funny,” a-Qing said.

“Daozhang thinks I’m funny,” Xue Yang said. Xiao Xingchen shook his head, but he was smiling again.

Too easy. Blind - literally - fool. It suddenly seemed sort of amazing that he’d stayed alive this long.

At least it was working in Xue Yang’s favor. He’d be ready for when that changed, but for now-

He could enjoy it, for now.

**

The smart thing to do would be to kill Xiao Xingchen before he put two and two together and came up with Xue Yang.

He’d do the girl too, obviously, but Xiao Xingchen was the one who could really hurt him. He might be playing nice now but Xue Yang had fought him before. He knew what he could do. He wasn’t going to assume that his being blind had changed that much. The way he moved mostly hadn’t. He didn’t use a stick like a-Qing, anyway.

So, yeah. The smart thing to do.

He still hadn’t done it. Mostly because the smart thing to do was sometimes also the boring thing to do, and Xue Yang would take not boring over stupid most of the time.

“So when are you gonna leave, anyway,” a-Qing asked loudly.

“Dunno,” Xue Yang said. “Every time you ask me that it gets further away.”

A-Qing scowled at him. “Why are you even still here? Do you like living in a coffin home?”

“Maybe I do,” Xue Yang said. “Maybe I’m not even alive. Maybe I’m a really animate fierce corpse. Like the Ghost General.” He thought of Wen Ning, briefly, chained up with nails in his head. Absolutely useless. Completely uncontrollable, which had really been just the most disappointing. “You wouldn’t know, would you?”

For a moment a-Qing looked a little uncertain. Then she scowled harder. “Daozhang would know. Obviously.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah,” a-Qing said firmly. “Besides, fierce corpses don’t bleed.”

“How do you know,” Xue Yang said. “Met a lot of fierce corpses?”

“Have you?”

“Yeah,” Xue Yang said. “I killed one once.” Its name was Nie Mingjue and its head is probably still in Lianfang-zun’s treasure room. He leaned back on his hands, flexing his leg and wincing at the pain that shot up into his hip. Fuck Lianfang-zun and his entire fucking life.

A-Qing shook her head. “You’re lying.”

Xue Yang shrugged one shoulder. “Believe what you want,” he said. “Doesn’t make any difference to me.”

He heard Xiao Xingchen’s footsteps a moment before he appeared and turned toward him, tensing reflexively and then scowling when that hurt, too. “What are you talking about?”

“Daozhang, do fierce corpses bleed?” a-Qing asked. Xiao Xingchen’s eyebrows rose a little.

“No. Not like living people do, anyway.”

“I knew you were lying,” a-Qing said to Xue Yang. “This asshole says he killed a fierce corpse, but he didn’t know that.”

“I didn’t say I didn’t know. I said you wouldn’t.” Xue Yang grinned at her. “If you’re going to call me names you could at least be more creative, Little Blind.”

Xiao Xingchen shook his head. “Why would you lie about such a thing, Stranger?” he asked.

“Came up when I was telling Little Blind how I’m a fierce corpse myself,” Xue Yang said.

“Don’t call me that,” a-Qing said. Xiao Xingchen seemed startled for a moment, and then smiled a little.

“I see,” he said.

“Well,” Xue Yang said. “You don’t, actually.”

A-Qing looked furious, but Xiao Xingchen let out a bright and full-throated laugh, like that was the funniest thing he’d ever heard. Xue Yang blinked. He hadn’t really thought about saying it, and if he had he’d’ve thought Xiao Xingchen would be touchy about it. But he was smiling, and still chuckling a little, when he said, “no, I suppose not. Perhaps you have us both fooled, though I suspect my sword would know.”

Xue Yang’s ears pricked. “What do you mean?”

Xiao Xingchen set down the basket of groceries he was holding and paused, seeming to be thinking. “My sword, Shuanghua,” he said. “It is able to sense resentful energy, and thus direct me toward beings like ghosts or demons. Or, presumably, fierce corpses. It is how I can still go night hunting.”

“Huh,” Xue Yang said. That was interesting. And he had sort of wondered. He hadn’t heard of anything like that before.

He wondered suddenly how discriminating Xiao Xingchen’s sword was. Did it detect any amount of resentful energy? Or type, or concentration?

Xue Yang tucked that question away for later. It wasn’t important right now.

“How is your leg today, Stranger?”

“Fine,” Xue Yang said. Lied. “Are you just going to keep calling me ‘Stranger’? You could just pick a name and go with it. Or guess. Or use a different name every time you talk to me.”

Xiao Xingchen smiled again, obviously amused. “Or,” a-Qing said, “you could just say what you’re called. Why won’t you, anyway?”

“A-Qing,” Xiao Xingchen said. “Sometimes a man’s history is his own business.”

Wasn’t that a nice idea, Xue Yang thought. He doubted Xiao Xingchen would still say that if he knew who he was harboring.

“Yeah, all right,” Xue Yang said. “I’ll tell you my name.”

A-Qing looked suspicious. “What is it?”

“Ju Hua,” he said. Xiao Xingchen let out a strangled sound, like a laugh disguised by a fake cough. A-Qing recoiled, her face crinkling up in disgust.

“You’re disgusting,” she said.

“Hey,” Xue Yang said. “It’s rude to make fun of peoples’ names,” but he started cackling a second later, hard enough it hurt his cracked ribs. A-Qing got to her feet and flounced off, taking a swing at his head with her stick he was sure was deliberate.

Xue Yang grinned at Xiao Xingchen, who still looked like he was trying not to laugh. “You shouldn’t tease her,” he said.

“She can take it,” Xue Yang said easily. The turn of Xiao Xingchen’s mouth and the set of his eyebrows was reproachful, though both offset by the amusement that was still there.

“You still shouldn’t.”

“Ah, Daozhang,” Xue Yang said, dragging out the second syllable. “Ruining all my fun.”

Xiao Xingchen’s expression faltered for a moment, eyebrows furrowing, and Xue Yang realized that his voice had slipped, a little. He held his breath, tensing, waiting, something almost eager jumping in his stomach.

Here it comes.

Then Xiao Xingchen shook himself and let out a faint laugh, though it sounded a little weak. “I know,” he said. “I’m merciless.”

Xue Yang pictured Xiao Xingchen as he’d seen him first, almost glowing in white, a pinched expression of displeasure on his face. He would’ve seen Xue Yang executed. Not done it himself - couldn’t get those pure robes dirty - but still. He thought merciless wasn’t as far off the mark as Xiao Xingchen probably believed.

“Yeah,” he said. “Absolutely. Those vegetables you bought don’t stand a chance.”

Xiao Xingchen laughed again, and smiled, and Xue Yang blinked at him, something funny twisting in his chest under his heart.

You know I’m going to kill you someday, he thought. Not yet, but I’m gonna do it. And I’ll make sure you’ll know how I tricked you, how stupid you were, when I do.

**

Xue Yang usually slept pretty well, if lightly. He’d learned the trick of it - a need to wring rest out of the hours he got when it was safe, but the ability to wake up fast when he needed to. Usually he could get through the night without waking up, and if he dreamed, he never remembered them.

At first he wasn’t sure what had woken him up this time, just that between one moment and the next he was awake, wide awake with his senses shrilling an alarm, something wrong. His heartbeat picked up and he started to reach for Jiangzai only to stop himself.

Then he heard it: quiet but still audible through thin walls. A soft, distressed sound from Xiao Xingchen’s room.

He held very still, waiting until he heard another. A whimper, almost. Quiet and pathetic, wounded animal. He rose, slowly, on quiet feet, and walked as silently as he could while still limping, out of his room and into Xiao Xingchen’s.

He was lying there on the bed, under a thin blanket that was now tangled around his body. One of his arms was flung outwards, his head turned to the side, face crumpled in a frown. There were red stains on the white bandages over his missing eyes. His chest rose and fell unevenly and too quickly.

As he stood there, watching, Xiao Xingchen made another sound, one of pain, and Xue Yang almost felt it in his chest, in his gut. He took a step forward, and another, and another, until he was standing right next to the bed and looking down at Xiao Xingchen, lips parted, in the grip of a nightmare, so vulnerable, so beautiful in his suffering.

What was he dreaming about? Losing his eyes?

Maybe he’s dreaming about me, Xue Yang thought, and had to bite down on a laugh.

He could see the big vein in Xiao Xingchen’s throat throbbing with his rapid pulse. It’d be so easy. He could draw his knife and plunge it in in less than a second. He could slide it between his ribs and up into his heart. He could slice him open like a pig and pull his guts out through the gash. It’d be quick. Or it wouldn’t, and he’d make Xiao Xingchen scream before he died.

Xue Yang cocked his head to the side and thought about it. What it’d look like. How it’d feel.

He pressed his tongue to his teeth and thought about licking Xiao Xingchen’s blood off his fingers.

His body snapped taut at a sleepy, “Daozhang?” and he moved immediately, dropping down into a crouch next to the bed and reaching out to give Xiao Xingchen’s shoulder a gentle shake.

“Daozhang,” he said, pitching his voice low but gentle. “Xiao Xingchen, wake up.”

Xiao Xingchen was a cultivator. He woke up quickly too, with a sharp inhale. “What,” he said, and Xue Yang let go of him quickly in case he lashed out.

“What’s going on?” a-Qing asked behind him, voice clearer. “I heard noises.”

“Your Daozhang was having a bad dream,” Xue Yang said. “I was just waking him up.”

Xiao Xingchen’s lips pressed together. “I’m sorry for waking both of you,” he said, and his voice sounded - not shaky, exactly, but shaken, and subdued. “I’m all right. You can go back to sleep now.”

“Thanks for the permission,” Xue Yang said. “But I’m good.”

“A-Qing…”

“I’m good, too,” she said stubbornly, but Xue Yang heard her yawn.

“You’re young,” Xiao Xingchen said. He sounded exhausted. It was so - human. Which of course he was, flesh and blood just like the rest of them, but there was still something sort of weird about hearing it. “You need your rest.”

“But-”

“You heard him, Little Blind,” Xue Yang said. “Go to bed. Your coffin’s going to get cold.”

“But-”

“A-Qing,” Xiao Xingchen said, and after a moment she made a disgruntled, frustrated noise and shuffled out. There was a brief silence, and then Xiao Xingchen said, “you, too.”

“Nah,” Xue Yang said. “Like I said, I’m good.”

Xiao Xingchen reached up to his face and touched the bandage, then stiffened with a sharp breath in and turned his face away. “Oh,” he said. “I-”

Shame, Xue Yang thought, with a little thrill. He was ashamed. Of the blood, or what it meant? How it revealed what he so carefully covered up?

“Looks like you need a fresh bandage,” he said, carefully matter-of-fact. Xiao Xingchen turned his face further away.

“I’ll - take care of it.”

“Want help?”

“No,” Xiao Xingchen said, his voice sharp, and then quickly added, softer, “thank you. And...thank you for waking me.”

Xue Yang shrugged. “It’s nothing.”

Which it was. He hadn’t done anything. Wasn’t doing anything. Wasn’t going to kill him. It’d be too easy, he decided, doing it when he was sleeping. He wouldn’t know. Xue Yang wanted him to know.

Xiao Xingchen took a long, deep breath. “I’m all right. Really.”

“Yeah,” Xue Yang said. “I know. Want to go for a walk?”

If Xiao Xingchen had eyes, Xue Yang thought he’d be staring at him. “What?”

“A walk,” Xue Yang said. “You know. That thing you do outside sometimes.”

Xiao Xingchen didn’t laugh. “It’s the middle of the night.”

“Not like it makes a difference to you, does it?” Xue Yang said. “I do it sometimes. Helps clear my head.” He stood up and stretched. “Up to you. But I think I’ll go regardless. And who knows what’ll happen if I’m out there on my own.”

“Your injuries-”

“Doesn’t have to be a long walk.”

Xiao Xingchen was quiet for a while. Then he said, “all right. I need to get dressed.”

“Great,” Xue Yang said with a grin. “See you outside.”

He put on his robe and went out, stretching his arms overhead and looking up at the sky, the stars. The moon.

Now why, he thought, had he done that? Xiao Xingchen’s nightmares were none of his concern.

It was sort of funny, though, wasn’t it? Comforting him. Helping him. It’d twist the knife harder when he eventually found out. Make it cut deeper. Maybe he’d cry, blood tears running down his cheeks, and Xue Yang would trace them with his finger, lick it clean. Xiao Xingchen, he’d say. Looks like you need a fresh bandage.

**

“You know your roof is leaking,” Xue Yang said. Xiao Xingchen sighed.

“I’m aware,” he said.

“Just making sure,” Xue Yang said.

“I keep meaning to fix it,” Xiao Xingchen said.

“Daozhang,” Xue Yang said with exaggerated patience, “meaning to fix it doesn’t mean fuck if you don’t just do it. That’s like saying-”

He cut off before he said that’s like saying you’re going to kill someone and not following through.

“Like saying what?”

“Like saying you’re going to go night hunting and then sitting at home on your ass,” Xue Yang said.

“Are you calling Daozhang lazy?” a-Qing said. “You’re the lazy one here. Useless.” Xue Yang’s face dropped into a scowl.

“You’ve really got a talent for interrupting conversations that don’t involve you,” he said. Xiao Xingchen frowned in his direction.

“Our guest is just pointing out that I should have done something about the roof leak before now,” Xiao Xingchen said. “And he is right.”

“Course I am,” Xue Yang said. “I’m right about a lot of things.”

A-Qing snorted. “Yeah,” she said. “Name one.”

You’re an ugly little brat who ought to get slapped. “Xiao-daozhang is the most beautiful cultivator in the world,” he said. Xiao Xingchen’s face went red. A-Qing scowled.

“I wouldn’t know,” she said. “So I’d just have to take your word for it.”

“It’s not true,” Xiao Xingchen protested. “Our guest is just teasing.”

Xue Yang shrugged. “One against one, Daozhang. Too bad we don’t have a tie breaker.”

Xiao Xingchen’s face was still flushed bright. Like he’d been slapped, all the blood right under the skin, and Xue Yang wondered if his skin would feel hot if he touched it. If he’d bleed faster if he cut into his cheek.

He’d started to think maybe he shouldn’t kill Xiao Xingchen after all. It might actually be better to leave him alive. Dead people couldn’t suffer like living ones.

He leaned back on his hands. His leg was feeling better these days. His other wounds were well on the way to healing. He could probably leave, if he wanted to. Slip out in the middle of the night.

Maybe he’d cut a-Qing’s throat to leave a message. That’d probably hurt Xiao Xingchen worse than anything Xue Yang could do to him.

It was an idea. He tucked it away for consideration.

“Anyway,” he said. “You should definitely do it before winter or Little Blind will freeze to death.”

“Why don’t you do it,” a-Qing said loudly.

“What’ll you pay me for it? I don’t do that kind of work for free.”

A-Qing scowled harder. “You’re eating our food and sleeping in our house,” she said. “Ugh. You’re the worst.”

“A-Qing,” Xiao Xingchen said, “our guest is still injured. You wouldn’t want him to aggravate his injuries further.”

“Says who,” a-Qing muttered under her breath. Xiao Xingchen seemed to pretend not to hear.

“I’ll get some supplies tomorrow,” he said. “It is starting to get colder. But don’t worry about helping, Stranger. I can manage.” He gave Xue Yang a horribly gentle smile. Why are you like this, Xue Yang thought angrily.

Yeah. He wouldn’t kill Xiao Xingchen at all. Just cut up his face so he couldn’t smile like that anymore. He wouldn’t even know how awful he looked until people started recoiling from him in horror, exclaiming with disgust.

Yeah. That was an idea. Kill a-Qing and ruin that pretty face.

He’d get around to it before winter, once he was fully healed, and find someplace nice and warm to set up in for the cold months. No reason to stay in this miserable dead city when there was a whole world to explore.

**

Xiao Xingchen did not have any idea how to patch a roof.

Xue Yang ended up mostly doing it for him.

**

There was an itch under Xue Yang’s skin, in his bones. He didn’t know why, exactly. He just got like this sometimes, tense and restless and jumpy and he didn’t like it. Usually he dealt with it in one of two ways: killing someone or fucking someone. Or both.

He hadn’t killed anyone yet today, but he was thinking about it. It’d probably be a-Qing. She was getting on his last nerve, and he kept thinking if he killed her quick and quiet and dumped her body in the river Xiao Xingchen would never need to know.

Though why it’d matter if Xiao Xingchen knew was another matter.

He didn’t think he’d really kill a-Qing either, though. Maybe one of the merchants in the market. The one who’d tried to sell them half-rotted turnips. He’d deserve it. Yeah. Him. He’d make a good target.

Itch, itch, itch. Fuck. He was going to crawl out of his skin if he didn’t-

“Stranger?”

Xue Yang whirled around, knife in hand, and just checked the movement before he put it through Xiao Xingchen’s neck. Or, he would’ve checked it, but Xiao Xingchen caught his arm first.

Xue Yang froze. His body coiled tight, ready for the retaliation. Briefly, he wanted to laugh. The first time he really got close to stabbing Xiao Xingchen since waking up here and it hadn’t even been on purpose.

Xiao Xingchen felt down Xue Yang’s arm to his hand, his fingers wrapped around the knife. Least it wasn’t his left. He paused for a moment, then let go and stepped back.

“I startled you,” he said.

Xue Yang blinked. “I was thinking about something else,” he said cautiously.

“Apparently so,” Xiao Xingchen said. He smiled, barely, and bowed. “I’m sorry.”

“You’re - for what?”

“Startling you,” Xiao Xingchen said. Xue Yang stared at him.

“I almost stabbed you,” he blurted out, and then grimaced.

“Yes,” Xiao Xingchen said. “But you didn’t. I suppose this might be a different conversation if you had.” His voice was still even, calm. Xue Yang stared at him harder, hating the confusion that was starting to overtake the itch for violence.

“Probably wouldn’t be a conversation,” he said, before he meant to. Xiao Xingchen smiled a little.

“I suppose not,” Xiao Xingchen said. “A good thing I have quick reflexes.” He paused, the smile fading. “Stranger...I know that you have...a history. That there are shadows in it you don’t want to discuss. For all your good humor, you are tense, and watchful, and wary. A man - a cultivator - does not end up on the side of a road in your condition without having made dangerous enemies.”

Xue Yang opened his mouth, then closed it, getting tenser by the second. He still had his knife in hand, but Xiao Xingchen had shown he could catch him, and while Shuanghua wouldn’t be able to sense him the way it did ghosts and the like-

“Whatever you might have done,” Xiao Xingchen said, his voice quiet and serious, “it doesn’t matter now.”

Xue Yang’s voice was locked in his throat. Speechless. He wasn’t speechless very often. There was a laugh in there, too, thinking wildly really, is that really true, Xiao Xingchen, would you still say that if I told you my name-

“Pretty generous of you, Daozhang,” he said. “I might’ve done anything.”

“Perhaps,” Xiao Xingchen said. “But you have not done anything to me, or to a-Qing, or to the people here.”

Not yet, anyway, was his first thought, and then oh. Oh, that was rich, that was hilarious, that was-

He felt sort of weird, suddenly. Not sick, and nothing was hurting, just - weird. Off-balance. The itch was completely gone now, leaving something else in its wake that he couldn’t quite pin down.

“Xiao-daozhang,” he started to say, and then stopped. Xiao Xingchen gave him a small smile.

“Most people, I think, have shadows in their pasts,” Xiao Xingchen said. “I am not a magistrate. I would rather not act as one.”

Xue Yang thought of Xiao Xingchen and Song Lan’s eagerness to deliver him to justice, and wanted to laugh. But only for a moment.

He sucked on his teeth. Cocked his head to the side.

“Call me Chengmei,” he said. And waited. Waited to see any sign of recognition, of memory, of understanding.

Xiao Xingchen smiled, slightly. “Chengmei,” he said. “Thank you.”

Xue Yang huffed a laugh. “For what?”

“For telling me your name.”

Huh. Xue Yang wanted to laugh, would’ve laughed, did laugh, a little. “That’s not telling you much, Xiao-daozhang. It’s just a name. It might not even be my real one.”

“I know,” Xiao Xingchen said. He didn’t reach out, just smiled that warm smile that Xue Yang hated, that set off that strange and twisting feeling like a worm winding through his insides. Nobody had made that face at him before. Not like that. “But at least now I don’t have to call you ‘Stranger.’”

“You still could, if you wanted,” Xue Yang said, which made Xiao Xingchen laugh. Everything made him laugh. He had a stupid sense of humor, Xue Yang was starting to realize.

Such an idiot.

Xiao Xingchen gave him one last smile and went back inside. Xue Yang looked after him, eyes narrowed.

He should’ve gone by now, probably. He was getting comfortable, and comfortable was dangerous.

But he had a good thing going, here. And he could end it whenever he wanted. The second he got sick of this game, he could finish it, and Xiao Xingchen, too.

There was no reason to hurry, though. No rush.

And he had some ideas for how to keep things fun.

He had time.

[aceandart]

Hey! I read your recent post and it read differently to a lot of posts under the destiel tag as of now. Personally, I’ve seen the first 5 seasons (watched it about 5 yrs ago), but haven’t been caught up to date on any of the recent stuff other than the Destiel apocalypse that’s happening right now. Could you explain the following?

“...mostly being this show is a misogynistic racist homophobic consent issue-ridden pile of bad writing “.

I was contemplating returning to the show and tuning in for the missing seasons, but what you said about it has now placed me on the fence. Could you elaborate and advise?

Thank you so much! I appreciate seeing an honest post that doesn’t sugar-coat or overlook bad writing/negative characteristics of a show!! :)

[re this]

Hi!

Well, I feel like the finale probably took care of any fence-sitting you were doing (and sorry I couldn't reply sooner), but actually my answer wasn't going to change even if the finale was okay (good, imo, was always a stretch): No, I personally would not recommend watching this show. and while my answer is mostly because of the things I am going to list to answer the rest of this question, I was also going to say - you dropped the show in s5 and that was five years ago? Whatever caused you to drop it in the first place, it probably got a lot worse. (It literally doesn't even matter what your major grievance was, they have since doubled, tripled down in terms of how bad it was.) Trying to marathon through ten seasons (20-23 episodes long each) is hard; trying to marathon through all of that to get something without a satisfactory ending is a lot of emotional labor for no payout. It's not just that this is a bad show (though it really, really is, on every level); it's that you have already tried it, you tried arguably the better seasons of it, and you still didn't want to stick to it. By the nature of how tumblr works, it can make anything look so much better than it is, just because in general the people you see hyping it up *like* the product, have decided to devote their fandom time to it, are highlighting the choicest parts of it. spn was always about the potential around the edges, the story fans made of it; the actual product was always secondary to the could have, should have beens, and this gets truer the later into the show you get. I'm not saying there weren't some great episodes, some great scenes, and even some great mini-arcs, but it was a drop in the bucket to everything else. and I'm positing this answer on the idea that you are asking because you want to watch the show, and not because you want to use the show as a supplemental for your fandom experience, but if it is the latter, I'll just say I'm currently heavily involved in reading fanfic for a fandom I've never actually watched a whole episode for, and while I'm probably missing some context I'm still highly enjoying it. fandom, honestly, so often becomes so much more than the bones we build it on. and if you want a little more, catch some "greatest hits" videos or catch up on just some of the “must-see” episodes and save yourself from having to watch all the moments in-between, because there are a lot more of them than the good parts. very few shows improve as they age out, and before the nov 5th resurgence if you weren't already following spn blogs, likely the main spn meme you were coming across was the annual 'salt and burn this dead horse' that went out after each season renewal. the tl;dr answer is really, it's not worth it. (to be honest, at the end of the day, despite the sheer amount of time, energy, and words I've put into this fandom over the years, and I put in a lot, I didn't actually like the majority of the show. so, you know, grain of salt on my opinion. then again, you left it seasons before I did.) That said, buckle up, cause now I'm gonna tell you why:

Literally, The Shitty Writing

I feel like the finale speaks for this point by itself, but before I get into all the "problematic" bad writing spn does, I want to talk about the fact that the writers are also just fundamentally bad at the craft of writing.

continuity errors. they’d change their lore/creature ability to fit their plot. (the reapers esp got the end of that bad stick.)  the characters will often forget (monster-slaying) solutions that worked before (holy wood, yarrow, christo, creative approaches like exorcisms on recording, spells to remove angels from their vessels, bullet with a devil’s trap, etc).  the writers forgot their own timeline more than once. the random retcons they'd do. sometimes it would also lead to plot holes.

which, speaking of, they had plenty of

there's also things that don't count as plot holes but are very large missed opportunities (ex: Dean spends a year in Purgatory and no one recognizes him? he doesn't bring up his daughter?)

I don't even know what this one would fall under, but if a character wasn't right in front of them, they would forget that character's existence. not just Adam (though that was a big one), but there were so many secondary characters that even in places it would make sense to mention them, much less bring them around, they didn't. or because they would not expand their main character list, characters who should have been around a lot more than they were (*cough* Cas, but that's an easy one, I'm also talking about characters like Kevin) would have these huge gaps between episodes that didn't make sense

they don't really have character development. this isn't to say the brothers don't change, they do, but at the same time the characters face the exact same (internal) arguments over and over again, never resolving or growing from them; they just have more examples when they think about them and it gets worse and more unhealthy because of the new weight added to it. the problem with their brothers only format, and the problem with their biphobia but more on that later, is that Dean wasn't actually allowed to grow out of his John Winchester's son role, to let himself be comfortable (and dare to be happy) with himself because that meant changing the story into something they didn't like and/or didn't know how to do. at the same time, allowing Sam to grow meant breaking the Brothers Only format, because as the show stated multiple times, Sam's happy ending did not involve hunting.

and with that, they sometimes flattened the characters so badly they became caricatures more than anything else.  hell there's a whole season where Dean goes evil, and people had a hard time realizing it, which was not because it was a subtle slow descent but because shitty pacing, uneven (and contradictory) episodes, previous actions that weren't written as being evil but were the the exact same thing as when he was evil that were supposed to be "signs", and how they chose to represent that evil meant it was really hard to figure out that was what they were doing and not just writing Dean as more of an asshole than they previously were.  (he's not evil, he's just a prick.) and I don't mean I had trouble telling, I mean fandom as a whole had major arguments about it, much less the general viewing public.

the series finale put a definite end to the idea they would follow through on even one of their main series themes (family don't end in blood, free will vs destiny, always keep fighting, etc), but this was something they would build up to addressing and then just anti-climatically let fizzle out in multiple seasons. character and relationship themes (not just destiel but the brothers co/counter-dependency, the importance of found family, Dean's growth from Daddy's Blunt Little Instrument and Sam's acceptance that he deserves better/agency in his own life, etc) would be built and broken down in an effort to drag the question out into another season. it wasn't two steps forward, one step back, it was a reboot.

their filler vs arc episode ratios: there's nothing wrong with the Monster of the Week format as a stylistic choice, but this show

a) would kill its own plot momentum to focus on MotW episodes. [part of this is the general spn problem they created of constantly trying to one-up their season's Big Bad, which I understand but also means one episode they are going against The Most Powerful Being in Existence (for the Fifth Time) and then rather than focus on that world-ending threat, they hunt vampires for like six episodes straight. they had a very bad balance where rather than continuously weave the larger arc into the season, or at least build characters and relationships, they'd jam it all around the season premiere, finale, and mid-season finale/premiere episodes, and then all the rest was just, bullshit cases where nothing got resolved or had a lesson stick around for the next episode, making them very skippable. also more on this under the homophobia section]

b) the filler episodes contradicted themselves and the main plot all the time.

c) sometimes they focused so much on making the b-plot a mirror they forgot to write a coherent a-plot. also: sometimes they focused so much on making the b-plot a mirror they forgot to write a coherent b-plot. 

I cringed my way through more than one episode of dialogue

the recycled plots

more on this in the next sections, but either they didn't notice, actively didn't care, or purposefully chose to overtly and subtly imply or state a bunch of really fucked up things, and then never address them at all

speaking of never addressing anything, I realize this is a fandom vs canon battle in general, but so many things get swept under the rug as they move on to the next issue (ex: Dean put an angel in Sam's body to "heal him", violating his consent and exasperating his issue with telling what reality is - a huge issue from previous season - and once the Mark of Cain story really took over the subject gets dropped.) 

death is so cheap on this show. and I don't just mean that the revolving doorway of resurrections means it's hard to get worked up about a death because (as long as the character was a white man and especially the brothers) there was a high chance they'd be back, and I don't just mean that their Murder Is the First, Last, and Best Solution to Any Issue, Ever means the faceless and not so faceless hoards of villains, monsters, and humans who get caught up in it are just hand waved as one of those things (they have ways of saving vessels and the later into the show the less likely they are to even try), but that there was no point in investing in (esp non-white, male) secondary characters because chances were they'd be dead pretty fast.  I'm honestly shocked characters like Jody (who actually at one point was in the middle of being killed off on-screen and then we didn't see her for eight episodes, so we assumed she was dead) made it until the end.

(speaking of dead characters though, what was with the habit of bringing them back constantly? just don't kill them in the first place! create new ones and let those ones stick around instead!)

when they can't use death as their solution, the other answer the writers fall back on is Deus Ex Machina

buckleming were a writing duo who had their own bingo cards that included things like shitty pacing, OOC-ness, flat one-liners, etc, and the question wasn't if you'd get bingo, it was a question of how often you got it during their episodes. at some point throughout the show, it became hard to tell what was a buckleming episode and what was just another episode in the season.  aka the writing quality went WAY DOWN as a whole

you know the tv trope Idiot Ball? or Idiot Plot?  spn should have it's own page for both. 

they constantly break viewer's trust, which is the basic tenet of what not to do when it comes to telling a story. (again, not just destiel, though the queerbaiting is a major part of it because it happened all the time to avoid actually answering that question.) when a writer violates their character's or story's core identity for a 'twist', it needs to have been carefully built so that it's a surprise to the viewer, not a betrayal. (you may not have seen it coming, but when you look back you can see the groundwork.) these writers, every time, chose the "shocking" choice regardless of how much they need to break canon or character to do so. their twists are either obvious, and/or they don't make sense with the rest of their story/lore of the show, and the viewer is left feeling stupid for believing they have more respect for the audience/characters than they do.

I realize this is pretty subjective, but huge swaths of it are just boring. fandom made the experience of watching it interesting, not the show itself.

and yet, for all of that, the quality of writing (while painful to have to sit through) was not the worst thing about it.

(note for the following: I stopped watching after s11, but I'm sure some if not all of these are still relevant until the very end)

Misogyny and Consent Issues: Is There a Limit? Signs Point to No

there is honestly so much under this topic I don't even know where to start. i'm going to focus on patterns rather than specific incidences, because otherwise I'll be writing this for a week, but just know I can easily provide examples of all of these because this is literally what I spent years writing meta on.

female characters were more likely to die quicker/earlier (esp vs other other male characters with similar reoccurring roles/characterizations), stay dead, and die often at the hands of their loved ones and/or in Stranger Danger situations. they died for man!pain. they died for fodder. they died as a sacrifice. they were turned into love interests (whether that was their original role or not) and then killed. they were put in mortal danger and then not given resolution for several episodes (Schrödinger's death.) they died in ways we've seen male characters survive. their deaths - the violence enacted on them - was constantly, consistently sexualized, and the camera lingered.

when it came to villains the show would go out of its way to kill the female one first, or act like she's the more pressing issue so that the male character could hang around longer (and honestly by male character I often mean specifically Crowley and the season's female villain. not only that but they'd often break canon to kill off a female character, and break canon to save Crowley/a male character)

when you compare the treatment of reoccurring female characters vs male characters who occupied either similar roles or characterizations, female characters were often punished and/or treated poorly for the same attitude and/or actions of their compared male character, who often got not just a (free) pass, but more screen time, dialogue, and development

they have more than once used the story line of underage girl seducing a grown man. (it was a whole season arc even.) this is esp galling when you find out about crew member Jim Michaels, who sexually harassed and assaulted (minor) fans

(btw, not the only crew/cast member to do so! and still be invited to cons!)

Dean Winchester (who is narratively treated as the moral judgement for the show) has blamed more than one rape victim for their assault/trauma. they often get abused (or outright killed) for stopping their abuser. 

Dean is ok with flirting with/leering at barely legal teenage girls. already sketchy when he's 26, really gross when he's in his mid/late thirties 

speaking of Dean. based on past personal experience I'm going to say up front people do not like me saying this, but that doesn't mean what I'm saying is wrong or even based on interpretations: Dean has more than one relationship that if it isn't rape, falls under extreme dubious consent.

there's actually a lot of rape (or "extreme dubious consent") and assault/molestation, both shown and mentioned: Cas and April, the cases were men take away free will and then have sex with the women (Ben Edlund was one of the better writers of series and even he did this a couple of times), Crowley orgy (and demon sex in general), random women in some episodes, Sam and meta!Gen, Becky and Sam, Sam and Lucifer, Dean and Alastair, several monsters (like the siren) and their victims, male characters secretly watching female characters undress/be naked, and so on. Dean was often attacked sexually by men, Sam by women. most of this is never addressed, never treated like what it is, and/or is made into a joke

and there's even more rape jokes beyond that, sub-sections: prison, vessels/demons, angel possession, sex work, childhood abuse, monster of the week, sexuality, etc.  huge chunks if not whole episodes were devoted to making what amounted to a rape joke. 

often ignored non-sexual consent (esp Dean’s actions, including a lot of mind-wiping and violations of body autonomy)

everything about Sam and body autonomy - he is frequently violated (multiple characters have possessed him; he is fed demon blood); how he feels unclean, how he feels disconnected from his own body, how he often is forced to act outside of his control and then blamed for those decisions

actually, Cas goes through that a lot too; he is trained, brainwashed, and forced to do things without his consent, and goes through major depressive episodes because of it

this show has a pattern of girls who are kidnapped, (sexually abused), raised in isolation, and expected to develop some perfect moral compass of acceptable behavior and were then killed off when they didn't. meanwhile, male characters get fourth, fifth chances.

female characters (and I'm talking about ones with speaking roles, who play an actual part in the plot, who are sometimes in multiple episodes) are more likely to be unnamed or given no last name

are you a Mother on spn (as in, that's your role)? you're either fridged for man!pain or abusive or both

it rarely could pass the bechdel test (including in s9 don't believe those fandom lies), and that's including episodes that focused on female characters. if the test included that the characters have to be named, that (small) number probably gets cut in half. if that test included both women are alive at the end...  

female monsters prove they deserve to live by killing off their family to prove they're the "good kind"  (this is not necessary for male monster characters)

female characters are not allowed to get vengeance

they took the Virgin vs Whore dynamic (and that that's all women are), and devoted a whole episode to it, but in general it underlines of ton of interactions, esp with regards to Dean and women.  {I actually never got around to writing it, but women tended to fall into four main classifications on this show, though overlap definitely allowed: Victim [sub-categories: Fodder, (Dean) Mirror, Mother], Love Interest, Sex Object, and Villain/Obstacle. very few female characters were either allowed to outgrow their category or didn't start in one.} 

we see the male characters assault female characters but it's okay because [insert supernatural reason here], ignoring that whatever explanations for why it's being allowed, we are still visually being shown this violence against women, and often from our "heroes"  (the women are then tossed away from the narrative after the violence and again, their aftermath gets regulated to off-screen who cares)

female characters were only allowed to be "so badass"; female hunters often fought female monsters or they lost/got regulated to the sidelines in battles. this gets even more contrasted as a male character/hunter will often do a nod about how "badass" she is, even as she is very easily beaten.

 the whorepobia of this show

had a tendency to strip female characters down to their underwear/make them nude before torturing them, and then adding sexualized torture on top of that

outside of actor injuries affecting this (like one of them broke his arm so he had a sling for a few episodes), female characters are often more likely to visually carry the bruises/violence of violent incidences much longer than male characters

gratuitous filming shots of breasts, asses

the use of the words: bitch, skank, whore, slut; the play on words they do so they can say "pussy"  

taking female myths/figures and reducing them to a cheap, sexist storyline (Amazons, Artemis, Lilith, Eve, witches - who are only allowed to live/be "good" if they're men, and are otherwise in league with demons/are evil and lose)

they often kept a character but switched out her actress; helps with the disposable feeling

how they treat women's ages (ex: Jody is not allowed to be a love interest to Sam because she's older than him/calling Dean 'kiddo'. ex: Rowena is played by a woman fifteen years younger than Crowley's actor. ex: Amara being one of the oldest things in existence but still having to age her way up.)

their treatment of teenage girls, ranging from how they sexualized them to expecting them to save themselves to treating them like they are grown adults and not children to the way they kept killing the ones who posted selfies to the fact the pr more than once used the tag "teenage girls - the scariest thing ever" for Claire's episodes 

actions and lasting legacies by female characters often got erased or passed on to male characters instead

it's a time honored tradition to treat certain monsters as metaphors for things. specifically for spn, they often use werewolves and vampires for sexual assault. (not the first to do so, not the last to do so.) however, that part of it gets textually glossed over, or treated as a joke, more often than not

and for all the patterns I talk about above, there's plenty of other one-off examples of misogyny/sexism or consent issues/rape culture this show did. like that time a grown man sniffed the bra of a dead teenage girl. not for any reason, just because it was there and that's what dudes do, apparently.

Racism: All the Flavors(+ Bonus Sexism)

when you compare the treatment of reoccurring white characters vs characters of color who occupied either similar roles or characterizations, characters of color were often punished and/or treated poorly for the same attitude and/or actions of their compared white character, who often got not just a (free) pass, but more screen time, dialogue, and development. 

usually Black men but in general men of color: 

a) got humiliated (often using feminization or infantilization) before their death  

b) had a more violent death; had a death that visually echoed racism (lynching, shot in the back, etc)

c) often used (racialized) rhetoric that in the real world is used against them

d) often filmed in ways to highlight their physicality, to portray them animalistically, to dehumanize them

e) even when victims, will add context to make them partially responsible for their death

characters of color were the villains or antagonists, very rarely "good guys"

this was a very white show, and while I'm speaking about speaking roles, reoccurring characters, and characters who get their own arcs, I'm also talking about background characters

using lore from groups they should not have and/or turned creatures into racist caricatures

having white actors play characters they shouldn't have

heavily depended on stereotypes for their characters of color

the treatment (esp narrative empathy level) of white angels vs angels of color.  again, screen time and character development differences between the two

a summary of (East) Asian woman on this show: fetishized porn/sexualized, “tiger mom”, Yoko Ono/The Girlfriend, monster. they were often silent or had no dialogue. microaggressions (usually spoken by Dean) were leveled at them.

antisemitism (styne issue, erasure of the Judah Initiative, Lilith, the golem)

like the sexism, just had random racist lines or visuals throughout the show (and sometimes those came in the absence of who should be there); some groups literally did not have enough characters to make a pattern, which is why this section looks a lot shorter than it really is

like for ex, I'm trying to stick with patterns but seriously, they put a Black woman in a dog collar and said her white boyfriend was her master/that she belonged to him

the ignorance of how white privilege worked to make them palatable

the replacement and/or elevation of a white character over a character of color (Lisa over Cassie, Bobby over Missouri, Charlie over Kevin in terms of how they were treated under Found Family, etc) 

how they treated non-Christian Gods: easily killed, evil, weak. they often repackaged them into a Christian framework and made them lesser than.

Bi/Homophobia, Queerbaiting, and Using Fans

they butchered Charlie.  they killed her, they killed her in a way that involved leaving behind plot, characters, and logic to do so, they killed her and used the violence of it for "shock," they butchered her and stuck her in a bathtub.  the guy who wrote Charlie in every other episode (Robbie Thompson, one of the better writers of the show) didn't write her last episode (assumption: because he wouldn't) and then he arguably left the show over her death. at one of the cons (comic-con?) the cast literally turned their backs when a fan questioned Carver (the showrunner) about what he did because they wanted no part of it. there was a mass exodus of fandom after they killed her (and another portion actually hung around because they got destiel queerbaited to stick out the rest of the season, and then they left.) she was un-apologetically queer, she was found family, she was widely popular, and they killed her for no reason at all. they didn't just Bury The Gay (their only reoccurring one), they salted and burnt the ground

they spent over a decade queerbaiting Destiel. they built queerbaiting destiel into the structure of the show: season opening/first couple of episodes whetted the appetite, which they then backed away from (usually removing Cas from Dean's physical area) and around this time they'd usually have some kind of heterosexual love interest, then mid-season they'd have some room to be together and share feelings, Cas would again disappear but this time they'd have some bi!Dean thrown in to keep you going, a few episodes before the end they'd have a major connection moment (I need you, I love you), and then the season would end with something to keep destiel fans occupied with during summer. it was never a trajectory, it was a cycle; just enough for plausible deniability but more than enough for fans to believe in. they had whole seasons where the b-plot were mirrors for destiel. they tried to sell DVDs by promising destiel cut scenes. they'd remove Cas from huge chunks of episodes just because they didn't want destiel interacting in the same physical space. they filmed them (I'm talking camera angles, physical positioning, etc) romantically.  (and sometimes, someone on crew/the network would accidentally reveal how not-fucking-happening destiel would be, and then backtrack when they realized fandom’s uproar.) 

a) Dean was only allowed to care so much for Cas, the narrative would only give him so much room to mourn/miss him. (Sam too.) it's beyond my general complaint that the writers/bros lose all interest in a character if they are not right in front of them (if they even cared when they were), but specifically they will spend episodes talking about how Cas is family, how much they care, and then because Dean and Cas cannot share the screen they come up with asinine reasons to remove Cas, which means Dean/the bros do not help him on his issues, and he is cast adrift until they need him, a push/pull of show vs tell with contradictory answers but made a lot of Cas/Destiel fans argue Cas deserved better.  

b) they also devoted seasons to the (subtextual) love triangle of Dean/Cas/Crowley. (I wish I was fucking kidding)

c) "you construct intricate rituals which allow you to touch the skin of other men": the way they use violence to supplement affection (which is actually a larger pattern with Dean and his loved ones in general, but specifically the show is willing to show - multiple times - Dean and Cas being violent (often with an arguably sexualized filming to it) in conjunction with or as replacement for expressing their care.)  other side of this: hugging/physical affection outside of the shoulder/hand thing is reserved for escaping or coming back from death, if then (and it took seasons and a few deaths to even get that.) 

d) "buddy"  

that time Dean was allowed to be textually attracted to his mother and a literal dog (who was visually made to be very clearly a girl dog), but his attraction to men always stays subtextual and/or treated as a joke

they spent the whole show queerbaiting bi!Dean. aside comments, checking out other guys, getting flustered by men he finds attractive, metaphors, mirror characters, the heterosexual overcompensation [which is different from but comes from a similar place of the macho compensation to counteract how he gets sexualized/feminized], everything with Cas and how they play that relationship romantically and with sexual attraction, the character development that led to his relaxation of his macho compensation coinciding with increasing subtextual readings of his bisexuality (and domesticity), the inspiration for his name/character is bi, his relationship to Charlie and the pattern of fictive kinship, etc etc.  

why are angels straight???? why do they have gender???? (why are they interested in sex???)  minus the queerbaiting of destiel, they spent a lot of seasons pushing Cas into a heterosexual box. other angels were often pushed into heterosexual boxes too. (or left in subtext and then killed.) closest we got to playing with gender was Raphael and maybe Hannah, and at least with Raphael it was not without its issues. (also: both dead.)

random transphobic lines

homosexuality was often treated like a joke/punchline. queer characters/scenes were often treated like a joke/punchline.

outside of Charlie, queer characters were small, two-bit roles, extremely rare, and often killed

how they treated and showcased fandom space and esp queer fans in-show (much less how they treated them in real life), comes from a deeply sexist and homophobic place 

The Show Was 328 Episodes Long And the thing is, these are the four big categories, but it's not like this is it. The show flip-flops on calling John an abusive parent/that the bros are childhood abuse survivors. The show doesn't even really call out when Dean is being abusive to Sam, and the way they always, always go back to the Brothers Only format means they are often ignoring or straight-up forgetting the unhealthy aspects of their relationship. The show ignores how their trauma builds (and all the things that happen because of it), disconnecting the current issues with the ones that came before. The way they flip flop on monster morality and never address what the winchester bros do to people who happen to be monsters but aren't evil (or definitely aren't as evil as they are).  How violence is always the answer. How the "saving people'' part of hunting got dropped the later the show goes on, and red shirt vessels/hosts die in droves. Depending on how you view it, the way they treat alcoholism and addiction. The ableism. The line between the narrative's opinion on acceptable violence and not is inconsistent and dependent on how much they like the character doing the violence vs who the violence is being done to. Etc.

(The above lists are definitely missing stuff. I haven't done anything in this fandom in like four years, I've forgotten a lot.) I'm not saying people didn't enjoy this show. I'm not saying I didn't enjoy (parts of) this show. I'm saying whether you are basing it on things like writing craft or things like 'social justice issues', this show is bad. It is of poor quality. I really don't know how to explain the hold it has on people, how a show can be charismatic, how fandom was able to squeeze so much out of so little, but that's probably what's got you attracted into the idea of watching it again. If you're thinking of watching it because you want a coherent, well done story, look elsewhere. The finale was the literal last straw, not the only one. 

[agustdomain]

A Slideshow of Road Lines {1}

Synopsis: They say oil and water don’t mix. What about oil paint and engines? He’s an artist reaching toward his dream while the girl with an engine heart is too busy trying to get her hands on the wheel. Is there a way for them to hold onto each other?

Word Count: 6.1k words

Pairing: Chris x Reader (yes, that is what I call him. I apologize if you prefer calling him Chan or Bang Chan)

Genre: college!au, artist!Chris, angst

Warnings: Alcohol, Language. Further warnings in later chapters.

Author’s Note: I’ve never done what I’m about to do with this work, which is to have several chapters of a series. The chapters will be on the shorter side, which is also very unlike me. I truly adore how this story is going and I can’t wait to further explore this world. I won’t be following any posting schedules, but there should be regular updates. Without further ado, let’s see where this road takes us. ~ Angelo

!IMPORTANT NOTE! If any of you have read my Hold a Heart, Bear the Burden series, this takes on a similar format. However, this story is taking place in TWO DIFFERENT TIMES instead of two different povs. When you see these flowers ❁, the story is shifting from present to past. There will also be a Then next to the day in order to further indicate that. If you have any questions, let me know!

DAY 1

She is a butterfly, beautiful and catastrophic. 

What were the last words he said to her? Ah, it’s all a blur now. How can she remember, when it’s been so long, she can’t recall his facial features anymore?

“Y/N. Come on. Talk to me.”

She swats her roommate’s hands away as she swats away her sanity. Ignoring Chuu’s look of exasperation, she continues the sway of her hips as her arms snake toward the ceiling. Dancing in the middle of their living room, putting on a show like she’s the only one there. 

Except she isn’t alone. And there isn’t any music playing. 

The night wasn’t supposed to unfold like this, mostly blaming it on her tsunami of thoughts. From the moment she’s heard the news, the tether to him tugged her and reminded her of its owner. It slithered up from her heart and around her neck, suffocating her.

It’s been two and half years. She thought enough time had passed. It’s evident that isn’t the case, because hearing his name tonight had caused rain to fall from the ceiling and the flood to rise in her lungs.

Even with all this time and distance between them, Chris still stains her brain like permanent ink...or poison. Poison is probably more accurate.

Isn’t drinking supposed to make her forget?

When she feels Chuu’s hand graze hers once more, she snaps like the bond between her and Chris had so long ago. 

“This is bullshit!” Her scream stills the storm, but only for a moment.

It only captures a snapshot of a moment. Chuu’s eyebrows are locked in a frown, hands outstretched like that of a needy child. Who is the real child?

Her other roommate Minnie is fanning her hands down at their guests Y/N had forgotten about, as if she’s avoiding a fire from spreading. What are those guys’  names again? She groggily searches her muddled mind, only remembering Minnie’s excited smile as she introduced one of them as her boyfriend.

It doesn’t take a genius to know Y/N isn’t taking Chris’s return well.

“I’m… sorry,” The words are miles apart, so distant she’s unsure if they come from her. The tsunami strikes shore just as Chuu’s face settles into one of understanding. Glancing at Minnie’s scornful glare sobers Y/N up a little. Chuu chooses to ignore their other and judgmental roommate, hands patiently waiting for her.

“I’ll walk you guys out,” Minnie makes it a note to speak pointedly as she escorts the two young men Y/N can barely remember to the front door. 

The imaginary music fades from her mind at the slam of the front door. When had she got down from the coffee table? The ceiling is spinning. Has it always been so cracked, so ugly? Raindrops are falling from it and splashing her cheeks.

“The ceiling is crying,” She tells Chuu. 

Chuu, her saving grace, fills her vision. Patting down Y/N’s face with a tissue improves the state of her damp face. Not enough, it seems, the rain continuing its downpour. 

“I’m here, Y/N. You’re not alone.”

“He left me, Chuu,” Sitting up, the waves crash into her so hard she slams back down onto the couch. The ceiling listens to her elegy without judgment. “Am I supposed to brush it off like- like- like we never knew each other? Like we didn’t love each other? That’s the hardest request anyone has ever given me. And of all people, he was the one to request that of me. No- No, I was the one to request it. He may have left, but I left him first.”

“Y/N-”

Y/N manages to sit up, leaning heavily on Chuu as she looks into her roommate’s startled gaze. “He was always destined for the beauty of the world. He convinced me there is more, that immortality lies beyond our understanding. He chose that over me. He told me he never would. But he did. And it’s my own fault.”

Y/N searches Chuu’s gaze, wondering if it makes any sense to her. It likely doesn’t, but it doesn’t matter. 

What matters is she understands. 

“Was I a mistake to him?”

Chuu doesn’t answer.

“Is he a mistake to me?”

Silence. The ceiling showers her with gentle rainfall. 

“Not possible. He’s…” Her eyelids suddenly grow massively heavy, heavier than that backpack she used to carry around in middle school. “He’s my favorite chapter. He’s… he’s the pen.”

Just like that, the butterfly is gone. 

DAY 2

Something is crying, her body is heavy as if she’s submerged in a pool, and there’s an ache in her neck begging for attention. Peeling her eyes open, her gaze slides over the boring ceiling before heading downward. After giving her brain a moment to kickstart, she realizes the crying is her phone blaring its ringtone. 

Making a note to change the horrid sound later, she moves to grab it- well, she thinks she does until she realizes her right arm is completely void of any feeling. Picking it up with her left hand, she watches as its slack body falls back to her side. The phone going off again is enough to make her snap. Instead, she slowly sits up, the flimsy blanket covering her pooling around her stomach. 

Ignoring the incessant knocking in her skull, she lazily fumbles for her phone as the needles start prickling throughout her right arm. Trying to speak is a feat, so instead she trudges to the kitchen for a glass of water as she accepts the call.

“Y/N! I’ve been outside the fucking door for twenty five minutes. I would’ve started banging on it if I was in the mood to deal with Minnie’s bullshit. I locked myself out again.”

Taking her time, Y/N slowly drinks a mouthful from her cup, pauses, then drinks some more. 

“Y/N? I’m not playing around. I had a shitty night and-”

Swinging the front door open, she comes face to face with Yeji, the fourth roommate and permanent resident in her life. 

“You look like-”

“Shit. I get it,” Y/N cuts her off, turning around and heading back to the kitchen. She listens as Yeji closes and locks the front door, kicking off her shoes and hanging up her keys. She isn’t surprised at the sound of her following. Y/N silently watches as her roommate watches her back, taking a seat at the dining table tucked in the corner.

Rubbing at her neck, Y/N’s eyes dance away, which so happens to direct her gaze to the refrigerator door. 

“Did I wake you up?”

“It’s whatever,” Y/N looks down into her empty cup, needing more water. Shuffling over to their water cooler, she pours herself more, stopping when she senses Yeji behind her. 

“Sorry. I didn’t realize you were… you know.” Y/N blinks at her words, realizing she’s trying to show she cares. Yeji looks away before holding up a finger, “I actually have the perfect hangover remedy.”

“Really? I thought you never drank.”

Yeji crosses her arms, narrowing her eyes. “And?”

Y/N walks past her with one hand up in surrender, taking Yeji’s previous spot at the table. “Just saying.”

Silence stretches between them as Yeji gets to work. Y/N doesn’t bother making small talk, sipping quietly at her water as she waits. Truthfully, she isn't sure what to make of this exchange. 

Best friends or not, things have been off-key between them for a while now. Nothing happened between them, no falling out or argument. It was just… off these days.  

The thought of last night hits her over the head like her hangover. The worst part of this ruthless torture is she remembered every single part of the night before. Isn’t drinking supposed to make her forget?

She hasn’t realized Yeji is sitting across from her until she slides a plate in front of her. Toast lathered with butter, two boiled eggs, and cut up strawberries. Her heart tugs, recognizing the breakfast from the many sleepovers growing up.

“Thank you.”

Yeji waves her off. As Y/N bites into an egg, she senses her friend is about to speak. Just as the difficulty of chewing the yolk kicks in, Yeji’s voice fills the void.

“I heard from Jin who’s back in town.” 

It’s hard to swallow, and not only because hard boiled eggs are unnecessarily difficult to eat. 

Y/N tries to play it off with looking unbothered, her heart rate picking up. What is her deal? Why is it so hard to breathe? Avoiding Yeji’s pointed stare, she only meets her gaze over the rim of her cup as she takes the opportunity to catch her breath. 

“Did drinking last night have anything to do with that?”

Stabbing a strawberry a little too hard, she braces herself for impact before meeting Yeji’s gaze and deadpanning, “What do you think?”

Yeji is never one to beat around the bush. What is she playing at this morning? Is their friendship so off that she can’t be her usual upfront self? 

They are dancing around each other at this point, Y/N trying to finish her food quickly as she keeps an eye on Yeji for any mind tricks. Her friend’s arms are crossed atop the table, chipped nail polish drawing attention to her impatient fingers tapping at her forearm. 

“What do you want me to say, Yeji?” Y/N finally breaks, setting her fork down. 

“What do you want to say?”

“Oh, quit bullshitting me. Everything you do is calculated. Even offering to make me breakfast wasn’t out of the kindness of your heart. The moment you saw me, you waited for the opportunity to bring him up!”

She’s gone and done it now, but it’s too late to backtrack. Yeji is in the midst of a look of disgust, and Y/N is too upset to care as the chair screeches as she stands. Her friend mirrors her, cutting off her escape right as she reaches the stairs. Of course they had to live in a townhouse. Even if they didn’t, there is never a clean escape when it came to the girl in front of her.

“I’m sorry you’re not exactly jumping for joy that Chris is back, but that doesn’t mean you take it out on me.”

Y/N forces a laugh out, hiding her fear at the realization that Yeji is bringing him up for a reason. 

“Spare me the pity. Why did you bring him up?”

Yeji pauses. Nausea rises in Y/N’s stomach. Is Y/N being too much? 

She’s the one to avoid Y/N’s gaze now, feigning confidence. “I-I knew you wouldn’t be okay. That’s all.”

“Is that so?”

“Yes, I’m not stupid, you know.”

Y/N mumbles beneath her breath, “I couldn’t tell,” and she wonders if Yeji chooses to ignore it. 

“Hyunjin isn’t the only person you can count on to be there for you, you know. And if anyone has been there for you, it hasn’t been him. It’s been me.”

Wrong move. Not that Yeji is winning this chess match whatsoever. Mentioning Hyunjin is giving up her queen in the midst of their match. Check. Bringing up Hyunjin is sensitive, because usually she brings up her cousin out of spite.

“You know nothing,” Y/N’s voice quivers with anger, not even letting her open her mouth before she shoves past her and up the stairs.

“Y/N! Y/N, wait! Are you seriously going to walk away- we’re not done-”

Somehow, she manages to make it to her room on the third floor without vomiting or passing out. Slamming her door signals they are just that- done. Checkmate.

Throwing herself across the bed, she fights with all her energy to stop from crying. She’s being pathetic, after all. So what? Chris is back. And not just for some brief visit or to show his face to everyone else but her (like he did these past couple of years). He’s back for good- at least, that’s what Hyunjin’s texts implied. 

Wiping her face with her sleeve, she pulls out her phone to check her notifications. As she scrolls through them, she ignores the sound of Minnie stomping down from the second floor to scream at Yeji about waking her up. She ignores Chuu’s knock at her door that follows shortly after, the one she saw coming. 

She doesn’t even listen for when the yelling stops. Eventually, it just does. 

Time passes as she lays there, turning her screen on and off. Holding off for as long as she could, it doesn’t take long at all for her to give in and open up her messages with Hyunjin.

Her eyes dance over his words over and over, the text that had set her off the night before. When he had first texted, she immediately knew he was acting strange. 

She and Hyunjin had never said it aloud, because if they did Yeji would lose her mind, but the two of them are the closest out of the trio. Yeji already has a one up on Y/N considering she’s cousins with him. Blood relations meant they’re bound by destiny. When Y/N told him that, Hyunjin always argued that would mean Yeji had a one up on him because she met Y/N first. 

They don’t have to say it aloud. They were in sync the moment they first met. 

Which is why she knows him from head to toe, and knew how he started their conversation last night was off.

At first, he had called. Picking up the phone and picking up on his tone went hand and hand. He had tried so hard to keep his voice steady, she could feel that too. Hyunjin had always been the easiest to read between the three of them. When he had sensed her suspicion he had made some lame excuse about calling her back and then proceeded to continue their conversation over text. 

Honey

I need to tell you something.                                   Delivered at 8:54 PM

There’s but a few sentences a person can receive over text that gives them a heart attack. That sentence is one of them. 

Y/N remembers how hard it was to stay calm as she texted him back as casually as she could, asking him what’s up. 

Honey 

I don’t know how else to put it so I’m just going to say it. 

Chris is back now.                                                Delivered at 8:57 PM

It had taken an hour long walk and a shower before she had responded to him with, That’s great. 

She’s sure Hyunjin knows it isn’t great, not to her. Since then, she hasn't answered any of his texts or calls. There aren't many, but he was ignored enough to get the message. 

What’s she supposed to say? Not just to Hyunjin, but to everyone? She can’t even articulate what she’s feeling to herself, let alone to her friends. The real question is, what did this mean? If he’s back, what does that mean to her?

“What does that have to do with me?” She confesses to her ceiling. Everything. 

She laughs at the brutal honesty. The ceiling is right. It has everything to do with her. As Chris used to famously remind her, she was everything to him. And he, to her. 

❁     ❁     ❁    ❁     ❁     ❁     ❁

Day 1, Then

She was a historian, studious and scholarly. That’s what she tried to tell herself as she scrolled through endless online journals, looking for anything she could use in the essay that had her on the verge of crying. 

A few months into university, and she thought it would eventually get easier. Of course, she had qualms about why she was a STEM major who was required to take a history course, but that didn’t stop her from working hard.

Just one more paragraph.

She stared at the winking cursor, every minute passed signifying a millenia going by. In the last month, there wasn’t a single assignment she was happy with, but she supposed it had to do. At least she was completing her work, after all.

For once, she decided to keep her phone on, making it impossibly easy for Yeji to pester her. So far, she was able to ignore it. After her phone buzzed for the eighth time, she picked it up without even checking the ID.

“Yes?”

“Did you really think I was going to let you off that easy?”

The thorn in her side since birth made way for the biting tone. That was the sweetest way she could describe Yeji. 

“I held out hope. Guess I was wrong,” Y/N said distractedly, reading the last sentence she had typed out. Her eyes trailed up, frowning when it said last save was twenty minutes ago.

“You realize that you promised me you would ignore homework for one night. Just one. And you’re already breaking that promise.”

Y/N’s face scrunched up at Yeji’s tone. “Don’t you think you’re being a little dramatic? I told you I have a lot to do this week. I have two papers due by Sunday and an exam next Tuesday-”

“Yeah, yeah. You’re always busy, Y/N. That’s not new. But that doesn’t stop your movie nights with Hyunjin. Or when you spend time with Lu. You expect me to meet these douchebags on my own?” She had hissed the last part, but Hyunjin had always had perfect hearing. His scolding in the background was exactly what she expected, and it’s what she heard a moment later.

Ignoring Yeji’s whining, she cut in, “My roommate's name is Chuu, by the way-” she started typing distractedly as she added- “Put Jin on the phone.”

“Why? Just so he can convince you in one word while it’s super easy for you to reject me?”

“Yeji, sweetie,” Y/N skimmed over her paragraph before holding the phone in between her neck and shoulder blade, fingers racing across her keyboard, “Jealousy is not a good look on you.”

“Go for Hyunjin,” His muffled voice was masked likely by whatever snack he was shoving in his mouth. For as long as she knew him, he had never managed to break out of his snacker phase. 

“Can you pretend that I’m considering going out even though I fully intend on staying in?”

“You should come out with us. I mean, I know school is important for us all, but I haven’t seen your face in years.”

Y/N deadpanned, “We had lunch together two days ago. You’re both being too dramatic for my taste.”

“You don’t have to come out. If it’s really urgent for you to hole yourself up in your room, that is.” Always the sweetest, she never had to worry about him understanding. “I don’t think it’ll kill you to come out for one night. There’s always a next time, of course-” Yeji arguing with his words made him snap before returning to his sweet self- “Anyways, I miss you too. A lot. We can’t be a trio when we’re missing the best one out of all of us.”

“I am right here, Hyun. Shouldn’t I be your favorite, ya know, since we’re blood related?” Yeji was closer to the phone now, Y/N too entertained by their banter to focus on her assignment any longer.

“That’s exactly why you aren’t,” He scoffed. 

Y/N tuned out their arguments for a few moments, typing away. Ignoring the disappointment at her choice, she shook it off as she said, “I’ll catch you later, Honey. Okay?”

“Of course.”

                                                         ~~~~

Swinging open her dorm door, a frown pulled at Y/N’s eyebrows at the sight of two very familiar faces in front of her. Hyunjin shuffled from one foot to the other, an apologetic smile awkwardly teetering on his lips. Y/N’s eyes slid over to Yeji, head high as she stood unashamed and proud. Narrowing her eyes at the woman, she pulled the door closer to her, no intention of inviting them inside. 

That’s when Y/N noticed two unfamiliar faces behind her two best friends. The one nearest Hyunjin was a flower pre-bloom, hand fiddling with his sweater sleeve, round glasses sliding down his face. He was quite handsome, his facial features contrasting with his softer style.

The guy behind Yeji exuded confidence. Or cockiness. She didn’t know yet, but figured she’d find out eventually. Head tilted upward, stance commanding the wall he leaned up against to support him instead of the other way around. Eyes sharp as an eagle, watching her. Basically, the exact opposite of the other stranger.

“I tried to tell her.” Hyunjin blurted, pinning the blame.

Yeji spared a glare at her cousin before flashing her famous charming smile at Y/N. It didn’t work, an uncontrollable sigh slipping from Y/N’s lungs.

“Yeji, I told you that-”

“Yeah, I know, but it’s a Friday night. You can spend an hour or two with us.”

They fell into tension, a wave of frustration washing over Y/N. Yeji really knew how to get on her nerves. 

Hyunjin’s gaze flickered between them, always on the forefront and ready to diffuse. “We’re going to play Mortal Kombat 11 at Jisung’s. I figured you might want to come.”

Tempting. Y/N softened at the sight of him, his face innocent and his intentions pure. She wondered how he and Yeji were blood related sometimes. 

“I’m Jisung,” The confident/cocky one from behind Yeji chimed in, eagle eyes morphing into a boy next door. That might be an issue.

“Y/N.” She offered up a small smile, glancing back in her dorm room with longing. Refusing to look at Yeji, she studied Hyunjin- the only sane person in front of her, it seemed. Yeji was right about one thing: Hyunjin was her soft spot and always would be. 

“Give me a few minutes to change. And then we can head out.”

“And the entourage gets bigger,” Jisung’s eyes flashed. Yeji rolled her eyes. 

Casting them one glance, Y/N regretted her decision the moment she closed her door. No going back now. 

                                                        ~~~~

“Oh, come on! That was some bullshit.” Hyunjin called out, tossing the controller aside as Jisung whooped in victory.

“What did I say? Doesn’t matter who I go against. I can kick anyone’s ass if I’m using Scorpion.”

Y/N sipped at her soda, very amused by the debacle in front of her. Jisung and Changbin’s dorm wasn’t too spacious, only slightly bigger than hers, but it was filled with character. Changbin’s side of the room, she quickly learned, was the side of sanctuary. Organized, neat, and smelling of a citrus freshener.

Jisung’s side of the room was chaotic. Haphazard piles of clothes stuffed beneath the bed, discarded papers strewn about. At least it didn’t smell. The moment he had cleared the bed for them to sit down, Y/N had to elbow Yeji to prevent the distaste from growing any bigger on her friend’s face. 

As the two guys continued on bickering for a few moments, Y/N watched as Changbin glanced over from his side of the room, irritation poking at his features. He was completely different from Jisung. 

“Guys,” Changbin warned. It was enough to calm the argument, but only slightly. 

“CB, who do you think is the best?” Jisung stumbled to his feet and headed straight for the guy in question. She didn’t know if Jisung was oblivious or he didn’t care for the look of anger on his roommate’s face. As the night dragged on, it seemed to be the latter.

“Don’t know.”

“It’s obviously Scorpion. Not to mention his fatalities are the most badass.”

Hyunjin rolled his eyes and gave Y/N a look, as if to tell her, Get a load of him. Smiling at him, she watched as the tension left his shoulders. Sitting on the floor in front of her made it easy for her to reach down and ruffle his hair comfortingly. 

“Don’t care, Jisung.”

Jisung animatedly threw his arms up in surrender, declaring, “I’m clearly the one with the best taste here.”

“Please,” Yeji uttered. It wasn’t unheard, Jisung’s eyes snapping to hers, lighting ablaze anywhere they touched. If it were anyone else, it would have been enough to make them back down. This was Yeji, though. If Jisung were a bonfire, Yeji was a volcano. 

“You think you could do any better?”

“I didn’t say that. I just think you’re hilarious.”

Hyunjin, wide-eyed and wise to his cousin’s behavior could sense the random tension growing between the two of them. Moving to open his mouth, Jisung beat him to the punch.

“Why, because I know how to have fun? Unlike you, who’s been sitting on my bed with a pissy attitude all night.”

Even Changbin was tuned into the bullets that came out of nowhere. Y/N subtly rubbed at her temple in annoyance. Just then, she recalled a conversation she had with Yeji a while back about how she had ran into Hyunjin and some of his friends. That conversation was a whole hour complaint and rant about one guy in particular, who was “so full of himself that he left the room empty”. 

Her brain put two and two together, realizing the Jisung she mentioned back then was the guy in front of her now.

“Subzero,” Changbin’s quiet voice sounded from his bed, his eyes never leaving his laptop as his fingers flew across the keyboard.

“What?” Jisung asked, face scrunching up.

“Subzero is clearly the superior MK fighter.”

The tension was snatched from the room like that, though Y/N had to subtly grab onto Yeji’s wrist to keep her from rekindling the fire. They shared a look for a moment as the boys broke out into another Mortal Kombat argument. For whatever reason Y/N couldn’t explicitly see, Yeji couldn’t stand Jisung. 

Sure, he was a bit full of himself but she also noticed the phenomenon that Hyunjin grew into in the boys’ presence. He was incredible on his own, but with his friends, there was a newfound confidence that hardly existed before. It was refreshing, because all their lives Hyunjin had struggled with that. Yeji had a habit of disliking most people, always finding something to complain about. 

Y/N sipped at her soda as she looked away, shaking her head at the drama Yeji was slowly creating. Her eyes trailed to Changbin once more, now donning a pair of headphones to block out the chaos. Slightly scoffing in amusement, she found herself wishing she were in his shoes. 

All she knew was Yeji was annoying her, Jisung was really loud, and she had a mountain of homework due in two days that she barely even touched. 

She tuned in then, just as Jisung was cursing to himself and shoving his phone into his hoodie.

“Come on, man, unpause it,” Hyunjin whined, “You’re stalling because I’m about to kill your ass.”

“Nah, that’s not it,” Jisung unpaused the screen and continued their fight on the tv, “This is just the third time Chris has cancelled on me.”

“Was Chris supposed to come chill with us?” Hyunjin asked, screaming in disbelief when Jisung landed his special move, taking the win for the second round. 

“Yup. Haven’t seen him for like a week. He keeps on saying he spends all of  his time in the art studios but if that were true, I wouldn’t see him with Felix all the time.” Jisung skillfully maneuvered his character, knowing all the special moves. Hyunjin was a bit more clumsy, clearly not as familiar with the game as the owner. 

“Yeah, but we are coming up on midterms,” Hyunjin reasoned.

“I get it. It’s why I’m not on CB’s ass about staying up all hours of the night. What I don’t like is Chris always cancels at the last second.”

Yeji distracted her when her then as she showed her a funny video on her phone. They spent a moment scrolling through Yeji’s Instagram for a moment, chatting here and there. Jisung, turning off the game, grabbed her attention again, his face guarded as he accused Hyunjin without hesitation.

“You cheated.”

“How did I cheat?!”

“There’s no way Erron Black beat Scorpion! There’s no way you beat me!”

“Oh, here we go.”

Y/N shook her head, Yeji nudging her. “What’s up?”

“What do you think about this guy?” Yeji revealed her phone screen, a Tinder profile on display. Y/N tried to keep her face from scrunching up, finding his photo to be too cocky considering the lack of clothing.

“Swipe left. Don’t do that to yourself.”

“Come on! He’s not bad!”

“He doesn’t even have a bio.”

Yeji pouted for a moment, studying the photo for a moment before sighing and swiping left, “Fair point.”

“What do you think we should do for his birthday?” 

Jisung’s loud voice made her tune into their chatter-again. She watched him in the midst of solving a Rubik’s cube he had produced out of nowhere.

Hyunjin leaned his head back on the bed, hair splaying out by her legs. Y/N subconsciously reached out and started playing with his hair. Hyunjin hummed in satisfaction before mumbling, “I don’t know, maybe the bowling rink? It’s only a couple blocks from campus.”

Jisung paused in his puzzle solving, eyes narrowing at Hyunjin. “Good ideas, please. That’s lame.”

Hyunjin looked back at Y/N upside down, disbelief clear as day. She flashed him a comforting smile. 

“Whose birthday is it?” Y/N jumped in as an attempt to redirect Jisung’s fire.

“Our friend Chris. You would’ve met him tonight if he wasn’t such a flake.”

Yeji stood and stretched before treading over to the communal bathroom the boys shared with their suite-mates. They all watched her for a moment before continuing their conversation.

“Well,” Y/N looked at Hyunjin before asking, “What’s Chris like?”

“That’s a good question,” Jisung pumped his fist in celebration as he finished solving the Rubik’s cube, fumbling to stop the timer on his phone. He groaned when the time read 4:01, clearly not satisfied. “What is Chris like, Hyunjin?”

“He’s… he’s probably the best one out of all of us.”

If Y/N was expecting him to say anything, it definitely wasn’t that. For as long as she lived, Hyunjin was the best guy she had ever had the honor of meeting without a doubt. It surprised her further when Changbin cut in with a one-word agreement before returning to his school work. Jisung even agreed, albeit a little begrudgingly.

The three of them might believe that, but it was hard for anyone to surpass Hyunjin in her eyes.

Looking between the three boys, she asked, “Are you being serious?” 

“What, you don’t believe us?” Jisung snapped. 

“Dude, chill,” Hyunjin warned, before he smiled genuinely at Y/N and nodded. “Yeah, I’m being serious. He has this way about him. I don’t know, he just knows how to make everyone around him feel good. He’s thoughtful and includes everybody. He’s also super funny and goofy. Oh, and my favorite thing? He always puts Jisung in his place.”

“Shut up,” Jisung barked, “Why don’t you marry the guy since you love him so much?”

“Nope. That’s CB’s job.” Hyunjin laughed, Jisung nodding and agreeing with whatever inside joke they shared. 

It warmed Y/N’s heart, to hear how much they adored this other friend she hadn’t met yet. Truth be told, it made her a little bit more curious about the guys before her. Maybe they caught her on a good day. If this were anyone else, one hangout would have sufficed. 

It was clear that there was more beneath this cocky facade Jisung put on, and Changbin was a locked treasure chest. This Chris guy lingered in her mind, wondering how great he had to be for his friends to praise him as effortlessly as they did. 

Shaking her head, she finished off her Dr. Pepper. She paused her train of that. That was weird. Why did any of that matter? It wasn’t like these were her friends. This was probably the last time she’d hang out with them. 

Her eyes found Hyunjin who was in the middle of a laughing fit. His face and neck were blushing red, his pretty smile on full display. Her heart squeezed, and she realized it made her happy to see him branching out and meeting new people. 

If anyone deserved to be seen and appreciated, it was Hyunjin. There was a reason she had nicknamed him Honey. He was sweet, warm, and magnetic. 

That was the moment she realized these guys? They were pretty alright. 

                                                       ~~~~

Later that night, after the girls parted ways with Hyunjin, they headed inside their dorm building. Unfortunately he lived at the same dorm as his friends, which happened to be on the other side of campus. After he and Jisung walked them home- Yeji quietly complained about her unwanted guest the whole walk there-they quickly departed.

As they rode up the elevator, a silence fell over the two. Y/N sensed Yeji had something to say for two reasons: Yeji didn’t hit the button for her floor and she kept on sighing dramatically. 

Having enough of her dramatics, Y/N turned to her at the same time Yeji did the same. “What’s up?”

“That was… worse than I expected.”

“How so?” Y/N narrowed her eyes. 

As the elevator rose up to the ninth floor, so did Y/N’s irritation. She didn’t know if she had the patience to deal with Yeji’s irrational judgment tonight. 

“Well, Jisung is unbearable.”

“Here we go.”

“What? I know you saw how he is. He’s so full-”

“-Of himself. What else, Yeji?”

Yeji gaped at her, the elevator doors sliding open. Y/N took the lead out the doors, heading down the hallway and toward her dorm. Yeji followed close behind, hissing, “What, do you like him or something? You don’t agree?”

“I’m not saying that. It’s just… you’re always like this. Every time we meet someone new, you find something not to like. Jisung isn’t perfect, I can see that already. But so aren’t you. And I’m not either. So who are we to disapprove of who Hyunjin decides to befriend?”

Yeji straightened her back, face going cold. “Actually, we are the exact people who should tell him who he should avoid. We’ve been by his side his whole life through thick and thin, and we know what’s good for him. Jisung is not it.”

“That’s where you’re wrong. Yeah, we matter to Hyunjin but he’s his own person. He can decide who he can be friends with. And why are you so dead set on hating Jisung? He hasn’t even done anything!”

Yeji shrugged a shoulder, just like a child with no comeback. “I don’t need a reason. It’s intuition.”

Y/N wanted to pull her hair out. Instead, she unlocked her dorm door. Before she shut the door, she looked at Yeji in the eye and said, “Well, good luck with telling Hyunjin that. I don’t agree with you, just remember that.”

It sucked having to close the door on her, but she knew that she wouldn’t let off until it escalated into a fight. She hated fighting with Yeji, so she knew the best choice was to walk away. 

“Everything okay?”

Turning slowly, she offered a weak smile to her roommate. Trudging into the room, she took in Chuu’s usual night routine, matching pajama set and face mask, sat at her desk as she watched her most recent Netflix obsession.

“Yeah, everything’s cool. Just Yeji freaking out again.” Y/N threw herself across her bed, needing a moment to collect her thoughts.

“Sorry to hear that,” Chuu softly told her, seemingly distracted by whatever was happening on her laptop screen. 

As she laid there, the conversation between her and Yeji played out again in her mind. She understood her concerns, she really did. Yeji wasn’t the only one who noticed some of Jisung’s… negative qualities. In terms of friendliness, she was more like Yeji than Hyunjin. She was wary of people just like she was, the only difference was she needed more of a reason to write someone off. 

Maybe it was jealousy, or maybe it was something more that Y/N couldn’t see, but Yeji was being irrationally unfair. After more thought, her mind didn’t change. Yeji would have to express her dislike on her own. 

She started dozing off to the quiet chatter of Chuu’s show and her thoughts of the boys she had just met. 

Bonfire Jisung, treasure box Changbin, and the mystery Chris. 

She could admit to herself now, when the world was quiet and she was vulnerable to her own mind, that she didn’t mind being around them, not at all. 

As long as they made Hyunjin happy.

> Part Two <