#i used to be like 'man i just spent my poor mothers money on a funny game i like im a lost cause' no bruh ur just neurodivirgent

[alexparozi]

paying to have my name in fnf credits was actually a great financial decision thanks 15 year old me you get a pat on the back

[bratbarzal]

On Your Side (NH13) / Prologue

Pairing: Nico Hischier x Fem!OC Poppy Jensen

WC: 13k

Chapter Warnings: angst, miscommunication, ghosting? maybe, some cursing, mentions of OC having nephews (gross), being broken up with over a text, allusions to anxiety, my oc being argumentative and avoidant (she's me), and nico also being avoidant and a poor communicator (he's a man) (he's also a capricorn) (sorry capricorns)

Summary: Poppy Jensen’s job with the New Jersey Devils was supposed to be her first big step into adulthood - a way to prove to herself and her overbearing parents that she could make her own way in life. She was never supposed to become involved with any of the players. Becoming best friends with their captain was stupid. Getting her heart broken by him was tragic. Getting knocked up with his child was just plain messy.

Series Masterlist

A/N: is a 13k prologue excessive? probably. is the mixture of tenses in this part going to grind your gears? most definitely. am I going to do anything about it? no.

I've never actually published any writing before so go easy on the girl. if I need to tag any warnings just let me know. if you like the fic let me know. if you don't like the fic I beg you I'm having a bad month spare meeeeee.

TW for british english spellings because shock horror I am unfortunately british, get used to u's and s's where you least expect them, I will change my spell check settings for no one!! nico's facebook aunt shenanigans have lit a fire within me today and I was writing a later chapter for this fic and thinking if I don't actually put this out into the world I never will so here we are hi my name is maggie I hope you enjoy

Poppy

New Years has always been Poppy Jensen’s favourite holiday. The dwindling aftermath of Christmas - lights and decorations still hung throughout the city, everyone decked in the hats, scarves and ugly sweaters gifted by distant relatives over the Christmas period, and the six days of limbo usually spent drinking and eating copious amounts of leftovers before the new year, new me resolutions kick in - and experiencing it all in her hometown surrounded by the people she loves the most, there is no other time like it.

This year, she feels like the festive period has been one, long, strung-out horror show. 

Self-inflicted, of course, like all the other tragedies of her life, she does know she only has herself to blame for how pathetic it has turned out.

She had prepared herself for Christmas to be a dud. The one time of the year that she and her family put aside their differences, and this year she had opted out - or, so her mother had dramatically concluded; she actually just had work commitments. But, this would be her first spent alone due to the fact her parents had decided to go and visit her older brother, Oliver, and his family in San Francisco.

They didn’t have to fly across the country - Oliver has more than enough money to book his clan on a flight back to his home state, but obviously as the golden child, the Jensen’s must bend to his every whim. Of course, Poppy had been invited. Her relationship with her brother wasn’t mutually acrimonious, but the aforementioned work commitments got her out of that bore-fest. 

She does love her brother. Sometimes. Christmas, especially - he’s a great and expensive gift-giver. And she loves his wife, Kimberley, and their two sons - her nephews, James and Lucas - but spending the holidays with them would have been a lot. Her family is hard work on the best of days, and the only reason Christmas is ever bearable is because her mother hires help, and it’s impossible for the stress train to leave the station if Priscilla Jensen is given enough wine early enough in the day to dull her usual wicked demeanour. 

Kimberley, God bless her soul, maintains a sober house, and Poppy, as much as she respects this, would not go anywhere near that train wreck if you paid her a million dollars.

There’s also the fact that the holidays were invented to unwind, and Poppy somehow always gets lumped on nephew duty. She had long grown out of her boys are gross phase, but lord, do those two try everything in their power to bring it back. She has lost count of the amount of their bodily fluids she has had wiped all over her best clothes over the years. If she had agreed to fly out, she no doubt would have ended up being the one to watch the kids while everyone else had their version of a good time, and so she’d successfully managed to avoid all that with a half-assed promise of visiting at Easter, instead.

Her brother hadn’t been too upset - one less place setting at the table for him to worry about - but her mother had been livid, and there was no chance Poppy would live it down without owing her.

God forbid she, as an adult, actually got to choose how to spend her time.

She hadn’t actually been completely alone on Christmas, not all day, at least. Her best friend Nia had invited her to eat with her and her dad, but they were hardly putting her in the festive spirit with their constant snipes at each other, and so she’d given herself stomach ache stuffing herself full of corn bread and roasted carrots and dipped out to make it home for the Giants game - because there’s no better tradition than watching your team lose on Christmas Day. At least she wasn’t there to watch her dad and brother yell at the TV and get all grumpy for hours after the fact. 

She’d watched Love Actually with mulled wine in hand and fallen asleep on the couch - waking up in the middle of the night to the muffled sound of her neighbours screaming at each other through the walls. 

Poppy had the 26th off, and spent the day preparing her apartment for New Years, knowing she wouldn’t have any other opportunity to get her big clean done. She’d cleared out half her wardrobe - done several loads of laundry so that she could donate clean clothes to the women’s shelter a few blocks over - rid her kitchen of all the outdated tinned foods in the backs of her cupboards, dusted every surface, vacuumed every floor, colour-coded her bookshelf to look more aesthetically pleasing and then within an hour put it back in alphabetical order - all in a day’s work. 

By the time the 27th rolled around, and she had to return to work, she had tired herself out completely. She had been drained, and the worst part of it all, she didn’t even actually need to be there.

Sure, December was a crazy time to work in the NHL, their schedule unrelenting when the season got into full-swing, and the holiday events that Poppy’s team had to organise seemed never ending, but she had technically been given limbo-week off. Not that her mother had to know.

The Youth Foundation team had all wrapped up work for the year on the 23rd, and if Poppy was a truly good daughter/sibling/aunt, she would have booked herself on a red-eye after the home win that evening, but the second the opportunity to accept an actual real excuse not to change her plans arose, she took it with open arms. Her guilt of lying to her family diminished, along with her will to live at the fact she had - self-inflicted, as always - put herself down to work her favourite time of the year.

Her career with the New Jersey Devils had started with an internship in her final year of college. She had worked with the digital content department for her first year, quickly being sniped by the Foundation in the middle of her second year and working her way past content creation to helping co-ordinate and run some of the community events.

When her friend Jessica had approached Poppy and begged for her to cover her spot in the department they had started out together in for limbo-week, spending it with the team at their games, she had jumped at the bit. She knew no one else would agree to work last minute after having their time off approved, and was pleased to relay to her mom that she had to prove herself as a team player if she wanted more responsibility at work. It was all in the name of bumping up her performance and getting her name out there, and definitely not avoiding her family and that whole shit-show.

Poppy loves her job, and is more than happy with her career, but she could sing about it until the cows come home and her parents could not care less. They rarely ever acknowledged her successes because her life didn’t fit the mould they had set out for her - another reason she hadn’t wanted to spend this Christmas hounded with questions of why don’t you come work for your dad? Or why didn’t you accept the interview Ollie so kindly got for you? She doesn’t want a non-sensical, nothing job made up to keep her under her family’s influence. She has forged her own path, one that many dream of in one of the biggest industries in the country, and no matter how much she disappointed her parents in comparison to her lackey brother, she is content with where she is.

She had completely forgotten, however, that the devils played away on the 29th and 30th, and if she was going to be tagging along with the bare-bones limbo week media crew, there was no way in hell she was getting out of joining the team’s New Years celebrations. 

She had done her fair share of dodging team events already this year, and despite the fact she could appease most of her friends within the organisation, there was one person who would not let her off so easy.

This year is Jack Hughes��� first year hosting the big Devils New Years party - he’d, in her opinion, stupidly volunteered pretty much last minute after the venue the team had booked flooded in November and cancelled their reservation - and he would not let Poppy get out of coming, even if that meant scuppering her own annual tradition of getting shit-faced with her girls in their perfectly planned New Jersey bar crawl.

She’d done her best work to convince him - had almost sold him on the dream - she and her best friend, Nia, always start at the bar below Nia’s apartment in Hoboken, and then dot to the bars closest to their other friends apartments until they end up by Poppy’s, which has the perfect little rooftop set up where they get to watch all the fireworks across the Hudson. It’s how she’s spent the holiday every year since she and all her girls turned 21, and it was her favourite day, her favourite way to ring in a new year with her best friends in her favourite place in the world. 

Jack’s argument was that he also had a great view across the Hudson from his Jersey City apartment, and that she was less likely to catch hypothermia this year because his view came through floor to ceiling windows and the luxury of central heating.

She’d tried to argue that she had all intentions of meeting her future husband on her adventures through New Jersey, and he gave the quick rebuttal that he had plenty of single friends she was yet to meet. 

There was no excuse she could give that he couldn’t counteract, and so she’d eventually given up with the resolution that when he is 3 drinks deep, Jack Hughes can barely remember his own name, let alone keep tabs on where Poppy is, or if she ever showed up in the first place. She can always just say she’s running late until he stops asking.

And then she’d somehow gotten roped into helping him set up. 

Jack had cornered her on their flight home from Boston, where they had just lost to the Bruins and, all of a sudden, no one was in any kind of mood to party.

“I swear,” he had said, throwing himself down into the vacant seat beside her as she attempted to clear her inbox on the short journey, swiping away messages and storing others to review when work started back up in the next week, “If I mess up this party, and my name goes down in Devils history tied to the biggest depression session this team have ever seen, I’m holding you personally responsible.”

“How the hell would that be my fault?” She had scoffed, kicking at his feet when he had tried to man-spread next to her and they had quite abruptly knocked knees. The staff seats toward the front of the plane weren’t quite as spacious as the player seats further back.

“You brought some serious negative energy with you on this trip,” he shrugged, reaching for the bag of skittles she had stashed in the pocket on the seat in front of her and stealing a handful, “And I can’t blame you for us losing, so I’m gonna blame you for constantly trying to abandon my event and making me feel so insecure about it that it turned into a complete bore-fest because I didn’t have my literal professional event planner friend to help me set it all up.”

Jack Hughes had joined the New Jersey Devils at the same time Poppy had started her internship. There had been some corny ice breaker session for everyone new to the organisation that season, and they’d bonded over their shared love for country music. He’d become dependent on her as a local to the area for recommendations for everything - food, sports bars, coffee, grocery shopping, running routes - and they’d quickly developed a friendship that had lasted them thus far. No fallouts, no drama, no issues. Being friends with Jack is easy. 

Poppy is older by near enough 18 months, and considers him as close to a little brother as she will ever find - annoying, teasing, loud and somewhat of a know-it-all, but he cares deeply, and he’s loyal, honest and open with her, and she loves him for it.

“I’ve done my part even helping you plan the thing,” she had to snatch the bag back from him before he finished the skittles off, needing the sugar to keep her awake for the quick drive home when they landed. Jack had been on her back about this party since he had first put his name in the hat to host, and she had been gracious, helping him arrange food, drinks, decorations and DJ equipment in the hopes it would lessen the blow that she didn’t want to attend. “I didn’t bring negative energy.”

“Do I have to kidnap you when we deplane or are you gonna come around tomorrow morning and help me?”

“Kidnap me?” she couldn’t help but laugh, casting a quick measured glance over his figure. “Real cute, Jack, you’re nothing without your stick.”

“I could take you.” He attempted to throw a skittle up into the air and catch it in his mouth, not accounting for the fact they were on a moving, somewhat turbulent plane, and he barely had enough finesse to pull that off on the ground. The candy landed and bounced off his cheekbone, and he watched it fall to the floor with a child-like pout. 

“It’s fighting talk like that that would lose you another tooth, Hughesy,” she had threatened in jest. 

“I’m a middle child, I don’t start fights I can’t finish, Popcorn.” He also has a track record of giving Poppy the worst nicknames she has ever heard in her entire 24 years on this Earth. “Luke’s already said he’ll help me on the kidnapping front, we have a plan.”

“Your plan is nothing without incentive, Jack. You come at me with weak threats when you could just offer me something in return.”

“Like what?” His eyes narrowed toward her, shuffling in the seat until he was facing her fully. 

“I want to bring Nia.” If she was going to be subjected to this, she was bringing back up - and she had thought this would be a good trade, knowing how protective the boys were of their private events, especially those thrown in their own homes.

Poppy hadn’t liked the way his lips curved up immediately, like she had fallen straight into his trap. “Done.” She should have known better. He stood up, edging back into the aisle and sending her a wink. “I’ll text you details on when and where I need you. Your hot friend is more than welcome to offer a hand, too.”

And that is how Poppy has ended up spending the day of New Years Eve, her favourite day of the year, rushing to set up Jack Hughes’ apartment. 

Her first task had been to go round to Jack’s and accept the deliveries that came while he and Luke were out picking up the decks for the DJ. Drinks arrived by the crateful, the boxes of paper plates, cups and other table wears took her several trips up and down from Jack’s apartment to the building lobby until she broke out in a sweat, and she had done her best to hang all the decorations, her last call being to pick up the bigger decoration delivery from downstairs.  

Poppy, with the help of Lionel, the building’s concierge, loads the elevator full of decor, ranging from golden helium balloons that spell out ‘Happy New Year’ and ‘2024’, a large roll that should hopefully unravel to reveal a backdrop for a makeshift photo-booth, as well as a deconstructed balloon arch that gave her PTSD from the amount of events at the Rock she’d had to put them together.

Lionel offers to come up with her to help unload everything upstairs, but the thought of cramming another person in there with all the stuff makes her feel claustrophobic, so she politely declines - though, when the elevator doors open and she bumps face first into a firm chest, her nose smushing against a khaki t-shirt she wishes she had someone else with her to buffer the tension that stiffens her spine. 

A large, calloused hand wraps around her upper arm to steady her, and another reaches out to keep the doors of the elevator from closing in on where she stands. She looks up into eyes swirled with the colour of warm, melted chocolate, and her throat feels just the slightest bit drier than it had 5 seconds ago.

“Hey,” Nico Hischier’s voice is deep, scratchy like he’s just woken up - he probably has given how late the team got in last night - and trickles down in static currents from her ears to the base of Poppy’s back. 

She takes a short, startled step back, and gulps down the dryness in her throat before she gives a quick, “Hey,” in response. “Sorry, I’ll just take a second to unload all of this then the elevator is yours.”

“I’ll help,” Nico doesn’t phrase it as a question, as if knowing she would immediately decline. Not, let me help, or do you need help? He’ll just do it. “You get everything out and I’ll take it inside?”

She nods, despite the voice in the back of her head telling her that he’s only helping to get the job done quicker, and be able to get downstairs. She makes a conscious mental effort to drown it out while the two of them work in a silent tandem, her lifting the decorations into the hallway and him towing them down and into Jack’s apartment. 

She makes another conscious effort not to watch when he lifts things, the flex of his arms, the rippling muscles of his shoulders.

“Is that the last of it?” He asks, gesturing to the rolled up backdrop leaning on the side of the elevator and propping it open. 

“Yeah, but I got it,” Poppy gives a tight smile, lifting the roll but staying in place so the doors don’t close behind her and she doesn’t get stuck any longer in Nico’s presence on her own. “Thanks for helping.”

There used to be a time she couldn’t get enough of being around Nico, but those days are long gone.There is a permanent frigidity between them now - it’s been there since the summer just gone - and she’s overstimulated enough having spent her morning being Jack’s lackey while he no doubt slacks off with his brother grabbing brunch out. Her patience is beyond wearing thin, and so the last thing she needs is prolonged contact with the Devils captain where she will no doubt end up blowing up and making everything worse.

No one wants to ring in the new year with an almighty fallout.

She can’t help the frown that befalls her features when he makes no effort to occupy the elevator. He makes no effort to do anything, only looking at Poppy with a pensive pout. “Jack said I should come help you out.”

Of course he did, she thinks.

For the past four months, Jack Hughes has been acting like it’s his greater purpose in life to bring Nico and Poppy back together - like the demise of their friendship was the greatest personal inconvenience he has ever faced in his life. 

He has orchestrated one too many ‘accidental’ run-ins just like this one, and Poppy isn’t going to entertain his childish games any longer.

Nico doesn’t want to be her friend - she knows this for a fact - so Jack’s schemes are becoming a waste of everyone’s time.

“I’m alright, Nia’s on her way, you don’t have to hang around.”

Nia was due at Jack’s apartment two hours ago, but is no doubt still asleep after she was out last night for her pre-New Years celebrations. She’ll come over soon enough, though, and so Poppy doesn’t feel entirely deflated to turn down help she actually might currently need.

“I don’t mind waiting until she gets here.” Nico shrugs, again not giving her a natural opportunity to say no. He nods towards the apartment, gesturing for Poppy to start making her way over. “We both know she won’t take the stairs.”

Something about the way he so casually recalls information about her best friend plucks at her nerves, just a little, reflective of the part of their lives they had once shared with each other like it was nothing, but she shrugs it off, beginning to head towards the apartment with the roll tucked under her arm.

“I thought New Years was your favourite holiday?” He asks once they’re both inside, the sound of the door clicking shut behind him and somewhat trapping her in his presence echoing throughout the room. He doesn’t allow for any kind of prolonged silence between the two of them. If Nico Hischier is good at anything, it’s getting people to talk to him.

It’s not entirely that she doesn’t want to talk to him.

She does.

She’s wanted to talk to him every day for the past 4 months that they hadn’t talked - has been craving even mundane, casual conversation about the weather or traffic on the way into work, but now, as he yet again indifferently recollects such personal details about her as if they have remained close, she begins to feel uneasy.

“It is,” she gives a half-hearted, dismissive response. 

“Then why are you all grumpy?”

“I’m not.” She frowns, eyebrows furrowing and arms crossing as she turns to face him, the lie tasting bitter on her tongue.  

She’s not trying to be difficult. Or maybe she is. She is in a particularly bad mood, but she had thought she’d done a good job at masking it. He’d been around her all of 2 minutes and saw right through her. 

“Jack said you’ve been off all morning.”

Like he cares, she thinks, her mood souring further at the fact he doesn’t see through her or even care at all, he’s here at the request of someone else. Following up on his duties as a captain and fulfilling a favour for one of his actual friends.

Embarrassment floods the pit of her stomach, and rears its ugly head in the form of her biting tone when she replies, “Jack’s been out all morning, how would he know?”

“He left you to do all this on your own?” Nico frowns, gesturing around to the half-way set up apartment. All that’s left to do aside from put up the decorations she’s just lugged up is set up the food and drinks, and Poppy figured she could leave that task to Jack so that it all remained fresher for longer. 

“I do this kind of thing for a living, remember?”

She cringes inwardly at the venom in her voice, turning away from him with a huff and missing the way his posture deflates. 

“You run events, Poppy, you’re not an assistant.” She can hear his heavy footsteps follow as she moves to set up the photo-booth area. “If I’d known he had you running after him all morning, I’d have-,”

“Called someone else to come help me so you could carry on avoiding me?”

She really is wound up now. Jack bailing on her to do God-knows what while she sets up his party had been one thing - there was a rational part of her brain that would tell her there would no doubt be hiccups in trying to source a bunch of DJ equipment in New Jersey on New Years Eve and he hadn’t actually bailed - and she could write off Nia’s disappearance due to the fact Poppy had sprung the plans on her last minute when she got home and called her last night, and she was bound to show up at some point. But Nico implying she is letting Jack walk all over her and needs anyone’s help to get through setting up a basic party is downright offensive. At least, in her stressed out state, it is - and so she can’t find it within herself to bite her tongue about their situation any longer.

If it drives him away and brings back her solitude to finish setting up without him occupying any precious mind space, so be it.

She almost forgets a key fact about the man before her. He doesn’t give up so easily.

“I’m not avoiding you.” He bites back, stepping into her space and helping her lift the backdrop roll to fit into the brackets she had set up earlier when the structure for the booth had arrived. “I would have come to help you, myself, Poppy.”

She wishes he would stop saying her name. 

4 months of radio silence and he’s thrown it at her like a dagger twice in the span of 30 seconds, the way his it rolls of his tongue in a low, smooth rasp scratching an itch she didn’t know she had, and now she can’t shake it. 

“I’m fine,” she huffs, reaching as far as she can and pressing until she hears the brackets click into place. At the brief noise, Nico catches on to what he needs to do at his side and manages to click it into place, barely lifting his arms. She moves into the middle of the structure, pulling at the velcro tab holding the roll together until it cascades to the floor and unveils the backdrop in its entirety. 

“What else needs doing?” He asks, his tone gentler this time.

“Nothing,” she mutters, winding the velcro in between her fingers to occupy them, before moving to pass him and make her way to the next task on her list. It’s only small things now. Arranging the balloons, setting up the arch, clearing table space for the equipment when Jack finally arrives home. “You can go, I’ve got it.”

“Mohn,” Nico sighs lowly, warm hand clasping around her forearm as she attempts to pass, holding her in place beside him. 

She really wishes he wouldn’t call her that.

If Jack is the prince of childish monikers that make her insides curl, Nico is the king of making her melt.

The nickname takes her straight back to the days before the waves of the summer break washed their friendship away. The times where he’d give her a ride home from the Prudential Center after work, whispering a, “Goodnight, Mohn,” in her ear as they hugged goodbye over the centre console in the front of his car. The times she’d meet up with the team to celebrate a win at their favourite bar, and he’d throw a never-casual, “Looking good, Mohn,” her way with an appreciative once-over. 

And it takes her even further back to when they had met, and she’d first offered her name.

“I’ll be interning with the content team, my name is Poppy,” she had offered a bright smile, reaching her hand out for him to shake, and making sure to keep a firm grip, just like her father had taught her, when he places his hand in hers. As she had done since she was a child, it was instinctual to follow up with, “Like the flower.”

“Mohnblume,” he had uttered, a smile so deep his cheeks dimpled into deep valleys.

“Huh?” She had been only a little bit caught out by the way his eyes shone, forgetting her manners as her head tilted to the side in confusion.

“Poppy flower, that’s what it is in my language.”

“Oh,” she had exclaimed, furrowed brows raising, a soft flush warming her cheeks, “Pretty!”

“Very.”

She had convinced herself for a long time that it was just his way of remembering - an aid in blurring the lines between the two languages that, especially back then, he often found himself mixed up in. And then, after a while, using it seemed to bring a protected familiarity between them - like an inside joke - and he’d use it less in front of others and more in the times it was just the two of them.

Years down the line from hearing it for the first time, and months down the line from hearing it for the last, her heart still thumps the same erratic beat at the sound.

Nico’s eyes still shine the same way when he looks down at her, and she fights every fibre of her being not to think too much about it. Or not to think about the touch of his hand on her arm, still holding her in place, the two of them closer than they have been in a long time, now.

It’s painfully easy to forget the months of distance after only seconds in his immediate company - to wipe from her memory the reason for her reticence and to push down the stubborn desire to push him away.

Her lips part to speak, and she doesn’t know if she’s about to turn him down or take him in, because another voice fills the apartment before any words get the chance to spill out.

“I come bearing gifts!” A sing-song lull breaks the silence as her best friend makes her presence known, entering the apartment with a drinks carrier in one hand, and a to-go back over the other wrist. 

Poppy steps away, shaking Nico’s grip from her arm, and turns to give Nia her full attention, hoping that she is either too hungover or too focused on herself to see or care about the obvious tension between her and the captain. She manages to bite her tongue from letting a Thank God slip out, and makes her way over to retrieve a much needed drink.

“They were out of chai so I got you an iced tea,” Nia holds out the drink to Poppy, and then the to go bag, “And half a cinnamon roll.”

“Half?”

“What? I was hungry too.” Nia scoffs, turning her attention to the brooding presence on the other side of the room. “Sorry, Nico, I didn’t know you’d be here.”

“Would you have only eaten a third if you did?” He trials a joke, and when Poppy sneaks a peak back toward him, he looks apprehensive - scratching at the nape of his neck as if anticipating a bad reaction to his attempt at lighthearted humour.

“I’m sure Poppy doesn’t mind sharing if you’re starving,” Nia makes her way to the bar set up by the kitchen, placing her own cup down and shrugging off her purse beside it. 

“I wouldn’t dream of depriving her of half a cinnamon roll.” While his words are directed to her best friend, Nico looks at Poppy with a wistful smile, and she can practically see the memory of an old shared routine wash over his eyes. 

A weekly ritual of meeting by the PATH station close to both of their apartments on a free morning for a run, and then catching breakfast to go and grab a juice or a smoothie for the walk home - abandoned just like all the other little traditions they once had together.

Nico and Poppy had been close, before. Closer than she is to Jack, now - closer than she’s been to anyone else on the team, ever. So close that Nico knows her best friend enough to joke around with a familiar ease; so close that they’d even hung out as a three before, back when the girls shared an apartment in Poppy’s first year with the Devils, and he had been the only person that Nia had ever been happy to share her childhood friend with. 

And now, Poppy stands between them in a silence so uncomfortable she feels like the room is shaking.

She hasn’t talked to Nico in months, and hasn’t talked about him in just as long, but she knows Nia can read her like a book. 

The girls had grown up together - been through everything side by side, pinky fingers intertwined with an eternal promise of friendship and understanding. The demise of relationships, friendship group implosions, familial hardships, Nia’s goth phase, the time Poppy wrecked her hair dying it a vibrant cherry-red because her high school crush said Ariana Grande was hot - she still shudders thinking of how her hair glowed red in any direct light for years in the aftermath. Through middle school, high school, college, and all the way up until now, the pair know each other inside out.

So Poppy knows that Nia knows something happened.

Nia knows that Poppy hadn’t been able to go a day without bringing up the Swiss Captain before the summer, and then all of a sudden, she didn’t mention him at all. But she also knows her friend well enough and loves her too much not to have pressed on an open wound.

“It looks insane in here, Pop,” Nia gawks at the set up around her, every corner of the open plan layout of Jack’s large apartment decked out with decor and party amenities. “Do you guys go this hard every year?”

“Depends who’s hosting,” Nico shrugs, knowing when it had been his turn the year before, his event had been much more lowkey. Poppy had seen the pictures, had been sent an abundance of wish you were here snapchats around midnight from the Captain himself. Jack has a thing about his reputation that won’t let him even consider doing anything lowkey. “I forgot this would be your first year coming.”

“Oh, we’re not coming.” Poppy covers her mouth as she speaks around a bite of her food, unable to wait until she’d finished her mouthful due to the immediate urge to shut him down once again.

“You’re not?” He almost sounds disappointed. She doesn’t dare check for the furrow of his thick eyebrows or the pout of his lips. “Jack said he’d convinced you.”

A flash of anxiety shoots across her chest at the thought of him considering her attendance. Had he asked Jack? Had he mentioned her specifically - pushed him to convince her? Or had Jack just brought it up in an offhanded comment?

“I just agreed to get him off my back about it.” Her choice of words is only slightly intended to hurt. She and Nico were no longer friends - she hadn’t been the one to make that decision. Despite that fact, she tries to suppress the guilt clawing at the base of her throat at the wash of understanding that passes over his features. A solemn nod, gaze bouncing to the floor, lips pressed together. “We have plans with our friends.”

“Actually,” Nia’s voice captures both their attention swiftly - Poppy’s head whipping around in subtle alarm and Nico’s in anticipation. “Blake’s flight back from Arizona got cancelled, and Kelsey bailed on me last night because she got Covid of all things over Christmas.”

“What about Emma?” Poppy asks, hoping and praying their hermit friend has all of a sudden grown some stellar social skills and agreed to carry on their tradition for the sake of Poppy’s sanity.

“She double booked with her boyfriend, and he’s a huge drip I don’t really wanna hang out with those two all night.” God damn Emma and her tool of a boyfriend, Poppy thinks. “At least if we come here, we’re still close enough to your place we can make it back for fireworks on the roof.”

“We get a great view of them from this building,” Nico makes his presence known again, attempting to offer a solution. “If you didn’t want to walk back home so late.”

“See, Pop,” Nia claps her hands together with a grin, “We get to come to a cool party, don’t have to worry about creeps following us around all night, and still get to hold on to tradition. Win, win, win if you ask me!”

“Right,” Poppy sighs, knowing now that Nia has her heart set on the plan, there’s nothing she can do about it. Any persistence on her part would be too obvious. “Fine.”

“Awesome! What’s left to do?”

Poppy eyes Nico, knowing she’d told him only a few minutes ago that there was nothing left. “Just need to clear a table for the equipment Jack’s getting,”

“Which one?” Nia asks, making her way over with her iced tea in hand once Poppy points toward the table in the corner by the wall-to-wall window. “Are you helping or just standing around looking pretty?” 

Nico’s cheeks flush, a subtle warmth arising to his skin, and he gives a bashful chuckle.

Poppy feels a little nauseous, and it’s not from the sickly sweet half of a pastry she’s just forced down.

Nia’s eyes flicker between the two of them like she’s at a grand slam, and her lips twist to hide a smile.

“I actually need to head out,” he says, gaze darting quickly to Poppy before turning to her best friend, “I have some things I need to do before tonight. It was good to see you, though, Nia.”

Nia hums around the straw of her drink, giving a dismissive wave. “You too, see you later!”

Nico begins towards the door to the apartment, and just before he passes Poppy, he stops. He doesn’t reach for her this time, doesn’t step too close, but she can feel his presence regardless. And every hair on her body stands to attention like she’s been shocked by static when he says, lowly, “I’ll see you tonight, Mohn.”

She can only nod in response, not trusting her voice to speak, not trusting her eyes to look into his and be able to look away. 

After he departs, there are a few minutes of an ear-piercing silence. Poppy can hear every movement Nia makes, from the slurp of her drink, to the manner in which she throws things around with little care for where they end up. And louder than anything, she hears the violent thud of her heartbeat in her own ears.

“So,” Nia drags out when Poppy joins her at the almost empty table. “What the fuck was that?”

“What was what?” Poppy and Nia have known each other fifteen years, she doesn’t know why she hopelessly thought that would work.

“Don’t play dumb,” Nia scoffs, “You and Captain Sexy,”

“There is no me and Nico,”

“But you know who I’m asking about,” she scoffs like she’s caught her best friend out, and then adds, with a suggestive wiggle of her brows, “So you do think he’s sexy?”

“What are you, twelve?” Poppy rolls her eyes, “He’s the only captain we’ve been in a room with, pretty obvious who you were referring to.”

“Admit it, Poppy, I saw the two of you when I came in, you totally wanna jump his bones, you have for as long as you’ve known him.”

“We’re not having this conversation, Ni.”

“The hell we aren’t!” Nia grabs her best friend by the shoulders, “I’ve bitten my tongue for months, Pop, watching you mope around and get all glum whenever work is brought up. I couldn’t get you to shut up about the guy before, what the hell happened between you two?”

“Nothing happened!”

“It totally did!” Nia can spy the aversion Poppy is attempting from miles off. “Don’t tell me you two finally hooked up and you didn’t fill me in,”

“He has a girlfriend, Nia.”

The way Poppy says it is like a period to a sentence. End of conversation. End of speculation. It doesn’t matter what they had been before, or what they are now. It doesn’t matter what she feels. There is no her and Nico because he is someone else’s. That’s the crux of it.

“Since when?” Nia frowns. 

“Since the summer just gone.”

And there it is. Understanding washes over the face of her best friend, and Poppy has to force herself to look away. 

He’d maybe been with her before that, too, but Poppy doesn’t actually know the entire timeline of it.

All she does know is that he’d come back from Switzerland with a drop dead gorgeous model hanging off of his arm, and he no longer had a use for Poppy in his life.

She knows other little bits, that she’d sourced from parts of conversations with others, or potential social media sleuthing that she will never admit to even with a gun to her head.

Talia, a model from somewhere close to home back in Europe, and Nico had hit it off at some festival when he’d gone back to Switzerland for his break. He’d very quickly and very clearly become smitten with her. Poppy had seen as much with her plastered all over his private stories and even posted on his private instagram feed.

By the time he came back to New Jersey for pre-season training camp, she was tagging along to team gatherings, he’d take her on his morning runs, grabbing breakfast together, he’d pick her up every day after work so he could no longer drive Poppy home, not that he’d ever attempted to explain any of that to her. She was at every home game, was his plus one to every event, and Poppy and Nico’s friendship had fizzled out so much that she sometimes feels like the whole thing had been a fantasy, or a figment of her imagination. Something she’d misunderstood, miscalculating every interaction they had ever shared and assuming they meant the same to him as they did to her.

They didn’t.

She doesn’t think any of it would have hurt her so much if he’d have let her down easy. A sorry for bailing on you the first time she’d text him if he wanted to meet up for their weekly run and he’d left her on read would have lessened the blow. He could have been straight up with an I just want to focus on my relationship right now. That would have been the decent thing to do, but he’d just dropped her, instead. Didn’t come around her office for lunch, didn’t text her after training when one of the guys said something stupid and he thought it might make her laugh. He’d cut her off from the intimate parts of his life - ghosted her, even - and all she could find it in herself to do anymore was miss him.

She’d made attempts to bring him around, at first. Tried speaking to him at work, tried texting, but after a few weeks of staring at the delivered sign at the bottom of their message thread, she had given up. It still taunts her every time she opens it up to delete the entire thing and move on like he clearly has - erasing all the inside jokes and times they had confided in one another like they meant ever meant anything in the first place.

She can count on her hand the amount of times they had spoken since the summer. Work related, entirely. A good game here and a have you seen whoever? there. Today is the first indication in months that they had ever been anything more than two people who worked in the same organisation. Friends of friends, co-workers, barely acquaintances.

Not people who know each other’s favourite holidays and are chummy with each other’s friends.

“I’m sorry, Poppy,” Nia frowns, “I didn’t know.”

“Doesn’t matter,” she shrugs, attempting nonchalance despite the stinging in the back of her throat. “Let’s finish here so we can go get ready.”

Nico

Nico Hischier isn’t the biggest fan of New Years Eve. He isn’t really a fan of the festive period, at all. He isn’t a scrooge by any means. He can appreciate the coming together of people and the celebration of the year just gone, and the one starting fresh - but ever since he moved from Switzerland and started his career in the NHL, the holiday period has felt unnecessarily long.

His schedule is jam packed - games up until the 23rd, starting again after Christmas on the 27th, and again after New Years on the 3rd - and there aren’t enough consecutive days together to celebrate in the way others get to do this time of year. 

He knows he has to make do with the fact - a small price to pay for living his dream - and his teammates help, all sharing in their sacrifices and trying to make the best out of a bad deal. But he can’t help but feel a lack. A lack of tradition, a lack of family being around, a lack of normalcy.

He remembers the holidays as a child, spending time at home with his parents and his siblings, having two weeks at home for his winter break and getting to spend his days doing whatever he pleased. As someone who moved overseas at such a young age, he looks back on those times fondly. 

But now, living at least 8 hours away from the rest of his family, this time of year only serves to remind him of the isolation that creeps up on him like a bad cold.

It starts at the beginning of the month, the sniffly nose period of the bug, when chatter starts around who’s doing what for Christmas. Decorations go up, parties are planned, names are passed around in a hat for Secret Santa, and discussions begin around who is managing to go where. 

Next comes the tickle in his throat - the last game before Christmas, where the team all depart and separate with temporary goodbyes as those who have family nearby all get to go home - their parents arranging home cooked extravaganza meals, reuniting with their siblings, exchanging gifts - and Nico, for the 5th year running, feels like a bit part in someone else’s festivities as he and a few of the other European guys all bustle into the dining room of whoever is willing to accommodate them for the day. 

Then comes the rest, the sneezing, the coughing, the lethargy, in the period between Christmas and New Years, when everyone is reeling off the back of their celebrations and looking forward to ringing in the next year with a big party. 

Nico had thought this year might have been better. He had been in a relationship, there were parts of the holidays he could tweak and adopt into his circumstances - exchanging gifts with a loved one, bringing her along to Christmas dinner at Jesper and Nicole’s place, and not having to feel like a third wheel or like he had to shrink to fit at the kiddie’s table. 

He’d even tried to start his own holiday traditions with Talia, his girlfriend. He’d booked an overnight stay at a fancy hotel on the Upper East Side in the middle in the month on one of the rare occasions he’d had two consecutive days with no game or other commitments - despite how hectic his schedule had been. He’d taken her Christmas shopping down Fifth Avenue like she’d talked so much about how she’d wanted to do ever since she came out to New Jersey with him after the summer. He’d taken her ice skating, away from the Rock so that it didn’t feel like work, they had bought and decorated the tree in his apartment together, he’d brought her along to every team holiday event.

And on the day of their home game against Anaheim on the 17th, just a few days after their trip into Manhattan, in the middle of the third period, she had unceremoniously dumped him with an I’m just not feeling this anymore. Over text. As she was already at the airport preparing to fly back to Munich to spend the holidays with her family. He had slumped into his locker after their brutal 5-1 defeat and couldn’t believe what he was reading.

Nico wanted to be angry. As he read the text, he could picture any other person throwing and smashing things. Calling her up and demanding an explanation - because it was clear she hadn’t been feeling it for longer than she let on, considering she was about to board a no doubt fully booked flight across the Atlantic in the eleventh hour. 

But there was too large of a part of him that just felt relieved.

Talia was great.

He had met her properly in the summer when he had gone home to Switzerland, but they’d had mutual friends long before. He’d liked a couple of her instagram pictures here, she had responded to a few of his stories there, and then they had been formally introduced at a friend’s party.

Things with her were easy, at first. Nico wasn’t looking for anything serious, and she had ticked all of the right boxes. She was good company, always down to do whatever he was doing with whoever he wanted to do it with. She recognised that summer was the only time of the year he truly had to himself, and she let him take the reins on how he wanted to spend it.

She would go on hikes with him, would lounge around in the sun if wanted, go to parties, go to festivals, join him on little weekend trips to Ibiza or Mallorca. And she was a great release when his training had picked up. She would work around his schedule. He’d invite her round to his apartment and he had enjoyed spending time doing nothing with her after a long day at the gym or at the rink.

She had slotted so perfectly into that version of his life that he gave very little thought into inviting her into the rest of it. 

She was beautiful, sociable, charismatic - and then she became hard work.

When summer was over, and he invited her to spend some time back in New Jersey, she didn’t quite grasp how much things would need to change. She constantly wanted to have plans. Wanted to go to parties, wanted to go out, be around other people, take little trips - and he had tried to accommodate her the best he could, but he didn’t have the time for himself, let alone for another person, to be doing things all the time. He had tried to tell her as much, and she said she was okay with it, said as long as he was present with her, she could settle for not doing the things they had in the summer, but she expected too much from him. 

She wanted Nico’s attention at all hours of the day, weaving herself into every aspect of his routine. He wanted to run? She would go with him, could really use the fresh air. He wanted to do some solo training at the gym? She had been meaning to work on her lifting. He couldn’t go to the grocery store - could barely even go to work without her wanting to be there. His phone would blow up whenever they were apart, and if he didn’t text her back straight away, she’d become cold - making him feel guilty and grovel for her forgiveness.

Talia was fun, until she wasn’t. Until she was exhausting, and Nico couldn’t keep up with her any longer. 

She didn’t give him the grace to have an off day. He was tired, he was struggling, and when the season kicked into full swing, and the team’s schedule was packed, he became unable to juggle it all.

His work was suffering, his star was dimming, his body ached and his performance dipped - both in his professional and personal life. 

And so, after the detonation of their relationship, a break up text felt a little like a wake up call.

Talia had contributed so much to the deterioration of normalcy in his life, that Nico was still trying to piece back together his routine 2 weeks later. 

His holiday period this year had been spent in a haze - and it wasn’t for the reason everyone thought. He had caught the pitiful glances sent his way over the dinner table at Christmas, had seen the way the couples in the room tried to spare him of their PDA whenever he was around, and he could have told them it was okay. He was okay. But there was a large part of him that was trying to figure that out, still.

He had known he wasn’t heartbroken. He wasn’t shooting off texts to Talia and begging for her to come back. He’d already boxed up what little belongings she had left behind and was going to ship them internationally after the New Year had passed. He had deleted, not archived, all their photos on his private socials, and had even deleted most of them from his phone. He wasn’t in pieces over the fact she had ended things.

But he knew something still wasn’t right.

At first, he had thought it was work related. Their worst week of the season had happened just before Christmas - 3 losses at home in the span of 5 days - and he thought that could be the reason for his slump. Then, they won against Detroit and he still felt off.

Then, he thought he had been anxious about Christmas - about showing up on his own, having to explain his breakup to everyone not quite caught up on the news yet, and he would have to wallow in that same old feeling of watching everyone else enjoy the holidays. But Jesper and Nicole had thrown together a pretty nice day for the guys. The food was great, the company was great, and he’d gone back to his apartment that night with a feeling of relief - like he’d been dreading something for so long only for him to have genuinely enjoyed himself.

And finally, as if being thrust into a freezing cold ice bath, realisation had washed over him on the morning of the team’s final home game of the year against Columbus. 

He had been walking through the back offices of the Prudential Centre when he had stumbled upon a conversation, and had heard Poppy Jensen’s voice for the first time in what felt like forever.

“I’m just kinda beat, to be honest, J,” she had said in response to a question Nico hadn’t caught. He had thought no one would be around, most of the Foundation staff having the week off, and hadn’t expected to come across anyone on his venture to the best vending machine in the building. The Foundation offices were often frequented by kids, and had an assortment of candies throughout their machines instead of the protein bars or rice cakes elsewhere in the staff areas. At the sound of her voice, he had come to an immediate halt, peaking around the corner where he could see into her office. She was moving some things into a box on her desk and Jack Hughes was reclining in the chair in front of it that once had been claimed by Nico as his own. “I’m all social interaction-ed out, the holidays have kinda beat me to a pulp, I don’t think I could keep up with you guys, I’m sorry.”

Nico watches as she swats at his feet when he tries to kick them up onto her desk, and can’t quite see the crease between her brows as she frowns at their mutual friend, but can remember how it used to form all the same. “You’re such a bullshitter,” Jack had scoffed, clearly pre-empting the stapler Poppy would throw at him, managing to catch it with ease. 

“You can’t call me a bullshitter in my own office,” she gawked, “You don’t see me marching out onto the ice and calling you an attention whore.”

Jack had thrown the stapler straight back. She caught it all the same, and dropped it into the box.

“You haven’t hung out with us in forever!”

“We hung out at the Toy Drive like 2 weeks ago!” There had been two toy drive events organised by the Foundation in different parts of town, and, as he had long become accustomed to, Nico had been put on the one separate to the event Poppy was working. It had been fun, but when he’d checked the social posts the next day and seen the pictures posted of the other team - all smiles between them, a slightly blurry Poppy in the near background of all of Jack’s pictures to indicate how close they had been throughout the event - he had felt like he’d missed out on something.

“That was work, it doesn’t count, Popsicle.” Nico could hear the roll of Jack’s eyes.

“Yeah, well some of us don’t consider helping underprivileged children and spreading Christmas spirit ‘work’, Jack.” Poppy had used air quotes to emphasise her sarcasm, and a fond warmth had spread throughout Nico’s chest at hearing her hold her own against someone as brazenly wise as Jack Hughes. “I thought we were hanging out, having fun, improving our community together. You should really check your ego!”

“I sh-,” Jack had managed to cut himself off, no doubt realising how loud he had gotten. “You’re the one who’s been avoiding the whole team all year, ‘cause you’re hung up on-,”

The door to Poppy’s office had slammed closed before Nico had a chance to hear the end of his teammate’s sentence. Their voices had been muffled after that, and shame had started to creep up on Nico at the fact he’d been eavesdropping on a private conversation.

He’d foregone the snacks he originally snuck off in search of, and returned back to the locker room to get ready for his practice skate. 

For the first time in a long time, when Jack arrived and threw himself down on the bench beside him, Nico had wanted him to bring her up.

In the months prior, he would freeze up at the mention of Poppy Jensen, not wanting to face the reality of his dwindling connection to someone who had once been such a huge part of his life. He had other focuses - namely, Talia - and reflecting on what had once been between the two of them did not serve any kind of good purpose. It opened him up to uncomfortable conversations that he wasn’t willing to have, uncomfortable realisations he couldn’t quite come to terms with, and he had been too comfortable avoiding any kind of confrontation around it.

But in the short time between witnessing the conversation between Jack and Poppy, and getting ready for the team’s morning practice, too many questions had been swirling around his mind, and he needed answers.

Why was Poppy packing up her desk?

Why was she avoiding hanging out with the team?

What was she so hung up on? Had something happened?

He’d spent so long avoiding even thinking about her, that he all of a sudden felt like he’d missed everything.

Luckily for him, Jack Hughes needed little to no prompting for his blabbermouth nature to prevail.

“You know, for someone who’s literal job it is to lead us as a Captain, you’ve done terribly at warning me just how stressful this whole New Years thing is,” Jack had huffed as he began changing into his practice gear.

“I did nothing but warn you,” Nico responded, “You called me Mr Grumpy Pants and told me I was just afraid your party was gonna be better than mine.”

“Yeah, well, you should have insisted, it’s stressing me out.”

“You’ll be fine,” Nico scoffed, running a hand through the mess of his hair and leaning back into his locker. He watched Jack’s jittery movements as he shrugged on his pads, and felt the need to reassure his friend. “Everyone’s looking forward to it. As long as there’s plenty to drink and decent music, people will have a good time.”

“Not everyone,” Jack grumbled, “I can’t even get Poppy to come and she loves parties.”

So that’s what they had been talking about. 

Poppy did love parties, but Nico couldn’t remember the last time he had seen her at one. 

“Poppy has a New Years ritual, she didn’t come to mine, either, I wouldn’t beat yourself up about it.” Nico shrugged, despite the wave of a memory that washed over him of him doing exactly that when she hadn’t showed up last year. He’d had to restrain himself from leaving his own party - spent the night texting her updates on what everyone had been doing, snap-chatting her pictures in the hopes it would entice her the few blocks over from her apartment building. He’d only been consoled by the text he’d received just after the clock had struck midnight, settling for the pride in knowing he had been one of the first to get a Happy New Years message from her - knowing it wasn’t just a mass text she would have copy-and-pasted to everyone else, and had been personalised to him with a bunch of perfectly curated emojis and exclamation marks after his name.

Nico didn’t see Jack’s stiffened posture at the way he had so nonchalantly mentioned her for the first time in forever. Didn’t see the side eye, or the pensive twist of his mouth as he carefully considered his next words like he was about to step through a minefield.

“I’m gonna keep trying,” he had sat back down on the bench beside Nico to put on his skates, “I’m definitely her favourite, she’s been helping me organise the whole thing, I don’t think it will take much to convince her.”

Nico tried not to show any kind of reaction to Jack being Poppy’s favourite, or at the thought of how much time they must be spending together to organise such an event. A part of him knew he was only saying it to rattle him. “Cutting it a little fine, aren’t you? New Years is in a couple days, and the guys from the Foundation aren’t even around this week, are they?”

“She’s covering someone on content until January, I said I’d drive her home after the game and me and Lukey can double down on it. And if we can’t get it done tonight, she’s coming on the road with us at the end of the week. I’ve got plenty of time.”

“Oh,” Nico was thankful for how Jack had leaned over to tie his skates up, because he wasn’t entirely sure he’d been able to mask whatever had flooded over him at the revelation that his teammate would be driving Poppy home.

That was his thing. He was pretty sure his passenger seat was still positioned to her liking despite how long it had been since she’d sat in it. He was still working his way through the stash of smiley face air fresheners she had stashed in his glove compartment. He still felt like he was forgetting something every time he left the parking lot and she wasn’t sat beside him, chatting his ear off about some of the kids she had worked with in the day.

“Maybe you should ask her?”

Nico’s eyes shot over to meet Jack’s in alarm. “Me?”

“Yeah, the more people that ask, the more she might feel like she’s missing out. Flash her those cute dimples, how could she possibly say no?”

“I think I’m the last person that’s gonna convince Poppy to come, Jack.” Nico had tried to be nonchalant about it, but he had come across so painfully uncomfortable that he could feel the hair on his arms stand, not liking the ache that spread through his chest at the statement. 

There was once upon a time that cheering Poppy Jensen up had been a large part of his routine. Even small acts, like bringing her a coffee on a busy day, where he knew she wouldn’t take a break to go get one herself, and knew how much she disliked the stuff from the pot in her office. Sending her texts from across the room when there were big organisation meetings and he could see her chewing at her fingernails at the vast amounts of information being spewed about. Tagging her in cute animal videos he’d come across on TikTok when he was across the country on a roadie and on a different timezone - she’d wake up to them sometimes, and he’d wake up to her response.

“Right, I forgot you two aren’t friends anymore.”

“Is that what she said?” Nico had swallowed down the hurt at the thought of her coming to that conclusion - vocalising it to someone and finalising the decision before he had any chance to do anything about it.

He couldn’t really blame her, though - he’d had plenty of chances.

Nico could feel himself beginning to spiral, words swirling around his head like a tornado of realisation and guilt. 

Aren’t friends anymore.

Avoiding the whole team all year.

Jack is driving her home.

He’s her favourite.

Aren’t friends anymore.

Shit.

He didn’t even take in Jack’s response to his question. As much as he wanted to know the answer, he couldn’t bear to hear it. 

Nico couldn’t face up to what he had truly lost.

It wasn’t his girlfriend of five months, who had dumped him over text during the most wonderful time of the year. It wasn’t a few games, that, sure, it had sucked that they had been beat, but in retrospect, the team had had a pretty decent start to the season, and shouldn’t have had his back up that much. 

Nico had lost someone who had, at one point, been the most important person in his life. 

The person he would usually have gone to to help him through the other stuff - the breakups, the losses, the stress, the anxiety - the crushing weight that had been pressing down on his chest since he had left for Switzerland at the beginning of summer. 

Nico and Poppy used to work around each other like a beautifully choreographed, well-rehearsed dance. She always knew when he was overwhelmed or exhausted, he always knew when she was stressed or upset, and they both knew how to pick the other back up. 

They hadn’t even fallen out of sync when they’d stopped talking to each other, only this time, they were moving around each other. If Nico entered a room, Poppy would leave. If she knew he was going to be at a team party, she’d make up an excuse not to go. If someone mentioned Poppy in casual conversation, Nico would quickly change the subject. All of it had been subconscious, on his part, at least.

It had been so easy after such a prolonged distance between the two of them to move when she pushed, to watch when she ran, like he had grown into his part in their relationship akin to repelling magnets, always moving away from one another.

It had been so easy that he hadn’t even really realised what was happening - lost and handicapped by a thick fog clouding his thoughts and his judgement. He’d let their once blooming friendship wither and die, and for what?

As he had watched Jack waddle out of the locker room for their practice session, muttering a dismissive, “Whatever, I’ll figure it out,” to his Captain, it was like he had been awakened into full consciousness. 

Nico had thought that his turmoil had started with the holiday period. Had thought the ache of homesickness had swirled in with the grief that came with the loss of his relationship, and the shame his poor performances on the ice had thrown upon him. But it had started long before that. He hadn’t been himself since he’d returned from his summer break. Before that, even.

Without realising that he had lost her, Nico had spent the last few months subconsciously mourning his friendship with Poppy - the crushing weight of that grief consuming him to a point that he felt lost with no way out, and had expressed it in a bunch of misguided ways.

He reached into his bag to retrieve where he had stashed his cellphone, scrolling through his Messages app until he stumbled across Poppy’s name. The last text had been sent in September, by her, and he had never responded - had never even opened it, the blue dot to the left of their message thread taunting him with chirps of how awful he had been to ignore it.

Poppy: Hey, can we talk? I miss you.

How late is too late to reply to a text like that? He could only hope she still felt the same way.

Turns out, 4 months might be too late.

Nico has drafted an embarrassing amount of messages to Poppy over the days since that conversation in the locker room.

His notes app has a whole folder dedicated to her. Bullet pointed lists, random memories that made him think of her, structured essays that laid out a timeline of their friendship, and all the mistakes he would need to beg for her forgiveness for. 

He’d tried sending a message when he had got back to his apartment after the game against Columbus, feeling a rush of confidence from the adrenaline of their OT win, his high had soon dwindled when he was alone. He sat staring at all the different iterations of an apology he could offer, and had even chickened out of the final draft of a very simple but hopefully effective, ‘Hey.’

He knew he was overthinking it. A conversation starter would at the very least open the door for the apology, and all he needed to do was talk to her in some way - but that turned out to be easier said than done.

She wasn’t in her office when he’d gone to seek her out at work the next day, and when he realised she was probably in the content and media offices, he felt like he would be cornering her if he sought her out in front of anyone else. When the weight of how far removed they now were from each other’s lives dawned on him, a text felt too informal, and so the paragraphs sat untouched in his notes. The weather hadn’t been too great, so he couldn’t try and intercept her on the running route he knew all too well, and even attempting to orchestrate a seemingly random encounter outside of work seemed too creepy so stopping by the cafe around the corner from her apartment in the hopes she’d be there grabbing a latte was off the cards. 

He’d seen her on the plane to Ottawa, having to pass her seat to get to the team section at the back, but he had a few people boarding behind him, and she had her eyes cast toward her cell, headphones on and typing intently to somebody, he couldn’t even offer her a friendly smile to try and warm her up to the possibility of a conversation.

Between their win against the Senators, and their loss against the Bruins the next day, there wasn’t much time, or energy, really, to seek her out, and so he’d had to press the breaks, but as they flew back to New Jersey from Boston, a panic had started to swirl within his chest.

Nico knew he couldn’t enter a new year without clearing the air, and so time was well and truly running out. He again had seen her on the plane, and when he had plucked up the courage to get up and go sit with her, Jack had beaten him to it. When the plane had landed, and the team bus had driven them all back to the Rock, the Hughes brothers had both walked her to her car to see her off for the evening. 

For someone who had been not-so-subtly trying to initiate a reunion between Nico and Poppy for so long, Jack Hughes sure knew how to get in the way. But, he was easy to forgive - especially when Nico had woken up to his texts late this morning.

Jack: need ur help

Jack: urgently

Jack: wake up dude

Nico: I’m not driving anywhere for you

Jack: not asking u to

Jack: u will like this I promise 😌

Nico: what do you want?

Jack: need u to keep Poppy company

Jack: she’s in my apartment and she seemed off when she got here

Jack: been on her own for a few hours

Jack: so she’s grumpy 👎🏻👎🏻👎🏻 👹👹

Nico: doubt I can change the grumpy part

Nico: especially if you’ve left her alone for hours

Jack: don’t need to

Jack: ur a grump too

Jack: will cancel each other out 👍🏻👍🏻😇😇

Jack: u going down or no?

Nico: fine

Jack: I’ll be back in 1 hr :)

Jack: love u cap 😚

Nico: 🙄

And that was how Nico had found himself trudging down to Jack’s apartment, hopeful at the dream of a bridged gap between him and Poppy, and quickly disappointed by the reality.

She had been cold, rightfully so, and had made it clear as day she didn’t want anything to do with him. She had shrunk into herself, backing away from him any time he got too close,  defecting to a state of avoidance - gaze dropping to the floor, declining his offers to help her, making assumptions she was in his way, as if the thought of him seeking her out had become an entirely alien concept.

He couldn’t blame her for how she was being with him. It had been his fault things had collapsed between them - he’d come to that conclusion with the vast amounts of evidence piled up in his phone storage the past couple of days, but it didn’t make it hurt any less to see her like this - or to feel an actual, tangible resistance when he had tried to insist on being around. She didn’t want him around, that much was obvious, and it was starting to feel like it was to late to fix what he had so royally screwed up between the two of them. 

The once well-oiled machine that was their friendship was now clunky, clattering, dying a slow death with parts that were now obsolete.

But that didn’t change how much he wanted it to work. His parents had once told him when he was growing up that nothing was beyond repair, and if he wanted something fixed enough, he would figure out a way.

They had been talking about a model train he, his father and his brother had made when he was very young. The company that made the sets had gone bust, and they no longer sold the individual parts anymore - so when his sister had stumbled over something in the garage back home, knocked a box, and the once pristine collectable train had tumbled out and ended up cracked and chipped, he had been heartbroken. He and Nina had filled in the chips with wood filler, and touched it up with her nail polish, and it wasn’t the same but in a way it was better - a new sentiment attached with a memory of bonding with his sibling. 

The same thing could apply to his friendship with Poppy. Maybe they couldn’t go back to what they were - maybe they could be better.

And, when Poppy had made one too many attempts to push him away - when he had taken a hold of her after she had tried to move past him, dismissing him and his desire to help her, once again - a fire reignited within him. A spark of hope flickered at the familiarity that had flashed across her face as he referred to her in an endearment he hadn’t let himself use in so long.

In that moment - hand wrapped around her arm, just above her elbow, the skin soft and warm, close enough to smell the all too familiar cloud of vanilla-coconut scent that followed her, and her eyes locked on his - he had seen a crack in her armour.

He had seen an element of want - wanting to reconcile, wanting to fix things, wanting him in her life in the way he had been those months ago - and in a mirror of his own emotions, he had seen trepidation.

They wanted the same things, had the same fears, had the same end goal.

And when the unforeseen interruption of her best friend arriving startled her back into her withdrawn persona, he had realised something else.

Nia’s contrasting attitude toward Nico - open, friendly, familiar - had opened his eyes to the fact that Poppy hadn’t told her best friend about the demise of her friendship with Nico. 

And that, as much as it needed unpacking entirely, was Nico’s backdoor entry into the high security vault of Poppy’s good graces. 

Thankfully for him, Nia’s obliviousness to their tension had worked entirely in his favour. He tried not to look too much into Poppy’s attempted avoidance of spending the evening in his presence, despite her other plans falling apart. Tried to shoulder the blows of her sly digs at them not being friends anymore. Tried to ignore the pang in his heart at Poppy’s best friend being the one to throw flirty jibes his way, and not her. 

A determination had begun to brew within him - swirling, bubbling, steaming - and it was going to push him to finally bridge the gap he had forced between them.

His first success was her agreeing to come to the party, and he could easily build on that momentum.

Nico and Poppy were going to be friends again by midnight, he would figure out a way.

> Chapter One

[free-for-all-fics]

So I had this thought about The Recruiter from Squid Game and it would not leave my head until I wrote it out as a prompt! Pls tag me if you’re inspired by this at all, and I’d love to read it! 🔴🔺🟥

Before he became involved in the games, he grew up in a poor household. His parents were high school dropouts. They would have a lot to do once their baby arrived. While terminating the pregnancy had been seriously discussed, his mother ultimately decided against it. She thought of it as a happy accident. She had been an orphan and on the run all her life, but when she became pregnant, she finally felt like she put down roots. She didn’t care if the father, her boyfriend, didn’t want anything to do with her or her baby. She was going to have her baby and raise it well. She knew it was a jungle out there, and if her child took after her, they’d be a handful…but she wanted her child to be happy. She didn’t care if her baby was a boy or a girl so long as he or she was healthy. She thought if she lost her pregnancy, she’d look back on that time as a living hell. His father was nineteen and his mother was eighteen when he was born. They married before she was showing. The rumors were that he arrived sooner than either of his parents planned, conceived earlier in their marriage than expected, or that he was the result of indiscretion, a love child, and the premise for the marriage. While his existence lent itself to both predicaments, the latter could be corroborated by the testimonies that his father was "immature and not ready for marriage" nor "prepared to raise a family". He "felt trapped in the commitment that being a part of a family required and couldn't handle the responsibility of raising a child." It was very possible his father married his mother out of obligation or was forced.

Either way, it was to salvage her reputation. As a result of her pregnancy, his mother never got to fulfill her dream of going to college. All of the money she saved for her tuition went towards childcare. She was a stay at home mother, while he grew up watching her do all kinds of odd jobs like peeling and selling chestnuts, babysitting, pet sitting, sewing clothing or plush dolls, etc. in her efforts to put food on the table. She made sure he had clothes on his back and food to eat, nearly working herself to death while his father spent most of his days between jobs and unemployed. What paychecks he did bring home were mostly used to feed his alcohol, drug, or gambling addiction.

And then you came along many years later. You were also an unplanned pregnancy and, whether your mother couldn’t afford to terminate or she decided not to do that nor give you up for adoption, you lived under the same roof. Your brother was at least twelve years older than you and, within two years after you were born, your father, the coward that he was who always ran away from his responsibilities, just up and left. He was gone and all his belongings and all his money, what little there was, was gone too. He didn’t even leave a note. Your brother came home from school and found your mother crying at the dinner table. Without her saying anything, he just knew. You weren’t the burden, your deadbeat dad was. He hated his father. He was a shitty man, a shitty husband, and an even shittier father. He was little more than utterly useless, a total waste of space. If he looked at him for too long it made him physically sick. His father didn’t beat him at first, only his mom. He could’ve done something to stop it. But he didn’t. His father made his home a living hell. That’s why he was glad he was gone.

Despite the hardship your birth and your father’s abrupt leaving added onto his mother and himself, he could never hate you. You were just a baby. You were innocent in all of this. It wasn’t your fault you were born into a family living on or below the poverty line and that money was so tight all the time. It wasn’t his fault either. After your father abandoned you, your mother worked even harder to raise money. But her income wasn’t enough and, when he was still a minor, he had to make money by running errands or doing chores for neighbors and contribute his earnings to provide for you and get you through school. He had to help pay for your uniforms, books, and other supplies. But he loved you more than anyone and you loved him just as much. Instead of hanging out with his friends, he stayed home and babysat you. At first, you were resentful of being watched at all because you were going through that phase where you thought you were all grown up and big enough to be left alone for a few hours. But he had a way with kids, his energy so much like one that it was hard for them to hate him. In just a few hours you were best friends, thicker than thieves. Despite your big age gap, he loved spending time with you. He’d play with you and draw with you while watching you whenever your mother needed a break. He and your mother made sure you were raised well with proper discipline so you wouldn’t grow up spoiled but, at the same time, wouldn’t grow up traumatized like they were either. Once he was old enough to work, he opened his own bank account and worked his ass off at all kinds of jobs to make enough of his own money to pay his way through college. He’d be damned if he let his father come crawling back like a dog begging for scraps and have access to a single cent. But he saw what debt did to people, how it so easily spiraled out of control and destroyed lives. He’d be damned if he took out a loan he couldn’t pay back, he thought.

When there was no money for dinner, he made sure you still got to eat by either stealing from convenience stores or giving you half of his lunch. Even a cup of noodles or a bread roll was like a feast fit for a queen in your eyes. But the biggest dinner treat when you were a child was Happy Toast. Happy Toast was pretty simple. It was a piece of toast. With a happy face drawn on it in tomato sauce. Once or twice every couple of weeks, your brother would get you Happy Toast for dinner. Those nights were the best. You didn't have to use cutlery! You could eat with your fingers! Your brother would let you choose whether your Happy Toast had straight or curly hair! And, even better, your brother and you got to sit at the table and have dinner by yourselves. Mom would still be at work or already asleep, so that left you and your brother alone in the kitchen. Sometimes he’d make you what he called Shark Infested Beans to put on your Happy Toast. Before you were born, your mom would make him a bowl of baked beans, with little toast triangles standing up in it for the shark fins. Sometimes the toast fins would have bites taken out of them. She told him the sharks had been fighting and it was the funniest thing in the world to him back then. He was in his late teens when he finally found out that those bites were all she'd eaten that day. He did that with all of your meals to get you to eat your food, making a game out of it by pretending the rice was a spaceship, the vegetables were cars, the fruit were bicycles, the meat was airplanes, etc. But Happy Toast nights were amazing.

Your brother got his driver’s license and bought himself a car and rented a cheap apartment so he could move out as soon as possible after his 18th birthday. Even though it wasn’t the prettiest or most impressive car and was like a junker more than anything, it worked well enough to get him from point A to point B. The same could’ve been said for his apartment. Old and dingy, small and not very pretty, but clean and livable. He made plans to go off to college. He’d spent so many years working towards earning his college tuition, studying and preparing for graduation, and raising you that he’d accidentally let university applications fall through the cracks. But one day, he checked his admission results and…

CONGRATULATIONS! YOU HAVE BEEN ACCEPTED!

But it wasn’t like just anyone accepted could go to college. He needed money to go. He’d saved up enough money for the initial deposit - four million won - and he’d pay the rest off with part-time jobs while he was at school. It was amazing! God, he had a pretty rough day that day. But that result made up for all of that. He was a college student now. He got in. Very soon, he’d fulfill your mother’s dream of him becoming a college student. Her son was totally awesome, right? But just as he had all of that money saved up and was well into his third year of college, on track for graduation, the worst happened: Your mother died. She had worked herself to death, after all. When he got the phone call, he didn’t know how he managed to act like a normal, vaguely irritated son for the entirety of it. Inside he was white hot rage. The first thing he did when he hung up the phone was shatter it. His whole apartment became a particularly fragile punching bag. If anyone were to have come inside, they would’ve looked at the destruction with bewilderment and asked, "Did you get robbed?"

Stepping into his childhood home for the first time in so many years made him sick. He swore he could still smell your mother's perfume in the air, but he turned the corner and there was another woman cooking and prancing around in her fucking kitchen like she owned the place. She wasn’t one of the neighbors. She wasn’t anyone he knew. She said she was his father’s girlfriend and that his father was a truck driver now and so he wouldn’t be coming to his own wife’s funeral. He wanted to string her up by her intestines. To choke her with them. He wanted to kill her first and make his father watch the entire thing. But he couldn’t do that. So he’d have to just settle on making sure to psychologically torture her in some way to make up for it. But however painful the step-whore's death would be, he imagined that he would make his father's twenty times worse if he ever saw his face again. That would be for his mother and for you. But it would have looked suspicious if the older man died at home. So he waited, impatiently. His death would come someday and he had to stay alive to witness it.

Speaking of death… Maybe it was a little vindictive of him to call his father for the first time in four, nearly five years to demand he forfeit his parental rights and give him custody of you before his wife was even in the ground. But he was gonna get around to it anyways, eventually. It was not a request. He never asked his father for anything and he wasn’t going to start now that his mom was dead. But when he brought it up, your father laughed his ass off about it as if it was a joke. He laughed again when his son threatened to take him to Family Court. He needed money to send in an application or push forward a petition. Money his father knew he didn’t have. Though he couldn’t do anything in that moment, that topic of discussion was far from over.

You didn’t come downstairs when he first arrived and he wanted to roll his eyes at his father’s side piece telling him, "she's not usually like this, honest-" as if she gave a shit about you at all and wasn’t just there because his father told her to come in his stead to save face. He was the only one left alive who genuinely loved and cared about you. You were still just a kid. It wasn’t your fault your mom died, your dad was a piece of shit, and your dad’s new girlfriend was a useless whore. When you slinked your way downstairs and dragged your feet in that petulant way that only kids could, he started to rethink about not taking up the job offer he was given. You spent all of dinner not saying two words to your dad’s girlfriend, but you had the nerve to scowl at her the entire time like she was intruding in your house and you were wondering when she was gonna leave. Or die.

Circumstances being what they were, he had no other choice but to use his college savings for your mother’s funeral. He held your hand as you cried and comforted you as well as he could. But you couldn’t stay inside for long. You could barely breathe through your sobs already, and the air felt musky and you felt like you were suffocating with all those people around offering you their sympathies and condolences. He took you outside for some space and fresh air. But after the funeral was over, there was her memorial to worry about. If he didn’t make the payments, his mother’s pictures and the urn containing her ashes would be moved to storage. He learned that the hard way when he took you to visit her on the third anniversary of her death when you were thirteen years old, and she wasn’t there. You were crying, clutching a bouquet of flowers you didn’t know what to do with.

“Excuse me.”

“Yes?”

“Where's the urn that used to be here? Our mother's.”

“This one? Did you not know? The payment on this space is three years overdue now. And we couldn't get in touch with the guardian.”

“So are you saying you threw it away?”

“We didn't throw it away. We have it in storage.”

“In storage?”

“Yes.”

“How could you just shove it in storage because of overdue payments? Do people need to be evicted, even in death, due to rent overdue?”

“We have our internal rules as well.”

“How much money do we owe you?”

“Five million won.”

“What?”

“Five million won.”

“Five million?”

“Get out of the way. Can you keep things quiet around here?” A passerby trying to mourn their loved one asked.

“I apologize.”

“Let's continue this outside.”

“Please, sir. Can you take my mom out of storage? I brought a present for my mom. My teacher told me that you're supposed to give white roses to people you respect. Please, sir. Please,” you begged as you cried, not caring if it made you look pathetically childish or immature for your age. You didn’t know what else to do or say.

While you were in another room being watched over by a neighbor, your brother faced your mother’s urn, talking to it as if he were talking to her.

“Mom. I do have most of the money and I can take out a loan for the rest. Your wish was for me to go to college. Right? That was your wish. Well, I’ve been to college, but I don’t need to graduate. So I’m going to drop out now, okay? My sister can graduate college instead, right? I'm your son whom you're proud of, so I can drop out of college, right? I'm sorry, Mom. I'm sorry. I don't think I'll need to graduate college. I'm sorry if you’re disappointed, Mom. But I’m making this decision because I'm going through such a hard time. Things are so hard for me right now. I miss you so much, Mom. Sorry, Mom. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. I miss you, Mom. I'll come see you soon.”

He took out all of the money he had in his savings and took out a loan for the remaining won he needed and used it to pay off the debt that was owed for your mother’s memorial. While he couldn’t graduate college now and had debts to pay, you were at least able to give your mother white roses and smiled as you talked to her.

After that, despite working a lot, he was still struggling financially, and had spent the last bit of his money on a few grocery items just to get through to payday. Three days later — and the night before his pay would arrive in his bank account — he had absolutely nothing to feed you for dinner. The fridge and pantry were bare, apart from a few pieces of stale bread, and the usual condiments.

"I'm hungry…” you complained. You looked malnourished. Like you hadn’t eaten in days.

He fought back the burning tears behind his eyes. And that was when it hit him. "Let's have Happy Toast!" He exclaimed, plastering a smile across his face. With great laughter and fun, you drew tomato sauce faces on pieces of toast, and you gobbled them up with the same reckless enjoyment he remembered having on Happy Toast nights as a child. Him? Oh, he didn't eat any. He supervised from the kitchen. There wasn't enough bread for him to have dinner and for you to have a full stomach. That night, after you were sleeping happily, he thought back to those Happy Toast nights as a child. From the perspective of an adult, their frequency made sense — his parents were paid biweekly; Happy Toast nights were probably the night before payday. And Dad was in the military — he could eat dinner at work for free (or close to it), which is why those were the only nights he wasn't home for dinner. And Mom? She made the exact same choice he did. Now, you and he ate "poor" food all the time. Your standard dinner was seaweed soup, made with small portions of the cheapest meat, lots of seaweed, and a sprinkling of soy sauce, sesame oil, minced garlic, and salt to taste. Your mother often made it for your and his birthdays since she couldn’t always afford rice cakes or actual cakes. But Happy Toast was a treat from that mundanity — and the real testament to both your mother's parenting, and your financial state.

While you ate, you started telling him things. “I hate playing happy family. Dad’s girlfriend only ever pays attention to me when people are around. She’s always gone and Dad never calls. I think they both wish it was just them, that I wasn't here—”

Your brother might not have been the most empathetic person around (obviously) but something about the things you told him made him feel for you. You had a sad little orphan thing going on. He didn’t know why he thought he should spend more time with you while he was home, but he did. Maybe it was because he knew his new job as a pink guard in the Squid Games was starting soon and that it was dangerous and he could get shot if he wasn’t careful. Maybe it was to better sell you the lie about what he did for work and explain how he’d suddenly have all this money to give you anything you asked for someday soon. You pouted when he told you he was leaving for his new job soon and would be gone for at least a week. Until he came back, he arranged for a neighbor to watch you so you wouldn’t be left alone in the house. You weren’t missing school or starving to death on his watch. The day before he left, he took you out to some diner he knew you’d like for a special "brother/sister" breakfast. You moped in his car, you stomped your way into the restaurant, and you slouched in your chair when you were seated. When he asked you if you wanted crayons to color with, you instantly knew that he was lovingly mocking you like he used to do. Sensing the game was on, you took a big sip of your water and tried to spit it out towards him like a super soaker water gun, hoping to wet him. It didn’t work, but he admired your spitefulness. When your food came, you only sat in silence, pushing it around your plate for a bit before you broke.

“Dad sucks. He’s not even here, and I hate him.”

“I know you do, but try not to. Don’t waste your energy on thinking about him. He’s not worth it. Indifference is so much worse than hate. Trust me, I know from experience.”

“I can’t help it. Even if I try not to think about him, I still do. I’m sure he hates me too.”

You didn’t start crying big alligator tears like he thought you would. He was already preparing for it, thinking about how he was going to have to bribe you with ice cream or something to stop you from crying. Instead you sunk further into your seat, like you wanted to melt there.

“He doesn't hate you.”

“He just wishes I was never born. That I wasn’t around...doesn’t he? Neither of them want me around."

“How did you know?” He asked, and then sighed. “Don’t take it personally. He was the same with me when I was your age. He’s never liked children, not even his own. That’s why I moved out as soon as I could. Don’t blame yourself. It’s not your fault he left. He would’ve found another excuse to go even if you hadn’t been born.”

“I missed you.”

“I missed you too. I’m sorry I couldn’t take you with me when I left home.”

He wondered what the hell your dad’s girlfriend was doing behind closed doors to make you feel the way you felt after your mom died. He knew his father was lousy, he'd already grown up with him. But your dad’s girlfriend had seemed normal. A little fake, but normal. He didn’t know what went on in that house before he got there. So you told him. About the neglect. The long hours alone that sometimes became days. By the end of it, your little hands were balled into fists and your food was ice cold. The entire time your brother sat quietly, hating himself for letting your suffering go on so long and despising your dad and his girlfriend even more. At the end, you regretted telling him anything. You started to turn to the window, ready to ignore him until he decided to take you both home. You turned back around when he said,

"Dad should’ve never been granted sole custody of you after Mom died. He is unfit to be a parent."

You blinked up at him, wide-eyed. You were shocked he took you seriously. "Yeah, he is." You finished eating your breakfast quietly but neither of you left the diner feeling the way you did when you came in.

The week he was gone passed by uneventfully. Prior to leaving, your brother ended the lease on his apartment and, when he came back from wherever he went for work, he stayed home with you. Even though it was very late at night, you were standing outside the neighbor’s house you’d been staying at to greet him when his car pulled up. When he took you home, neither your dad nor his girlfriend were in sight. You told him about school. About the things you'd been doing since you last saw him. About how you managed to watch some of the horror movies he snuck you, and you didn't even have to sleep with the light on afterwards. He sat through it all dutifully and maybe even with amusement. He sat shell-shocked for a minute. Frankly, he'd never talked to a kid for as long as he talked to you. You were not the same withdrawn kid you were when your mother died, that was for sure.

You curled up on the side of him and the two of you fell asleep on the couch together. He woke up a few hours later when your dad finally made an appearance, stumbling in with his girlfriend. They were both drunk and shushing each other too loudly. It pissed him off, thinking about how they'd have probably gone out on the town and left you alone even if he didn’t make arrangements to have you stay with a neighbor or if he wasn’t there to watch you himself. He wondered just how many times you were left alone in this house that was too big and lonely for him even when he was a teenager, let alone a fucking kid like you. When he ran into your dad and his girlfriend, they were in the kitchen, opening another pack of beer like they weren’t wasted enough.

"Thanks for finding someone to look after the kid last week. I know she can be a lot." His dad’s girlfriend said.

The words made him stop cold and he looked behind them, to the drawer that the knives were kept in and almost said fuck it. If the miserable bastard hadn't wanted to be a father this badly he should have kept it in his pants or gotten a vasectomy. He wanted to cut his dad’s dick off. He wanted to stab his dad’s girlfriend in her throat to make her shut the fuck up.

"Yeah, no problem." He had to leave before he killed either of them.

He didn’t wake you up so you could go up to bed on your own. For some reason, he thought about the last time he ever got carried up to bed and picked you up and took you there himself. He remembered the feeling of waking up, drowsy but safe on his mother's shoulder. Of being tucked in, and then waking up in bed later, only vaguely aware that someone else put him there. He was younger than you were then, that last time. But he didn’t think it mattered that much. He didn’t think you'd ever get cared for like that if he didn’t do it himself. Though your mother did her best, she was often too weak and exhausted to carry you, even when you were very little. He didn’t think it was enough and he wanted to make you feel as loved as he was by her. At least, when your mother was alive, she was there for you. So he put you into bed, and tucked you under the covers, and sat beside you for awhile, just staring. He looked up when he felt like he was being watched, only to find your dad in the doorway staring at him. Then the old man turned around and went to bed. He didn’t say a word to him about his behavior and poor decisions. Not even a goddamn fucking apology.

Whether or not it was a special occasion like a holiday or your birthday, your brother gave you a present: Your very first cell phone with his number already saved in it. He smiled and ruffled your hair, telling you not to be a stranger and to take care of yourself whenever he had to go away for work in the summer. He told you that if there was ever an emergency when he wasn’t there and you needed him, to just give him a call and he’d come running. Your dad stood so stiffly as he got ready to leave on a long truck haul again. He’d be gone for months, leaving your brother to look after you. He extended his hand towards your dad for a handshake, not wanting to put either of them through an awkward goodbye hug. He didn’t deserve such warm familiarity.

“These things aren’t human. They’re just trash, utterly useless in this world.”

He kept telling himself that and worked hard for a few years. Then they gave him a gun. It felt pretty good. Like his existence was acknowledged for the first time in his life. The months went quickly and, before he knew it, it was time to don his pink uniform for another annual round of games. But he wasn’t as excited as he thought he was going to be. He didn’t know why he was starting to get second thoughts. But he had a job to do and it was too late to back out of it now. The years went by quickly. A mass murder here, another one there, in between figuring out what to get you for your birthday or what color dress you preferred for a school dance. Life outside the games was hard, but inside it was easy. Despite real life creeping in and threatening to bleed over into the bottle world the games were held in, he had almost forgotten about his dad entirely.

Almost.

Summer hit again when it finally happened. He doesn’t know which year it was but one day he was about to shoot a man who had lost a game. The guy seemed familiar. His dad. His dad was suddenly standing right in front of him. He was in tears, desperately begging him to spare his life. His pink and black uniform concealed his identity. He didn’t say a word but, even if he had, the voice modulator would’ve masked his voice. He didn’t know it was his own son pointing the gun at him. And he never would know. There was crying, begging, pleading. He drew it out for a long time. At the end of it, his father was whimpering, staring at the bloodied corpses of other players and asking why. It was a question he didn’t deserve the answer to. So he shot him right in the middle of his forehead, and realized, “Ah. I’m cut out for this job.” He had absolutely no qualms about shooting his own father dead. No remorse or guilt. He killed him and it was his best work yet. He had plenty of practice over the years.

He was offered a promotion to be a recruiter for the games shortly afterwards. It was easy being a pink guard. He only had to work for a week out of the year. But being a recruiter would require him to work year round. Once the games were over for the year, he’d be as busy as ever. He’d need to find and recruit more players for subsequent years. He should’ve been eager to accept. But something was gnawing at him, threatening to eat him alive from the inside until he asked his superiors, hesitantly, "Since my dad died in the games… If I become a recruiter…what's gonna happen to my little sister?"

And there it went. The reason his stomach had been twisted up into knots. He killed his own father for failing a game. He couldn’t care less about that. His father had it coming for a long while. He had been as shitty as he could be, outright forgetting to feed you or pay the bills to keep the lights on. You were once hospitalized from severe malnourishment and food poisoning because of your father and his girlfriend’s incompetence and negligence. Two days after your eleventh birthday, you were sent to bed without dinner by your dad’s girlfriend. You were almost unable to sleep because you were so hungry it felt like you were starving. You had already run out of the candy you had stashed away in your room. Later, your sleepwalking got so bad that you got out of bed and went around the house, eating various non-edibles. First, you went to the kitchen and ate animal food that your dad’s girlfriend bought for her pet. Then, you went to the bathroom and ate from a tube of toothpaste. Then you ate the berries or seeds from a plant on the window sill because you confused them for edible sunflower seeds or berries. You thought all flower seeds or berries were edible. In your dreaming state, you didn’t realize what you were actually eating. Your dad didn’t want gossip, so he almost didn’t bring you to a hospital, just like how he never brought his wife to a hospital after beating her. It was his girlfriend who found you and called the ambulance, not him. He would’ve let you die and claimed it was an accident. Your brother was terrified and pissed when he found out. He got a speeding ticket on the way to the hospital and was there the entire time while they worked to save you from the toxins in your stomach. If he hadn’t swooped in and worked his ass off or stole food to feed you, you very well could’ve starved or been poisoned to death sooner.

Needless to say, his dad had been living off of borrowed time anyway. And as for his dad’s girlfriend… Knowing that appearance is everything, he made sure to publicly bond with her. He went grocery shopping with her. They got lunch. Anything to sell the image of a perfect family. Anything to alleviate suspicion when she wound up dead and her body went missing thanks to the connections his new job offered him.

But you? They weren’t planning on killing you. There were strict rules to the games. One of them was players had to be ages 18 and up to play. Minors were ineligible to play. They hadn’t killed any kids. And they never would. Ironically, when discussing how much fun and thrilling it would be to watch desperate people who were drowning in debt die in deadly children’s games - the thought of killing actual children or watching them die made the viewers and organizers uncomfortable. While it may not have seemed like it to the players, even those responsible for the games weren’t completely morally bankrupt. Even their kind of evil had standards. But what about the aftermath? He didn’t know what was going to happen to you if he couldn’t take you in. You were still a minor and had no other living family besides him. Were you gonna get carted off by the state? Or shipped away to some other family who couldn't give a shit about you? The thought made him sick, but he didn’t want to admit it. But his superiors told him they thought of that and the proper arrangements would be made so he could legally have custody of you. No matter how busy he was, he’d still be able to make time for you and keep up a somewhat healthy work-life balance. For him, they made an exception to the rule about recruiters needing to cut all ties with family to uphold the secrecy of the games. They let him keep you, someone from his past life in the outside world.

After the games were over, he was allowed to return home. He snuck back into his childhood house and you were just where he left you. Tucked in and sleeping soundly in your bed. He went to his own room and fell asleep with a smile on his face. He got up twice in the night, restless. Each time he wound up outside your door. Sometime later, police officers showed up at the front door, hats in their hands, and handed him a legal envelope with the signed transfer of custody papers. They told him that something awful was believed to have happened to his dad, though his body wasn’t found. He pretended to be shocked. He closed his eyes and tried not to think of how you were definitely eavesdropping, too impatient for him to come and tell you what was going on after the police left. It was to help with appearances, sure, but he was actually looking forward to looking after you. He felt a lot less smug when he turned around and you were sobbing your eyes out. The moment he sat down next to you, you threw yourself at him, clinging to him like he was a lifeline. And he was surprised at how quickly he wrapped his arm around you. At the way he rubbed your arm and squeezed your shoulder, trying his best to soothe you. You weren’t crying for your dad. You were crying for yourself.

“What's gonna happen to me, Oppa?" You wailed, helpless in the way only a kid could be.

He was looking down at you and, before he knew it, he opened his mouth and said, "Nothing's gonna happen to you. You're my sister. We're family. See this paper? It means I’m going to take care of you from now on." It didn’t make you stop crying but he kept saying it, over and over. “You're gonna be okay. Nothing's ever going to happen to you. I’ll take care of you, I promise. Come on, are you hungry? I could eat, so let’s eat. I’ll make you seaweed soup.”

You were better off with him anyways.

Looking back, your brother practically raised you even before your parents’ deaths, so him becoming your legal guardian didn’t feel that much different from how things were. You thought you’d feel some kind of change, but you didn’t. You’re an adult now. It wasn’t until you were much older that you really understood that Happy Toast wasn't really a treat - it just had good PR thanks to your brother. Though he helped you a lot throughout the years, you didn’t want to financially rely on him for everything. You wanted to be independent. You got a job and paid for most of your college tuition and living expenses including your car, apartment, and phone on your own. Whatever money you borrowed from your brother to pay for the rest, you made a budgeted plan to pay back in installments over a period of time.

“I can't take your money just because we're family! I donated that money to you!”

“What did you just say? Donate? Did you donate that money because you felt sorry for me?” You asked. You huffed and stood up. “I want to go home.”

“Where do you think you're going? You are home. You have a room here.”

You shook your head. “This is where you live, but I meant I want to go back to my own place.”

“Sit down. I know how precise you want to be with money, but don't do that to me. I'll wire the money back to your account.”

“No! It's your money. Just take it.”

“Would you take it if you were me? What kind of a man would take his little sister’s money...especially when she's doing financially bad! I'd be reluctant to take it even if you had lots of money.”

“Don't look at me like that. I think even family members should pay back what they owe. And I’m not even doing bad. I’m doing just fine. Better than fine. I can afford to pay you back. I may not be making nearly as much as you, but it’s not like I can't pay my rent if I don't have that money.”

“Don't you get it? I don't want it.”

“But I want to pay you back!”

“Stop being stubborn!”

“Oh, whatever! I'm leaving!” You got up and grabbed your coat, your purse, and your car keys.

“Hey! Stop right there! I'll count to three! One, two, two and a half, three...”

Ignoring him, you put your shoes on and left, his front door shutting behind you loudly even though you didn’t slam it.

He immediately grabbed his phone and called you. When you picked up, he said, “Hey! One, two—”

The line went dead again. You hung up on him.

“Hello? Hello? Hey! Hey!” He looked at the screen and then threw his phone on the coffee table in frustration. He couldn’t believe you were paying him back! And on top of that, you insisted on paying interest. He was so pissed! He would’ve smacked some sense into you if he could’ve.

~

It’s now present day and you haven’t heard much from your brother in the last two years. While others may find it odd, it’s normal for you to not hear from your brother much. You still don’t know exactly what he does for a living beyond working in business. All you know is that he’s often busy with work and is called away from home to go on long business trips all over South Korea, often to places where he can’t be reached by phone. But he always emphasized to you that if there was ever an emergency and you needed him, he’d drop what he was doing and come to your aid. Luckily, you haven’t had to take him up on that offer. In the past two years, though his communications were considerably less than previous years, he still sent you the usual birthday and holiday cards and called you periodically. That was enough to assure you he was well. As the saying goes: No news is good news.

But then, in his mad hunt for The Recruiter, Gi-hun discovers your existence and connection to the man he’s been after. The loan sharks he’s hired to investigate and search for him somehow find out this information through what seems almost like a miracle or lucky break and they relay said information to Gi-hun immediately after confirming it’s legit.

“Sir, we’ve been doing what we can to find that man. His whereabouts and identity are still unknown, but we found something. It might be a lead.”

“What is it?”

“He has a younger sister.”

“I'm sorry?”

“He has a younger sister.”

“Living?”

“Yes.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. We cross-checked and verified the information multiple times. It’s legit. She lives in Seoul. But if we question her, a lot of craziness might go on all at once and, in the end, she might not be able to tell you anything if he’s kept her in the dark about these games to cover his tracks. She might be afraid if we just show up at her home or corner her in public. We don’t know if she still keeps in contact with her brother and, if she does, she may tip him off that we’re onto him and we may lose all of our progress, what little we’ve made, if she goes into hiding too. How should we proceed?”

Gi-hun tells them to watch you from a distance for the time being and, when the time is right, to question you subtly, casually. He tells them no matter what, to not let you know they’re looking for your brother, just that they’re looking for someone who might have seen something rather than someone who did something. No one thinks that their family or neighbors are capable of what The Recruiter’s done. He tells them that they should get started. After tailing you and monitoring your activity for days or weeks to learn your routine, the opportunity finally comes. They approach and give you a cover story that they’re looking for a missing dog that was last seen near where you live. They even show you a picture of the dog.

“We're hoping that you may have seen something and not even realized it. Maybe you have a neighbor who takes his trash out late, works on his car in his garage, anything that might put someone outside at an odd hour and give them the opportunity to see something.”

“I see. But it’s hard for me to remember things like that. Is there anything specific you’re looking for?”

“It won't be overt. Neighborhood kids probably aren’t afraid of this person.”

“They aren’t? The person you’re describing…is it possible they have an explosive temper?”

“Definitely. Why do you ask?”

“Anger wasn't normal at my house after my dad left. Usually when it happened, when it exploded, it was an anomaly. A surprise. My older brother was overly solicitous. Too nice. And if I wanted anything... Bicycles, toys, dolls... All I had to do was ask. But in public and in groups, he always held my hand. Always. Sometimes so tight, it almost cut off the circulation. But the weird thing is… I can never remember him putting me on his lap or carrying me in his arms or on his shoulders, holding me in any way beyond an arm around my shoulder or a quick side hug. He only ever held or carried me in his arms when I was asleep. And...my brother would always have these talks with me. He was terrified someone would take me.”

“Because he knew what was out there.” Men like him. Mr. Kim doesn’t say that last part out loud, only thinks it to himself.

“You know, maybe this person took your dog because he or she wanted to give a gift to his or her kid or little sibling, but couldn’t afford one. My brother used to buy me things all the time and, when he couldn’t afford it, he stole it for me.”

“What kinds of gifts?”

“Anything. Everything. I told you, there was nothing...” Your eyes lock with a dog as it passes by, being led by their owner on a leash.

“What is it? What else is on your mind?”

“My whole life, there's only one thing I wanted that I couldn't have.”

“Which was?”

“A pet.”

When you were seven years old, you found a puppy on your way home from school. You ran all the way home with this little ball of fur. You were so excited. And when you got to the house, your brother was the only one home. He was nineteen and was visiting during winter break. You gave him the puppy to hold while you got it some milk. You didn't have dog food, but you thought, well, a puppy's like a baby, so milk, right? You heard the puppy yelp and when you got back, your brother was in the bathroom and he turned and told you to put the milk away before it spoiled. You didn't understand. He told you that your mother didn't need the hassle of another mouth to feed and you were never to do that again. He tilted his head and you saw the puppy limp in his arms. Dead. You started crying and you could swear he looked like he was having fun. He buried it in the woods or in the backyard before your mom got home and swore you to secrecy by scaring you, telling you that you’d both get in a big heap of trouble if she found out what you guys did. Cruelty to animals is part of psychopathy. You know that now. But what you don't understand is that...

Your phone alarm or reminder goes off, breaking you from your trance and deep thoughts. You’re running late. “I’m sorry, I have to go. I hope you find your dog. Good luck.”

After meeting you, Mr. Kim and Mr. Choi are in Jonggak Station, eating vending machine food that is less than appetizing and bemoaning their lack of progress even after questioning you. And then it happens. They hear a loud clacking. They look up and see your brother, throwing down a red paper ddakji tile and slapping a man. When the man wins, your brother hands him 100,000 won. The clacking continues and your brother applauds the man when he wins again. Mr. Kim’s hand is shaking as he holds up his phone to call Gi-hun.

“We’ve found the guy. It’s him.”

“Are you sure?”

“The ddakji, slapping, and money. It’s just like you said. He’s handing over the card now.”

“Where are you?”

“Jonggak Station, but he’s leaving.”

“I’m on my way. Follow him carefully, and keep me updated on his location. Stay on him until I get there.”

“I got it. I’ll be in touch.”

Mr. Kim and Mr. Choi tail him as he buys a hundred bread rolls at a bakery and a hundred scratchers at a convenience store. They follow him down the street.

“Hey. He’s gone into Tapgol Park.”

“I’m heading there now. Do not approach him. Wait for me.”

“Okay. Hurry up.”

They follow him into Tapgol Park, pretending to read newspapers and watching as he approaches every homeless person in the park one by one.

“Excuse me, sir. Hello. You seem to be struggling, living a life with no future. I have a little gift for you today.”

“A gift? What is it?”

He holds out bread in one hand and a lottery scratcher in the other. When the homeless man tries to reach for both, he pulls his arms back and up and shakes his head. “You can only have one. Bread, or lottery. You have to choose one.” He holds them back out.

The man picks lottery. The Recruiter holds out a coin.

“Ah…you lost.” He holds out his hand. “The coin, please.”

The homeless man gives it back and the Recruiter picks up his grocery bags and briefcase and moves on to the next person. And the next person. And the next person. So on and so forth.

“Woo-seok.”

“Yes.”

“What do you think he’s doing?”

“I don’t know. Maybe he’s a good guy. I’m confused.”

“How come he’s not giving us one?”

“Beats me. Man, I had a lucky dream last night.”

The Recruiter stands in the middle of the park and dumps all of the leftover bread onto the ground.

“What is he doing?”

“Why would you throw away perfectly good food like that?”

When the homeless man tries to grab the bread, The Recruiter stomps on it, nearly crushing the homeless man’s fingers as he squashes it beneath his shoe. He gave them all a choice between prioritizing survival by choosing the certainty of the bread, or choosing the random chance of the lottery scratcher that they were likely to lose. While he approves of the very few people who picked the bread, he has nothing but contempt for the many people who chose the lottery and continued to gamble instead of focusing on staying alive.

“I gave you a chance, and you made your choice. I’m not the one who threw these away. It’s you, ladies and gentlemen.”

He grunts as he’s more than happy to stomp on and kick the once perfectly good bread just to spite the homeless people. Unbeknownst to Mr. Kim and Mr. Choi, he was like the game players and homeless people at one point in his life, having hit rock bottom. He spent years doing all kinds of grueling work, all to pull you and himself out of the hole you were both born into. And sometimes, when he made progress, something unforeseen happened in his life to set him back. It felt as if he climbed closer and closer to the surface, just about to claw his way to freedom, to a better life, only to have more dirt shoveled into the hole, making him slip and fall deeper into it. He hates his past self. His actions in the park are an expression of self-hatred and an attempt to set himself apart from the vagrants. And then he just combs his hair back and tucks his tie back into his suit blazer like nothing happened. His social experiment complete, he gets into an orange taxi.

“Where are you? Are you coming?”

“I’ll be there soon.”

“This guy is a total nutcase. He’s in a cab now. I’ll keep you updated, but hurry!”

“I got it.”

“I’ll send the address. Call when you arrive.”

“Where’s Seong?”

“He’ll be here in ten minutes.”

The Recruiter walks down an alleyway.

“Hey, we might lose him if we wait. Let’s just get him by ourselves.”

“By ourselves?”

“That’s right. Are you scared? It’s two against one. Don’t be a coward now that you’re married.”

“It’s just that something seems off with that guy. You heard what his sister said. Besides, Seong told us to wait until he gets here.”

“But what if we lose him? What if Seong doesn’t give us the money? Woo-seok, it’s a billion won!”

“You’ll give me half, right?”

“Don’t you trust me? I officiated your wedding, for God’s sake. Come on.”

They run down the alleyway, chasing after The Recruiter who leisurely strolls down the way and turns the corner like he’s going on a nice, relaxing walk and isn’t being pursued.

“Hey, you! Stop!”

“Stop! Hey, you!”

Although it’s two against one, they’re no match for The Recruiter as he subdues them both easily, knocking them out cold after a few hits with just his briefcase. He watches from the top of a building as Gi-hun runs around the alleyways below. He pulls out his phone and calls you.

You pick up within three rings. “What’s up?”

“Would you come over?”

“Now?”

“Yes, now.”

“No. I’d like to, but I can’t. I should really focus on this project I’m working on for a client. The deadline is coming up and I haven’t made as much progress as I would’ve liked to by now.”

“It would just be for a few minutes. An hour at most.”

“An hour is a long time when it’s the afternoon and you have a deadline like I do.”

“Come on. Please? I miss you and it’ll make me feel better to have you here so I can see your face. Don’t you miss me too?”

“Of course I miss you, but—”

“It’s important.”

“More important than my work?”

“Yes.”

“How so?”

“Remember how you always asked me what I did for work in the summer and I was always very closed lips about it all?”

He hears you snort over the phone.

“Remember? It’s impossible to forget. You always used to say you’d tell me when I was older. A phrase which you know always upsets me. I gave up on asking after a few years. Figured you were never gonna tell me and it’d be a secret you’d take to your grave.”

“But I wasn’t lying. You deserved an explanation, and I really did want to have a conversation and explain everything to you one day when you were older. And, well…that day has come.”

“What are you saying?”

“If you still want to know what I really do for work, come over. You’ll see when you get here.”

“Okay. But just for a few minutes to an hour at most. I’m going to hold you to that. I’ll be there soon.”

“Okay. See you then. I love you.”

He doesn’t say ‘I love you’ to you often. He just isn’t that kind of person. So when he does say it, you know he really means it.

“I love you too. See you soon.”

Unbeknownst to you, he had hidden cameras installed in every room of your apartment or house after you moved in to keep an eye on you. After you hang up, he taps an app on his phone, switching over to the live feed of your apartment or house. He watches you. Ever since you nearly died while sleepwalking, he had to follow you around every night whenever you had an episode since you couldn’t afford treatment or medication. He was afraid you might kill someone. Or yourself. Though you’re on medication now or otherwise have taken the proper precautions and have your sleepwalking under control, he still worries. Better safe than dead.

When you arrive at his place, he welcomes you inside, taking your coat and your purse for you. He leads you upstairs. You don’t know what to make of the scene in front of you. It isn’t at all what you thought it would be. Underneath the chandelier, there are two men tied up in chairs in the middle of the room. But not just any two men. You recognize them as the men who questioned you about a missing dog earlier in the day. Now they’re both gagged with black dog bone shaped gags and blindfolded with black blindfolds. Their skin is bloodied as if your brother got physical with them. Your brother removes their blindfolds and turns on the gramophone. “Nessun Dorma” begins to play loudly. What the fuck is going on? What you’re seeing before your very eyes brings back all the memories you tried so hard to repress. Looking back and forth between your brother and the bound and gagged men, your past traumas end up knocking on your door once again. It feels like the air is being dragged out of your lungs with punches to your stomach. Your thoughts are spiraling out of control and there is nothing you can do. Seeing them bloodied like that, they look eerily similar to the boys that you dated and even the ones you didn’t. Boys that all had one thing in common: They broke your heart. Whether it was because they cheated on you, dumped you for other girls, stood you up at a school dance or on a date, or asked you out as a cruel prank. For a minute that feels like an hour, you dissociate. Your mind is thrown back into the past when you were a teenager.

~

When the sound of the door opening brought you back to your senses, you dried up your tears and put on a happy face to greet your brother, except that when his eyes met yours, he could sense something was wrong. You tried to pretend like nothing happened, you really did, but nothing ever escaped your brother’s eyes. When he arrived home with his usual attire and briefcase and saw your figure laying on the floor, close to a corner of the room and shaking your way through an episode of heartbreak and betrayal, he felt his blood boil despite his cold exterior. Underneath the impassive mask, his eyes were taking in account every detail, from your body posture to your wet eyelashes. He was a very attentive man after all, he didn’t get his job as a recruiter for nothing. Seeing you clutching to yourself as your life depended on it, desperate to relieve the emotional suffering, he couldn’t do anything else but clench his jaw, body stiffening due to the urge to protect you from any harm, be it emotional or physical.

“What happened? Who did this to you?” It was a shot, knowing you well enough to bet that your state was caused by someone else rather than yourself.

Despite showing worriness, his voice also carried danger. And you, poor thing, you were being washed away by tides of confusion and sadness. You couldn’t bring yourself to speak up, the only sounds leaving your mouth being sobs. You wanted to crawl towards your brother but wouldn’t he think you were pathetic? In any case, you didn’t move. Upon seeing you having trouble breathing, a million things crossed his mind and yet he didn’t rush to your side. He went through his usual routine of undoing his tie and taking off his jacket. This time, however, his movements seemed slightly stiffer and more aggressive than usual. Despite not knowing what he was thinking, it was the silence that was killing you. He was a dangerous man beneath that charismatic facade and a part of you knew that. But another part of you also knew that he promised that no harm would come to you and you believed his words faithfully. How much of his words were true at that point? The uncertainty caused you to sob as uncontrollable tears escaped your eyes. You were completely shaking under the stressful emotions that took over your body. Your brother, on the other hand, picked you up from the floor and helped you walk to the couch, ignoring your tense fingers grasping and wrinkling his perfectly ironed white dress shirt.

“Who did this to you?”

You had a feeling he already knew. He made it clear to you in the past that it was pointless to hide anything from him. You didn’t answer.

“Tell me who did this to you,” he tried once again, more firmly this time.

Upon still receiving no answer, his fists clenched and unclenched as his blood boiled. It became impossible to keep his cool when you were hurt like that. Fuck, he would even kill the person who did this to you.

“Who are you protecting with your silence? Why?” he spat, voice rising as his emotions took control, but he didn’t dare yell at you. “Hm?”

You barely managed to say the boy’s name before he sat down next to you and continued to demand to know. Your brother was persistent, he would not give up until he had what he wanted. His breathing became shallow, fast, and he was rabid. So you gave him what he wanted — a name. You managed, between sobs, to whisper the name he was looking for. The name he already knew, but wanted you to corroborate. He gave you a light pat on your shoulder, content with you obliging but with fury running through his veins. Suddenly, his hand was itching and the gun inside his briefcase felt heavier than before. A hand landed on your trembling shoulder before his expression softened. He waited until you had your attention fully on him before he decided to speak up in a stern voice.

“We have two options,” he raised two fingers in front of your eyes, giving you the false sensation of choice and comfort. He took one finger down and held up his pointer finger. “Option One: I’ll take care of you at this instant and everything will go back to normal, or—” He held up a second finger so it looked like he was making a peace sign. “Option Two: I’ll find a way to make him pay. Right now. What do you say? Which one is it?”

Surprisingly, his voice soothed your nerves and you stopped crying. Still, you could only sit there, apprehensive for the outcome and having these faltering feelings for this recently discovered darker side of your brother. His temper didn’t show, but you knew from that moment on that he was capable of anything. You ended up picking Option One, too tired to take care of yourself so you let your brother do it for you. You despised violence and would much rather let things go as if nothing ever happened. You only hoped your now ex-boyfriend would be safe from harm. Your brother thought it was unbelievable how you were worried so much about the person that put you in that situation. What you didn’t know, however, was that he was going to make that stupid boy pay anyway, despite your obvious concerns. He had the means to do it and, whether you believed it or not, he would hurt or kill others for you, even if you didn’t ask him to. Later that night, he ended up helping you bathe and dressed you in more comfortable clothes before cooking you dinner - seaweed soup. When it came time to go to sleep, he placed you in bed and tucked you in. It was all just like he did when you were a kid.

“I told you to stay away from that boy.”

“I know. I’m sorry I lied to you. I shouldn’t have, but...”

“I’m going to ask you one more time. And this time, I want you to answer my question and I want you to answer truthfully. What exactly happened?”

It was about time that he figured out what you were hiding.

“He…and his friends…they… At first he was so cool, he bought us all booze and cigarettes. He had a car and his own apartment. We were kinda going together for about five months. Tonight, I was at the beach with some of my and his friends. I was flirting with him, you know, a little buzzed. Then another car came driving onto the beach and there were a bunch of girls in it and…it was dark but it was still so hot outside… He asked me to grab more drinks from the extra cooler he left in his car and when I came back…she was laying in the sand topless, her swimsuit bottoms halfway down her legs while his head was…his mouth was…he was… He never cared about me. He was just using me to get closer to another girl. To make her jealous until she took him back. You were right. I should have known better, but I considered him a good friend and loving partner! He…he shared his food with me.”

Out on the streets of your neighborhood, starvation was one of the most common causes of death, right after death from exposure, drug use, alcohol poisoning, and murder. Sharing food was a big deal. And growing up the way you did with your brother, the only man who loved you, how could you not have seen it as an act of love? Because of your brother’s gestures of platonic and familial love with food, you were confused and misconstrued your ex-boyfriend’s similar gesture as an act of romantic love.

“You’re telling me you were secretly dating? That you snuck out and went off with your friends to meet that boy and have a party at the beach when you should’ve been at home studying or asleep in bed?”

“I know. I’m sorry. I thought he loved me, but he tricked me.”

“And if it was all a trick? If any of that food or those drinks had been spiked? You could have been kidnapped or hurt or assaulted.”

“I know that, too.”

“Then why did you do it? You're smarter than that.” He sighed and ran his hands through his hair. “From now on, don't cry in front of any other man besides me. If you do, I'm going to get mad at you. They’re not worth your tears. They’re not worthy of you or your heart. Don’t give your love away so cheaply,” he said to you, wiping away your tears.

You nodded and fell asleep soon after.

While you were asleep, he quickly left you alone in the house and disappeared into the night, determined to solve the situation whether you or his superiors approved of his methods or not. Whatever happened next, he’d clean it up and take care of it. His years spent working as a pink guard meant he was good at cleaning up messes and destroying all traces of evidence. Next thing you heard was the sound of the key rattling and turning in the lock of the front door in the wee hours of the morning just before there was a soft click as it shut. Your brother was home, and you had no idea he even left.

You didn’t see your ex-boyfriend again after that. You didn’t see that girl he cheated on you with either. They didn’t show up to school the next day. They didn’t show up to school at all. They just stopped coming. But there weren’t any missing persons reports made for either of them. Some said they transferred schools. Some said they dropped out. Others said they ran off and got married. It was all rumors. Nobody knew the truth. Except for their murderer.

~

They were the first, but they weren’t the last. Whatever the offense was, your brother made every person, man or woman, wish they hadn’t hurt you. Dating and romance was difficult for you because of your brother. He’d be damned if he let history repeat itself and you ended up marrying a man he considered to be a lowlife or deadbeat like your father. But at the same time, it was as if no man was good enough for you in his eyes. Everyone else in the world apart from you and himself were pieces of trash, there were just some who got lucky and made it out of the dumpster. Every man was somehow beneath him and, by extension, beneath you. There was always something about your potential partners that caused him to disapprove. You were exasperated and it got to a point where you wondered if he was going to arrange a marriage for you. You even confronted him and asked him if that was the case, but he said no. He did have an ulterior motive, but it wasn’t that. Unbeknownst to you, he blackmailed or bribed every single man who was interested in you to stay away from you and never contact you again. And those he couldn’t scare away or buy off ended up dead. He wasn’t totally unreasonable. You could have male coworkers and friends. Even best friends. Of course you could. Just not male lovers. Unless you found one that met his impossible standards. Because of his weird superiority complex and classist ideologies, for the longest time, you were an adult virgin who had to use sex toys or your hands to find release. That very well might still be the case to this day. After one too many awkward dinners or gatherings where you tried to introduce your potential partner to your brother, you gave up on love and dating. You instead focused your time and energy towards your career. Just like he did. He never had a girlfriend or fell in love as far as you knew. But you had a feeling that, even if he did, he wouldn’t tell you about his love or sex life. If it wasn’t for your own life experience, you wouldn’t think he was even capable of love. Though you tried to block them out from your memory, you’d be lying if you said there weren’t times your brother frightened you.

This is one of those times.

“These men here… When you met them earlier today, though it was the first time you saw them, it wasn’t the first time they saw you.”

“What?”

“You didn’t realize, but they’d been following you. They were watching your every move, studying your routine.”

“What? Why?”

“A man hired them and a bunch of other loan sharks to find me. He offered to pay one billion won to whoever succeeded. During their investigation, they learned you were my sister.”

“How?”

“I left the information for them to find. All that time spent staking out subway stations and they still had nothing to show for their two years of work. No leads, no clues. Their incompetence was amusing at first, but I eventually grew bored of hiding from and evading them. So I gave them a nudge in the right direction.”

“You led them to me?”

He nods. “But they still didn’t know how to approach you. So they followed you and watched you for an extra week before finally making a move.”

“So their story about the missing dog…?”

“A ploy to get information about me out of you. They thought maybe you knew something about my work. Now you see I had good reason for keeping you in the dark all these years. I knew that the less you knew, the safer you’d be. But all things kept in the dark must come to light eventually. And so here we are.”

Your legs feel like they’ll buckle underneath you. You fall onto the purple couch in the room. It’s one of the only things of color in his entire house. Your tastes in home decor are completely different from his. Apart from your bedroom here, which he lets you decorate however you want because it’s your space, everything else in his house is black. Everything. The curtains, the chairs, the tables, the shelves, the clocks, the dishes, the appliances, the record players, the shower, the closets, his bed, the elevator. Even the walls are painted black and the floors are black tile or black wood. You complained that so much black was suffocating and reminded you too much of death, that it was like he lived in a funeral home. Even funeral homes had more color than this. You told him he needed a pop of color somewhere in his living space too, so he let you pick out this purple couch yourself as a sort of compromise. You put your head in your hands. A part of you can’t believe this is happening. The other part of you realizes that all of the clues about the man your brother really is underneath the facade he put up were always there, you just couldn’t or refused to see them.

“What’s going to happen now?” You ask hesitantly as you pick your head back up and look your brother in the eye.

“These men here will be very sorry. They'll wish they never involved themselves with you and that they could have done something to stop me. They'll wish things could be different. They would do anything for things to be different. So…” He puts his hands on Mr. Choi and Mr. Kim’s shoulders. “You’re going to play a game now. Rock, Paper, Scissors, Minus One. I trust you know the rules. You form a shape with each hand, then take one away. The game is decided by the remaining hands. Of course, there’s a penalty for the loser.” He pats them on their shoulders.

He picks up a gun. Oh, god. There’s a gun. You didn’t notice it before. How did you not notice it?

“I’m sure you’ve seen this in movies. It’s called Russian Roulette.”

“No! You can’t be serious!” But you know he is. Dead serious.

He ignores your protests. “I’ll place one bullet into a revolver and close it. I’ll point the gun at the loser’s head and pull the trigger.”

You’re so scared when he puts the gun to his own head.

“Your odds of death are 1 in 6. Your odds of survival are 5 in 6.”

You notice his finger is actually on the trigger.

“Wait, don’t—!”

He pulls it, making you flinch even though it’s a blank. The gun clicks but, as fucked up as this situation is, you’re relieved. You don’t want your brother to die. He’s the only family you have. You don’t know what you would’ve done if he blew his brains out just then.

But he whistles as if what he just did was nothing.

“Not that bad, right?”

The men look towards you, their scared eyes pleading for you to help them even though they know you can’t. You left your phone in your purse downstairs. Even if you try to make a run for it, your brother’s legs are longer and his stride is wider than yours. He’d easily catch you before you made it three steps towards the stairs leading downstairs. And then what? Would he tie you up too? You’re being held captive just like they are. You’re just the captive audience. Your eyes are just as scared and helpless as theirs even though it’s not your life on the line. You just want to apologize to them. But you know it won’t do any good.

“Please... Please, don't make me watch.”

“What?”

“You never let me see you angry, right?”

“I’m not angry, little sister. Far from it.”

“Please, don't make me watch this.”

“You don’t want to watch? But this is what you wanted, isn’t it? Once this is over, I’ll tell you the whole truth and nothing but the truth about what I do for a living. But first, I’ll show you. Give you a little taste.”

“And then what’ll happen to me? I know what happens to people who know too much.”

He laughs as if you just told a great joke. “Nothing will happen to you. These men here…they aren’t the only ones who were watching you. When you became an adult, I told my superiors you could and would keep the secret, even if you didn’t do what I do. But they had to be sure, so they watched you too.”

“For how long?”

“Years. I finally got their approval to tell you everything and I just had to bring you here to celebrate.”

“Celebrate? This is like a celebration for you?”

“Of course. This is like a ‘take your little sister to work day’ for me. You can think of it like that if it’ll make you feel better.”

“It won’t. Please, let's just leave.”

“I can’t leave just yet. These men have something I need first and one of them is going to give it to me. But not before I have my fun.”

“If you make me watch this, I will never forget it. I will never forgive you. Please, Oppa…” You hope the term of endearment will get through to him.

It doesn’t.

“Why are you acting so squeamish? It’s nothing you haven’t seen before. You told me you watched those horror movies I sent you and didn’t need to sleep with your nightlight afterwards.”

“I lied. I didn’t watch those movies at all.”

He sighs. “I had hoped you’d get over your strong aversion to blood and violence as you got older, but I see you still haven’t.”

“You don't have to do this to prove a point, Oppa.”

“Oh, but I do. I’m not just proving a point. I’m doing this for your benefit. Even at your age, blood and death still makes you physically ill. It’s my fault. I coddled you just the right amount when you were little, but I did it too much when you were older. I didn’t do enough to desensitize you from those things, and I need to fix that. Rape, assault, fraud, arson, murder... Why do you think these crimes are punishable by law? Why is it that they are prohibited by law?”

You don’t answer.

“That's because they are part of human nature. Left to our own devices, humans will rapе, steal, and kill each other. That's just who we really are. But there are no laws in this room. Isn't it a waste to not do any of those things? Such human nature empowers us!”

You curl forward like a shrimp and put your head to your knees. You feel as if you’re on the verge of vomiting.

He tsks at you. “Stop fucking around. You’re younger and smaller than me, but you’re tough. I know you are. The fun is just beginning.” He grabs a waste basket and puts it down next to your feet. “Fine. If you really can’t stomach this, then pull your hair back and vomit into this.”

“I don't want to stay.”

“Oh, now you don’t want to see what I do for work? Too late and too bad. You’re staying. Consider it tough love.” He turns to Mr. Kim and Mr. Choi. “All right. Now, let’s play. On my count. Rock, paper, scissors.”

While Mr. Kim follows the rules and forms a rock and scissors with his hands, Mr. Choi’s hands are shaking too violently. He doesn’t make any shapes.

“You didn’t play. You broke the rules for the first round. Disqualified.” He points the gun at Mr. Choi’s head and pulls the trigger. Blank.

You flinch.

He spins the cylinder. “Now, let’s play again. Rock, paper, scissors. Minus one.” He points the gun at Mr. Kim’s head and pulls the trigger. Blank.

You flinch again. You hate this. You can’t watch but you can’t look away either.

Your brother pulls out a handkerchief and dabs the sweat off of Mr. Kim’s forehead. “Don’t be so nervous. Like I said, your odds of survival are 5 in 6. Let’s play again.” He spins the cylinder. “Rock, paper, scissors. Minus one.” He points the gun at Mr. Choi’s head and pulls the trigger. Blank.

God, it doesn’t matter what the odds are. You flinch every time.

“It’s getting a little boring, isn’t it?”

Oh, God. Your entire body is filled with even more dread, if such a thing is possible. So much that it threatens to overwhelm you.

Your brother puts more bullets into the cylinder. “Let’s reverse the odds now, shall we? Your odds of survival are now 1 in 6. Your odds of death are 5 in 6.” He spins the cylinder. “All right, let’s play again. Let’s speed it up, okay? Rock, paper, scissors. Minus one. Rock, paper, scissors. Minus one. Rock, paper, scissors. Minus one. Rock, paper, scissors. Minus one. Rock, paper, scissors!”

It all goes by so fast. Too fast. Your head is swimming and spinning at the same time from the whiplash of looking back and forth between the three of them, your eyes darting all over the place and not knowing where to keep focus.

He pauses for dramatic effect, letting the suspense linger painfully. And then… “Minus one. Too bad. You didn’t take one away. Disqualified.”

The opera music crescendoes and climaxes as he points the gun at Mr. Kim’s head and pulls the trigger. You flinch and cry out at the loud gunshot. Mr. Kim’s blood splatters on your brother’s cheek, but he’s unfazed and only admires his work. The music stops. You can’t hold it in anymore and vomit into the waste basket.

You feel like you just spent an eternity in an unbearable hell where your brother played God or The Devil. Time moved so slowly, to a crawl. In reality, it was no longer than five minutes.

“Congratulations on your win. Now, can we have a talk?” He looks at Mr. Choi and then back at you from over his shoulder.

You lift your head from the waste basket and look up at him. You know that once he’s done talking to Mr. Choi, you’re in for a talk too. While you look at his face, really look at it for the first time while his mask is completely off and you stare deeply into his eyes, your brain doesn’t even have room to be shocked or traumatized by what you see. A part of you always knew, didn’t you? You knew how tired your brother was. You knew how exhausting his life is. You watched him live it. You watched him fight it. And you saw the man he was becoming, saw the man he really was underneath the facade and you did nothing. Because you loved him. Because he was all you had in the world. You saw how desperately he wanted to be different. You watched him try so hard to be a good brother and, in many ways, he was. But in the end, he just couldn't stop the other thing.

After sweating him for a few minutes, he gets what he wants out of Mr. Choi and knocks him out again. You and your brother are alone.

“Now that that’s taken care of, I believe you and I have a pressing matter to discuss. But let’s do it over a hot, home cooked meal. I’m so hungry I could eat a horse!” He tries to joke.

You don’t laugh.

When you make no attempt to move, he grabs your arm and helps you up. You and he go downstairs together and he pulls out your chair for you, helping you sit down at the dinner table before he pushes your chair back in. You sit there silently and watch him as he takes off his suit blazer, rolls up his sleeves to his elbows, and puts on plastic gloves to make seaweed soup. Prep time for seaweed soup is ten minutes. While his back is turned, you see your purse hanging by the door. You debate making a run for it. You move your legs to the side. Your chair squeaks from under your shifting weight. Damn it.

“I wouldn’t try it if I were you.” Your brother says without even turning around or looking up from what he’s doing at the stove.

You freeze and stay seated, painfully listening to the wall clock tick. There’s nothing else you can do. Cooking time for seaweed soup is thirty-five minutes. Additional time is usually around five minutes.

He sits across from you at the dinner table and serves the food when it’s done. While his appetite is larger than ever after killing a man, yours is completely gone. He notices you playing with your soup instead of actually eating it.

“You should eat.” He taps your bowl with his spoon.

“I’m not hungry.”

“You should be. You just emptied your stomach a few minutes ago. Don’t worry. This is just the start of your desensitization training. Whether you witness it or commit it, the first murder is the hardest.”

“The first? There’s gonna be more?”

He nods. “Being surrounded by death is hard at first, but it will get easier with time. Now eat. I made it with higher quality meat and seaweed, so it should taste even better than what we used to eat as kids.”

You reluctantly take a couple bites. It does taste a lot better than you remember. But you don’t have it in you to savor the taste. Your brother eats with relish. You eat with obligation.

“You know, people who grew up by the seaside cook this soup with rockfish, not beef. Once you’ve had it that way, its memory follows you all the way to the city. You can’t replicate that childhood taste, no matter how hard you try. But some are beaten for not getting it right.”

You swallow nervously. You know he’s talking about himself and your mother, how your father used to beat him and her for nothing and anything.

“Before you were born, we always had seaweed soup at home. At first, I thought it was because Dad liked it. I only found out later that Mom had never gotten it after giving birth to me. Mom never had a mom, and that haunted her throughout her life. The day she was beaten by Dad and taken to the hospital with chipped teeth… I saw her cook seaweed soup and eat it in the kitchen in the dark. To think he did that to her… All over something like seaweed soup. Every time she was hurting, and every time she was beaten, maybe she thought it would heal her, or maybe she believed her fate was sealed because…because no one had ever made her that soup. To me, seaweed soup is a reminder of death.”

You freeze, your spoon halfway to your lips. You lower it and stare at your bowl of seaweed soup. After your father was presumed dead and the police came with the custody papers for you, he made you seaweed soup. The night you went to the beach, after you told him your boyfriend cheated on you, he made seaweed soup for dinner. In that moment, it finally and suddenly clicks for you that your father didn’t die in a vehicular accident. Your ex-boyfriend and the girl he cheated on you with didn’t transfer, didn’t drop out, didn’t run away and get married. They were murdered. By your brother. And those are only the ones you know about. How many others had he directly or indirectly killed? A pit forms in your stomach at the question you don’t dare to ask. Even if he knows the answer, you don’t want to know.

He looks at the time. “You should head home now.”

“What? Are you seriously kicking me out?! You promised me that you’d give me an explanation! That you’d tell me everything!”

“I did. But it’s been an hour.”

“So?”

“When I called, I told you it’d be no more than an hour. You said you’d hold me to it. So you should go home and work on that project of yours. I’ll explain another time.”

You narrow your eyes at him as he smiles at you. “I know what you’re doing. Stop it. Forget what I said. You were right. This is more important.”

“Are you absolutely sure you want to know? Curiosity killed the cat, you know.”

“And satisfaction brought it back. We’ve passed the point of no return. You might as well tell me everything. Now. Stop playing games.”

“Oh, but I can’t. Playing games is my job.”

Your seaweed soup grows cold as he takes his time to tell you everything and answer your questions. He’s a recruiter for something called the Squid Games. Children’s games with a deadly twist where elimination means death. He finds and lures in desperate people who are drowning in debt so deep there is no chance to come up for air with a game of Ddjaki and the tantalizing offer of 100,000 won for every time they win. But for every time he won, he’d slap them instead. That was just one of many tactics he employed. Before he was a recruiter, he was a guard. He killed players and burned their bodies. He directly and indirectly killed a lot of people before you were a teenager, including your own father. You wish you could shed tears for your old man, but you can’t. Your father was horrible to you both. Your brother once told you...the best day of your lives was the day your father went missing and was presumed dead, because his abuse finally stopped and you would be happier and better off now that it was just the two of you. But did he deserve the fate he was dealt? You don’t know about that.

What you do know is your brother is a sadistic killer who gets his kicks from other people’s misery, misfortune, pain, desperation, and fear. And that could very well include your own now. But despite everything that’s happened…you still don’t hate him. You don't hate him. You don't. You try, but you just don't. No matter what else he is, he's your brother. Now, you're not responsible for the things he did in the past or the things he’ll do in the future. But you can't change the fact that to you...he’s still your brother. Your brother who played with you, fed you, comforted you when you cried, took you shopping, and tied your shoelaces. Your brother who helped you through the awkwardness of your first menstrual cycle because your mom was already dead and couldn’t do it herself and bought you everything you needed including chocolate, a heating pad, tampons, and pads, and showed you how to use them. Your brother who bought you a large bouquet of your favorite flowers and stood up and clapped loudly when it was your turn to walk on stage and accept your diploma or degree for your high school and college graduations. Your brother who told you how proud he was of you and how proud your mom would be for graduating college with flying colors. But you just feel like he's winning if you don't hate him. But there’s no real winning, is there? There's just...living. Moving forward. And if you keep doing that... You'll be all right. Is that true? It is for you. It has to be. You’ll never get to apologize to any of the victims. Nor the families of the men and women your brother directly and indirectly killed in the past and will kill in the future. If only you could just apologize to one family that had been hurt that way... But it wouldn’t be good enough.

After taking your and his dishes away, your brother rolls down his sleeves and puts his suit jacket back on, buttoning it. He tells you he’ll clean up his mess upstairs when he gets back but, for now, he’s going to play another game of Russian Roulette, but with a twist: To make the game appear a little more serious, he and Gi-hun will each take turns pulling the trigger without spinning the cylinder again. The bullet will be fired within six attempts, and the game will be over. He’s thought of every possible outcome so that, no matter what happens, he’ll make it out alive and return to you. His suit is already rigged with piping filled with fake blood and he has a fake bullet that’s painted to look real to the naked and untrained eye. He can quickly swap out the real bullet for the fake one without Gi-hun noticing by using sleight of hand if the bullet comes up on his turn. In his line of work, it isn’t enough to be just one step ahead. He has to be at least five steps ahead of the other person he sees as an opponent. No matter what happens, whether or not he has to fake his death, he’ll get up and walk away. He’ll have to go back into hiding for a while. It’s up to you whether or not you come with him.

He goes off to face Gi-hun, taking Mr. Choi’s tied up and unconscious body and Mr. Kim’s corpse with him. He’s going to stage the former in a hotel room and dispose of the latter. He leaves you alone in his place to mull over his offer. You can’t leave even if you want to because he’s taken your purse and locked all the doors and windows that only he has the keys or knows the passcodes to since he changed them all. There are bars on the windows or the glass is so thick they’re practically impenetrable and there’s nothing you can break them with. There’s no landline phone or internet connection. You’re trapped until he gets back. You have a choice to make now. Go back to your old life and carry on as normal, or join the games as a recruiter. As a recruiter, you won’t have to see any violence or bloodshed like you would if you were a guard. You’ll just have to lure players in. Like fishing. But if you go into the field, he will be responsible for you in the beginning until you get your bearings and then you’ll be responsible for yourself. Though you’ll work together or independently, you will still be a team working under the same people and towards the same goal. Either way, you have to keep the secret if you want to stay alive. If you try to snitch, he can’t protect you then and you’d only succeed in getting yourself killed. You don’t know what to do. Stay in your old life or go into a new one. By making this irreversible choice, you will carry the burden of knowledge and alter the course of your entire future no matter what you decide.

[notthecutesttrash]

Vanilla Ice Cream

Content: Sierra Six is your newly appointed bodyguard. You only want to make his life a living hell so he can leave. That is until unfortunate circumstances make you feel closer to him, and eventually like his company.

Warnings: Lil bit of angst, reader's a brat, fluff, inebriation, blood, vomiting, language, death

Word count: 6.8k

When you saw him, all you could think was how it was just another pointless bodyguard who might fail to do their job. Apparently, you were notorious for being a spoiled brat, as your father so explained, and no one else wanted to work with you because of it. Your lips twitch in irritation at the thought. You? Spoiled? Please. 

“I don’t need a bodyguard! It’s not even a bodyguard anyways, it’s a babysitter! I’m so tired of being watched every day! Can’t I have some goddamn privacy?! I’m like 25!” You yell out to your father who is as usual, too busy calmly packing things into his neatly confined suitcase. 

“Enough (Y/n), you’re going to have a bodyguard because you can’t seem to sit still for once.” 

“Oh, maybe because, again, I’m 25 DAD! I’m so sorry for wanting to go out and have fun!”

“I have a target on my head, your mother has a target on her head, therefore YOU have a target on your head. What do you not understand?” You’ve heard this quote a million times at this point so you just wave it off.  

“Yeah, and? That target has gotten us nowhere but money spent on these so-called body guards and given us senseless paranoia. Nothing has ever happened, and nothing will. Just relax already.” Maybe you knew you were being selfish, but you didn’t care, it was true.

“I am going to be gone for not just a day, not just 2, not even a full week, but almost 2 months.” He emphasizes. “I need the best security there is for you, do you understand? Someone is bound to try something.” He gives you a finished expression and then glimpses to the maid. “Margaret open the gates for Sierra six.” Your father says. She nods and briskly walks off. 

You roll your eyes and huff, “dad!” 

“He’ll be here any minute now. Introduce yourself, be nice, and we will see you in 2 months.” You open your mouth to speak and he holds up a finger. 

“Don’t give this poor man any trouble than he needs, or at least enough that I have to hear about it. I don’t need yet another bodyguard that refuses to work with us because of you.” Your father rubs his fingers at the bridge of his nose to display his exhaustion. 

“What do you mean because of me?” You cross your arms and huff, “I don’t do anything to any of them.”

“Don’t play coy.” 

You shake your head, “i’m not.” You kind of were. Just kind of. 

“You are. Don’t act like every guard so far hasn’t wanted to reverse the contract and shoot you themselves.” You cross your legs and turn your head. 

“They start it.” That was also most definitely not true. 

A brooding man makes himself known at the doorway. A tall figure, blue grayish eyes, sandy dark blonde locks, and somehow a face and demeanor that could make a mother proud. 

“Another fit pretty face.” Was the first thing you say and your father instantly gives you a look that says don’t. 

Pursing your lips, you hum begrudgingly and step in front of the man. “My name is (Y/n), nice to meet you.” A clear fake smile burns into your features, and you stretch your hand out. Sierra Six doesn’t say anything, he remains stoic and silent. He then places his hand into your own and firmly shakes it. His hand felt warm and rough like he was born fighting every day, and you made a note to remember that. 

“Have a safe trip Dad!” You speak with honey, tiptoeing on your pretty little expensive slippers. Planting a kiss on his cheek, you give a side eye to six. A sadistic joy twitches into the edge of your lip, and you give him one last look before he turns to his side to let you pass through the doorway. 

Fitz told him it was going to be a trip, and he believed it. For the past few days all you were trying to do was tick him, to break him, to over-exaggerate every little opinion you had, to make sure he’d want to get up and leave himself. 

“I despise ketchup with my fries, why can’t we just have some alternative, what do you think Mr. Sierra six?” You would complain about one moment. Then the next moment you went on about how chocolate was better than vanilla, about how winter sucks because you can’t use your lavish pool, why red is better than yellow, why Pepsi tastes better than coca cola, and so on. 

 “So what’s your real name mr. six?” you ask him, your legs crossed over one another as you sat by him. His fingers were expertly working at the computer ahead of him, and he only gives you a split second of a look. “Nothing?” You inch closer, your red heels dangling near his legs. 

“Why are all you guards so boring? Hm? It’s been like 3 days and you can’t say more than 2 words.” Throwing your head back, you groan out loud. Finally, you thought of an idea, and you glance back at him, grinning.  

“Well then you wouldn’t mind if I invited my friend over would you?” A giggle escapes. “No. Of course not.” Pulling out your phone, you scroll through your contacts and grin. 

“You’re not supposed to have anyone over.” Finally, Mr. Special Sierra Six speaks. You wave your phone and laugh. 

“It’s just one friend pretty boy, come on now, don’t be shy. She won’t give you as much as a bite… though.. she might try to get into your pants.” Snickering to yourself, he gives you that same blank stare. You click on your friend Cacie, and she answers the phone just as fast. Smiling wide, you’re already pulling it to your ear and telling her to come over. 

“There’s a little special surprise for you. This one is good this time.” 

“Can’t wait~” she says with that little mischievous snicker at the end of her words. She hangs up and you know she’s already on her way. 

“Hey pretty boy, do you like wine? Wait don’t answer that. You strike me as a.. on the rocks type of guy. Let me guess.. bourbon? Scotch?” Six doesn’t respond, and you tap at your chin. “Whiskey!” Six gives you a glimpse, and you know you got it. 

“Let me guess, “I can’t drink on the job,” you mimic him, “just one little glass wouldn’t hurt.” Already pouring the whiskey into the glass, you shoot him a side look. He’s still working at his computer, and at this point a guard might be sighing, rolling their eyes, or shaking their head. But he’s quite diligent. It was impressive. 

You set the glass in front of him, and he doesn’t even eye you. “Just a sip for me, pretty please?” You give him the sweetest orbs you could muster, but it wasn’t very good knowing you. Eventually he gives you a look, and this time it stays. You couldn’t know what he was thinking with his expression at all. “Come on, please? I won’t bother you at all after this.” You tilt your head, and your eyes glimmer a certain sadism that screams out your lies.

“I’m good.” Sierra six speaks, turning back to his screen, and you create a fake pout. 

“That’s no fun.” You take the glass you poured him and take a sip. Your gaze lingers on him. He knows you’re staring, you know he knows you’re staring, but you still do it. The nails of yours tap onto the glass one finger at a time, and you rest your free hand at your cheek. Still stuck in your peering, you don’t realize the doorbell rings. 

“You should probably get that.” Six states, and you smile sarcastically. You should’ve made him get up and do it himself for that smugness. 

A swift smirk dawns on you when Cacies pretty face is revealed. Her red lips are stunning, and her blonde coils are wrapped up. She wears her velvet red slim-fit dress, and you know she always wore this one to seduce the prettiest of guards. “Cacie dear, meet Sierra Six.” Cacie walks up to him right away, a burning intrigue in her light blue orbs.

“You are quite the pretty one, aren’t you? Older, though. You could probably be my dad… but lucky for you, I like that.” She sways her hips to the side and giggles. There is a little flicker of annoyance inside of you that you push down. Six glances up and says nothing, he doesn’t even give a reaction, no visible sigh, no rude comment, not even a linger over her body to show he secretly enjoyed it. Cacie was more than intrigued by that though, and you knew she was 100% willing to break him by the night’s end. 

Cacie turns her back to six, and she unclips her hair and rolls her head slowly, pulling her fingers to her scalp to massage out the little bumps while her hair rolls evenly at the end of her back. Cacie pulls out her phone and loud music begins to blare out. Six doesn’t flinch, but he exhales a barely noticeable sigh that finally showed irritation. It was subtle, but you knew. You take a sip of the whiskey and giggle. Cacie breaks out into a little dance, and Sierra Six closes his laptop and gets up.

It was getting late so he carries his little flashlight and shines at the glass windows to make sure no intruder was around the corners. You roll a lighter in your hands and flick at it, igniting a small fire that you raise to your cigarette. Taking a deep inhale, you blow a trail of smoke in front of you and stand. 

“Dance with me (Y/n), you know you love this song!” Cacie shouts, moving her hand into the curves of her ass. Your gaze lingers over to your bodyguard and you flick your cigarette to the floor. You take another swig of whiskey, and Cacie turns to you with a bottle of champagne in her hands. A big grin stretches her lips and yours do the same. You break out into laughter and she mimics, pouring a generous amount into your glass. She was more of a wine girl, so she’d always have her little special bottle that she’d love to get from some handsome cashier to share a long sip with you. You place your glass down and begin to move your body with the music. 

“You’re free to join too,” Cacie throws a wink at six, and he gives a glimpse before getting back to work. 

Throughout the night Cacie sends every little flirt, any little comment, even a flash of her tits to six, and alas no response. You on the other hand couldn’t care less and once Cacie leans down all drunken to six and tries to touch him, he finally speaks. “Don’t touch.” You take this moment to finally pause the music. Falling to the couch with a sigh, you unbuckle your painful high heels and chuck them off to the side. Your stomach felt like it was violently churning. 

“Why? Afraid I’ll mess up your work? Get you fired?” Cacie chuckles, turning to you. 

“I don’t understand this guy. He’s more boring than watching paint dry.” She grumbles. Huffing, you lean back to the couch and clutch your stomach. There’s a swirling that rushes to your throat, and you bite back the nausea.

“I really don’t care Cacie, just stop bothering him,” you mumble off, unsure if you were even inteligible at this point. You pull your hair out of its restrictive tie and let the locks fall into your face. The headache that was beginning to brew pounds into your ears. Lines of haziness muddle together fast. 

“What is wrong with you?” Cacie gives you a look of disgust as if it was just blasphemous what you uttered. You mumble into the leather, dragging your tired face into it. Your head lulls to the side, everything was too heavy. 

“Are you okay?” Six asks from his position, his head turned over his shoulder, brows furrowed. 

“She’s just drunk,” Cacie rolls her eyes, gesturing towards you. You lean your head onto the curve of the armrest, and the way the light blares down into your sight has you rolling your eyes into the back of your head. Breathing raggedly, you follow Six’s movements toward you, a sickness hits your chest again and you close your eyes, sucking in a pained breath. Six scans the half bottle of champagne, and then you. Suddenly a hand presses to your forehead and you attempt to flutter your lids open. Beads of sweat drip down your skin, and your hair becomes so wet it clings to your cheeks. 

With a sudden sternness six asks, “What was in the champagne?”

Cacie throws up her hands and scoffs. ”How the fuck am I supposed to know? Champagne? I bought it at the store.”

Six rotates the bottle, attempting to find any language or label on the glass. “From who?” Cacie sighs and rolls her eyes dramatically. “I don’t know. The fucking cashier, who else?” 

“Did you say anything to them? Like how you were going to be alone?” Six asks, staring up at Cacie who quiets, a certain guilty look on her face. He raises his brows and she throws up her hands again. 

“Well… I didn’t think it was gonna be a big deal. I just told him that her dad was finally going out of town for more than just a few days, and he gave me that from behind the counter.” She holds a slightly worried expression as six gives her a blank look. You groan out loud as the pain in your stomach swirls. The bile was reaching your throat, the acid, the nausea, you couldn’t hold it back anymore. You violently hurl over the leather couch until your stomach expels every ounce of liquid it can. Before you knew it you were carried away and forced to sit in a car seat before you passed out cold. 

When you woke up you are met with a hospital ceiling, and upon turning, you find six at the corner, standing. Pulling your arms to your sight you see an IV in your wrist, alongside other needles. Anxiety spikes, and you gasp, rushing to get out of the bed.

Six rushes to you, gesturing with his hands to calm down, “Hey hey, lay back down, relax." You hesitantly ease back in.

“What happened?” You ask. 

“Your friend gave you a poisoned bottle of champagne.” He states blankly. Rolling your eyes at the paranoia, you cross your arms. 

“I’m sure I was just drunk.” Sighing, you look out at the window nearby. 

“Do you normally puke out blood when you’re drunk?” He says, tilting his head, and you turn to him. 

 “Only when I’m having a good time,” you can’t help but joke and smile to yourself, eyes now glued to the outside.

Six was quiet, and you shift your focus on him. He has a straight face like usual. You had a deep feeling that maybe if you weren’t purposely attempting to annoy him for the past few days, he might’ve liked you as a person.

“Sorry.” You mutter. 

He raises a brow, and you go on a nervous rant. “I just never get to be alone, so I get angry. So far every guard has quit, and that was always my intention. But..” The words were at the tip of your tongue, but you just couldn’t bear to say thank you, that he saved your life of course, a feat no guard has ever done, and probably never would’ve. 

“I understand if you will.” It is quiet for a moment, and you sigh, keeping your gaze just stuck to the window. You swallow sharply, and it feels like razor blades scratching down your throat. 

“I won’t. It’s my job.” Sierra six states like some automated robot. 

Pushing your head into the pillow, you scoff. “Even when you got a girl who’s trying to make your life a living hell?” 

“I’ve been with worse company.” For just a moment, you can see a shimmer in his eyes, and there’s just the smallest prettiest little curl at the edge of his lips. Grinning widely, you make out a laugh. Though, it’s not for long before you cough out a gross chunk of phlegm, or even blood maybe. 

“You okay?” He asks, moving to you as you nod weakly.

“Yeah…” You trail off tiredly. “Can we go home now?” He finally chuckles, and you turn to him, embarrassed, a slight blush burning in your cheeks. 

“Not yet.” There’s a frown from you, and you sink into the bed, your eyes closing. Six’s gaze lingers over you for a moment before he gets back into his past position, his hands folded neatly over each other. 

It’s been close to a month, and the only company you ever had was six, and you hated to say.. you were starting to fall in love with him. Maybe it’s because you were desperate for any social contact. Or maybe because he's the only one who actually broke your facade and you feel comfortable to be your self around him... Or maybe it was just.. something about him.. the way he would smile just slightly, his soft chuckles whenever you finally did make him laugh, his ability to remain so calm.. it was so peaceful and reassuring in your boring days. 

“I mean seriously though, why isn’t there an alternative to ketchup? It’s not like I’m just gonna put mustard on my fries, so you can’t say that’s one. It’s either ketchup or fries alone. You know?” You complain while shoving a fry into your mouth, huffing. Six removes the attention from his computer, his brow raised.

“Are you done?”

You nod absentmindedly. “You’re right, mustard sucks too.”

He lets out an impatient exhale, but there is just the slightest little twitch that nudges his lips into a smile. You find yourself grinning whenever you manage such a feat. Maybe he was annoyed at you, sure, but you knew he couldn’t deny that the mindless banter was enjoyable, and even he couldn't help but join in it every now and then. 

Six looks up at you with a stern but playful expression, “I like mustard.”

“Hm. You do seem like a mustard guy.” You raise your spoon to him accusingly. 

“What’s that supposed to mean?” He stops typing completely now, gaze locked onto you. 

You circle your spoon and gesture to all of him. “It just screams.. you, you know?” 

Six hums. “Is it the hair?” 

“Yes! It is the hair!” You point to him and six nods, resuming his typing. He then shakes his head, and chuckles after a moment of silence. Smiling, you continue eating and snicker to yourself, well that is until a wonderful idea hits you.  

“You should teach me how to fight!” You shout and he gives you a blank look from his computer. 

“Why?” He asks.

“Well, what if someone breaks in and you need help?” He smiles only slightly, and your stare remains fixated on him. His beard compliments the frame of his sandy hair, and the blue of his eyes that glance your way. You loved picking those features out every now and then. 

He averts to his screen, “I won’t need help. Trust me.”

“But what if you do.” You retort. 

“I won’t.” He shakes his head. 

“But what if-“

Six sighs, “Alright, I’ll teach you. Happy?” Hand resting against your cheek, you giggle. Six glimpses when you walk off. Then his gaze remains for a second too long. 

Surely when he wasn’t looking around the same spots, exits, and corners every moment, he could relax in a way that still made him feel like he was working. That’s what you hoped at least when you dragged him outside beside the pool and forced him to teach you his martial arts, or whatever. 

“I’m not going to hit you,” he reminds you right off the bat.

You playfully gasp, pressing your knuckles to your hips. “What if someone bursts into my room and attempts to knock me out, hm?” 

“That won’t happen.” You open your mouth to retort and he puts his hand up.

“Don’t.”

You whisper the words “but what if it does?”

You would’ve believed him and even called yourself paranoid, but considering you just had an attempt of murder on you, unfortunately, the idea wasn’t out the window anymore.

“Hit me.” Six gestures, and you step back instinctively, a bundle of worry in your chest. 

“Anywhere..?” You press your lips nervously into another.   

“Anywhere.” 

You dive your balled-up fists at him, and he swiftly moves to the side. It was some impressive reflex, and you did it again only to watch him repeat. You take a step back and smile, breathing through your words. “So, I guess my father doesn’t hire useless people.”

The more you try, the more useless it is, but you’re determined until finally he grabs your wrist and holds it. “You’re too predictable, you can do better. Come on.” A huff escapes, and you swing directly at his eye, but he dodges just in time. 

“Better.” Six pauses, and moves to you, grabbing your fist. “Like this.” He moves your hand in the direction, imitating the movement, and once he steps back, you copy. “Good,” he compliments, and you step back, smiling.

Six makes a gesture with his hand, directing it to him as if saying to keep it coming. Taking a deep breath, you move to punch him, and he dodges. You do the same movement several times and he all but does the same, except each time you notice you were getting just a little closer to his window.

Eventually, you pant and hold your hands to your knees. “This is a lot more tiring than it looks.” 

Six looks around at the daylight slowly diminishing. “You should eat, it’s dinnertime.”

“You cooking?” You ask, taking a deep breath. 

“Not unless you like cereal.” He jokes with that blank tone as he walks away, but you give a small chuckle before following him. 

There was a question you were itching to ask as you sat down, and you gave him several glances to determine his mood. Then again there was never anything that showed what he might be thinking, so you purse your lips and look down at your food again. “What?” Six speaks up, and you turn to him, quietly staring. 

“Nothing,” you mutter, eating a forceful spoonful of your rice. 

Sierra Six hums, his gaze lingering over you, and you stand, getting up to walk to your freezer. “There’s no more ice cream,” you pout. 

“Good. I won’t be able to hear about how chocolate is better than vanilla for a while now.” You turn around to Six who has a little playful glint in his eye, and you fake pout, moving to sit back down. 

“You didn't enjoy my talks?” 

“I would’ve if you chose vanilla.” He jokes, and when you laugh he can’t help the small smile that tugs his lips.

You rest your hand on your cheek and find yourself gawking at him. Six eventually speaks through the strange tension. “You look like you have something you’re wanting to ask, so what is it?”

Biting your lip, you look away for a moment and eat another spoonful of bland rice. Life without your fancy chefs was definitely a depressing one. 

“Nothing I haven’t already asked you.” You say in a small mumble, and six hums, stopping his movements at the laptop. 

“You’ve asked me a lot in these past few weeks. Like what icecream flavor is my favorite, if I like ketchup better than mustard, if whiskey is better than bourbon, if-“ Cutting him off, you sigh. 

“What’s your name?” Six gives the same blank neutral expression, but as if he’s thinking. “Unless.. you don’t have one.. but you’ve got to right? You weren’t born an agent.. were you?” You ramble on, and six eventually lets out a small exhale, tilting his head. 

“Court.” He states and you quiet, keeping your eyes on his. Suddenly you smile, then it turns into a grin, and you laugh. He looks confused this time, “what?”

“Nothing… I’m just.. happy you told me.” A giggle escapes you, and there’s a swirl of butterflies in your stomach. Court raises a brow and gets back to work, his side gaze lingering on you as you move to put your dishes into the washer. 

“Goodnight Court,” you sing with a little giggle and wave. 

“Good night (Y/n).” He says, his focus back on his screen. Yet as you walk away the smile he held within him escapes fully.  

Throughout the night you found yourself tossing and turning, your head filled with thoughts of six- or Court. The house felt safer with him, you admitted, and on many nights when you were scared, he soothed you to sleep with his presence that you bothered to have near you.  

“Six?” You call out, making your way out of the bed with your little nightgown on. No answer and your heart leaps up into your throat. He always answered the first time. What if someone actually did intrude and he wasn’t there, or worse, he lost? God you were starting to sound like your dad, no way that’d happen… But what if it did? 

“Six..?” You call out quieter, tiptoeing around the door frames like a scared little child. There were no lights on, and the windows displayed only the inky blackness outside. It must’ve been, what, 2 am? Now you were beginning to get very worried, and your heart began to beat so fast it was drowning out the quietness of your large house. 

“Six..?” you call out yet again, and no response. 

When you turn a corner, there’s the body of an unfamiliar man on the floor which makes you jump back. Your toe pokes at him, and he doesn’t move. Your anxiety is now fully spiked, and you rush around the hall to call out for six. You find yet another black outfitted body, blood leaking from their chest onto the floor. Although, you didn’t notice that part until you tripped and fell on it. Groaning out in pain, you clutch your head, and call out one last "S-Six!".

Suddenly you hear glass breaking and a silenced gunshot which makes you jump. There's a heavy thud at your feet, it’s the body of another man, and when you look up, it’s Court who stands above you, alive and on his two feet.

He lets out a breath, and you ogle up at him, unsure of what to even say. Court gestures his hand to you and you take it. He instantly pulls you to your feet and you tiptoe silently around the body in front of you. You open your mouth to speak, but his focus zones behind you.

Something is moving in the corner of your sight and you shriek in reflex, instantly rotating to punch the assailant. "Ow!" They hiss in pain and recoil, holding their nose. You stare, wide-eyed, and when the man removes his hand from his face, his eyes narrow onto you. Your heart leaps into your throat, and you contemplate running for a moment but you are more than determined, so you hold up your fist and muster up the same expression.

Suddenly an object flies over your shoulder, it nearly grazes your cheek before it lands deep into the chest of the man who is knocked back. Turning, you see Court who has a serious expression on his face, possibly the most you've ever seen.

You don't have much time to breathe out a word as another man comes behind him. Court rotates just in time and lands a loud sucker punch to the man’s jaw. The attacker stumbles back and gasps, attempting to grab at his pistol that Court more than easily undoes and the magazine falls to the floor. Court lands another hard hit, and you can visibly see the blood that leaks from the attacker’s nose as he repeats, and repeats.. and repeats to the point where you might as well feel guilty for the poor guy.

Cringing, you turn away, and you assume Court is finally finished when he lets out a breath and walks towards you. You study his movements as he nears the man beneath your feet and yanks the blade out from his chest. He takes a rag nearby and begins wiping the blood from it. You notice there is also blood running down his arm and without thinking your hands quickly roam to find the wound. 

“Are you okay?” There was pure concern in your voice, and he scans you as if deep in thought. 

He answers after a few seconds, shrugging, “I’m fine, just a little graze.” You frown and he adds, “You should be sleeping,” breaking you from the focus on his arm. 

You huff. “When did they come in?” 

“Now.” Court continues wiping the blade, not even looking at you. 

“I told you I wouldn’t need any help.” Court continues in his monotone voice and you’re breathless in pure astonishment. You wanted to gasp out a “You’re unbelievable," but in reality, you say what you know annoys him. 

“But you might've.” He cracks just the edge of a smile at you. 

Your knuckles are a bruised red and you can't help but smile as you add, “Did you see the punch I landed? I did more than help, are you kidding?" Court chuckles and god even at a moment like this your heart flutters. 

"Really? That's weird, I feel like I remember teaching you that punch. When was it..?" He looks to the ceiling as if just struggling to remember, “Just earlier today?" You were stuck in your smile, and your head tilts like a lovesick puppy, eyes glued to his. He gives you a sweet smile, then examines your dress which now has a puddle of red in it from when you tripped. 

“You should go change.” He comments as if trying to shift the moment, and you hum, looking down at the bodies on the floor. It’s not like this is the first time you’ve seen this, considering the line of work your father was in, but the shake of six possibly getting hurt, or that they were coming for you upset you more than anything. 

“I couldn’t go to sleep.” You now change the subject, looking up at him. He doesn’t respond, so you touch his hand and gently grab the knife that he was working at and place it on the counter. “Do you ever sleep?” 

“Rarely. I can’t really afford to, considering,” he gestures to the bodies, “someone might break in.” 

“What if I stand watch, and you sleep?” You offer, and he laughs for a bit. When he notices you’re serious, he gives you a look as if you just said something ridiculous. He scoffs and you pout.

He shakes his head, “That’s not your job.”

“No, it’s not. But my job as a host should be to make you feel comfortable and well-rested in my home.” You tilt your head, giving the best puppy eyes you could muster. 

“Interesting character development.” He jokes and you pout. 

���Come on, please? Starting tomorrow, you can take the best nap of your life.” You hold his hands that were once cleaning the knife and squeeze gently. Blue meets (e/c), and for a quiet long moment, it remains that way. Six doesn’t say anything, he just stares, and you do the same. Eventually, he decides to speak.

“I should probably clean this up.” You look around and take a step back forgetting to remember you’re an inch away from a pile of blood. 

“Oh.. right.. yeah.” You trail off, giving him one last look as he does to you, before you nod, and walk off. 

“Good night (Y/n),” he says and you turn back and smile. 

 “Good night Court.” 

The closer you got to the time of your dad coming back from his trip, the more a big twinge of disappointment would hit you. It was almost 2 weeks left now, and you felt a sadness thinking of it. It would mean no more Court, and he would go on his way to other missions, or worse, even become a bodyguard to some other girl who’s conveniently all alone in a big house. 

“Are you okay?” Asked Court who was, as usual, typing on his computer while you ate. 

“Yeah.” Responding, you stab sadly at your eggs and let out a sigh. He wouldn’t like you anyway, not with how bad you treated him the first few days. There was no way.

Maybe it was a good thing he was leaving soon, so you could just be on your way and stop being so lovesick. Sooner or later another guard will come and you’ll go back to making their life a nightmare. 

Court stares at you from the sides of his eyes, and hums. “I’ve been with you long enough now to know what’s wrong, so tell me.” He pushes his computer out of the way and directs his focus onto you. “What’s on your mind?”

Your lips purse, and for a moment you think of lying or not telling him anything, but you finally decide, that if he wasn’t going to be here after these 2 weeks anyway, then what was the point of keeping it to yourself? 

“I’m just.. disappointed you’ll leave soon.” Court tilts his head, probably not even sure how to respond to that. 

“You’re the only guard I’ve liked. So far I’ve made all of them quit, or even want to kill me themselves. My dad probably expects that you’re already gone or wanting to blow your own brains out by now. But… you’re here.” Awkwardly you finish your statement, refusing to stare at him in the eyes.. until finally you do. He gives you this questionable expression, and truthfully all of his emotions have been at least a tiny bit readable, but right now, you’re truly unsure of what he’s thinking. All you seem to notice is a glimmer in his eyes, maybe something sad, happy, mad, you really couldn’t tell. 

“Yes.. I am.” He trails off like he wants to say more. 

“Why?” 

Court shakes his head for a moment and glances down, then he shrugs. “It’s my job.” Exhaling, you push yourself back into your seat. 

Thinking of what to say and biting back a disappointment, you muster out a painstaking gratitude. “Well… I thank you for doing your job. In 2 weeks, you won’t see me again, and I’ll be back to making someone else’s job here hell. So.. you’re almost free.” You joke, but in a way that hurts you. A small fake smile is all the reaction you want to give, but the humor that makes its way to your words is almost nonexistent. 

There’s a harsh jab that hits your heart that you’re attempting to push down. You knew he wouldn’t like you, it’s outlandish, but still, the tears that force their way to your eyes made it hard to show no emotion. Court sees it, and his attempted stoic gaze remains on you, but you can see he’s feeling emotions he’s unsure of, or like he’s thinking hard. His mouth opens to speak after a few seconds but you don’t want to hear it, not the words that you’ve been dreading, not the confirmation that’ll break your heart.  

“I’m going to shower.”

He nods, and you purse your lips, turning away from him. Once you are sure he couldn’t see you, a few tears fall to your cheeks. 

You put your hair up in a clip and decide to give yourself a nice bath instead. Undressing yourself, you lock the door to the bathroom and turn on the faucet, adding in a scent of your favorite soap. The bubbles rise to the top, and you watch, spacing out as you wait for the water to fill the spacious tub. Once it’s done you dip your legs in one by one and slowly sink yourself in, enjoying how the hot water settles your nerves. Once Court is gone, you’ll go back to normal, surely. Your eyes close and you let out a relaxed exhale.

You must’ve stayed there for longer than you thought, because there was a knocking at the door, and you mumble unintelligibly to yourself, rubbing your eyes awake. Muttering tiredly, you ask, “Yeah..?”

“It’s been a few hours. Are you good in there?” Court calls out, a slight worry in his tone. 

Humming lazily, you draw yourself out of the bath and swing a robe on, your hair partially wet in its bun. “Sorry, I.. must’ve passed out.” You nearly whisper, opening the door to see Court’s face. He nods, and you both share a longing gaze. 

“Right um… I’m going to get changed.” You cut off the awkward moment, walking off before he could see the light blush that dusts your cheeks. The way your heart beats, betrays the nonchalant thoughts of him leaving and reminds you painfully of the attachment you have. Once again, the idea of him vanishing right when your father arrives causes a pure sinking pain in your heart. 

You throw on whatever’s comfortable and let out a sigh. Grabbing your hairbrush you tiredly begin brushing your hair while a sad pout glues to down turn your lips.

A knock on your door alerts you. Courts at the doorframe, his hands folded over one another, his blue orbs holding a certain sweetness when he views your form. 

Nervously finding yourself caught in his gaze again, you pull away clearing your throat. “Hi…” 

“Hi.” He responds, remaining still. It’s another awkward moment as you slowly brush your hair.

Court suddenly starts, “I’m not going to leave.” You stop, your attention shifting to him. He adverts his eyes for a moment and shuffles his legs, then focuses back.

He speaks with his usual neutral tone, but there’s a slight mix of something unreadable in there. Your attention is now stuck on him and every word he has to say.

“As tempting as it is to no longer have to hear about.. chocolate being better than vanilla,” you both share a small chuckle, “I don’t want to be “free” from you.” Court peers longingly, and you’re not sure what to say, you’re barely even blinking, your heart is leaping into your throat and you swallow roughly. You’re unsure of what exactly he means by this.

Court continues. “The only way I’ll leave is if you want me to leave,” he pauses, “Do you want me to leave?” 

“No,” you whisper, eyes glued to his. 

He walks towards you, slowly and steadily. “Then I won’t leave..” Court trails off, and you avert your attention. 

“What about when it’s no longer your job?” He takes a seat beside you and uses his thumb and index to hold your chin gently, making you gaze back into him. 

“It’ll always be my job.” He practically whispers. 

You scoff, “To be my bodyguard?” 

“No, to protect you,” He says surely, and your cheeks instantly turn a soft pink. 

This time you mumble back, a small frown on your features. “Even when you have to leave?” 

“Even when I have to. But that doesn’t mean I’ll be gone forever.”

Your eyes keep staring directly into his blue orbs, and you aren’t sure if it was his face that got closer, or yours, but eventually, your lips touch, and your lids close peacefully. He tasted sweet and was softer than you’d imagine. Upon separation, your gazes remain fixated on one another, and a genuine smile tugs at both your lips. 

You speak without thinking, “I like you. You know that?” Court hums, breaking out into a laugh. His lips spread wide into a grin, and your heart skips just a little beat. 

“Just like?” This time you chuckle. 

You bite your lip and coyly tilt your head. “You gotta earn that second part.” 

“And how do I do that?” Court asks, his voice soft. His fingers dance over your cheek, and you go weak at just the idea of his face so close to yours that you almost can’t even respond. He’s returned your feelings, and this makes you ecstatic. Your breath hitches when he leans in and plants a kiss on your lips. 

“Just like that?” He asks, smug, and you nod, breathless, moving to touch his dark blonde beard that frames his features so well. 

“Just like that,” you whisper, and he smiles, moving in to kiss you again.  

[thepatristictradition]

Suffering is not What You Think

(The Penitent Magdalene)

So often you hear, when people leave their churches, their gripes surround suffering. Why would God allow suffering? Why would God allow babies to be murdered and die of cancer? Why would He allow war and cannibalism and pedophilia? Why did God allow me to see my mother die? Why did he allow this or that?

What I cannot help but notice is that the people saying this are never talking about their own suffering.

"Why does God allow war?" said a cowardly young man who has never seen bloodshed. "Why does God allow cancer?" said a woman who is perfectly healthy. "Why does God allow abuse?" said a man who had the privilege of watching the sex abuse crisis of the RCC play out on the TV screen and not in the sacristy. "Why did God allow my mother do die?" said a daughter who is still alive.

We may mourn, and we ought to mourn, the sorrows and the fallenness of this world, but witnessing suffering is not the same as suffering.

(Just Take Them and Leave Me Alone)

This was never more clear to me than when I spent a summer arguing with my anti-natalist, atheist sister. She would spend hours berating my poor mother and father for the heinous crime of having children. During one of these spats, my sister turned to me and said, "How can you support natalism?" which she said like a slur, "your grandmother abused you from the moment you were born."

Now, this is true. Truer than she knew, or, if I have it my way, will ever know. My grandmother (who was my and my sister's primary caregiver) always despised me because I was born with a deformity. Her hatred only intensified when my sister was born. My sister was, in her eyes, perfect. As a child, my sister would ask for me to be abused in front of her, for her amusement, by my grandmother.

My sister witnessed plenty of my suffering, but she experienced not an iota of it. And yet, she used my suffering as a way to say that all of human life is suffering. She used it to discredit the worth of all human life.

(Ophelia)

I find this is always the case. When I was an atheist, I was confused by people who brought up the "problem of suffering". I never viewed my suffering as something that made my life worse. Even as an atheist and a child, I saw clearly how the suffering I experienced and was experiencing was driving me toward a larger purpose. This pattern of thought followed me into the sexual abuse I experienced in middle school and into my conversion.

My atheist associates, whose suffering I know well, likewise never cite their suffering as a reason for their disbelief. When you really get down to it, "God is a big meanie" is not a reason to reject His existence, say these associates of mine.

It is only being a witness to suffering-- usually an impotent witness-- that causes this specific kind of apostasy. Even if my sister had stopped encouraging it, I still would have been abused. Her behavior would have made little difference. It is the same for the sufferings I listed earlier. Regardless of what we tell ourselves, no boycotting, no Instagram post, and not even tax evasion or immolation will stop the Genocide Israel is purporting against the Palestinians. We, far removed, poor, and powerless foreigners, are impotent. We can do nothing to help someone with a terminal illness not die-- it's terminal. We can do nothing to help the kidnapped children we see on the news, taken from their homes halfway across the country. We cannot bilocate, live forever, or have infinite money.

When these people say, "Why does God allow suffering?" they are actually asking, "Why does God allow my impotence?" The implication is that, of course, they would solve these sufferings if only they were not impotent. Is this the case? I don't know; who am I to judge the heart of another man?

Whatever the case, it is clear to me that witnessing suffering is of some different metaphysical nature than the actual experience of suffering. I've written a little about this privately, so I will get around to expanding upon it in further posts.

[worstscholar]

I cant shake this idea out of my head while listening to music lol

What if reader is a popular singer/star and Doffy is publicly spreading news about his and readers alleged relationship, so reader released a music titled "obsessed" by Mariah Carey. I would loveeee to see Doffys reaction lol

Btw, love your works 💗

Reader cab be in any gender, Thankyou!

thank you so much :) this is super rushed and not edited at all. I had fun making doffy out to be a pathetic loser, part of me wanted to make him stalkerish, but I didn't feel like writing a whole fic, so here's this little drabble.

the reader has no gender

He didn't know what to call it, the sinking feeling in his chest every time he heard your voice, heard your name, saw your face. He couldn't find a good name for how utterly lonely you made him feel. Doflamingo knew he was obsessed, he loved you, he couldn't stop thinking about you, he needed you. 

He knew he looked dumb, spending hours watching youtube tutorials on how to photoshop like a pro, just so he could convince his poor mother and father that he had found ‘the one’. If only they knew you had no idea who he was, that the only thing he was holding at night was your photo. It doesn't matter if he didn't have you now, he knew he'd have you in the future, you were bound to be his, Doflamingo could feel it, and he'd wait for you, no matter how long it took and no matter how lonely he got. 

He was dedicated, using his inherited wealth to buy your albums, merchandise, anything you sold, no matter who was the target audience, Doflamingo bought it and cherished it. He's probably spent over thousands of dollars on you by now, fantasizing that it was his money that bought you that pretty new outfit, or that bag, or your new car. He couldn't help himself, could never stop himself from stalking your socials, compulsively hoarding your photos, sending you designer things, in hopes you’d read his messages and respond. 

His parents were convinced you two were a thing, so proud of their son for getting such a pretty partner, always bothering him about you coming to dinner, getting married, and giving them grandkids. His mom was especially proud, posting on her facebook about the two of you, bragging to all of her friends about her son's special new partner. Rosinante on the other hand saw right through his brother's lies, in the beginning it was harmless, innocent little lies to skip out on family functions, or holidays. Then it started to get annoying, the pictures were weird enough, but the lies had been going on so long now, their mother would start asking him about any boyfriends or girlfriends, she’d even compare him to his brother. “Roci dear, when are you going to settle down with a nice boy or girl like your brother?” She’d ask, looking all innocent, while Doflamingo sat a few feet away suddenly looking a little pale.

He doesn't outright tell his parents that doffy’s lying, instead he leaves little (big) hints, like teaching his mom how to use instagram, and adding you and doffy as her friends. He lets his mom find out for herself that your profile does not mention her son at all, in fact, your profile says you’re dating someone completely different. At first she’s horrified, thinking you’re cheating, and she stirs the pot, leaving comments on your posts, asking if you were cheating on her son. And before anyone realizes, you have a full blown cheating scandal on your hands with a man you’ve never met. The media is all over you, criticizing you, spreading ridiculous rumors. Your real partner is understandably horrified, and ends up leaving you. 

Doflamingo is also very horrified, and embarrassed. He has no idea what happened, how did this blow up so fast? He feels sick, as he scrolls social media, he started a scandal without even meaning to, ruining both of your reputations. It's easy for doffy to ignore the hate directed at him, but when it's meant for you, he's enraged. This is his fault, why are people hating on you? 

When his phone pings with a notification saying you’ve released a new single, his heart drops when he reads the title. As he listens to the song, part of him is excited that you’ve recognized him, but another part is upset that you don't reciprocate his feelings. He's done so much for you and his mom just had to go and blow up this whole situation, you’re supposed to love him.

[einsliga]

I was born in a town in West Virginia so small every person knew every other persons business three generations back. My mother stayed at home, first to raise three boisterous, lively girls, then because cancer robbed her of strength. Cancer or not, she was the strongest person I've ever met, strong enough to look death in the eye and make it take her on her terms. She was a fighter, and that orneriness was planted in her brood in spades.

Daddy was a miner till the coal mines got shut down for being dirty. So he found odd jobs to make ends meet and get momma her insurance. We lived. It weren't easy. It never were. We mended our clothes as best we could, and helped our daddy around the house when momma got too weak to house clean.

When momma passed, my daddy did, too. It took his body a few years to let go, but his spirit were already gone on. He couldn't imagine , he said, a life without momma in it. So he'd follow her into the next one, lest she ever have to open a door or hear an insult. He was the best man I ever met, and where he was weak, it was where my momma had made a nest of him.

When we laid him down next to momma, the whole town, and half of two others showed up. Flowers so deep their stones looked like gardens. Hard men, strong men, men from the mines with hands like stone cried like children. They'd known momma and daddy. Played ball, went to prom. These men, these women, were my family now.

You can say we never had much. My prom dressed were handed down to me from the town seamstress. Our car spent as much time being fixed as being driven, and there weren't a single thing in the dollar general we didn't have. We never had much money.

But never call us poor. We had each other. We had half a county looking after us, looking in on us, looking out for us, or, in the case of Charles "Heartthrob" Murphy, just looking at us.

So no. Destitute? Yes. Poor? No. We were rich in experience.

[desdemonafictional]

The Woman Called...

Fujiko Mine was born into a family that did not consider itself poor, on account of they could afford to eat meat every week or so, unlike some families they knew who couldn’t afford it at all. Those were poor families, her mother would have said, not us.

Of course, they had been poor. They had been dirt poor. They had been secondhand shoes bought three sizes too big so you can grow into them, get slapped for breaking a dish at dinner, too-proud-to-beg poor. Whatever warm family feelings they might have had for each other were strained to the point of fraying by the time Fujiko entered middle school.

At age 12, Fujiko had looked around herself at the world—at the shining elegant faces in advertisements, at the delicate patisseries where it would have cost as much for one cake as her mother spent on dinner for all four of them, at the sneering faces of girls who had more than she ever had just for the stupid fortune of being born to a better class of family—and Fujiko Mine had come to a conclusion. Her conclusion was thus: the world was demonstrably not fair. And if the world was not fair, then what was the point in playing fair while the other side went on cheating?

Dumb luck might have given other girls family connections, money, and an easy life, but Fujiko had something most of them didn’t.

Fujiko was beautiful.

At age 14, she measured her bust religiously, noting the centimeters of growth and calculating her seams. She searched her face for imperfections and rationed out dollops of pale foundation as if the cream was gold. She walked tall, wore her hair short, and stood on tip-toe when she couldn’t wedge rags into her shoes. Men had already started to notice her years ago, but the extra help never went astray.

One day, on her way to school, there had been a man waiting for her a few blocks away. He explained that if she would come to dinner with him, he would buy her a beautiful new jacket for the winter, so she wouldn’t have to wear that old ratty one with the patches. Of course, she said yes.

He was a very nice man, as far as such men went. He took her shopping. He told her she was beautiful.

“You probably expect a story like that to end in tragedy,” Fujiko said, examining her cigarette with vague contempt. “Poor dumb little girl in the spider’s parlor. What was he hiding, what did he do, how did he hurt her? Well it was fine. Nothing happened. After a few weeks he went back to his sad little housewife in Kanto and lived a normal life, probably never thought about Fujiko Mine again. But I had the jacket.”  

There’s an impermeable barrier that separates the poor from the rich, and it’s all quantified in clothes. The better you dress, the more people believe you belong. A ragged slob off the street would be turned out of a high-end store before she even knew what was happening, for fear that she’d pocket something nice with her greedy nasty little hands. But the same girl, dressed in a nice coat that obviously cost a salaryman quite a lot of money? Oh, why would she steal? She’s obviously doing just fine. So come in, come in, if you have money to spend.

“I worked my way up,” she said, and took a drag. Her elegant red nails alighted only delicately on anything she touched. “Shirts first, then dresses. Just slightly above my class. Once you have slightly nicer down, you can shift another class up. But people notice if your shoes are wrong, it’s one of the first things to give you away when you don’t belong. Shoes are expensive. They’re hard to fit in your sleeve. So I worked at the hostess club for months to afford a pair of new leather shoes.”

At the hostess club, she met a lot of new types of men. She was too young to work at an above-board club, so she worked at a shadier one instead, the kind where touching was alright. At least up to a point. Some of the girls would call security on a handsy drunk, but Fujiko didn’t want their help—she’d deal with it herself, on her own terms. Anyway, a man who was busy grabbing a breast was probably not paying attention to his wallet. And he probably wouldn’t remember how much he spent, either.

She bought the shoes. She thought about quitting. And then she stayed anyway.

“I was good at getting men to buy drinks,” she said, “and I had a system for swapping out empty glasses with half drunk glasses. I used to hide them in the corner of the cushions. Or under my skirt. I was very good at getting other people to drink.”

She ashed her cigarette with a careless flick, her nails like quick shining beetles taking off.

“But it turned out one of those men I’d been getting to drink was a Yakuza mid-boss, the ambitious type, you know? And so one day this asshole pulls me aside as I’m leaving work—”

Sunglasses at night, that’s mostly what she remembered. Long jacket, with the sleeves pushed up to show the edges of tattoos. He’d smiled like a tiger on a diet, ever so polite, banked hunger and a rough rolling accent.

“I took the job, of course,” Fujiko said. “It wasn’t like I was attached to the guy, or anything. I let him take me home after a shift a few nights later, and when I had him alone and naked, I opened the front door for his rival. The trouble is,” and here, she contemplated the glowing cherry between her fingers, “once you’ve taken blood money, you can never really go back. You know how it is. There were always more men in sunglasses, always more jobs, always more money, and always more things to hide.”

She finished off the cigarette with a long, contemplative drag.

“One day you look up, and you realize that little by little, without noticing it, you’ve become someone who can’t go home.”

The silk of her dressing gown fluttered translucent and pink against her thigh as she stood. The wide high window glowed verdant with morning light over the garden that several men worked quietly and invisibly each week to maintain. She stood in front of the glass, staring out, still except for the restless flicking of her fingers at her side. Her shoulders tensed, like a cat watching a bird just out of reach.

Then, of course, there had been Poon. He hadn’t called her beautiful. He’d called her clever. Deadly. He’d admired that she was ruthless. He’d opened his hand, his portfolio, his heart, and offered her the chance to be more than set dressing. To take partnership in the business where for so long she’d been only pawn. Teacher, lover, friend—escape, ensnarement, she had wanted to be him, and yet she had wanted to be more than him. Everything she had was his, and the worst part was that he held nothing back. He gave and gave, and the more he gave the less she had.

They’d been unstoppable. They’d been a cataclysm. They’d been the golden pair. And when he died, he’d gutted her of everything he’d been.

“I liked killing less than the hostess work,” she remarked to the window. “But the hours were better.”

And then she turned, and smiled a wicked, insouciant smile.

“Of course, those days are long behind me,” she purred. “I’m a good girl now.” She dripped like water across the lounge, graceful legs and trailing silk, to climb into the lap of the man who meant to hire her.

 “Silly me, how I’m going on. I’m afraid I’ve quite lost my head around you, Mister…?”

“Lupin,” the man said, and his eyes reluctantly tore up from the place where her thigh was pressed to his side. “The Third.”

“How distinguished,” she said. She drew her fingers up along the length of his neck, grazing his ear. His pupils dilated. It didn’t matter what she’d said, really; he wasn’t listening. Men like him never did.

Easy money, she thought. I’ll have him chewed up in a week.

“So what was it you wanted done, exactly?” she asked.

[queen-of-the-avengers]

CATFA: Part One

Pairing: Ikaris x Female!Reader, Bucky Barnes x Female!Reader

Word Count: ~2.2k

Warnings: canon violence, language, and angst

Author’s Note: any and all comments are appreciated <3

Earth is nothing like you expected it to be. There are a lot of planets in your home galaxy that can support life as well as millions of other planets in other galaxies around yours. Still, you never expected Earth to be so similar to your home planet, Xenia--a thriving ecosystem, corrupt governments, billions of people, and large bodies of water that cover most of the planet.

The only difference is that your planet is home to one of, if not the evilest man your galaxy has ever seen. Xenia became a breaking ground for bad ideas, and they all point to the one who made you: Markus Hottle.

To most, you look like you're in your late twenties or early thirties, but you're much older than that. You've just had your one-hundredth birthday, and you know you've got a lot more to go through before you die. What Markus did to you caused you to nearly stop aging; just another side effect of his experiments.

It's why you fled your planet and have been on the run ever since. You've spent fifty years jumping from planet to planet, always avoiding Markus when he sent his goons to chase after you. You've been running for so long that you don't know what a home is anymore.

Yours was destroyed the second Markus had your parents killed.

Will Earth be different?

Xenia has always thrived on the creativity and knowledge of other people. It's what made Xenia so successful with businesses, its own ecosystem, and its communities. Earth has none of that. You landed on Earth in the year 1000, and they're nothing like what your planet is like. This planet is filled with poverty, famine, greed, struggle, and a corrupt elite community who think they're too good for everyone below them.

With your knowledge and power, you could easily fit your way into the elite status, but then who would help out those in actual need? Who can they turn to when they need help? You don't have any healing powers, so you can't aid them medically, but you can offer them something else: agriculture and clean water. You're still getting used to your new life Markus forced upon you, but if you can help others while doing it, then you have the obligation to do so.

They don't have the resources to build a new world, and you're not going to freak them out by showing them you're an alien, so you'll use what they have to help them. Something you often did back home with your mother, was make clothes for all of your friends and family. You love sewing and creating something out of nothing, and seeing how the poverty is dressed, you think you can help them by providing them with clean clothes, blankets, and other types of means to stay warm.

It didn't take long before communities came to your town to buy your clothes. Most of the time, you didn't want them to pay since you're not doing this for the money, but some refused to take your clothes without paying for them. After five or so years of being in that town, you've come to make friends with almost everyone. Along with clothes and blankets, you'd offer clean water for them to take with them--as much as they needed. It's not much, but that seemed to make their day.

While Earth is not as technologically advanced as Xenia is, you're enjoying your time on Earth and hope that Markus doesn't find you here. Your home is on the other side of the known universe, so you think you're safe for now.

The bell on your door rings, signaling that there is a customer in your store. You look up and see one of your regulars with a tired look on her face.

"Alice, are you alright?"

"Yes. My youngest is not feeling too well. The poor thing is hot and cold and is not getting any better. I came in here hoping you might have something that could help?"

"Of course. I have more water for you to take home to your family. I have made some more blankets, which are in the back. Please, help yourself. I do not want your son to be cold."

"I do not know what this town would do without your generosity."

"I am just happy to help." The bell on your store door rings again, and you give Alice a warm smile. "I will be back there in a few moments."

She leaves to the back to browse your collection while you turn to the new customer. You're about to greet them when you see the most handsome man you've ever laid eyes on--and you've met millions of people.

He has a square jaw and pink lips. He's muscular which is defined by the blue and gold suit he is wearing. He has short hair with a sliver of white in the front. He has the prettiest of blue eyes--they sparkle like the ocean does when the sun is rising. You've only lived here for six years, but you've never seen this man before. Who is he? Why is he here? What does he want?

"Hi. Welcome in."

"I hear you are the best clothesmaker in town."

Ooh, and he has an accent.

"You heard right. What are you looking for?"

"Anything that will make it look like I belong in this town. This kind of sticks out like a sore thumb," he says and gestures to his suit.

"I have never seen that or you around here before. What is your name?"

"Ikaris."

"Well, Ikaris, I must pick your brain about where you came from, but I can help with the clothes situation. Follow me." You lead Ikaris to the section where you've made some clothes specifically for men. You grab something new you're working on and place it against his chest to see how it might look on him. You pause and look into his eyes. Wow, the blue in his eyes is shinier up close. "I believe this one will do."

"Thank you."

"Please, try it on. I do not want you leaving here without a proper fit."

There is a section you've blocked off with a wooden partition you've created. All the stores in Xenia have these, but you've resulted in using what humans have made available. A lot of businesses are run outside, but with your powers, you've managed to make a store big enough to have a few people in at a time. Humans wondered how you got there, to begin with, but they were easily won over by your generosity.

Ikaris walks behind the partition and tries on the shirt, and you grab a pair of pants you made before handing it to him. The partition is low enough so you can see his face, but you can't see anything else. He maintains eye contact as he tries on the clothes, and he smiles once he knows it fits.

"How do you like it?"

"It is very comfortable. How much for these?"

"No need. I do not need your money."

Ikaris walks out with the clothes on over his suit. You're not sure why he didn't take his suit off, but you don't comment on it. There is something about Ikaris that catches your attention, and you're not sure what it is. It's like he isn't from this world. It's in the way he speaks and the way he carries himself. He seems a lot older than what he looks like, and the more you spend time with him, the more you see that.

A couple of months have passed since you first met Ikaris, and you two have been spending a lot of time together. You're starting to really like him, and you believe he likes you too. There are some days you like to close up shop just to enjoy the day or buy food from the vendors around town, and today is no different.

You and Ikaris are walking down a beaten path in the woods behind the town you live in because it's less crowded.

"You never told me how long you have been here in town."

"Quite a while."

"You are very mysterious, you know that?"

"I do," Ikaris chuckles.

You two continue to walk, but you pause when you feel the ground rumble. You look to the side to see a gnarly yet beautiful creature inch toward you and Ikaris. The creature is bigger than anything you've ever seen on Earth, and it's iridescent blue and purple that shines whenever it moves. It opens its mouth to bare its very sharp teeth, and your eyes widen in fear.

"Look out!"

You push Ikaris out of the way just as the creature pounces on you. You go crashing to the ground as it drags you twenty feet. You reach up and grab its upper jaw to prevent it from snacking on you, and Ikaris looks at you just in time to see something truly amazing happen.

Your eyes shine dark red and orange and fire forms at your fingertips. As if it's second nature, you place your fiery hands on the creature and let the fire spread throughout. The creature cries out in pain, and you kick it as hard as you can which causes the creature to topple over you so that you're free from its grasp.

You gasp and back away from the burning creature only to back into Ikaris.

"You're bleeding," he says.

You look at your arm to see a huge gash where the creature must have scratched you.

"Don't worry, I'll heal."

Just like that, your skin starts healing from the damage taken to it, and Ikaris watches with curiosity and concern.

"Are you an Eternal?"

"What the hell's an Eternal?"

"Come with me."

He takes one last look at the deviant before taking your hand. He leads you to where he's been staying these past few hundred years, but there is nothing there to show. He stops at a clearing, and you look around in confusion. Before he has a chance to say anything, gold spirals and rings form in the sky until a black triangle forms. You're kind of amazed, but you've seen a lot of alien technology throughout your life.

You two are beamed up into the floating triangle, and you're greeted by nine other people in the same kind of clothing Ikaris was wearing when he first came into his shop.

"Ikaris, who is this?" the youngest and shortest one asks.

"This is Y/N, and she killed a deviant."

From what you understand, Ikaris and the other nine people on the spaceship are called Eternals, and they were put on Earth about six thousand years ago to protect humans from deviants, which is what you just killed. They all have special powers that they use to aid them in the war not a lot of people know about. When you had a feeling Ikaris was different, you weren't expecting him to be six thousand years old.

"If you're not an Eternal, then what are you?"

Makkari is the only one who speaks Sign Language, but you don't know much about the language to understand what she is saying, so Druig translates for her.

"I'm from Xenia, a planet on the other side of the universe. I was experimented on by someone who wanted to take over planets with fear. He created a serum that gave me the powers of shapeshifting, which is why I've been able to sneak in and out of the royal castle to steal food or pose as someone with wealth.

"Then, he started experimenting with the Tesseract or the space stone which is one of the six infinity stones. It's what gave me my second set of powers which is controlling the four elements. It's why I was able to kill that deviant with fire. It's also why I can heal quickly."

"How old are you?"

"One hundred. I left my planet at fifty years old, but I stopped aging when I turned thirty-three."

"How did it take you fifty years to travel across the universe? I'm not a math genius, but even I know that's impossible," Phastos asks.

"Because I was made using the space stone, it gave me the ability to create portals which I can open to anywhere in the universe. I had trouble adjusting to that power, so it took me a little longer to get away from my maker. I'm making a home here, and I'd like to stay here if that's okay with you."

"Of course," Ajak says. "I thank you for killing that deviant. We could use your help in killing all of them so that we may go home."

"Anything I can do to help."

And just like that, you became an Eternal-adjacent. It pained you to leave the small town that relied on you to survive, but if you don't take care of the deviants, then there won't be a town left at all. It's nice to be part of something that matters since all you've been part of is something evil for most of your life. You're not even sure where Markus is, but you hope that he doesn't ever find you.

The years blend as you and Ikaris grow closer. The more time you spend with him, the more you fall in love with him. You've never been in a serious relationship before him since you were too scared to start something, but now you feel secure enough to let someone else into your life.

It doesn't matter if Ikaris is human or not.

x

Follow my library blog @aqueenslibrary​​​​​​ where I reblog all my stories, so you can put notifications on there without the extra stuff :)

[moonlightink7]

LISTEN.i'll do it right htis time. ill also consdense each meme i use into a single ask For illymril ::) GOLD 4: Does your OC hold that some social groups have an inherent nobility unavailable to others? Do they perhaps believe in the idea of a "ruling class", with qualities that the lower orders could never hope to evince? Or, conversely, do they believe in the unsullied nobility of the poor, in contrast to the decadent and corrupt upper classes? SILVER 5: What is something that your OC would find incredibly hard to lie about? Even if they really wanted to do so...

COPPER 1: Does your OC believe that they are beautiful? Is their beauty, or lack of beauty, something to which they ever give much consideration?

(For context I gripped and shook my dear friend in private for sending me the asks without prompts. Ily CT you're so silly)

GOLD 4: Does your OC hold that some social groups have an inherent nobility unavailable to others? Do they perhaps believe in the idea of a "ruling class", with qualities that the lower orders could never hope to evince? Or, conversely, do they believe in the unsullied nobility of the poor, in contrast to the decadent and corrupt upper classes?

Neither really? But leaning the latter. Which is interesting, since he grew up as a part of the nobles! Aaand technically he once again is, right now. Well. Okay. He never wasn't well off, but as a man he doesn't have proper access to his family's money. (See context: drow nobles.) Anyway! He does see some inherent bitterness and coldness to nobles, he's been around them and experienced what they're like. Non-nobles just seem... well. Not more carefree, but more themselves? They're not hiding behind so many layers of masks and codes and just... They're just trying to survive. It's simpler. He spent ten years living among them and it was so much less stressful. Granted. That's the autism speaking mostly. ...and the trauma.

SILVER 5: What is something that your OC would find incredibly hard to lie about? Even if they really wanted to do so...

Oh god this is a tough one. He is conditioned to lie well. There is very little he can't lie convincingly about. (Depending on my FUCKING DICE LUCK but that's another matter. In a world where the dice don't exist he generally lies well.) Something he couldn't lie about even if he wanted to though? If someone asked him how he felt about his late spouse. Even if he tried to feign indifference, his front would still waver. Déaglán is a weak spot of his.

COPPER 1: Does your OC believe that they are beautiful? Is their beauty, or lack of beauty, something to which they ever give much consideration?

Oh yeah absolutely he knows he's beautiful. I mean if it weren't for the more depressing reasons he likely would have thought Déaglán was biased because they loved him. Déaglán definitely made sure to tell him, but he was her muse, so it was generally easy to see that they weren't lying. The real reason he still believes it? It's one of the few things his mother doesn't insult about him unless he doesn't present himself properly. He knows better than to not present himself properly. That and Keera (older sister) got SO much worse after he hit puberty. He started looking a little too pretty and her perception of how much of a threat he is got higher. As far as whether he takes his beauty into consideration? Only if he needs to. Granted, this need presents itself every time he's required to leave his room, given that he has standards he's held to, but outside of the manor, he generally tries to keep himself entirely covered. ...for different reasons than one might think, though.

[mswyrr]

I did my dissertation on post WW2 veteran mental health. The realities of that war got erased and remembered in the US as "the good war." But there is no such thing. It broke people; a lot of them. During Criston's despairing speech I thought of these lines from Kurt Vonnegut's "Slaughterhouse Five":

Vonnegut was one of the artists who wrote about the ways in which WW2 was very much not good, because war itself is never good, not even when it's necessary and people have no choice. There was an evil side in that war, clearly! But that doesn't mean anyone was good or that war can be good.

All of the lies of honor and masculinity Criston told himself have just collapsed under the the reality of war. I might find the lies he told himself disgusting--the man is deeply patriarchal, sexist, etc--but that's what he was given by his society and now it's collapsed and his will to live along with it. Those lies are, in fact, designed to dupe men into willingly going to war and having their bodies and minds broken like this.

I feel like HOTD is committed to being an antiwar narrative -- not in a preachy way, in a very "show, don't tell" way -- and I love that. It's been decades now since US pop culture has had a genuinely, bone deep antiwar narrative.

The fact that the one major battle they spent money on was gut-wrenching and horrific. That the aftermath is that so many people are now mentally and physically maimed for life. There is no glory, only despair and human beings (and loving animals like poor Sunfyre and Meleys) slaughtered and maimed.

"And for what?" is the question that hovers over the whole scene. For what? Do the lies this system tells hold up under the reality? Can any throne (of conquest!) be worth this? Any notions of honor?

And all of this is happening at the same time we see what striving for that throne of conquest and believing the deep, long-term lies (of conquest!) is doing to Rhaenyra -- Aemond is becoming monstrous, someone who will burn innocent people, and [as I go into detail about in this meta] so is she. The "show, don't tell" of that when we see how little Aegon, the brother they want to knock out of the way, actually wanted any of this! The whole set of lies is empty; it's certainly not worth burning cities full of people to death for it.

But their pride, their identity, their sense of family love, and now their very survival is all caught up in that. They're more tragic to me than the people who have seen it's all empty and not worth this. *That* is what Helaena was trying to tell Aemond - she wasn't trying to hurt him! She was trying to say: can't you see, it's not worth this? It doesn't matter.

(And, to be clear, the Rhaenyra parallels with Aemond are about how this thing is not worth all this death for anyone, son or daughter. Seeking after it destroys you and everyone you love. Not because you're a girl, but because the thing itself is broken and poisonous - there is no good way to sit on a throne of conquest, erected by people who burned innocents alive to dominate the population).

All of this is why I don't think the story hates or dismisses the male characters! Rather, I think women are being allowed to be total messes in plausible ways and it's showing a side of what is asked of men that isn't shown enough - when you fly off to battle thinking it will be grand (because societies tell boys from the time they're small that it will be) and then die in horror or have to live mentally and physically disabled as a man in a society that thinks that makes you less of a man (and therefore not a worthy person at all). Or you come home and physically hurt your sister and scare your mom. Criston thought it would be noble - all he wants now is to die. Similarly with Aegon too. And with Aemond... he went into this never intending to be someone who would engage in domestic violence against his sister, his mother. But now he is. He hasn't despaired, like Criston and Aegon, he's become even worse than that.

Violence has been depicted by Hollywood as something external to the characters largely over the past few decades. Something they do that gives them power. Maybe it makes them sad, traumatizes them, but it doesn't fundamentally change them forever inside in ways that make them feel lessened and warp their relationships. But that isn't what it is. At best, it is a necessary thing that leaves people deeply scarred. And most of the time it isn't necessary at all; the system and people making those decisions are corrupt and don't care about morality or spending human lives carefully.

Even when the writing falters (due to being screwed over by the studio! A month before production the studio cut the episodes from 10 to 8 - and then they forced them to film even when the writers' strike was going on and there was no way to adjust in rewrites anymore) they're aiming so damn high on so many levels that I just love it. And, no, not just because of the canon queerness! That is one of several difficult things they're trying to do simultaneously while being kneecapped.

[sundove88]

MHA: Heart of Glass Chapter 1: Diligence and Duty

Once upon a time, in a quaint little neighborhood that was also one of the poorest areas of a great city, there lived a little family of three: A father, a mother; and their teenage daughter Ochaco Uraraka.

Unlike most teenage girls in the city, who spent their time talking to their friends about boys and the latest fashion trends, Ochaco had to work hard, often cleaning the houses of various others in this great city, whether they be rich or poor, she had to clean a whole house just to make ends meet for her poor family. She cleaned the big houses of the rich and the small houses of the poor, tall apartment buildings in town and short cottages out in rural areas. There was no house she couldn’t leave sparkling clean. But she also had a special gift called a quirk- one that could manipulate gravity. That way, she could get to even the smallest corners in the house and leave them sparking clean when she was done. Whenever she exited a house, she was covered in soot, dirt, and various other debris from when she was inside. But she didn’t let the dirt on her face cloud the beautiful heart she had inside. However, this attracted the attention of a trio of neighborhood bullies- Shigaraki, Dabi, and Toga, who were known for looking down on others. But they bulled the poor especially, since they were very normal in terms of money, but the poor had anything but luxury.

“Hey, it’s that cleaner girl again, walking to work. Can’t she afford a bike? Oh, wait. She can’t!”, replied Shigaraki, his light blue hair accompanying the many hands on his face. He used those hands to break down the barriers between him and the innocent, and more often than not, he pickpocketed whenever he got the chance. “Yep. And Ochaco Uraraka? More like Cinder-Ochaco!”, laughed Dabi heartily. His blue flames flared to life as he cackled. “Yes! And since she’s so poor, there’s no chance that she’ll ever go to a party or two!”, Himiko Toga replied as she guzzled down a soda. But Ochaco just ignored their teasing and sat down on a nearby park bench, knowing that their words would never get to her. Knowing that the girl meant no harm to them, the pigeons, squirrels, and various other animals of the park scurried to be around her, knowing that she had lots of breadcrumbs and trail mix to offer them as snacks. Ochaco didn’t mind their company, even as her human friends arrived on the scene. They came from all parts of the city, and they considered the poor girl to be part of their loyal friend group, because of her good heart and dedication to her family. The animals trusted them as well, as when they approached, they stayed in their place and didn’t scutter off or fly away suddenly.

“You know, guys? I think they’re mean because they don’t have any friends of their own.”, the gentle girl said as she let the others sit next to her on the park bench as she took out her trusty laptop, checking her savings and seeing if she had enough to pay for her family’s expenses. “It seems like you’re getting there, Uraraka! How about we go to a local bookstore and maybe have some hot chocolate?”, replied Izuku Midoriya, her green haired friend who had a most powerful Quirk. “Yeah! And maybe one of these weekends, you can play some soccer with us at the park over there!”, said Katsuki Bakugo, an explosive young man. “Or we could go and grab some kakigori,” said Shoto Todoroki as he placed his bags down. The other kids hurried over and started giving various ideas: Momo Yaoyorozu suggested that she could go to the movies in her spare time, Eijiro Kirishima asked her if she could learn a new skill like carving statues, and so on, so forth.

“You guys have some great options, but my duties are my top priority. After all, I’ve gotta make ends meet so my family doesn’t get evicted by the landlord. I know he’s super nice, but I don’t know how long we’ll be staying at the apartment we live in.”, said Ochaco as she began to pack up her things and make her way home. As her friends waved goodbye, she promised them that things would get much better for her. Life was typical like this for the girl, with cleaning the houses of others to earn money, and the fact that she had amazing parents to support her all the while. It wasn’t everyday that one works hard to support their family and keep a roof over their head without their parents having their back at all times. Luckily, Ochaco’s good nature and kind heart didn’t go unnoticed, for a good Pro Hero skilled in the arts of thread making on his way to U. A. High took notice, and was on his merry way there.

But soon enough, one fateful invite would change the young girl’s life forever; in a way she could never even imagine.

[foxydivaxx]

Gossip Girl Prequel: Z After Dark

This is the full prequel of the Gossip Girl AU. As you can see, it is Zoro-centric. About time I placed the spotlight on him and show people how he turned out the way he did.

Trigger warning: mentions of suicide attempt, drugs, underage sex, abuse, depression, mental breakdown

How did his life get this way? One minute, he was onstage to present an award and the next, he immediately collapses.

He does not remember much other than feeling like shit a couple hours prior. Okay, he actually remembers now. This year has been a pretty turbulent year for him. His movies for the past two years have been flopping and his last single got trashed by critics and fans alike.

Who would have thought that the once mighty bankabke star Zoro Roronoa would have a mighty downfall like this? He spent all those years pretending whilst taking all that hate.

He is now suddenly reminded of his younger years where he would receive excessive beatings from the other kids in school growing up for his natural green hair and the fact that he was Japanese and his mother barely doing anything about it. As far as she was concerned, Zoro was a means to an end, a tool.

Speaking of his mother, that woman keeps lashing out at him and blames him whenever shit goes wrong, just like his now declining career. Ironic considering it was her poor decisions and micromanagement of her poor son’s life that caused all this. It has now began to manifest as the boy is overworked to death and is exhausted beyond measure. All that fame and money is worth what at the end of the day if this boy suddenly dies?

“Zoro!! Zoro!!” Mihawk calls out to his stepson who was unconscious. Perona, his daughter immediately calls for paramedics.

The boy could not respond as he was completely unconscious. There was mass pandemonium as fans and celebrities alike were horrified by what they had just witnessed.

At first, they all thought it was either a fake act or he tripped over something and fell and would always pull himself back up, something that seemed unlike Zoro since the Prince was almost always picture-perfect. This is a boy who debuted when he was just 3 years old, thrust into the spotlight prematurely by his mother from day one.

But after the boy refused to get up for close to an hour, this case became serious. Making matters worse is that his mother, his so-called manager, was not present. The paparazzi spotted her in Milan with a mysterious man, fueling cheating rumors and making many suspect that there was more to Zoro’s downward spiral.

There is also the story of her using Zoro to spite Sora her former rival because Sora was the former Queen of the Upper East Side and she always hated that woman and her kids.

There was also that infamous public argument Zoro had with his mother outside a restaurant a month prior to this. He was heard saying out loud in the video, “You shall know no peace!!”

“Is he sick?”

“Whatever happened to him?”

“His mother did something, didn’t she? That witch!!”

Questions began to mount as paramedics arrive on the scene, place an oxygen mask over his face and place him on a stretcher, taking him out of the building.

As expected, there were paparazzi outside, but thankfully, the bodyguards help to fend them off as Perona and Mihawk follow the paramedics and get into the ambulance. "Make sure that woman does not come near my son!!" Mihawk yells into the phone and then hangs up.

“Have you called Kuina and the others?” Perona nodded, trying to fight back tears. “I also called Zoro’s friends that were not in the building. They are on their way. Grimmjow and Sukuna are on their way.”

“And Sanji?” Perona nodded, trying hard to swallow the lump she felt in her throat. “T..That was the toughest call I had to make because of how much he means to him.” Mihawk sighs and places a hand over her shoulder. “You did very well.”

He was trying to be strong but even he himself felt like he was falling apart. Zoro may not be his birth son but the kid is the son he never had.

He had always been protective of the kid and often got into heated arguments with Terra over her maltreatment of her son.

Just because she did not achieve certain things when she was a kid does not give her the right to project her failures onto her son.

That was why Mihawk got Zoro his current friends. He needs other kids around his age around him who will be there for him and would guard that heart of his.

Mihawk has made a huge decision in regards to his own mental well-being and also Zoro’s safety and happiness in light of this incident and also the tabloid stories he has been seeing of Terra and that billionaire she met in Milan. He should have listened to Sora before hooking up with that woman.

Either way, he can sort that out this evening. Right now,his main concern is Zoro’s health.

*******************************************************

Grimmjow sighs as he gets into the taxi. Not too long ago, he saw Zoro’s fainting spell on live TV. He panicked because it is a well-known fact that his mother never had his best interests at heart and he and the others have tried to free him from that woman. It seems now it is going to become a reality.

Perona soon called and confirmed what had happened. He cannot believe that this was happening.

He told Zoro several times to stand up to his mother, but he did not know or understand the true extent of the abuse until he and Zoro started their secret recording sessions a couple months. Zoro approached him since he is a skilled music producer and entrusted this secret project to him. He also shot music videos for like 4 of those songs all without his mother knowing.

All those songs were pretty painful to listen to and were tearjerky. The worst part? He wrote all those songs himself.How long has the guy been pretending? Heck, he cried recording majority of these songs.

How nights did he spend alone crying himself to sleep? All that hard drinking and partying he had been doing is both a cry for help and also a possible way to slowly kill himself.

Not helping matters is Zoro telling him yesterday, “If anything happens, leak out the songs.” Why Zoro? Why did it have to come to this?!

He sighs and begins to upload the songs on every single digital platform. He also posted the songs and videos on his secret Twitter account and on Zoro's YouTube channel to help him promote the songs.

Almost immediately, the songs breaks the Internet as everyone mass downloads them and view them on YouTube to the point where Zoro gets the highest amount of views in his career. And the guy is only 15 years old now.

"Let us get him to number 1!!" a fan tweets online. Immediately the hashtag #FreeZoro starts trending online. All of Zoro's friends are happy to see this and they too join the movement. The rest of the industry joins in too.

*******************************************************

Hours later, Zoro finally wakes up in the hospital ward. “Ugh…” He still felt drowsy. “Zoro!!” Perona exclaims as she hugs her baby brother. His other siblings follow suit and hug him too.

The boy immediately breaks down in tears. “I….I’m so sorry…”

“No. This shit ain’t your fault. Mamma hurt you Zoro-kun, and we are gonna free you.” says Johnny, ruffling his brother’s hair. Kuina pats his head. “You will be fine.”

He nods, sniffing. “Dad filed a restraining order against your mother. He also filed for divorce.” His eyes widen in shock. “Really?!”

The others nodded. “Yeah he did. He also presented evidence to the court and asked for complete custody of you so as to protect you from that woman.” says Kuina.

Zoro was not surprised. His mother has been cheating on Mihawk for years and is a toxic person to be around. Now he understands why his father lost his sanity years ago and ended up in that asylum. That woman drove him mad and intends to do the same thing to her own son.

“What matters to me is Zoro’s safety and health. The doctor said that you passed out because you were extremely exhausted and malnourished” says Yosaku. “Which is why I brought food for you all!!” Zoro’s eyes light up once he sees his grandma and Mihawk. Yosaku gets up so that Mihawk can have his seat. Kuina and Perona help Grandma Roronoa dish out the food.

“You good kiddo?” he asks as he sits next to him. Zoro nods. “I have not been eating much and got zero sleep and zero social time.”

“That’s because your mother treated you like a damn slave and not the star that you truly are.” says Grandma. Zoro chuckles at this. He and his grandma were quite close when he was young.

“We are changing that. You are star yes but first and foremost, you are a kid.” says Mihawk. "And kids need a nice nourishing meal." says Grandma as he hands Zoro a bowl of rice balls. He grins. He used to eat these a lot when he was a kid.

"Thanks Grandma." He then begins to eat them. Happiness begins to fill him up as they are as tasty as he always remembered them. "Now I feel like a kid again." Everyone laughs.

It was at that moment that Zoro's friends arrive. "Marimo!!" Sanji yells as he rushes towards him and hugs him much to everyone's amusement. It is an open secret that Zoro and Sanji have a crush on each other.

"Hi Curly." Both of them knew each since they were kids. The fact that their nicknames are the very insults that they used to throw at each other as kids makes their relationship hilarious.

"You need to eat more and also rest." says the blonde. "He got a point dude because I warned you man." says Sukuna, shaking his head with a little smile on his face.

"Speaking of which, dude have a look." says Grimmjow who hands his phone over to him. Zoro looks at the activity of social media and his jaw drops. "OH MY GOD!!"

Everyone else takes a look and are shocked as well. "Let us capitalize on this." says Mihawk. "Thankfully, I asked the staff to pack up all of Zoro's stuff out of that damn house so that he moves in with me."

"Yes!!" says Perona. "We are also moving in with your guys too." says Kuina. Zoro grins. "Thanks Papa Hawk." Mihawk smiles and pats the boy on the head.

"See Zoro? You are sorted."

Meanwhile, Terra is in Milan chilling in her hotel room. She saw the hashtag but paid it no heed. She does not care about her son so long as she gets what she wants. Besides, the boy cannot access that money. Only she can. What do kids know anyway?

She scrolled and came across a song with Zoro's name attached to it called Are You Satisfied? She clicks on it and listens to it. He sang it in English and it was a pop rock track. She is horrified as that song is clearly referring to her.

Furious, she tries to call him. Regardless of how exhausted he is, he should pick up her calls. After all, she is his manager and mother. No response. "WHAT THE FUCK?!" She tries Mihawk and all of Zoro's step siblings. Also no response. She also tries the staff members and some of her friends. No response.

"THE FUCK IS THIS SHIT!!" She screams as she grabs a champagne bottle and throws it against the wall. "Okay. calm down. Calm down. Everything is gonna be okay. Must be pretty late right now. best try tomorrow.."

Both Zoro and Sanji qualify as the Britney for this verse, Zoro leans more towards the dark conservatorship aspect due to his mother's controlling and abusive nature and Sanji is more the looks department and both of them are amazing dancers and share similar styles. Though Zoro is a lot darker than Sanji.

[radkindoffeminist]

Today in idiots I argue with on TikTok:

Original video: It’s about if child support should be given for specific things/limited rather than being given as a cash sum. The story is about a guy who’s conflicted because he grew up as a child of divorce where his mum used child support to get an education to support her and her two kids and is doing better for it BUT now he has a kid with a woman he’s not with and is paying more for stuff for her in addition to the child support which he’s not even sure is used for the child.

My original response (in response to someone agreeing that it would never work): If anything, making women prove that it was all spent on the child would backfire on these men. They want to use it to prove that women are just spending it on themselves but really it would show how much goes into raising a child and they would have to pay more. (Side note: Still think it’s a bad idea, but just think it would massively backfire if implemented.)

Idiot Man: You mean like a woman using child support to pay for her education?

Me: OMG! Because that’s what the story with the unreliable narrator says actually happened so that’s obviously true for all women??? Anyway, the children were still fed, housed, and clothed so child support must have been used on them.

Idiot Man: Then where did the money for her education come from?

Me: Savings? Financial aid? Alimony? College loans? Her job?

Idiot man: It didn’t come from any of that.

Me: And you can prove that?

Idiot Man: The kids didn’t have new clothes.

Me: That proves nothing? The story is told from the POV of the son who likely didn’t know the full extend of his mother’s finances and therefore can’t make a judgement on this stuff. We can’t know if her education was actually paid for by child support without hearing from the mother because the OP is not a reliable source about his mother’s financial position.

Idiot Man: *something about society*

Me: This is about this story. But if you want to argue about society then please.

Idiot man (beginning to talk in a way which is straight up incomprehensible in order to talk down to me): Provide evidence that this story is false.

Me: Provide evidence that the child support money specifically was used to fund the mother’s education.

Idiot man: That’s not the point. I’m not the intellectually inept one who is trying to call the story false.

Me: I’m not calling the story false.

Idiot man: Yes, you are.

Me: Nope. Just saying that the child support money was used to feed, house, and clothe the children as they were fed, housed, and clothed and that we cannot know for certain if child support was being used for the mother’s education as the child is an unreliable narrator in the story. You’re calling me intellectually inept but the alternative to being critical of the story due to the unreliable narrator is believing every single story on the internet without question if there is no evidence to the contrary which is not the smart thing to do here.

Also, at some point he also argued that child support was too high because she could afford education but also questioned why they were unable to afford new clothing. Apparently, if you receive child support then you can’t be too poor to buy clothes for your children!

[saintsenara]

I'm curious about arachne!

thank you so much for the ask, @midnightstargazer - and i'm sorry for taking so long to getting around to answering this work in progress tag game question...

arachne is a piece i'm putting together for @ladiesofhpfest, specifically for the week on character studies - you can find the full schedule of themes here.

as with many of my pieces for last year's iteration, i'd like to use the fest to take a deep-dive not only into female characters who don't get a lot of attention in comparison to male ones, but into female characters who don't get a lot of fandom attention full stop. I've got stories in the works about mrs zabini, merope gaunt, kendra dumbledore, petunia dursley etc.

but this one is about eileen prince, severus snape's mother.

when eileen appears in fan-fiction, which is rarely, she is often given a standard backstory: she's from a pureblood family, often an elite or influential one, which disowns her when she runs off with the muggle, tobias snape; her marriage is marked by poverty and abuse; and she dies before 1991 at the latest [often, she's dead before her son becomes a death eater], frequently at her husband's hands.

and this backstory does, of course, have a strong canon basis: snape's memories of his childhood, seen by harry in order of the phoenix and deathly hallows, reveal undeniably that eileen was a victim of domestic violence and that she spent the 1960s and 1970s - at the very least - as notably poor even within a poor town.

that she's a pureblood, however, has as its canon basis only harry deciding at the end of half-blood prince that she must have been, in order to force a comparison between snape - who has just murdered dumbledore - and voldemort. that she's from an elite pureblood family has no basis more reliable than this fandom's belief that all purebloods are glamorous aristocrats, and that aristocracy is a good and admirable thing...

but, of course, the thing about harry's assessment of snape's character at the end of half-blood prince is that he's... wrong. snape is neither a coward nor a murderer, he didn't hate lily, and he's not a loyal death eater at all.

so, that made me think... what if he's wrong about eileen? after all, if her marriage to a working-class muggle man is announced in the daily prophet, she can hardly be supposed to be from a blood supremacist family? we know that not all pureblood families live glamorous lives on ancestral estates, why couldn't some of them live in terraced houses in declining industrial towns? why couldn't eileen and tobias have grown up together, have believed themselves a love story, and then discovered as they tried to make a life together as adults that the magic which seemed so irrelevant between them as children only brings resentment once there are bills to pay and no money to pay them with? what effect would that have on a son already primed to be radicalised against muggles...?

so, arachne is eileen's life story, featuring me on my soapbox about how social class is the most important theme of the series and also featuring me on my soapbox about how every character is irish in some way.

i am keeping coy for now [which, while i'm on my 'everyone is irish' soapbox is a phrase i do not sound good saying out loud...] about why the title is what it is...

[bozepomagaj]

College AU!Trigun (part 1)

I can't believe I'm actually posting something I made on a long ass car ride LMAO. I haven't written fanfics in a long time, and this is my first time with 'x reader' fanfics so you'll have to bear with me on this one, I'm treating this as an experiment to see if I can even make these types of fanfics (also I'm a lesbian. But I'm not immune to babygirls.). Criticism is always appreciated on this blog🤝. Also wanted to mention that english is not my first language so I apologize for my poor/repetitive vocabulary. This was proof read but I also apologize in case I missed a mistake or two.

|------------------------------------------------------|

Summary: you end up at a party and save a mysterious but pretty blondie that your dear friend won't shut up about

Tw: drugging

Cw: swearing, 'questionable noises' get brought up once

Word count: 2.2k

[part 1] [part 2] [part 3]

There was an infamous guy on campus that seemingly, everyone knew. Rumors about him spread quickly every couple of weeks but what we do know is this:

He came here through a recommendation. Didn't have to work hard like the rest because his relative, supposedly late mother, was an up-and-coming biologist who apparently stuck her nose where she shouldn't have and got killed in an 'accident'. No records of said crash could be found, presumably because the government did their best to cover it up. He barely studies and instead spends time at parties getting drunk out of his mind but luckily he's incredibly smart which means all he really has to do is anxiously study the night before the test and he'll get incredible results everytime. He's kind, caring, cheerful, and many other positive adjectives, or so you've been told by your dear friend Meryl who's been trying to get you to meet him for the past few weeks. She always complained about how you need to 'live a little' because you never went out, always nose deep in some book studying or on your phone, never the outgoing type. She never forced you to go out but this time, she had to because you needed to meet Vash Saverem, the guy she would talk about nonstop.

You stood in front of the door, loud music blaring, people screaming in excitement as their favorite song came on, lights flashing in your eyes until all you could see is white. You could even make out some... questionable sounds but this was normal. This was college. You were going to grab your phone to call Meryl when she bursts out of the front door carrying quite a large, half-unconscious man.

"Oh my god you came afterall, I thought you were gonna ditch me!"

You rolled your eyes at the comment, she promised you 20 bucks if you finally came out of your hidey-hole and who are you to say no to that type of money?

"Yeah, I need to get out from time to time too."

"Good! Now come in!"

She grabs your hand and pulls you inside, giggling while doing so. Clearly she was a little tipsy already. She dragged you to the only clean table in the house, most likely defended it with her life to make sure it stays like that.

"So it's just the two of us?"

"Nope. Others are scattered around, I'll go and find them okay? You just stay here."

It was only then that the realization of what you're doing hit you. You're about to meet her friends. 3 other complete strangers that you only knew some bits and pieces about (except Vash) and you had no idea if they were even gonna like you. You looked around nervously, contemplating if this really was a good idea. The place was already cramped but somehow it felt even more cramped and stuffy in this moment.

"Are you like... sure about this?"

"What do you mean?"

It was honestly surprising how you didn't meet her friends yet, considering how much time she spent around them and how many random stories she told you about them. You made an image in your head of every single one of the individuals she spoke of. The heavily religious Nicholas D. (she said it stands for dickhead) Wolfwood who, despite studying theology and being the first person in the church on a Sunday morning, drank like a 40 year old man with marriage problems. Milly Thompson, a total sweetheart but also not the brightest bulb who went to the gym at least 4 days every week and was fucking shredded and him. Vash. The one and only. She was convinced you two would be great friends when you meet eachother but you doubted that, considering how many stories she told you about him going out to random parties. She left as quickly as she came, looking for her dear friends. You were never much of a drinker so you just sat there, looking at your phone, rejecting random advances from drunk guys&girls alike. 20 minutes pass by and Meryl is still nowhere to be seen. You get a little concerned, these types of parties could get... out of hand at times so you get up, looking for her. You walk around, trying your best not to bump into too many people but you're still met with an occasional 'hey' and 'watch it'. It's then that you witness a different scene. Two guys holding a blondie who was clearly drunk out of his mind, babbling something while the two tried to drag him upstairs. Weird... you thought. But it was then you saw them force his mouth open and quickly throw in a small, pink pill. You might not have been to many parties, but you've seen your fair share of movies and shows to know exactly where this was going. Other people saw the scene, too, but just ignored it.

Fucking Bystander effect.

You kept looking at the scene unfolding infront of you, your mind racing at a 100 miles per hour. You wanted to help obviously but could you really go up against two guys at the same time? Or would you just end up making the situation worse? It's then that you saw both of them hesitating as the blondies legs gave out on him. It was now or never. Quickly, you approached them, putting on the bravest face one could muster up in a situation like this.

"Hey, what are you two doing?"

Their heads snap back, fear in their eyes. Clearly they didn't expect someone to approach them while doing this. They looked at eachother stammering some excuses but you cut them off.

"If you don't mind, I'll be taking my friend back so he'll sober up."

You were quick, hoisted him on your back and dragged him to the nearest bathroom, locking the two of you in a stall. He was completely out of it and you could only hope it was because of the alcohol and not the pill. You forced his mouth open, he didn't swallow the pill. But even then, it must've melted at least a little. You grab the pill and flush it down the toilet, then proceed to slap him a few times so he could maybe, just maybe get a hold of himself.

"Hey, buddy wake up. What's your name?"

You kept trying but it wasn't working. He tried to say something but the words were slurred and nonsensical. You ran to the bar to get a cup of water then returned, making him drink it in hopes it would somehow help. You got your phone and tried to call Meryl to find out this mysterious mans identity at the very least but she wasn't picking up. Texting also didn't work. Frustration and anxiety kept building up, you never expected to be in this situation when suddenly, the guy handed you his apartment keys which you recognized immediately. Meryl had s similar pair which meant they lived in the same apartment complex. After some weird glances and bumping into people, you two managed to drag yourself out of the house, it felt like hours had passed by the time you were in front of his apartment, the poor guy still completely out of it. You unlocked the door hastily and dragged him inside. The apartment was... large. And fancy. Not really what you expected from someone like him. You look around, trying to find a bedroom and on your 4th try, you do. You drag him inside and lay him on the bed, taking off his long coat and his shirt so he doesn't overheat. You give him some more water to drink when finally, Meryl calls you back. Her voice is muffled, loud music still blaring and people talking in the background.

"Where'd you go? I can't find you anywhere."

"No shit, I'm freaking out cuz I'm at some guys's apartment."

You hear Meryls voice shift to being slightly panicked.

"What? Did they take you there? Are you okay?"

"I am fine but the guy certainly isn't! Someone gave him a fucking pill and I dragged him back to his apartment, he didn't swallow the pill so like... maybe he'll be fine."

"Holy fuck, uh, do you want me to come over or something?"

"I'll be fine but I'm going straight home after this. Maybe I can meet your friends another time."

"Yeah, yeah no problem. Sorry about all this I uh... didn't expect this."

You hang up and sigh heavily, putting your head in your hands assessing your situation. You're in a random, half-unconscious guys apartment, sitting down on the floor close to tears because this was NOT how this night was supposed to go. You were supposed to be drinking while meeting new friends and overall having a hell of a time. You decide there's no time to wallow in your misery and you get up, checking back on the guy. He's sleeping soundly, his beautiful facial features still visible by the moonlight seeping through the window. In a way he looked angelic... otherworldy. You grabbed a pen and some paper and wrote a small note.

"Dear stranger,

We don't know eachother but I dragged you home cuz you almost got roofied. If you still feel sick in the morning, please call an ambulance. I hope your hangover isn't too bad.

Ps. Here's my phone number in case you need help with anything."

You left it on the nightstand and quietly exited the apartment. You stumbled back home, absolutely wasted from... well, everything. You got changed, did your nightly routine and the moment your head hit the pillow you fell asleep, exhausted from everything that happened.

-|-

You woke up to the sound of your phone blaring and vibrating. You grabbed it with an annoyed groan slipping past your lips. You tried to turn off your alarm... but realize it was actually a call. Who the, and excuse my language, FUCK would be calling you at 6:07am? You answer with a raspy voice, not even bothering to clear your throat.

"Oh my God you actually picked up, hi! I'm the guy you helped yesterday."

And just like that you were wide awake. Memories of last night flooded your brain as panic set in again.

"Hey, hi, are you okay? Did you call an ambulance?"

"No I didn't, I'm doing fine now thanks to you. I wanted to thank you for helping me out. If I'm being honest I don't remember a thing so... I'm just glad I'm home safe. Thank you."

His voice was like honey, you couldn't tell if he actually sounded that nice or because you still weren't fully awake and being complemented this early in the morning gave you a kind of an adrenaline rush.

"It's no big deal really, it's the least I could've done."

You replied with a small giggle. Not sure what was so funny but just the fact that someone came to thank you for your good deed felt nice.

"It is a big deal though! I'm treating you to coffee or some cakes, I know a really good place. But it would be nice if I knew your name."

Overly-sweet, he was just like the cakes he mentioned. You couldn't help yourself but to smile, it's rare to find people like these today.

"Yeah, sure. The name is (Y/N) (L/N). And you, my mysterious drunken man?"

He giggled at the nickname. For someone to sound so angelic and energetic at 6:10am, he left you in an awe.

"Vash Saverem."

And with that your jaw just dropped. He was the guy you were supposed to get drunk with yesterday, chat about something random and not drag him half-dead body home, wondering if he'll be okay or not. You stayed silent for a couple seconds before nervously talking.

"Oh my God I know you. Kind of, you don't know me but- it's hard to explain okay? We'll talk more when we meet up, bye."

You could hear him protest on the other side of the phone but you quickly hung up out of shock and disbelief. It's like this couldn't get any weirder. You quickly call Meryl, she was gonna murder you for calling her this early but it would only be right to tell her about her friend, right? The phone rang once... twice... three times... four times... and then you heard a loud, pissy groan.

"Seriously. 6am? What is wrong with you."

"Remember the guy I had to drag home yesterday? Turns out it was Vash."

Thank the lord you moved your phone away from your ear because the screech she let out was ungodly.

"You're kidding right!? How do you know!? And is he even okay now?"

Her voice was panicked, you could tell she was concerned about her friend.

"Yes, yes he's fine now. He called me this morning cuz I left him my phone number in case he needed me for something. I still think you should go check on him, just in case."

Meryl hangs up hastily, most likely to run over to Vash's apartment to see how her friend is doing. You just stay there staring at the wall.

You wonder if you'll ever get those 20 bucks she mentioned.