#i was literally told the amount of work i put out is like three thesis' worth and its the best theyve seen in a long while

[clownattack]

I aced my thesis defence with merits and I WILL TELL EVERYONE ABOUT IT (once i had my little rest) tm

[autisticshadowthehedgehog]

Team Chaotix found out how to Time-Travel and are (probably?) using their powers for good

[I.D.: Screenshot of Shadow the Hedgehog, the cutscene before “Mad Matrix.” Shadow approaches Team Chaotix, standing in front of Eggman’s computer. Vector says “Well, we need your help to hack into [Eggman’s] computer... and don’t ask why!” End I.D.] 

What a title, huh? Let me complicate this more by explaining this is going to deal near exclusively with the 2005 game Shadow the Hedgehog and Chaotix’s role in it. 

My thesis statement for this is as thus: In Shadow the Hedgehog, all endings are actually technically canon; the universe was reset back at the end of them all until the True Ending was reached, and the universe was reset by none other than Team Chaotix. 

Is this theory going to make at least two insane reaches? Yes. Is it a crack theory? uuuuuuuuh depends on how people react to it 

So, let’s get into the logistics of how and why I think this went down.

Part One: What was Team Chaotix’s Mission?

Team Chaotix appears very briefly in ShTH; Charmy is on a solo mission on “Prison Island,” the whole team seems to be in “Mad Matrix” with Vector in  “Cosmic Fall”, and they appear briefly aboard the ARK at the end of the game. (Which... I don’t think they left? Were they up there when Shadow isolated himself inside? Is that why he wasn’t gone for long, did he get sick of their shit and pilot them back to the planet--) 

The point is, from the few appearances of the team in the game, we know that they are on a mission, one so secret/confidential that no team members tell anyone what it is- even Charmy, who has the impulse control of a kid left alone in a room with a million buttons. 

Of course, with their appearances, we can figure out some elements of their mission, and it becomes quite clear that their mission has something to do with the Space Colony ARK. 

Charmy’s solo mission, for starters, in “Prison Island.” Charmy is there to collect five discs from GUN, discs that I don’t believe the player ever finds out the contents of. 

[I.D.: Three screenshots from Shadow the Hedgehog, of Charmy’s dialogue in the “Prison Island” stage. He says, “Heeey, Shadow! I gotta ask you something! Vector told me that he wants to find five top secret discks... but, like... what’s a top secret disk?” End i.D.]

As the Hero Route of Prison Island immediately transitions to “Mad Matrix”, the implication is the GUN discs have something to do with hacking into Eggman’s computer. 

Oh, yeah, the team needed to hack into the files of Eggman’s computer, with Espio having to gather data himself. Again, what they were looking for is never revealed, but Vector insists that it’s urgent. 

[I.D.: Screenshots from the beginning of the “Mad Matrix” cutscene. Espio is sitting at a computer, attempting to hack. Vector says, “Are you done yet? At this rate, the entire day will be wasted.” Espio turns and says, “Hey, back off! Data retrieval isn’t exactly my specialty.” End i.D.]

Vector attempts to locate the ARK’s computer room, again for no stated reason. 

[I.D.: Vector at the beginning of the “Cosmic Fall” route. He says to Shadow, “We’ve got to make it to the computer room before this place collapses!” End I.D.]

Upon it being found in the True Ending, Team Chaotix once again hack inside the computer. After Gerald’s video begins playing, we don’t see them again. 

So, to recap: they are all gathering information from GUN- which was pretty much the only organization with any information on the colony- and Eggman, a member of the Robotnik family; with the fact they were later on the ARK and stealing GUN documents, it’s likely they were looking for information on Gerald on Eggman’s computer. 

So, while we don’t have the explicit mission, we can clarify that it definitely has something to do with the ARK. An important question, though, which might be able to clarify their entire mission, is who is their client? 

Part Two: Who Sent Team Chaotix on this mission?

Team Chaotix’s missions are almost exclusively client-based, and even if we say that they don’t have one, there has to be something that tipped them off that they needed to get to the ARK. 

The client themself is a bit of a mystery- it can’t be any non-chaotix main character, as literally nobody seems wise to what they’re up to. And considering Charmy was, uh, pretty much literally stealing GUN files, we can safely assume they’re not working for GUN. 

But their client had to be someone who knew there was important information on the ARK, which was pretty much unknown to everyone before SA2, and afterwards, even if we assume the ARK incident is common knowledge, there has to be something specific the Chaotix were sent after. 

And something important. 

In case you haven’t played ShTH, during the entire game, the world is being attacked by demon aliens intent on murdering and eating everything on the planet while also setting it on fire. You’d think that Chaotix would want to deal with that above a relatively unimportant mission. So whatever they were doing was more important than fighting/hiding from/investigating the apocalyptic monsters attacking them. 

What would be important than the, as I said, apocalyptic demon monsters? 

Potentially... a way to stop them. 

[I.D.: Screenshots from a cutscene in the Last Story. Team Chaotix are attempting to hack into the ARK’s computer. Vector says, “Espio, we need you to focus, cuz if we don’t hurry all the data we recovered will be lost.” End I.D.]

So. You know how in every one of my metas there’s a part where I leap off the deep end? 

Let me just say this outright. 

What if the one who sent them on their mission... was none other than Gerald Robotnik?

So, here’s my mission statement. 

Gerald Robotnik, sensing that something bad was going to happen on the ARK, made his video message for Shadow. We know this because of, you know, the content of the message. 

After the ARK massacre, Gerald obviously cracked, but left behind some hint of the video’s existence, or a hint of a way to defeat the Black Arms that nobody picked up cause nobody knew they existed except the people on the ARK. Who, you know, GUN massacred. Thanks GUN. 

What the hint exactly was I’m not sure-- in Sonic X he wrote a shitton of stuff on the walls of his prison island jail cell, maybe he left something there. [Something to note-- Sonic X begun airing before production of ShTH, and it second and third seasons, the ones featuring Shadow, would probably be being made while ShTH was in production.] 

[I.D.: Screenshots from Sonic X of Gerald Robotnik’s prison island cell, which has multiple scientific notes scribbled across the walls. End I.D.]

We already know the Chaotix know of Prison Island and can get there from Charmy’s appearance in his route, so them being there and seeing something left behind isn’t impossible. 

So this hint was discovered by the Chaotix, who pieced together that this ARK message would give the information needed to defeat the Black Arms-- I believe they knew that there was a message specifically, as they seem unsurprised and happy when the message appears at the end of the game, meaning it was among the things they were looking for, if not the only thing. They also figured out that the only one who could defeat said Black Arms was Shadow. Hence why they’re not only hacking into the computers of two Robotniks, but they, in different timelines, accompany and assist Shadow in his little angst party missions. 

[I.D.: Screenshots from the end of the “Cosmic Fall” Hero Route. As Shadow walks away, depressed that he’s what he considers a failed experiment, Vector says, “Hey... don’t go there... yet! Things may not be what they seem. You could be...” End I.D.]

But then why wouldn’t they tell Shadow what they were up to? Sure, he has amnesia, so you can’t just say “your granddad might have a secret way to kill the demon aliens,” but you could say “we think there’s a message for you.” So why didn’t they? 

Because, my dear friends, they only have twenty-four hours, and it takes quite a while to explain and prove time travel to an amnesiac hedgehog. 

Part Three: What Route leads to the True Ending? The Time Travel One 

Here’s where we get into crack. 

Let’s put everything together and then go into Connie’s HellBrainMode™

The Chaotix’s mission is so secret that either they didn’t dare tell Charmy, or the ADHD 6yo understood that he had to shut up for once (and I say that with love) and thus not a single one of them dares reveal it. 

The Mission definitely pertains to the ARK, Black Arms, Robotnik Family, and Shadow. 

The Chaotix vaguely knew of the message that was needed to defeat the aliens, and so they were attempting to hack Robotnik computers to find it. 

For some reason, they don’t even tell Shadow what’s up, even though due to their penchant for traveling with him and protecting him, they likely are aware he’s a bit important at the moment. 

...so why does Shadow the Hedgehog have so many endings anyway? 

On that last point... ShTH has an insane amount of routes, but really only eleven endings, with #11 being the final, canon ending. But all the endings are plausible routes, no matter how goddamn dark they can get. It seems the only thing that separates the endings is Shadow’s choices; whether he remains neutral, assists the Black Arms, or fights for Earth. Of course, the true ending involves him fighting for Earth, his friends, and Maria’s final wish, but the path he takes over the day of the Black Arms invasion needs to lead him there. 

Does that mean he must follow a Hero route to reach that? By the time he gathers all the chaos emeralds, he can’t be in the depths of despair or convinced he’s an android, etc.; he’s definitely not in one of the endings where Eggman or Sonic die, seeing as they help him out in the True Ending. So if Eggman and Sonic are alive and Shadow’s not literally losing all hope in everything, we have to assume neither a Dark nor Neutral route was taken, as Dark tends to end with dead Sonic and Neutral tends to end with Dead Eggman. 

Something interesting-- several Hero Routes involve helping the Chaotix. Gathering the discs for Charmy, helping Espio collect necessary data, helping Vector find the infamous computer room... Of course, most Hero Routes involve helping your friends when you see them, but the Chaotix specifically are looking for GUN/Ark/Robotnik/BlackArms information. While they will not share this information with Shadow, helping them puts him on the Hero Route, aka closer to the True Ending. 

But which ending leads to the true ending? None of them, and yet all of them. 

None of them end in the place where the true ending begins-- Shadow alone with the Chaos Emeralds, ready to discover the truth about his past, and about to be ambushed by an uninjured Black Doom while his friends are about to burst in to try and save him, having apparently discovered more about what’s happening. 

Hero endings end with Shadow defeating Black Doom earlier, Neutral ends with depressed Shadow and dead Eggman, Dark ends with angry Shadow and dead Sonic. So a whole nother timeline was taken. Then what was the point of the first ten? 

Well, through the first ten, you do learn certain information, don’t you? So who’s to say someone else going through the first ten endings wouldn’t learn something as well? If someone could, say, reset the day to the beginning every time Shadow has an angst moment and fails to save the world, and then use what they learned the last time in order to try and steer Shadow on a better path... 

And in the True Ending, when Shadow and his friends are attacked by Black Doom, Shadow hears voices in his head-- voices from several different routes. Almost as if something in his mind clicks, something that feeds every route into him to make a final decision. 

[I.D.: Gif from the Last Story of Shadow the Hedgehog; Shadow is on the ground, and voices are heard, represented here by captions, which read, in order: “I will avenge those whose blood has been spilled!” “Did I... die?” “That’s why you were created...” and “Please help me, Shadow.” End I.D.] 

So what route leads to the last ending? All of them. All of them, so that the information gathered... gets the Chaotix on the ARK. To get the message out to Shadow. 

Part Four: The Timeline of the Chaotix Time Travel 

Every route begins with the same cutscene-- the beginning of the day, as the Black Arms invade... as their comet gets close enough to reach the planet. Let’s say, hmm, Gerald, for example, realized something might go horribly wrong when the Black Arms showed up if Shadow was traumatized and confused, and tried to make some kind of safeguard. The safeguard ended up being a reset button,* but it relied on the position of the Black Arms’ comet-- so thus, you can only reset to the beginning of its approach. The beginning of the day. And only the one(s) pressing the button remembers the reset, that could be an issue. 

*Note: we’re using “reset button” as a general term, obviously it doesn’t have to be a literal button. 

The Chaotix break into the remains of Prison Island sometime before the Black Arms attack; perhaps they sensed something was up, perhaps they noticed some weird stuff was going on, who knows. But they get in there, and find Gerald’s notes, and figure out some important stuff-- the Black Arms are invading, there’s a way to stop them on the ARK, and... oh, what’s this, this thing that the GUN scientists could never figure out how to use but hid away in case they figured it out one day. It’s a comet reset button? 

Oh, comet, like the one right overhead-- oops. 

The Chaotix are unable to stop the comet from arriving in the first place. So Vector puts together all the pieces-- “ultimate lifeform,” fifty-year timeskiip, whatever hints Gerald left-- and figures out that, likely, Gerald knew about the Black Arms, how to stop them, and that his ultimate lifeform, Shadow, is the key to saving the planet. 

He sends Charmy to retrieve discs from GUN involving the ARK and Gerald on Prison Island, and then sets Espio to hacking into Eggman’s systems. Once they’ve got the info they need, they hop on a spaceship and race to the ARK. Thing is... each of these steps could go wrong in any way. Charmy doesn’t find the discs, Espio can’t reach the data, Vector can’t find the computer room, they fail to reach the ARK, or, above all, Shadow shows up and fucks up their shit. 

Thankfully, the Chaotix have the day reset. Every time the planet starts to go to shit, Vector resets. Shadow just killed Sonic? Reset it, now, before those demons crash into Earth. Omega just texted Rouge to tell her that Shadow is convinced he’s destined to lead a robot uprising? Reset. Shadow is depressed thinking he’s a failed experiment that never should have been created and thus literally falls into such a state he can’t or won’t fight the Black Arms? Gotta reset that shit. They reset at least ten times, each time gaining more information and figuring out what they have to do. Charmy gets Shadow’s help in one route, then in the next timeline repeat remembers the locations. Espio knows how to break into Eggman’s computer. Vector figures out where they need to go. They figure out where the Chaos Emeralds are and where and when to get them to Shadow. 

The eleventh and final reset begins, and Chaotix informs the Sonic Squad that the Black Arms need the Chaos Emeralds to destroy the planet and that they need to go keep an eye on Shadow. Somehow they get Eggman onboard-- idk they probably just namedropped Gerald and he listened to whatever they had to say. Once they’re sent off, they rush to the ARK. 

Shadow, in the Last Route, has gathered the Chaos Emeralds off the ARK, somewhere on the below planet. Everyone else is on Earth, including Sonic, Black Doom, Eggman... 

Everyone but the Chaotix. 

The Chaotix, who continue working on this Big Case even after the Black Comet has descended through Earth’s atmosphere and the Black Arms are killing everyone on the planet. 

The Chaotix, who are trying to hack into Gerald’s computer, looking for something important. 

The Chaotix, who show absolutely no surprise or concern when Gerald’s message appears, implying that this could be what they were looking for. 

The Chaotix, who are not seen again after the message is played. 

Because their work is done. 

Shadow’s choices lead him to make the right decision, but that final push he needs to defeat Black Doom is Gerald and Maria’s message. And once it’s played, he saves the goddamn world. 

And then is stuck on the ARK with the Chaotix until the next game. Oops. 

[beelsnack]

Hi! I saw your requests are open and I was wondering if you could write a little reaction of the bros + undatable (if you do that) in hearing mc singing or seeing mc dancing and and find out they're very good at it. Thank you in advance, lots of love!❣

*bursts through the wall* Choir kid mode, activate!!

Hope you like it, Nonnie!

Lucifer: The human tended to be...noisy.

That wasn’t the right word, and Lucifer knew it wasn’t the right word, but he couldn’t think of another way to phrase it. They were always humming a Human Realm song he didn’t know, tapping their foot to a beat he couldn’t hear, swaying to a rhythm he couldn’t feel.

So he shouldn’t have been surprised to discover that they had quite the siren’s voice.

He had been in the process of leaving the House of Lamentation to attend a meeting with Diavolo. The fact that the human’s bedroom door was left slightly ajar didn’t even register to him until their voice reached him, making him pause.

Although they were merely singing for themself, and thus not putting all of their power behind their voice, he could still tell how strong it was. Clear, bright, and mid-range. Without fully meaning to, Lucifer closed his eyes and listened. He didn’t know the song or the lyrics, but that didn’t make their voice any less captivating...

Until a harsh clattering interrupted both of them.

Their D.D.D vibrated against their desk, cutting off their singing and breaking Lucifer out of his spellbound state. With a shake of his head, he continued on, smiling softly. Their human was just full of surprises, weren’t they?

Mammon: “Nu-uh, you’re lyin’ to me.”

“Swear to Go - oops,” the human cut themself off with a laugh. “Guess that’s not a thing I should do down here. But for real!”

Mammon snorted, folding his arms behind his head as he flopped back against the human’s pillows. “I can’t see it.”

The two of them were parked on their bed, having long since tuned out the high school anime that Levi had begged them to watch. They had managed to make it to the part where the main love interest stumbled upon the shy nerdy character practicing in the choir room and revealing that they had some Broadway-worthy pipes before they got bored.

“I’m telling you, I was a hardcore choir kid!” the human smacked Mammon on the shoulder with the pillow they had been cuddling with. “I did competitions and everything!”

“That might be the lamest thing you’ve ever told me.” Mammon snickered. “Did you wear robes and shit too? Ow, hey, stop hitting me!”

The human gave him one final pillow-smack to the face. “Well, I WAS going to show you the video of the solo I did, but…”

“Aw, hey, don’t be like that.” he whined, popping up. “You know I’m just messin’ with you.”

After a few more minutes of poking and prodding, Mammon finally convinced them to pull up the video. All of the choir members were dressed smartly in black, but even in uniform, his human outshone them all. They stood apart from the rest, in front of a microphone, and belted out the most heartfelt lyrics Mammon had ever heard. It was a little bit tear-jerking - not that he was tearing up or anything!

“Well?” the nudged him with their elbow as the video finished up. “What do you think?”

“I’ve heard worse.” he shrugged, pointedly turning his head away so they wouldn’t see the awestruck look in his eyes.

“That’s Mammon-ese for “you’re the best singer in the Three Realms,’ right?” they grinned impishly.

“Oh, shut it, human.”

Leviathan: This was all Levi’s fault.

About a week ago, one of his idols had released a video of their dance practice, and, like the incorrigible fanboy that he was, Levi had proceeded to geek. He had sent the video to them, accompanied by flurry of keysmash and emojis that came in so fast that their D.D.D had vibrated off of their nightstand before they could catch it.

After the initial fangasm, Levi demanded they watch the video and tell him what they thought. They had learned from experience that he wouldn’t shut up until they gave him a thesis paper about the video, so the tapped on the link.

It was definitely interesting choreography, and it looked fun. After watching it - with copious amounts of bouncing and swaying to the catchy beat - they flipped over to their messages.

Human: Man, that looks so cool! I kind of want to learn it!

Leviachan: Hah! Good luck, normie, this band is renown for their intense dances. Even I couldn’t do it!

Challenge. Accepted.

With a satisfied smirk, they watched as the file sent to Levi. It definitely could have been better quality, but considering they filmed it with their D.D.D camera perched on a stack of books, it looked pretty damn good.

Levi hadn’t been kidding, the dance was intense. Their muscles were sorer than they were after they worked out with Beel. But, nothing motivated quite like spite, and it was completely worth it when Levi responded.

Leviachan: You…but…how?!

Leviachan: It’s only been a week!! How could you have memorized it that quickly?!?!

Leviachan: More importantly, how were you able to do it?!

Leviachan: I know demons who have injured themselves trying to learn these moves!!

Levichan: *gasp* Don’t tell me you were an idol up in the Human Realm?!

Levichan: Hey, answer me already!!

Satan: He has definitely seen this in a movie somewhere.

The human was looking for a specific book - they were struggling to find research for their Ancient Curses course, and if anyone had a helpful book, it would be Satan. He had offered to help look, but they insisted that they could do it themself.

He doubted that, but never let it be said that their human wasn’t a tenacious little thing.

Watching them climb up the library ladder made his anxiety spike, but they handled themself just fine. Slowly but surely, he went back to his reading, keeping one ear tuned into the sounds they were making somewhere behind him.

That’s when he heard it.

He thought he was imagining things, or maybe the human had stumbled upon one of the books that spoke to you when you opened it. But, as he listened closer, he realized it was their voice.

“Here’s where she meets Prince Charming,

But she doesn’t know it’s him ‘til chapter three…”

There was no holding back his laughter even if he wanted to. He didn’t even need to look to know that they were sliding around on the ladder like that scene from Beauty and the Beast.

“What are you doing over there, Belle?”

“I want much more than this provincial life!”

Asmodeus: He couldn’t believe his luck.

Every time he had invited the human out to The Fall, they had staunchly refused him. They fed him every excuse in the book - they had to study, they were tired, they weren’t feeling good, etc. Even if he couldn’t work his magic on them, he could tell their reluctance was a result of fear of being surrounded by intoxicated demons.

Being around the brothers was one thing - they trusted them quite literally with their life. But other low-class, desperate demons with no such loyalty? Asmo didn’t blame them, and he didn’t push the issue.

But this time, they had said yes.

He didn’t know what changed, and frankly, he would care about that later. For know, he reveled in the fact that he got to see his cute little human all dressed up to go out! Ooh, they looked absolutely delicious.

And drunk.

“Well?” he asked over the pulsing beat of the music. “Are you socially lubricated enough to join me on the dance floor?”

For a moment, they stared at their cup before knocking it back and setting it on the table with a pronounced thunk. “Yup.”

Just as they arrived, the music changed. Slowly, sultry, and sexy. For a moment, Asmo thought they were going to shy away, but that liquid courage was doing it’s job phenomenally.

They moved with grace and elegance that reminded Asmo of the devotees at the ancient temples of Greece. He hummed a little when they accentuated the beat with a teasing roll of their hips.

“You’ve been holding out on me, darling,” he pulled them close to murmur in their ear.

“You think so?” they giggled. “If you like this, you should see me give a lap dance.”

Beelzebub: There was a little corner in the kitchen that had officially become the human’s herb garden.

Little pots with all kinds of green growing out of them were lined up neatly on the windowsill above the sink, and the plants from the Human Realm that needed sunlight that the Devildom didn’t have were placed against the wall beneath them, basking in the sunlamp they had bought on their last visit home.

It was a nice addition, and Beel could always tell when the human used their herbs in cooking. Something about it just tasted..better. He couldn’t quite figure out why.

Well, until now, that is.

He had just finished his morning workout and decided to grab a little pre-breakfast snack. With the sweat he worked up, he earned it. Swiping his forearm across his face to wipe off some of the sweat, he rounded the corner into the kitchen.

The human was standing with their back to him, tending to their garden. No matter how many times they reminded themself, they still forgot to buy a watering can, so they were still using a cup to water the plants. They took their time at each pot, giving them the appropriate amount of water and…

Singing to them?

Beel paused, hand around the door handle of the fridge. Yup, they were definitely singing to the plants, gently inspecting the leaves as they did so. Their voice was soft and sweet, and as Beel watched them,he could have sworn the plants looked a little more cheerful as they passed over them.

Beel felt a little more cheerful too.

Belphegor: “Did you seriously ask me to come over just so you could use my lap as a pillow.”

It was more of a statement than a question, and Belphie barely opened his eye enough to give them a lazy glare. “Yes.”

“Why.” they sighed, slumping back against the wall.

“You have a comfy lap.”

“You have, like, fifty pillows.”

“And none of them are your lap.” Belphie rolled over onto his back to look at them fully. Despite the bored expression he had, they could see the twinkle of mischief in his eyes. “If you’re going to keep making noise, sing me a lullaby.”

He had been almost entirely joking. So when they started to actually sing, he felt his heart do something funny.

They had a soothing voice. Not too high, not too low…a perfect lullaby voice, actually. Without really meaning too, he felt himself start to doze. Before he actually fell asleep, he nuzzled closer to them.

“I wasn’t expecting you to actually be a good singer. Keep going.”

Diavolo: “I thought you said they didn’t teach ballroom dancing in Human Realm schools anymore.”

They couldn’t help but laugh at the situation they were in. Lord Diavolo had taken to having weekly “meetings” with them that were a thinly veiled excuse to grill them about whatever human custom he found himself fascinated with. Now it felt more like a gossip session instead of a meeting with the Crown Prince of Hell.

The week prior, they had lamented the fact that they were attending all of these formal gatherings as the Human Representative of the Student Council, but didn’t know any of the waltzes or other dances that seemed popular. It made them feel out of the loop.

So, they shouldn’t have been surprised when they arrived at the Demon Lord’s Castle to find Diavolo waiting for them in the ballroom.

“They don’t,” the human giggled as Diavolo spun them around. They had long since given up on memorizes steps and were now basically just twirling around the dance floor. “I guess I’m just a quick learner!”

“I should say so.” Diavolo’s smile was nearly blinding. “If I didn’t know better, I would say you were classically trained!”

The human spared a glance down at their beat-up sneakers and jeans with a hole in the knee. “Really?”

“Clothes have nothing to do with it, my dear,” Diavolo suddenly pulled them closer before lowering them into a dip. “You could be dressed in rags and I would still find you mesmerizing.”

Simeon: “May I have this dance?”

Lucifer was still trying to hide them behind his back, but the human was having none of it. They ducked from beneath his arm and took Simeon’s offered hand. “Of course.”

It was hard not to burst into laughter at the angry sputtering and protesting behind them. Even Simeon couldn’t quite hold back the amused grin on his face. “I think you were supposed to refuse me.”

The two of them stopped in the middle of dance floor as the music started. “I like to keep things interesting.”

Simeon laughed, taking the lead. The dance wasn’t too complicated, almost boring. Until Simeon leaned down to whisper in their ear.

“What do you think? Shall we have some fun with them?”

They followed his gaze over to where the brothers stood fuming. Based on the air changing colors, they would bet good money that Satan was attempting to curse Simeon.

“Let’s.”

Simeon led them into a spin, and when they came back, he pulled them flush against his chest. He looked like he was about to give them instructions, but they leaned into him with an impish grin. His blue eyes widened slightly as they put their weight on him, sliding their leg up to his hip in a decidedly scandalous manner.

It didn’t fit the song at all, but the angry squawking from Mammon and the whine from Asmodeus was music to their ears.

“You catch on quick.” he laughed.

“I have to use those dance lessons for something, don’t I?”

[katiebruce]

adios, amigo.

Well, 2020. What is there to say that hasn’t already been said, tweeted or Instagram-ed a thousand and two times about you? I’ll save us all the generic stuff—“unprecedented,” “nightmarish,” “absurd”—yes, 2020 was all of those things, but on a deeper, more personal level, there is so much more I have to say that doesn’t fit quite into those clichés.

So, this will be my attempt to document and reflect upon one of the strangest years I’ve encountered in my thirty-one years on this planet. Buckle up, buttercup.

Like many others before me have frequently observed, the way I spend my New Year’s Eve has always set the tone for the year to come, and boy, was this year a picture-perfect example of exactly that. Because I had to work on January first, I spent my New Year’s Eve at home watching a depressing movie with T, quietly kissing on the cold back patio as fireworks went off in the distance. I remember feeling both happy and sad about this evening (a duality that was a major theme for me for the fifty-two weeks to come, if only I had known). I was sad not to be celebrating my favorite holiday and even remember telling T that I didn’t want the year to come to be one I spent not going out, staying home, and becoming reclusive as I finished up the stressful process of finishing my MFA thesis in the course of ten (or, what I thought would be ten) short months.

But on the other hand, being held in T’s arms, I remembered feeling so happy that I could have this little quiet holiday—something that felt so private and personal—so entirely our own. It really set the tone for our relationship for the year, and for the obstacles we not only overcame together but dominated, one right after the next.

January was cold, snowy, and full of flight cancellations, which I remember to be something worth celebration at the time. I stayed home and snuggled my way into Aquarius season, the time for me and my brethren to shine, feeling positive that I had lived my thirtieth year to one of great satisfaction and maximum travels taken. (If only I had known then that that late-January El Paso layover where my crew and I walked across the border into Juarez to eat street tacos and laugh over Mezcal would be one of the only times I would leave the country for the year, well, I might have taken a few shots of tequila and really enjoyed my stay abroad just a bit longer).

February came, and with it, the promise of friends. My darling Kristopher, as always, flew to Chicago on the day of (also the day I completed and passed my eighth recurrent [!]) and, thanks to my other darling baby, Nicole, scored tickets to one of the highly coveted format reunion tour shows happening in March* for me, her, and my momma.

(*It did not, in fact, take place in March).

I turned thirty-one in the way I’ve come accustomed too—surrounded by my favorite people (this year at Dorians—a jazz club to end all jazz clubs) too drunk and too smiley to even coherently remember the evening properly. As much fun as I remember having, I told T that I thought it was my last year to host some sort of birthday gathering, and to hold me to it come next year. (He did very well—a few weeks later, after spotting an ad in a discarded newspaper for the Chicago tour of Moulin Rouge happening on my birthday weekend, we bought tickets and I sat peacefully with the fact that one of my new year (or, new age) resolutions was so quickly and poignantly adapted).

By this time, I was already deep in the throes of my first thesis writing course, meaning that I was pretty stressed out all of the time and surely a misery to be around (sorry to those of you who were). Basically, in three semesters’ time, I was expected to draft, edit, and rewrite a fully formed novel (70,000+ words) and the idea of accomplishing such a feat felt like a ton of bricks being carried on my shoulders. I had at least four mental breakdowns in the beginning of the year (again, we all know what lays ahead for the year, I know—but at the time, this seemed like an unbearable amount of stress for one person to have to carry. The joke is not lost on me).

In the coming weeks, things began to get even weirder. Covid scares began sprouting up in cities all around us, and as the government asked people to stay at home, airline ticket prices became massively reduced, so more people began traveling. I mean, this shit was like spring break on acid—it was hugely stressful, and though the threat of the pandemic had yet to reach Chicago, I felt more and more at risk with each passing day as careless amounts of people cashed in on what they thought was the deal of a lifetime.

By the time March reached its midpoint, I, like so many others, was terrified. We had no PPE at work—literally nothing. No gloves, masks, or even hand wipes. Cleaning the aircraft still wasn’t considered a “no-go” item, as far as regulatory practices go. I remember watching the news on my layovers only to keep myself up at night wondering if the virus was going to take hold of me or anyone around me, and if so, how long until they would recover, or perhaps wouldn’t.

St. Patrick’s Day came, and after fighting about whether or not to go out with friends (we didn’t—and for the record, T and I rarely fight—but this was, after all, his first St. Patrick’s Day as a Chicagoan—so his resentment was more than justified) we saw a matinee movie (Onward) and while in the theater, read about how Chicago restaurants, as a precaution, were shutting down the next day due to rising concerns about the spread of the virus. We reacted by grabbing drinks & lunch at one of our favorite neighborhood eateries and tipping the waitstaff more heavily than I think I’ve ever tipped anyone in my life (not mentioning this to brag, or whatever—just remembering what it was like to feel utterly helpless and unsure of what to do or what was to come—we had to find our positivity in some way, and on that day, this was how we saw fit, and it helped).

Then it all sort of happened at once—Lauren’s store was closed with no impending reopening date. The grocery stores (and I swear to god, I will never forget this) became a madhouse—people taking things out of other people’s carts when they weren’t looking. I remember going into Mariano’s with T and insisiting we tie bandanas around our faces for safety, feeling like a goddamn bank robber about to make a heist. But there was nothing left to even take. Frantically, we got what we could and got out of there, and I went home to have a full-fledged panic attack about the state of the world we were currently living in and what we were going to do if things didn’t turn around quickly.

As if overnight, everyone cancelled their airline tickets. It was for the better, and though it put my job in serious jeopardy, I was in massive support of it but still felt an eerie sadness looming around the countless empty airports, airplanes, hotels and city streets. There were times when my crew and I were the only guests in a place—times when I had zero passengers on a revenue flight. And then came the mass flight cancellations—and I mean mass. Everyday became a battle of anxiety as to what was going to happen to my job in the next twenty-four hours, and then cooing my stressed-out thoughts to sleep, only to relive the anxiety with every phone buzz waiting to find out if I had lost my job overnight. By mid-spring, I was hugely considering dropping out for a period of time, just due to the stress of it all, but thanks to support from my friends, family and T, I chose to stick it out and roll with as many punches as I could until I was finally knocked-out.

Quarantines were happening all around me, and without the ability to travel or the (former) grueling expectations of maintaining a social life, I started to reconnect with myself in ways that felt both organic and new, yet much like returning home after a long time away. Lauren taught me to knit, and we celebrated her birthday on the floor of our apartment in an Indian-food induced daze renting Emma and making thousands of tiny knots onto needles that would eventually become blankets. We took walks, did puzzles, and Lauren drove me to and from the airport on the rare occasion that I actually had a flight to work, as the CTA had, unfortunately, become a cesspool of targeted attacks on flight crew members (seriously) because they were often the only person in any given train car.

A rare glimpse of optimism then presented itself via two different opportunities: a chance to take a ninety-day leave from work, and a job offer in the form of editing a book for publication. I said yes to both and hoped that I would be able to take a step back and deal with the crumbling world around me easier with both of these opportunities now on my horizon.

This period of the year (May-July) started off swimmingly. Knitting, reading, and even smoking weed for the first time in nearly a decade (I took two hits and spent the rest of the evening sinking into the couch painfully aware of how bad I am at breathing and worrying that I might stop at any given moment). I fell in love with yoga and felt myself loosening up parts of my body and my mind that had been twisted into a series of knots for god only knows how long. I spent days reading in the sun, baking bread like everyone else in the world, and learning to make my own pies. Things were going really well, and I was even ahead in school, now on track to graduate in August—when things started getting heated.

I’m not going to go on a rant about race, although I very much could, but I will say this—the fact that we are still in a race war in this country in the year 2020 (and even now, a few days into 2021) makes me so sick to my stomach I don’t know what to do. Every injustice that passes by us, overshadowed by the next untimely death or wrongdoing makes me angry in ways that I cannot even fathom putting into words. It burns the color red that is so hot and so vibrant that I can see it soaking through my eyelids even when I squeeze them shut. This country lost a lot of love from me this year, and even more respect. There are not only things we can do better—there are things we must change. And honestly, most days, I don’t think most of the country is ready to not only admit that but to also work for. And that not only sickens me, but depresses the living hell out of me. I feel so stunted all of the time when I picture a world so at peace with its own injustice. It’s just so unfair.

I watched as the world was (rightfully, although woefully) destroyed around me. My neighborhood turned into a desolate, looted shadow of itself—one where Lauren and I could sit on our back patio safely until dusk, when the crime and gunfire became so rabid that on occasions, we sat in the living room in total darkness, listening only to the radio, afraid to let anybody at street level see that we were, indeed, at home. The opportunists that took advantage of the message of this movement made me numb to such a large demographic of the population, and I found myself crying myself to sleep enough times that I thought it might be time to leave the warzone that had become Chicago for a little while as escape down to Florida. So, we packed our bags and left. It is not lost on me that so many did not have this option, and for so many minorities, just simply existing during this time was enough to cause assault. I know I am fortunate—I carry it like lead in my pockets every day.

While in Florida, the first retailers began to reopen and I found myself waiting in an hour-long line to buy soaps and hand sanitizers, and to get a glimpse of what this “new normal” might look like when things started picking back up again. Like many, it was jarring to see empty tables, capacity limits on items, cashiers behind plexiglass sheets shouting to be heard over both the physical barrier and the cloth one strung across their faces.

By the time T & I arrived home, Lauren was already making plans to reopen her store “safely” and I felt sorry for her. How could anything be safe when nothing had changed? Why were companies acting as if business could go on like before—even though nothing had gotten better?

My final months of my MFA were just ahead of me, and I had one month remaining free from work to finish my first full-length novel, and I all I really remember is stress stress stress.

And then Andrew, being Andrew, offered a glimmer of hope, in the form of a drive-in concert celebrating fifteen years of Everything in Transit in southern California, a mere matter of hours from where Nicole had been working. It took a matter of two or maybe three text messages to confirm that we would be attending, and once the ticket was purchased I practically packed my bags and headed off to visit her and try and make light of my heart.

As suspected, the trip was magical. Being around Nicole, per usual, was magical. My heart felt so fully aligned seeing a little piece of her story and getting to experience her way of life once more—drunken hot springs and all their glory. There truly are few things in my life I love more than sitting in the passenger’s seat as Nicole drives us all over the country, and experiencing it again felt so right and so perfect that I honestly thought it was one of the happiest experiences of my life. Because I had requested so, she drove me all the way to Venice Beach the day of the concert so we could see where the infamous album cover was taken. We ate cbd gummies and listened to jack’s and ate in-n-out burger like our lives depended on it. When the concert began, it was eerie, yet hopeful to see all the new protocols of something that had become so familiar to me in my former life. Drinks were ordered through an app and delivered, as was merch, and clapping was replaced by the exuberant honking of car horns. We streamed the sound through the radio and laid the in the back of Nicole’s converted SUV as we cried and sang along to the songs that made everything, even just for one night, feel like it was all going to be okay again. We ended the evening marking ourselves with our first stick and poke tattoos—hers a sun to my moon, positioned to kiss one another when we stand next to each other on our preferred selfie side (lol). I left worried about how long it might be before I could feel her warm embrace again, the embrace of one of the truest friends I’ll ever know, but also recognizing that we were lucky to have had such an experience at all during such an insane year and feeling eternally grateful for its memory.

The last weeks of what I referred to as my Rumspringa were ahead of me, and one sunny afternoon I wrote the final pages of my novel. In a mad rush to edit, revise and complete my portfolio for official review, I never really sat with myself and what I had accomplished or congratulated myself; I wrote a book in seven months’ time, and even though I am unhappy with it (more on that later) there’s no denying that I actually did it. I did it, and nobody can ever take that away from me; it’s an accomplishment I will forever have, and it’s all my own. And I need to remind myself of that. I need to let myself feel proud.

I was back to work in September and taking a huge pay cut, though working the same hours. It was stressful, but once I found out my portfolio had been accepted and I, indeed, would be receiving my MFA I felt a bit at peace for a while. I had let my hair grow long all summer, and all but stopped wearing make-up (mascara makes me feel entirely dolled up now). I felt in an odd way free—almost bare.

The fall came and went fairly quickly—the weekends alone at home and grocery-store-only outings feeling more and more like normalcy. It had been such a tough, trying year, that it suddenly felt nice to just stand still for a bit. So, I did.

In a brief amount of time, I watched (safely) as friends got married, got sick, got older and fell in love. I watched, with great anxiety, as our country voted in the most important election of our lives so far and took the deepest breath I’d ever taken as I watched that man face defeat—although he’s yet to swallow it. I watched as ex-lovers had babies, got engaged and never really stopped to think twice about any of it. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: the safety (and not in a lame, “safety-net” sort of way) of having T in my life has turned me into someone who not only craves quiet time at home, but really also sort of fell right damn into it very easily, though unexpectedly. I’ve heard the saying so many times before, but you really don’t realize everything is different once you find the right fit because that place feels like it’s always been home. I am grateful to not only have that now and moving forward, but most certainly throughout the trying, unstable times of 2020. In fact, I don’t know how I would have survived without it.

The holidays always creep up on me, and after being dealt a shitty hand from work (don’t even get me started, I’m still fuming) they came that much quicker. T & I were lucky enough to spend the holidays back home in the swamp, visiting my parents and his Dad. The time went by fast but was relaxing, fun, and reenergizing. We spent New Year’s Eve playing giant Jenga and yard Yahtzee with my parents in the cool, tropical winter of Florida. It was nice. We got tired right around 11, so we laid in bed until midnight talking, staying awake just long enough to share our new year’s kiss. It felt right—a proper send off to such a strange and unusual year. I was exctly where I needed to be—wrapped up in a blanket of T’s embrace, comfy in a bed in my childhood bedroom.

So now, here it is: 2021—the supposed upgrade to 2020, or so everybody secretly hopes. So now, as I sit here, drinking a warm, soy-chai latte (homemade!) I find myself having great difficulty setting an intention for the days ahead of me. I feel so beaten and bruised and physically fatigued for no reason but the experiences of 2020 and the courses they ran all over my life. I’m feeling reflective of having finished yet another year of my life (and my Saturn return! Halleluj!) and finding it hard to be anything but fatigued. I guess it’s from the year that’s just finished—more so than any other year it physically pained me at times to be alive at times. I’m missing so many of my friends who I haven’t been able to see for extended months at a time now. I am craving a sense of normalcy, of safety, so that I can feel better about making plans, but as for right now I just don’t have it. I am quietly trying to make subtle changes within myself and how I react to the world around me, but just like the start of this new year, that process is a slow one.

One of my resolutions (though I’m growing to hate that word more and more with each passing year) is to get back to writing. I had a good, albeit stressful, thing going while still in school, and after finishing my novel and receiving feedback, I couldn’t shake the feeling of absolute failure. It’s still there—it’s really hard to try and celebrate an accomplishment when you don’t feel like your work was good enough to warrant anything at all—especially not a fine arts degree. I never said I was a fiction writer—I just wanted to get better at writing fiction—so I need to remember that and allow myself to veer away from that for a while, to work on something new. Something I’ve been saying I’m not ready to write for many years now, something that when I now say that is just a plain old lie: My memoir. I’m ready to close the chapter in my life where I am a flight attendant, so the timing feels more than perfect.

I learned so much about what I want to do within my career and what sort of boundaries I don’t want to place on myself—and I’m trying, I really am. T gifted me with my own pottery wheel for Christmas and we are going to set it up this weekend and I am so excited to get my hands muddy and start creating. Until this year, I didn’t realize how much I needed a creative outlet other than writing—I had been depending on it for too long, my little cup felt bone dry. So, I’m excited to see where this new hobby takes me and how it influences my ability to return to the blank page—quite literally.

I know this year will not be the quick fix that so many are hopeful for—I think quite the opposite, actually. But here are some things I know for sure will happen: I will move out of my apartment and in with T. We will then, immediately get a dog and a new apartment. This, alone, feels like enough to fill the pages of the blank year ahead of us. I will go long periods of time without seeing my loved ones, and without traveling (bleak as this lifestyle may be). I will write, even when it’s hard to. I will publish something—I’m at work submitting pieces as we speak, and though the process is slow, I can tell this is my opportunity—I am ready t fight for it. I will turn 32, and the numerology of my life will seem more aligned. I will spend my birthday at home, alone, because of course Moulin Rouge has now been cancelled (I’m fine with it). I will learn more about myself the more I use my hands to create, to plant, to sculpt, to mold. I will love with fervor. I will smile more, because it’s actually healthier for you, even though my black heart hates to admit it. If I’m lucky, maybe I’ll get to attend a live concert, though I realize this might be wishful thinking at this point. I will do mushrooms and giggle with the colors. I will cry. I will hurt and I will cause harm. But through it all, I will persevere. Because if 2020 taught me anything, it’s that I am capable of regenerating into new versions of myself that I didn’t even have the time to dream up. I can adapt to whatever is thrown at me, though it will often times feel impossible. I can, and will, create. I can be reborn (as many times as I’d like to, too).

So, thanks, 2020, for teaching me more about myself than any other period of five years has ever taught me. I definitely feel like I’ve been through the ringer a couple of times, yet I find myself still standing day after day. It must be the way a domino feels, standing up, time after time, knowing that something right in front of you is about to knock you down. But instead of thinking about what I’m bringing down with me, I’m thinking of the entire collective as a whole—we are all experiencing this together. And maybe, just maybe, on the other side, there’s a kid with a smile waiting to do it all over again. And that’s perhaps where the beauty lays: we have to tear everything down in order to do better, be better, make change. Nobody likes to catch fire, but everyone loves rising from the ashes. We’ll all get to where we’re headed, one way or another. And eventually, I hope, we’ll see that the other side is better than we could have ever dreamt of.

I hope that 2021 is a bridge that brings us from destruction to creation. I hope the journey is long, so we all appreciate the outcome.

I love you all and wish you warmth and wellness into this year and beyond.

Happy new year—honor the circumstances you have around you and let them help you grow.

[lov3nerdstuff]

Voluptas Noctis Aeternae {Part 3.6}

*Severus Snape x OC*

Summary: It is the year 1983 when the ordinary life of Robin Mitchell takes a drastic turn: she is accepted into Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Despite the struggles of being a muggle-born in Slytherin, she soon discovers her passion for Potions, and even manages the impossible: gaining the favor of Severus Snape. Throughout the years, Robin finds that the not quite so ordinary Potions Professor goes from being a brooding stranger to being more than she had ever deemed possible. An ally, a mentor, a friend... and eventually, the person she loves the most. Through adventure, prophecies and the little struggles of daily life in a castle full of mysteries, Robin chooses a path for herself, an unlikely friendship blossoms into something more, and two people abandoned by the world can finally find a home.

General warnings: professor x student (however no underage romance), blood, violence, trauma, neglectful families, bullying, cursing

Words: 5.8k

Read Part 1.1 here! All Parts can be found on the Masterlist!

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Unsurprisingly, working with Snape was absolutely demanding and still (or therefore) absolutely delightful. The Sunday evening they had started the slow process of making the potion, Robin had mostly watched Snape working and listened to him explaining what he was doing as he moved along. But over the days and weeks, she was allowed to do more and more herself, and somehow, miraculously, a second chair had found its way to the laboratory by the end of the third week. Being allowed to do more practical work, however, had come at the cost of Snape correcting literally everything Robin was doing for a good amount of time. Whether it was cutting something up, separating something else, or even something as simple as stirring… he always had something to complain about.

Robin loved every second of it dearly, even though she would accidentally sass him sometimes in return to his corrections of whatever she did. There also was no denying that she was learning more than she had ever expected, and even though the times when they actually had to work on the potion were not more frequent than two to three nights a week, she always looked forward to it from the very moment she left the lab in the first place.

Unfortunately the two months came to an end eventually, and Snape summoned her to the lab on a Saturday night in December to bring their work to an end with the very procedure this all had led up to. The restoration of the page. Honestly, Robin didn't know what to expect of it. They still had no idea what was hidden on that page, but she felt honoured that she was allowed to be here for the final revelation nonetheless. He was by no means obliged to keep her around at any point, especially not now, and Robin was well aware of that, which was what had led her to be all the more grateful in return.

"What do you think we will find on that page, professor?" She asked as she sat on her stool, observing how he placed the old book on the table, opening it to the two pages that enclosed the missing one.

"If I knew, we would not have to go through with this entire procedure."

"I know that you don't know… But what is your assumption? What do you think is worth hiding like this?"

"I do not know, Miss Mitchell." He sighed, but then turned to her as he lifted an eyebrow. "What is your assumption then, if you expect me to have one?"

"Well… I've actually spent quite some time thinking about this." She smiled to herself for a moment. Truth be told, she had been thinking about little else over the course of the last two months. "Seeing as this page is probably from the Renaissance, it would be something THEY deemed worth hiding. So I asked myself: What was worth hiding in the 15th and 16th century? The answer would be: basically the same as today. Sex and power, the driving forces of mankind since the very beginning. Now, I honestly doubt, or rather I want to doubt, that this entire spell is about sex, so I'm staying with power. The means to power are control and protection, which leaves us basically with weapons and security. Now back to the Renaissance: as far as I remember and as far as the library here allows me to research, most of the European countries weren't actually counties but basically a rag rug of principalities and such. That again leads me to believe that wars, especially of the magic kind, weren't actually fought on a scale large enough that would bring forth a weapon strong enough to be worth hiding like this. That leaves us with security, and thus protection. Which is, to finish this off, what I believe this page is about. A protection spell."

Mildly amused and badly hiding it, Snape raised an eyebrow at her once again. "You seem fairly confident in your thesis."

"If I wasn't confident in it, it would hardly be a thesis worth upholding." Robin smirked. "I would even bet my non-existent birthday presents on it."

"If they are non-existent, that statement hardly counts for anything, does it?"

Now Robin had to laugh out loud indeed. "True, unfortunately. But I'm still fairly certain about my thesis."

"Then we shall see if you are correct." Snape mused and finally moved on to follow the instructions in Robin's literature spell book. First, one had to make the potion. They'd done that already, at least. Then the potion would have to be drizzled over the part of the spine on the inside of the book where the page was missing. Snape allowed Robin to do this step, and it admittedly was an easy task, but she was only too happy to get to do something in this procedure at all. Next, the actual spell had to be spoken, which Robin gladly left for her professor to do, as she honestly didn't even know how to pronounce the words she'd read on the page. After that was done, the instructions merely said to wait, and then they would be done. So that's what they did, merely sitting on their stools and staring at the book while waiting for something to happen.

"Do you think it worked?" Robin asked after five minutes of silence, when still absolutely nothing had happened

"Yes."

"I honestly can't believe it was this easy after freaking two months of making that potion."

"Luckily efficiency not always correlates to effort."

"I hope you know that I'm very grateful that I got to help you in this, sir, no matter how difficult or easy it is. I've learned so much, and I truly believe that I've never felt so filled with… passion, and joy, and curiosity, in anything ever before."

"I know." It was a simple statement, but Robin understood what he meant to express. He wouldn't have made an effort to teach her any of the things she'd learned if he didn't know she appreciated it.

"Good." She returned with a smile, then looked at the book once more only to jump in her seat. "Bloody hell! It's glowing! It's actually working!"

Snape rolled his eyes, but still had to suppress the not-smirk at the same time, which was only a partial success, seeing as Robin still noticed it. "Of course it's working, Mitchell, get over it."

"Sorry." She bit her lips and tried to contain her sheer excitement, but it honestly was difficult. It was actually working! "It's just… a spell I found, in my book, with a potion we made, restores your book page! How amazing is that!"

"You seem to have had fairly few successes in your life if you get that excited over this one."

"Well, all successes I've ever had were utterly unimportant in the grand scheme of things. Getting good grades, winning minor quarrels, scaring scummy shop owners… It wasn't anything worth mentioning. But this could be something amazing! Something that actually matters!"

"We will see in just a short moment." He mused, then turned towards the book and once the page was entirely restored at last, he went to read it over once, twice, another time…

"And?" Robin asked anxiously, after giving him almost fifteen minutes to read that one single page. Nobody needed that long to read a couple words!

"Shush."

She rolled her eyes, but complied. If the past two months had done anything, they had proven to her that the odd amount of trust she put into Snape was actually justified. And thus she waited another ten minutes until he finally turned to her with a grave expression.

"Is… is it something… bad?" Robin tried again, and her insecure frown met his stoney gaze for a moment until she looked back at the book.

"You should read it." Was all he said, before standing up from his stool and busying himself with whatever he could to obviously distract himself from whatever it was he had just read. To think about it, perhaps.

In an instant Robin's eyes were glued to the book. It was a protection spell indeed! The grin was on her face immediately, and she felt proud to have come to the right conclusion. As she read on, everything became a bit clearer, and yet also a great deal more confusing. It wasn't a spell… it was a potion. After reading it a second time, she looked up from the book and her eyes found her professor's across the room. "Quite frankly, I'm not sure I understand."

"I would be surprised if you did."

"Why?"

"Because I am not certain I understand it either, and I would much prefer if I didn't."

"What?!" Robin frowned at him in honest question. "Why would you hope you don't understand? What exactly is it you believe to understand?"

"You were the one to guess that it was a protection spell. Why don't you tell me what you understand?"

"Alright…" Robin sighed and let her eyes travel over the page once more, before looking back up at Snape. "As far as I got any of this, it's a potion, not a spell."

"Good. Go on."

"Well, it is supposed to protect the person drinking it from the influence of any kind of magic. But not their own, somehow. So… it's like a two-way mirror, kind of. Nobody can magic you, but you can magic everyone else."

"Precisely."

"But…" Robin added reluctantly.

"But?" Snape frowned in return, clearly not having expected her to continue.

"Yeah, but…" Robin frowned as well, as she looked at the page once more. "It seems like this spell will only protect…" She stopped there, feeling like this was probably a really silly thought. If Snape hadn't understood it this way, it was probably wrong anyway.

"Do go on." He encouraged, or rather demanded though.

"It sounds like it only protects half bloods. Or maybe also muggle borns, I'm not sure… but definitely not pure bloods."

In an instant, Snape was by her side and looking at the book as well in an astonishing intensity. "Where did you read that?"

Robin pointed to a paragraph at the bottom of the page. "Here it says 'Only thee who is't hast ventur'd both worlds shalt beest the one who is't dwells in the safety of the beshrew's blessing'. In my opinion that would roughly translate to 'Only you who has ventured both worlds shall be the one who dwells in the safety of the curse's blessing' in modern day language. And seeing as the entire book is a mixture of the muggle and wizarding world, I just thought that those are what's meant with 'both worlds'. The only people who usually know both worlds are muggle borns or half bloods. So… yeah."

Snape read the short paragraph again, then looked up at Robin in sincere astonishment. "I believe you are right, Miss Mitchell."

"Wait, what? Really!?" Robin stared back at him in equal surprise and doubt, eyes wide as they searched for any sign of mock in his own. But he was entirely serious.

"It seems fairly obvious now that you pointed it out, but I must admit… I failed to notice it before." He commented, reading the paragraph yet another time.

Had he just-... No, surely not… but he definitely had admitted that she had found something he hadn't, right? Right?! Robin was too stunned to even give any proper reply, so she simply offered him a happy half smile.

"However I am not certain if this means that pure bloods cannot make the potion, or if it will not affect them, in disregard of the ones who made it." He mused after a few seconds, and Robin finally snapped out of her daze as the words sunk into her brain.

"Them?" She asked before she could stop herself from saying anything at all. "Do you mean… you're not…?"

Immediately he shot her a defensive glare. "That is not even remotely of your concern."

"I'm sorry." Robin replied quickly and while she still felt curious, she also regretted bringing it up. "I really didn't mean to pry, sir."

"Simply forget about it, will you?" He murmured, then turned towards the book once more.

"So… why does it matter if they cannot make it or if they merely cannot use it?" Robin asked for the sole sake of a change of topic.

"You know the answer to that." He replied with a pointedly annoyed expression.

"I do indeed…" Robin whispered to herself, then looked at the book in front of her, and finally to the ingredients on the shelves. She really had screwed this up, hadn't she… It had been truly stupid to ask him something that personal. "Sorry…"

"Don't apologise. You had a crucial part in the project, and this discovery is your merit as well as it is mine. A potion like this has been searched for for centuries, and would any of this become known… It would be revolutionary."

"...would? We're not going to… to tell anyone about it?" Robin asked in surprise, and a mild twist of disappointment. "But… we can try it out at least, right?"

"No." He replied with a quiet solemnity that made Robin's heart sink even further. "This potion is dangerous, more so than you likely realize."

"But how? Why?!" Robin asked in desperate incredulity. "What's wrong with protecting yourself against your enemies? This potion could help so many people…"

In a moment's notice, Snape turned to Robin entirely, not even an arm's length away, and looked down at her with such a seriousness and intensity that she inevitably shuddered. "Nobody can know that this potion exists. Not a single soul but you and me, do you understand that?"

"I do." Robin replied quietly, as she still looked up at him with sad eyes. "But please, at least tell me why."

"Promise me that you will never lose a single word about it to anyone but me. Not the other teachers, not a friend, not even Professor Dumbledore or the Minister of Magic himself." He really seemed to be dead serious about this, and Robin started feeling sick with anxiety again. If he truly wanted her to swear her silence, he had a reason to.

"I promise." She replied in complete seriousness and utmost honesty. "I don't know if it means anything to you, but I promise."

"It does." He replied a little less gravely, and took a step backwards, out of her personal space. "Coming from you, it does."

"Can you… please tell me why this is so dangerous? Please… I just wanted to understand." Robin tried once more after a moment of silence, not even caring if her begging was pathetic, but she needed to know.

"Do you know Oscar Wilde, Miss Mitchell?" He asked completely out of context, or so it seemed, and Robin only looked even more lost.

"Yes, I… I've heard of him."

"I thought so. He supposedly said: 'Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth'." Snape made a small pause, and Robin considered the quote for a moment before he spoke on. "In my eyes, the same principle applies for might. Make someone believe they are invincible, and they will show their true self in their actions. Now, I'm certain you are aware of the propensity of mankind to oppress their oppressors, if given the chance. What do you think would happen to the muggle borns after centuries of being oppressed by the pure bloods, if they gained access to a potion that makes them invincible?"

"Oh…" Robin's face softened from pouting incredulity to actual understanding, but her chest still felt painfully small for her thudding heart. "It-it could lead to some very serious damage in the world, I guess. There's always someone willing to start a revolution… but we mustn't give them an opportunity for that." She finally concluded on her own, nodding to herself as if to help the words sink into her mind and shake out the disappointment.

"Precisely." He confirmed, back to neutrality if not even a subtle touch of calmness. "That is why nobody can know of its existence. Do you understand that now?"

"I do… and I agree, even. I just didn't really consider that something so good could be used for something so bad." She sighed, picking at the buttons of her shirt subconsciously rather than by choice, and looked from Snape down to the book. "What do we… what will you do with it?"

"The very same thing the previous possessor did. Destroy the page, keep the book of nonsense safe." He replied as he sat back down on his own stool, and Robin could feel his eyes on her even though she kept staring at the book to hide her tears.

"So all efforts were for nothing, huh?" Her voice was throaty and thick, and Robin felt like they got stuck in her chest in the first place. She had been so focused on this whole thing, had put so much of her heart into it… and now it would be destroyed, and thus every chance of possibly continuing this out of class work with Snape was over once and for all. That maybe –no, definitely– was even worse than the loss of this remarkable potion that had been lost in the first place anyway.

"Will you stop being so dramatic, now…" He gave right back, feignedly scolding, but it did its job and Robin pulled herself together as he spoke on. "Nothing about this project by any means was in vain, seeing as we both learned a valuable lesson. And wouldn't you say it was our aim to solve a mystery rather than strive for material gain?"

Once again, Robin had to realize that Snape was right. Of course he was... It was ridiculous to be upset over this, she should be happy indeed that they had actually managed to solve the mystery. That she had gotten to help, and that she had gotten to learn so much over the last two months. In this new light, the tears stopped burning in her eyes and she could blink them away before looking up at her professor with an attempted half smile. Better.

"We definitely did solve the mystery." She said, and the smile reached her eyes a moment later. "And I definitely learned a lot from all of this, and from you, professor. It truly was a joy."

"Your understanding of joy is rather curious, if you consider being constantly corrected one."

"I consider potions a joy. And learning." Now she had to smile for real, and the sadness faded from her mind like clearing fog. This wasn't the end.

"That is… acceptable."

Robin had to snort at his choice of words. "It's 'acceptable'? May I ask, what did you learn, sir, if you say we both learned something from it? Is it just the spells and potions or… something else?"

His face went straight back into stony nothingness, and Robin believed she had said the wrong thing again as he got up and walked across the room to fetch an empty bottle, probably to store the remainder of the potion.

"I learned that at least one person in this school full of dunderheads is worth my time and efforts." He finally replied, likely as indifferently as he could manage, but the words were clear enough even without any means to convey them appropriately. Professor Snape deemed Robin worth his teaching. He didn't regret allowing her to help. Maybe he would even let her do it again. Robin's smile widened into a grin before she could help it.

"That's the nicest thing you've ever said to me, I believe." She smirked before she could think better of it.

"Who said I was speaking of you?" Came his immediate reply, but now both his tone and expression clearly gave away the obvious tease. Robin found herself enjoying it… those extremely rare moments when he wasn't void of any sentiment, on the outside.

"I beg your forgiveness for being so pridefully assuming." She laughed, and there it was again, the sarcasm she got scolded for more often than not. And still Robin couldn't wipe the smirk off her face.

"Forgiveness granted."

"That was easy…"

"Careful."

"I'm in the potions master's private laboratory… whatever else would I be but careful?" While her tone was still anything but serious, he actually seemed quite pleased with her statement, and that made Robin smile even more. Slowly her cheeks were starting to hurt again… it was odd how she always seemed to go through a wide array of emotions in the shortest time spans whenever she was around Professor Snape. He was irritating, and everything he did was too. That must be it.

While Snape filled the remainder of the potion into the bottle he had just retrieved, and then labeled it and put it away into one of the shelves, Robin looked over the page with the dangerous-protective potion again (she couldn't find a name anywhere and thus that's what her mind had labeled it, for now). Would destroying it really prevent it from being found in the future? Sure, Snape was brilliant, but if a potions professor and a third year student could restore it almost by chance, then who said nobody else would in the future?

"Professor… can I ask you something?" Robin started her attempt to voice just that thought in a way that wouldn't possibly sound like an insult to him.

"You may ask, but there is no guarantee that I will answer."

"So… I was wondering if the spell we used to restore the page in the first place, and with spell I mean potion and spell and the entire thing, if, you know…" Just get the question out, idiot! "Don't you think someone like us will eventually do the same thing we did? I mean restoring the page that you're destroying now. Wouldn't that simply be a delay of things, if the next person finding it isn't as considerate of its dangers?"

He seemed to really consider her words for a moment, which he had done quite often over the last weeks actually, before he looked at Robin when answering. "That is possible, yes."

"So maybe… a repetition of history wouldn't necessarily be the… best idea?" Robin suggested vaguely and already made a face that clearly showed what she expected him to reply with. A scold, namely.

"What would you suggest I do instead?"

Now, she hadn't expected that. But she'd take the opportunity to voice her thoughts a little more in detail. "So this is the point where my logic kind of depends on my very limited knowledge of things, but… I was thinking, if there really isn't another possibility but to restore the page with a spell-potion-whatever thing like we did, then one should consider how the process of restoration works. From what I understand, the spell in my book refers to the destruction of the page itself which is, kind of, reverted by the procedure we just did as well. Seeing as you said two months ago that all the book restoration spells you tried didn't work in this case, that would –with a bit of corners and loops– mean, in the end, that the page needs to be destroyed first to be restored in the book. If it's not destroyed, while it simply being taken out of the book wouldn't qualify as destroying it I believe, one couldn't restore the page with the book alone."

"So?"

"So… You could take the page out of the book, but NOT destroy it. Because if the only means to getting the page back into the book is a restoration spell or potion, which in return only works if the page was destroyed in the first place, then nobody will be able to get their hands on the page if they have the book." Robin suddenly wasn't so sure about her idea anymore… what if he deemed it stupid? But she'd already voiced too many dumb thoughts around him to let that stop her now. "That of course would still leave open the possibility for the page itself to be found, when it's not destroyed, especially since it's no longer hidden by the book… However if you find out just what exactly counts as for the page being 'destroyed', you could always do something else to it to make it useless. Something that doesn't count as destroyed, and thus will make a restoration impossible, but will also make the page useless. In the end you will thus have a useless book, and a useless page, and neither can be made to function again."

"Where, pray tell, did you get that idea from in this instant?" He raised an eyebrow at Robin, but otherwise didn't give away what he thought of her suggestion. Idiot…

"I… think. A lot." Robin replied lamely. "I mean, I don't know much, and I can do even less, but I'm fairly decent at thinking… I think."

Snape rolled his eyes at that admittedly silly statement, and Robin tried to force the heat out of her face. For a minute, it was completely silent.

"Your mind truly is an ever-surprising quarry to delve in, Miss Mitchell…" He commented then, with a frown and a curious look at her, and while it wasn't really a compliment, his words still made Robin shiver for some reason. "I will consider your suggestion before making my decision about what is to do with the page and the book."

"Thank you, sir. I'm just glad it wasn't complete nonsense." Robin replied with a nervous chuckle, then scooted herself off her stool and awkwardly took a step towards the door before turning back once more. "Uhm, is there… anything else for me to do tonight?"

"If I'm not mistaken, you have an essay to write for my class." Aaand he was entirely back in professor-mode, scowl, bored indifference and all.

"I finished it last night, sir."

"I assigned it last night, Miss Mitchell."

"Yes, and I wrote and finished it after dinner. Proofread it this morning. Edited it this afternoon. All done now."

"The class really is too easy." Snape sighed dramatically. "Unfortunately, all the other students would fail if I made it any more difficult."

"Don't they fail as it is already?" Robin whispered more to herself than to him, and still received a glare and a not-smirk in return.

"Goodnight, Miss Mitchell." He said after two more seconds of silence, and Robin understood a polite invitation to leave when she heard one.

"Goodnight sir." She gave back before she let herself out, with a smile that didn't leave her face for the rest of the night.

_______________

It was almost a month later when Robin heard about the book, and the dangerous-protective potion again. Just as last year, she had decided to stay in the castle over Christmas break. However this year she actually knew from the start what she would be doing, and Professor Sprout seemed rather delighted about Robin's enthusiasm to help her out again. But one thing did change in comparison to last year. This year, Robin received a Christmas present. Not in the traditional sense, admittedly, but to her it would always be one all the same.

Seeing as she would only get the money from her parents once she would go home in the summer, Robin hadn't exactly expected to be given anything at all. And it surely wasn't given to her the way she would expect either. While usually the students who stayed here over the holidays received their presents in the common room upon Christmas morning, this is not how Robin came to hers.

Christmas arrived in a whirlwind of snow and cold, just like last year, and it also went that way again. Robin worked in the greenhouse most of the time, but occasionally she would be sent to Hagrid's for a change. She hadn't really had much contact with the man in question before this particular Christmas break, but seeing as Professor Sprout didn't require her assistance every single day, the herbology teacher still was kind enough to refer Robin to the gamekeeper. He wasn't the brightest fellow, admittedly, but good-natured and kind to the bone, and that made Robin like him in an instant. She helped him out with all kinds of things, from taking care of the magical creatures (which she unfortunately knew nothing about since she hadn't taken this particular class) to simple work in the school garden, and admittedly, she did learn a lot from Hagrid, too.

In the evenings Robin would still come to sit in Snape's classroom, alone, for she still couldn't stand to be in the common room even though it had become rather deserted. The overwhelming panic she had felt in the beginning of the term hadn't been back since, but Robin assumed that it was solely due to the fact that she had been avoiding situations that made her panic in the first place at all costs. Christmas came and went this way, without a present, but with a good lot of practical work every day. She actually felt content, with enough decent company throughout the day, and enough time to read by herself at night. The only thing that nagged at her mind from time to time was the absence of a certain potions professor from the classroom or his office in the evenings, but then again, she reasoned that since he still showed up for most meals, he surely was fine. Still, she felt worried about him. A little. An appropriate amount. It was perfectly normal to worry about someone you usually saw every day. Almost. She didn't let his absence stop her from making good use of his classroom every evening though. The first night she didn't spend in there was New Year's.

After her work of the day in the greenhouse was done, she got cleaned up and tidied her part of the room, then wrapped herself in her warmest clothes, and in sweet remembrance of last year headed out into the arcades that surrounded the courtyard at roughly eleven. With a soft smile she sat down in the same arch as last year, crossed her legs underneath her, and started to read her book on the care of magical creatures. Maybe she could convince some people to let her join the class after the holidays, if only she caught up with the class material before then. It's what she'd been trying to do ever since the first day of working for Hagrid, when she had discovered that magical creatures actually were a very much similar subject to herbology when it came to its usefulness for potions.

"Becoming predictable, are we?" Snape's voice called out to her even before he was anywhere to be seen.

"I'd rather say I've been spending surprisingly little time out here this Christmas." Robin replied with a smile, but kept her eyes on the book. At least she hadn't jumped again.

"What are you reading this year?"

"The textbook for the 'care of magical creatures' class. I thought about convincing whoever teaches it currently to let me join the class after the holidays."

"Where does the sudden interest stem from?" His voice had gotten closer now, and Robin believed he had once more taken a seat in the arch next to hers.

"It's surprisingly handy to know a bit about the creatures whose body parts and liquids we use in potion making. Just like it's useful to know herbology." She smiled to herself, eyes still on the book while yet she had stopped trying to read.

"Clever."

"That's what I’d rather hoped."

"Consider it done."

"What exactly?"

"Your inquiry to participate in the class. I will speak to Professor Kettleburn, and he will let you join once term resumes."

"Wha-... Thank you! That's… amazing! Really, thank you so much." Robin's eyes finally lifted off her book and she looked towards the arch next to her, but yet again could see nothing more than stone and ornamentation.

"Yes, well… just do me the favor and make sure you are not ahead of the class right on the first day already." He mumbled in the usual discomfort upon being thanked, and still Robin had to snicker at the comment.

"Then I better stop studying their textbook now and leave the last two chapters for another day." She commented with a grin, and indeed closed her book in her lap only to rest her forearms on it to lean forward just enough to get a glimpse of her professor in the next arch. He looked gnarlier than usual, if one could even say that about someone that young, and Robin seriously wondered what he'd been up to during the holidays. But it wasn't her place to ask.

Thus they merely sat in silence yet again, watching the snow falling slowly and calmly as the minutes ticked by without their notice. Robin did wonder for a moment why Snape was out here with her, but she dismissed the question when she couldn't even tell the reason why she was here herself. Maybe it was the calm, or the solitude. Even if technically it wasn't solitude in the first place, with it being the two of them, but still it was like solitude from all the stupid people. Just two people who understood the silence like a part of themselves. At least that's what Robin thought, and for her it was a good enough theory to stick to.

At last it was the noise coming from Hogsmeade again that made Robin aware of the turn of years, and she smiled to herself as she realized that she had spent another new year's out here with the potions professor. Maybe it was turning out to be an odd little tradition, just like Professor Sprout's –who had told Robin that she always spends new year's sitting in her room's window with a piece of cake, watching the fireworks in the distance– which she had told Robin about the other day. While Robin found the herbology teacher's tradition quite charming, she preferred her own that hopefully would come into existence for real. Just Snape, and silence, and darkness, and Robin. She could very well live with that. Too well, perhaps.

_______________________________

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[xx-autmnlvr-xx]

Is this embarrassing? Chapter 1

PAIRING: KEVEDD (Kevin x Edd) [Ed, Edd n Eddy]

Rating: T (for cursing and violence)

This is really exciting because I have been working on this story for almost a week now and I didn’t want to post the first chapter until I finished the whole thing. I’m so happy to finish such a long fanfiction! I hope you all enjoy!!! If you like it please feel free to reblog so others can read it!

    It was a cool autumn day and peach Creek high was out at the football field for a pep rally. The Ed's, who are now in 10th grade, were on the top of the bleachers. Edd shifted in his seat in discomfort. Eddy was sitting, leaning against the back railings and Ed was laying down beside Eddy.

    "so, I said to Rolf 'I know where you should stuff your salami' I mean, it wouldn't have hurt for some of it to be sold! I was gonna give him 25 percent of the profit!" Eddy yammered in a huff. Edd shook his head with a slight smile before looking out at the football field. His eyes raked over each player until he saw him.

   With the number twelve spread on his uniform, Edd knew that underneath was a tall and slightly muscular Kevin. Kevin has grown a bit since they were 12. He began talking more to them in a friendly way and has stopped the bullying. He still calls the Ed's dorks, but now it's in a kinder way. Double D's smile widened as he watched.

   "Hey! Earth to sock head! Are you listening?" Eddy yelled, waving his hand in front of Edd's face.

    Double D snapped out of it and looked at Eddy, "o-oh I'm sorry, Eddy. I must have dozed off."

    "Are you fawning over shovel chin again?"

    "Wh... what? No! I was... just thinking of quantum physics! Very intriguing!" Edd claimed, a blush spreading on his cheeks.

   Eddy rolled his eyes, "why don't you just talk to him, Edd?"

   "Oh no no no! I would never!" Double D's cheeks grew redder.

   Then he sighed, looking out at the field, "Kevin would never go out with me. I mean he's obviously straight."

"So?" Eddy asked, "why don't you convert him? Isn't that what people like you do? Make straight people gay?"

Edd glared at Eddy, "sometimes I really wonder why I'm friends with you."

"Oh, I know! It's because we all have the same name and have been hanging out since we were kids!" Ed said loudly, smiling wide.

Double D smiled and ruffled Ed's hair, "yes. That is a few of the reasons, Ed."

 Suddenly the conversation was cut short with a loud voice, "Okay, peach Creek high! Pep rally is over so get your asses home!" Sarah screamed in a megaphone at the students.

"But be sure to come by tomorrow at 6 for the football game!" Nazz cut in with her own megaphone, "Let's come show support to our team!"

Eddy stood up, "come on, guys! Let's get going." The three made their way down the bleachers and began trekking back to the cul-de-sac. Edd glanced behind him and saw Kevin looking at him. As their eyes met double D made a flustered noise and looked in front of him. When the Ed's made it to the cul-de-sac, Eddy yawned.

"Well, boys, I would say let's hang but that stupid football rally wore me out."

"Aww but Eddy! I wanted to show you my new 'poinder monster blood' movie!" Ed pouted.

"We can watch it tomorrow, Ed. I promise." Eddy patted his shoulder.

"Yeah I agree. Today was most strenuous! I'll see you both tomorrow!" Edd smiled and waved as he went up to his house. Double D closed the door behind him and sighed, looking at his home. It was just as he left it with no sign or hair that his parents came home that day.

"It must have been another triple shift." He muttered to himself.

 He walked to the kitchen and drunk some water. Double D put his bag on the table and looked through his books. He whispered a mental list of all that he must get done that weekend that includes two essays, a page of math equations, and a thesis on ancient Aztec inventions. he began to head upstairs when someone knocked on his door. He checked the time, it was 5 pm.

"Weird. Who could that be?" Edd made his way to the door and opened it. He nearly passed out.

"M-m... Marie! What are you doing back in peach Creek?" He asked, his knees shaking slightly. Marie kanker and her sisters were taken away back in 8th grade when May came to school with multiple bruises. The human resources department found out the kanker sisters were being beat by their fathers and found multiple signs of malnutrition. Marie still had her blue hair, cut so one of her eyes were covered up she wore a black crop top with some Jean shorts. She had on some fingerless gloves. Marie rubbed the back of her neck.

"Our mother got custody of us and talked to us about where we wanted to finish school. We all chose peach Creek. We're living close to the shops."

Edd nodded, "Oh. I see." He was a little confused. Why is she acting so different?

"Do you... Want to come in?" He asked, moving aside for her.

She nodded, "yeah, thanks." She sat down on the couch and looked down at the rug.

"Would you like something to drink?"

She looked up, "do you have any sweet tea?"

"Yes, I certainly do! One moment."

 Edd came back and handed Marie the cup and sat down in a lounge chair.

"Thank you, Edd."

"It's no problem. You seem different than last time I saw you. What has happened?"

She took a sip, "well after the people took us away, they tried to put us in a foster home. Lee made a fuss and we shanked some of the kids there. They called us a danger to society and threw us in a mental hospital. While we were there, they talked to us about internalized obsessive disorder and abuse. They gave us medicine and had us talk to so many therapists. I didn't even know what we did as children was wrong. I guess that's what happens. We all began to listen, and I found out something about me. I realized that my love for you was false. I didn't love you I loved your sensitivity. I wanted to be as hopeful as you. I should have realized that I wasn't straight when I started sneaking to look at my dad's magazines."

"You mean you're...?"

"Yeah, I'm a lesbian. I didn't realize because I honestly thought that I NEEDED a man."

She took another sip and put down the drink, "but that's not why I'm here." Marie looked at him. He looked back at her.

"Double D, I want to apologize. How I acted two years ago was very ridiculous and I understand that you must have been very scared. No one should be forced into any kind of romantic interaction. I understand that now. I don't expect you to forgive me, but I just want you to know that I am working to improve myself."

"Oh... oh wow, Marie. That is very admirable of you! I must admit I never expected this. I accept your apology." Edd smiled.

She smiled back, "I hope we can be friends."

"Of course!" Edd nodded. Suddenly, Marie's pocket buzzed. She took out her phone and looked at it.

"Oh shit. I have to get home. I'll talk to you later?"

 After Marie and Edd said their goodbyes, she left his home and ran down the street. Double D watched for a moment and closed his door.

"Isn't that interesting. I never would have thought that someone like the kankers would work to better themselves. I'm happy for them." Edd said to himself as he walked up the stairs and into his room.

He took off his clothes and slipped on his pajamas. He even completed most of his homework. Edd laid on his bed and looked at the ceiling. He thought about how he should come clean to Kevin but at the mere thought of confessing made him shiver.

"Eddward this is ridiculous..." He told himself aloud, "what do you have to lose?"

He thought about it and bit his lip, "he could laugh at me... Distance himself... What if he starts beating me up?" Edd felt tears well up and he made a noise of desperation. He suddenly got an idea and went over to his desk.

"Of course! I'll just write a love letter and just never give it! I'll have the emotions released and I won't get rejected!" Edd sat at his chair, grabbed a pen and blue paper and started writing.

'my dearest friend, Kevin,

It may come as a shock, but I can contain this no longer--' double D began. He smiled and kept writing the letter, letting out all his hidden desire. After he completed the whole thing he felt better. He folded it up and put it in a tin can. He debated throwing it away, but he couldn't bring himself to do it, so he decided to put it in his pants. He slept well that night.

Edd awoke at 10 am that Saturday to the sound of his alarm blaring. He sat up with a stretch and turned it off. He groggily went to his closet and grabbed his toiletries before going to the bathroom. After his shower he was brushing his teeth while trying to avoid looking in the mirror.

'why hasn't it gone away? I've tried everything but the scar is still there.' Edd thought. Finally, after he rinsed his mouth, he looked up in the mirror. There, in the middle of his head, with a haphazard pattern was a large scar. No hair grew around it so there was just a bald spot. The scar is a constant reminder of the worst point in his life. He sighed, rubbing a pea sized amount of cocoa butter lotion on the scar before putting on his hat.

Eddward left his house after doing his chores and locked the door.

"Hey, double D! Finally, you came out!" Eddy yelled from across the cul-de-sac. Eddy and Ed began bursting into a fit of laughter. Edd rolled his eyes and chuckled, walking up to them.

"You know, I may stop hanging out with you if you keep up with the gay jokes, Eddy." Edd teased.

"Aw puh-leese sockhead you know I'm just teasing." Eddy smiled, lightly nudging Edd.

Ed lifted the other two and hugged them tightly, "guys are we gonna watch the movie now?"

 Ed was sitting cross-legged in front of his couch, his eyes glued to the TV. Eddy was spread out on one side of the couch, typing on his phone. Edd was on the other side of the couch with his ankles crossed, watching the movie. After Ed's parents bought a new couch, they threw it down the basement for Ed since double D and Eddy are always over.

Edd tilted his head, "so the monster is literally a sentient glob of blood? Who comes up with these things?"

Ed turned toward double D and smiled happily, "I know! Isn't it awesome?? It could roll and wobble and gobble everyone! And it would grow each time!!! What if it happens?"

Edd smiled and patted his shoulder, "it's highly impossible, Ed. They said in the movie that they made it using 'a vial of hubirous' and there is no such thing as a hubirous. You have nothing to be worried about."

Ed nodded, "yes! You're right, double D! If it was real Godzilla would probably eat it anyways!"

Edd shook his head and smiled, "you're so imaginative."

Eddy stretched, "if I had that vial, I wouldn't waste it on some stupid experiment. Science is lame. Oh! Hey, guys, that new game came out last night! It ended up being free! Do you wanna play it sometime this week?"

"Ooh ooh yeah! That sounds cool!" Ed said, jumping up and down in his seat. A loud noise came from the television and Ed went back to watching it

Edd rubbed the back of his neck, "I don't know, Eddy. We have a big test coming up this week. Maybe we can do it next weekend."

Eddy groaned, "sockhead, you're too uptight. One test won't kill us."

Double D raised an eyebrow, "Eddy, you didn't pass the practice ACT two weeks ago. You NEED to take school more seriously."

"School is for chumps! I'm gonna make a NAME for myself! I don't need no damn geometry!"

"School is the beginnings of all business and careers. You won't last."

"WATCH ME, SOCKHEAD!" Eddy huffed, crossing his arms. Edd rolled his eyes and continued watching the movie.

 After a while Edd remembered something.

"Remember the kanker sisters?" At the mere mention of them, Ed and Eddy looked at Edd with wide eyes.

"W-what... What about them?" Eddy asked nervously.

"They came back to peach Creek!" Ed was about to scream but double D covered his mouth, "BUT they aren't like they were before! They changed!"

"How do you know?" Ed asked behind being muffled. Edd cringed and took off his hand, wiping it off on his shorts.

"Marie came over to my house last night and apologized for what happened when we were in jr. High."

"Woah you serious?" Eddy asked, shocked.

"Yeah! They got help and now they aren't obsessive or aggressive like they were."

"Cool!" Eddy and Ed said in unison. The movie ended then, and double D looked at the time. 5 pm.

"I should take my leave now."

Ed pouted, "aww but why?"

Eddy smirked, "isn't it obvious? He wants to go see Kevin throw a ball around."

Edd's entire face went red, "n...no I'm not! I just have homework!"

Eddy raised an eyebrow and shrugged, "whatever. It's your life. But you know you don't have to keep denying it, it's pretty obvious. Even lumpy can tell when you're drooling."

"Yeah! It's as clear as the little ant trying to sneak off with my cheese!" Ed chimed.

Edd looked down at his hands and fumbled with them, "you guys think it's that noticeable? Oh, my what if Kevin knows? Is he going to start avoiding me?"

"Dude, it's not that deep. My father always says, 'sell it quick before they notice' which basically means 'just go for it or you'll miss it.'" Eddy said. Double D nodded and said goodbye before climbing out Ed's window.

 The autumn wind whistled past Edd's ears. The chilly air causing fallen leaves to land near his feet. Double D looked at the ground as he walked, thinking about what Eddy said.

'maybe he's right. I mean we have lived by Kevin for years. Maybe he would accept me?' Eddward smiled a little and imagined what it would be like. Kevin pulling him close and kissing him behind a tree, whispering sweet nothings in his ear.

Edd wasn't looking where he was going and bumped into someone's back. He fell backwards onto his butt.

"Ngh! Oh, how humiliating." Edd groaned in pain, rubbing his lower back.

"YO, NERD!" A voice yelled. Edd looked up at two stocky-built guys in football uniforms.

Double D's face went pale, "I'm sorry! I... I didn't mean to--" The one on the right got close to Edd's face. His name was Kyle, he had bushy eyebrows and an Auburn colored buzz cut.

"You didn't mean to WHAT, loser?"

"I was- I was deep in thought and I didn't know you was there. I'm sorry."

The one on the left smirked and went behind Edd. He was named Larry and he had blonde wavy hair with a goatee. He pulled double D to his feet and locked his arm around Edd's neck to prevent him from leaving.

"What were you thinking about? Were you thinking about math? Hey, Kyle, do you think if we bust his head open, we will get a cheat sheet for school?" At the mention of a busted head Edd started squirming, gripping Larry's arm that was nearly choking him.

"Plea... please just let me go! I'm sorry!"

"Oh, you'll be sorry alright." Kyle smiled, he punched Edd in the nose. Edd screamed in pain while the two laughed. They spent the next five minutes punching and kicking him. Edd felt himself starting to pass out from the pain. The last thing he remembered was being shoved in a trashcan and them digging in his pockets.

"Shit! Doesn't the nerd have any money? I thought his parents made a lot of money!" Kyle grumbled. Double D only saw black as he passed out completely.

[kendrixtermina]

An Alternate Take on The Prologue

It seems to have been almost universally accepted that the events in the prologue were an assassination attempt meant to remove Dimitri and Claude so that the war would go smoother later on. I’d like to present an alternative possibility. 

I have no solid 100% certain proof I’m not even going to pretend that this is anything other than my own interpretation that’s no more valid than the other one. It’s just a possibility. 

Thus it is ultimately an opinion that I wouldn’t base further conclusions on. We don’t know for a fact that her goal wasn’t, in fact, assassination. 

Still I think because there’s quite a lot of interesting stuff going on in that scene that ppl seem to miss, that I want to dissect here regardless of wether you agree with my thesis or not

Significant Clues: 

The Actual Motive

I’m not sure if it was Seteth or a random Monk, but I think more than one character goes on about how the Church’s reputation that they worked for so many years would have been tarnished if anything happened to the heirs.  Especially when you consider there aren’t that many Blaiddyds left and even less Riegans and that both are expected to solve/end the dire chaos in their respective factions.

Now who would benefit from making the Church look bad? Someone who plans to declare war on them maybe? 

They wouldn’t put that sort of dialogue there if we weren’t supposed to conclude something from it.

This might be less obvious if you haven’t played her route (though even then, you still get her speech in all of them don’t you?) but her declaration of war was strictly against the Church and their allies. She hands out papers everywhere, exposing the Church’s wrongdoings and asking all the rulers to choose sides. Petra mentions getting one such letter. 

She knew full well that most of the Kingdom and Alliance would side with the Church (and keep fighting even after Rhea’s taken out) and that there would probably be calvacades of collateral damage,  after all the Church indoctrinates the ruling elites at the Academy and thanks to the phony “crests are divine gifts” story the nobles depend on the Church for legitimacy as rulers - but every lord who doesn’t support the Church is one whose army she doesn’t have to fight. 

When she declares war, she wants as many people as possible to either stand down or join her. Painting the church as incompetent (or, in her mind, “highlighting” their incompetence) to safeguard the precious heirs might have increased that number, if Byleth’s heroic intervention and subsequent appointment as a professor hadn’t overshadowed the whole thing. 

Also note that for this to cause a scandal, Dimitri and Claude don’t need to be dead. 

Essentially ordering a hit on herself is certainly in line with Edelgard’s other... as Claude put it, “gutsy moves” (Such as not evacuating Enbarr in GD knowing full well that Claude was not going to tear through the civilians, effectively restricting his movements) but looking at literally any other action she’s ever taken, she always goes out of her way to give people the option to surrender., consistently, all the time, all throughout her route (and even many of her engage quotes in the other routes - She offers to let Claude and Byleth go at Gronder, for example) 

She even gets this whole rant before you go to fight Claude about how she wishes people would just stand down peacefully instead of starting fights they can’t win. (which is perhaps why she tells Byleth to just go ahead and finish her once she realizes that she’s beaten in the other routes)

She’ll mow you down if you oppose her alright but first she’ll make sure that both you (and her allies all of whom get the chance to opt out) are all there because you want to be/ are actually choosing to oppose her. It’s not like her to just kill people without giving them an explanation or a choice. 

But smears and coverups? That’s another matter. There’s her whole secret identity/secret faustian Bargain thing, that time only Hubert, Byleth and Lysithea knew which fortress they’d be attacking, and how she pinned the Javelins of light on the church. That’s totally something she’d do, (which might’ve backfired on the credibility of her pamphlets; PR and negotiation are simply not her greatest strengths)

Which makes her less truthful than, say, Dimitri (I think the only time he ever remotely lied to an ally was to hide his investigations of Arundel from Dedue), but overall still not as deceptive as Claude or the Church , since these are all “tactical” lies for concrete short-term goals, nothing relating to their goals. 

Everyone on Edelgard’s side knows that she wants to abolish hereditary rule and create an equal society, even if that means making enemies; Claude tells no one what he’s planning until the very end even though the knights might not follow him if he’d told them that he means to diminish the Church’s influence on society, kinda hoping that everyone will come around on their own - He does this even with Byleth to an extent. 

(Though when it comes to the Church we must really differentiate between the Chuch as a whole established by Rhea and Seteth individually, who I’d rate as significantly more truthful than Edelgard since he only lies out of very justified self-protection and loyalty to Rhea (who is his sister, and about whose wrongdoings he only knows the tip of the iceberg), and even urges her to come clean in the end.)

Ferdinand finds it strange that they just so ran into a bunch of mercenaries and wonders if one of the house leaders knew that there were mercenaries. 

As before, that Dialogue is there for a reason. One of them probably did know. 

So who is it? Probably not Dimitri he can’t pokerface worth a damn. 

That leaves Edelgard or Claude. 

Edelgard might’ve know that there were mercenaries nearby and expected them to intervene if things went south. Or it could be Claude, and that’s why he ran off.

We know that he’s got great survival instincts, grew up in a warrior culture of sorts, and makes a habit of carefully observing his surroundings. Perhaps he just spotted a large amount of hoofprints or beaten muddy footpaths, and deduced that there might be help to be had in that direction.  

For now I’ll say that Claude is the most likely option. 

I mean it’s really like him to be a spanner in the works before he even known anything is up - also, he’s the one who ran. It’s because of HIM that the trio went that direction, not because of anything Edelgard did. 

Leave it to Claude to look like he’s bailing when he’s actually looking for help. (but also taking a bit of a risk since he didn’t know for certain that he would find help).  Also he says something like “Ain’t it great the gods of fortune sent us your way?” which is something Claude would only say ironically. 

Kostas didn’t know there would be knights

As far as he knew he was just supposed to “kill some noble pipsqueaks”

But actually, our trio wasn’t supposed to be alone - it was an exercise with Alois and bunch of knights, the elite knights of Seiros, mind you, who are renowed throughout the land. (as Edelgard herself tells you after the fight)

Meaning that Edelgard probably didn’t expect them to be beaten by a bunch of bandits.

Of course beating Claude and Dimitri themselves on their own might be another matter, at least if they’re outnumbered. Still, she must’ve known that Dimitri had seen actual war before and was aware of Claude’s suspicious arrival. 

Since she was with them one could think that she maybe lured them away from the group... except that the situation ultimately depended on at least two unpredictable factors:

- The guy who was supposed to get Byleth’s job bolted. He was supposed to be with the trio and presumably semi-competent. 

I’m surprised that he didn’t show up as an antagonist afterwards or something. We never find out anything about this guy or why he ran though it coulve been simple cowardice. 

Well, unless he too was a plant who meant to run off so Jeritza (who definitely was an imperial plant) could take his job - Didn’t someone say something about expecting Jeritza to get the job Byleth got? I think it was Felix. 

- Claude ran for it, and Dimitri chased after him

Now that’s something that Edelgard really couldn’t have predicted. It’s just Claude being Claude, and Dimitri being Dimitri and hence, heroically charging after him to help him out. 

If Claude hadn’t run off, the trio would have stayed with the knights who could presumably handle a bunch of bandits. If Dimitri hadn’t charged after him to save him, Claude’s plan would have worked without a hitch and he would have returned with allies - he was just one person, he’s the fastest/stealthiest and the least valuable target so he might’ve escaped by himself. 

But Dimitri and Claude running off? Let alone all three? That’s all the most valuable targets on a platter so the thieves went after them. Dimitri, bless his heart,  of course thought that Claude was acting as a decoy and counting on himto come after him.  (consider how he eventually really DOES expect Dimitri to bail him out at the end of Dimitri’s route)

I’d like to stress that Dimitri’s genuine, unpremeditated and unplanned action with no ulterior motive besides helping out proved to be as much of a spanner here as Claude’s clever foresight and chaotic action, and that neither of the other two had been expecting it.  

Dimitri and Claude explicitly tell us that the other two got separated from the group because they chased after Claude. (Again, if she just wanted to kill them, why not just stick with the knights and let them run to their deaths? She’d get a bonus alibi. Indeed she might’ve gone after them because she hadn’t meant for this to end lethally - though it’s fully possible that she just followed without thinking and didn’t intend to get separated)

Something to appreciate here is that while Edelgard is competent and had been planning this for a while, she’s still relatively young and inexperienced and she can only defy or constrain TWSITD so much until she gets the throne.

She has clearly been amassing allies of her own (she marches in with a bunch of relatively young, handpicked generals such as Randolph, Jeritza and Ladislava, and cuts a deal with some from the old regime such as Caspar’s and Linhardt’s dads... though how he goes out in the Church and Alliance routes suggests that Caspar’s dad had some redeeming qualities) , but even with all this and some tentative assent from Arundel and co. she still needed to make an unnanounced surprise visit to actually get her hands on the crown.

She’s not exactly in over her head, but she’s attempting to control a very volatile situation while essentially making a deal with a loose-canon devil she can just barely keep in check. 

A microcosm of what’s to come

The central tragedy of the game is that though the faction leaders were ultimately good people who had the same enemies, they wind up fighting each other before they get at the real bad guys because they’re all acting on information that other other’s don’t have and hence don’t know the other’s situation. 

In a way the introduction scene is kinda like a miniature version of that. 

Each of their individual plans/decisions might have worked, but not all three at once. 

If you think about it the way they would’ve died without Byleth’s intervention foreshadows each of their “bad” endings - Edelgard finds herself surrounded and outnumbered after he plans backfire and goes down fighting as no one else has a clue what she’s really doing, Dimitri rushes head-first into an unwinnable fight because he puts honor before reason,  misjudged someone’s intentions and doesn’t consider his own role, and Claude would’ve either bailed, or gotten himself killed when one of his plans didn’t quite turn out like he wanted. 

Too bad you can only pick one :( 

The other two stay that way. 

[spiltscribbles]

Stay For A While

Notes: I had a really really awful day and this was in my drafts, so here we go.

.-

Ronan’s never really noticed how pungent the scent  of hospitals are, the eerily clean surfaces that are masked with the smell of the  residue of the alcohol remover Blue uses to clean off her nails once she inevitably gets bored of which ever eccentric color she’d chosen for that week. (Ronan remembers a particularly amusing night at Monmouth when Henry had dared Ronan to drink the bottle whole, to which Blue— pixie sized and never putting up with any amount of shit— cuffed them both on the back of the heads scoldingly,  “You can’t drink it asshole, it’s like poisonous.”) 

Idly, Ronan thinks that he’d rather chug down ten complete bottles of that shit instead of sitting here in this utter hell hole of a waiting room, the smell of antiseptics clogging his nostrils and  glaringly florescent lights pounding down on him and a swarm of strangers trying to catch his eye for polite, if not a bit flirtatious, small talk. All just to wait for some fucking quack to tell him what half a dozen others said before. That Opal’s condition is to severe, to intensive, too unstructured. For this prick to tell Ronan that the technology just isn’t here yet and that they should just give it a rest already. 

God fucking damn it, Ronan hates this place, hates all the memories it evokes and the literal hopelessness that’s woven into it. He hates it even more that he fucking let Gansey talk him into meeting with this fucking prick of a doctor, getting his hopes up and making Ronan actually believe this Parrish douche is worth meeting with. 

“He’s a class act Ronan, truly,” Gansey had crowed in that uniquely Gansey way of his— all American charm and boyishly enthused smile. “Carruthers had sung his praises to us for so long that I simply insisted he came to Lucy’s christening a bit ago.”

That’s when Ronan had cocked a brow at his oldest friend, unconvinced that Helen of all people would allow any riffraff to puncture her picture perfect soiree for her picture perfect daughter to show off her picture perfect life.

“I bet princess wasn’t to happy with that impromptu invitation?”

“That was until she met the boy,” Gansey had corrected a bit too cheekily for Ronan’s liking, finger waggling in the space between them and it took all Ronan had not to bite it right off. “Carruthers was right on! Parrish is a magnificent specimen, and smart as a whip too!”

“What a dreamboat,” said Ronan, deadpanned and wondering if he’ll ever be over Gansey’s theatrics. (Most likely not on account of his loving the dip-shit like a fourth brother.) 

“You know he got his medical degree from Harvard? And his undergraduate at Princeton?”

“Gee Gansey, I’m swooning.”

“Well don’t fall in love with him quite yet,” Gansey had chuckled good naturedly with a patting to Ronan’s shoulder. “I reckon you’ll need him for another, much more important reason.” Ronan just furrowed his brows, not bothering to show any actual interest, and Gansey just flashed him a row of pearly whites in turn. “You’ll never believe his senior year thesis was about? Fibula Hemimelia.”

Ronan’s heart had lodged in his throat and he suddenly, foolishly, felt a surge of pure hope. So Gansey had set up everything. He had scheduled  the meeting for a day he knew Opal didn’t have school and Ronan didn’t have work,  he had called to send over Opal’s medical history, and on top of it all Gansey had convinced Ronan that continuing to try was better than to give up, and Ronan had agreed. That’s why he’s sitting in this hell hole now, glower securely set on his face and simultaneously watching Opal as she built and destroyed her lego towers, while staving off any too curious onlookers. 

Finally— mercifully— A kind faced nurse had called out, “Opal L,” and they were being dashed off behind the doors to get all the preliminary numbers before being lead into the quacks office. 

“Don’t break any of his shit,” Ronan tells  Opal as she made her way to the corner where some blocks and puzzles were set out, crushes and all. 

It’s another ten minutes of waiting until the door swings open and a low, molasses smooth voice greets them good morning while taking a seat in his desk. And well…. He’s all cutting cheekbones and piercing eyes and his hair’s the same color as the caramel cubes that Arora use to set out for guests back in the barns when Ronan was a kid. Ronan feels a instant pulsing of white hot hatred towards Gansey at this exact moment for not giving him the heads up that this Parrish fuck is only moonlighting as a doctor while actually having a career in modeling or some shit. 

“G’morning,” he holds out his all too attractive hand, and Ronan pretends his insides aren’t imploding while he gives it one quick, savage shake. “I’m Dr Parrish, and you must be Ronan Lynch?”

“Yes.”

“Wonderful,” if Parrish was put off by Ronan’s standoffish demeanor, he doesn’t show it, just continues on speaking in that crisp cadence that Ronan thinks all doctors have mastered in one way or the other, and goes back to flipping through the blindingly yellow binder in his grasp. He doesn’t bother with pleasantries, or puts on a facade with some overly cheerful smile and Ronan appreciates him for it, he’s gone through too many stilted conversations of a blank eyed doctor telling him that there’s no hope with an uncomfortably large smile threatening to split their faces in half. 

Ronan much prefers the touch of realism that Parrish is offering up.

“So is it just you for today or are we waiting for Mom?”

“Mom doesn’t exist,” Ronan says, words clipped— He reckons he’ll never not be irritated by that automatic assumption, even when it’s ridiculously pretty doctors making them. 

Parrish quirks a brow at him and Ronan relents, just slightly. 

“She was an orphan till I adopted her a few years ago, so it’s just me.”

“Oh, I see,” Ronan pretends his chest doesn’t totally contract at the sight of the other man’s small, thin lipped smile that makes his eyes shimmer a thousand splendid shades of blue and green and violet. “My apologies.”

“Whatever.”

“I’m turning seven in three weeks.” Opal, excited for a new audience, announces with a manic grin, her ash blonde hair tugged out it’s ponytail and her big brown eyes gazing at the doctor like he’s one of her dolls. 

“No way, really?” Parrish says, and if Ronan thought his small, privately impressed smile was charming, it’s nothing on the one he’s beaming at Opal with right now. It’s beautiful in its unadulterated sincerity, in the way it crinkles the corners of his wide eyes and brightens his countenance ten fold. Ronan inwardly thinks that the grin is one he doesn’t dole out that often, which is a real shame because Dr Parrish’s dimples should probably be declared an eighth wonder of the world by who ever the fuck decides on that sort of shit. 

“You must be Opal.”

“Are you my new doctor?” She asks, abrasive if it weren’t coupled with her toothy smile.

“Yes, I think I am, if you’ll have me?”

“Cool,” Opal marvels. “Will you actually help me?”

There’s an instant tautness to the air that Opal, in all her childhood obliviousness, doesn’t notice, but Parrish doesn’t let it linger. 

“I certainly hope so.”

Adequately convinced, Opal pivots around and returns to her puzzle. 

The next hour is composed of Ronan answering questions he’s been asked a million other times, (“Yes, it’s the left leg. Yes, the bone is completely missing and her foot’s heel is ruptured as well. Yes I know that some doctors have suggested removing the leg completely and replacing it with a  prosthetic, but i already told you that they’re all fucking stupid and lazy, and I already said I want to exhaust all options until I consider it.”)

“I hope we don’t have to get to that point,” Parrish says like an oath and Ronan knows it in his bones that Parrish— Adam according to the admittedly impressive array of degrees adorned on his wall, can’t promise anything to him or Opal in so many words, but it doesn’t stop him from believing that Adam could actually do what the others couldn’t. 

For the  next quarter of an hour Adam examines Opal’s leg and takes notes in a scrawl Ronan doubts anyone could ever actually transcribe, until he’s seemingly satisfied.

They make an appointment for next Tuesday, giving Parrish enough time to examine all the information he’s gathered, and can talk to Ronan about the options on the table for Opal. 

“Alright, see you then doc.”

“Adam. You can just call me Adam.”

Ronan just snorts, derisive, before carting Opal out of the room. 

“You think he’s cute,” she preens.

“Shut your trap,” Ronan hisses. THat doesn’t stop Opal singing some ridiculous nursery rhymes about trees and kissing and babies all the way home.

.

-

Next time they meet is right after Ronan drops Opal off to school, and Adam looks just as competent and put together as the last time. He explains each possibility with no inflection, just straight facts for Ronan to take in and comprehend however he’d like.

“So either way it’s surgery,” Ronan bristles. 

“If you want to avoid the prosthetic, yes. You can either continue with the latter which would slow down the growth of her right leg so that the left could catch up, or we can conduct several procedures in the next few years adding to the length of the left to match that of the right.”

“That sounds like mumbo jumbo shit to me,” Ronan bites out, trying his best not to sound as frustrated and frightened as he feels. Though the way Adam’s ordinarily stoic looking expression softens ever so slightly, tells Ronan that he’s doing a pretty shit job at it.

“I know it’s a difficult decision, especially when it’s for your kid,” Adam’s voice ripples right then but it immediately goes back to it’s typical, low timbre. Ronan doesn’t probe. “But I assure you that which ever decision you make it’ll be the right one.”

“How? How do you know that?” Ronan asks, challenging.

“Opal’s young, and healthy. She’s still growing, both procedures are optimal when that’s still a major factor. And besides, it’s clear that you love her. You know what’s best for her because you’ll do your research.”

There’s a different stillness to the air than there was last week, but Ronan doesn’t think it’s any less charged. 

“When do you need an answer?”

“As soon as possible. We want to make sure we can get the best feasible results.”

“Fine.” Ronan gets up to leave but is stopped by Adam calling after him.

“I’m always a resource if you need it.”

Ronan doesn’t reply, just purses his lips before snatching the card Adam holds out for him and swaggers out with a thousand different thoughts swarming in his head, ones about Opal. About her leg. About the healing process, the tole  it’d have on her. How she’s so small and delicate already, About Dr Adam Parrish and his pretty eyes.

Ronan realizes about half way to work that Adam had written his personal cell number on the back, and pretends that his cheeks aren’t blazing red, chides at himself that he’s only Opal’s doctor. That’s all.

It’s for Opal, that’s it.

.- 

“I like Dr Parrish.”

Ronan starts at the non sequitur, eyeing Opal like she’s grown a second head right here in the middle of Nino’s while they wait for their pizzas to take to Gansey’s place. After weeks of paper work and consultations and check ups, Opal’s first official surgery would be taking place tomorrow afternoon and they all agreed it calls for celebration. 

“Okay… That was random.” 

“Nah-uh,” she peevishly sniffs, lips twisted in irritation— Ronan doesn’t give a fuck about DNA because that’s straight out of his playbook. “Look!” 

He follows her insistent finger pointing onto the distance through the window, just making out the sight of none other than Adam fucking Parrish strolling down the street, dying afternoon light dancing golden in his hair and touching the tops of his cheekbones… It’s all very cinematic if Ronan’s being at all honest.

“Imma say hi,” Opal announces, and before Ronan can tell her to sit her ass down she’s dashing off through the doors and stopping him in his tracks. 

“Damn it,” Ronan curses under his breath before saddling up behind her. 

“Dr Parrish!”

Jolting back, Adam scans his surroundings before finally casting his gaze down to find pipe sized Opal smiling up at him, and by rote, he returns the expression.

“Opal!”

“Daddy didn’t believe me but I saw you all the way from inside,” she tells him pridefully,  and Ronan only roles his eyes heavenwards. 

“Good eye,” Adam says, crouching down so that they’re level. 

“What are you doing at Nino’s?” 

“I reckon I’m doing the same thing as you and your pops here.”

“Getting dinner and teasing Aunty Blue for working here when she was little?”

Adam cuts a glance at Ronan, silent question of “What the fuck,” painted all over his features. 

“It’s done lovingly.” He says in a monotone and no. Ronan absolutely does not feel the flutterings of butterflies swarming down deep at Adam’s bemused laughter.

“You should come to Uncle Gansey’s house!” Opal crows. “He’s throwing a party for me cuz of my op-op-peratoin tomorrow!”

“Operation,” Ronan softly corrects.

“Oh yeah that!” Opal squawks.

“That’s really cool Opal, I’m glad that they’re doing that for ya.” Adam says, utterly sincere.

“So you’ll come!”

“Yeah doc, come and get boozed up before the surgery,” Ronan says, only partially teasing. 

“Sorry Opal darling,” Adam says, lips pouting. “I promised an old friend that I’d actually eat out with them, and I seriously doubt that your Dad or Uncle or whom ever would appreciate me crashing in on your family time.”

Opal looks grief-stricken and Ronan privately thinks he feels the same.

“My birthday then!” Opal proclaims.

“It’s after the surgery and it’s not until next week and could you come please!”

“Ah,” Adam’s eyes surreptitiously flutter over to Ronan, seeking permission.

“There could never be enough guests,” he says, totally flat.

“Alrighty then, I’d be honored to come Opal.”

“Yay!” She tackles into Adam for a quick embrace and then leaps into Ronan’s arms over the excitement.

“Oh Parrish, just heads up, the themes Disney Princesses, and the invitations explicitly dictate that everyone dresses up.”

Adam glares nastily at Ronan but then just tosses Opal a thumbs up, Ronan translates it for the bird he’d rather be tossing him.

.-

Ronan admits that he regrets everything the moment Adam fucking Parrish strolls into his house wearing a shit eating grin, and a full on Prince Philip costume— tights and all.

Everything in the procedure went as wonderfully as anyone could’ve hoped, so Opal— dawning a sparkling pink princess dress— promenaded through the party in the Barns with a huge smile on her face and a sharpie pen so that all her guests would sign her cast, a beaming Blue pushing her along in the tiny wheelchair the hospital provided. But even with how precious she looks, and the excited thrumming in the air, all Ronan could focus on is fucking god damn Adam Parrish. 

“Lynch,” he says in greeting, swinging around a large, wrapped box. Ronan jutted his chin to the table carrying the rest of the gifts and Adam dropped it off before returning to his side.

“Lovely place you got here.”

“If that was your attempt at small talk, you’re shit at it.” Is how Ronan chooses to reply. 

Something warm and splendid coils somewhere deep in  Ronan’s gut at the sound of Adam’s miraculous peals of laughter.

“You’re such a shit.”

Ronan feels charged by that one comment.

“Oh, so Doc’s got a little bite all of a sudden?”

“Always have,” Adam corrects in that detached, ever amused way of his. “Only thing was that you were my client, but everything with Opal went better than expected, so now I can call you out for being a complete prick whenever I please.”

“So you still expect to see me outside of the allotted appointments for my daughter?” Ronan snarks, snide and excited.

Adam just gives him a one armed shrug before leaning close to Ronan’s ear— hot breath skirting against his skin. “You aren’t slick, but my ass appreciates your intense focus.”

At that, Adam swivels around on his heals to grab a drink and to say hello to Opal, and Ronan knows he’s fucked.

***

Five years later, when they’ve got matching bands of gold and Adam’s slumped on the sofa with Ronan’s head propped on his lap— the pair of them  watching over Opal tending to her new baby brother— Ronan thinks to when Gansey warned that he shouldn’t fall in love with Adam.

Ronan laughs and Adam flicks him on the temple for being such a freak.

[roman-writing]

two, across (7/8)

Fandom: Fire Emblem Three Houses

Pairing: Hilda Valentine Goneril / Lysithea von Ordelia

Rating: T

Wordcount: 5,181

Summary: Lysithea can barely keep afloat under the workload of giving undergrad lectures and finishing off her PhD thesis. Meanwhile Dr. Hilda V. Goneril is somehow both the laziest person as well as the most successful young professor she has ever known. It’s absolutely aggravating.

Author’s Note: Please be aware that the previous chapter has adult content, but that this chapter does not. 

Read it here on AO3 or read it below the cut

Spring has officially arrived. The mornings still coat the pavement in frost, but it is quick to melt. Usually Lysithea would need to pick her way with care across the slick sidewalk on her way to the train station. It is easier when walking with Hilda, who somehow never loses her footing despite the fact that she wears nothing but the most outrageous heels.

Lysithea will never understand why Hilda bothers with heels, anyway. It’s not like she needs the extra height.

Most importantly, it is now warm enough that Hilda has insisted on getting everything she drinks in iced format. She cannot abide weather that is too hot or too cold, and so she pretends that it is neither one way nor the other by ordering food and beverages that do not suit. While Hilda starts ordering iced coffees with vibrantly coloured straws, Lysithea sticks to her mochas with extra marshmallows.

What surprises Lysithea most about the last month is how little has actually changed. Somehow she had expected a romantic relationship to involve far more change, but her routine has remained relatively intact. Indeed, Hilda has managed to incorporate herself as seamlessly into Lysithea's life as she had when they first started hanging out.

Perhaps that’s just Hilda. Perhaps other people would have required more effort. But Hilda is easy to love.

Hilda lets Lysithea hold onto the crook of her arm as they walk to work. Lysithea feels her feet slip beneath her, and has to grip Hilda's arm tighter. Her free hand holds her usual coffee. She is lucky to not lose a marshmallow from the lid by the time they make it inside the University building. It is a relief to finally ride the elevator up to the seventh floor.

"As much as I hate summer, I can't wait for spring to finally be over," Lysithea grumps as they step out of the elevator.

"So I can finally take you swimsuit shopping?" Hilda asks.

Lysithea glares as she bends down to pick up the newspaper from the floor. "No."

"No to the reason? Or no to swimsuit shopping entirely?"

Pursing her lips, Lysithea says, "Only if I get veto rights. I don't want you to dress me in some horrible bikini."

"How could you be dating me for nearly six months, and still think so poorly of my tastes?"

"We've only been dating for one month."

"Not true. I'm counting all those other months before we boned as dating, because we were literally dating. Just without sex."

Lysithea stops outside her office door. "I see the delivery boy came early this morning."

One of Edelgard's care packages is waiting outside her office. It's large enough that it reaches almost to her knees, and she wouldn't be able to wrap her arms around it if she tried.

"Could you, please -?"

Hilda is already handing over her coffee. "I'm on it."

Lysithea quickly unlocks her office door and opens it before taking the iced coffee from Hilda. "Thank you."

"Brawn is one of the many many benefits I can provide you."

"I already said 'thank you.'"

"Yeah, and I will also accept a kiss as payment."

With ease, Hilda picks up the heavy package. She carts it inside, and sets it down gently on a cleared corner of Lysithea's desk. Then she turns to Lysithea and leans down slightly, pointing at her own cheek and turning her face aside.

Faking a much put upon sigh, Lysithea puts down her mocha and kisses Hilda’s cheek. As Hilda starts to straighten however, Lysithea puts a hand on the back of her neck and tugs her down for a proper kiss. It tastes of coffee and marshmallows.

“I should do favours for you more often,” Hilda says when she straightens with a grin.

Lysithea hands back her coffee. “And here I thought you’d be the one trying to get me to do everything for you.”

“You’re still buying my coffee every morning, aren’t you?” Hilda waggles her iced coffee, and drops into the spare seat.

“Only because your rental prices are very competitive.”

Opening up one of her desk drawers, Lysithea pulls out a pair of scissors. While she is cutting through the liberal amounts of tape sealing the package, Hilda starts on the crossword. She slurps at her iced coffee and fills in the first few easy clues. Lysithea sits and pulls the now open box towards both her and Hilda.

The first thing that catches her attention is that there are two letters at the top of the package, rather than the usual one. The first letter is what she has come to expect from Edelgard over the years. A brief handwritten note listing the box’s contents, and expressing her warmest affection.

Lysithea opens up the second letter, and scans the first line.

'Lysithea, if you are reading this, please stop and give the letter to Hilda.'

Blinking in surprise, Lysithea stops reading. She holds the letter across the table. "It's for you."

With a curious hum around the straw, Hilda takes the letter. She sits back in her chair, her eyes moving rapidly across the page until she's finished. Lysithea studies the next crossword clue and pretends to not be waiting for Hilda to tell her the letter's contents.

"What's it say?" Lysithea asks, when Hilda is not so forthcoming.

Hilda folds up the letter. She tucks it away into the dark chasm of her purse, where all things inevitably fade into death and obscurity. "She said she included something in here for me."

Lysithea’s eyes widen. "Did she really?"

They look at the box. Then abruptly both she and Hilda start pawing through its contents for whatever it is that Edelgard packed. When they find the right bag - ribbon-wrapt and pale grey, with a tag bearing Hilda’s name in fine calligraphy - Hilda is positively trembling with excitement.

"Ohhhh, she didn't!" Hilda unties the ribbon, and opens the bag to reveal a smaller case in the same colour. She flicks that case open, and pulls out a pair of sunglasses.

At first glance they look identical to the ones Hilda prefers to wear most days. Upon closer inspection however, they are far far nicer. Their frames are - Lysithea presumes - made of actual gold, and with a more geometric shape. Despite the fact that they are inside, Hilda puts them on immediately, and her smile is beaming. The lenses are also pink, but lighter, so that Lysithea can see more of her eyes.

"Friendship officially accepted," Hilda says, picking up her drink and sucking at the straw in self-satisfaction.

"That’s all it takes, is it? Bribery?"

Hilda adjusts the sunglasses on her nose. They match her hair and nails to perfection. "It certainly doesn't hurt."

Lysithea snorts in amusement. “You’re so easily bought.”

“Um? Excuse you. These babies cost five hundred dollars.” Hilda taps the frames with one finger.

“Five hundred dollars?” Lysithea repeats, incredulous. "So, you're telling me that I could've befriended you faster by giving you stupidly expensive gifts?"

Hilda makes a contemplative noise around the straw. "Maybe. But your method was very effective, to be honest."

Still digging through the care package for her favourite biscuits to go with her coffee, Lysithea scrunches up her nose. "You mean my method of griping over a communal newspaper? That inevitably made you want to be my friend?

"Nah. It meant I wanted to jump your bones."

"Just how long were you wanting to do that for?"

"Oh, like, ages." Hilda crosses her legs, so that their ankles brush beneath the table. Lysithea does not pull her foot away. “I thought you told her we were dating?”

“I did. Pretty much the moment that weekend was over.”

“Huh.”

“Why?” Lysithea finds the biscuits and triumphantly starts to open one up to eat. When she leans back in her seat, it means that Hilda’s ankle brushes midway up her calf now.

“Oh, you know.” Hilda waves her drink a little.

“Obviously I don’t know, since I’m asking.”

“She’s very protective of you.”

“Ah. Yes.” Lysithea takes a bite of the outrageously expensive and delicious cookie, chewing thoughtfully. “She can be a bit over the top sometimes.”

Hilda hums a note in the back of her throat. Her eyes peer at Lysithea through the new frames of her pink sunglasses, as piercing as ever. They may have been dating for a month now - or over a month, depending on who asks - but Hilda still would occasionally wear an expression that Lysithea could not read.

And then, out of nowhere, Hilda asks, “Was Edelgard the person you had sex with before?”

Lysithea almost chokes on her biscuit. “What? No!”

"No?" Hilda holds up her thumb and forefinger very close together. She closes one eye and squints. "Not even a little?"

Lysithea can feel the rush of heat to her cheeks. "Well, we -" she clears her throat. "We kissed. Only the once."

It had in fact been the first time Lysithea had ever kissed someone. It had happened when they had been celebrating Lysithea getting into University at the age of sixteen. To them, it had marked a pivotal moment where they could both finally live a life that existed outside of hospitals. They had shared a hospital bed like they used to as kids. They had eaten all the food they were never allowed. They had to hide the bags and wrappers from nurses that stalked down the hallways past their door.

Edelgard had kissed her while they had been stifling their giggles beneath the sheets. It had been painfully sweet, tasting of all the sugary processed foods they had eaten. When they parted, Edelgard had started to say something, but stopped herself. Lysithea never did find out what it was.

And the next day, Lysithea had left on a plane for university. From that point on, she and Edelgard had not spent more than a week in the same city. Their lives were both too busy, diverging.

"It was so long ago," Lysithea adds, shaking her head as if to rid herself of the memory. "Almost ten years. Whatever romantic feelings Edelgard may have had for me are long gone by now. Surely."

Hilda is watching her with an indulgent smile around the straw of her drink. "If you say so."

"Why? Are you jealous?" Lysithea needles in return, expecting Hilda to scoff.

If anything, Hilda seems positively gleeful at the accusation. "Not at all! In fact, you're welcome to invite her around to our place next time she's in town. I’m sure the bed is big enough for three."

This time, Lysithea does in fact choke. She inhales a crumb of biscuit, and it takes her a while to stop coughing. "Please tell me you're joking," she wheezes.

Hilda shrugs. "Listen, I'm into whatever makes you happy. So long as you talk to me about it first, and everyone agrees, then that's fine with me."

"I don't -!" Lysithea sets the biscuit firmly on the table, and says in an overly calm tone. "Thank you, but that won't be necessary. You're enough of a handful as it is."

"Aww... that's the second most romantic thing you've ever said to me." Hilda taps at the newspaper. “Anyway, what’s another word for ‘COMPLEX’? Starts with an ‘L’ and has a ‘B’ in it.”

“How many letters?”

“Twelve.”

“LABYRINTHINE.”

“Perfect.” Hilda writes in the clue. “Have you still not heard from Rhea yet?”

“Not yet,” Lysithea sighs. She eats the last of the biscuit, then pushes the box away, and leans her elbows on the desk. Scooting closer to Hilda, she peers down at the crossword. “It’s only been - what? Two months? My Masters thesis took longer to grade.”

“Nah. Should be any day now. I can feel it in my bones.”

Lysithea wishes she had Hilda’s seemingly boundless confidence.

--

Another month passes. The mornings are no longer brisk. Lysithea starts to leave her cardigans at home, while Hilda starts to wear clothing that is borderline inappropriate. Lysithea spies Judith squinting at Hilda as they walk by the staff coffee room one morning, as if she were debating if Hilda should be allowed to wear that top to work.

Hilda pulls down her sunglasses and winks as they pass. Without comment, Judith scowls and returns to the sudoku they had left for her in the newspaper. Lysithea knows for a fact that Hilda carefully measures out the exact limits of the dress code with a little ruler just for that reason.

"You're playing with fire there," Lysithea murmurs when they reach the elevators.

Hilda jostles Lysithea's elbow with her own. "Says the one who tried to trick me into taking the sudoku instead of the crossword. Did you think I didn't know Judith would get mad?"

"If your track record is anything to go by, that just means you would've been dating her instead of me."

At that, Hilda's eyes widen behind her pink-tinted lenses. "Oh, shit," she breathes. "You're so right."

Lysithea laughs under her breath. The elevator doors open, and they step inside to go to their respective lecture halls.

More than once, Lysithea considers approaching Judith to ask how her thesis examination is going, even though she knows that Judith - as the Head of the department - has very little to do with the process. Lysithea and Hanneman are both excluded from talking to the examiners at any point, lest the entire thing be declared null and void by the university.

The only other option would be to approach Rhea. To be honest, Lysithea would rather have her liver be eaten by a wild animal. A meeting with Rhea feels about the same.

So, she waits. She teaches her classes. She spends time with Hilda. She texts Edelgard. She has the time to hang out with her old flatmates, now that she is no longer constantly working on completing her thesis. But always the lingering notion scratches at the dark spaces of her mind - that she might have failed. That something has gone wrong. That this shouldn't be taking so long.

It happens on a lazy Saturday morning. Lysithea is seated in bed. The sheets are pulled up around her waist. Her knees are bent, and she rests the folded newspaper on her thighs. Hilda is snoozing beside her, using Lysithea’s arm as a pillow so that she can also see the crossword puzzle.

"What's another word for ‘CONTENT’ that starts with a ‘V’?”

“‘SATISFIED’,” Hilda mumbles against Lysithea’s arm.

Lysithea rolls her eyes. “Yes, because ‘SATISFIED’ starts with a ‘V’.”

“Well, maybe your four down is wrong. You ever think of that?”

Lysithea chews thoughtfully at the cap of the pen. The answer occurs to her like a spark atop tinders. “It’s ‘VOLUME.’”

“I still like my answer better.”

“That’s because you’re still asleep,” Lysithea writes in the answer.

“Weekends,” Hida is adamant, “are for sleeping.”

Lysithea’s phone pings on the windowsill with an email notification.

“C’mon,” Hilda groans as Lysithea sets down the pen to pick up her phone. “I thought we agreed: no work on Saturdays.”

“I know. I know,” Lysithea says, even as she unlocks her phone to glance at who sent her the email.

It may have been from Edelgard. Oftentimes, Edelgard would send emails from her company account, and simply click on the first of Lysithea’s addresses that popped up, rather than select the secondary personal account.  

The email application glows white. There are a number of unread messages, but she glances at the most recent one. Her eyes widen. She sits up very straight, which means that Hilda’s head drops suddenly to the bed.

“Yo! What gives?” Hilda mumbles grumpily into her pillow.

Lysithea hasn’t clicked on the email yet. “It’s from Rhea.”

That gets Hilda’s attention. Her head and shoulders lurch upright. She blinks blearily, the light streaming through the windows and painting her naked torso in bright strips. Her hair is a mess. She runs a hand through it as she straightens into a seated position beside Lysithea.

“Go on, then,” Hilda urges her. “Open it.”

Lysithea’s thumb trembles. She holds her breath, and presses the email open.

‘Dear Miss Ordelia,

The Dean’s Office for the Faculty of Biological Sciences and Physical Sciences is pleased to confirm that your doctoral degree has been graded and will be awarded, with a Merit pass for the thesis.

You are now required to lodge one hardbound copy and one electronic copy of your thesis with the main library, as specified by university regulations. As you have applied to attend graduation at the end of this term, this must be done in two weeks time by the latest.

Please find attached copies of the examiners’ reports.

Sincerely,

Rhea, President of the University for Biology and Medicine, Dean, Division of Biological Sciences and Physical Sciences, PhD’

Lysithea stares. Her mouth hangs open in shock. "I've passed."

"With Merit," Hilda says. "And you know what that means. No revisions whatsoever. Just spank and bank."

"Spank and bank," Lysithea repeats, as if in awe.

Hilda snickers at her, but she barely registers it. She's too swept up in the idea that all she has to do now is send her thesis off for printing, fill out a few forms, and then she's done.

“You knooow,” Hilda drawls, pointing at the screen. “She called you ‘Miss’ Ordelia, when really she should’ve called you ‘Doctor’ Ordelia.”

Even the sound of the title - ‘Doctor Ordelia’ feels so surreal - sends a thrill of pleasure shivering down Lysithea’s spine. Still, she sets down her phone and says, “Technically that’s not true. I don’t graduate for another month and a half.”

“Screw that! The literal second I received the news of my thesis results, I refused to answer my brother unless he called me ‘Doctor Goneril’ for a whole month. He was so mad. You should totally make everyone call you ‘Doctor Ordelia’ now. I’ll be the first to start.”

The sound of ‘Doctor Ordelia’ has not lost its magic. Lysithea can feel her face flushing at being referred to as such three times now in less than five minutes.

Hilda notices.

A slow smile spreads across Hilda’s face. “Oooh?” She waggles her finger. “I saw that.”

“Saw what?” Lysithea says.

Gently, Hilda pokes at Lysithea’s still burning cheek. “That. You like being called Doctor.”

“Well, of course I like it. I worked very hard for it.”

“No, I mean - you really like it.” With a grin, Hilda runs her finger down Lysithea’s throat. She traces the neckline of her shirt, pulling on the fabric so that she can peer down Lysithea's pajama top to where she's wearing nothing beneath. “You want to roleplay?”

"You also have a doctorate," Lysithea reminds her, but she doesn’t push Hilda’s hand away.

"Thank you, Captain Obvious, but also please consider: I don't get off on people calling me 'doctor'. You, on the other hand -" Hilda trails off suggestively.

"That's absurd! I don't -! That’s -!" Lysithea goes red, and splutters. “And you and I both know we’re not those kinds of doctors!”

“Oh, Doctor Ordelia,” Hilda says in an overly breathy voice, and drapes herself across Lysithea on the bed. “I’m sooo sick! I need you to perform a very thorough check up STAT.”

Lysithea pushes at Hilda without actually meaning to dislodge her. “I diagnose you with ‘horny and annoying.’”

“And only you can give me the cure, Doctor Ordelia!!”

“You are the worst. The absolute worst. Why do I love you?”

Hilda shrugs, smiling up at her from where she sprawled across Lysithea's lap. "You have exquisite taste.”

A warmth floods Lysithea’s chest, pooling in her stomach. She overflows with it. At first it feels like it stems from the thesis results - months and months and months of pent up anxiety clawing at her gut suddenly released. But then Hilda winks, and the feeling is near overwhelming.

Lysithea leans down to kiss her. "I suppose I do."

--

None of Lysithea's family attend the graduation ceremony. This does not surprise her. They had not attended any of her other graduation ceremonies in the past. Indeed, the last ceremony she could recall them attending was an embittered stamping of emancipation papers at the local courthouse. And that had not been a 'ceremony' so much as a 'mutual torture session.'

Edelgard rings up to relay her regrets that she is overseas on business, and cannot be there to celebrate with her and Hilda. She sounds distressed over the phone - there is far more background noise than usual on her call - and Lysithea has to assure her multiple times that they can celebrate some other time.

The hall is packed with people on the day. Undergrads and grad students alike line up in their ground floor seats before the stage, while the parents fill all the auditorium seats behind them in great wings. As a member of the faculty, Lysithea sits on the stage with the other academic staff. From her vantage point, she can see everyone in the crowd.

Spotlights streak down from the ceiling; they are blindingly bright. She tries to focus on Seteth, who is acting as the master of ceremonies at the podium.

"Can't believe I'm not allowed to wear my sunglasses to this shindig," Hilda grumbles. She is seated directly to Lysithea's right, while Hanneman and Judith are to Lysithea's left.

"You could've stayed at home today," Lysithea reminds her. "None of your students are graduating."

"And let you graduate without someone taking an obnoxious amount of pictures? What do you take me for? A buffoon??"

Even as she says it, Hilda clutches her phone as though clutching at pearls strung round her neck. To drive her point home, she turns the phone horizontally and snaps a picture of Lysithea.

Lysithea glowers.

Hilda continues taking pictures. "Oh, nice. Just like that. The scowl really captures your glittering personality."

Judith and Hanneman are starting to notice that Hilda is - predictably - starting a scene while Seteth welcomes everyone to the ceremony. Judith shoots them a look of disapproval. Lysithea can feel her cheeks heating up.

"Is now really the appropriate time for this?" Lysithea whispers furiously.

"Just you wait until you're up there getting capped."

"Oh, dear god."

Seteth's cool-toned words issue through the microphone, while Lysithea and Hilda engage in a wrestling match over the phone. They quiet down in their seats only when the undergrads start to be called up to collect diplomas. The names are read out in alphabetical order. Rhea stands to Seteth's side, handing over each degree and shaking every hand.

It takes ten minutes to get to the 'B's. Hilda sinks lower in her seat with a dramatic sigh. "We're going to be here until the heat death of the universe."

Nudging Hilda's elbow with her own, Lysithea points to another faculty member a few rows behind them. "Don't be obvious, but isn't that the new department head of the Divinity School? I thought they were on some sort of Sabbatical."

Hilda turns completely around in her seat to stare in the most overt way possible. "Oh, you mean Byleth Eisner? I'd heard they took a vow of silence or something."

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“I’m serious. Have you ever heard them talk?”

Lysithea opens her mouth to respond, but pauses. “Well,” she admits. “No.”

Hilda gestures to her and then to Byleth as if that proves her point.

“Oh, shut up.”

Byleth notices them, and waves blankly in their direction. Hilda waves back, but Lysithea drags her hand down and turns them around to face the audience.

Hilda takes the opportunity to lace their fingers together. She pulls Lysithea's hand into her lap. Lysithea does not complain in the slightest.

By the time Seteth drones through the undergraduates and reaches the grad students, Hilda is bored out of her mind. She toys with Lysithea's fingers in her lap. She whips out her phone and challenges Lysithea to a game of chess, despite muttering adamantly that chess is a game for nerds and losers.

Half an hour later, the two of them are engrossed in a battle of wits and wills. Neither seems the obvious victor, and Lysithea is all but sweating beneath her graduation gown.

Hilda takes a black knight piece, and smirks. "You can always just give up, you know."

"Over my dead body."

When Lysithea does not immediately make a move, Hilda's smile turns smug. "Want to spice things up with a bet?"

Lysithea lifts her eyebrows, but does not look up from the board. "Oh?"

"Well, I figured we would be celebrating later this evening. Because reasons. So how about -?"

"You want to wager for sexual favours," Lysithea finishes for her.

Hilda's eyes gleam wickedly in the harsh light slanting across the stage. "How'd you guess?"

"Because you're so obvious." Even so, Lysithea sticks out her hand. They are hunched behind a few other faculty members, hiding Hilda's phone from view. "Fine. You're on."

The moment Hilda seizes Lysithea's hand to seal the deal, Lysithea moves her queen across the screen to take the last remaining white bishop. Slowly, satisfyingly, Hilda's grin slides from her face in realisation.

"Checkmate."

"Why, you sneaky little -"

"And now for our doctoral students," Seteth's voice says through the microphone.

Hearing that, Lysithea nearly jumps out of her skin. She sits bolt upright, but is still too short to be seen over the person sitting in front of her. Adjusting the gold and white hood around her shoulders, she listens carefully for her name to be called.

There are only four doctoral students graduating today, and Lysithea is last in the alphabet. When Seteth says her name and her thesis title, her ears are abuzz.

She rises to her feet. The lights flood her vision. It is difficult to see, and she has to lift the gown away from her feet to keep from tripping. It feels like walking through a dream, like the ground will yawn open beneath her feet and she will fall awake in her own bed. She barely even registers Hilda taking pictures all the while.

At the head of the stage, Rhea towers all in white, wearing an elaborate gold and red hood, and a scarlet cap. In her hands, she holds an identical cap. It is different to the graduate and undergraduate caps; it is squashy and velvet, and the gold tassel circles all around the brim.

Even now, Rhea's smile is cold and distant as a star. She refrains from showing any teeth. Lysithea does not need to duck for Rhea to place the cap atop her head. It feels like it will immediately slip to the floor. Somehow, miraculously it stays put.

Rhea hands over the diploma in one hand, and reaches out to clasp Lysithea's hand with the other. "Congratulations, Doctor Ordelia."

Lysithea flushes at the title, and Rhea's smile broadens almost imperceptibly. It is the first time anyone except Hilda has called her that. With a final chilly squeeze of her hand, Rhea lets her go.

Seteth nods at Lysithea as she passes on the way back to her seat. The entire row of the biological sciences department waits her her return - Hanneman flashing her a thumbs up - but only Hilda is standing at the end of the row.

Diploma in hand, Lysithea allows herself to be wrapped up in a warm congratulatory hug. Hilda kisses her cheek and murmurs for her ear alone, “Well done.”

The rest of the ceremony passes in a blur. Lysithea vaguely remembers reading and rereading every line of her diploma as if trying to decipher a foreign language. The diploma is gilded in enough gold to feed a starving village. She traces every line with her fingertips.

Finally, it is over. The faculty are permitted to leave first, filing out of two separate doors in the wings. The students soon follow, pouring out onto the street until the pavement is awash with people.

Hilda leads her out, jostling her way further down the street in an attempt to find someplace less crowded. In her four inch heels and her far more colourful overseas graduation robes, she would be impossible for Lysithea to lose even of they weren't holding hands.

"Lysithea!"

Glancing around in confusion at the sound of her name, Lysithea tugs at Hilda's hand to get to her to stop.

There, striding through the crowd, is a very frazzled looking Edelgard. Hubert looms at strangers to get them to move, parting the mass of people like a shark through a shoal of fish. Edelgard has a folded up newspaper beneath her arm, and dark rings beneath her eyes.

“Sorry I’m late," Edelgard says when she manages to reach them, looking far more harried than her usual poise. "I rescheduled a meeting to be here, but the jet needed to refuel.”

Lysithea barely hears the words. She rushes forward and envelops Edelgard in a tight hug that makes her stagger back a step. It also knocks Lysithea's squashy cap loose. Hilda catches it by the tassel, and places it back on Lysithea's head.

Edelgard looks at Hilda over Lysithea's shoulder. "Do you have the pictures?"

With a jaunty wave of her phone, Hilda says, "So so many pictures."

"Thank you."

Pulling back from the hug slightly, Lysithea frowns at Edelgard. "Wait a second. All those pictures are your fault?"

Edelgard looks guilty. "Well, I was going to ask, but Hilda offered, and -"

“Alright, you two.” Hilda interrupts. She drapes an arm around each of them, and begins steering them down the street. “I’m starving, I look cute, and I believe Hubert has booked us in somewhere nice and fancy for me to show off my new outfit. So, let's not waste any time. I’m assuming everyone here is also on the ‘no drinking' bandwagon?”

“I think for today I’ll make an exception,” Edelgard shoots Hilda a grateful glance. Then, noticing Lysithea watching them, she smiles at Lysithea from beneath Hilda’s arm. “Just one drink, though.”

Lysithea nods towards the paper still held in Edelgard’s hand. “Anything important in the news?"

For a moment, Edelgard looks in confusion down at the paper. Then she shakes her head, and hands it to Lysithea. “Someone told me you hate having to fight over the crossword in the shared staffroom newspaper, so I bought you a lifetime subscription.”

Lysithea takes the paper in the same hand that holds her diploma. The front page is the same as ever. The world is falling apart, political crises cropping up everywhere, precarious markets teetering on the edge of another GFC. And yet, the crossword puzzle is blank and waiting, and Lysithea knows that Hilda always keeps a spare pen in her bag.

--

Notes:

1) if this feels finished it's because chapter 8 is going to be an epilogue from Hilda's POV. Stay tuned.

2) This story isn’t officially an ot3 or anything. I just like the idea of Edelgard being Lysithea’s first love in this AU. The two of them remain friends, and ultimately Lys does end up solely with Hilda.

That being said…....I’m always down with the idea that Lysithea has TWO hands...

[stvrshinc]

  °✧｡× :  (  zendaya coleman + non-binary +  they/them )  ───  welcome to roselake village, lydia beckett !  oh, well, i suppose you’ve been here for three months, so perhaps you already know your way around the town. well, you are the twenty-two year old scientist, though, right ? the harvest sprites told me about you ! they said you do not believe in the harvest goddess. oh, my. well, that explains why they also said you’re quite principled and decisive, but can also be a bit stubborn and close-minded. either way, you should be a wonderful addition to our island ! i guess i’ll leave you to it now, but if i need you, i suppose i’ll just look for you at de la lune, yeah ? we hope you love it here as much as we do ! oh, and remember not to go into the tulsy woods ! cheeks stained with ink from falling asleep on notes , wild hair curling over a starched white collar , chalkboards covered corner-to-corner in indecipherable calculations ! ✧ 

A BITCH FINALLY FINISHED okay here we go what’s up, babes !! it’s ya boi, mozzie. i’m 8teen ( a babie , i know ) and i am in hast ! literally no one else is gonna be in that timezone, and i’ve accepted this fact. i go by they/them and uhhhhh got nothing else to say about myself. anyways, i’ll be out here trying my best so pls feel free to hit me for a good time !! or at least, moderately entertaining time.

 S T A T S

full name: lydia beckett

nickname(s): becks

age: twenty-two

date of birth: february 10

gender: non-binary

pronouns: they/them

hometown: flagstaff, arizona

parent(s)/sibling(s): elijah becket ( father ), charlotte beckett ( mother ), amelie grace nee beckett ( sister -five years older ), virginia beckett ( sister - three years older ), isaac beckett ( brother - two years younger )

orientation: science

occupation: grad student - they out here working on their thesis baby !!

P H Y S I C A L

face claim: zendaya coleman

hair colour: dark brown with golden highlights from being in the sun too long

eye colour: hazel

height: 5′8′’

tattoos: n/a - may get some in the future

piercings: standard lobe piercings on both ears. belly button piercing that she got with her sister when they graduated that they haven’t told anyone about. 

distinguishing characteristics: wildly curly hair that they refuse to wear any other way besides natural. known to throw it up haphazardly with pencils/pen sticking out randomly in different directions.

A B O U T

can i just say that they boring as shit until they get to rose lake??

lydia grew up the middle child in a huge family, with siblings and cousins constantly underfoot. their parents loved them all, but obviously were more than busy trying to take care of the horde. with a burgeoning lawyer and star athlete for older siblings and a leading thespian as a younger sibling, lydia found themselves falling into the role of quiet, studious middle child.

they convinced themselves into thinking that there wasn’t anything special about them and that they wouldn’t amount to much. they resigned themselves to a life of constantly being surpassed, up until they decided in high school that they would use their smarts to try and change the world.

they got into *insert fancy school here that would be most convenient plot-wise* on a partial-ride scholarship and decided to pursue environmental science ! college is where they thrived, mostly because they were surrounded by other people who had the same goals as them and were willing to work hard for it. 

environmental science isn’t particularly competitive as a field, but being female-presenting in male-dominated world forced them to speak out more and thus, their middle-child syndrome began to become more prominent. they felt the unending need to prove themselves to others, and they began to steal attention for themselves.

they decided to continue environmental sciences in graduate school, mostly because they weren’t done being a student, but also because graduate school opened up more research opportunities. this is what lead them to roselake in the first place.

they had signed up for a highly-coveted research position in the arctic circle (let’s say,,,,,,,somewhere in scandinavia) but due to some clerical error, they missed out on the spot and was forced to take the only remaining spots left, which sent them to roselake with a miniscule group of two lead scientist and one other grad student. suffice to say, they aren’t exactly happy about it.

P E R S O N A L I T Y

they are a bitch ! absolute grump this one !!

middle child syndrome like nobody’s business. they need to be the best and  is not afraid to step on anyone else on their way to being the best. it a good thing they are in science because if they were in a more competitive field, they’d probably have thrown hands by this point.

 they value their intelligence very much and they like to put the world into neat boxes. sciences makes sense to them. they understand biology and physics but not people so much and never magic, so they absolutely do not believe in the harvest sprites. 

they’re kind of vehemently against the idea of the sprites, so they will be dismissive and often cold with anyone who does believe in the sprites. they do feel like its a loaf of horseshit.

they are going to boost themselves using this tiny town and they will end up with an international prize if it kills them, so they are going to make certain that they find the source of the town’s ecological decline and they are certain there is a perfectly reasonable explanation for it all. their thesis is gonna smack.

honestly kind of feral. tends to get that crazed scientist look about them if they go too long on a research binge with no rest. 

not too interested in making friends in roselake, but i bet there are definitely people interested in making friends with them. 

pls get them to chill the fuck out and get the giant stick from out of their ass.

W A N T E D  C O N N E C T I O N S

pretty pls can someone bring me either the other grad student or any of their leads o-o they can be anything they want i would just love to see someone fully appreciating lydia’s scientific brilliance but absolutely unable to handle everything else about them.

throw all the harvest sprites at them. do your best pls.

friends??? spare friends for them please??? they aren’t going to know how to handle people liking them for their personality lmao so pls baffle them

enemies!! this could be someone else on the team scientist who have differing opinions, either on the harvest sprites or on literally anything else!! this could also just be towns folk who don’t like them cause they’re a dick!! anything !! fight them !!

[changbeanie]

something new ➳ kim seungmin

➳ genre: wedding au, fluff 

➳ pairings: reader x seungmin 

➳ word count: 6.2 k

➳ description: Weddings were never your thing, but on your brother’s wedding day, Seungmin ended up being your “something new”.

Hyunjin wanted a fall wedding, so you made sure the autumn leaves fell gracefully from the tree right as he walked down the aisle. 

You felt tears brim your eyes as you watched his fairytale wedding come true: smiling faces, ornate decorations, and a happily ever after between him and the love of his life. Hyunjin looked so happy at that moment, and he deserved nothing less.

“Tissues?” Someone beside you asked, holding a pack of Kleenex in his hand. 

Sniffling, you accepted the tissues gratefully and turned to thank the kind stranger. You’ve never met him before, which was strange because Hyunjin usually introduced you to all of his friends. He was sitting in the front two rows of the venue reserved specifically for close family and friends, so he must have been close to your brother. 

“Thank you. And you are?” You asked, looking over at him peculiarly. He was tall, had doe-like eyes, and was slightly baby-faced – if Hyunjin had introduced him to you earlier, you would have definitely fallen for his angelic features. The stranger gave off a very amiable vibe, someone you could imagine yourself going on grocery shopping dates with; plus, the crispness of his dress shirt told you that he took great care of himself.

“Seungmin, the groom’s college roommate. And you?” He replied in a modulated voice, smooth and silvery. 

You flashed him a quick smile and held out your hand. “The groom’s sister,” you said, your hand clasped firmly around his warm one. “You’re the one who tolerated my brother’s weird sleeping habits for four years straight?”

“That’s me. I hated his alarms but got used to them the second year. You’re the one who planned this beautiful wedding?” he reciprocated as his eyes scanned the garden venue you booked specifically for the special day. 

Smiling, you were grateful someone had noticed the amount of effort you put into the planning. Booking gardens weren’t easy, especially during fall because everyone craved the fall aesthetic; it took you nearly three months to secure the venue and order all the centerpieces. “Yeah, I did. Could have been better if there were something more, like a fountain... but it’ll do,” you replied modestly.

“I think it’s perfect. Your brother’s lucky to have someone like you,” Seungmin chimed. He stared ahead at Hyunjin and his bride exchanging vows to one another. “I remember the time where we used to talk about weddings like they were the most intangible things in the universe. A few years later, he’s walking down the aisle with that goofy, lovesick look on his face.”

“That’s just how life works. Fate messes with your life like a game of Monopoly. Sometimes you strike gold early and sometimes later, but ultimately, you’ll get what you want,” you said. Your college days were an utter mess. One time, you got so wasted at a house party and ended up confessing to your TA, who also happened to be really cute to your intoxicated self. The next morning, your English grade plummeted. But you still managed to graduate, so that was all that mattered. “How come I’ve never met you before?”

Seungmin laughed, that melodic laugh you could listen to all day. If Mozart’s pieces were transmuted into laughter, that’s exactly how it would sound like. “Life got in the way, and I got an opportunity to study abroad. I just got my master’s, literally my thesis was just approved, and I had to fly back for Hyunjin’s wedding. Imagine how stressed I would be if I had missed the flight.” He puffed his cheeks out and made a face, which you thought was too cute to believe. Why have you not meet this adorable human being earlier?

You’ve never passed an opportunity to meet cute boys, whether it be parties, bars, or even Friendsgiving gatherings. But every time, every single time, you’d end up being disappointed because they were either too young (which you didn’t care much about because age was easy to overlook), too dumb, too weird, or something along the lines. So far, Seungmin didn’t exude any of those undesirable qualities.

“Congrats on your master’s.” You fixated your gaze ahead and caught the last bit of your brother’s vows. Hyunjin was never an eloquent guy, but his vows tugged on your heartstrings. He had a gift and was able to transcribe his feelings into words effortlessly. He mentioned last summer’s proposal, and you were able to relive that day vividly: the covert smiles, sneaky planning, and the massive backyard party where Jisung got a little too tipsy and fell into the swimming pool. It was quite funny how quickly time passed, and before you knew it, his wedding day had arrived.

“It’s time,” Seungmin whispered to your right, his eyes staring up ahead at his friend.

The officiator announced, “It is at this time that I now pronounce you husband and wife. You may now kiss the bride!” And the audience burst into a heap of wild, uncontrolled cheers as Hyunjin shyly dipped his bride into a heart fluttering kiss.

In the spur of the moment, your hand grabbed Seungmin’s out of pure excitement, the emotions consuming you whole like a wave. You failed to notice that he took the initiative to intertwine fingers with yours, his palm fitting over yours like a glove.

“The prick finally got married. I can’t believe it,” you mumbled, teary-eyed. Your eyes diverted to his hand around yours. “I’m so sorry!” You jolted your hand back, and suddenly, you wished you hadn’t said anything because you liked the warmth.

“It’s fine,” he chuckled. Seungmin followed the guests as they stood up, helping you up in the process because your heels were digging into your foot. “I’ll see you at the reception?” He figured you’d have to be seated with your family members, which he was pretty bummed out about because he wanted to get to know you better.

“Definitely,” you responded automatically. 

»»————————««

The post-ceremony celebration kicked off with a dinner that Hyunjin and his bride personally picked out, followed by a series of “eyebrow-raising” games for the bride and groom. 

Then came your most dreaded game: I Dare You, which Changbin insisted on playing because it would “get you out of your comfort zone” and enable you to “meet new people”. You stood up and carefully picked a piece of paper from the metal bucket near the heart of the table. Unfolding the piece of paper carefully, you read, “Kiss someone on the table opposite of you.”

Your family and close friends “ooh-ed”, and Hyunjin wiggled his eyebrows at you, anticipating your pick. 

Out of all the dares in the bucket, you had to choose something embarrassing like this one; in addition, you hated kissing people in front of your parents, much less kissing a random friend of Hyunjin’s. Dreadfully, you glanced across the room at the table across; you were able to recognize a few people: his college friends, a few colleagues, and Seungmin. 

“Choose wisely,” Changbin said obnoxiously to your left, his phone camera ready as you got up from the table. 

“Shut up,” you grumbled, your thoughts caught in a series of knots. Half the people on the table came with their significant others, so they were pretty much off limits. You had no intention of kissing Hyunjin’s boss or his professor who was exactly twice your age. 

Sighing, you narrowed it down to one. 

It was unfair. You were about to mess it up with the only cute boy you met that night, and after the wedding, he would think of you as a complete freak.

You made your way across the room with your heels clicking shyly on the polished floors as a few of your cousins, including Changbin, came with their cameras pointed directly in your face, night mode on. You stopped in front of a seated Seungmin, and he looked at you with a mixed expression of shock and amusement.

“I’m so sorry for what I’m about to do,” you apologized before pulling his tie and bending down to give his lips a quick peck. You pulled away with flushed cheeks as the entire room cheered, phone cameras clicking. Guess you were going to be on everyone’s Instagram story tonight.

When you released his tie, Seungmin’s eyes widened as big as saucers when the sensation of your lips left his. It happened all too quickly, and he could almost still taste your rosy lip balm. With a grin on his face, he watched you run back to your seat with your head buried in your hands.

“How was it kissing my college roommate?” Hyunjin asked playfully, his arm around your shoulder as you shot him a deadly glare.

“I fucking hate you,” you said in disbelief, confused whether or not you should be laughing or crying. “Why didn’t you tell me about your cute roommate? And why did you seat him in that specific table?”

“How was I supposed to know that you were going to pick that dare out of the other twenty?”

“Because you know me. I have rotten luck,” you defended. You recalled the countless times you were kicked off the bus because your phone wouldn’t load the ticket. Honestly, if the bus drivers had an ounce of mercy or pity in their hearts, they’d let you on regardless.

Hyunjin smirked and said in a sly voice, “So you liked the kiss.”

“If it weren’t your wedding, I guarantee that I would actually spike your drink with laxatives or something.” 

“So... do you want his number?”

“No... okay, maybe. Just give it to me.”

»»————————««

Seungmin’s number had been in your phone for at least a couple of days now, courtesy of Hyunjin, but you still haven’t mustered enough courage to actually send him a message. You were still nervous about the whole kissing stunt you pulled on him during the reception. Moreover, you had no idea how he felt about the kiss because you haven’t spoken to him since. Did he hate it? Did he like it? You had no idea and no way of finding out because there was no way you’d be willing to text him.

Mondays were dreadful, especially since you had such an eventful weekend. While Hyunjin and his wife were off to Greece for their honeymoon, you were stuck in the office planning your company’s tenth-anniversary gala. But before that, you needed your daily intake of caffè latte with an extra shot of espresso, maybe two.

The cafe across the street was packed...as usual, and you could have easily gone to the coffee shop a block down. However, you didn’t want to make an effort to walk down another block just for a drink; plus, the line of customers outside the storefront made their coffee seem that much more tempting.

You opened your phone and started checking for missed messages, pretending to look preoccupied when really, you were just trying to kill time.

“Fancy seeing you here,” a voice behind you said, garnering your attention away from your phone. “Not going to greet me with a kiss this time?”

Seungmin.

Out of everyone in the entire city, you had to run into him in the same coffee shop at the same time right beside each other in line. It was almost like as if the universe were playing with your feelings, tossing it like a vegetable stir-fry. 

A slow-motion train wreck was the right comparison. 

“Hey, what brings you here?” You feigned enthusiasm, ignoring his question.

“Coffee. You?”

“Coffee.” You took a deep breath and weighed your options. This was painstakingly awkward because you didn’t know what to say in situations like this. You could either apologize or completely divert the topic into something random. “IT WAS A DARE,” you blurted out of the blue, startling Seungmin.

“What?” he asked, his tone light-hearted and amused.

“The kiss... it’s a dare. I didn’t mean to do it. It’s just that all my cousins were pressuring me, and there are consequences for not doing dares in my family. You see–”

Seungmin interrupted your rambling. “I know. I’m not mad at you. Was this why you never texted me?” 

You paused. What did he mean you never texted him? Did he possibly... did Hyunjin tell him that he gave you his number? “Y-You knew I had your number?” you stuttered. Hyunjin was insufferable to betray you like this. You knew his intentions were too good to be true.

“Yeah, I was waiting for your text all weekend. I think I deserve a ‘thank you’ after you put me through that, not to mention my face appearing on all platforms of social media.”

“Thank you.” Wait, why were you thanking him? It wasn’t your fault that dare happened to fall in your hands. “I appreciate you for letting me kiss you, but honestly, the dare wasn’t–”

“You’re welcome.” He cut you off, satisfied with just the first part of your answer. “Do you have work today?”

You nodded with a sullen expression on your face, dreading the following hours. “I’m so behind in planning for this gala. My tenth birthday wasn’t nearly as extravagant as my company’s tenth birthday. Pathetic, to be honest,” you complained with what little time you had. “I never got the chance to ask. Are you back here for good, or are you flying back?”

“I’m back here... for now. I’m taking a break from my studies and deciding what to do with my MBA,” he said.

“You have many options with your credentials. Heck, you could even help me plan the gala.” You brought up the topic jokingly, but not in a million years did you anticipate his response.

“Sure. I’d help you if you want.” He said it as if it were the most casual thing in the entire world. Planning wasn’t easy especially if you were starting from scratch. The venue, the guest invitations, the decorations, and the list goes on. Seungmin rendered you speechless.

Your let eyes go big and gaped at him in awe. “Are you serious? You’re doing me such a big favor... you don’t understand. I don’t even understand.”

“Wouldn’t be the first time right?” Seungmin flashed you that signature smile of his that made his eyes turn into crescent moons and the apples of his cheeks lift up. 

For the first time, you started to believe the whole “butterflies in your stomach” saying – the fluttery feeling ceasing to stop.

“When do you get off work?”

“At six.”

»»————————««

It was nearing the colder months of the year, so that meant by the time you got out of work, the sun had already set well below the horizon, the moon greeting you from above. The sky was a dark purple, bordering black, and if you looked hard enough, you could almost see glimmers of stars peaking behind layers of city mist.

You ran your fingers through your tangled hair; it was grimy and dry, a lost cause. As you contemplated to either take the bus or call a taxi, someone’s car drove down the street and parked right in front of you. 

Seungmin climbed out of the car and stuffed the keys into his pocket. “Hope I wasn’t too late,” he said, straightening his sweater. It was a cream color, and it looked so soft to the point where you wanted to touch it to see for yourself.

“What are you doing here?” You asked in your calmest voice, ignoring the loud thumps in your heart. No one has ever picked you up from work, not even Hyunjin. You’ve only really pictured this scene in your reoccurring daydreams, but never would you have pictured someone as heart-stopping as Seungmin. Not even close.

“We’re going over our game plan, remember? I’m helping you plan your gala.” Seungmin reminded you. He raised his eyebrows and opened the door to the passenger seat, motioning you to go in. “Your ride.”

“Where are we going?” You sat down and he closed the door softly, entering his side of the car.

“Surprise.” He buckled his seatbelt, and you did the same. 

You pressed your lips together and clasped your hands on your lap. “Better not be some shady gambling place where it reeks of alcohol or something,” you mumbled under your breath, just loud enough for him to hear.

“I didn’t know you were that type of girl,” he remarked, his lips tugging into a smirk, and you regretted opening your mouth. “Relax, we’re going to dinner. Unless you’d prefer what you mentioned earlier, of course. I play a mad game of poker.”

“Can you just drive already?” You suggested, more like demanded.

Seungmin reversed the car, and you caught yourself ogling at him. You forgot how it felt like to have a boy drive you other than your brother or Changbin. It felt soft and fluffy on the inside like you were floating on pink colored clouds with chocolate sprinkles. And you felt somewhat special.

»»————————««

Dinner was rather brushed aside in the sense that the two of you were just chatting up like old friends, occasionally ranting about Hyunjin, who was on his honeymoon and completely oblivious about your whereabouts with his friend.

Seungmin was very similar to you. He was a shy kid in all of middle school, but in high school, he got more involved in clubs and broke out of his shell. In college, he wasn’t necessarily a frat boy but was social enough to have his own circle of friends who studied, partied, and did stupid things with him. Much like him, you could finally say that you were content with where you were in life: a stable job and a solid group of friends.

“Do you think that if I order the decorations now... would it be too soon?” You asked Seungmin. You pulled your chair beside him and showed him your laptop screen. After dinner, the two of you decided to get some actual planning done in the pub next door. The pub had this sort of retro chic lightbulb thing going on, and you had a love-hate relationship with it. It wasn’t nearly as bright as you wanted it to be, but at least it looked good.

Seungmin looked up from his tablet, his eyes darting across your screen. He navigated the keyboard with his fingers. “Not the flowers yet. Those can wait because florists have the tendency to get their orders done beforehand. By the time of the gala, the flowers will be wilted.”

“I see. You have experience?”

“Yup,” he said, popping the “p”. “Interned and worked for several companies while completing my master’s. They teach you little tips that will help you in the real world. Like marketing through people rather than social media. People like saving face, so if you ask them personally to attend an event, they’re more likely to clear their plans for the evening and come through.”

“Was it difficult to fit in overseas?”

“Sorta. After a while, you just get used to it. When you have a goal set and you work towards it, time flies by a lot quicker than you think.” Seungmin offered you a piece of his mindset, and you couldn’t agree more.

You chuckled and opened up your Google document to jot down more notes and reminders. “I need more people like you in my life. It creates a healthy sphere of influence, you feel me? You don’t complain about the negativity in your life. You combat it with positivity and optimism. I like that,” you admitted. “C’mon Seungmin. You can’t be as perfect as I think you are.”

“Try me,” he challenged, his full attention geared towards you. 

“Weird sleeping habits? Mommy’s boy? Feet fetish?” 

“Your brother is the one with the weird sleeping habits. I’ve lived by myself for almost eight years now. And no? That’s unnerving,” Seungmin replied with a disgusted look on his face. “Okay. Maybe I’m a very watered-down version of a neat freak, but it’s understandable to not like other random people laying in your bed.”

You thought for a while before answering, “Fine. I see your point. That’s just because you don’t know where other people have been prior to seating on your bed, and I find that disgusting.” You shuddered, and that made Seungmin smile.

“How’s the guest list going?”

“Just contacting whoever the External Director wants me to contact. Not too hard.” You scrolled through the pages, a bored expression gracing your features. “Do you ever feel pressured by time?”

Seungmin raised his eyebrow at you. “What do you mean?”

“I feel like time’s against me. Hyunjin’s married, Changbin’s finally not sleeping around, and Jeongin’s somewhere in the world, but I know he’s happy... they’re all happy. I’m happy too, but I want someone to share that happiness with,” you explained, sounding semi-pitiful.

“Understandable. That’s kinda how I feel too. My mom’s on the verge of arranging a marriage for me because I’ve been all school and no dating,” he joked, and you couldn’t tell whether he was being seriously or not.

“You’re different, Seungmin.”

“How?”

You threw your head back and took a quick sip of cider before continuing. “I’m not the type boys fall for. They like elegant and enticing, but I’m weird and quirky. I don’t meet their standards.”

“I’m not mysterious nor do I exude the bad boy facade that most girls yearn for. Your point is?” Seungmin argued and laughed at your poor explanation. 

“That’s not true... not all girls yearn for that.” Not you, at least.

“Then not all boys like ‘elegant and enticing’.”

Point taken. 

You were at a complete loss of words. “What I’m trying to say is that... Hyunjin’s wedding made me want to experience something like that for myself as well. I want to be able to trust and love someone like that. But where in the world is that someone?”

“In front of you.”

“Don’t flirt with me, Seungmin.”

Seungmin feigned a lovesick expression. “You’re really going to break my heart like that, Y/N? Don’t I at least get a chance?”

You let out a chuckle as you tucked a strand of hair behind your ear. “If you’re being serious... then ask me out properly,” you said, and despite sounding calm, your heart was actually beating erratically. The first time in a very long time.

“There’s a rooftop movie at the Hilton tomorrow night, fourth floor, ride and snacks included. You up for it?”

“Depends on what’s playing.”

“La La Land.” Seungmin said, but he was smiling like there was no tomorrow.

Where there was a Ryan Gosling, there was also a Y/N. “Sold,” you agreed. You let your hair fall in your face as you diverted your focus back onto your laptop screen. 

That way, he couldn’t see you smiling.

»»————————«« 

You were standing outside the front entrance of the Hilton. The ceilings were painted gold and the floors were a polished marble; you felt very out of place with your hoodie and sweatpants. Ultimately, you decided that it was better to be comfortable than fashionable. 

“Ready?” Seungmin asked, a brown teddy bear blanket in his arms. Like you, he was also wearing a hoodie and sweatpants.

“Yeah. You watched the movie before?” Feeling bold, you reached forward and tucked your hand in his, which he gladly reciprocated. His hand was a lot bigger than yours, and it was warm to the point where you felt your heart doing little happy somersaults.

Seungmin rolled his eyes and shifted his hand around into a more comfortable position, which you didn’t mind at all. “Y/N. It’s a classic. Of course, I watched it.” He gave you a puzzled look. “What do you think about the ending?”

“It makes you question what a happy ending really means.” You stepped into the elevator and pressed the button with a “four” on it, and when it lit up, you took a step back closer to Seungmin.

“What’s your definition of a happy ending?”

“You’re seriously going to ask me something deep like that on a first date?” Seungmin smelled like fresh linen as if he just stepped out of the laundromat, and that scent was intensified since it was just the two of you inside the elevator. You wondered how it would feel like to hug him.

Seungmin grinned and then shrugged. “I’m willing to take my chances.”

“I like your ambition,” you acknowledged. “It’s not necessarily a definition, but I believe that if you truly found your happy ending, you’d be afraid of losing it. And that fear is how you know that you’ve found it.”

The elevator hit the fourth floor and the doors slid open, leading you right into a junction that led straight to the roof. 

“I’m guessing you haven’t found your happy ending yet?” 

“No, not yet.”

»»————————««

Halfway through the movie, you were practically laying on top of Seungmin because your feet were cold. That might have been an excuse, but the rooftop was honestly cold. Your hoodie proved useless against the chilly wind blowing against your left cheek.

You huddled your cheek snugly into his chest; he was a good couple of inches taller than you, and the two of you were practically cuddling. Seungmin draped his arm loosely around your shoulder, pulling you in. And the two of you stayed like that for the entire movie, right until “City of Stars” played for one last time. 

When the movie ended, you were sad because the ending was heartbreaking in the most beautiful way possible and because you missed the warmth radiating off Seungmin and the fuzzy blanket draped over both of you.

“I really don’t want to get up,” you mumbled in his chest as he was tugging the blanket off. “Can we just stay here?”

“If you’re planning to get kicked out by security guards. C’mon Princess, we’ll do this again some other day.” Seungmin sat up with you and pulled you from your slouched chair.

You scoffed at his pet name, ignoring the girlish skip of your heartbeat. “Don’t flirt with me, Seungmin. It doesn’t suit you.”

“If I ask you properly, do I get a second date?”

“Maybe.”

»»————————««

Seungmin was the type of person who was transparent because his emotions and expressions often mirrored the exact way he was feeling. So when you met up with him for the second time that week, in his apartment, and saw the sad puppy look on his face, you knew something was wrong from the start.

“Hey,” he said, trying to sound normal.

“Hey,” you said. “Something wrong? Did Jisung come over and mess up your bedsheets or something?”

Seungmin’s expression was so sad that you almost felt it in your heart. What in the world could possibly wipe the smile off his face? He always seemed so carefree, so content with life. Was it because you never asked him about his life? Were you not attentive enough?

You were concerned now. “What’s wrong? You’re being so serious that it scares me,” you reiterated.

“I got a job offer.”

Immediately, the ton of weight lifted off your chest. “That’s great! Why do you look like someone scolded you? You got a job delivered right to your front door. Do you know how many people want that?” You hyped him up, but he wasn’t feeling it.

“You didn’t let me finish. It’s all the way across the world in New York.”

“Oh.”  

That was why he was sad? People with MBA’s would die to work in New York. What was holding him back?

You smiled with encouragement, slightly glum at his announcement because you had really high hopes for Seungmin. But long distance... that was an entirely different obstacle to overcome.

“Take the job,” you said without hesitance. “You worked years for your degree, and it finally paid off. Go to New York.”

“But I could easily land another job here. What makes New York so special compared to here?” he argued. That was the first time you’ve seen him this indecisive over something, anything. 

You nodded in agreement as you stood up from the couch. “Yes, but it’s where business thrives. You’ll learn so much there, Seungmin. I don’t want you spending years and thousands of dollars on schooling to land a job in Seoul where you could easily achieve with a bachelor’s,” you countered.

“Is it weird that I want to stay because of you?”

“Stop flirt–”

“I’m not flirting with you. I mean it.” He raised his voice. “Is it weird that I want to stay in Korea because of you? Answer my question, Y/N.”

You completely avoided the question, unsure of what to say. “This isn’t about me. I don’t want to influence your decision. It’s your job, and I’m not going to bear the guilt of you not achieving your dreams.”

“Do you even know what my dreams are? Have you ever asked me before? You think I’m shallow enough to regard my dreams as an occupation? Or money? It’s like you don’t even know me.”

For once in your life, you wanted to be selfish. You didn’t want to lose Seungmin. But guilt is a crippling culprit. You hated the fact that there could be a possibility of Seungmin finding happiness in New York. Maybe you weren’t the right one for him after all.

“You want me to stay right?” Seungmin questioned softly. He looked so heartbroken that you wanted to say “yes” desperately. Your heart was screaming that, but your mind knocked some logic into you.

Taking a deep breath, you replied, “I want you to take the job.”

“Really?” Seungmin was clearly disappointed in your answer. He really thought you were someone special, but perhaps his feelings blinded him. Seungmin thought he meant more to you, but now, he was thinking that perhaps he was just another pretty face for you to look at.

Your heart shattered into shards. 

“Yeah. Go to New York.”

»»————————««

“Please leave a message for–” 

You did a full body groan and ended the call. Greece was only seven hours ahead of Seoul, and you made sure to call Hyunjin while he was still awake. At times like this, you desperately needed his advice.

Usually, when you made big decisions, your heart will feel at ease with your answers. This time, there was a queasy feeling inside of your chest; you didn’t know what it was, but you had the urge to turn back time and run into Seungmin’s apartment, preventing him from going to New York. You weren’t a selfish person, and never in a million years would you persuade someone not to pursue a career for the sake of being with you. Why was this so hard? Why was it so hard to just let him go?

[6:31] minnie: my flight’s in an hour

It was in an hour? Where was Hyunjin when you needed him? You thought Seungmin was leaving in a week or so, not in sixty minutes. If you had the ability, you would teleport yourself to Athens and strangle your brother on his stupid yacht. 

“Should I go to the airport? No... it’d be hard to say goodbye. But I want to see him. Ugh, I don’t want him to go,” you rambled as you were packing your belongings into your purse. 

Your phone’s familiar ringtone started to play. With one glance at the caller ID, you let out a sigh and picked up the phone. “Where were you ten minutes ago? I swear, why bother having a phone if you’re not going to answer it,” you said in an annoyed tone.

“Is that how you greet your brother? No wonder why you’re still single. Okay, but what’s up with the five missed calls? Missed me?”

“You wish, Hyunjin. It’s Seungmin,” you explained and the other side of the line went silent, so you continued. “We’ve been kinda dating, and honestly, it’s been going really well. Then he suddenly throws in the ‘I have a job in New York’ card at me. He’s at the airport right now.”

Hyunjin made a noise. “And?”

“And??? I obviously don’t want him to go, but I can’t tell him that because he deserves that position in New York. You went to college with him! You know how hard he worked for it.”

“Does he want to go?”

That question made you think. Seungin never mentioned whether or not he wanted to go. He merely asked you whether or not you wanted him to go. “Yes... I mean he never specifically said that, but c’mon, New York. He asked me if I wanted him to go, but that’s such a burden for me to decide someone’s future,” you cried in frustration.

“Damn. If Seungmin asked you, then you must have meant something to him. What’d you say to him?” he asked.

“I told him to go to New York, but now I feel queasy, like I want to throw up.”

“That means that you’re doing something wrong. I can’t help you much because this is your life. I didn’t ask you for advice on whether or not I should propose to my girlfriend, so I think it’s better for you to figure it out yourself.” Hyunjin gave you some advice but useless in your state of mind.

You paused. “I don’t know what this feeling is.”

“Sometimes, love’s just a feeling. You can’t really put it into words.”

“Okay, loverboy.”

When it was just you, you would buy one of everything. One portion of Chinese takeout, one pair of socks, or one ugly Christmas sweater. But recently, you’ve been adding Seungmin to the equation. You’d order two portions of walnut shrimp, two pairs of corgi socks, and two nasty candy cane sweaters. It wasn’t even intentional; you thought of him in the most random of moments. 

He must have meant something to you.

»»————————««

[7:21] y/n: have a safe flight

[7:22] y/n: jk turn around

Seungmin stared at his phone and turned around cautiously, brows furrowed. Afraid that his eyes were betraying him, he gave you a weird look and stood there, feet planted on the floor.

“What are you doing here? Sending me off to New York?” He called out, his expression dull. He tried controlling his voice so it wouldn’t sound so spiteful. Obviously, he was still ticked off by your response earlier.

“No,” you said. Hastily, you added, “Unless you want me to. Flight’s right there. You can easily just walk through.”

You took steady steps towards him. “But if you do, you’ll be ruining someone’s happily ever after.”

Seungmin tightened his grip on the handle of his suitcase. “Enlighten me,” he offered. “What made you change your mind? Then maybe... maybe I’ll consider staying.” He nearly cracked a smile but made an effort to control his features. Deep down, he knew you were going to come for him. He saw the resistance and yearning in your eyes.

“When you’ve found your happy ending, you’re terrified of losing it. I hate the thought of you going to New York. I hate that we’re separated by a whole ocean. And I absolutely hate the possibility of you holding hands and hugging someone else who’s not me. Call me selfish but please, don’t go,” you rambled, eyes trained on his shoes. You shook your head and finally glanced up to meet his gaze. “I’m not sure if you’re my happy ending or not, but I don’t want to lose you without even giving it a shot.”

Seungmin stayed quiet, and you wondered what the boy was thinking about him his mind. Was he staying? Has he made up his mind about New York? Did your confession even work? Gosh, the silence was unbearable; your fingers were practically trembling as you continuously wiped your clammy hands on your jeans.

“You look pretty today. I like you in glasses,” he replied.

You chuckled in relief, completely forgetting to take off your glasses earlier before rushing to the airport in sweats. 

“Stop flirting with me, Seungmin. It doesn’t suit you,” you answered. You watched as his hands reached forward to hold yours, the familiar touch of his warm hands in yours.

“If I ask you properly, can we continue our second date?”

“Yes, I’d love that.”

The thought of love was freaking terrifying, but there was no reason to be afraid of it. You were certain that everything would play out the way it was supposed to play out, regardless of time. Hyunjin may have had his happy ending earlier than you did, but that didn’t matter anymore. You will find your happy ending, and that person may be Seungmin. 

Because the feeling with him was something new, perhaps even love.

[squiishiichaos]

Tekketsu University AU: 1

“Hey, Yamagi, wake up!” 

 The lump of human flesh groaned into his pillow, turning onto his stomach and disappearing further beneath the heap of blankets.  Inside the nice, warm cocoon of cotton heat, it was hard to imagine why anyone—let alone his kind, caring roommate—would dare wish to awaken him from his slumber.  Not after he had spent literally days the past few weeks pulling all-nighters to complete the paper part of his future thesis project while his rowdy roommates enjoyed their time off partying and relaxing.  

But when he felt the fiend prod his side and roll him rather easily onto his back, he figured that the reason was probably good enough to face his wrath and possibly viable—enough so not to bloody his face with a mobile suit.

Wait…

Mobile suits?

Oh, “fuck! What time is it?”  His jump from the covers clearly startled his two roommates, throwing them back a couple feet as he clambered out of bed and went about locating his discarded jumpsuit. He slipped into the tan material with a moan of effort, falling back onto the comfortable sheets of his bed as his two roommates watched in amusement.  He rolled his one visible eye.  “Can you please focus? This is important!”

“You know, I’d sympathize with you if it hadn’t taken three tries to finally get your ass out of bed.”

“And whose fault is that?”  His blonde roommate—Takaki—had the audacity to look alarmed.   It quickly shifted to offense.

“I don’t like what you’re implying.  Are you blaming me for you not waking up on time for class? Because I will have you know that I have been up for an hour already while you repeatedly hit snooze.” He crossed his arms over his chest, shifting his weight in a very sassy manner. Yamagi had the good sense to just roll his eye and finish doing up his jumpsuit, grabbing his extra pair of gloves off his desk and getting out of bed again.  He briefly took a moment to jostle his hair around a bit more before deciding that there really was nothing more he could do.

He let out a sigh and turned on his other roommate—Ride. “What time is it?”   The fiery redhead looked at the nonexistent watch on his wrist with a green-eyed look of disdain.  

“Let me see here, looks like it’s about time for you to get the hell off our backs and drag your ass to class.  I’m not your maid; I shouldn’t be getting dragged in here to rouse your ass from beauty sleep just because Takaki here is too chicken shit to do it himself.”

“Hey!”  Seniority be damned, the redhead sent an emblazoned look at the offended blonde, knocking him another couple notches off his horse.  

“Shut up, you know it’s true!”

“That doesn’t change the fact that it’s rude.”

“So what?  It’s true!”  Takaki rolled his brown eyes to the heavens and apparently prayed manners into the youngster living in their dorms.  

And faced with a headache that could not be put to words, Yamagi decided it was as good a time as any to dismiss himself quietly from the scene.  He managed to get his boots on and almost out the door before their voices were yelling after him.  Luckily, some of his other dormmates took the liberty of telling them to shut up—saving him the time and effort of that failed escapade.  He instead used that to propel himself as quickly as he could to his first class of the new semester, ready for whatever work the Old Man had waiting for him afterwards.

Truth be told, he liked his work.  

As a mechanic for the Tekketsu School of Robotics and Mechanical Science, he got the privilege of working with some of the most advanced machinery the human mind had crafted in the last century.  He was personally in charge of running diagnostics on all of their mobile suits and mobile workers—and more recently, their Gundam Frames—giving him a hands-on experience with all the finest technology this school had to work with.  

Well, most of it.  There were still some mobile suits even he didn’t have access to.

Even still, the ones that were available to him were more than enough to sate the need to keep his hands busy.  Despite how labor intensive and exhausting maintenance could be at times, he enjoyed every minute of it.  There was something about the robots he worked with that he bonded with. Ever since he was a little kid, he’d been fascinated by the ones he watched rampaging and rough housing in the Robotic sporting competitions, and that fascination had slowly grown into an obsession.  From there, it had just been fate that Tekketsu happened to work with the objects of his dreams.

Sadly, though, no obsession was going to fix the fact he was late for class.  And by the time he barreled into the classroom and managed to quietly collapse into his seat, it was already too late.  His teacher—Eco Turbine—had noticed.  “Yamagi Gilmerton, just in time for my first lecture of the semester.  What’s your excuse for tardiness this time?  Got locked in the hangar with your inventions again?”

“I’m sorry, Miss, I overslept.”  His one visible cheek took on a flushed appearance at the glare she sent him, unamused by his lack of respect for her class.  Not that it was on purpose, of course.  He had never been a big morning person, even less so when his respectable roommates decided that going to bed at three am on a school night was acceptable behavior.

In spite of the terrifying dread building in his stomach, she once again released the tension coiling behind her pursed lips in a reluctant sigh of resignation.  “Don’t make a habit of it this semester, okay?  You still need to pass this class to get your thesis published, don’t forget that.”  He nodded his head, sinking deeper into his seat.  Almost immediately, the kid sitting next to him smirked, rolling his eyes in amusement.

“Way to go, hot shot.” Eugene commended him, leaning back in his seat and ignoring everything their professor said.   Did Yamagi ever mention that he really didn’t like pilots?

Especially ones like Eugene.  “You should really pay attention.”  The boy scoffed and rolled his eyes.

“As if!  It’s your job to make sure the machines are in tip top condition before they go out on the field.”  

“But if something goes wrong out on the field, I won’t be there to assess it.”  The blonde scowled.

“Like hell you won’t.   Everyone knows you’re practically attached at the hip to your machines.” The way he said it made it sound like he should feel insulted, but he hardly took offense to the statement.

“And if I wasn’t, half of you would probably be dead.”

“Yamagi!”  He inwardly groaned at the little grin Eugene sent him, turning to the professor and offering a sheepish smile.  This time, she wasn’t so pleasant.  “If you can’t pay attention, I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to leave.” He bowed his head in a defeated nod, sinking deeper into his seat.  She let out an annoyed huff and turned back to the smartboard. “Now, as I was saying before I was rudely interrupted: the most important thing to check before engaging a mobile suit equipped with the Alaya-vijnana system is,” the limiters, he silently answered. Limiters were the whole point of the neural lobe between the suits and the pilots.  While on, the user had decent sensory connection with the suit they were controlling, but off allowed them access to spacial awareness of things that weren’t inherent to the human body.  Thrusters, for one.

“…the limiters have been disengaged, it is unsafe to hook a pilot up to them.  The amount of information that could leak into their brains is enough to lobotomize the user and potentially paralyze parts of their body.  It’s always standard practice to allow the pilot to determine the limitations of themselves and their suits, and the ability to engage and disengage to whatever level of their liking.  However, in the case of some suits, there are stall mechanisms built in as a safety to keep information overload in control.”  Barbatos and Gusion, for instance.  Even though Mikazuki—Barbatos’s pilot—had been adamant that he remove all limiters.  Akihiro, thankfully, was a bit smarter than that.

“I don’t get the point, though,” one of the pilots in training—Hush—complained.  “Of limiters in machines without the Alaya-vijnana system.  Shouldn’t they be running at full capacity to make up for the lack of spacial control?”  

“The problem with that,” Yamagi interjected, “is that the Alaya-vijnana system can be transferred and installed into any working mobile suit in service these days.  Without pre-existing limiters, the engineers would need to go back to the basic coding of each mobile suit to reprogram them in.”  

“So?  That’s what you guys do.”  He rolled his one visible eye.

“No, it’s not.  We’re in charge of maintaining and fixing, not remodeling.” Beside him, Eugene scoffed.

“Yeah, right.  If Shino asked you to—”

“That’s enough!”  Yamagi had never loved Eco more than he did just then.  Her dangerous eyes settled over each of them in a glare potent enough to silence them all into a symphony of quiet.  “Now, if you’re done fighting, do you mind if I continue my lesson?” All of them nodded and she huffed again.   “Good. Now, where were we…”

  “I can’t believe how long that took.” Yamagi groaned, collapsing into his work station with a sigh of relief.  He was quick about removing his books and slipping on his work jacket, adjusting his gloves and grabbing his trusted tablet.  He scrolled through the listing of odd jobs remaining for the maintenance crew, looking for something that interested him.  Some days, there were oddities found with the machines that needed special work, and other times—like today—all of them were random jobs that they were all used to doing for the various pilots on the team.

He sighed and chose one of the jobs at random, rushing over to one of the mobile suits and securing the elevation cables to his belt. He quickly scaled up the Grazer, reaching the cockpit and hooking up to the mainframe.  He scrolled through the various diagnostics and data coming in through the transfer, digesting the sequence of code and highlighting any errors he spotted in the algorithms.  Guessing by the amount left behind by the last technician that had played with this model, he assumed Ride was the dumbass who hooked in last.  He rolled his eyes at the idea of the kid half-assing his work—again.  

It was no surprise to the rest of the crew that the redhead wanted to be a pilot.  Who wouldn’t?   

In their school, pilots were treated like heroes.  Their dorms were all doubles and singles, dressed up in lavish layers of silken sheets and comfortable beds.  The maintenance team lived in suits of six or more, all of them situated in tiny bunkers with rotting beds and hardly enough space for one, let alone five.  The pilots got to spend classes out on the field in mobile suits running drills and sparring, having fun in preparation for another match.  The maintenance team spent grueling hours inside the sweltering hangar, suffocating in the smell of sweaty men, and looking at more lines of green against a black background than eyes in the jungle at night.  

The pilots ate grandiose meals made by some of the best hands this place had to offer.  The maintenance team might as well have eaten stools.  The pilots all had lovers and fan clubs and supporters. The maintenance team didn’t have time. And while the pilots were well respected and loved by the community at large, no one ever noticed or appreciated them.  They were just the hands behind the scenes, always working, always busy.  Hell, Yamagi spent more time studying and fixing than he ever did with his friends.  He didn’t have time for anything else.  

Not when their heroes didn’t exactly have respect for the time, money, resources and energy that went into keeping their precious machines functioning.   Half the time, their best pilots came back with their suits in a state of absolute peril.  No matter who they faced or who they fought, it was always the same.  They were ruthless and competitive, and if that meant losing an arm on the machine, then so be it.  It had to be done.

Except that it didn’t.  

He sighed again and went about reprogramming the limiters and engaging the locks in the system.  

This Graze model had been a gift from the dean of the school—Mr. Naze Turbine himself.  After the stunning victory the boys had against their former coach’s new team, he’d figured it was a good prize to offer.    And looking at the mastery that went into designing the mechanics of the mech, he could understand why.  Someone had taken a lot of time out of their lives to make this baby perfectly fit for workers like Mika and Akihiro.   It had durable armor and many of the limiters were disengaged for the alaya-vijnana system, and the structure greatly resembled the make and model of the Grazes that Eco and Lafter had taught the boys on originally.  He had no doubt that whoever worked this particular piece of metal would be very proud of the results.

Speaking of which.  He scrolled through the list of details regarding the make and model, skimming past the credits and settling on the schematics regarding the use within the school.  He stared at the letters staring back at him on the page, burning into his eyes and crushing what little hope he had left for the world.

N O R B A   S H I N O

He gulped down the saliva pooling in his mouth and looked at the statistics of the machine again.  He double checked the formulas and codes again and again, looking over every letter and number and character.  He rechecked every single piece of the mainframe until he was absolutely satisfied with the results, making sure that there were no discrepancies or errors. And then he rechecked again.

Once that was done, he set the tablet into auto, running a protected diagnostic as he toiled with the gears inside of the cockpit.  

He could tell from the smell of hot metal that someone had recently finished replacing the old controls with the Alaya-vijnana system.   This particular mech had been customized for an integrated system, allowing the user to switch between different modes of control.  In the first, the pilot could set the data siphon to focus on spacial awareness alone while the controls were relegated to the manual efforts of the user.  In the second, the two parts were shared equally between the manual controls and the Alaya-vijnana.  In the third, the machine was set to an auto pilot of sorts in which the mobile suit reacted to the thoughts of the pilot based on the information wrought by the machine.  

Knowing Shino and his habit of berserking into the rampage of games and fights, he really didn’t like the idea of leaving the suit on auto-pilot.  He knew that the moment the idiot took a seat in the cockpit and felt the rush of steel adrenaline in his neurons that he’d likely rush headfirst into a challenge without the slightest bit of concern. And as much as he would love to see how fast and strong this Graze could be, he also didn’t accept the image of his favorite pilot coming in beaten and bruised every time he went out to spar with Mika or Akihiro.  Lord knows he was already foolish enough.

He let out a deep breath and turned back on the limiters, going through each of the manual checks he’d done and the few performed by the system maintenance. He quickly fixed any error codes and told the system to replenish the fuel in the tank, unplugging his tablet from the model and disengaging the reactor.  As the mech powered down, he quickly climbed from the cockpit and took a closer look at the physical structure of the mobile suit.  

It wasn’t that impressive, really.  Unlike the Gundam Frames—seventy-two world class mechs made by only the finest hands in the world of robotics and technology—Grazes were the mass-produced assembly line creations that could always be counted on but never collected.  There was something inherently modern and unsatisfying about them that never ceased to bore him.   Although they worked well and were easy to maintain, they would never compare to the honor of working with a creation like Barbatos or Gusion.  

He doubted anything ever would.

“Oi, Yamagi!”  He looked down off the shoulder of the mobile suit, barely taking in the waving arm of the coordinator here in the garage.   Old Man Yukinojo wasn’t the oldest person in the school, nor was he the wisest.  But down here, away from the limelight, he was the best they had.  And ever since he started hooking up with the ethics commander—one terrifying Ms. Merribit—it had become increasingly rare to see the tall, stout man in their midst.  “You almost done up there?  The boys have practice soon and Shino’s gonna need that up to par with his hefty standards.”

“On it!”   He took a couple more minutes to do a final glance through the various monitors stationed around the build of the suit, checking off his list of qualifications until he was one-hundred-percent satisfied that everything was in order. After dusting off a couple flecks of dirt and dried paint, he released the tension on his elevation cord and sailed back down to the ground.

His boots landed with a thud on solid ground, echoed by a second set of footsteps.  He turned on a dime and gawked at the man standing there, grinning wide at the mech beside him.  

There were a lot of things he admired about Norba Shino.  

Number one: he was funny.  He told jokes that could light up a room in laughter for hours, sometimes without even trying.  He literally spent half of his lunch time just entertaining his circle of admirers with story after story, always ending them with punch-lines and hilarious tags.  

Number two: he was charming.  He had this way about him that most of the other pilots didn’t.  While they were all distant and reserved in their own rights, he was outgoing and determined.  Honest and persistent.  He always smiled at everyone, regardless of friend, foe or between.  He greeted them like they were his equal, looking them dead in the eye and offering his full, undivided attention.  And if they didn’t meet his look or return his gaze, he always wore this confused, curious face—like he couldn’t fathom why they wouldn’t want to look at him.

He was handsome, too.  At nearly six-feet-tall, Shino was only beaten in height by Orga and Akihiro. His earthy brown hair was kept short and messy, just enough there to run his fingers through without enough to find purchase in.  Against it, his honey brown eyes were always alive with mirth and alight with passionate fire.  And due in part to their rigorous exercise routine, he had rippling muscles that coiled through his arms and continued into a strong chest, broad shoulders, and a six-pack that could sate an alcoholic for years.  

And those goddamn studs.  He didn’t know what it was about them, the earrings glistening in his ears. Perhaps because he was the only one who had them.  Yamagi could never quite figure out what it was that drew him to stare at the gold diamonds, but even if he did, he dared believe it wouldn’t stop him.  It was part of what made it so hard to look at the pilot now, when he was right there in front of him, only a short walk away from being in intimate proximity.

He gulped.  “Oh, hey, Yamagi!  You just finish checking her out for me?  She’s a beauty, right?    I think I’m gonna have Ride change up her colors a bit, though.  That dull green just ain’t my thing.  I’m thinkin’ magenta, ya know, for spirit!”  Oh, great.  Just make it even easier to pick him out of the damn crowd.

“Sounds…interesting.”  He stuttered out, clasping his hands together to keep from fidgeting.  It was hard not to when that intense stare was so intent and focused on him.  “Umm, I did a diagnostic report on the main functions.  The Alaya-vijnana system was installed yesterday, but I had to re-input the limiters.  Would you mind…”

“Need me to test the balance?”  He nodded and the pilot gave a hearty, jubilant laugh.  “Well, of course!  I’ll do all the tests you need, Yamagi!  Just say the word!”  He inwardly groaned—outwardly, he just gave a faint nod of his head and pulled on the elevation thread to take him up the height of the machine and back to the cockpit, Shino following happily behind him.  

At the heart of the mech, the pilot quickly hopped into the cramped space and grabbed his hand off the thread, pulling him over the heavy metal framing to hook him in.  He quickly took his hand back, intimidated by the warmth that radiated even through the thick polyester of his gloves.  Shino didn’t even seem to notice.  He just smiled one of his heart-shaking smiles, leaning forward so he could attach the Alaya-vijnana connector to his neck.  He did so as quickly and efficiently as he could, checking the cord for any damages or leaks before he grabbed his tablet and engaged the reactor.

“You’re going to feel a slight tug at your conscience for a minute.  If it gets too strong, let me know and I’ll dial back the input.”  As he spoke, he tapped a few keys and ordered the Graze to start downloading strings of data through the newly established connection.  He watched Shino arch out of his seat a moment, eyes going wide and nostrils flaring at the endless waves of data processing through his neural lobe. His normally intent eyes shook unsteadily for a second, flicking over sequence after sequence of code with an understanding that went beyond reason.  

After a moment of restless anticipation, he finally relaxed in his seat a little, settling back into the cushion against his back with a long sigh. “Wow, Yamagi, you really weren’t kidding around with this thing.   I can see all the adjustments you just made, was it to help stabilize the connection?”

“It was to block some of the unrelated functions.  Right now, the suit is deactivated and so are the spacial awareness sensors.  I was putting in the commands to turn them on one by one.  It will let you get a grasp of your surroundings through the instincts of the machine.  Here, I’ll show you.”  He tapped on another sequence of code flowing down his screen and quickly made some manual adjustments, inputting another string of letters and numbers.  Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Shino twitch and look over his shoulder, eyes bewildered and fascinated.  

“Whoa, this thing is really sensitive, huh?  I can practically feel Yukinojo walking behind me!”  He turned back to Yamagi and smiled a wide, enthralled smile.  “Is that the highest level this baby has?”  The blonde reluctantly shook his head.

“There are a couple more bypasses I could run to give you more of a feel for the machine but we’d have to take them one at a time.”

“That’s fine.  I have plenty of time to play around with the settings.  Let’s try a couple more.”  He hid a sigh and nodded, going back to the list of data streaming on his tablet and scrolling through the necessary functions.   He grabbed another line of data and began to pick it apart, watching from beneath his bangs as Shino settled into the cockpit and slowly became one with the machine.

It wasn’t until hour two that Yukinojo finally ascended the elevation line and came over to check on their status, and by then, Yamagi could’ve told you Shino’s limits better than the pilot himself.  

The brunette had been persistent and endless about testing each and every limiter in the machine, balancing a strong relation between man and beast as they reset all the defaults to fit him.  For every battle they won in a single try, there were the six others that took about seventeen, and among them, there had been three tests that had actually forced Yamagi to remove his bangs off his left eye just to focus.  And by the end of that, he was so sick of staring at the black background of his tablet that he was compelled to stare at literally anything else just to get the green flash off the back of his retinas.

He rubbed at his tired, sore eyes and stifled a groan, looking at his teacher with a grimace of irritation.  

“So, how’s she lookin’?  You get everything properly aligned with the hot shot here?”  Yukinojo nudged his thumb at the jock and Yamagi just gave an exhausted nod.  

“All her functions and attitude modulators have been reset and reprogrammed. I defaulted the reactors back to their base levels for now and redirected the extra power to her motor-drives, just like we did with Barbatos.”

“Sounds good to me.  What about her sensitivity scale?  To what degree are we talking with this one?”   Yamagi reluctantly reopened the manual and skimmed down to that panel, opening the text and scrolling through the different operations.  

“I redacted the delay a bit.  She was set to stagger with the intentions of the pilot, so I dialed that back down.  I turned off the hair-trigger tuner.  It has a manual override worked in, though.” The Old Man smirked.

“Programmed that in yourself, huh?  Smart kid.”  The pilot—who had been previously looking between them with the intensity of a person who was very lost in a foreign country—looked fondly on the blonde, reaching out to ruffle his locks affectionately.  

Yamagi had never leaned away from someone so fast.

That didn’t detract from the smile the brunette was giving him.  “He sure is!  The last time I was tested on one of these babies, it took three days.  He did it in three hours.” Yukinojo chuckled.

“Less, actually.  S’why I prefer to let him do most of the diagnostic checks with our pilots.  He has a sharp eye for equity.  Once he finds the comfort zone in a category, he leaves it alone.  That’s not an easy feat, even for me.” The blonde sighed.

“I’m right here, guys.  Stop talking about me like I’m not.”

“Why?  It’s all good things!  Jeez, can’t you take a compliment?”  He rolled his eyes at the boisterous brunette, leaning away before he could touch his hair again.  “Anyway, if that’s all we had to cover, I should probably get going.  Akihiro and Mika want to run some sims before our real spars begin.    If there’s anything we missed, just let me know and I’ll come in whenever you need me!” His eyes crinkled in a bright smile, melting the icy layer growing around Yamagi’s tired heart.  The heat of a flush radiated out of his cheeks, hidden by a curt nod and a quick turn away.  The pilot gave another award winning smile and quickly detached himself from the mech, swinging over the edge of the cockpit and descending in one smooth motion back to the ground floor.

They both watched him race to the door, one in admiration and the other in curiosity.  But as soon as he was gone, treacherous black eyes settled on him with a Cheshire grin that had him cursing his luck for ending up close to the professor after a chance encounter with his crush.  

“So, was it all you ever dreamed of?”  He choked on his own spit and the large man bellowed out a laugh.  “Relax, kid!  I’m just pushin’ your buttons!  I know you were just doing your job.  I’m still amazed, though.  When you worked with Mika, it took twice this long to get him settled.  Must’ve been nice.”  The blonde shook his head with a long repressed sigh of tension.

“There are so many functions that are going to be a little whacky on the field. I’m going to need to see the actual refined data to really finish off the adjustments, and I’m scared to see what shape this guy comes back in.  All of his sensitivity monitors are set high enough to react to a pin dropping.  If anyone gets near him, he’s gonna blow without even needing a prompt.”  The Old Man gave a slow nod, resting his hands in his belt with his own sigh.

“What do you think the damage will be?”  He scoffed.

“Minimal, at best.  No way Shino’s gonna come back from a test run unscathed.”  The teacher nodded again, and sent him a teasing look. Yamagi immediately shot it down with a glare.  “No. Forget it.  Don’t even go there.”

The man looked bewildered.  “What?! I was just gonna suggest—”

“No, I know what you were gonna suggest and the answer is still no.  I’d rather refurbish the beaten and broken form of this mech than get in a cockpit with him.”  The teacher shook his head in humor, shrugging his shoulders and taking a hold of his own elevation line.

“Well, suit yourself!  Now, when you’re done powering down that new buddy of ours, I have a couple of quick fixes I need you to take care of with the Gundam Frames.  Think you can manage to get it done and close up shop tonight?” Of course.   Just another all-nighter.

With another reluctant sigh, he nodded his head and hooked his transport cable up to the suspension connecting the machines.  He might as well get started before someone else came in to distract him.

[millennial-medusa]

Help Me Piece It All Together, Darling

This was just supposed to be a little Jasiper drabble for my Baseball AU, but I love these two so much and it got away from me and, well...here’s 11k words of them being idiots and honestly barely any baseball. It is absolutely as cheesy as it sounds.

This is set their sophomore year, so earlier than the other fics I’ve written for this au.

Jason x Piper, rated T, read on ao3

Jason Grace might just be the death of her.

She’d thought he was attractive as soon as she’d started going to baseball games last year and spotted him from the stands. She’d thought he was gorgeous when she’d approached him at that bar a few months ago, the couple drinks in her system giving her the courage to toss her hair and tease him a little, the resulting blush across his cheeks and the electric blue of his eyes weakening her knees.

But now, sitting in the library watching him help Leo through a research paper with all the patience and kindness and—yes, she’d admit it, grace, no pun intended—of a seasoned kindergarten teacher, she was positive he was the most beautiful person she’d ever met.

And this was a problem.

It was a problem because Piper, despite being a decent flirt when she wanted to be, had absolutely zero skills in terms of getting a guy to date her. She’d had her fair share of one night stands and casual hookups, but those were easy; the kind of guys that were willing to do one night stands were willing to do them with anyone decently attractive and emotionally detached. Piper checked those boxes pretty well, minimal work required.

But Jason wasn’t one of those guys. The more time she spent with him, the more obvious it was that he was the kind of guy to hold open doors and only kiss on the third date and ask for a lady’s favor before going to fight a dragon for her hand because he was literally a knight in shining armor, and it sucked because Piper was pretty sure she was the scullery maid in that scenario. Or the evil step-sister. Or the dragon.

(Okay, she reasoned, she wasn’t that bad. She wasn’t evil. Just hopeless and delusional. One of the nameless court ladies who swooned at a glance from the knight, but was overlooked in favor of the lovely and virtuous princess he would live happily ever after with.)

So a crush on Jason was a terrible, awful, absolutely horrendous idea, but for some reason her heart didn’t get the message her brain was so desperately signaling to it with red flags and emergency flares, because it kept picking up speed with every blindingly white smile he sent her from across the table.

(What had she just been saying about swooning?)

“But I say right there what it’s about,” Leo was complaining, gesturing to his laptop screen.

“No, that’s your topic sentence for that paragraph,” Jason explained. He ran a hand through his already mussed hair.

Piper wanted to run her own hands through it, tugging on the blonde locks while her tongue explored his mouth.

“Isn’t that what a topic sentence is supposed to do?”

“Yes, but you don’t have a thesis. Or an introduction.”

“Why would I need one of those when you made me write that abstract thing that explained the whole paper anyway? I still maintain that invalidates even needing to write a paper, by the way.”

“Leo, have you ever written an essay in your life?”

Leo’s eyes darted to Piper’s, and twin smiles stretched slowly across their faces.

“Oh yeah,” Leo answered, turning back to Jason. “I’ve written tons, and they were fantastic. Totally winners.”

Piper bit back a laugh. “Honestly, Leo’s written some of the finest essays of our generation. I’m incredibly proud of my—ah, of his work,” she added.

Jason’s brow furrowed—in a non-totally adorable and distracting way, of course—as he glanced back and forth between the two of them.

“Leo,” he repeated slowly, fixing him with a stern gaze, “have you ever written an essay in your life?”

“Define ‘written.’”

“Are you serious?” Jason’s eyebrows hit his hairline, and Piper didn’t bother to hold back her laughter. “How did you get through high school? How did you get through all of last year?”

Leo grinned over at him. “Wilderness school didn’t assign too many essays, and when they did, they didn’t read them closely enough to realize the similarities in Piper’s and my writing styles.”

Jason’s eyes widened before landing on Piper. “You—you wrote his essays for him? For all of high school?”

Piper shrugged. “Like he said, there weren’t that many to write. Besides, I can knock out a three page paper in less than an hour, and Leo did lots of my math assignments to pay me back.”

“Yes, she drove a hard bargain, but every equation was worth it to not have to analyze Jane Eyre," Leo sighed.

“What can I say? The rates are high, but I provide excellent customer service.”

“Absolutely. I’d give you four stars on yelp.”

“Only four? That rhetorical analysis of Mark Antony’s speech got you a 98!”

“Sure, the quality is great, but your options are limited. You’re not writing this essay, for example.”

“You’re right, the uses of obscure elements is a little out of my scope of provided services. That’s what you get for taking chemistry.”

“What good are you comm majors if you can’t even write my essays for me?”

“You committed plagiarism for four years and got away with it?” Jason interrupted with a harsh whisper.

“Relax, Sparky, the teachers didn’t care what we did as long as we sat quietly,” Piper laughed.

“Which, naturally, we always did,” Leo added. “We’re both known for our ability to sit in silence and behave just like we should.”

Jason shook his head. “I have no idea how I ended up with the two of you for friends.”

“Aww c’mon, you know you love us,” Leo crooned.

Jason chuckled and adjusted his glasses. “You’re lucky I do. I would not risk having ‘aiding and abetting criminals’ on my record for anybody else.”

With that, the air shifted. Piper felt her stomach drop, and her eyes met Leo’s again, but this time the knowledge that passed between them was not of an inside joke. The laughter had disappeared from their expressions, and Jason noticed.

“Guys?” he asked tentatively, glancing between the two of them nervously before landing on Piper. “Is everything okay? Did I say someth—”

“So I don’t have a thesis,” Leo interrupted, “what is that, exactly?”

Jason was still studying Piper, who was avoiding his gaze. She could feel his eyes, all too perceptive, roaming over her drawn face and tensed shoulders, but she focused resolutely on the textbook in front of her.

“Your thesis statement sums up your argument and the key points you’re using to prove it,” she spoke up, her gaze trained on Leo now. “It’s like, a shortened version of the back of a book. Or a highlights reel. Or a movie trailer.”

Leo looked back at her blankly. “So…another thing that sums up the whole paper. Why do I have to write the whole paper if I can prove it in one sentence?”

Piper rolled her eyes, but, to his credit, Jason managed a small smile. “It doesn’t prove your claim, it just gives a little preview of how you’re going to prove it. It gives the reader an idea of what to expect,” he explained, far more patiently than Piper ever could have. She was good with words, but even Leo exceeded her patience at times like these.

Jason was just so good. Piper couldn’t think of anybody deserving of him, especially not herself.

Her heart ached.

Over the past three months, Jason had fit seamlessly into Leo and Piper’s lives, clicking instantly. She and Jason were easy friends in their own right, getting pizza together or hanging out in the apartment when Leo was out. Of course, she’d befriended Percy, Annabeth, and many of the other team members and their assorted friends in the same amount of time, but her connection to Jason was just…different, somehow. And not just because she was perilously close to falling in love with him already.

Leo would always be Piper’s best friend—they’d been through so much together that losing him wasn’t even a possibility to Piper, they were stuck with each other for life—but Jason, even after only three months, was already a close second. After their initial meeting of tipsy flirting, they’d bonded quickly over their shared love of baseball and Disney movies.

So now Piper knew just how kind and genuine of a person he really was. She also knew how much of a disaster she was, and how much he didn’t deserve to have to put up with that.

So she suffered in silence, hoping her little crush would go away painlessly and soon. The way her stomach flipped when Jason glanced over at her again, his eyes still slightly apprehensive, seemed to insist she would not be getting an easy out.

When she tuned back into the boys’ conversation, Jason was asking Leo when the paper was due.

“Tomorrow?” he yelped at Leo’s answer. “And you waited until now to ask for my help? Leo, you have six more pages to write, we’re gonna be here all night!”

“Nice rhyme, Dr. Seuss,” Leo teased, but at the look Jason gave him, he ducked his head guiltily. “I know, honestly I didn’t think writing a dumb essay would take that long,” he mumbled. “You guys can go home if you want, it’s pretty late and finals are in a few days and I’m sure I can figure this out—”

Piper just snorted. “Not going anywhere, Valdez. We’re a team.”

“She’s right,” Jason chimed in, patting Leo lightly on the shoulder. “I meant it when I said I’d help. If we have to stay until the paper is due, then that’s what we’re gonna do.”

Leo smiled at both of them, and they went back to work.

—

Three hours later, Piper felt her eyelids drooping. It was only 10 PM, but she'd had gotten up early and worked all day, so she could already tell staying up with Leo was gonna be rough. The boys, she noted, were looking a little frazzled too, so she stood and told them she was going on a coffee run.

Jason frowned. “It’s late, Pipes, are you sure you should be walking across campus alone?”

Warmth spread through her at his concern, but she shrugged it off and her jacket on. “I’m a tough girl, I’m sure I’ll be fine.”

Jason opened his mouth to protest, but Leo cut him off. “Just go with her, Jason, I need some time alone anyway.”

Piper nodded at Jason’s questioning glance, but she glared daggers at Leo when Jason turned to grab his coat. Leo just gave her a shit eating grin; he’d picked up on Piper’s crush early on and frequently found excuses to leave them alone together.

A few moments later, Piper and Jason were walking out into a wall of freezing December air that had Piper tugging her coat around her and wishing she could cuddle up to Jason. Strictly to conserve heat, naturally.

They chatted easily as they walked to a small coffee shop about five minutes away, the only one on campus open 24 hours.

“Are your finals bad?” Jason asked, his words a puff of steam in the frigid air.

Piper shook her head and buried her hands deeper in her pockets. “Nah. My media law final is the only one I’m really worried about, but I think I’ll do okay. What about yours? Is that political theory stuff still giving you trouble?”

“I’ve been studying for it, so I think I’ll be okay,” he shrugged.

“I wish I had the self discipline to already be studying for finals,” Piper grumbled. “I can’t get myself to study before the last minute.”

Jason laughed at her sullen expression. “You just need the right motivation, like a reward or a study buddy.”

“You offering?” She caught his eye and smirked; Jason blushed a pretty shade of pink that spread down his neck and disappeared beneath the collar of his peacoat. Piper found herself wishing she could see just how far down that blush travelled.

“Yeah—I mean, if you wanted,” Jason stammered, looking hurriedly away from her.

Piper cringed inwardly; she hadn’t meant to embarrass or pressure him. But she had to admit, having someone to make her study would be helpful—Leo was no help at all and Annabeth had her hands full with Percy—and she couldn’t bring herself to say no to spending time with Jason, even if she should for her own sake.

“I’d like that,” she found herself saying, and his resulting smile was so bright she forgot all about the awkwardness of the previous moment. His teeth were so perfect and straight, he could’ve done toothpaste commercials, she noted. And his lips—well, Piper had spent plenty of time thinking about them already; they were a little thin and a little chapped, but they were so frequently pulled into a smile and looked so inviting she knew she wouldn’t mind the roughness if they were working with her own. She wanted to bite the scar on his upper lip—where had it come from? She’d have to ask him sometime.

Her eyes traveled upward then, following the gentle slope of his nose to his bright blue eyes. Piper usually preferred brown, like her own, but Jason’s were so genuinely captivating, fringed with long, blonde lashes, that she longed to drown herself in them.

That thought snapped her out of her haze: she wasn’t this much of a fucking sap, and she couldn’t afford to be thinking things that sounded like they were written by a lovesick thirteen year old. She couldn’t take her eyes off his, though, and she noted the way they dropped to her mouth as her tongue darted out to wet her lips.

He was looking at her mouth. And his eyes were different somehow—darker? Or maybe that was just the shadowy lighting, but either way he was definitely staring at her mouth and either he was going to stop and kiss her or she had something stuck in her teeth. She really hoped it was the former, because they’d gotten so close their arms were touching as they walked and his eyes were flitting up to her own and back down again, and Piper prayed, oh she prayed that she was right because she was leaning forward now so there was no going back and—

Unfortunately, staring prolongedly at a boy who probably wasn’t even into her meant that Piper didn’t notice the patch of ice she was walking towards.

She shrieked as her feet slid out from under her, the dark pavement suddenly racing towards her. She braced for impact, but instead of freezing concrete to the nose, she felt a pair of strong arms wrapped around her waist and hauling her back to her feet.

Before she could fully process what was happening she found herself pressed entirely up against Jason’s front, his arms securely around her waist and his wide eyes blinking down at her from behind his glasses. Her hands settled on his chest as they stared at each other, and then slid down to grip his forearms. Neither his hands nor his gaze shifted.

Piper swallowed hard before noting just how nice his arms felt, even through his coat. All those workouts and baseball practices had really paid off.

Jason’s cheeks were stained crimson again—he blushed a lot, and Piper adored it—but he started laughing.

“Yeah, uh, I guess they have,” he said. Suddenly his eyes went wide. “Not—not that you’re heavy, or anything. Because you aren’t. I mean, you’re like, average weight I assume? For a girl your height? I don’t really know, I haven’t caught very many people—”

Piper was mortified her comment had been spoken aloud, but thankfully Jason’s own stammering had shifted the focus off of her.

“What?” she asked, cutting him off with a raised eyebrow. “You mean to tell me you don’t regularly swoop in and catch people? And here I thought you were some kind of blonde Superman. It’s kind of a let down that you don’t save the day all the time.”

Jason grinned, a little sheepishly, but without most of the previous nervousness. “Haven’t noticed too many people falling.”

Piper’s heart hammered in her chest, and surely he could feel it with the way they were still pressed together. Then you must be blind, she wanted to say.

Instead, she stepped back, letting his arms fall away from her. She instantly felt the chill seep into her as though she weren’t even wearing a coat.

“Guess it’s just me, then,” she quipped, tossing him a smile as they headed toward the coffee shop again. They were nearly there. “Figures, I’m pretty clumsy.”

A small smile appeared on Jason’s face at that. Piper saw him attempt to subtlety lengthen his strides—attempt being the key word, because it wasn’t subtle at all—and reached the door first, just in time to open it for her, ever the perfect gentleman. “Hey, every princess needs a little saving now and then,” he said.

This time, Piper was the one blushing.

—

Piper McLean was going to be the death of him, he was sure of it.

Jason had never been great with girls. He knew there had been girls who’d liked him in the past, definitely more than a few who’d flirted with him, but he never had much interest. The only relationship he’d ever had was with Reyna in high school, and that had been short lived; Jason cared about her deeply but not romantically, and Reyna…well. Reyna had ended up dating his older sister.

Where was he going with that? Oh, he was bad with girls. Right.

So when he’d seen Piper across that bar in September, he’d nearly panicked. She was gorgeous, looking him up and down with eyes that were shifting color, and she seemed to approve of what she saw, but Jason couldn’t flirt to save his life when he was sober, let alone several drinks in. Luckily she’d been about as drunk as he had, so she hadn’t minded his inability to keep up with her.

Since that night, Jason couldn’t get her out of his head. She was beautiful and brilliant and funny, and they just matched. The more time he spent with her, the harder he fell, and he knew it would end badly because she was clearly out of his league—but that didn’t stop him.

Being around her and knowing she would never be interested in him was torture, but if it meant he could make her laugh and watch her re-braid her hair and listen to the little songs she made up under her breath when she thought he couldn’t hear, then he’d gladly suffer every day of his life.

They’d gotten the coffee and headed back to the library after the rather embarrassing incident outside the shop (he wanted to die a little remembering how he’d basically called her heavy, and that he’d stood there and not let her go like some kind of clingy creeper. It was worth it to get to hold her like that—it just felt right—but still. And had he really called her a princess in need of saving? As if Piper needed him to save her. Piper was more like a badass queen who slew her own dragons, so Jason really had no idea what had possessed him to make that comment).

In any case, they’d made it through the rest of the night without any more awkward moments, and now, at nearly 4 AM, Leo was finishing up his paper. Jason’s eyelids had been drooping for the past hour even with the enormous amount of coffee he drank, and Piper had slumped forward and fell asleep on her arms some time ago. Leo, however, somehow managed to maintain his ridiculously high energy levels, which struck Jason as a little concerning. Did he ever sleep?

“Okay,” he was saying now, his fingers flitting frantically over the keyboard, “what if I shifted this quote down here, and I could add something up here about the chemical bonding process?”

Jason shook his head to wake himself up. It didn’t work. “Uh, yeah, if you’ve got more to say about…about uh, chemical bonding, I say go for it, man.”

He looked over at Piper. One of her arms was extended across the table in front of her, and the other was bent next to it. Her head rested on them at an angle that didn’t look comfortable to Jason, but either didn’t bother Piper or the discomfort was outweighed by her exhaustion. Her hair was a mess, thrown across her shoulders and sticking to her face. Jason’s fingers twitched on the table, wanting to brush it back.

Even when she was messy and undone and practically drooling onto her oversized flannel, Piper still made Jason’s heart skip a beat. It wasn’t that she was traditionally beautiful at all times (because that was just unrealistic), but she was her own kind of beautiful, and it was the most breathtaking kind Jason had ever seen.

He must have been staring, because Leo nudged his shoulder and shot him a knowing grin that heated Jason’s cheeks. “I’ve got this covered here, if you wanna take Piper to bed.”

Jason’s face went full red at that. “What? I-I wouldn’t—she’s, I mean that’s not really—”

And then Leo was laughing, laughing way too loudly for four in the morning. “Relax, Grace, I just meant take her back to our place. This is basically all written, but I’ll probably stay a couple more hours to finish editing and then print it and turn it in while I’m up, so I’m not gonna be able to take her back. And I don’t…I don’t like her walking alone at night, even if she says she can,” he added quietly, suddenly more serious. Jason nodded in agreement. The idea of Piper going out alone at night on a college campus made his stomach turn. He knew how a lot of guys their age could be and wouldn’t put it past them to try something, as horrible as that was.

And the thought of one of them trying something with Piper made him want to punch someone’s teeth out.

“You sure you’re okay here?” he asked. “I can stay if you need more help.”

Leo shook his head. “I’m good now. But listen…thanks. I know this isn’t your ideal Saturday night, so, um, thank you.” He kept his gaze down, fiddling with his fingers like he always did, but this time it seemed more…agitated?

Nervous, Jason realized.

He gripped Leo’s shoulder tightly until the other boy met his gaze. “Remember what Piper said about us being a team? That includes me now, and I’ve always got your back, Leo.”

A grin lit up Leo’s face, and he shoved the hand off his shoulder playfully. “Welcome to Team Valdez and the Crew, then!”

“That name needs a little work.”

“What are you talking about? It’s perfect!”

“I somehow doubt Piper signed off on it, and I may be late to the game but I know I hold some kind of veto power.”

“Fine, we can workshop it. Later. Right now you need to get the beauty queen home, because if she stays like that any longer I’m pretty sure her arm is gonna lose blood flow.”

Jason chuckled and moved to Piper, trying to gently wake her. It took a few tries—wow, she was a deep sleeper—but eventually she stirred.

“Hmm? Jason?” Her eyes blinked in the fluorescent lights of the library, and closed again.

“Yeah, Pipes, it’s me,” he reassured quietly. “Come on, let’s get your coat on.”

“Coat?”

“Yep, I’m gonna get you home.”

“Oh. ‘S cold outside.” Jason had to keep himself from laughing at her slurred words. Half awake was as good as he was going to get, he supposed, but damn, it was too adorable for him to mind.

“Yep, that’s what the coat’s for.”

“Where’s—” she yawned dramatically— “where’s m’purse?”

“On your shoulder.”

“…oh. Hmm.”

Piper’s eyes were barely open, and he honestly didn’t trust her to not walk into a wall or something, so Jason hesitantly wrapped his arm behind her waist, gripping her hip to keep her pressed to his side. She immediately nuzzled into the crook of his shoulder and sighed, and Jason’s brain sort of broke for a moment. He stared down at the top of her head, his heart pounding.

That doesn’t mean anything, he told himself. Pull it together, man. She’s basically asleep. She doesn’t know what she’s doing.

So he shook his head in an attempt to clear it and started to steer her to the exit.

“Grace!”

Jason turned back a little to half face Leo. “Yeah?”

“Be careful with her. She’s more fragile than she looks.” The normal teasing lilt to his voice was there, but his eyes were serious, piercing into his own with purpose.

Jason nodded solemnly. He knew Leo meant more than just to be careful tonight, though he wasn’t sure exactly what he intended beyond that. What Jason did know is that he would never hurt Piper.

Besides, his own heart seemed much more at risk than hers.

—

Jason was living in a dorm this year and didn’t have a car, but luckily Piper and Leo’s apartment was only a short walk from campus. Plus, the longer they walked, the longer Piper was wrapped up in his arm, pressed against his side and nuzzling into him like a kitten.

By the time they reached her apartment building, the chill and the walk had woken Piper up some, and she was a bit more conscious of what was going on, but Jason noted giddily that she made no attempt to move away from him. In fact, she may have even pushed closer, but that could have been his imagination. Besides, it was probably just because it was below freezing and she wasn’t completely awake.

(He really didn’t mind.)

Finally he had to release her so she could kick off her shoes and shrug her coat off and fall into bed. He felt colder without her, and almost…hollow, like something was missing where she had been? But that was just silly. They were just friends, and he was fine with that. He had to be.

“Okay, well if you’re good I’m gonna—” he gestured towards her door, starting to leave, but her soft voice calling his name stopped him in his tracks.

“Just crash here,” she said sleepily, her eyes barely open. “It’s late.”

“Only if you don’t mind,” he said, but he was praying she would insist because it was freezing, and his dorm was on the other side of campus, and he was almost as exhausted as she was.

“‘Course not.” She yawned again, and her eyes drifted shut. “C’mere.”

Jason blinked, confused. “Um, I’ll just sleep on the couch, Pipes,” he tried to explain, but even in her mostly-asleep state she was pushy.

“Couch is lumpy and I want you to stay here,” she insisted, though her slurred words made her a little less intimidating than usual.

Still, Jason hesitated. She was so tired she was practically drunk, she could not be thinking straight. She’d probably wake up tomorrow and wonder what was wrong with him that he didn’t ignore her.

“C’mon, Sparky, I’m cold,” she pleaded, and when he glanced back at her, her eyes were open and clear. “Please?”

As Jason toed off his sneakers, draped his coat over her desk chair, set his glasses carefully aside, and crawled into bed beside her, he was cursing himself for being so weak for this woman. He knew he’d regret it tomorrow, but, well…he just couldn’t say no to her.

—

Piper woke suddenly. She sat up and glanced around blearily, trying to find what had woken her up. Her eyes landed on her clock. It was 7:28 on a Sunday morning, why the hell—

A noise came from beside her, a kind of strangled yelp, and she jumped. Jason was lying in her bed—Jason was lying in her bed, oh, God—Jason was lying in her bed—and he was shaking, a thin sheen of sweat glistening on his frowning forehead. His chest was heaving, and Piper realized with a clench of her heart that he was having a nightmare.

She placed a hand on his chest, feeling his erratic heartbeat beneath her fingers. Then she shook him gently, trying to wake him up.

“Jason,” she whispered, repeating it louder when he didn’t stir.

Suddenly he jolted awake, gasping, his eyes glancing about the room frantically before landing on her face and softening.

“Piper?” he croaked.

“Yeah, Jason, it’s me,” she answered softly, unthinkingly combing his hair back from his forehead. He leaned into her touch and her heart nearly stopped. What was she doing? It had been stupid of her to ask him to stay; he would’ve been fine on the couch.

He seemed to notice something was off, and he coughed awkwardly as he sat up. “I should go,” he muttered, not meeting her eyes. “I-I shouldn’t have stayed, I’m sorry, you were basically asleep, you—”

“I asked you to stay, and I meant it,” she insisted. It was the truth, even if she was kicking herself now for practically forcing herself on him. He paused and wiped the sweat from his brow. Together, they waited in silence for something Piper couldn’t name.

“What was it about?” she asked hesitantly. Her voice was small and cautious. “The dream.”

Jason’s head lifted and their eyes met, sparks lighting up Piper’s spine. Her nickname for him was more accurate than he realized.

But he hesitated, and Piper rushed to add, “If you don’t wanna talk about it that’s fine, I shouldn’t have pried, I just thought maybe—”

“My mom,” he answered quietly. “My real mom. She—well, she was an alcoholic, so Thalia and I got taken away from her when I was really little. I barely remember her, just bits of memories here and there. I was only two, so...I found out later my dad is some politician, barely even knew we existed, and his wife hated us so she made sure they didn’t have to take us. We were put into foster care, different families. Took us years to find each other again.”

His gaze hadn’t wavered from hers, and Piper could see the pain in his eyes. She hadn’t meant to make him relive something that hurt so much, she hadn’t realized.

“Jason,” she breathed, her hand finding his. He gripped it hard.

“She died,” he said, his eyes finally dropping from hers to settle on their hands. “Went sort of crazy and drank herself to death a couple years after we were taken away. I only found out years later, when Thalia told me. I never…I didn’t get to see her again.”

His hand was shaking in hers, so Piper squeezed harder. Minutes ticked by in silence, and she wasn’t sure how else to comfort him. There was nothing she could think to say to make him feel better, and it didn’t feel right to try to brush past what he’d just admitted to her. He’d opened up a huge part of himself to her.

Maybe that called for her to do the same.

“I never knew my mom,” she said finally. Jason glanced up at her earnestly, questioningly. She took a shaky breath and continued, “My dad’s a movie star and all so I guess it could be pretty much anyone, but he never talks about her and shuts down when I ask, so I gave up on trying a long time ago. He was never really around either though, with his film schedule and press stuff. He tried, for a while anyway, when I was little. He used to come home more often and take me to the beach, but I was always a difficult kid and pretty soon it was visits for a day every couple weeks when he could make the time to fly out and see me. Pretty sure he didn’t even want a kid, but he was stuck with me.”

Jason was watching her, studying her face openly, but she couldn’t meet his gaze. Instead she focused on their entwined hands, as he had done. Her fingers played with his as she talked, and she took comfort in the fact that he let her.

“Anyway, Leo and I met in middle school and he got me through it. His mom was really sweet to me, way nicer than the nanny my dad hired to watch me most of the time. That’s around the time I…I started acting out? You know, doing stupid stuff to get my dad to pay attention to me, even if it was just to scold me or whatever. Leo was happy to help, and after his mom died and he got stuck with his awful relatives it just got worse, and we probably spent most of our time in detention. It wasn’t enough for me, though, and it kept escalating, and I—I was in a really bad place, but my sophomore year I got caught shoplifting some clothes.”

She paused to look up at him, expecting to see judgement written across his face, but she found only the same earnest expression as before.

“It was dumb, and my dad’s lawyers got me off without anything on my record somehow, but I finally got my dad’s full attention. He flew all the way home just to chew me out.” She laughed a little at the absurdity. “It was really bad, and the next week I was at wilderness school, which was like this boarding school for troubled kids out in the middle of some bumblefuck Nevada desert.”

“Shit, Piper,” Jason said, “I’m sorry.”

Piper waved him off. “Please, even the racial slurs those kids threw at me is nothing compared to what you just told me, and Leo acted up enough to end up out there with me, so it wasn’t the end of the world. I just thought I should be honest.”

Jason frowned. “You don’t owe me anything. I told you that stuff because I wanted to, Pipes. I trust you.”

“I know. I trust you too,” she answered, squeezing his hand. “So now that we’ve agreed that parents are shitty, wanna go back to sleep for a few hours?” She forced a smile and hoped he would miss the tension behind it.

He studied her a moment longer, but finally relented with a nod. Together they lay back down in Piper’s bed and drifted back into sleep.

Piper smiled to herself at the realization that they were still holding hands.

—

The second time Jason woke that morning was not to Piper’s voice calling him out of a nightmare, but to her hair in his mouth and Leo’s loud laughter, which was somewhat less pleasant.

Apparently they had shifted over the last few hours so they were no longer holding hands; rather, Piper was stretched out face down on top of him, one leg slung over his hips and her head nestled on his chest, hence the aforementioned hair in his mouth. Jason had instinctually wrapped his arms around her, and he thanked every deity he could think of that there was no morning…issue to deal with. The situation was embarrassing enough without it.

He stared down at her as she came to, blinking confusedly in the morning light before meeting his eyes. She seemed to realize where she was then and shot up, Jason’s arms jerking back immediately.

Leo laughed again from the doorway, wiping tears from his eyes. “Jason, man, I told you I didn’t mean it literally when I said take her to bed!” he was giggling, and Jason felt his face flush brightly.

He was gonna kill him.

“Leo, get out of my room before I murder you,” Piper snapped from behind her hands covering her face.

Never mind, Piper had it handled.

Leo did as she asked, but not before blowing them each a kiss and winking at Jason.

The pause that followed was tense, unsurprisingly.

“Piper,” he started, but she interrupted him.

“I’m sorry, I was asleep so obviously I didn’t really know what I was doing,” she rushed, sliding out of bed and hurrying around her room, searching the clutter until she found a hair tie to braid her hair back with as she talked. “I wouldn’t have—I mean, I shouldn’t have made you stay. Sorry.”

Jason grit his teeth. There was the rejection he’d been anticipating since last night. It hurt more than he'd expected, but it was his own fault. He'd known the risks. He should’ve just slept on the couch. He should’ve kept quiet about his mom. He should’ve stopped her, told her he wasn’t trying to pressure her into talking, into anything.

He should’ve known better.

“No, I’m sorry,” he muttered, trying to mask the hurt on his face and bending to put his shoes on. “I appreciate you letting me stay. I’m gonna head out.”

She may have nodded, or maybe she didn’t answer, or maybe she watched him go. He wasn’t sure, he walked out and didn’t look back.

—

Piper didn’t hear from him for the next several days, and kicked herself every time she checked her phone hoping to see a message from him. Of course he isn’t gonna text you, she chided, you basically told him you regretted letting him stay over right after he poured his heart out to you, and you were cuddling with him when he woke up. You’ll be lucky if he talks to you again.

So Piper went to Annabeth, the only person she’d actually told about her feelings for Jason, unsure of what exactly she was hoping for.

What she got was a frown over the carton of ice cream they were sharing.

“You’re taking all the cookie dough chunks,” Annabeth complained.

“No I’m not. Focus on the real issue here!”

“The issue of you not telling Jason how you feel? Because that’s the real issue.”

Piper rolled her eyes; they’d had this exact conversation about a million times already. “There’s no reason to ruin the friendship we’ve got because my stupid feelings got in the way.”

“You seem to think you’ve already ruined it,” Annabeth pointed out, nudging Piper’s spoon away from another chunk of cookie dough.

“It’s been three days, what am I supposed to think?”

“Maybe he got busy?” Annabeth suggested. “Maybe his phone got broken or lost, maybe he thought you didn’t want to hear from him. Have you tried texting him?”

Piper bit her lip and focused very hard on getting a decent spoonful of ice cream.

“You haven’t even tried texting him. Of course not. Piper, I thought you were good with guys!”

“I am!” she insisted. “Guys that I wanna sleep with and then never see again, or that I want to flirt with and not have to worry about their feelings. But Jason is all perfect and handsome and sweet and suddenly my brain feels like it’s been zapped by lightning.”

Annabeth raised an eyebrow. “Well he probably thinks you don’t want to hear from him and is agonizing over why you haven’t texted him.”

Piper perked up a little at that. “You think so?”

“I don’t know, Percy said he was really off Monday but seems mostly fine now, just distracted. Sounds like it could have something to do with why he hasn’t said anything.”

Piper chewed on her lower lip, mulling the possibilities over. Either he was distracted by what had happened Sunday—though she hoped that wasn’t the case—or something else had happened and that was keeping him preoccupied. She just had to figure out what was bothering him, and then maybe things could go back to normal.

“So you think I should text him?”

Annabeth sighed. “Honestly? I think you should both wake up and realize you’re obviously head over heels for each other. But since neither of you is going to admit it apparently, yes, I think you should text him before it gets weird.”

Piper grinned and snagged a hunk of dough before pulling out her phone.

hey, she typed. Very eloquent. Definitely summed up the “please talk to me I’m really sorry and I miss you also I might be falling in love with you” sentiment she was going for.

But, having nothing else she could think to say, Piper pressed send and waited.

She didn’t have to wait long. Less than a minute later, her phone buzzed with an answering, Hey!! from him. Piper grinned, just as another message followed: What’s up?

“He answer?” Annabeth asked around the spoon in her mouth.

Piper nodded as her fingers flew across the keyboard. just haven’t heard from you in a few days, everything ok?

Yeah everything is fine, I’ve just been busy. he answered. Piper smiled at his perfect grammar. She’d tried to explain to him once that he didn’t need to worry about that with her, but he’d furrowed his brow and asked why she wouldn’t want the same consideration he gave to everyone else. She’d laughed at his seriousness and let the issue drop. She glanced down when her phone buzzed again. Are you still in need of a study buddy?

Only if it’s you, she shot back. It was a little risky, but she figured it was just a casual friendly remark. No hidden truths to be found anywhere.

Her anxiety mounted a little when the three dots showed up at the bottom of the screen and then disappeared. Was that the wrong thing to say? Had that sent her crashing through the thin ice she’d been standing on with him and right into hot water?

But no, his answer was simply, Tomorrow, 7 PM at the library? and she breathed a sigh of relief.

make it the coffee shop and you’ve got a deal

Sounds good. See you then.

Piper grinned giddily down at the screen. Everything was okay, and their friendship was intact.

She looked up to see Annabeth smirking at her from the other side of the couch.

“Shut up,” Piper muttered. Annabeth only shrugged and returned to the ice cream.

—

The “study date”, as Percy and Leo insisted on calling it, went smoothly, much to Jason’s relief. He’d panicked after not hearing from Piper for so long, thinking that either his storming out or the waking up cuddling incident had upset her, so getting a text from her was a huge weight off his shoulders. He focused on everything, including baseball, a little better when he was on good terms with her. It was dangerous, he knew; he couldn’t afford to let every disagreement with a girl he’d only known a few months throw him off his game, but he couldn’t exactly help it. He’d just have to settle for keeping her happy. (Luckily for him, keeping Piper happy was becoming a top priority at an alarming rate. Or…perhaps that was unluckily.)

Things had just about returned to normal between the two of them, and they hung like nothing had changed. Which, Jason reminded himself, was true. Nothing had changed. He just knew for certain that she wasn’t interested in him the way he wanted her to be. But he’d known that before. So.

Jason was just reflecting on this when Leo caught up to him, leaving the locker room after the last practice of the semester.

“You missed an easy shot at the end there, you sure you don’t need a little more practice?”

Jason raised an eyebrow at him. “What’s your average again?”

“Point taken. When are you headed home?”

“I’ve got one more final tomorrow and then I’m out. What about you?”

Leo looked down, his fingers tapping out an agitated rhythm on the shoulder strap of his bag. “I’m staying here, actually. Lotta money to fly to Houston, and I’ve got lots of stuff to work on here, so.” He shrugged.

“You’re from Houston?” Jason frowned. “I thought you and Piper went to school together.”

“We did. Piper lived at her dad’s little ranch house thing even while he was filming, supposedly so she didn’t ‘get sucked into the Hollywood stuff.’ Really it was because he didn’t want to deal with her.” Suddenly Leo glanced at him, eyes wide. “Shit, don’t tell her I said anything, yeah? I probably shouldn’t have told you that.”

Jason waved him off. “I won’t, but it’s fine, she already told me about her dad.”

This seemed to interest Leo. “She did?” A small smile appeared on his face at Jason’s nod, which seemed…odd, for such a serious subject. “Anyway yeah, we knew each other in Texas before we both got banished to the desert.”

“So she’s going home to Texas?”

“Nah, her dad sold the property as soon as she went to college. He didn’t use it, so no point in keeping it if you don’t need somewhere to stash a kid, I guess.” Leo’s tone was bitter, and Jason got the impression Leo felt about the same way toward Tristan McLean as his daughter did. “Besides, Piper’s only going to L.A. for Christmas because she has to, and then she’ll be back. We spend every New Year’s together. It’s tradition.”

“You’re lucky,” Jason commented drily, “my foster mom is great and all, but she’s a little…I don’t know, militant? Makes holidays kind of stressful.”

Leo grabbed his shoulders and pulled him so they were facing each other in the middle of the sidewalk. “Come back for New Year’s.”

“What?”

“I’m serious, you can stay in the apartment until the spring semester starts. You’ll still have Christmas with your mom, but you can have a little fun with us for the new year!”

Jason frowned, thinking it over. “I don’t know, Leo…”

“Piper will be there, too.” Leo wiggled his eyebrows suggestively, and Jason blushed.

“Are you sure she wouldn’t mind me staying for a couple weeks?”

Leo snorted and released his shoulders so they could walk again. “Please, Piper would love having you there.”

Jason started to ask what that meant, but before he could, Leo slapped him on the back.

“Great! Glad that’s settled. You’re gonna see Piper before you leave, right?”

“Um, I was planning on it, but Leo—”

“Smart man. Have a good break! See you at the end of the month!”

And then Leo was gone, leaving Jason with plans for the holidays and several questions.

—

“He what?”

Jason winced. He knew he shouldn’t have agreed without asking Piper first, but then again, Leo hadn’t left much room for debate.

“Yeah,” he answered once he’d swallowed the bite of pizza he’d been working on. “He kind of insisted, so now I guess I’m spending New Year's and the following couple weeks with you guys? I mean, if that’s okay with you. I can always tell him no,” he added, watching her chew her lip and resisting the urge to reach over and soothe it with his thumb.

“No!” she yelped, and immediately blushed. Probably remembering what had happened the last time he’d stayed with her, he figured. This plan was seeming worse with every passing minute. “It’s fine,” she amended more quietly, “I just wasn’t expecting it.”

“I’ll be sleeping on the couch, obviously,” he said with a dry smile. He’d hoped to reassure her, but her face seemed to fall, almost like…disappointment? But that didn’t seem right, unless she really didn’t want him there.

Her expression shifted almost immediately to one of excitement, though, and he didn’t have time to overthink anymore. “Right. It’ll be fun!” she was saying. “You can join in all our New Year’s Eve traditions, like drinking.”

Jason waited a moment for her to continue. She didn’t. “Oh, I thought you were listing things.”

Piper nodded, taking a sip of her soda. “I was.”

“So…?”

“That was the whole list.”

Jason laughed. “Of course. Well, it’s more traditions than I’ve got, so I’d be happy to join in.”

Piper’s answering smile lit up her whole face, and Jason had to swallow hard to keep his heart from jumping into his mouth. She was so beautiful it was just unfair.

—

As soon as Piper walked into their apartment on December 29th, she felt at ease again. Her Christmas had been stressful—which is completely unfair, by the way, it’s Christmas—because yeah, he was her dad, and he was trying and she got that, really she did, but she always felt a little on edge around him because, frankly, they didn’t know each other very well. It was easy for constant filming to get in the way of visiting your kid when you didn’t really want it in the first place.

So coming back to Leo, who always wanted her around and never made her feel awkward in the slightest, was an enormous relief.

“Hey, Beauty Queen, how’s it hanging?” he called from the kitchen.

“I’m sorry,” she laughed, “but I don’t think anyone has used the phrase ‘how’s it hanging’ since, like, the seventies.”

Leo only shrugged, abandoning his bowl of cereal to grab her suitcase and carry it to her room. “I’m bringing it back. The seventies had some great trends.”

“Such as?”

“Well, for starters, I could rock a pair of bell bottomed pants and one of those shiny disco shirts.”

Piper laughed and wrapped him in a tight hug, which he returned enthusiastically. “I missed you, Valdez.”

“Don’t be such a sap. You were gone for like a week and a half.”

“I know, don’t remind me.”

“That bad, huh?” He pulled back to examine her face. “You guys fight?”

Piper shook her head and started unpacking. “I’m just always on edge when I’m there. I hate L.A.”

Leo nodded in solidarity. “Wanna order pizza?”

“Obviously.”

Leo grinned and pulled out his phone.

—

As soon as Jason walked through the door on December 31st, he was treated to the sight of Piper wearing a blue bra, a beanie, jeans, and a single sock. It was in interesting look, but Leo was enough to distract him in socks, boxer shorts, a glove, and a top hat.

Jason was more than a little confused, but had the presence of mind to be grateful that Leo’s outfit was weird enough to take his attention from Piper in just a bra. That thought had the unfortunate effect, however, of directing his attention right back to her though, because Piper was in just a bra and Jason’s brain was sort of short circuiting because holy shit Piper was in just a bra.

(And the pants or whatever, but who could be bothered to look that low when Piper. Was. In. Just. A. Bra.)

Focus on something else, he told himself. Don’t be a creep. That’s super weird and predator-y and you’re not even dating. Yes, Leo’s top hat. Stare at that. Just focus on the top hat. He mentally patted himself on the back for pulling that off.

“Hey,” Leo and Piper called in unison, not even glancing up from the cards in their hands.

“Um, hey,” he answered, pausing to allow one of them to jump in and explain just what exactly was happening. Neither did. “What’s, uh…what’s going on?”

“Strip or sip poker,” Leo answered, laying a card down with incredible focus.

“Sorry?”

“It’s like strip poker, but you have the option of taking a drink instead of losing an article of clothing,” Piper explained, finally looking up at him. “It’s, um…”

Jason could swear her cheeks got redder when their eyes met; he knew his certainly did. Her loss of words made him feel a little better about his own at her state of undress as well.

“It’s our New Year’s Eve tradition,” she finished finally, looking back down at her cards. “Shit, Leo!”

Leo laughed triumphantly at whatever had just happened in the game.

“I thought your tradition was just drinking,” Jason commented, removing his coat and wheeling his suitcase farther into the living room.

“Didn’t you hear the drinking part of the rules?” Leo asked, grinning up at him from his seat on the floor. “Come on, I’ll deal you in as soon as this round’s over, which should be soon with the way Piper’s playing.”

Piper flashed her middle finger at him.

“You guys don’t think it’s weird that you play strip poker together every year?” Jason asked, running a hand through his hair.

“Why would it be weird?” Leo asked.

“You’re playing a game favored by couples and horny groups of teenagers because the purpose is to get naked.’’

“The purpose is to have fun and get drunk,” Piper countered. “Besides, we only strip until we reach our underwear. Then you have to forfeit or chug your drink.”

“I don’t know if I can keep up with these rules,” Jason laughed.

“Well you’re gonna have to learn quick,” she said, smirking. “Hurry up, Grace, it’s only two hours ’til midnight and I’m not even tipsy!"

“Alright, alright, but someone’s gonna have to explain how poker works because I haven’t played it in years.”

Leo and Piper groaned in unison, and Jason grinned as he took a seat where they’d left room for him beside the table. It was good to be back, even if he knew he was about to end up either drunk or naked very quickly.

—

As it turned out, it was a combination of the two.

By the time 11:59 rolled around, Piper had lost her beanie and her other sock, Leo was down to his boxers and top hat, and Jason was left with just his underwear (purple briefs, one of his nicer pairs which he was now thanking himself from this morning for picking out) because, as he’d expected, he lost horribly. He wasn’t nearly as drunk as the other two, however, as he’d had more items of clothing to lose and had to drink less to keep up.

He was exceedingly thankful for that as well, because he had no idea what drunk Jason would say to a half naked Piper and he certainly didn’t want to find out.

There were 60 seconds until midnight, and Leo was trying to get the other two to come out on the fire escape with him, insisting it was the best spot to watch the fireworks. Piper was laughing, definitely drunk but lucid enough to know it was way too cold for that. Jason was insisting Leo get back inside, that it was below freezing and Leo was going to catch a cold out there in just his underwear.

(Leo countered this by explaining he was also wearing a hat.)

There were 45 seconds until midnight, and Leo was attempting to translate Auld Lang Syne into Spanish. Piper was singing the English lyrics, since she didn’t know much Spanish to begin with and translating that was just too difficult. Jason was listening to Piper sing, because she had the most beautiful voice he’d ever heard, which was unfair because everything else about her was beautiful too, and it was keeping him rooted in place, just staring at her.

(Piper caught his eye more than once and her skin took on a pretty deep pink tinge, but Jason figured it was probably just the alcohol.)

There were 15 seconds until midnight, and Leo was beginning to count down, watching his phone to keep track of the seconds as they disappeared into the ether. Piper was warning him to be careful, that he was too drunk to be waving his phone around out there, that he was going to drop it. Jason was watching her inch closer to him, each second vanishing along with an inch of space between them until she was pressed fully to his side and his heart rate was skyrocketing.

(Jason was pressing closer to her too, he realized.)

Three, Leo was shouting over the railing.

Two, Piper was looking up at him expectantly through her eyelashes.

One, Jason panicked.

“Happy New Year!” the three of them yelled together, and Jason bent down, and Piper’s eyes fluttered shut, and he pressed his lips to her cheek, softly, so softly.

He pulled back to see Piper frown, looking almost disappointed. Maybe he wasn’t misreading signals then, maybe Piper really did want him to kiss her, and he’d majorly screwed up. But he wouldn’t let their first (and maybe last, if he really was just tipsy and she wasn’t into him at all) kiss be a drunken fumbling one for the sake of the holiday with Leo jumping around in his underwear. His brain was cloudy and he wanted so badly to press Piper up against a wall and hear her sigh his name, but he knew that she deserved better than anything that would happen tonight.

So together, shivering, they pulled Leo back inside and, after a bit of celebrating and watching whatever fireworks they could see, pushed him in the direction of his room. They all needed to get some sleep.

Jason found himself standing with Piper outside her bedroom door, which was across from Leo’s. She was studying his face, and had the same look in her eyes she’d had at midnight. It had Jason’s breath quickening, and his hands ached to brush her hair behind her ear or find her waist and pull her against him.

“What’s your resolution?” Piper asked, catching him off guard. Her words were only the slightest bit slurred, and her eyes were bright, the color seeming to change in the dim light.

“Haven’t really thought about it,” he answered truthfully.

Piper nodded solemnly, eyes still locked on his. Her voice was gentle, and soothed him even as the heat passing between them riled him up. “Wanna know mine?”

Jason nodded.

“It’s to go after the things I want,” she said, just a whisper, nearly drowned out by the sounds of partying and fireworks from outside.

“I like it,” Jason said. “Does it apply to anything in particular?”

Piper smiled coyly, and Jason couldn’t quite catch his breath. “Mm hm. But I think what I want can wait for another night, when I’m a little more sober.”

Unable to formulate a response to that, Jason nodded mutely again.

She turned and opened her bedroom door. “Goodnight, Sparky.”

“Happy New Year, Pipes.”

Her eyes sparkled at him, and then the door shut and he was left alone in the hallway.

—

Piper spent the first half of the next day hungover and hoping she wasn’t as obvious last night as she thought she’d been, and the second half regretting ever having made that ridiculous resolution because Jason fit so well with her and Leo and she really wasn’t looking forward to the awkwardness that would surely follow his rejection of her, but there was always a chance the heat in his eyes and the tenderness of his kiss last night hadn’t been a drunken hallucination, and besides, Piper had committed to going after what she wanted. What she wanted was him, and every time she thought about backing out she reminded herself that mama didn’t raise no bitch.

(You know, metaphorically, because she had no idea who her mother was and her father certainly didn’t raise her and the nanny didn’t put in much effort, so really it was more like…Piper didn’t raise herself to be no bitch. But that was too complicated, so she stuck with the original phrase.)

Actually telling Jason how she felt was a little more challenging with Leo hanging about—yeah, he lived there, but that was hardly an excuse—so before she knew it they were going to bed and she was lying awake, and then sneaking past a sleeping Jason to sit out on the fire escape, bundled in a hoodie and a blanket.

It was freezing, but the cold air helped her think, so she didn’t mind it too much. It was still pretty early for her, only a quarter past midnight, but the stars blinking down at her made it feel later than it was. A car honked in the distance. Someone in another building was blasting music.

“Jeez, Pipes, it’s freezing out here.”

And then Jason was sitting next to her, and it didn’t feel quite as cold as it had before.

She unwrapped one side of the blanket and held it open for him, letting him scoot closer and wrap the blanket around himself.

“It’s a good system,” she said, looking back up at the stars. “We can share a blanket and body heat.”

She hoped he couldn’t feel her heart pounding.

They sat in silence for what felt like hours, just drinking in each other’s presence and watching their breath turn to steam in the air, curling and entwining before vanishing into the night. Finally, it was Jason who broke the spell.

“Piper?”

Just her name, but it was enough to knock the wind out of her. “Yeah?”

“How drunk were you last night?”

She kept her eyes on the sky above them. “Not drunk enough to say anything I didn’t mean.”

He was silent then, but she could feel his eyes on the side of her face, watching her. She wondered what he saw.

“Piper?” he asked again.

“Yeah?”

“I came up with a resolution.”

She turned to look at him, and suddenly his lips were pressed to hers and the blanket was sliding down because his hands were on her waist, hot even through her hoodie, pulling her closer and closer and closer and somehow it still wasn’t enough, so Piper pressed back, one hand bunched in his shirt and the other finding his cheek. She needed air so desperately but she couldn’t pull back, not when his tongue was sliding against hers and she finally felt like she could breathe, and her hand slid up to wrap his hair around her fingers like she’d always wanted to.

She was practically in his lap now, nipping at the little scar on his lip, and she still didn’t know where he’d gotten it but she didn’t really care at the moment. His hands slid up, one around her back to hold her against his front and the other to her hair where it tugged on her braid, making her moan into his mouth. He must’ve liked that because he kissed her harder and his tongue dipped deeper and Piper had just about lost all presence of mind when she suddenly put her hands on his chest and shoved herself back.

She stared at him, panting, and he stared at her right back with his cheeks flushed gorgeously and his eyes wide. He opened his mouth and she knew he was about to apologize, he was going to think she stopped him because she didn’t want him to kiss her, and of course that couldn’t be farther from the truth, so—

“Jason Grace, how dare you have the audacity to kiss me,” she took a brief pause to catch her breath, not long enough for him to start to apologize but enough to scare him a little (she couldn’t resist messing with him just a tiny bit when he looked so adorably shocked), “when you knew it was my resolution to go after what I want, which is obviously you!”

Jason’s mouth opened and closed several times, but no sound came out. He blinked and frowned, and, “Um…what?”

“I was going to make the first move,” she sniffed. “I’d made a resolution and worked up the balls and even had a speech prepared. And backup speeches for different scenarios! I can’t believe you just ruined all those plans.”

Jason blinked several times, but a shadow of a smile had appeared on his face. “I’m sorry, I had no idea.”

“I basically told you last night.”

“I didn’t realize you were preparing speeches, though. I figured I’d save you the trouble with a resolution of my own.”

“You stole my resolution, too. Who’s committing plagiarism now?”

“Not true. Your resolution was to go after what you want. Mine was much simpler.”

“Oh yeah?” she challenged, picking up the fallen blanket to ward off the chill seeping back through her clothes. “What was it?”

“‘Kiss Piper.’”

She brushed back a piece of hair that had come loose from her braid—probably when Jason’s hand had tangled in it and pulled, she realized, the memory causing heat to pool low in her belly—to cover her smile. “Well that’s just…boring. Where’s the pizzazz?”

When she turned to look at him again, his face was much closer than it had been, his warm breath ghosting over her lips in a way that made them tingle deliciously. “I thought there was plenty of pizzazz. You need a refresher?” he teased.

Piper sucked in a breath. She had been far less prepared for confident, sexy, teasing, ready-to-kiss-her-stupid Jason than she’d thought, and it might just kill her. Trying to regain some control of the situation, she raised an eyebrow and said, “It still doesn’t make up for all the work I put in. Now I’ll never get to fulfill my New Year’s Resolution. I’m a failure.”

“Would it make you feel better to give me one of the speeches you prepared?”

“No, I don’t have one for this scenario.”

“You prepared for multiple scenarios but none of them included me kissing you?”

“I thought it would be at least another month before you made a move on me, Sparky, so no.”

“That stings.”

Piper laughed and nuzzled her nose against his, her eyes fluttering shut for a moment. “Can you blame me?”

“No,” he sighed, “I’m still pretty amazed I got it together long enough to kiss you. I’m sorry you didn’t get to give your speeches, though. You sure you can’t tell me one anyway?”

“I’m afraid that’s impossible, you’ll never know what I was going to say.”

Jason laughed. “You are a cruel woman, Piper McLean.”

She just shrugged, a smirk spreading across her face. “That’s what you get for stealing my moment.”

“How about I make it up to you?” His eyes were dark now, his nose brushing along hers and his voice deep. Piper shivered, and it wasn’t from the January air.

“I think we can work something out,” she whispered, and their mouths met in the middle as they reached for each other.

—

The first game of the season, Jason was third up to bat, and he was nervous as hell.

It was normal, especially for him. His nerves would decrease as the game went on, but that didn’t stop the shaking of his hands as he stepped up to the plate and took a couple warm up swings.

The first pitch veered to the left, just out of the strike zone.

The second was a fastball, and he was half a second too late.

He adjusted the straps on his gloves and tried to steady his breathing. This is normal, he told himself. You just need to pull it together and get your head in the game.

Great. Now I’m quoting High School Musical.

This, naturally, got I Don’t Dance stuck in his head, which wouldn’t even be an issue if Piper hadn’t made him watch the movies last week and sung that song at him constantly. (Not that he really minded; Piper’s singing voice was one of his favorite things in the world to listen to, even when accompanied by cheesy choreography.)

He glanced at the stands to his left, where he knew she was sitting with Annabeth, Grover, Hazel, and Percy’s family. He found her quickly, and she waved. His heart rate slowed, and the haze in his brain seemed to clear as he stepped back to the plate.

It probably wasn’t great to rely on her to keep him relaxed at bat. If they broke up, or fought, or even if she just missed seeing him play, he couldn’t afford to be off his game. He’d never had an issue working through his nerves before; he was sure he could do it without her, but it was so much easier to take one look at her and feel himself relax.

When he hit the ball way out to left field and made it to first with plenty of time to spare, he figured he didn’t mind relying on Piper so much. Watching her jump up and down, cheering in the stands, he got the feeling she wasn’t going anywhere.

[storytaeme]

slip ‘n’ slide – taegi

The last thing Yoongi expected to find in a secluded mountain was an adorable ice skating instructor with the most gorgeous ass. 

taegi week 2017 – taehyung x yoongi ft. jihope

❅ Prompt: Ice Skating

❅ Elements: Fluff, Smut  |  Ski Lodge AU    ↪ smut includes fingering, spanking, slight size kink

❅ Word Count: 7,580 words

❅ A/N: A poor excuse of a pwp!!! I just wanted to write smut for Taehyung and Yoongi heheh also did not proofread yet so I apologize for mistakes!

Min Yoongi was a talented, versatile man. He was skilled in a lot of things—rapping, music production, ensuring that Kim Namjoon stayed alive despite his clumsy two left feet and wildly long limbs, and sleeping for a good ten hours straight on satisfying nights. However, what he was far from qualified in was ice skating. And that was the last thing he wanted to do just a few sprinkle of days away from Christmas.

After pulling him out of the hellhole that was his finals, Namjoon had hauled Yoongi into his car and made their way up to the mountains where he planned an “all boys weekend” which basically implied a lot of booze, a lot of Namjoon flailing around, Hoseok picking up every walking thing with two legs in sight, and Yoongi struggling to keep his sanity intact. That, and a lot of karaoke sessions that Hoseok would drunkenly start in their cozy little lodge suite. They had splurged a little extra in honor of Yoongi’s early finish of his thesis and that meant a snazzy space with three bedrooms for all of them—which was probably for the best because, the first night, Hoseok was already thumping against Namjoon’s walls.

“This always happens,” Yoongi spoke over his coffee, humming as he inhaled the aroma of the bitter brew. His fingers were numb but they were quickly getting their senses back with the warmth radiating from his mug.

Namjoon groaned, fingers tangling frustratedly in his mussed up hair. They hadn’t even reached the weekend and Yoongi could already see the telltale signs of shadows under his eyes. He wanted to spew out an I told you so but it didn’t seem like the right time—not when Namjoon looked about ready to throttle Hoseok who was having his second round with whoever he had plucked from the club last night. “I know, I know,” he moaned, “it’s just so miserable. I wanted it to make a good weekend out for all three of us but he’s not being a team player. And neither are you, you bailed on the club last night.”

“I had to email my professor,” Yoongi smirked.

“Liar,” Namjoon snarled right back, jabbing an accusing finger his friend’s way, “I know Professor Han is already out for break and, when that’s the case, he never replies to his emails. Plus, you submitted your damn thesis a week ago, you’re basically free. A free bird. Caw caw, motherfucker.”

The elder snorted, swallowing the burn of the coffee with a wince. “It was to make sure that he received it. And you know that cramped places like those are not my forte. I was going to end up babysitting the two of you.”

“That’s the point,” he pouted sulkily.

“Nice try,” he scoffed, “I’m not playing into this game again. This was why I refused to come in the first place.”

“You signed a contract by blood.”

Yoongi squinted at him, “You literally scribbled an agreement, pricked my finger and forced me to stamp my thumb on that piece of toilet paper. We were both drunk, I’m surprised you didn’t cut my finger off.”

“By blood,” Namjoon pressed, palms flattened on the pretty marble countertop. They really did invest a good amount to get them a nice accommodation for the weekend. “But there’s this huge party that the lodge is holding tonight, cheap booze,” Namjoon wiggled his eyebrows excitedly, “you should definitely come.”

“I’ll think about it,” he grunted. He honestly had no intentions on sticking around for long even if he did show up. His thesis had drained the last of drop of energy he had in him, and he was surprised that Namjoon and Hoseok stuck around considering the amount of social contact he had to cut off to finish his work by the deadline.

“We are going ice skating today though, so that’ll be fun.”

Yoongi’s face showed otherwise. His expression had twisted bitterly as he gaped at his friend in utter incredulity. “You want me to go ice skating?”

“Yes, it’ll be good bonding time.”

“None of us know how to do it,” Yoongi reasoned.

Namjoon gave a shrug. “They have instructors around to help. Plus, if we go down, we go down together.”

“Fuck you.”

Hoseok came stumbling into the kitchen minutes later, hair sticking up in all sorts of angles and a blinding grin on his face. His neck was littered with purpling bruises that bloomed almost grotesquely. “Good morning, sunshines.”

Yoongi wanted to ask why this guy had light sprouting out of his butt at ass o’clock after he had his brains screwed out of his head. Then again it was Hoseok. The only times Yoongi had seen him in any other mood, he had steered clear. He wasn’t the nicest person when he was a little moody. Second later, another figure appeared in the doorway, looking as disheveled as Hoseok but twice the intensity of being mauled over. “Uh, hey everyone,” the man coughed awkwardly with all the eyes on him and his half-naked figure. “I sort of lost my shirt.”

They all could see that. The guy was good looking, had toned abs and all, tiny—probably Yoongi’s height—and cute as fuck, Hoseok’s and everyone’s type. There was a sweetness to his face that had all of them quietly admiring him. Hoseok had definitely gotten lucky.

“You can walk around without it, babe,” Hoseok beamed. The guy blushed, but fidgeted. “Grab one of my jackets, I’ll probably see you later anyway.”

“Coming to the rink?” the guy perked up, looking surprised. So were the rest of them. Their friend never really did ever come back for seconds, so if he had plans to even hang out with the guy, that said a lot.

Hoseok nodded, still grinning his post-sex afterglow. “Yeah, we’re all going there. So see you then?”

The guy pinked again but nodded shyly, “Okay, I’ll see you all later.” He disappeared back down the hall, then out the door, all of them waiting to hear that soft click.

Namjoon hopped on it first, “Damn. He was cute as fuck.”

“Tell me about it.” Hoseok’s eyebrows jumped enthusiastically. “You should hear his moans too, even cuter.”

“And you’re going back for him?” Yoongi questioned curiously, “That’s a first.”

Hoseok sparkled, his entire face lit up brilliantly like fireworks had burst before him. “He’s really good too, nice ass. Fuck, such a nice ass.” He looked up to the ceiling as if thanking the heavens for gracing him for that Grade A booty. “God, I can’t wait to slide my dick—”

“Anyway,” Yoongi interrupted, shoving a piece of toast into Hoseok’s mouth before he could further detail the process of coitus that Yoongi was familiar with and certainly did not need to hear coming from his friend’s mouth.

“I’m going to get ready, get myself all dolled up,” Namjoon fluttered his eyelashes teasingly, smiling. “I heard the instructors are gorgeous. I wouldn’t mind snatching one of them up for tonight.”

“Like your no-game ass is ever going to nail one of them,” Yoongi snorted. Hoseok high-fived him with a laugh. The two of them knew what always happened whenever Namjoon tried to pull off the smooth and suave. No matter how many times they’ve told him that his charms lied in his intelligence and awkwardness, Namjoon tried to work the “cool” look and always ended up embarrassing himself with double the humiliation.

The youngest of them narrowed his eyes, “Don’t test me. I’m going to be so riled up to get good ass if you put it that way.”

“Alright, honey,” Yoongi smiled sweetly, patting Namjoon’s cheek patronizingly, “go get dressed up so we can get you that ass you need, yeah?”

“Fuck you.”

—

The thing about being up in the mountains, far away from civilization and trapped in the only building that existed with only snow and hills surrounding it, was that there was no escape whatsoever. Yoongi had learned his lesson that having no exit door was never a good sign, but he supposed that—just this time—he could make it work.

Namjoon had bounced all the way down to the outdoor area where all the kids were playing. It seemed a little strange, Yoongi supposed, to see three grown men fumbling around with their laces as they attempted to balance themselves on the blade of their shoes. While Yoongi and Hoseok managed to keep their composure, Namjoon was hanging onto every possible surface for dear life with shaky knees. They had laughed about it for a little while, the two of them tittering about how ridiculous their friend looked. However, they really did speak too soon when they actually arrived on the ice.

The ground was slippery, had Yoongi clinging onto the barriers with his gloved hands to avoid falling flat on his face and gluing his skin to the freezing cold ice. Hoseok was slowly making his way around the rink, going ahead of Yoongi and laughing, only to stop when he lost his balance, then proceeded to cackle at him again. However, the dark horse of this entire story was probably Namjoon. The man was a fucking whiz on the ice.

Yoongi should’ve known better that karma always played fairly and that the two of them would get what was coming for them when they had snickered over Namjoon’s misery. Now, the youngest of them was gliding, slip and sliding all over the ice easily. Gone was the baby fawn and came in the massive buck who conquered the task. Well, that’s something to expect from a genius who managed to nail everything that needed skills and practice—except life, Namjoon was still working on life.

“Hey, hyung,” Namjoon called out and Yoongi could already feel the irritation bubbling in his veins as he turned slowly to face the other man. Namjoon was wiggling his ass stupidly while his feet maneuvered smoothly upon the cold surface. His glide was almost impeccable and Yoongi could’ve sworn he saw the guy do a figure eight at some point.

“Shut the fuck up, Namjoon,” Yoongi growled, fingers gripping the walls of the rink for dear life. Namjoon howled in laughter before skating away, hands behind his back. Smooth motherfucker. If only he had that kind of gracefulness in every other occasion too, maybe Yoongi would stop having a billion heart attacks whenever he handled pans in the kitchen.

Hoseok popped up behind him, purposely giving him a hard pat on the back then laughing when Yoongi jolted forward with a yelp. “The more you stick to the sides, the scarier it gets you know. You just have to embrace the feel.”

The only thing Yoongi would be embracing if he let go was the searing pain of his body doing an entire dive onto the ice, and the embarrassment of tumbling in front of dozens of other kids who had no problem working their own skates. It really was humiliating to be upstaged by ten-year-olds who kept pointing their fingers at him and muffling their laughter.

“Hey, Hoseok, here’s an idea. Fuck off,” Yoongi scowled bitterly. Hoseok only snorted again, poking at his friend. The incessant action had him wiggling around to avoid it, had him sticking his hand hard into Hoseok’s side to get him away.

“Hyung!” This time, it was another voice. It was the kid from earlier, the one who had gotten his ass wrecked by Hoseok.

“Jiminie!” Hoseok squealed, pouncing on the boy almost immediately. The guy looks brighter now, cleaner. It was sort of weird seeing the two of them side by side. It was as if there were two suns competing to shine brighter than the other. The Jimin guy giggled.

He wasn’t stripped half-naked this time (unfortunately) and was decked out in a navy and maroon puffy jacket zipped up with a logo of the lodge. “Are you an instructor here?” Yoongi queried with a curious raise of his brow.

“Yeah!” Jimin beamed, nearly blinding Yoongi with all the brightness he was radiating. “I’m a student studying sports therapy but I’ve been skating my entire life, been working here every break since I started.” That explained the entire chocolate abs thing he had going on.

“Mhm,” Hoseok cooed, pinching his cheek, “but Jiminie’s mine for today.” Jimin flushed at that, scarlet creeping up his neck and reaching the tips of his ears.

“Do you need some help, hyung?” Jimin asked warily, concern dripping in his voice. Wow, cute and sweet. Why didn’t Yoongi have this kind of luck?

Hoseok crinkled his nose and tightened his hold around Jimin’s arm. “Don’t worry about him. He said he was perfectly fine.”

Jimin’s gaze fell to Yoongi’s wobbling legs. He looked like a newborn foal trying to get a steady grip on life. “Are you sure—”

“He’s fine,” Hoseok insisted.

“I can get my friend, give me a second.” God bless this boy. God fucking bless this angel of a human being. Hoseok could go suck his dick and choke on it. Jimin’s that was. Yoongi wasn’t letting his friend anywhere near his dick. “Tae! Hey, over here!” He was waving down one of the guys wandering around the rink in the same uniform.

Yoongi squinted at the faraway figure. He looked tall but he did seem to have the skills to move around the ice, as he should as an instructor. When he arrived, he should’ve known that a beautiful person like Jimin would have beautiful friends too. Yoongi just didn’t expect his smile to have double the butterfly effect in his stomach. He’s never felt his guts flip this way, it was almost unnerving.

“This is my friend, Taehyung,” Jimin introduced with a huge smile, “he’s one of our best here so he can take care of you, uh…”

“Yoongi,” he cleared his throat, sticking out his hand and realized too late that it was a mistake because he lost his balance and almost slipped to land on his ass. However, his white knight had swooped in and caught him right before he—

“Whoa there, be careful.”

Yoongi was going to nut.

The man’s voice was rich and velvety. There was a baritone ring to it that would’ve sounded wonderful if he crooned something as cozy as jazz. It certainly didn’t match up to his expectations. His voice had something strange brewing inside his stomach.

“Yoongi, you good, man?” Hoseok peered at him curiously as if asking him where in the world he just went to.

It was then he realized he was still clutching onto Taehyung for dear life. The realization had him jerking away in embarrassment, hands flying to grab hold onto the railings instead.

His friend grinned stupidly at him. “Well, now I know that you’re in good hands—” something told Yoongi that Hoseok knew that he was very much affected by the stranger next to him “—I’ll leave you both to it. Come on, Jiminie, show me the ropes.” The pair skated away, Jimin’s smaller stature guiding Hoseok.

Meanwhile, Yoongi was still wobbling around on the side. Taehyung breezed closer to him, proximity unnerving. “Need a hand?” he grinned, lips squaring up to reveal a perfect set of teeth. He was cute. Too cute. Yoongi didn’t handle cute well. Or any other form of attractive in fact.

“I’m—” Okay should’ve been the next word, but it turned out that he was most definitely not okay. “Yeah, sort of.”

Taehyung chuckled and even that sound reverberated something warm through him, a tingling left on his skin that had his hairs rising. It was sort of terrifying how this man’s voice alone did wonders to Yoongi when he had barely spoken two words. The tall boy held out his hand, gleaming smile still glittering on his face. Yoongi took it cautiously, more for the sake of his safety rather than the beating of his heart.

Slowly, he eased Yoongi away from the sidelines and towards the actual ice where the action was packed. It was frightening to say the least. However, Taehyung was patient and guided him gently and instructing him how to move his feet. This was good, this was actually okay. Yoongi could get the hang of this. Minutes ago, he was this close to throwing Namjoon off a hill, but this wasn’t so bad once he got used to it.

“You’re a natural,” Taehyung brightened.

“I bet you get paid to say that to all the guests,” Yoongi chuckled nervously.

Taehyung shook his head and flashed another grin, “Only the cute ones, cross my heart.”

Yoongi didn’t handle flirts well either. And Taehyung was a cute flirt. “Well, I’m touched,” he chose to say instead.

“Boys weekend?”

He nodded in confirmation, “Got sort of dragged out here by those two. The cold isn’t really my thing, I’m barely alive with how freezing Seoul is most of the time.”

“I feel you,” Taehyung huffed a laugh, puffs of white forming before his lips, “It doesn’t snow much in Daegu so coming up here every break was like a miserable slap in the face from Jack Frost.”

“You’re from Daegu?” Yoongi’s eyebrows jumped.

“Yeah! Are you too?” Taehyung was practically brimming with excitement and Yoongi was thankful he had the right answer, otherwise he would’ve disappointed the poor boy.

Yoongi grinned, “Yeah, born and raised. Only moved to Seoul for college.”

The two ended up chatting amicably about shared memories and places from back in their hometown. Despite loving Seoul to its fullest, they couldn’t help but have a mutual understanding of homesickness after having been away in the city for so long. Taehyung told him about his grandfather’s strawberry farm, how he used to spend nearly the entirety of his childhood there, and Yoongi with his parents and brothers who hadn’t been the most supportive of his initial endeavor for his future.

“But I’m glad they approve of it now,” Taehyung hummed, “it’s good to have some backbone. Anyway, even if you didn’t, you’d still be doing something you’re passionate about and, despite what people say, I think that’s enough to keep you going in life.”

“That’s a good mindset to have,” Yoongi murmured thoughtfully.

They hadn’t realized how much time had passed until Jimin was approaching them, Hoseok in tow. Their hairs looked mussed up and Yoongi wasn’t sure whether it was due to the whipping wind or if they had snuck away to make out somewhere. “Tae, it’s time for a shift change,” Jimin grinned, looping his arm through his friend’s. “How was your session?”

“Was good, we talked a lot,” Taehyung giggled, “hyung here is from Daegu too. It was really nice to meet you. I’ll see you at the party tonight?”

Well, Yoongi hadn’t planned on going. It looked like a trainwreck waiting to happen. Hoseok’s elbow dug into the elder’s side, eliciting a yelp out of him. “We’ll be there,” he grinned for the two of them.

“Great,” Taehyung beamed, though his gaze focused solely on Yoongi. If Yoongi didn’t know any better, he could’ve sworn the boy’s smile was a little shy, tinged with a hint of hopefulness. “See you both then.”

It wasn’t until the pair skated away and Hoseok was pounding on the questions that he realized that Taehyung had kept a hand a hand around his waist the entire time.

Yoongi was going to nut.

—

The party turned out to be a bore after all. The only people participating in the actual games were senior citizens who looked like they could barely make their way to the slopes. Hoseok and Namjoon, safe to say, were disappointed. They deflated faster than a popped balloon when they saw the thrilling crowd to entertain. “Fuck it,” Hoseok growled, “if I can’t get my party on then I’m at least going to get trashed.”

However, his plans were foiled when Jimin curled behind him, arms wrapping around his lean waist. Yoongi had never seen the boy melt so fast. It looked as if his entire body just molded back against the younger boy. “Rushing off so soon?” Jimin asked, blinking his eyes adorably at Hoseok.

The man was fucking whipped, they all could practically hear the figurative whip landing across his ass. Hoseok basically bloomed as he turned around and wrapped himself around Jimin, lips seeking the other’s. Well, that was it. One man down, two more to go. Namjoon muttered a “the fuck” under his breath before waving it off and striding away in search of his own vice—namely, alcohol.

Yoongi eyed Taehyung whose eyes were darting between him and the shameless couple whose hands had begun to roam. “Uh, wanna get a drink or something?” Yoongi suggested, clearing his throat.

Taehyung grinned, “On the job, can’t. But I can watch over you drink, make sure you get back okay.”

As the two made their way to the bar, walking past a few elderly couples who greeted Taehyung fondly, Yoongi wondered if this man was just a people whisperer. He seemed to be very good at the whole wooing everyone to liking him business. “You’re still on the job? I thought you were just the skating instructor.”

“I am, but I volunteered to help out with the party a little, make sure it doesn’t get too crazy you know.”

Yoongi glanced briefly to the mellow crowd, smirking, “Yeah, I bet it’s going to get wild tonight.” Taehyung elbowed him with a low chuckle.

They ended up sitting by the bar where Namjoon joined them. Taehyung was friendly still, bringing up conversation topics with Namjoon to keep the elder talking and the awkward silence nonexistent. When prompted, Yoongi knew his friend could keep going on and on all night about whatever topics he came up with. Namjoon and Taehyung found mutual ground on alien, extraterrestrial theories. Yoongi found mutual ground with his gin and tonic (laugh at him all you want but at least he’s got a sweet drink and a good time).

“Well, it has been lovely talking to you, Taehyung,” Namjoon genuinely said and added a theatrical bow. “Alas, I must now find a young maiden or lad to warm my sheets. Farewell, friends.”

“Don’t mind him,” Yoongi rolled his eyes as a response to Taehyung’s quizzical look. “He starts pushing Shakespeare when he’s a little tipsy. Let him be.”

Taehyung laughed, nodding in understanding, before propping his arms up on the countertop. He leaned closer towards Yoongi who had his fingers circling his glass. “What about you?” Taehyung started, “What are you like when you’re tipsy?”

His eyes were dancing with mirth that had flashbacks coursing through his mind. Tipsy Yoongi wasn’t the best Yoongi. Most of the time, it involved a lot of bad rapping and rhymes (that would grate on Namjoon’s nerves most), and other times he tended to spill everything in his mind, a word vomit of sorts. “I’m chill,” he instead said.

The other boy clearly wasn’t buying it, giggling as he inched closer, going as far as tapping Yoongi’s nose. “I don’t believe that. I feel like you’ll start saying things you don’t intend to get out of your head. All your dirty secrets.”

Well, that hit the nail right on the head. “Maybe,” Yoongi shrugged nonchalantly.

Taehyung snickered again, bringing his hand up and sliding it across Yoongi’s broad shoulder. He crinkled his nose cutely and grinned, “Why don’t you tell me what’s on your mind then, big boy?”

Big boy. Yoongi choked on his drink, the burn creeping up his throat. “I–uh—not sure what you mean.”

“Mhmm,” Taehyung hummed, “come on. You can tell me. I’ve been wondering what your sincere thoughts of me are.”

“We just met,” Yoongi swallowed. Yes, they literally just met hours ago. That was it. But Taehyung still made him jittery, made him feel like he was fifteen again with a crush on the kid who smiled as brilliantly as Taehyung did and offered the sweetest words to console Yoongi and his dreams at the time. It made him feel like the sun was shining a little warmer, the night a little nicer, and the atmosphere a little more magical.

The gin was really messing with his head. He was starting to make himself believe in love at first sight and all that fictitious whatnot.

“Yeah, but what do you think of me? What’s the verdict, boss?” Taehyung smiled, something in his eyes indicating a sign of something dancing in his mind. The elder wasn’t sure what to make of it. “How about I go first?”

“Alright,” Yoongi replied, shifting on his stool.

“I think you’re hot,” Taehyung confessed simply. The brevity of his words had Yoongi pausing to think. That was… good right? An attractive man found him attractive. “I really want you to fuck me.”

Holy shit. His drink dribbled from his lips when he unconsciously parted his lips in surprise. He quickly reached for a napkin to wipe it all up, cheeks flushing a deep red and it wasn’t from the alcohol. Taehyung didn’t look fazed in the least—he probably had people spilling drinks out of their mouths all the time.

“That’s, uh, rather bold,” Yoongi said stupidly. What he meant to sungay was that was a fucking swell idea and his room’s door was open 24/7 for him.

Taehyung rolled his shoulders. “You’re here for the weekend, we don’t exactly have excess time to spend, hyung. I’d rather cut it straight to the chase instead of beating around the bush with neither of us ending up satisfied. Wouldn’t you agree?”

“I, um, I guess so,” Yoongi said. He was feeling less and less intellectual by the second in that moment.

“So,” Taehyung licked his lips, dark gaze lifting to meet Yoongi’s stunned ones, “how about it? I end in like an hour. Feel up to it?”

Yoongi could only gulp and nod, “Y-yeah, sounds great. I can work with that.”

“Perfect.” Taehyung’s hand appeared on his knee. Why was his hand on his knee? It was going to make his boner even more evident before the boy who had propositioned him. Very smoothly, might he add. “I have to do my rounds for the night, but I’ll meet you after?”

“Yeah, after works.”

At this point, all Yoongi could do was agree to everything Taehyung was saying.

Taehyung hummed with a devilish twinklier his eye, “Great. Your room then?” Nod. “Are you sure you’re cool with this?” Nod. “Uh—” Nod. “Hyung, you’re kind of scaring me.”

Yoongi was about to nod again but pulled himself out of the stupor. “No, yeah, I mean we’re good. My room’s good. Perfect. You’re perfect. Your face is just really distracting, your lips too. Just… so pretty.”

A laugh bubbled up the younger boy’s throat as he nodded, tilting his body forward to place a soft kiss on Yoongi’s cheek. “You can get more acquainted with my lips later, hyungie.”

God, yes.

—

Preparing to get acquainted with Taehyung’s body meant spending nearly half an hour pacing the length of his room. He had probably traced the circumference of every inch of his room five times over with his feet in the last few minutes. Yoongi had escaped the humdrum party soon after Taehyung left to hop onto his duties, but gave Taehyung his room number to visit later.

Taehyung had drifted away with a promise to come by.

Yoongi hadn’t stopped sweating since.

When the doorbell rang, he had bounded over to the entrance hall, briefly glancing at the hallway mirror to fix up his hair, before reaching for the knob. He had never been this nervous before a hookup, ever. Maybe it was due to the fact that Taehyung was possibly the most beautiful human being he had ever seen.

Conjuring up the image of the man in his mind, Yoongi could see the smooth slope of his nose and the single mole printed on his skin. Then there was the way his eyes crinkled whenever he smiled, lips stretching to reveal a set of teeth that sparkled in the daylight. His jawline wasn’t sharp, but was defined enough to leave Yoongi with the urge to run his lips along it.

“Hey,” he coughed when he swung open the door to find Taehyung standing with one hand on the frame, his body leaning in.

“Hey, gorgeous.”

Fuck. Him.

“Not gonna invite me in?” Taehyung questioned teasingly when the two of them had been in a strange standstill.

“Right, come in.”

One thing led to another—read: the second Taehyung stepped into the room, Yoongi clicking the door shut behind him, Taehyung had him pinned up against the wall. His lips moved almost on instinct to cover Yoongi’s. The elder had been taken aback at first, lips parting in surprise and Taehyung took that opportunity to slip his tongue in. Yoongi had never been big on kisses, never liked people sticking their tongues down his throat.

However, the way Taehyung was twisting his tongue against Yoongi’s, the way he was stroking the insides of his cheeks and how his large hands smoothed down Yoongi’s shoulders had him shaking against the boy. “Fuck, you’re so pretty, hyung,” Taehyung whined quietly as he nosed the elder’s cheek before moving down to paste wet kisses on his neck. His teeth grazed the skin  and brought blood rushing to the surface in a littering of marks.

“W-wait, let’s take this to my room, I don’t need my friends barging in on us,” Yoongi stuttered, fingers clutching Taehyung’s jacket. This was more for support than anything. If he had felt vulnerable on the ice, he was downright helpless in that moment. Taehyung nodded and began walking.

He only looked back when he realized that Yoongi wasn’t following him. “Hyung, you good?”

“Uh, yeah, just trying to feel my legs again,” Yoongi chuckled weakly. He was but a weak man.

Taehyung laughed and returned to his side, grabbing hold of his skinny arms and practically dragging him into the room. The elder landed on the bed with a soft thump and, before he could even take a breath, Taehyung was already on top of him, stealing it from out of his lungs. Their lips latched together, molding into one as Taehyung’s hands wasted no time in working on the buttons of his shirt. “Christ, you’ve got the prettiest skin,” he muttered under his breath, stopping his movements to stare at the paleness of Yoongi’s skin.

It was milky and clean, free of blemishes, but that was a fact soon to be changed when Taehyung dived in for the kill. His teeth were merciless as they nipped on the sensitive parts of him, planting bruises and marks to mark him as his. Yoongi could feel his veins buzzing with life, every inch of him lighting up in flames with Taehyung’s scorching touch upon his skin.

“How do you want me, hyungie?” Taehyung panted as he pulled away, shrugging off his coat and shirt over his head. Yoongi allowed his glance to travel from the expanse of smooth, golden skin. The boy was beautifully breathtaking, like a god descended from the fair heavens. He swallowed as he looked at the delicious contrast between his wild, seductive eyes and the softness of his pudgy stomach.

Yoongi licked his lips as Taehyung pulled his pants off, his hand circling his cock. God, he was long. Cock so pretty and dripping all wet for him. “Want you on your knees, want to see you opening yourself up for me. Can you do that?” The question came as an additional stammer. He didn’t want to sound too demanding.

However, judging by how Taehyung’s eyes had flashed and the slow curl of his lips, the younger didn’t mind it all that much. Instead he grabbed a bottle from his jacket pocket and flipped the cap open, drizzling a good amount onto his fingers and rubbing it in between his digits. “Yeah? You wanna see me fuck myself open?”

“Mm, yeah,” Yoongi nodded, breathing in sharply just as the boy leaned down, pressing his face to the sheets. His long, wet fingers danced along his hips and reached around his back to barely brush over his hole. The puckered ring seemed to tighten at the warning.

It wasn’t long before Taehyung’s subtle moans bounced off the walls of the room. His deep voice bubbled up his throat, squeaky, choked whines escaping as he pushed a finger in then another. His digits tugged on his rim, attempting to stretch it out in preparation for Yoongi.

Meanwhile, the elder watched him in awe. There was something so beautiful about the way Taehyung had his pretty back arched, his ass up in the air in full view. Yoongi couldn’t help his hand from wandering down to his pants, his hand grabbing hold of his crotch as he palmed the growing erection behind the fabric. It really wasn’t enough—not when his imagination was going haywire with Taehyung right there in front of him. It felt like a dream come true seeing how tight Taehyung was.

“I always pegged you to have a loose hole,” Yoongi muttered under his breath, his free hand reaching out to stroke the boy’s supple skin.

Taehyung quivered at the assumption and the other boy’s touch. He tossed a sly look over his shoulder, but the smolder in his gaze wavered as Yoongi danced his pale fingers along his soft, caramel skin. The contrast was enticing, a sweet blend of colors. “I usually do, but being up here means I haven’t been fucked in a while.” His voice cracked in a broken moan as he curled his own fingers inside of him. The elder observed where his fingers joined his hole, watched as he pulled at his opening. God, he was so pretty.

“You tight, Tae?”

“So tight,” Taehyung confirmed in a whine, “bet your fat cock will fill me up real good, huh?”

Fuck yes. A hiss slipped past his gritted teeth as Taehyung sat back on the balls of his feet. His hand was still trapped behind him, sinking deep into his ass as he began to bounce against his palm. Yoongi didn’t think he had ever seen a prettier sight than that. Taehyung’s cock, long and thick, was standing upright. He could see the tip beaded with a drop of white, precome that clung onto his skin before rolling down the length every time he moved. His member thumped against his stomach every time the boy sank down on his fingers, his gaze wild with clouded lust and mouth open, tongue practically dripping with desire.

“My cock’s not too big, but you’re tight enough,” Yoongi grunted.

Taehyung grinned at that, a teasing, mischievous curve of his lips. “Yeah? You got a small cock, hyung?”

When he put it that way, Yoongi was blushing. Sure, he wasn’t the biggest in his friend group, but he wasn’t tiny. Maybe.

“Take it out, hyungie,” Taehyung cooed as if he was coaxing a pet. He shifted closer to the edge of the bed, to where Yoongi stood touching himself through his pants. “I wanna see your cock.”

Licking his lips, the elder quickly worked away at his button and zipper with trembling his fingers. There was this nip of fear that—what if Taehyung didn’t like his size? What if Taehyung was into monstrous-sized co—

“Fuck,” Taehyung clenched his jaw, “fuck, you’re so pretty. Cock like that, shit. Looks small, baby.”

A flush spread across his skin at record speed, coloring his cheeks and the back of his neck to the tips of his ears. His heart was beating rapidly in his chest, his lips parting and his throat moving as he swallowed. Taehyung had nudged forward again, his free hand reaching out to wrap around Yoongi’s dick. The first contact was like a relief to his throbbing member, one that had been left without pleasure for too long.

“Do you like that? Do you like being called small?” Taehyung giggled. Yoongi blushed again in response. He’s heard it before from others he’s fucked, knew that he liked his size the way it was, but at the same time, had a Thing for being reminded of it, reminded of how much smaller he was than others. “So cute, hyung,” Taehyung laughed again.

It really should’ve hurt his pride and his bloated ego, but the only pain he could feel was from the sudden rush of blood down between his legs. His knees wobbled a little with Taehyung’s words and he offered no response whatsoever to confirm nor deny that he really did in fact fucking love it when Taehyung called him small.

“Mmm, bet I can take the whole thing in my mouth in one go,” the younger simpered with a dangerous glint in his eyes. Leaning forward and with one hand still behind him to finger himself open, Taehyung parted his lips to mouth at Yoongi’s cock.

The heat that swallowed up his sensitive length was excruciatingly mind-blowing. Taehyung’s tongue pressed down against the sensitive skin and dragged up along the length of it. True to his word, he managed to stick the entire thing down his throat without gagging even once. His nose brushed against the base of his cock where a few curls of hair tickled his face. Yoongi released a low moan and buried his fingers in Taehyung’s soft hair. The gesture had Taehyung groaning as well, the vibrations coursing through his already shaking figure. It pulsed a rhythm through his veins, a quick skip in his heartbeat.

Taehyung pulled off with a loud, purposeful pop before sucking hard on the head again. His tongue darted out to collect the dot of come from Yoongi’s slit before he smiled up at him again. “You’ve got the nicest cock, hyung. I don’t think I’ve ever had cock this pretty and cute before.”

Cute. He called his cock cute. Yoongi should’ve been offended, that would be the normal reaction, wouldn’t it? But he wasn’t. Instead he jerked his hips forward for Taehyung to take him again. Taehyung stroked it in his hand, the length comparable to the size of his palm. It was almost humiliating if it didn’t feel so good.

“So small, hyung, fuck,” Taehyung cursed, “you’re so fuckin’ pretty. I want you stick this in me, stretch me out. You’re small but I promise you I’m tight enough that you can feel my ass squeezing you.”

“Then do it,” Yoongi grumbled, tilting the other boy’s head back so he was looking up at the elder. “Why don’t you turn around and give me your ass so I can fuck you properly.”

Taehyung was practically buzzing in anticipation as he scrambled around, shaking his ass at Yoongi who was about ready to faint with how good Taehyung’s ass looked. “Do your worst.”

Yoongi snatched up a condom from his wallet and quickly rolled it down his length. He picked up the bottle of lube and drenched his cock in it, spreading it along his member.

“You don’t need that much, hyung, it’s not going to hurt that bad with your size.”

The elder stiffened and directed a threatening glare at the younger, “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It’s gonna be tight, but not that tight.”

Yoongi’s hand came down on Taehyung’s ass in an echoing crack. For a second, he thought he had fucked up, thought he had hurt him, but Taehyung’s following whimper proved otherwise. Instead, the younger stuck his ass back at him more, nudging it in his direction. “I thought you were this cute, sweet kid. What happened to him?”

“I turn into an asshole in bed,” Taehyung smirked, “get it, asshole? Ha ha.”

Christ. Yoongi wanted to toss him across his lap and spank the living daylights out of him. But maybe that was for another day (or tomorrow morning). “You always talk this much? Guys never shut you up before.”

“They shut me up once they prove to me they can use their cock properly.”

Growling, Yoongi yanked his ass back, nearly causing the younger to slip his grasp on the sheets. He positioned himself before Taehyung before thrusting his hips to fill him up in one go. The boy jolted forward with the movement, a shocked gasp drawn from his pretty lips. Taehyung had been right. Even with Yoongi’s size, Taehyung was still so, so fucking tight. His ass was snug and warm, wrapped around Yoongi’s dick perfectly.

He swung his body easily, jutting his hips forward to bury his cock over and over again inside of Taehyung. The boy was writhing before him, his slim figure trembling with every one of Yoongi’s thrusts. Yoongi didn’t go easy, he was too impatient, it’s been too long. All he could feel was the absolute ecstasy of the tightness that surrounded his cock, the walls that clenched around his sensitive length to bring him closer to his peak. Taehyung’s cries and little ‘uh-uh-uhs’ only fueled his growing desire, the bubbling warmth brewing inside his belly. His moans were so fucking pretty, Yoongi drank it all up like a drug he could never be clean of.

“Such a cute little ass,” Yoongi grunted, his cock sliding into the tunnel again. It was such a good fit and every time he jerked forward, he could feel Taehyung loosening up to him. “Can’t fuckin’ believe you’re not getting your little hole opened up every night, fucked open like this.”

“Hnnnng, fuck,” Taehyung sobbed, “f-feels so good. O-only want your cock, hyung. You’re so good, fuck me. Fuck me open. Make me your little slut.”

Goddamn. “You want that? Want me to make you my little cockslut?” Yoongi bit back, giving a particularly hard thrust that reached deeper inside of Taehyung. “I should fuck you in the lobby where everyone can see you, see what a pretty little slut you are. Do you want that?” Taehyung was still too immersed in the sensations that engulfed him, bearing Yoongi no response. The elder’s jaw ticked. “Answer me.”

“A-aah, yeah, I want that, want you to make me your slut. Want everyone to see my ass always open for the taking for you,” Taehyung whined, “fuck me harder, h-hyung.”

Yoongi obliged and moved faster and harder, his thighs were aching and his knees were beginning to give, but he pushed through to give Taehyung what he wanted. The boy was already so close, his body giving tremors to how deliriously incredible it felt to be filled up full.

“J-just like that, I-I’m so close,” he choked, breaths hiccuping in his throat.

“Come for me, baby. Come on, show me how much tighter this ass can be. Clench around my cock, slut,” Yoongi snarled, hand coming down on Taehyung’s ass. The action came as a surprise and Taehyung enjoyed it way too much with the way his cock twitched and leaked, dripping precome all over the sheets.

Taehyung gasped, “Again. Hit me again.”

“Like getting punished, huh?” Yoongi chuckled, humoring him with another smack on his other cheek. It was almost mesmerizing to see the soft skin jiggle and Yoongi wished he could capture this moment on camera. “Tell me what you are, baby.”

“I-I’m a slut,” Taehyung hitched, swallowing the thickness in his throat.

“Whose slut?”

“Yours!” he cried as Yoongi thrust forward, hard and fast, again. “Yours! Your slut.”

Yoongi grinned, smoothing his hand down the reddening skin to alleviate the soreness. “Good boy, now, do you want to come for me?” Taehyung nodded eagerly, practically mewling in desperation as he plead for Yoongi to let him come. “Alright, baby, come on. Come for me, I want to see your milk all over my bed.”

His words had Taehyung tipping over the edge, his lips parting soundlessly, eyes blown wide, as white semen spurt out of his cock and spilled all over the bleached sheets. His body was still quaking as Yoongi pounded into him deeper, chasing after his own orgasm and filling the elastic with the result of his climax.

The two were out of breath, stuck in the same position with Yoongi still settled snugly inside of Taehyung. Even worse, Taehyung kept nudging his ass back and squeezing his walls as if to drain Yoongi of every last drop of come.

After Yoongi pulled out of him and cleaned him up, he maneuvered the trembling boy underneath the sheets (after stripping off the gross, come-stained ones despite Taehyung’s filthy protests). “You’re letting me sleep here?” Taehyung smiled softly up at him.

It was almost strange to see the one-eighty he did after sex. This post-orgasm afterglow made him even prettier, gentler, almost angelic. “Of course, it’s late. Get some sleep.”

Taehyung giggled and snuggled into Yoongi’s chest when he slid himself underneath the covers. “A good fuck and a gentleman, I might just keep you.”

Yoongi laughed at that, tucking the younger into his side. “We’ll see how long we can survive each other,” he grinned.

“You’re cute, I’ll tolerate you longer.”

“But who says I’ll tolerate you?”

Taehyung pouted adorably, swatting Yoongi’s chest. “Meanie.”

“Go to sleep, baby.”

The fondness in Yoongi’s voice had Taehyung melting into his grasp as he nodded obediently. “Goodnight.”

[heartslogos]

newfragile yellows [272]

“You’re back!” Evelyn is just as startled to see the proprietor of the Black Emporium swinging down from stacks of books as she was the last time she was here. “And you look the same as before! Did you forget something?”

“No. Did you?” Evelyn replies, and suddenly - as though the realization of what she’s doing has just happened now - feels extremely awkward about maybe having taken a joke too seriously. She holds up a basket, “I did say I’d be back and we’d have some tea. I. Um. Should I have sent a message ahead? I brought Dorian.”

“Hello, charmed. Probably. It remains to be seen.”

Ellana blinks slowly, “You…came back to have tea with me?”

“Yes,” Evelyn says, “Was I…not supposed to?”

Ellana had seemed very excited about the idea the last time Evelyn was here, and she had looked so terribly lonely and it may be something of what some people would consider a waste of time and effort to come back to the Black Emporium without any real business aside from tea and chatter, but at the time Evelyn thought that based on the sad and quiet and nervous look on Ellana’s face it would have been the least she could do.

“You meant it?” Ellana says, sounding terribly small for someone who’s going to outlive the rest of the world. “I mean - you remembered? And you meant it?”

“She’s here isn’t she?,” Bull says, “You got anything good for making vitaar around here?”

“Probably. Check around that-away with the rest of the cosmetics,” Ellana says offhandedly gesturing vaguely behind her, blinking confusedly at Evelyn. “And you brought Dorian Pavus, Altus of Minrathous, preeminent researcher and developer of time-space warping magics? I - are you sure, absolutely and completely certain, that you hadn’t forgotten something and now you’re doubling back to make it look less awkward by sweetening me up to get it?”

Evelyn turns around to look behind her. She’d thought bringing Dorian would be fun because Dorian, in general, is always a little party of his own and she thought if things got awkward Dorian’s propensity for destroying and plowing down awkward social situations would bail her out.

Dorian beams, “You’ve heard of me.”

“Oh, yes,” Ellana replies, “I mean. How could I have not? I’ve been following your research for the past few - how does time work again?  Um. I think it’s years. Years are a normal amount of time? I think? Anyway I’ve been following your research since you published that paper concerning a timed-delayed rapid compression spell to enhance fire based magics and I’ve thought you very brilliant. I mean, the way you applied the same theory from that paper to the current use of time distortion fields? Wonderful. It’s a great work around for the complex issue of overlapping mass.”

Dorian’s eyebrows might as well have become part of his hair.

“That was my first paper and I’ll let you know now, out of surprise and awe that you actually read that piece of utter useless shit, that I’m flattered that you think I could link those two studies together considering that when I polished up my latest piece I was literally doing it by the seat of my pants with death breathing down my neck.”

“I can tell,” Ellana nods sagely, “Crude but extremely effective, especially if you polish it up a bit more. It’s not the work around I came up with, but I think it’s much more efficient.”

“Wait,” Evelyn’s brain catches up with the conversation as she holds up a hand to stop this from rapidly spiraling into a discussion. Because three mages from three different schools talking theory is a discussion and she hasn’t even put down the tea basket, “You’ve solved time travel?”

“I’ve had all the time in the literal world,” Ellana replies, “If you name it, I’ve probably played with it for a few years before getting bored.”

Dorian pushes past Evelyn, grabs the nearest chair and sits down in it, “Enough pleasantries. We’re talking theoretical mathematics and philosophy. Evelyn, if you’d have told me sooner that this is what was waiting for me at the Black Emporium maybe I wouldn’t have been so damn slow about getting here.”

Evelyn grabs her own chair and drags it to where Dorian is as Ellana quickly goes to get a chair and table, quickly casting some spells to increase the light in the room and float over pens, papers, some journals, and a couple of plates and jars.

“If I had know this is what I could’ve been getting the entire time you’d have never gotten me out of here the first time,” Evelyn replies. “Maker - Bull said that your hobbies were knitting and embroidery. I brought you wool. I could’ve brought you my unsolved thesis project.”

“I do like to knit and embroider,” Ellana protests, “He wasn’t wrong. He just…neglected to mention my other hobbies.”

“You’re useless,” Dorian calls out towards the stacks where Bull and disappeared. Bull’s arm appears from behind a shelf and he flips Dorian off.

“The last time I was here - before the Inquisition - I spent three days discussing the relevance of architecture and war tactics to a culture. Topics I didn’t think either of you two would care about.”

Evelyn and Dorian stare at Ellana.

Ellana shrugs, “The Iron Bull is the only person I’ve met in the past two centuries capable of holding an interesting conversation regarding the trends of society’s foreign policy and aesthetic movements. He’s a man of many depths and frankly I’m extremely excited to have him back in my shop again. And he’s brought me the two of you and I feel like I don’t even know where to start. Bull, are you good back there? I’m going to start in on them because. Well. It’s been almost five centuries since I’ve had a live body down here willing to sit down and talk theory.”

“I’m good,” Bull says, “Do I still have a tab?”

“Does he still have a tab,” Ellana rolls her eyes and whispers, “He just takes things for free and pretends they’re on a tab. As if I cared about the stuff he takes. He’s the only one who’s had an interest in most of it in this decade. He’s practically taking out my garbage for me.”

[poorquentyn]

I'm re reading IT right now (slowly, as adult life is getting in the way) and was wondering what other bad storytelling choices you thought king made besides the. Uh. Sewer scene? Its been years since ive read it and nothing else really stood out to me as poor storytelling that i can remember. I'll read it for myself eventually but was curious of your thoughts. Love your blog!

Thanks! Stephen King often veers into caricature with his supporting characters, and It is no exception. The way he describes Eddie’s mom and wife physically goes well beyond the narratively useful purpose of establishing how their weight disorders have intertwined with Eddie’s hypochondria and into “ugh fat people are gross” territory. I don’t think King has conscious malignance in this area, because he finds a proper balance with Ben: the latter describes in realistic detail how he lost weight over time, his mom is upset that he’s eating less but is presented humanely (as someone who associates her son eating a lot with her doing well as a single mother), and King manages to avoid shaming Ben for his weight while also acknowledging that Ben personally feels a lot better about himself after having shed it–or rather, because of the confidence he gained in himself by taking charge of the situation. The idea here is not “Ben needs to lose weight because gross” but rather “Ben needs to be in control of his body.” 

The good doesn’t wipe out the bad, nor vice versa; gotta consider them both in context. Main characters are naturally going to get more nuance than supporting characters, but necessary shorthand can easily turn into harmful caricature. And of course, a storytelling choice that seems solid in isolation can become a problem within the work as a whole. Beverly is sexualized throughout It in a way that’s often very unpleasant to read, associated throughout with violence and misogyny. Sometimes this works, as a way of peeling back the layers of petty ego driving a man’s man like her husband Tom; he explodes at her in their introductory scene because her paying attention to Mike’s call instead of him makes him feel like he’s literally not there. Other times it doesn’t, like when King lingers on the “smell” that Bev and her father “make together” now that she’s reaching puberty. We don’t need that to get the point that Bev’s father has inappropriate feelings for her–we got that from Bev’s mom asking if he ever touches her. When you put both sides of the coin together with the infamous sex scene in the sewers and the amount of time spent on whether Bev will choose Ben or Bill, it starts to look less like King was taking a stand against objectification by showing its omnipresence than that he simply didn’t know what to do with Bev as a character without constantly making reference to sex, rape, assault, and molestation. While she does get some right to response on these matters, I don’t think it’s nearly enough. It pushes back against a mindset that casually treats women like objects, but fails to establish a counter-narrative rooted in the female characters as individuals, fleshed out beyond their relationships to the men around them. It’s less a question of Does Stephen King Hate Women than one of imagination and empathy. 

Of course, some flaws are lessened by context, rather than enhanced by it. Take, for example, our protagonist William Denbrough, a blatant author insert. Bill is a popular horror author (check) whose books are increasingly being adapted for TV and film (check) and who has a rather tense relationship with critics and academics (double check). The latter is spelled out in an extended flashback to Bill’s college days, in which he takes a stand that ought to be very familiar to anyone steeped in modern media discourse:

Here is a poor boy from the state of Maine who goes to the University on a scholarship. All his life he has wanted to be a writer, but when he enrolls in the writing courses he finds himself lost without a compass in a strange and frightening land. There’s one guy who wants to be Updike. There’s another one who wants to be a New England version of Faulkner-only he wants to write novels about the grim lives of the poor in blank verse. There’s a girl who admires Joyce Carol Gates but feels that because Oates was nurtured in a sexist society she is “radioactive in a literary sense.” Oates is unable to be clean, this girl says. She will be cleaner. There’s the short fat grad student who can’t or won’t speak above a mutter. This guy has written a play in which there are nine characters. Each of them says only a single word. Little by little the playgoers realize that when you put the single words together you come out with “War is the tool of the sexist death merchants.” This fellow’s play receives an A from the man who teaches Eh-141 (Creative Writing Honors Seminar). This instructor has published four books of poetry and his master’s thesis, all with the University Press. He smokes pot and wears a peace medallion. The fat mutterer’s play is produced by a guerrilla theater group during the strike to end the war which shuts down the campus in May of 1970. The instructor plays one of the characters.

Bill Denbrough, meanwhile, has written one locked-room mystery tale, three science-fiction stories, and several horror tales which owe a great deal to Edgar Allan Poe, H. P. Lovecraft, and Richard Matheson-in later years he will say those stories resembled a mid-1800s funeral hack equipped with a supercharger and painted Day-Glo red.

One of the sf tales earns him a B.

“This is better,” the instructor writes on the title page. “In the alien counterstrike we see the vicious circle in which violence begets violence; I particularly liked the “needle-nosed” spacecraft as a symbol of socio-sexual incursion. While this remains a slightly confused undertone throughout, it is interesting.”

All the others do no better than a C.

Finally he stands up in class one day, after the discussion of a sallow young woman’s vignette about a cow’s examination of a discarded engine block in a deserted field (this may or may not be after a nuclear war) has gone on for seventy minutes or so. The sallow girl, who smokes one Winston after another and picks occasionally at the pimples which nestle in the hollows of her temples, insists that the vignette is a socio-political statement in the manner of the early Orwell. Most of the class-and the instructor-agree, but still the discussion drones on.

When Bill stands up, the class looks at him. He is tail, and has a certain presence.

Speaking carefully, not stuttering (he has not stuttered in better than five years), he says: “I don’t understand this at all. I don’t understand any of this. Why does a story have to be socio-anything? Politics… culture… history… aren’t those natural ingredients in any story, if it’s told well? I mean… ” He looks around, sees hostile eyes, and realizes dimly that they see this as some sort of attack. Maybe it even is. They are thinking, he realizes, that maybe there is a sexist death merchant in their midst. “I mean… can’t you guys just let a story be a story?”

No one replies. Silence spins out. He stands there looking from one cool set of eyes to the next. The sallow girl chuffs out smoke and snubs her cigarette in an ashtray she has brought along in her backpack.

Finally the instructor says softly, as if to a child having an inexplicable tantrum, “do you believe William Faulkner was ‘just telling stories’? Do you believe Shakespeare was just interested in making a buck? Come now, Bill. Tell us what you think.”

“I think that’s pretty close to the truth,” Bill says after a long moment in which he honestly considers the question, and in their eyes he reads a kind of damnation.

“I suggest,” the instructor says, toying with his pen and smiling at Bill with half-lidded eyes, “that you have a great deal to learn.”

The applause starts somewhere in the back of the room.

Bill leaves… but returns the next week, determined to stick with it. In the time between he has written a story called “The Dark,” a tale about a small boy who discovers a monster in the cellar of his house. The little boy faces it, battles it, finally kills it. He feels a land of holy exaltation as he goes about the business of writing this story; he even feels that he is not so much telling the story as he is allowing the story to flow through him. At one point he puts his pen down and takes his hot and aching hand out into ten-degree December cold where it nearly smokes from the temperature change. He walks around, green cut-off boots squeaking in the snow like tiny shutter-hinges which need oil, and his head seems to bulge with the story; it is a little scary, the way it needs to get out. He feels that if it cannot escape by way of his racing hand that it will pop his eyes out in its urgency to escape and be concrete. “Going to knock the shit out of it,” he confides to the blowing winter dark, and laughs a little-a shaky laugh. He is aware that he has finally discovered how to do just that-after ten years of trying he has suddenly found the starter button on the vast dead bulldozer taking up so much space inside his head. It has started up. It is revving, revving. It is nothing pretty, this big machine. It was not made for taking pretty girls to proms. It is not a status symbol. It means business. It can knock things down. If he isn’t careful, it will knock him down.

He rushes inside and finishes “The Dark” at white heat, writing until four o'clock in the morning and finally falling asleep over his ring-binder. If someone had suggested to him that he was really writing about his brother, George, he would have been surprised. He has not thought about George in years-or so he honestly believes.

The story comes back from the instructor with an F slashed into the tide page. Two words are scrawled beneath, in capital letters. PULP, screams one. CRAP, screams the other.

Bill takes the fifteen-page sheaf of manuscript over to the wood-stove and opens the door. He is within a bare inch of tossing it in when the absurdity of what he is doing strikes him. He sits down in his rocking chair, looks at a Grateful Dead poster, and starts to laugh. Pulp? Fine! Let it be pulp! The woods were full of it!

“Let them fucking trees fall!” Bill exclaims, and laughs until tears spurt from his eyes and roll down his face.

He retypes the title page, the one with the instructor’s judgment on it, and sends it off to a men’s magazine named White Tie (although from what Bill can see, it really should be titled Naked Girls Who Look Like Drug Users). Yet his battered Writer’s Market says they buy horror stories, and the two issues he has bought down at the local mom-and-pop store have indeed contained four horror stories sandwiched between the naked girls and the ads for dirty movies and potency pills. One of them, by a man named Dennis Etchison, is actually quite good.

He sends “The Dark” off with no real hopes-he has submitted a good many stories to magazines before with nothing to show for it but rejection slips-and is flabbergasted and delighted when the fiction editor of White Tie buys it for two hundred dollars, payment on publication. The assistant editor adds a short note which calls it “the best damned horror story since Ray Bradbury’s "The Jar.” He adds, “Too bad only about seventy people coast to coast will read it,” but Bill Denbrough does not care. Two hundred dollars!

He goes to his advisor with a drop card for Eh-141. His advisor initials it. Bill Denbrough staples the drop card to the assistant fiction editor’s congratulatory note and tacks both to the bulletin board on the creative-writing instructor’s door. In the corner of the bulletin board he sees an anti-war cartoon. And suddenly, as if moving of its own accord, his fingers pluck his pen from his breast pocket and across the cartoon he writes this: If fiction and politics ever really do become interchangeable, I’m going to kill myself, because I won’t know what else to do. You see, politics always change. Stories never do. He pauses, and then, feeling a bit small (but unable to help himself), he adds: I suggest you have a lot to learn.

You can easily imagine this argument–a timeless appeal is being ruined by lefty college kids and their postmodern analyses–being made today by an alt-right YouTuber out to cleanse the game industry of SJWs. Throughout It, King keeps cutting back to an image of a librarian reading “The Billy Goats Gruff” to a group of kids, the latter enthralled (King tells us) by the primal purity of the kind of monster stories upon which both King and Denbrough have built their careers. “Will the monster be bested…or will It feed?” That’s King declaring that Bill’s his professors were wrong to wave aside his short horror stories. See? See?! I made it, and you pretentious eggheads were wrong to ever doubt me! This aspect of It is frankly embarrassing, especially as time marches on and we see how this mindset has taken root in the next generation.

But! While King very clearly believes this stuff, he’s also self-aware enough to include auto-critiques in his writing. Stan’s wife Patty picks up one of Bill’s novels and dismisses it as practically pornographic in its horror imagery. King goes too far in casting Patty’s dislike of Bill’s work as reflecting a lack of imagination on her part, but he then goes on to sympathetically explore how the grounded relatable struggles Patty has faced (anti-Semitism, her father mocking and dismissing Stan, their inability to have children) have led her to consider “horrorbooks” as shallow escapism. The real world, It admits, has horrors beyond anything the Kings and Denbroughs can come up with. “Werewolves, shit. What did a man like that know about werewolves?” 

Later on, when Ben is telling his triumphant story about calling out a high school coach who taunted him for his weight, Bill gently notes that as an author, he has trouble believing any kid really talked like that. That’s King using his self-insert to wryly poke fun at his own oft-overheated dialogue. Self-awareness and self-deprecation are absolutely vital to making a book as thematically and structurally ambitious as this one work. 

And while some of It’s politics make me cringe, other aspects make me perk up and take notice. King wrote It over the course of four years in which HIV and AIDS became a national crisis that was being largely ignored by said nation’s government. There was a growing conventional wisdom that the afflicted deserved their punishment and should be more or less left to rot. This was all part and parcel with the ascension of the religious right in American politics, especially within the Reagan White House. A huge part of the Reagan narrative (as we see in the “Morning in America” ad, also released while King was writing It) was a portrait of lily-white small-town America as a social ideal being beset by all sorts of ills that the left was either letting happen or actively supporting, and The Gays were most certainly among them.

It opens with a scene that seems to dovetail with that narrative: an idealized ‘50s small town in which an adorable innocent white boy from a good Christian family is horribly murdered by (what seems to be) a nightmarish external force that takes advantage of that innocence. Already, you can see a potential Reaganite spin–It as the Other, the “bear in the woods” threatening the ideal of Derry. 

But that’s not what It is about. The second chapter jumps forward a generation, into the mid-1980s in which King was writing, and onto a scene of violence that cannot be wrapped into the meta-narrative of the religious right. Three men attack a gay man on a bridge, their delicate sensibilities offended by his flamboyance. They beat him within an inch of his life and toss him over the side…where he finds It waiting for him with a gleaming sharp-toothed smile. Both the victim’s boyfriend and one of the assailants tell the cops and lawyers involved about the demon clown who finished the victim off, but the powers that be cover it up for the sake of a successful prosecution.

The idea being that they’re dealing with the symptoms, not the disease–the violence, but not the hand-me-down hate driving it. The bereft boyfriend tells the cops that he tried to warn his new-to-town lover that despite its cheery appearance, Derry is a “bad place,” one positively crawling with “AIDS is God’s punishment” homophobia. Moreover, he whispers through his tears, he realized while staring into Its silver eyes as It ate his true love that “It was Derry…It was this town.” 

So while the first chapter seemingly wrapped the era’s conservative politics in a cozy semiotic blanket, it was only baiting the hook so that the second can rip that blanket off like a Band-Aid. As Reagan strolled to re-election with 49 states at his back, as the Democrats’ convictions wavered and they began to drift rightward, as thousands of Americans wasted away while their government and so many of their fellow citizens watched pitilessly, here comes Stevie King to stick his middle finger in the Moral Majority’s face and say: gays aren’t the monsters, you are the monsters, you are the ones eating your children. He built a thousand-page Lovecraftian epic around that idea, and made it a bestseller. How fucking awesome is that?

Again, it’s all always going to be complicated. The good not only coexists with the bad–they’re often inextricable. The author who slipped a rant against leftist academics ruinin’ his storybooks into It is also the guy who now declares his support for BLM and his disgust for Trump, and It is both a deeply flawed work and one of my very favorite novels.