#i’ve just had the album on loop the past few days since it came out and hngggggggg

[supernovafics]

𝐓𝐇𝐈𝐒 𝐈𝐒 𝐌𝐄 𝐓𝐑𝐘𝐈𝐍𝐆

pairing: steve harrington x fem!reader

word count: 2.7k words

summary: in which a moment at a party that led to a drunken kiss and a heartfelt admission pushes you and your best friend away from each other. after nearly a week of silence, it’s still hard to find the right words to say to steve and to find the right way to mend what feels as if it has been permanently broken. until you’re drunk at a bar and he is the one to come and get you.

warnings: bestfriend!steve, explicit language, underage alcohol consumption, angst with a happy ending<33

author’s note: this was sitting in the drafts for a veryvery long time and i’ve finally decided to let it see the light of day🫶🏾 (full “folklore” album series masterlist here)

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。. .・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.

“i didn't know if you'd care if i came back, i have a lot of regrets about that.”

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。. .・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.

The bar was comforting in a weird kind of way. 

It was pretty dark and empty for the most part, which partly made sense since it was ten o’clock on a random Wednesday night. You didn’t mind the music softly playing and the stool you were sitting on actually felt comfortable, or maybe it was the alcohol making you believe that.

Somehow even with the number of drinks you’d had in the past hour, it still didn’t manage to effectively push your thoughts far away from Steve and what happened at Robin’s birthday party. 

You couldn’t not think about the kiss with him, which you had abruptly and drunkenly initiated; it was a kiss that felt simultaneously wrong and right. And his words that followed the kiss played on what felt like an endless loop in your mind too.

“I’ve wanted this, I’ve wanted us, for practically forever. Ever since that moment our mom’s forced us to meet at that county fair thing when we were ten, I think I knew it was you.” 

It was hard to think about what you did in response to that, but still the quick, “I’m sorry, I can’t,” you managed to stutter out before basically running away from him played on equal loop in your head.  

The two of you hadn’t spoken since that Saturday night, with you returning back to your college that was two hours away from Hawkins early the next morning. And you were unsure if it was you leading this dance or if both of you were equally avoiding each other because the phone calls that would happen practically daily were reduced to nothing. It had barely been a week, but it was long enough for everything in your life to feel shifted; to feel a little emptier. 

“You look like you need to talk to someone,” The bartender, a woman who you were certain couldn’t be older than thirty, said as she slid you the latest drink you’d ordered. 

“No, I’m fine. It’s just…” You trailed off with a small sigh before taking a sip from the cold glass. “I did something stupid this past weekend and I regret it, but I also think it might have been the right thing to do.” You were unsure if you were referring to the kissing Steve part or the running away from him part. “I don’t know, I just wish that entire night hadn’t happened, actually.”

You knew that it wasn’t solely your inebriation that made your words seem as if they didn’t make any sense, because everything going through your head was so damn confusing even when you were completely sober. None of it, the emotions you were feeling or the situation itself, fully made sense to you and you forced yourself to not think about any of it by solely consuming yourself with your schoolwork for the last few days. And when doing that was no longer enough to silence your thoughts, you decided to come to this bar. 

It was dumb and probably only making things worse, you knew that, but it also felt so much easier. 

“Okay,” The woman said. “Can I have a lot more context?” 

You were unsure why you had the immediate urge to tell her everything. Maybe it was the alcohol, or perhaps because it was just always so easy for anyone to pour their heart out to a stranger. 

“My friend— my best friend, we’ve known each other since we were ten— me and him were at a party. It was actually our other friend’s birthday and she just turned eighteen, so of course, we had to make it a huge thing for her, and we did it at Steve’s house; my best friend, that’s his name. Anyway, it’s about two hours into the party and we’re all pretty drunk. Me and Steve are in his backyard sitting on one of his old patio chairs, and then I don’t know why, I blame it on my drunkenness and how close we were in that moment, but I kissed him. I pulled away almost immediately, but then he said that he has wanted this, wanted us, to happen for so long, and I didn’t know what to say to any of that. So, I just mumbled out a stupid “I’m sorry,” and then left.”

You had barely taken a breath as you spoke, spitting out what happened that night in one rushed go. Finally saying all of it out loud— recounting the story in pretty much its entirety— made you feel a little better. Everything was still a complete mess, but you felt like you could breathe the tiniest bit easier. 

“Why did you leave?” 

A part of you expected her to ask that question, and at this point, you should’ve had an answer to it that felt certain, but you didn’t. 

“It just… It felt like the right thing to do, I think.” 

The thought of anything more happening with Steve hadn’t ever crossed your mind, at least not consciously, and even now you still refused to think more about it. Because it wasn't just about Steve. You didn’t want anything more with anyone; you didn’t want feelings, a relationship, any of it. 

It wasn’t that you hated love or the thought of it, it was more so that you had been burned because of it so many times that you refused to fall into it so easily again. Falling for boys that you thought actually liked you only to be proven wrong and left heartbroken. 

“I get it,” The bartender ultimately said, her voice soft. “You guys have been friends for practically forever and if you started dating and then broke up it would probably change everything between you two.” 

We would never break up. 

The thought hit you so abruptly that it actually managed to surprise you.  

The woman looked at you, confused. “Okay… So, then what’s the problem?”

“What?”

“You said that you and him would never break up, so what’s the problem?” 

You hadn’t realized you said the thought out loud, and you couldn’t even feel embarrassed about accidentally saying it because all you could think about was how completely true it was. You and Steve would work so well together, you pretty much already did. You knew the ins and outs of each other; everything little that was annoying but also so endearing. It was what you loved about him— as a friend and as more.  

But still, it was so fucking hard to admit that out loud, and you wanted to forget about the entire realization.

“I– I don’t know,” You finally answered before folding your arms against the countertop and then putting your head down. You squeezed your eyes shut, hoping that that action would be enough to will away the tears that you could now feel threatening to spill out. 

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。. .・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.

“and i ended up here. pouring out my heart to a stranger.”

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。. .・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.

“Hey, you okay?” 

The voice was soft and immediately comforting and oh so familiar. It was enough to put a smile on your face, but your head was starting to pound so you couldn’t bear to do anything but groan.  

You lifted your head and mumbled out a soft, “Steve?”

You only vaguely remembered the bartender, whose name you eventually learned was Chelsea, asking for a phone number of someone that could pick you up. And although you should’ve given her your roommate’s number, you instead gave her Steve’s. 

“I never thought I’d be the one picking you up from a bar,” Steve said as he sat down next to you. “I always thought it would be the other way around.”

“Y’know what they say about college, it changes people,” You told him with a nonchalant shrug. The two of you hadn’t talked in days, but it still felt like second nature to fall back into the joking cadence you had with him. “I’m a total badass now.”

Steve laughed a bit and looked at you amusingly. “Mhm, yeah, sure you are.”

You weren’t as drunk anymore but you were entering the early stages of a hangover that would be a bitch, and you already knew that there was no way you’d be going to your eleven o’clock Statistics class. 

“I can’t believe you drove two hours to pick me up,” You said as you settled yourself in the passenger seat of Steve’s car after you paid your pricey tab and goodbyes were said to Chelsea.  

Steve offered you a small smile. “What else are best friends for?”

You couldn’t help but look away from him as you mumbled out a soft, “I didn’t know we were still that.”

“We’ll always be that.” 

There was so much certainty in his voice that it actually managed to soothe something inside of you. Only for a second, though, because then you were back in your head again. 

The drive back to your dorm was quiet with only the soft sounds of the radio to fill the silence. It was a short ride, only about ten minutes, and the entire time you could only focus on your dull headache and what you wanted to say to Steve because you knew that you had to say something. Although you didn’t want to, that night needed to finally be talked about.

When he was parked in front of your building, you still didn’t know exactly what to say, but you decided to start with something. “Listen, about Robin’s party–” 

“It’s okay, we don’t have to talk about it. Let’s just pretend it never happened,” Steve interrupted you. He pushed a hand through his hair and then met your gaze. “It was really dumb of me to say all of that stuff, and I partially blame it on all the drinks we had— definitely way too many. We’re just friends, I know that. And your life is here now, for the most part, and mine is back in Hawkins, so yeah…” He trailed off with a small shrug. 

You suddenly felt nauseous and you knew it had nothing to do with the alcohol. He was saying everything that you fully thought you wanted to hear— what happened at the party should’ve never happened, you two were just friends— so why did it feel so wrong? 

Things became quiet and Steve was looking at you expectantly, and you were unsure how long you’d been silent for. 

“Um, yeah, exactly,” You finally said as you unbuckled your seatbelt. Before you opened the passenger door to leave his car, you reached over and pulled Steve in for a hug. “Drive safe.”

“Thanks,” He said as his arms circled around you. 

For some reason, there was a huge part of you that wanted to say “I’m sorry” in that moment, but you didn’t entirely know why, so instead you said nothing and simply got out of his car.

You headed to the entrance of your dorm building and then turned around, giving Steve a final wave before he drove away. 

It was then— as he headed down the street and after a few moments his car became completely out of your view— that you wished you’d been honest; with yourself and with him.  

Because it was in that moment of you yearning for him to turn around mixed with you sincerely wanting to go after him that essentially sealed it for you. 

Steve was different and he always would be. 

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。. .・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.

“and maybe i don't quite know what to say, but i'm here in your doorway.”

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。. .・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.

You felt slightly lucky that you only had two classes on Thursdays because when you woke up after sleeping through your Statistics class, you knew that you wouldn’t be going to your Psychology class that started at three. And the reasoning actually had nothing to do with your hangover. 

Aside from the slight headache, you woke up with your mind feeling completely clear for the first time in a long time. You knew exactly what you wanted and what you wanted to do, and before that feeling could go away, or you could convince yourself to push it away, you were in your car an hour before your class was supposed to start and driving to Hawkins. You were pretty much running off of impulse and hope.

The weather was terrible and you hated driving in the rain, but it didn’t matter to you right then because you needed to see Steve.

You had two long hours of driving in terrible rain to figure out what exactly you wanted to say to him, yet you still couldn’t form a coherent set of sentences in your head. But, similar to the rain, that didn’t stop you from ringing his doorbell. 

In hindsight, it probably would’ve been smart to bring an umbrella because it was still pouring and from the short walk from your car to his front door, your clothes managed to become effectively soaked, but it didn’t bother you. 

“Hey,” He said when he opened the door, it was easy to tell that he was surprised to see you. “Did you drive all the way here?”

You quickly nodded at his question. “Yes.”

“You hate driving in rain.” 

“Yeah, but I… I just really wanted to talk to you, and didn’t wanna do it over the phone.”

“Come inside,” Steve said, pushing the door open wider so that you could step in. 

You almost followed him but then stopped. “No, wait… I kinda just wanna say this here.” 

Steve looked at you confused, but ultimately nodded. “Okay.” He then stepped out of his house and closed the door behind him; his clothes immediately got wet. “It feels wrong that you’re the only one getting hit by the rain.” 

You laughed a bit. “Thank you. That’s very considerate.”  

Things got quiet for a second and you suddenly felt nervous, but you pushed that feeling to the side.

“I know you said that we don’t need to talk about the party and we should pretend that it never happened. And although that’s exactly what I’d been doing for the past few days, I don’t wanna do that anymore.” It actually didn’t feel too hard to let all of this out; verbalizing exactly what had been going on in your head. In a way, it felt like a relief. “I think I kissed you that night because deep down I know that it’s you too. And that it’s always been you… Which is actually so scary to think about because we’ve known each other for so long and you’re the one person in my life that has been the biggest constant. You’ve seen every part of my very horrific love life and I don’t want us to end up like any of the stupid relationships I had before, and I think that’s why I ran away that night, which I do really regret.” You pulled your eyes away from his for a second. “But, what we have is different, and I want to try. I want us to try.”

You let out a long breath. “Okay, that’s it.”  

Steve didn’t say anything for a few moments, and it was then that you realized how loud the rain was, and somehow it was actually a bit calming to hear the sounds of the heavy drops hitting the ground. 

You searched his eyes to see if you could decipher what he was thinking, but before you could get a clear read on anything, he was closing the small bit of distance between you both and reaching up to cup your face in his hands before leaning in to kiss you. 

The abruptness of the action slightly startled you, but you were completely okay with this nonverbal response to you pouring your heart out. You were kissing him back almost immediately and suddenly the sound of the rain was gone and instead all you could hear was your heartbeat pounding in your ears.

The kiss felt perfectly new but also so insanely familiar; even though this was the first time this was happening sober. And so many things were running through your mind, but it was also effectively blank and you knew you wouldn’t be able to form a coherent sentence even if you tried. 

Most of all, though, everything happening right then— the way your hands fisted themselves in his rain soaked t-shirt to pull him impossibly closer to you, and how his thumb stroked your cheek so tenderly— it all felt so certain and sure and right; there wasn’t an ounce of doubt lingering in the air around you both or lacing its way within the kiss. 

When you pulled away to catch your breath and smiled up at him, a smile that Steve immediately matched with an elated grin of his own, it slightly killed you that all of this hadn't happened sooner.

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。. .・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.

“i just wanted you to know that this is me trying.”

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。. .・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.

let me know ur thoughts<333

[notebookmusical]

Hi Cossette! My favourite Maisie songs are I'm Trying (Not Friends) and Cate's Brother, but I also highly enjoy both singles that she released for The Good Witch (both accompanying music videos are also very enjoyable) :D I've started following Maisie's music releases circa You Signed Up For This and it's been a joy to see her artistic growth over the past 2 years 💖

For The Good Witch, I'm most looking forward to the title track, but The Band and I and Coming of Age are also amongst the songs that I'm very eager to hear! I love good storytellings and I'm excited to see what she comes up with to weave the stories altogether!

I also love your connection between The Band and I and Taylor Swift's Long Live: When I first heard Long Live years ago I love how wholesome it is!! It also shows how far Taylor came (music career-wise) since her debut and the importance of fan support over the years 💖 Hopefully we'll get to hear the Taylor's Version of the song one day!

To name a few other music albums that I've been enjoying lately:

The Record by boygenius

Good Riddance by Gracie Abrams

Drop Cherries by Billie Marten

Young Heart by Birdy

Everything I Know About Love by Laufey

Phosphorescent by Gabrielle Aplin

P.S. 2023 has been a great year in terms of music releases so far (a lot of artists that I enjoy are releasing new music), so I'm very excited about it! In addition to The Good Witch, what are a few upcoming music releases that you are looking forward to? And what are a few recent albums that you've been enjoying lately?

that’s so special! one of my friends that i met through broadway twitter has been a huge maisie stan since YSUFT if not earlier and that’s how i found out about her music! i can’t wait to see what she does next!!  and i agree — i’m most drawn to good storytelling & good lyrics, and i feel like maisie does such a good job with that! i’ve loved reading her little teasers for each song! it’s just so special. 

i think long live (taylor’s version) would be the song that destroys me most on speak now (taylor’s version) — either that, or never grow up! i’m honestly so shocked that long live didn’t make it on the eras tour setlist, and i know that when she performs it on tour i’ll be sobbing (most likely on the livestream)! 

i’m actually listening to good riddance right now (as i respond to this message)! it’s one of my favorites of 2023 so far, and i hope it gets pressed on vinyl soon! i also really loved the record by boygenius & everything i know about love by laufey, but haven’t really listened to the others — i’ll do so soon! i own both the record & everything i know about love on vinyl, but rarely listen to them on vinyl for some reason even though everything i know about love sounds so good on vinyl!

i’ve been listening to a lot of holly humberstone’s “can you afford to lose me?” which is a compilation of her first two EPs! she’s rumored to have her debut album come out this year — i feel like since you like maisie & taylor, you’re likely to enjoy her music!  i’ve also been listening to cate canning’s newest single “get better” lately — i hope she releases another album/ep/something soon. the japanese house’s in the end it always does comes out at the end of june, and i’m so excited for it! i actually just preordered my vinyl yesterday. i have no idea what these singers are up to, but i’d love to see more music from: benjamin francis leftwich, no rome, isabel pless, and del water gap! i feel like there’s another album i’m really eagerly anticipating, but i can’t think of anything right now! 

albums i’ve had on repeat lately are: phoebe bridgers’ punisher, cuts and bruises by inhaler, emails i can’t send fwd: by sabrina carpenter, and of course, taylor swift’s entire discorgraphy and the 1975’s entire discography! and not an album, but i’ve been looping beabadoobee & clairo’s version of glue song since it came out! 

[hocusbogus]

Day 7: Hybe Insight, Hangang Park, Itaewon

Our last full day in Seoul after we got back from Busan. It was the day where we’ll be as (possibly) close to BTS as we can be because we were visiting Hybe Insight for the Proof Exhibition, it is a special exhibition that is different from its museum, and it’s BTS’ office.

It was so dramatic to get the tickets because we can’t buy it from the official Hybe Insight website, we had to buy it from Inter-park Global, and it was at the same time as the Busan concert bid if I am not mistaken. The website crashed so hard many times and it was so complicated to login, I almost gave up. It costs 30,000KRW for the ticket, so that’s around 100+ ringgit. Diana couldn’t get through the website till like late at night, the thing was I already bought mine, can you imagine if we couldn’t book the same slot? But of course we did.

Hybe Insight was actually near to our hotel it’s only a few subway stops. It felt so exciting to just see the building, it felt even more surreal than the past few days. We were asking the Hybe crew where to redeem the tickets and only the one with an American flag badge could communicate in English while the rest was somehow quite rude? But maybe they just didn’t wanna deal with foreigners. Couldn’t really tell if they were being polite or not because they were wearing masks, but from the eyes they looked annoyed.

Literally almost everyone in line for our session at 11am were foreigners, it was so diverse! In age, in ethnicity, in genders and language. I was so amazed. It made me love being an ARMY more and love BTS more. That day we felt so on point with our outfit, Diana and I were like “omg why do we look so fucking good?”, and it felt amazing.

Since we weren’t allowed to take any pictures of videos, I will try my best to describe it here. After redeeming our tickets we were guided into a foyer space (we can still take pictures here) where we had to wait for the guided tour, we waited for quite awhile maybe around 30 minutes? The foyer space were just pictures of them from the PROOF photoshoot and there were green lasers shooting out everywhere. Then everyone was asked to get in two lines side by side as the tour started. 

When we went through the tunnel we saw scribbles from the members and their quotes, and we saw mementos from their different album eras, but not all, I forgot which was it. We then walked into a space where their Proof Live performance ft. Anderson Paak was being played on a loop in a big screen with their pictures all over a wall and a carousel. It was just a lot of photos of them, some were released photos and some were exclusive ones that we’ve never seen but we know it’s from a certain photoshoot. We then walk through a tunnel where from ground to ceiling it was all BTS’s pictures, I’m sure I’m not describing the details correctly because I do not remember non key pieces. There was also a space like a digital wall where they played videos of them 360 degree, it felt immersive.

Then we get to see their outfits that they wore in the Yet To Come Music video and iconic concert outfits of theirs.

I think my favourite one would be the tunnel walls of their unreleased practice videos, but you can’t really stand there for long because they will usher you to move along which was understandable but there were a lot of videos and I couldn’t really watch all of them.

We get to see all of their albums in all era, get a random photo-card from this dispenser machine, see random memorabilia. There was also this boomerang banner of the boys playing with the bullet from their Proof photoshoot. That one was never before seen and was so cool.

When we get to the merch section, it was a bit underwhelming, to be honest the whole exhibition... felt underwhelming for us because we’ve seen what the HYBE Insight museum was like, the boys did some content on that, and apparently Namjoon shot a content of him visiting the Proof Exhibition as well but I only saw it when I came back. I had no idea what to get, I’ve never been that into merch anyway, I felt like I wanted to get something to commemorate the day but there was just nothing there that made me jump in joy to own, especially when I bought so much stuff already and was strategising in my head where to even fit everything.

After the exhibition we went to Burger Boy, it was pretty random, we wanted to get Indonesian/Malaysian food but it was kinda far so we decided to just go to a random restaurant nearby. Burger Boy was amazing by the way even though we struggled a bit to order because no English on the ordering machine. We ate at the rooftop and discussed about what we think and felt about the exhibition and we were pretty frank to admit that we were disappointed. It’s normal and healthy to feel that way about idols or people you admire, you’re not gonna like and love everything that they do and the exhibition was managed by their company, they may have a say but still it was a team that curated it and it just didn’t reach our expectations. We wished the merch selections were better, the photo folio that they announced should’ve at least been there, less of BTS collab merch and more on their actual merch that were on Weverse? We see none of that basically. The merch that the boys designed were also not there. Other than that the exhibition were just walls of pictures, and a lot of it were pictures that we’ve seen or at least we know which photoshoot this was from so we’ve seen the look.

There were no interactive activity as well compared to actual HYBE Museum. I’d wish for more interactivity, but we didn’t get to have that. The only exclusive thing we get to enjoy was that unseen practice videos in which we couldn’t even actually enjoy because we were ushered to move along.

We still love and admire the boys and appreciate their team’s effort but we’re also allowed to be disappointed because we had expectations from the  previous HYBE Insight museum contents. 

Anyways, Burger Boy was amazing, the fries were amazing and Diana who doesn’t eat ketchup or sauces in general because of their texture actually ate the fries with the ketchup! It was that good. It was kinda hot at the rooftop but we still enjoyed it.

We decided to go back to Myeongdong and go to Nike to check out the customised stuff, and I needed a duffel bag because the one I bought in Hongdae gave up on me.

We ended up not customizing anything because it was just too long of a wait and we wanted to go check out Hangang Park. 

We didn’t really do much at Hangang, just sat on the steps and soak in the atmosphere, watch some busking performance and donated, and walked around for a bit since it was starting to get dark even though it was still early. A random decision was to go to Itaewon to go to Jonny’s Dumpling.

The minute we got to Itaewon we were already loving the vibe, maybe it was because there were more young people there, and the night life was great with a lot of tourists/foreigners so it felt more diverse and comfortable for us. We were like, “We shall stay here next time!”. The shitty thing was we had to queue for an hour and a half for Jonny’s Dumpling and it weren’t even that good. It was alright, but compared to Myeongdong Kyoja which totally blowed our mind, this pales in comparison.

We walked around Itaewon, taking random street pictures, Diana bought a waffle (was it a waffle?) and we just enjoyed the people dressed in costumes. Not knowing that the night after something tragic happened.

I will jumped straight to how we found out about the incident at Itaewon, the Halloween tragedy. I woke up Sunday morning with a text from Diana about it, and a text from my friend asking me my whereabouts.

I didn’t tell anyone (except for Safwan because he picked me up at the airport) we were already back in Malaysia, I’m sure some of them were worried. When I read about the incident via the link Diana shared me, I was speechless, then I saw the videos and fair to say I was affected and traumatized. I had nightmares for two days. It was slightly survivor guilt even though I was not there during the incident, but I was there the night before and seeing the victims’ from the videos. It felt eerie and I felt so strongly about the incident, I can’t even describe what kind of feelings it was, it was just a very strong feeling.

I spent the next couple of weeks keeping up with the news, saw interviews and was just very much overwhelmed by the whole tragedy. It must be weird for others to see me so affected even though I was literally not even there, I’m not Korean, nor am I a citizen there, but I was just so deeply affected by it. I have no explanation for this.

I’ll stop this sombre closing here, and we’ll talk about homecoming in the next post.

[yharnamopossum]

well in other news ancient bards has slowly but surely been becoming my favourite band over the past several months and their new album is fkin amazing and i implore anyone who likes symphonic/power metal to listen to origine cus hhhhhhh

[poptod]

Cyber Security (Elliot Alderson)

Description: An online ad leads him to you, though in reality he has little interest in your ad. What interests him is how you accidentally doxxed yourself and how oblivious you are to that fact.

Notes: idrk what to say about this one its one of those things that i wrote at midnight after almost falling asleep to a fantasy and then realizing it could work as a fic. like i did this same thing with ‘close your eyes’ that one was also a before-bed-to-get-to-sleep fantasy. this is also not a particularly romantic interaction, though it can be read as such WC: 2.2k

+

Sweat drenched his sheets, bathing him in the cold wind that breezed past his only air conditioner lodged in a nearby window. He stared blankly upwards, half shivering and half overheated, as he once again found himself in a familiar predicament—the practice of sleep.

It was no secret he had trouble calming himself down, and that aspect of himself reached into the evening, as well. He already downed three melatonin pills hours earlier, along with smoking a joint that should’ve put him to bed. Unsurprisingly, that did not work.

“Xanax,” he mumbled to himself, hearing it bounce back from empty walls. “Need to get xanax.”

In the meantime he raised himself to his feet, padding across freezing floors to his computer. With a click of a button the white screen buzzed to life, shining bright onto his sleep-heavy eyes, that did their best to acclimatize to the sudden change.

Hypnotization—strange as it might’ve been—had worked a couple times before. Not all the time, but decently enough to give it a try. He had work in the morning and he didn’t need to be more miserable than usual, especially since he hadn’t slept almost the entire weekend.

sleep hypnosis

The blinker flickered for a moment before his fourth finger slammed down on enter, the last step in calculated movements. What popped up first was a video titled [ SLEEP HYPNOSIS ] 8 Hour Loop with a screencap of a spinning black and white screen. Below that, however, was something he hadn’t seen before—a YouTube video titled exactly what he’d typed, lacking the caps just as he had. The title screen appeared to be some sort of poorly-drawn painting.

Curiosity overcame his hazy, aching head, and he clicked, finding a playlist of videos containing what could be the titles of songs, along with several different poorly-drawn title screens.

The first video began to play before he could realize it. What he first noticed was it was bereft of ads—that meant the publisher made no money off the album.

Sat in the presence of God

whose name means filthy old fraud

Captions had been manually added by, he assumed, you. The author. There were three views on the video, no comments, and no likes, leaving few other options.

Maybe it was the melody—maybe the lyrics, who talked of a world plagued by aristocrats. But he found his eyelids heavy, dropping dark eyelashes in his vision that blurred the screen. By the third song, reciting verses of an Islamic poem, he was slouched in his seat.

He slid down to the floor, crawling his way back to flop onto his bed. The music continued to play till the first ad popped up, at which time he opened his eyes, seeing a music video from Katy Perry, at which time he promptly reached over and unplugged his computer. He wasn’t sure which cord he pulled out, but the screen still went black. With that, he just barely sneaked into his covers, dozing until the morning.

It was far too easy to get information on you. Your full name was stated clearly in your youtube bio, alongside several different social media tags leading to instagram, tumblr, and facebook.

Facebook alone provided him the means to your address, and he didn’t even have to go looking for it. Your most recent post was an ad, searching for someone good with computers to aid you in your recording process, which you noted as ‘dismal’.

Are you fucking kidding me? He thought to himself, reading the ad once more.

Your address, your real, physical address was stated as the place you wanted to meet those interested in helping you. On the internet. You had doxxed yourself after less than a year of being online.

Okay, he thought, clicking on your listed email. Someone needs to be taught a lesson.

Three days later—after about two weeks of listening to your echoing voice every night—you replied, sending a cheerful email detailing when you would be available to meet him. After shooting a short message back, the date was organized.

Two more days and he was standing at your doorstep, his neck craned upwards as he scanned your tall, narrow home squished between two other apartments. He just barely knocked before the black door swung open, revealing a familiar face belonging to a stranger. Elliot was dressed in his black hoodie and jeans, a stark difference to your long, colorful robes, coming out of a sort of fantasy world.

“Hi,” he said, his voice grating with how low and quiet he kept it.

“Hello,” you said with a smile that did not match his hunched posture. “Are you Mr. Alderson?”

“Elliot,” he corrected, his chin just barely raising to meet you. “Elliot Alderson. Elliot works.”

“Alright,” you said, nodding. “Come inside? I was just making tea. Do you like tea? Or do you prefer coffee?”

“I... I’m fine, thanks,” he said softly, scooting past you when you opened the door wide enough for him to enter. He sucked in a breath as his chest brushed yours.

Your home was modern—far fancier than Elliot’s own apartment, with large windows flanked by soft grey curtains. A small, upright piano was in the corner of the living room, set upon a reed mat lined with Korean symbols. The couch was clinical, made of a sort of black plastic leather that matched the grey skies beyond the window panes.

He sat down, shifting his feet closer together as his fingers dug into his palms, continuing to scan the room in its’ entirety until you returned with your own tea.

“What kind of experience do you have? School counts,” you said, setting your cup down on a tiny plate whose decorations matched your teacup.

“I’ve been... experimenting, with computers, since I was around 9,” he said, mumbling the words out as his shoulders hunched awkwardly down. “Have a job at a cyber security firm. Started a while back.”

“You still have that job?”

“Yeah,” he said with a small nod. “Jus’ thought this would be... fun.”

The dead look on his face indicated no humor whatsoever, but you took his word as it was.

“How’d you find the ad I put out?”

“I... I listened to your music,” he answered honestly for once. “Helps me fall asleep.”

“Oh,” you said, clearly taken aback. Your face grew warm as you glanced away with wide eyes. “I’m glad I could help.”

“You’re not very good with technology, though,” he said in his usual low, grating voice.

“Not really,” you chuckled sheepishly. “That’s why I put out the ad -“

“No, not that,” he interrupted you. “You put your physical address on the internet. You doxxed yourself. Do you even know how dangerous that is?”

The lyrics of your songs pointed towards a kind of brilliance, balanced against emotions felt thoroughly on pages and screens. It didn’t match your actions at all.

“What’s doxxing?” You asked.

Elliot had to physically stop himself from sighing and leaving.

“You want everyone to know where you, a minor celebrity, live?”

“I’d hardly call myself a -“

“I could’ve been a murderer,” he said, reaching into his bag.

He looked you in the eye as he pulled out a gun, clicking on the safety before he pointed it at you.

“This is how easy it would be to kill you.”

As expected, you stiffened at the sight of the iron barrel, your fingers withdrawing to your chest. Your lips pursed as you met his gaze once more.

“Please put the gun down,” you whispered, your voice cracking.

He did as you said, resting the gun on the table.

“That’s a hell of a way to start an interview, Mr. Alderson,” you said quietly. “Please get out of my house.”

His heart sank. What had he expected? For you to fall to your knees and sing to him as he desired you to do? He threatened you with a gun to teach you a lesson, and you reacted accordingly. Calmer than others would.

Elliot stood on shaky legs, sliding the pistol into his backpack before he zipped it up. Throwing the pack over his shoulder, he swallowed through a tight throat, shuffling as he delayed his departure.

“Keep safe from people like me,” he said in a strained mumble. “Take that ad down. Meet people from the internet only in inhabited, public areas.”

You tapped your fingernails on the table for a moment, chewing on your bottom lip. Suddenly you stood, tugging on his sweatshirt sleeve to get him to face you, instead of staring at his feet.

“Alright. If you’re really so good at the internet -“

He ignored your incorrect grammar.

“- and... if you actually do want to help me with my songs,” your tone softened, “then you’ll be able to find my real name, not my stage name. If you do.. I’ll hire you.”

“Alright,” he said monotone, knowing the battle was already won.

Even though he knew your name already, he turned away and left to his apartment, immediately going to work on figuring out everything he could about you. If you willingly still offered him the job after that, he knew it would take a lot to scare you off. He could impress you.

It was, after all, the only thing he was good at.

Two days later he showed up at your apartment again, quietly thanking you when you let him in. The clean floors and walls remained unchanged since his last visit, and you led him to the same table, sitting him down on the same seat.

“Your name is (Y/N) (L/N),” he started with. You already appeared to be surprise. “You grew up near LA and you’ve had a chronic illness all your life. At eleven you saw your first therapist.. that must’ve been when you first got diagnosed with depression... and anxiety.”

“Killer duo,” you muttered.

“Your parents split when you were thirteen, which came at the same time as your dog, Penelope, died. Or... sometime that year. When was that... 1997?”

“1999,” you said quietly.

“Your mom homeschooled you,” he continued. “That’s probably why you don’t know how computers work. Rather eclectic, in a.. boring way... an ex-Amish, right?”

You nodded and his heartbeat tripled. Everything was right thus far despite a two year difference in his guesstimate of your life’s timeline.

“Then there was your dad... logger in the Redwood forests. Burly guy. Not a great man, from what I saw,” he said.

“He was fine,” you said with a small shrug as you looked away. “Didn’t ever hurt me, or anything.”

“Abuse isn’t always physical,” he said faster than he could think, dizzied by his own memories playing behind his eyes.

“I know,” you murmured.

You went silent, so he continued, hoping to pry more precious words from you.

“Your favorite color is yellow,” he said, leaning closer to you. “On Valentine’s you get chocolate strawberries, and on easter you get kinder eggs.”

Nothing.

“You studied mythology as a kid, and you made paintings of the forest you lived in with your mom. Santa Cruz mountains, I think.”

“Yeah,” you said. “I miss the forests.”

“I know. You want to visit Ireland again because it’s a land of faeries and moss, it’s a breeding ground for your song lyrics.”

“How did you find all this out?” You finally asked.

“You use the same password on everything,” he said, though that was far from the actual answer. “Your web browser tracks all your movements and you don’t try to stop it, or hide ads, or stay away from sketchy websites. Your parents aren’t much better, either.”

You chuckled, shaking your head as you brought your hand to massage your brow.

“You’re way too smart to be helping me,” you said with soft laughter, blushing with your smile.

“It’s better than working for E Corp,” he said, huffing out a laugh that was hardly humored.

“E corp?”

“My.. uh, place of work,” he brushed off his slip. “My point is... I’d rather work with you and do easy work than work with my current fucking coworkers.”

You laughed, truly and fully this time, curling into a little ball that shook with the force of it. Your feet tucked into your tiny chair, making you even smaller.

“Bad people or just annoying?”

“Stupid,” he chuckled. “Don’t let me wear my sweatshirt.”

“Ooh, now it’s my turn,” you suddenly interrupted him, earning a strange look. “I’ve noticed things about you, too. I couldn’t learn anything off the computer, but you, you have anxiety too. Probably some childhood trauma.. maybe a dissociative disorder of sorts or a form of PTSD. Your jacket is like your home, and... you have sensory issues. Few types of fabric, don’t like to be touched, if I had to guess I’d say you might be autistic.”

“Blunt,” he said after a full minute’s silence.

“Do you mind?” You asked.

“No, not really.”

“Good. Then you’re hired,” you said with a smile, extending your hand for him to shake. “If you still want the job, of course.”

He watched you with evident apprehension, but took your hand after much thought, shaking with a firm grip.

“When do I start?”

[musiconanironingboard]

9 May 2022: Chapter and Verse, Bruce Springsteen. (2016 Columbia release of 1966-2012 recordings)

At 9:30 A.M. on May 9, I had jury duty in downtown Chicago. This is the fourth time I have been called to jury duty in the past 13 years, and three of them have been since 2014. I’ve been called twice during the pandemic. I don’t even want to reveal that I’ve only had to be on one jury; two times I went and sat there until I was dismissed and was never asked to be interviewed, and one of these four times I called the hotline the night before and the robot voice told me I didn’t have to show up at all. I feel like just talking about all of this will ensure another summons in my mailbox as soon as legally possible. Maybe it sounds like I’ve gotten off easy, but being summoned four times in 13 years is outrageous considering I know dozens of people who have never been summoned at all in their entire lives, including my eighty-something parents. In fact, I’m not sure that I know a single person who has actually sat on a jury other than myself! (Well, that’s not true. My partner at work gets called as much as I do, if not more, and surely she’s sat on a jury.) 

Anyhow, the mere notion of having to physically go and do this sets off all kinds of dread and anxieties for me, not least of which is getting downtown (or to whatever other far-flung courthouse they can make you go to) at the, for me, ungodly hour of 9:30 A.M. The robot voice told me the night before that anyone whose surname began with H through P (that’s me) had to report, and it all just filled me with dread. Another part of the dread involved missing work: sure, I take vacation days, but those are planned and desired. Missing crucial time on work projects is another thing. Of course I understand the civic duty involved, but again, can they call one of my other friends and take me off their speed dial? I dragged myself to the Daley Center downtown and was in place and reading my book by 9:30. Everyone, and there were probably 250 of us, got a number assigning us to a panel. I got #6. I had no idea how many panels there were. At 9:45 they announced that everyone on panel #2 had to line up to go into a courtroom to be interviewed. At 10:15 they called another panel, but jumped ahead to something wild like #34. By this time I was listening to headphones and continuing with my book and yearning deeply for the lunch hour we would be afforded at 11:30. At ten after 11 the microphone came on again and I feared my panel would be called, but the voice said “We have everyone we need for today, your jury duty is now fulfilled for one year and you are free to go.” I was so pleased. Excused before lunch! In 2014 when I went, there were also about 250 of us but I had to sit there until everyone had been picked but me and another guy and they didn’t let us go until 5 P.M.

As soon as I went to the food hall across the street from the courthouse and ate lunch, I went straight to the record store. Reckless has a tiny outlet in Chicago’s Loop and I don’t get there much. It’s often closed when I am there, so I was happy to have a chance to browse. And since I’d already arranged to miss work, after all the dread I’d felt I decided to treat myself to a few hours off downtown. 

Now that I’ve written the kind of personal essay ostensibly about an album that I used to scream at young Pitchfork writers for doing, let me get to the music: this compilation of Springsteen music was released to accompany his 2016 memoir Born to Run. I read the book when it came out, but for whatever reason I never felt like chasing this compilation. Out of 18 tracks, only 5 were previously unreleased, not a great ratio (even if some of them are pre-fame recordings from his early bands The Castiles and Steel Mill), and to paraphrase my brother’s hilarious statement about David Bowie after he realized he owned a zillion Bowie albums, “I’m not even a real Springsteen fan!” You wouldn’t know it, for I’ve religiously bought all of Springsteen’s albums, including his dreariest, most dreadful ones of the 21st century, and I’ve seen him live at least three times that I can recall. Sometime in the past couple years, another branch of Reckless got in a copy of Chapter and Verse, and it was a colored-vinyl edition originally released through Barnes and Noble. I get sick of colored vinyl and I am not fond of buying music from big-box stores, but when I saw that Reckless had one I thought it would be the perfect copy to buy: a limited, special one that I never even had to chase, it just fell into my lap. By the time I got over to the store to buy it, it was gone. Then on my chance visit to the Loop Reckless some years later, after escaping jury duty, I found another one in the new-arrivals bin. I am guessing there are people who frequent the vinyl department of Barnes and Noble when it’s gift-giving time, or maybe titles like this seem like good Father’s Day gifts, or something, and the recipient isn’t always enthusiastic. I don’t know why else two copies of this Barnes and Noble edition would pop up at the same chain in a relatively short period. I never see used copies of the regular, non-Barnes edition. Anyway, I was happy to find it. And I had to tell the jury-duty story, because this will forever be remembered as a jury-duty purchase.

Above are the front cover, hype sticker, and back cover. The top of the back cover is a bit banged up, but with the shrinkwrap slipped back on—amazingly, this used copy had its shrinkwrap opened but not damaged or gone—you don’t see the creases.

Below are both sides of the two inner sleeves (this is a double).

Next up are all four labels.

Last, here’s a shot of that tortoise-shell vinyl.

[kyun-toast]

[MONSTA X] Changkyun - Happy Without Me

word count: 3.8k warnings: alcohol, suggestions of smoking, swearing, suggestions of sex summary: I don't think about you sometimes 'Cause I think about you all the time a/n: I’ve been listening to the All About Luv album a lot recently and Happy Without Me hit a little different the other day. I hope you don’t notice how I slacked off near the end 💜

“Yerim what are you wearing for tonight? I wanna look cute but not like ‘I’ve put effort in’ kinda cute, you know? Like I’m always this cute.”

Yerim laughed as she replied, “You’d look hot wearing a bin bag so shut up and let me know what drinks you want. It’s ‘bring your own booze’ so I was gonna run to the store for extra before we go.”

“Umm, vodka? Tequila? Maybe rum? I’m getting smashed tonight and you’re all going to carry me home, just letting you know.” Soobin winked and blew kisses at the both of you with a coy smile on her face, as some form of ‘thank you in advance’ for the troubles that you would be going through later that night. As much pain she put the both of you through, it was hard not to love her.

“Yeah, you say that as if that’s not what happens every week, you psycho.”

You smiled from the comfort of your sofa as you witnessed the two of your best friends bicker. You were never really one for parties, but you decided to let yourself go after an unfortunate night maybe five? six months ago. You thought that you could vent your frustrations into your notes app and be done with it, but your friends took pity and introduced you to another option. One where you could numb your mind with alcohol and crashing bass, and you figured that it was somewhat more enjoyable than cry-writing shitty poetry on a Friday night. Notes app therapy was now a thing of the past.

Changkyun had become such an integral part of your life that you couldn’t help yourself from unconsciously replaying memories that you had attempted to bury. A simple look at the most irrelevant objects would have him running through your mind before you could even stop yourself. Oh, we bought this mug together. You were surprised he hadn’t taken it with him when he left. It was his favourite mug to drink whiskey out of. Speaking of whiskey, you needed a drink. It had only taken days for him to make himself at home at the forefront of your thoughts but how long was it going to take to rid of him?

As much as you tried to keep those thoughts at bay, no amount of alcohol could ever stop them from crashing back over you whenever you saw that little smiley face appear at the top of your Instagram feed.

imnameim. When had he posted a story? You hadn’t seen the pink circle earlier. Would it be too early to look at it now? You couldn’t risk tapping on it only to see that it had been posted 12 seconds ago, just like you had done the other day. And the day before. And the day before that. Should you just make a burner account? No, that’s too far, we’re not going there today, bitch... Maybe tomorrow.

You hated how much power that tattoo face held over you, looking straight into your eyes - almost mockingly. Oh, did I look like a smiley face to you six months ago? Well, I’m a sad face now and that’s all you’re ever going to see.

“Y/N! Hey! You’re going to stare a hole into your phone.” Soobin clapped in your face, trying to get your attention. You looked up, softening your expression to meet Yerim’s eyes.

“Soobin was asking what you’re going to wear tonight.” Yerim said.

“I don’t know, probably that top I got yesterday?” you shrugged, unbothered by your friends’ question. You weren’t going to parties to impress anyone; you were going to drink the last of your braincells away.

“Y/N, ‘that top’ you got yesterday is a free t-shirt you got from the Domino’s pop-up stall on campus. I’m not letting you do this again.” Yerim dead panned.

“OK and...?” You met both of their concerned faces only to have them grab each of your arms.

“Come on. Up. That’s it.” You made unintelligible noises as they dragged you up off the sofa and into your closet. The thoughts about Changkyun’s story were left on the sofa as your mind was now filling with an excited buzz. “You act like you hate this, but I know you love getting trashed with us, Y/N.” Yerim laughed and you knew it too.

-

Changkyun lay in Jae-in’s bed, with her nestled in his chest as he looked up at the ceiling and sighed. Being careful not to wake her, he slowly squeezed his arm out from under her head to lay on his stomach to scroll through Instagram.

He had posted a story over an hour ago, half hoping that you’d see it – a cover of Dean’s Instagram. How ironic.

He shook his head at how pathetic his efforts seemed, whispering to himself, “What the hell are you doing?” He refreshed his feed for the last time to see that you had posted a video of the three of you dancing to a song in your walk-in closet. Probably drunk. Upon re-watching the video on loop for the third time, he concluded that you were most definitely drunk.

Seeing you having fun like this had him torn between being happy for you, moving on with your life and probably on to other men too. Being attractive plus the endless number of parties you went to now was just the perfect recipe. You were bound to have found someone.

And this is where the hatred washed over him. He despised it. Hated seeing you have fun without him, moving on as if he had never existed. Was it that easy for you to just forget? It seemed unfair that he was still struggling to keep you off his mind while you were out having the time of your life, letting your followers know of that fact too.

Deep down, he knew that he wasn’t happy for you at all. He was just trying to kid himself into thinking that he was. Be mature and everything. That was what both of you had agreed to be when your relationship came to an end. After days of what could probably be called a verbal equivalent of a nuclear war, the two of you had given up.

Crying, shouting, complete silence, you had done it all and there was no end in sight. On day three of radio silence, you felt as if you could do without speaking to Changkyun at all. When you brought it up, he admitted he felt the same. Exhaustion making both of you devoid of any emotion, you agreed to disagree and act like the fight had never happened. You were tired and wanted nothing more to do with it. Or each other. Thinking of yourselves as somewhat grown, you decided to be civil since you were in the same circle of friends, not wanting to burden them with any of your problems.

With so many things left unsaid and ties still loose, there was no way that you could just cut clean. But you never so much as bumped into each other since.

You hadn’t blocked each other though, as you both felt that it was some sign of weakness. Yeah, I’m tough enough to keep them on my socials. They don’t bother me. Not at all. But in the small hours of the morning, you were on each other’s profiles, hoping for a glimpse of what they were up to. Wondering if he had finished that song he was working on. If you were eating well. If he was really seeing Jae-in seriously. If you were well and truly happy.

“Hey, how are you doing?”

Y/N’s doing just fine for themselves, everyone can see that.

“Did you finish that essay?”

No, that’s too random.

“I think about you all the time.”

Shut up Changkyun.

Though you had both agreed to be ‘friends’, there was no easy way in going about messaging one another when you had fought so explosively. Changkyun also felt that he had missed the right timeframe for him to salvage whatever there was left of the relationship. Whether it be platonic or romantic. No matter how much he wanted to message you, his pride falsely masked as maturity stopped him from ever doing more than wish for you to call him and say that everything was going to be ok. That you can start over.

“Do you wanna go to Minhyuk’s house party?” Jae-in’s voice was heavy with sleep, squinting her eyes at the bright screen of her phone. Changkyun was startled from his thoughts, not realising that she had been woken up by a text.

“House party…?” Changkyun was dubious.

“It’s ok if you don’t want to, it’s just that we don’t ever do anything besides fuck, and I thought we could do with a change of scenery.”

“I mean yeah it’s just that we’ve never hung out with other people before. Like together.”

He had met Jae-in at a bar a few months ago. Holed up in his studio after the breakup, Changkyun got to channelling his anger into working on his music until his course mate Minhyuk persuaded him out for drinks. Minhyuk had flirted with the girls from the table over to get them to join in on the pity party. Jae-in had seated herself next to Changkyun and a few drinks later, they had quickly bonded over their childhood obsession with Death Note to which she followed up with an invitation to watch it at her place. Who was Kyun to reject? With all this pent-up energy to spare, music wasn’t quite cutting it.  

“I doubt anyone will care that we arrived together.” Jae-in shrugged. “Let’s go.”

-

“Yeah, I invited Jae-in and I think Changkyun might come with her too.” Minhyuk stated nonchalantly over the phone. You choked on your wine and thanked God that the music in your room was loud enough to cover the unnatural sound you had just made. “Y/N, is that ok? I should have asked you befo-”

“No, I don’t care.” You replied a little too quickly, “It’s been months and we broke up on good terms anyway, remember?”

“MINNIE! I MISS YOU!” Soobin drunkenly shouted across the room as Yerim held her back from throwing herself at the phone.

“I MISS YOUR FACE TOO, BINNIE! I’LL SEE YOU LATER!” Minhyuk chuckled as he didn’t hesitate to match her volume through the phone.

“Ugh, you two make me sick”, Yerim rolled her eyes, “You literally saw each other this morning. Just get together already.”

As Soobin and Minhyuk continued to chat, engulfed in their own little world, you reached to grab another drink. If Minhyuk’s predictions were right, you were going to need something stronger than wine to get you through the night.

-

Stepping into Minhyuk’s apartment, Changkyun could feel the bass rumble underneath his feet already.

“Hey! You made it! I thought you guys weren’t going to come, it’s so late! But we have drinks and snacks in the kitchen. Oh, and Jae-in, the bathrooms just through the hallway on the right…” Minhyuk’s voice trailed off into the loud music. Changkyun followed behind Jae-in as his friend gave the newcomer a guided tour of his place.

Though he was familiar with the apartment, it felt a little weird for him to walk through it with someone else by his side. A pack of cards strewn over the floor jogged his memory back to a particularly warm night in June. With the sun just beginning to rise, you both stood below Minhyuk’s balcony at 4am. You shouted,

“HEY MINHYUK, WE’RE GOING TO PLAY UNO AT YOUR PLACE, D’YOU WANNA JOIN?”

“THOUGHT WE’D ASK IN CASE YOU’D FEEL LEFT OUT.” Changkyun added. You both snickered as Minhyuk opened his window to shout back at you, regretting that he had ever given you two the spare keys to his apartment.

“ARE YOU REALLY INVITING ME TO PLAY CARDS MY OWN HOUSE RIGHT NOW?!” Birds fluttered away startled, as a neighbouring window flashed on a light in annoyance. Your shouting combined could never top the sheer volume of Minhyuk’s voice. Changkyun grabbed your hand as you ran into the building laughing before the neighbour could join in on the screaming match.

With classes finished for the year, you had what felt like an infinite amount of time on your hands. Kyun smiled to himself as he was reminded of those summer nights that he had spent with you. Stargazing, pillow talking, daydreaming on repeat.

“Yeah, so you can get to the outdoor space through the living room but I’m giving you special access to my little balcony through my room because you’re uh, Changkyun’s friend.” Minhyuk grinned as he ended his tour.

Upon entering the actual party in the lounge, Changkyun stopped in his tracks at the sight of you on the other side of the room. For a moment, the smoke in the room seemed to clear as his eyes trained on you throw your head back in laughter at Yerim’s animated storytelling. Hearing your voice so crystal clear made his heart swell with something that he couldn’t quite put into words. Half a year had passed since he had last seen you, sat broken on the floor of your apartment, explaining that it would be best to part ways. You had looked so drained of emotion then; it was such a stark contrast to what he was seeing now. He stood frozen, heart beating hard against his chest like a hammer.

“Kyun! Why are you so late?” Wonho, another friend of Kyun’s appeared out of nowhere with a bottle of tequila in his hand. “You gotta catch up on the drinks now, come on, open your mouth.” Wonho went to grab his face with one hand as he proceeded to try and pour some alcohol into his mouth jokingly. Changkyun chuckled as he play-fought with Wonho only to stop midway when he noticed Jae-in smiling at the sight.

“Oh, this is my friend Jae-in.” Kyun straightened up and brushed off his clothes.

Wonho went to shake her hand as Minhyuk snuck up behind him.

"Yeah, friend.” He giggled as he raised his brows suggestively and left as quickly as he appeared shouting, “Binnie! Where are you? We gotta go make those s’mores you wanted!”

Changkyun rolled his eyes and smiled as he guided Jae-in to the nearest table of drinks and set to introducing her to the rest of his friends, hoping that you wouldn’t notice him.

-

At this point, the three of you were beyond gone. Soobin had already passed out with a s’more in her hand as Minhyuk hauled her over his shoulder to put her to sleep in the guest room.

“And she.. she was telling me to sythensi.. she was telling me thynsenise, no, synsi.. she wanted me to synthesise, there we go, snythi…” Yerim tripped over words, dead set on getting her pronunciation right while Hyungwon sat and nodded with his signature painful smile on his face. She was determined, hand on his shoulder with a grip that let him know he wasn’t going anywhere until she had finished her story.

As for you? You were sat next to Yerim, a vacant smile on your face as you struggled to keep your eyes open. Day drinking followed up with a house party in the evening really wasn’t the best idea for the lightweights that you are but there you were, listening to your friend repeat the same sentence over and over again. An urgent voice in your head piped up, letting you know that you should probably go for a breath of fresh air.

“Yerim, hey, Yerim, I’m.. going for some air… stay with Hyungwon okay? Hyungwon, call me if anything happens?” You stood up, struggling to find your balance and teetered across the room to get to Minhyuk’s balcony.

The thing about you is that you are one of those blessed people that can sober up as quickly as they get smashed. You felt refreshed, taking in a deep breath as if to cleanse your alcohol ridden bloodstreams with the cool evening air. Your head still spun a little but as long as you kept your eyes anchored on the moon, you’d be fine in no time.

As much as your body needed a break from the party, it wasn’t the greatest timing for your mental state. Once you had assumed that Changkyun wasn’t coming to the party, you let go of the anxiety holding you back from enjoying yourself. You had been overstimulated from the alcohol, music, and people, not giving yourself a chance to think about anything else. But once those factors were gone, it was just you, alone with your drunken thoughts on a balcony looking up at the moon. And just like that, those suppressed memories regarding a certain boy couldn’t help but unpack themselves from your unconscious. Oh man, this was going to be such a good cry.

-

Changkyun was beginning to feel a little too tipsy for his liking. Though he was having a great time, it felt as if he wasn’t entirely present at the scene, like he was watching and laughing along through a TV screen. He slipped away from the kitchen island to get a breather.

“Oh shit, sorry, I didn’t realise anyone was here.” He apologised, going to close the door of Minhyuk’s balcony to a figure hunched over the railing. You looked up from your hands at him and tried to focus on the blurry face.

His movements faltered when your eyes met, door still open. Just one look at you was enough for that knock back into reality Changkyun had needed. God were you a sight for sore eyes. He drank up the way your cheeks and nose were flushed pink, how your eyes were glossy in the moonlight, eyelashes thick with tears, and the way the softly coloured city lights behind you framed your face. With the night air stained with your perfume and the sounds of muted traffic perfecting the scene, he had never felt so in the present until now. He wanted this moment to last a lifetime.

“Changkyun?” You replied, as you wiped your eyes clear of the tears blurring your vision. You could tell that voice apart anywhere, you only questioned in the slight chance that you were just hallucinating, going insane.

“Are you ok? I can leave if you want, I-” He began hurriedly, knowing that you hated having anyone see you cry.

“I’m fine.” You sniffed.

“Bad day?” He asked softly, bringing himself to stand next to you, looking over at the cityscape.

“Yeah, something like that.” You replied, letting out a small laugh as you wiped the last of the tears from your face. 

Tension hung so thick in the air you could feel it weigh down on your shoulders. Changkyun hated that you, the person he had once shared the deepest parts of his mind with, was someone he was now so uncomfortable with.

You both stood there awhile, looking out at the blinking lights of the cityscape. As quiet as it was, you could almost hear the sound of your brains whirring, going back and forth over whether or not you should say something to break the silence. Changkyun had spent months thinking of questions he wanted to ask you for when this moment came, but the alcohol and nerves fogged up his mind. All he could think of doing was holding you in his arms, hoping for you to be able to feel his apologies, sincerity and promises through the beating of his chest.

A heavy pressing in your lungs only intensified, as you thought about how the present situation had become the outcome of those few perfect years. You regulated your breathing, trying to break down the lump from coming up in your throat, on the verge of tears again. Thinking back, you realised that you probably could have been a little more understanding, could have softened your sharp words, could have opened your heart up some more to allow for Changkyun to do so in return. These thoughts and emotions bubbled up inside your chest to spill out of your mouth before you even knew what you wanted to say.

“Changkyun, I-”

“I found a really nice place for nights like this. Y/N.” he cut across with an anxious tremble in his voice. He could feel the apology ready to tumble from your lips, he had to stop you from apologising for things that you really didn’t need to. He hated that your heart was so big and so loving that you were willing to start trying to mend this relationship first. But he hated himself more for not having the courage to try to be even half as loving as you are.

He continued, still looking out over the balcony, worried that he’d start to tear up if he met your eyes again, “you can see the stars so clearly, it’s insane.”

You turned to him, tears welling in your eyes again. Despite having cut each other from your lives for what felt like a lifetime, it broke you how he could still read you like his favourite book.

“Can we go? Y/N? I’ve waited so long to show you.”

Hot tears fell down your cheeks again as Changkyun noticed and turned to you, pulling you into his chest as you cried out the mess of emotions you had amassed. 

The person you had wanted to talk about your breakup with Changkyun the most, was so ironically Changkyun. He’d know how to calm you down, how to sort out your problems with ice cream in bed like any other issue you were facing. But what were you supposed to do when you had cut the one who understood you the most so bluntly from your life? Who were you supposed to turn to when you wanted to talk about that?

Your cries pierced into his heart deeper with every second that passed, feeling the hurt in your voice in the deepest parts of his soul. He replied by holding you tighter, and you could feel all those things he left unsaid that day you left in the warmth of his chest.

“We don’t have to rush,” He whispered into your hair, “I have all the time in the world for you. Let it out.”

He brought a hand up from your shoulders hesitantly, feeling almost undeserving of comforting you after the pain he had caused you. But to you, his hand stroking your hair was where you found your solace.

So, there you stood, in each other’s arms having poured out your hearts to one another without having said a single word. But you both knew that you felt every single one.

[miss-authorcita]

A/N: So, I'm obsessed (once again) with Taylor's Fearless album and I've decided to write one shots of each of the songs. They probably won't be that good cause I'm literally just writing them down and posting them. (No spellcheck, no beta reader, no nothing) I just wanna get back to writing and this came to mind.

SUMMARY: It's been almost 2 years since Civil War. You and Steve have grown closer while on the run, but you can't help missing the roller coaster love you and Tony shared. (Inspired by: That's The Way I Loved You)

I was sitting by the window of my ratty Motel room, simply staring at the wet cobblestones of the empty street barely lit up by two lamp lights. My thoughts kept drowning me, it was a new thing with me when I was alone. I made so many mistakes in my life and now the solitude seemed to bring them all to the forefront of my mind.

A knock brought me out of my stupor and I was instantly in alert, gun out of its holster and aiming towards the door.

"Y/N, it's me and Nat." Steve's voice was heard muffled by the wood.

I relaxed, letting my shoulders fall. I reholstered my gun and unlocked the door, letting both of them step into my room. As soon as I locked the door behind them Steve pulled me by the waist and kissed me. Just a quick peck. I blushed and stepped away.

"I got you something." He smiled and pulled out a packet of skittles from his pocket.

I couldn't help, but smile. "I haven't had these in years not since..." I trailed off not wanting to mention his name.

Steve nodded and kissed my forehead.

"I have to stop by Wanda's and Sam's just to check in. I'll be back later tonight, alright?"

I nodded still staring at the bag of skittles in my hand. Steve opened the door and waited for Nat to walk by first. She stopped beside me and squeezed my forearm making me look up. She gave me her signature side smirk. She always voiced her support. She was mine and Steve's biggest shipper.

After the two of them left, I waited till I couldn't hear their footsteps anymore before collapse on the bed. Once again, while in solitude, I let the memories of my mistakes flood my mind.

It was a few hours later when Steve knocked on my door again. I opened and stepped to the side to let him in. He locked up and once again pulled me towards him by my waist. This time he just holds me.

"I know this life is hard. I know how hard...how difficult leaving was..." He's hesitant with his words, always sensible and caring of my feelings.

I just nod, unable to use words, afraid I'll just start sobbing.

"You know I'm doing everything I can to make this as easy for you as possible, right?"

I pull back and stare up at him. I let my hand caress his bearded jaw as I look deep into his blue eyes. "I know, Steve and I appreciate it so much" I whisper and stand on my tip toes to kiss him.

I fall asleep in his arms that night like many before and again like many times before we have to leave suddenly. Sam is the one to wake us, urgently banging on the door. We'd been tracked and we needed to move out quickly. All of us are out of the building in less that 15 minutes. We head to our cars and Steve opens up my door, helping me step in like a true gentleman.

"You look beautiful tonight." He says with a grin and I roll my eyes with a chuckle and close the door. He jogs to the driver side, and we're all off to find our next hideout.

The ride is long and before I know it I've fallen asleep.

*

"Tony!" I yell as soon as the elevator doors open. "Tony Stark!" I shout once again.

"What!? What!? Why are you shouting?" He asks, coming out of the kitchen. His hair is wet , he's wearing a black tank top and sweats and holding a bag of chips.

"Why am I shouting!? Have you seen the news!?" I yell again. His confused face only makes me madder. The rage is building like the rain and thunder outside like it's mimicking my mood.

"I was showering...so no?" He smiles and that is the last straw. I explode, my voice basically shrill.

"All the news channels are showing the explosion! The one of the building you and the Avengers were in! They don't show you guys coming out of it! I called Tony!"

"Sweetheart, I'm fine. I'm alive." He says like my tone isn't a very obvious clue to my state of mind.

"You didn't answer when I called! You what? Came home, showered and were gonna eat fucking chips! Did you even think to let me know you were okay!?" I couldn't seem to lower my voice even if I wanted to. I was so upset.

"I was gonna call you as soon as I sat on the couch." He excuses.

"Fuck you, Tony Stark!" I hissed and started walking to the elevator to leave.

"Friday close access to the elevators." Tony said as he made his way towards me. I dodged him and made my way to the doors that led to the hall.

"Friday if you could, please." At his command the padlock turned red, obviously meaning they would not open, at least not for me.

We stood a few feet apart, me glaring and him smirking. I must've lost my mind that night because I looked out towards his Ironman platform and made a run for it. He followed me out, both of us instantly soaked by the rain. He grabbed my arm and pulled me to face him.

"Are you insane!? What was your plan!? To jump off of the building!?" He yelled over the roar of the rain.

"You're the one who locked all other exits."

"I was bloodied, bruised and covered in soot and cement and dust, okay!?" His change of tactic threw me.

"What?" My eyes were wide. This whole conversation was an unpredictable rollercoaster.

"That's why I didn't call you. I...didn't want to scare you. I don't want you to worry eveytime I go save the world...So I came here, hid the suit, cleaned up and then I was going to call you."

"I always worry about you, Tony."

He sighed and looked away from me. I'd always known his fear. He lost Pepper because she couldn't handle his Ironman life, so he tried to keep me out of the loop thinking he was helping, but it wasn't.

I stepped closer and wrapped my arms around him. "Call me. It helps me to know how you are. Even if you're bleeding out." I said locking eyes with him

He chuckled. "I'll be sure to do that. I love you, Y/N."

"I love you too, you insufferable man."

And with a laugh he kissed me in the rain at 2am we were so in love back then.

*

"We're here." Steve's voice roused me up from my dream, or more like memory.

"Where is he? I mean 'here.' Where is here?" I ask still groggy.

"One of Nat's safe houses." Steve fills in and starts unloading the car.

I'm not sure if it was the dream, but the memory of Tony crushed my mood. Steve must've noticed my shift because he asked if I wanted to sleep alone tonight and I agreed. They're so different that sometimes it's shocking to me. Steve respects my space, Tony was always there even when I didn't want him to, but always needed. Steve has never made me wait, Tony was known for being late. I started telling him the wrong time to try and trick him into arriving on time. They're opposites. Steve gets along so well with Nat who is basically my sister, while her and Tony were never the best of friends. Steve is just charming and endearing and even while being on the run for almost 2 years he's managed to make me feel comfortable. But I can't help it, I miss Tony.

It's while sitting on my bed alone, opening my bag of skittles that the tears come as I remember him. I fall asleep, sobbing that night.

*

I had been sitting in the couch for an hour. Dressed amazing if I may add. Heels and everything which I hated and he wasn't here. He was always so late and I was more than frustrated. I heard the elevator doors open and I didn't even glance. I was gonna strangle the man.

"I know I'm late. I'm sorry, I was--"

I interrupted his apology "Let me guess, you got tied up in the lab? Again."

"Actually no."

His answer suprised me and I turned to glare at him, but my eyes widened when I saw him holding a huge jar full of red skittles.

"W-what is that?"

He smiled and walked closer to me, setting the jar on the table next to the couch.

"I know you only like eating the red ones so ta-da."

I laughed. "Are these the reason you were late or are these a gift to make up for being late?"

"A little bit of both? I forgot to pick the order up earlier today...cause I got tied up at the lab...so I went to pick them up after and that's why I'm late."

I sighed and kissed him. "You drive me insane."

"But that's the way you love me." He teased.

I nodded and kissed him. That's the way I loved him.

*

As I sit outside with Steve, leaning on his chest, I can't help but wonder if he knows. My smiles aren't real, and I've gone numb over the months. I barely feel anything anymore. The numbness worsened after we started whatever this is. Steve has always been looking for someone to fill the emptiness since Peggy and conveniently I needed a balm for the pain of losing Tony. We weren't in love, or at least I hoped he didn't love me...because my heart doesn't feel anything anymore.

*

"You're...you're siding with him?" The crack in his voice made me wince.

"Tony, I can't sign the Accords."

"Why not!?"

"You know what being under the governments control has done to me!" He knew of my past, of the millions of tests I was subjected to, the betrayal, the rules that were only there to hurt me. I'd confided in him every dark moment.

He sighed and rubbed his eyes. "We need to be held accountable." He repeated to me what he'd said at the conference room.

"I know, but not like this. Tony--" I went to touch him and he flinched away. That simple move broke my heart.

"If you side with him, it'll break us."

"Tony..."

He locked eyes with me, begging me to stay, but I didn't. I couldn't and I lost him.

*

I had decided that morning that I needed to talk to Steve. He was my friend before we became anything more and even if it meant making our runaways situation awkward, I needed to be honest with him. I couldn't keep sleeping wrapped in his arms. He needed to know that my heart belonged to Tony. He needed to know that I spent my days dreaming up plans of how I could see him without getting arrested. He needed to know that I looked for him in every person we passed by. He needed to know...or at least I needed to tell someone. I took a deep breath and started walking towards him when a ring broke the peaceful morning silence.

He looked at the number on his burner phone before locking eyes with me. "It's Tony."

[bubmyg]

orchid - myg

pairing: yoongi x reader

genre/warnings: fluff, angst, childhood best friends to lovers, fake engagement au? kind of?, emotional constipation to the max, rapper/singer!yoongi, wedding planner!reader; set in a beach side town because i can’t help myself, loosely based off like three different hallmark movies, told entirely in yoongi’s pov, random svt members appear too

word count: 19,079

summary: everyone has a theory as to why renowned singer songwriter min suga hasn’t released an album in over two years but none of those theories point to a crippling inspiration block. or to a wedding. or the one where yoongi doesn’t know his fiancé's favorite flower but he knows yours.

a/n: the longest fic and the hardest fic i’ve ever written is done. i’ve never written something that was this invested completely from a member’s point of view so this was certainly something new and challenging and fun! i hope u enjoy (pls let me know if u do) and thank u for reading this monster jfkjsld

Petals of bleeding purple, a hard line in the center of white where blending hadn’t been buffed out with a brush, almost pink meeting in a jagged line as if dipped onto nature by the curved tip of a damp paintbrush. They came in uneven waves, plucked from their stem to rest on the edges of Yoongi’s yellow notepad. His smile grew with the volume of words he scrawled across the page, patient in gently brushing them aside with the curve of his tiniest finger the longer you fiddled with the flowers in your grasp. 

“Sorry,” You hushed after the third time he’d nudged the offending petals aside, burying them in grains of sand that moved each time you shifted closer to him. He dropped his pen just to glance at you, something bleeding into his own vital organ at the way your eyes were comically, genuinely, dilated in apology. 

“S’okay,” Yoongi’s hand fist in the sand behind him, lounging backward. “I suppose I should be, you know, talking to you.”

“Why?” You gently shoved at his shoulder, “Special occasion?”

His cheek lulled against his arm, eyes falling shot as the corners of his mouth turned up. One deep inhale and he hummed, “—going to miss you, you know?”

Your grasp didn’t move from his arm, instead sliding downward to curve your fingers around his elbow. When he didn’t budge, you shifted closer, squashing any remaining petals below your thighs as you settled your cheek against his sleeve. “Are you really, though?”

Yoongi’s eyes shot open, chin pointing down towards you, “Are you serious?”

A sliver of your irises appeared under your eyelashes, turning away into his grasp after a second to shrug. 

“Well…” He let out a grunt as he shifted, dropping his notepad and pen on top of his nearby bag, “I probably won’t miss you catching crabs just to drop them down the back of my shirt. I won’t fondly remember that time you shoved me into the tide with my work uniform on. I definitely will be forgetting your haircut in seventh grade—” You smacked his thigh, earning a gentle grin as he jostled his arm, coaxing you to look at him. 

“But you?” Yoongi reached past his bag, gathering one of the flowers you’d plucked into diligent fingers. The crooked end of his index finger pleated it behind your ear, hand hovering there. He leaned closer instead, heart swelling in the same way your pupils dilated to collect all the celestial bodies glittering on the push and pull of the tide beyond your tiny campsite. 

He shook his head, barely a twitch in his neck, “I could never forget you, angel.”

“Good!” 

Yoongi startled forward instead of back, bashing your foreheads together with an audible, hollow sounding thump. He groaned in time with your scrambling, your touch leaving him to instead stretch over his lap, rustling around in your own bag. It didn’t come without you digging your palm into his inner thigh, forcing another tiny grunt from Yoongi’s mouth before you settled again, a safe distance away. 

He eyed you again, welt quickly swelling onto the crown of his hairline, sand digging into the dip in his eyelids. You held something in cupped palms and he had half the mind to assume it was a crab to dump down his shirt like some sort of sick joke. 

But Yoongi supposed the sick joke was on him because in a blur of momentary pain and a two percent chance that you’d snatched a ghost crab out of the darkness, you were still the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. 

“—because I bought you something to remember me by.”

Yoongi’s studio collected trinkets. A baseball jersey with his stage name plastered across the back draped to his chair. A tiny Kumamon plush squished between his monitor and a sea turtle shaped coaster that held his favorite coffee tervis. An oxymoron of a welcome mat with a brutish cat advertising go away. 

A framed platinum record for his debut single encased on either side by a song of the year and a record of the year trophy. Just trinkets. 

Something meticulous to his nature never moved his items. Their arrangement created some sense of security and warmth, feet stepping out of rubber sole slippers in the hallway to the thick grey rug over the tile floor like brushing away a curtain of gathered mist in the haze of an already uneasy conscious. The programs on his massive computer monitors didn’t help, nor did his untouched keyboard or the various other pieces of equipment scattered with less than neat wires over his work space. 

But the trinkets didn’t move. That he could count on. 

The press, he could count on them too. Their newest angle, an attempt to prod their way into his growing collection of items, was plastering a grainy image of himself onto their glossy covered magazine front. He could handle the images when they were nothing but background noise in his email, a notification from an intern in marketing that he’d been caught. Yoongi deleted the email with a good conscience. Going to a bar didn’t warrant front page gossip news. 

He’d seen it all in two years since releasing any substantial work. The first guess had been that his contract was under negotiation. Dropped after successful debut? Then he’d signed for five more years and they had to scramble for something else. A fake feud with long time soloist Jung Hoseok, battle of the company’s two superstars, who will come out on top? Hoseok released new music first. Yoongi had producing credits on it. 

And Hoseok was the other shadow in the grainy press image in the present day, his face cut off by the massive pink banner that curled around the perimeter of the magazine’s layout. 

Excessive partying? The headline read. Yoongi pressed his thumb to the center of the cover, bending the magazine as he lifted it closer. Font a handful of sizes smaller than the title looped underneath the image, the curled edges of characters slipped around his throat and stalling his sharp inhale for a half second. 

Min Suga, one hit wonder? New questions as hiatus stretched toward the two year mark. 

The vibration of his cellphone startled him out of his trance. The magazine flopped forward in his grasp, giving out to curl over his knuckles as he poked at the device with his free index finger. 

“Hey.”

Yoongi dragged his fingers down his cheek, letting the limp magazine rest against his thigh. “Yeah, Tae?”

“Are you working on something?”

His blank monitor mocked him, the plain black screen with massive SUGA written through the center ridiculously simplistic and frustratingly idle. Yoongi shook his head even though his manager couldn’t see him over speaker phone. “No.”

“Great, they want you in the conference room in ten,” Taehyung’s voice dropped an octave, falling out of professionalism as he casually asked, “Have you seen the headlines?”

“Yeah,” Yoongi let the magazine fly, hitting the free space near his keyboard with a smack and a tinkling noise. Just another trinket. “What do they want me for?”

“To talk about the headlines,” He could hear the smile in Taehyung’s voice and he could hear the way it erased at Yoongi’s lack of response. “No we’ve...figured out a way to move forward from this. From all of this. Maybe. Just be here, alright?”

“Where else would I go?”

“I don’t know, the bar?”

Yoongi let himself laugh at the ridiculousness of the situation. The last time he’d set foot in a club was the last time he’d been photographed in one. An incident that happened far before his first album when he’d just been signed to the label from some offhanded success on a self published streaming site. 

“Watch it.”

“Didn’t know you still had it in you, old man,” Yoongi could sense Taehyung beaming and he relaxed. Marginally. 

“Whatever. See you in a few.”

His phone hit his work space with another elicited click of soft against glass. The reflection of his idle monitors curved over the object in question, contouring shadows around the silver and purple object until Yoongi reached for it, dragging it out from underneath where he’d shoved the magazine. 

A tiny glass orchid purposed to be a pin with the sharpness of a gold latch strapped to the back teetered in Yoongi’s open palm. A misplaced trinket. He clutched it tightly, letting the smooth edges cool into the calloused lines of his hand as he stood from his desk chair, safely depositing the object a tier up on his desk, far away from any further misplacement. 

The magazine didn’t last long in Yoongi’s collection, though. He rolled it, depositing it with a heavy thump into a trash bin on his way out the door. 

Taehyung fidgeted in time with Seungcheol shuffling papers at the head of the small conference table. He crossed his legs, uncrossed, shuffled to the side, fingered at the edge of his own stack of folders slipped sideways from their neat tower, shifted enough to bump shoulders with Yoongi where he sat white knuckled in the chair directly next to him. Yoongi nudged him back, intentional, reaching over to pat his thigh until he settled. His manager and friend glanced at him with wide eyes and Yoongi shrugged, retracting his hand to fold it with the latter then shoved intertwined fingers between his thighs. 

“How’s the writing coming?” Seungcheol asked finally. He hadn’t looked up, continuing to filter through a myriad of stapled packets, one eyebrow cocked into styled bangs. 

Yoongi shrugged again, features wincing. His shoulders hunched from the curl of his stature into himself but he allowed his muscles to relax, and inverted shrug. “No different,” It was shame at himself in his voice, at the nagging innards that told him he needed to make music and at the smoldering creative synapses that refused to fire anymore. Softly, he added, “But I’m working on it.”

“Have you spoken with Jihoon?” Seungcheol looked up then, enough to flatten a packet to the table and slide it across. It was a list of credited songs to said company producer, ones Yoongi would have to do no more than record over his soft vocaled friend and send out a release date to the public. 

The high value Yoongi held his art to, personal and important to him, loomed in his subconscious. Somewhere in the archive he was sure he could connect to Jihoon’s words, dig out enough content to compile into an EP and sate the media. 

But it was the principal of the thing. 

“I’ll figure it out.”

Seungcheol accepted the packet when Yoongi pushed it back, nodding with folded fingers settling over the paper. “About the press...recently—”

“We have an idea!”

Yoongi glanced at Taehyung like he’d grown a second nose from the round of his smiling cheek but Seungcheol didn’t seem affected, nodding with a gentle smile curving upwards on his lips. “Go on, Taehyung. You explain.”

It was only the three individuals in the cramped conference room, a spare in the back corner of the company hallways that was grabbed for the sake of privacy and the ability to drop formalities between the artist, manager, and CEO who’d become easy friends. Yet, Taehyung’s dramatic pacing around the perimeter of the room suggested he was plotting a multi-million dollar investment to a swath of shareholders. 

“What’s the one thing in the world that takes ages to plan?”

Yoongi squinted, “...I don’t believe that description is limited to one thing.”

Taehyung ignored him, “When googling this very thing, there are to do lists that range anywhere from a ten step process to an eighty-eight step process, depending on how you choose to split up the planning…”

“It’s an event in which there is an entire job created to plan the very thing.”

“Event planners are a universal job,” Yoongi sighed, “Go on.”

Taehyung’s steps stalled, one arm still folded behind his back, the latter lifting one finger in Yoongi’s direction. “What’s the one, single most romantic day and event that will ever happen in a couples life?”

“Romance is not limited to a singular interaction and often the horrors of capitalism prey on that insecurity when in reality, leaving someone their favorite coffee in their favorite coffee mug before they go to work can be considered romance—”

“Correct!” Taehyung remained unaffected by his rant, letting his wrist hinge to point a stiff index finger in Yoongi’s direction, “If one day you happen to find someone willing to put up with those kind of statements, what would you like to do to them? Or with them, I guess—”

Seungcheol sighed, brushing his paperwork aside to clatter ring clad fingers against the top of the conference table. “How do you feel about getting engaged?”

Yoongi briefly thought the world had chosen that exact moment to flood the remaining thirty percent of it’s surface with water, voices sounding far away as if muffled by an echo and thirty pounds of wool. He managed to pull himself out of it by actually looking at something blue, the stretch of skyline on the tiny window just beyond Seungcheol’s shoulder and even if towers of smoke created faux clouds, it still reminded him to breathe. 

As a result, a neanderthal question tumbled out of pouted lips, “To who?”

“Someone,” If Yoongi weren’t fond of the organization in his files, he would have tossed one like a frisbee directly at Taehyung’s neck. His manager flailed his hands as if it were simple, “Anyone! That’s the beauty of the plan.”

Seungcheol had shifted forward to bury his face in intertwined fingers, muffling the audible sigh he let out. “At first, we thought to sign a contract with someone within the company,” Red marks were left in the path of his fingertips dragging down from underneath his eyelids, “But the aftermath of the eventual breakup would be too much for both parties. We can’t do that, not to someone in or outside the agency—”

“I wouldn’t do that anyway,” Yoongi’s levelheaded sternness faltered as he dropped his gaze to the fiddling fingers in his lap, “This is all my fault. I’m not incidentally sharing my burden with someone innocent.”

“Besides—” He tried to smile, “—not sure you could get anyone to want to fake marry me.”

“You are so dense,” Taehyung scoffed, “Half our talent would add a dating clause to their contract right now if you were on the other end of it.”

A deep spring pink blossomed in jagged puzzle pieces over Yoongi’s bare cheeks and he was thankful for the lack of schedule and makeup as he involuntarily lifted a hand to rub at the back of his neck. 

“Essentially, your partner will remain nameless,” Seungcheol drew a shape on the table with his nail, “We’ll disguise them as a non-famous individual. Something about a short term relationship but a long term planning process for the wedding—” He nodded solemnly, “—that’ll be why your music has been on hold.”

He wasn’t done, lifting his finger from the table, “The suddenness and the eventual break up of the relationship will be a win win. Each will buy you time to write.”

“And you know what else?” Taehyung had sat again, barely, dangerously hovering on the edge of his chair as he leaned toward Yoongi. “You can go home!”

Another folder glided across the table, coming to a stop in front of Yoongi’s furrowed eyebrows. He tucked his thumb inside, flipping it open to be met with a full page ad, one that had his breath stalling in his throat and his tongue curling into a dried knot. 

“There’s still a wedding business that runs out of your parents’ former home.” 

Yoongi watched you spread the petals with a delicate touch, fingers placing pressure in the sand as you instead created them a tiny rut to rest in, safer from the curl of gentle night breezes brushing off the calmed waves. His gaze trailed in a jagged line, from the ballpoint tip of his pen to the half drawn character crooked between the lines on his yellow notepad to the stretch of his legs outward on the tiny embankment to the crouched curl of your stature. Finally you settled, one full flower in cupped palms, breeze catching the petals there to drape them across the lines in your hands. 

“Did…” He paused when you glanced at him quizzically, “You got the last of the contract details finalized, yes?”

A bright smile encased your features at his question, nodding, “Same day you signed your contract, superstar!—” You leaned closer, hand falling over his knee and he tensed, “Technically I’m a business owner now. You should be nicer to me.”

“So you never finished the application then?” You tilted your head and Yoongi clarified, “School. Scholarship. The city…” My city. 

A quiet smile graced the wrinkles next to your eyes even if your teeth died from it, dropping your chin. One petal plucked from it’s center, lifted by the pinch of your fingers until the wind caught it and it drifted toward Yoongi, slipping up over the spine of his notepad and settling against his belt. 

“I don’t need a degree to teach me a business I already manage,” You said kindly. “If your parents felt confident enough to completely sign it over to me in their retirement, then I suppose we’ll just have to trust their judgement.” 

You tilted your head, “Why? Do you not trust me?”

Yoongi swallowed. He wasn’t holding his bag, but it felt heavier in that moment, like it’s very important contents were weighing on the straps slung to shoulders that drooped involuntarily. You’d gone back to plucking at your flower by the time he gathered himself, eyebrow still raised albeit. 

“No, no, it’s not that,” The next mark on his page was angrier, dark and scuffing through thin pages to leave flakes in its wake. “You’ll do great.”

“I…” Your speech stalled but your petal picking didn’t, “You know, up until I signed the contract, the business was yours to have. Your parents would have left and still would leave it to you in a heartbeat.”

“I don’t want to run the business. You do. We both know that,” And he meant it. Taking over the family business had never been more than a joke passed over dinner and the occasional holiday, especially not when you’d earned full time employment there. His parents had never been interested much in the idea of keeping it in the family. It hadn’t started that way and there was no reason for it to be such in the future. Why allow you to spend thousands of dollars to start your own aspirations from the ground up when you could continue something that had only improved in legacy from your thoughts and ideals in the time you’d been employed there, anyway. 

Still, Yoongi knew you felt a certain level of apprehension towards signing the contract. There were invisible standards to hold up in your mind, just like there were invisible boundaries you desperately never wanted to cross. 

There was a feeling of indebt clouding the way your clammy fingers shook to sign the paper on the same dinner table you’d been invited in to by the boy whose gum filled smile only shined for you. 

The petals had stopped drifting against his calves again. He glanced at your shoulders rounding, arms limp between the part of your thighs. 

“You’re sure?”

Yoongi nudged your shoulder, incessant until you looked at him.

“I’m sure.” 

Your face grinned at Yoongi in melded inks, ones clearly from the office printer in Taehyung’s office slapped onto low grade, basic copy paper. 

“Do you know the owner, by any chance?” Seungcheol nodded toward the document in Yoongi’s possession, “The person who bought it from your parents?”

Purple specks bled into pink when he dropped the folder to the table, instead using the last link of his middle finger to rub at his eyelid. 

“No,” He met the tattered edge of his fingernail instead of the eyes of his boss, “I have no idea who took it over after them.”

Fingertips patterned a beat to the table top, lining over Seungcheol’s soft hums as he considered the information, shuffling a bit more at his paperwork. 

“Story will hit the press in three days. Your flight will leave in a week. I’ll email you the itinerary but essentially there will be a series of different press dockets done in your time at home—” Seungcheol gestured vaguely, “—engagement photos, staged bits of you planning, things to make it believable, completely produced and sent by us, of course. Keep the prying away from your next album.”

“We’ll insinuate that this is a wedding you’ve been planning for a while, something you’ve been fronting the majority of the work for in the comfort of your ridiculously romantic seaside hometown.”

Yoongi set his shoulders after a half heartbeat of silence, one that earned Taehyung’s gaze on the side of his face, “Is that our only option?”

“Of course not. It’s an idea, no more no less,” Seungcheol sighed, “Unfortunately, we’re to the point where there is only so much I can do for your image. Refuting claims of going to a club seems ridiculous, but the narrative is out there now. No one cares that you were there with Hoseok, they only remember their fabricated feud.”

A gentle smile crossed his lips, “An inspiration block isn’t a good story until there’s music that comes out of it.”

“How do I keep—” Yoongi’s tongue dried on your name, stuttering it back into his throat as he corrected, “How do we keep those close to the situation from telling the press?”

“We’ll give the wedding planner a check. Otherwise, no one should know the wedding is fake. Improve authenticity if anyone gets a hold of the gas station attendant who met you one time,” Seungcheol made air quotes with his fingers, “Trusted sources, you know.”

“...is that something we should be worried about?” He leaned forward in his chair, “Someone leaking something to the press, that is?”

Yoongi swallowed. His chin broke the rigidity of his stature first, dropping, then shaking, fists on curling outward until flattened palms curled around the edge of the table. 

“No,” He said finally, “Shouldn’t be an issue.”

Particular details he knew would be in various reminder emails and sent by text from Taehyung well in advance became background noise to him, like the water from earlier had returned and lipped over his ear canals. They’d taken his lack of protest as a go ahead on the plan, discussing contract details for legality and file purposes without much input from Yoongi. He wasn’t going to deny them, anyway. No matter what the selfish ball unfurling in the sinking pit of his stomach told him to feel. 

Taehyung standing caused him to stand, numb in moving as his brain registered the quiet dismissal without his conscious quite catching up. It was his name that startled him enough to focus, Seungcheol standing opposite him with a hand resting on the back of the chair he previously sat in. 

“Enjoy your trip home,” It wasn’t a suggestion, it was a request. The next bit was a comfort, “It’ll come back.”

In the light of his trinkets, Yoongi lounged into his office chair, carefully pulling his phone to his face. The expected text messages were there, ones Taehyung had labeled with giant letters WRITE THIS DOWN WHEN YOU OPEN IT, an email from Seungcheol with his flight information, and an obligatory email from Jihoon that he assumed was at the prodding of their shared boss. He swiped past all of them with a delicate index finger, instead tapping around meticulously organized folders until he found his contacts. 

Phone changes had been abundant through his young career but he maintained a vast majority of the information. Including your name, one he scrolled by without truly remembering if it were there but quietly hoping to see anyway. He let that same finger hover over the name, gathering enough courage only to press on it to pull up the full contact page but not to hit the tiny blue phone hovering out next to the number. 

Instead, he slipped his phone to his desktop, shaking awake his idle screen to click onto an internet browser. The business name appeared in the search box from a prior investigation but Yoongi typed it all out anyway, making sure to add the town so that the relevant place was pulled up. 

The website was a bit generic but it was leaps and bounds ahead of what it had been when his parents still held control all those years ago. In any case, it was a higher quality version that the manila folder Seungcheol had presented him with, that a screen cap of the business homepage that currently stared at Yoongi in ridiculously bright pixels. 

Incidentally, the cursor hovered over your picture, one slightly bigger than the panels of options and tabs scattered underneath. His gaze wandered from the familiar lines of your smile to the orchid he’d placed aside earlier, gaze wavering until he could see the reflection of the glass in the computer monitor. 

Long fingers plucked the trinket out of it’s place for the second time that day, letting it rest to the heel of Yoongi’s palm as he placed it between his thighs, sighing. 

“See you soon, angel.”

Muscle memory presents in things like riding a bike, something your body never quite forgets how to do. But even the trained cyclist will bobble after years of not climbing aboard their vehicle or at the very least, they certainly won’t be hitting their personal record the first time back out. In a similar fashion, Yoongi’s wrist remained limp over the head of his steering wheel, bypassing the correct turn twice. 

It wasn’t that he was lost. He recognized his surroundings once engulfed further into the scenery, pulled into the days of his youth and budding adulthood. But it wasn’t his final destination. 

By the third time his rental SUV rolled past the gravel turnoff, he started to think his subconscious was doing it on purpose. 

His conscious remembered the back way, guiding his car out to the highway that circumvented the coast line, blue blurring into the early afternoon sky until he was almost startled by the return of trees as the road curved back on to land. A few purposeful turns later and his phone GPS, a backup that he’d tuned out the nagging of, happily informed him you’ve arrived. 

The grass was a bit greener than he remembered, almost plush under his tennis shoes as he stepped out of the car. The flowers definitely were, decorated meticulously around varying archways, wire and wooden in build, chevron patterns of pink and purple and blue and yellow and everything in between. Paneled outsides of the main building appeared to have been freshly painted, a red outlined in white dirtied near where the cinder block foundation peeked up from the ground and the mulch collected in the landscaping. 

Yoongi scuffed his way to the winding dirt path that led to the front door of the two story farmhouse, the only thing that appeared as though it hadn’t changed. Bits of gravel stuck here and there but the path was otherwise a beige dirt, dust clinging to the ground from the lack of rain and kicking up around Yoongi’s ankles as he shuffled. Ground lanterns lined the way, solar panels absorbing the heat for their evening duty, some staked out of the ground more so than others, tilted at all angles but the effect in the night was there regardless.

A handful of paces from the house was a wooden sign, it’s white outer edge not fairing the same as the house as chips were missing to show the wood underneath, splinters poking out in all directions otherwise. Most were covered by stacks of hay bales positioned strategically around more clay pots of flowers, ones that had started their vining process up the rough posts. 

Your face wasn’t there this time but your logo was, contact information splayed out underneath the looping script, Be Happy, white on top of a powder blue. You hadn’t changed the name when you took over ownership. Yoongi had a size too small t-shirt somewhere deep in the recesses of his closet with the same name in opposite colors, black and white. You’d looked ridiculous when you worked events together, even when you returned back to the house and spent hours on the front porch swing sipping slightly unbalanced lemonade Yoongi made on the spot while shit talking the groom.  

The memories, plural in the way they swirled to the forefront of his conscious at the first step of his sole onto the lowest porch step, elicited a tiny upward curl to the outer seam of his lips. Curled fists stuffed their way into the pockets of his pants, hanging his head as he vaulted another step up until two heeled boots cinched at the ankle came into his view. 

The lipped edges of his white bucket hat flopped into his direct line of sight but he still managed to register a lot of black, skin tight in a pair of ripped jeans, in the ajar hang of a leather jacket on toned collarbones, in the widen of perfectly round irises that blinked three consecutive times at Yoongi’s frozen figure. 

“Suga?” The man squeaked, taking another step backward on the staircase. “What are you....why are you....”

“How did you get to this town of all places?”

Yoongi’s lips parted just enough to let out a noise that would stall the younger man, a prolonged hum until he finally settled on the gentle answer, a tease in a monotone, “By plane and then rental car.”

The black figure giggled, giggled, a high pitched noise that made his features crunch up in the center of his nose. In his distraction at Yoongi’s poor attempt at humor, he rushed out your name, something that made the younger man pause in his laughter fit to cock an eyebrow. 

“Do you need to....” The poor man blinked again, chin cocking in the slightest, “Are you needing…” A high pitched noise of confusion came from the back of his throat and his chin twitched the opposite direction, “How do you know Y/N?” 

Yoongi’s lips pressed into his cheeks again, just for a fraction of a second, “Small world—” Determined yet wobbly steps carried him to stand level with the man yet still leaving him a few inches below eye level. Sharply, he stuck out a hand, “—Yoongi.”

“What—”

“Call me Yoongi,” Yoongi slipped his bucket hat off with his free hand, letting black locks fluff in static pieces around his eyelashes, “Please.”

“Jeongguk. Jeon Jeongguk,” The younger man surprised Yoongi by grasping his palm with both hands, giving it a firm shake. He continued to stay attached to him as he turned up toward the house, eyes darting wildly until he chirped, “T-they’re out right now but if you want to come inside, I can go see if I can find—”

“That would be great,” Yoongi smiled kindly, letting his hand stay in Jeongguk’s grasp as the younger enthusiastically began to drag him toward the front door. 

A lot of things appeared to be updated from when Yoongi resided within the creaking floorboards of the house yet somehow, you’d tastefully managed to keep its original charm. There wasn’t anything that said you couldn’t update whatever you pleased, you owned the house and you owned the business, his parents happy to hand over everything in favor of an easy retirement a few cities up the coast, a bit more lively than the sleepy, tourist free town they’d spent the majority of their adult lives in. Even then, Yoongi found himself oddly charmed by the way you’d retained a lot of what you’d grown up around too, a consistent visitor from your cognitive teenage years to a steady employee through high school and college. 

It was between admiring the sealer you’d chosen for the hardwood floors and wondering how you’d so artfully covered up the floral wallpaper his mother insisted on piling onto drywall that Yoongi’s heart stopped beating somewhere in the base of his throat, resuming it’s patter at a skyrocketing pace as it shot downward into the pit of his stomach. 

There was something to the low sitting wardrobe piece kept in the foyer of the business section of the house that Yoongi couldn’t quite understand. In the end, he decided it was probably due to the fact that none of the drawers would quite stay on their tracks, sticking shut when you tugged on their flapping gold handles after twirling tiny gold bars into minuscule locks and then tipping out and forward when you finally could get them out, puffs of dust curling outward from the harsh scratch of wood on wood in the process. 

Maybe it was that the top left drawer stayed unlocked at all times, enough to harbor a cardboard box that kept the keys for the rest of the drawers. Maybe it was that he knew there was nothing in the locked drawers aside from some decades old paperwork, a handful of paper grocery bags, and his every day personal items, ones that never stayed in there during business hours. 

That is, until he started storing a few secrets underneath his wallet and car keys. 

The first secret didn’t remain that way for long. Plane tickets were booked just as a formality but they signified so much more, like the unsigned contract he’d had emailed to him in the middle of recording something on his half dead microphone to upload to the very account that had pushed him toward getting recognized by an entertainment company. Unsigned quickly became signed and synonymous with the day it no longer became a secret, breaking the news to his parents that he wouldn’t be going back to university after the summer of catering to carrying any and all truckloads of equipment associated with a wedding planner to and from their positions. Yoongi was careful then, softening the news as to why there was a new key on his lanyard and garnering the warmth that his announcement of finding an apartment near his new job had lessened his parents' apprehensions in the slightest. 

Then there was you. The person who’d started off as willing to listen to his halfhearted rants about basketball and the specifics of what an angry bride sounded like over crust-less peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and eventually became the person his parents trusted with hearing those complaints firsthand. In a roundabout way, he had your eventual co-workership to thank for starting his career, giving him more time to write and record and publish, particularly when you lessened your hours at your shared university in order to take over a greater role at the business. 

In Yoongi’s mind, the ideal scenario was the one with the highest probability of becoming reality. He would sign with an entertainment company not minutes away from a university with a high ranked business graduate school. You would get into said graduate school, giving his parents a final few years to iron out any details they wished for your eventual takeover. 

He would have enough time to translate song lyrics into Yoongi words and effectively cure part of the yearning in his heart that dragged his chest first toward you anytime you were in his general vicinity. 

The addition of you to his secret drawer came in the form of a tiny velvet box, the first step toward allowing his yearning to manifest in an exterior way rather than remaining simply as his heart swelling and spilling between the spaces in his rib cage. 

Yoongi took the staircase two at a time, dropping onto the ground floor with a resounding creak. Socked feet pulled at the various splinters formed between the spaces in hardwood as he made his way through the silent business level of the house. His plane tickets and apartment key came out of hiding, resting on top of the wooden piece of furniture as to not forget them with the addition of his massive grey suitcase stationed next to the refrigerator two rooms over. He left the normal essentials though, allowing himself that familiarity in what would be his last night in the house potentially for good. 

Meticulous fingers balanced the proper key between the hole underneath the handle, mechanical click making Yoongi’s tongue pull back into his mouth in triumph as one hearty tug had the drawer popping free. He shrugged his backpack from one shoulder, enough to deposit his wallet into the front pouch and snag his keys on the twirl of his index finger. The next object made his throat dry, digits clasping around the box with a hard swallow. 

If you can’t see it, it can’t make you anxious. Yoongi promptly hid it away next to his wallet, shoving his arm back through the dangling backpack strap and striding for the front door. 

You seemed to be just as startled as his most vital organ, pausing your advancements into the house just in front of the heavy piece of furniture, loose knobs rattling with the steps you took. Yoongi instead scrambled, tripping out of the oak chair Jeongguk had left him in when he’d scurried away in search of you. In the process, his hip nudged at the corner of the round conference table, scuffing across the floor and effectively rattling all the metal again. And every other loose object in the house, it seemed. 

“Yoongi?” Your voice came out soft, lips parting like a fish out of water. Your apprehension lasted long enough for a soft smile to corner into the seam of his lips before you were coughing, shaking your head as your stature set, “What can I do for you?”

The bashful smile spread into a bit of heat that sprinkled his cheeks and his hand touched his neck, shoulders hunching. “Uhh—” He squinted from underneath his eyelashes, “—do you happen to plan weddings?”

He missed the way your stature froze again, rigid all the way down to the tips of your toes that rooted to the ground inside your shoes, gaze instead jerking to the squeak of delight Jeongguk let out from the doorway. The younger’s eyes widened when your gaze whipped to him, trying to retreat outside before you could scold him but to no avail. 

“Can you go finish loading the archway into the trailer for me?” Jeongguk nodded frantically, another step dragging the door with him until you added an octave louder, “The sunflower pots go with it, not the petunias.” His got it! was muffled by the echoing shut of the front door. 

“Thank you. I wasn’t trying to cause any trouble—”

“Sit.”

Yoongi plopped directly down into the chair, watching with pursed lips and round eyes as you drug out the chair across from him, taking your time in sliding to the end of the wood. A sharp inhale racked your shoulders, keeping your gaze on the grain of wood where it peaked out from the lace table runner curled down the center of the furniture until you finally looked at him. 

“No how are you? No how’s business going? No stack of signed CDs for me to hand out to customers as incentive?” Your eyebrows furrowed in teasing but the light didn’t quite reach your full smile. Not the one Yoongi remembered. “Just a I’m getting married.” 

“I didn’t say that.”

“You implied it.”

Yoongi’s smile softened, leaning forward until one of his hands could encase the fiddling of yours. You glanced at him between picking a bit of skin from around your thumb nail. 

“How have you been, angel?”

It was childish, the way you pulled your hands against your chest, and there was still a hint of something in your voice, teasing, “No, too late now.”

He shook his head, a soundless laugh leaving through his nose. “Business seems to be going well. I see you’ve made a lot of upgrades on the property—”

“I told you,” Your arms instead threaded at your chest, leaning back into the chair, “You are too late. Should have done those formalities first.”

“Ah, right. Customer treatment now?”

“What’s your spouse's name?” You shifted again, enough to cross your legs, “For the paperwork. Not for the press.”

Part of Seungcheol’s monologue curled into his mind in that second but he had no reason to believe you were series. He shook his head, earning a laugh from you that confirmed his suspicions. You were kidding about the last part. 

“That’s actually, uhm—” Yoongi turned, glancing in the general direction of the staircase, “—is there anyone else around?”

“Jeongguk is my only employee. Spill, who are they?”

“Have you...read anything about me lately?”

“Truthfully, Yoongi—” Your arms uncrossed to grip the chair underneath you, legs unfolding to place your feet flat on the ground, “—I try not to.”

Yoongi nodded. Right. You’re the one who left. You’re the one who stopped returning phone calls. 

“The press hasn’t exactly been...patient in waiting for my second album. The negative press has piled on so much that it’s started to reflect on my image and frankly the state of my agency.”

“Is any of it true?”

He blinked at you, “Last week they contrived the image of me being an excessive party-er.”

“Right, they have no idea then.”

Part of Yoongi grew warm at your conviction. “I suppose…”

“The idea is to create positive press with a story my agency can control.”

“Ah, so to fake a wedding,” You nodded gravely, “Everyone loves a celebrity wedding.”

That’s what Taehyung said. “I guess. They thought if they sent me home, that it would give greater meaning to the story. That I’ve been pining at home trying to make the wedding perfect for all these months.”

“And your music?”

Yoongi blinked, finding you leaning forward again with your fingers clasped together, thumbs rubbing at each other. “What about it?”

“Why is it so delayed?” You were gentle again in your obvious statement, “You used to write a song a day here. At least.” 

“Wasn’t that much.” And something in Yoongi remained endeared at the fact that you thought he was constantly writing something new each time he carted his notebook around with him and not fretting over a set of three songs he’d written with your smiley nose wrinkle in mind. 

“Just haven’t felt anything in a while,” To say it out loud felt weird, especially in the presence of someone he’d no much as said hello to in the past handful of years let alone confided his feelings in. The house wasn’t your weekly beach trips.

And you weren’t his best friend anymore. 

“I’ll figure it out.”

“So you need me to…”

“Help me plan a fake wedding,” He said it simply because in his head, he wanted it to be simple, “Obviously, we don’t need the nuanced things in between. But I do need the outward details to be very apparent.”

“...there will be press here eventually to take pictures of me planning. I need to be seen at a venue...here...picking out flowers...you know. Doing wedding planning things.”

“After a few weeks, my company will call it off and I’ll go home. Somehow, they plan to frame the story as a mutual breakup that leaves me in heart break,” He had to refrain from rolling his eyes, “Hopefully from that I can slap together some music to sate them. At the very least, maybe they’ll give me some space.”

“Probably not.”

The tension left Yoongi’s stature and he allowed himself to laugh for a few beats at your bluntness. “Yeah, you’re right, probably not. It’s worth a try or at least, my agency thinks so,” His eyes flicked across your face, “It’s nice to be home, anyway.”

You didn’t allow him the luxury of enjoying the simple silence of your presence, instead standing with a harsh scrape of the chair across the floor. He held his breath as you approached the wardrobe, exhaling when you reached past the top to crouch on the bottom, yanking open the right to retrieve a stack of stapled papers from within. 

“Do you want to go ahead and start?”

Yoongi frowned, “You don’t have any questions?”

“No.”

“You aren’t worried about the press being here?”

“You’re my client,” You shrugged, “Whatever comes with that isn’t my business.”

“...do you want your check?”

It was your turn to frown. “Has your service been fulfilled to your utmost satisfaction?”

Yoongi settled back into his chair. “No...not yet.”

“Then I don’t need paid yet.” A pen materialized in your grasp, one you twirled twice before clicking on. “State your full name.”

You blinked at each other in a challenging silence until you shrugged, “I could just put Min Suga, if you like—”

“Min Yoongi.”

Yoongi watched the poke of your tongue between your cheek fondly, enamored even when you didn’t look up from writing to say, “Spouse...to be determined…”

You’d moved your paperwork party to the front porch of the building, sign now flipped closed and the main entrance gate shut and looped together with a rusted old chain. Condensation lipped down Yoongi’s knuckles when he reached for the glass of lemonade Jeongguk had brought the both of you, ones that garnered his attention away from your incessant chattering. 

“I don’t need to make a full guest list,” He said finally and when you didn’t respond, just continued to rock yourself in the wicker chair you perched upon, he clarified, “The wedding isn’t actually happening.”

“What are you supposed to tell the press then? What if they want a rumored guest list?” 

“I’ll just tell them Hoseok—”

The chair stopped abruptly. “...J-Hope?”

Yoongi rolled his lips together to keep himself from laughing, “That’s the one.”

The rocking resumed and the audible sound of the pen scratching against paper could be heard over the breeze and chirping of birds. “I forgot you were signed under the same agency. Hope World is one of my favorite albums.”

“I had a feature on there, you know.” It was embarrassing how quickly he informed you of the obvious fact but you smiled to his flushed cheeks. 

“You also had a number one best selling album.”

“Did you ever get the album I sent you?” 

“I gave it to Jeongguk.”

Yoongi didn’t have to remind himself of his guilt, he just had to keep it at bay. He smiled, “I can get you another copy.”

“So can I,” You scribbled a nonsensical line to the paper, letting your wrist rest on the pad of paper as you looked at him, “Who else?”

“You.”

You didn’t blink. “I’ll be there. I’m the event coordinator. Theoretically.”

“And theoretically, I’d want you there,” Yoongi didn’t blink, “In another circumstance. I’d invite you.”

He didn’t miss the way your voice softened into a murmured thanks, resuming your haphazard scribbles, “—but unfortunately I am nothing the press would be interested in. Give me another name.”

“Uh...Taehyung I guess. He’s my manager. The fans know a good deal about him. It may be obvious that he would be there, though.”

“It’ll work for now,” Your wrist carried your pen in looping circles down the length of the page until you flipped it at the stapled corner. “Okay, next. Who would you have stand up with you?”

“Taehyung.”

You couldn’t hold your laughter that time, puzzling Yoongi’s features. “I can do that—” You eyed him as you pressed pen tip to paper, “—but that would really make it obvious that he’s attending.”

“Oh,” Yoongi frantically reached for his lemonade again, downing a sizable gulp, “You’re probably right.”

“Okay, most important question. For me and for the press,” You clicked the pen a few times in a rhythm he didn’t recognize, “Give me a date.”

“I was told I had a four week time frame. Agency orders,” His eyebrow cocked when you choked, “What? Do you need more time, because I can call—”

“You think a month is enough time for people to believe you?”

There wasn’t anything condescending about your question. You’d been sitting with him long enough for the sun to start to hide behind the coastline, bathing the world in a color that bordered between black and blue, a hue he couldn’t quite place a name to but knew by heart. You hadn’t jumped at the first opportunity to write a number on the blank line of the check tucked neatly in his wallet. You’d barely considered the validity of his motives and immediately jumped into the task at hand. 

You hadn’t asked him what was wrong when you, of anyone, had the absolute permissions to do so. 

“The press currently believes I’m lazy, undermine close friends for fame, am not genuine in the message of my first album, and, for some reason, that I am unapproachable,” Yoongi shrugged, “I’m, frankly, not too worried about what they do and don’t believe at this point.”

Your features quirked as you shut the packet on your lap, settling your palms flat to the paper to let the pen roll a few paces away in your lap. 

“Yoons.” 

Part of his facade crumbled at the tenderness in which you uttered the nickname as he gripped a bit harder to the chair in an attempt to keep it in place. An audible breath shuddered in and out of his nose before he looked at you. 

“Are you doing okay?”

The fragmented part of his heart that had tumbled into his throat threatened to spill out as you offered him the compassion he wasn’t quite sure he deserved from you and the only way he knew to keep it down was to stand and swallow. His bucket hat came in white knuckles, smashing the article of clothing over wind ruffled hair as he averted his gaze to anything but you. 

“Fine. It’s getting late and I’ve already kept you far past business hours,” Long steps carried him past your stature, pausing with a hand on the rail and a foot on the second step. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

For a second, Yoongi’s peripheral swore to him that you reached for his hand in passing. 

“You’re…”

“Hi,” Yoongi thrust his hand toward the blonde headed man in front of him before he could finish. “Min Yoongi. Nice to meet you.”

The stocky florist blinked at the hand presented to him, then to the taller Jeongguk standing behind Yoongi. Yoongi didn’t have to look to know that giddy smile was still plastered on Jeongguk’s lips and he swore he felt him nod against the side of his ear from how close the younger man was standing to him. 

“Park Jimin,” He said finally, settling his smaller hand into Yoongi’s grasp. After a brief shake, his fingers continued to grip on as his gaze wandered to you where you were picking through a jar of fresh lilac. “What...what can I do for you guys today?”

“Why else do I come to you, Minnie?” You turned, wielding one of the long purple stems to tickle toward the blonde’s nose. Jimin broke away from Yoongi to giggle, swatting at you. “New client. New wedding. New flowers.”

“Right. I have a few of those,” Jimin nearly head butted the glass counter displaying arranged boutineers and sample bouquets, returning a moment later with a tiny notepad and a pen he took off the cusp of his ear, then jammed in plump lips while he flicked through the lined pages. Through the object in his mouth, he muffled, “What can we start with?”

“The usual. Twenty some of each,” Yoongi watched in muted fascination as you moved about the shop, dropping the lilac back in its place in favor of something green and leafy. Various other stems snagged on the ruffled leaves, dragging a messy handful of vegetation, earning a surprised squeak from your lips as you began to untangle them. 

Subconsciously, he reached across, fingers brushing yours in route to pull away one of the three strands. 

“What are you doing?” 

“Helping you?” Yoongi plopped the freed strand back into its container, again stretching long digits toward you. 

“Do you want to be photographed with me?” You wielded the stems away from him until he stopped making grabby hands and instead resorted to jutting his bottom lip out. “Me being your fake fiance’ wasn’t part of the deal.”

“They’re not going to think that,” Yoongi finally succeeded in snagging the tangled flowers away from you, gentle fingers prying them apart and placing them back in their rightful container. He smiled to the glare you set on his cheek, “We’ve got it covered.”

“We’re here for flowers,” You childishly poked your tongue out at him, “Not to argue the logistics of your weird celebrity powers.”

“Don’t make it sound so glamorous,” Yoongi huffed, trailing you as your footsteps took off rapidly through the shop. As abruptly as your speed picked up, it stalled, making him nearly topple over you and a stand of glass butterflies in the process. His hands gripped your waist to steady himself, an action you barely flinched at as you covered his wrists with your hands, leaning past his arm in silence. 

After a handful of heartbeats more, Yoongi ducked closer to your ear and whispered, “Why did you bring me back here?”

There was a small crash from somewhere on the opposite end of the store, then a fit of mingled laughter, something that had you relaxing out of Yoongi’s embrace to look at him. 

“They can’t hear us back here,” You explained. “Now...if you were to actually be getting married, what kind of flowers would you want?”

Yoongi blinked, “I don’t know. I’ve never thought about it.”

You weren’t amused, “What about your fictional spouse? What would they like?”

~

He spotted your figure on the bridge carrying over some of the largest sand dunes, your figure just a silhouette but your features lit up by your phone pulled to your nose. He ignored the buzz of a notification in his pocket, instead calling out your name. 

“Yoongi!” You bounced a bit in greeting, arm waving so that the illumination on your screen remained for him to see. He ducked his head in response, gripping the straps of his backpack a bit tighter as he stepped out of his sandals, crooking them in between his index and middle fingers to change terrain to the sand coated wood. He barely reached you when you were snagging his wrist, dragging him down the opposite side of the bridge until bare feet changed once more to pure, cool granules of the beach. 

“Come on,” You tugged a bit harder until he fell in step next to you, “If we hurry, we can pick some before it gets dark.”

“These would be the ones you’d pick,” Yoongi grunted a few minutes later, crouched on a sliding hill of sand to reach his fingers into the vined mess of vegetation rooted to the dirt underneath. The rumble of a crab itched in the arch of his foot where it was buried deep in the sand to anchor him in place but he was afraid to jerk away in fear that his already squinted eyes would be unable to spot the singular stem of pink flowers again. Something in his shoulder popped, knee too, and the crab finally secured it’s pinches into his skin, but he managed to return with the stem in twirled fingers, falling backward onto his backside in a pride crushing triumph. 

Your phone flashlight blinded him as you jogged around the corner, frowning first then breaking into soft giggles. The center of the light shifted away from his eyes, allowing them to adjust to the fact that you were hovering above him with an entire handful of pink and white stems. 

Miserably, Yoongi lifted to a seated position, quite as the last of the sand fell back to the ground from his shoulders and around the crevices in his cloth backpack. His arm stretched slowly upward, holding out the flower with eyes scrunched shut until you slipped it in with your existing bouquet.

One eye peaked when you didn’t say anything, the second falling open in time with your lips softly touching the apple of his cheek. You held your free hand out, palm up, until he laced his fingers with yours. 

“Thank you, Yoons.”

He waited until he was standing, stalling your excited dragging of his figure down the beach with an exclamation of your name. 

“I have something else to give you later,” Yoongi said slowly, “Don’t let me forget.”

You used your intertwined fingers to punch his thigh with his own knuckles, “Better than this flower?”

A slanted smile was the only thing his rapidly beating heart would allow him. 

“Hopefully.”

“Orchids,” Yoongi decided finally, gaze still wavering off beyond your figure, “They’d probably like orchids.”

You swallowed, bouncing once on your heels. Your chin cocked, eyes staring straight ahead from where he stood in front of you. Quickly, he amended, “Is that okay? Are those not good wedding flowers—”

Your steps picked up in speed like they had before, effectively bumping into the bin of glass landscape decorations in trying to brush past him. He took the time to balance the tin, centering a blue butterfly and it’s green caterpillar counterpart before dashing off after you.

Jimin and Jeongguk appeared as though they’d been caught with their hands in a cookie jar although they were no more than crowded around the computer monitor of a shop that Jimin owned and managed. Nonetheless, you seemed to pay no mind to their startled appearances, speaking past Jeongguk’s chin on Jimin’s shoulder to nod toward his forgotten order notepad flopped open on the glass container. 

“Did you—”

“Orchids,” You said, “Pink ones, if you can.”

There was a strange lingering scent from the greenery Yoongi had helped you separate, one he didn’t notice until he was rubbing crooked fingers underneath his nose while waiting for Taehyung to answer his call. He squinted at the smell with a wrinkled nose until the dial tone rolled over to an obnoxious rustling that projected loudly through the speaker. 

“How’s it going, married man?”

Yoongi flinched at the content of Taehyung’s words and the volume, using his thumb to lower it while holding the phone away from his face. When he was sure his manager’s excited outbursts wouldn’t be wholly projected to the entire hotel, he sighed, “I’m not married.”

“But you’re going to be soon,” Taehyung sang. More rustling on the other end. Yoongi wished he could hurl a much too white hotel pillow through the screen. 

“Why did you send me five texts asking me to call you? What do you need?”

“Oh, right,” There was something muffling Taehyung’s speech now that wasn’t the aggressive sound of crinkling. The heel of Yoongi’s palm met his forehead in realization and he could picture the over-sized hamburger clenched between Taehyung’s fingers from miles away. “Namjoon and the team will be there with a new photographer tomorrow to get some staged shots for the press.”

“Staged…” Yoongi rolled to his stomach, sanctioning his weapon pillow against his chest, “Of what?”

“It’s supposed to simulate an engagement photo shoot. They want the pictures for a cover story. That’s why there’s a different photographer coming. You’ll actually get to meet this one,” More wrapper crinkling. An audible swallow. Yoongi began to think a pillow wasn’t the only weapon he needed. 

“How am I supposed to do that with just me?” 

“They only want your face. The anonymity adds to the suspense and interest,” Taehyung sighed, “They should be bringing a model with them. They’ll just be used for their shadow, essentially. Maybe their hands, hand shots of the rings will be good—”

“I don’t have rings.”

“We do.”

Yoongi groaned into the plush of his pillow. “Won’t that ruin the whole facade if someone figures out who the model is? I don’t want to drag a literal total stranger into this mess.”

“Give me a better idea, Yoongi. Use both your hands? Craft a cardboard cutout in your hotel room?”

“I just…” 

If he closed his eyes, it was like traveling through idealization with a fish-eye's view, placing him first in the depth of that rickety old wardrobe piece while a hand he recognized as his own looted around inside to snatch a velvet box, one his point of view was tethered to as he then was transported to the inside of a backpack, rattled around inside with a yellow notepad and a handful of uncapped pens. 

Somewhere along the way, the trip was halted, marked by a nonsensical swirl of color as his fingers rubbed at his eyes, Taehyung’s sarcastic rambles just background noise as the story picked back up in the forefront of his consciousness. It was a longing that generated the second half between the darkness of the backpack and the open breeze off the beach, viewpoint now situated in his own palm, looking up at your tear filled eyes, then skipping forward to peer into the familiarity of his own gaze as he was slid securely onto a finger. 

It was the ridiculous daydream about becoming a literal piece of jewelry that made him speak, cutting off Taehyung’s increasingly outlandish suggestions.

“I’ll do it just…” Yoongi settled his chin on top of the pillow, letting his eyes open to the cloth headboard in front of him, “Don’t send the model. I have someone I can get to stand in.”

There were muffled noises of surprise marked by more, very apparent, chewing until Taehyung sighed, “Won’t that just create the same issue you said previously? What if someone finds out who your stand-in is? What do we do then? Pretend to marry the two of you?”

“That won’t happen,” Yoongi saw shades of pink in hazy petal shapes when he closed his eyes a second time, squishing his cheek against his free hand that rested on his pillow. “Just don’t send the model. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

“I don’t know much about the entertainment industry but don’t they generally have models available that can do these kinds of things?” You blinked across at Yoongi as his stylist, Mingyu, jabbed a makeup brush between the closed crease of your eyelids. 

“They do if you’d like me to have them call one,” Yoongi shifted in his own chair, fiddling at the collar of his button up that had just been meticulously fixed for him. He tucked an index finger under the tight fabric, tugging it away from his neck. When that couldn’t sate him, he popped the top button and folded the lapels across his chest. “This isn’t exactly part of your contract…”

“It’s not.” He continued to be amazed by the nonchalant way in which you accepted his suggestion, seeming to move in autopilot since he rigidly explained the dilemma from your dew covered front porch that morning. Stunned must have graced his gaze when you glanced at him, your eyebrows raising considerably when Mingyu moved on to poke and prod at your hair, “But you’re my friend, so I’m helping you.”

You ducked a bit, catching his eyes that darted away while gloss tinted lips parting into a neat oval. “We are still friends...right?”

Yoongi masked his relief with his tone, pitching his voice in firm words so that you couldn’t hear the way his heart did several back flips that tickled the back of his throat and retrieved some of their broken pieces in their tumbling path, settling a bit of warmth that was a step closer to full into his chest cavity until it spread upward into the tiny tug on each curve of his lips. 

“Of course we are,” Stoic faltered when you blinked at him. Yoongi let himself smile. 

“One more question,” You lowered your voice, dipping a bit closer to him Mingyu shifted behind you to continue toying with your hair, “Why do I have makeup on if you won’t see my face?”

Yoongi’s shoulders bounced in silent laughter, lips wrinkling then rolling together to prevent anything audible and he shrugged. His healing heart let him study your face for far more time than necessary, finally settling on your eyes as his cheek nearly lulled to his shoulder. 

“You look nice,” He assured gently.

You turned away, surprising Mingyu in the process as he now had better access to final touches, but even through the touches to your face with fingers and brushes and pads, Yoongi didn’t miss the trace of your smile. 

“Okay you two…” The photographer approached you like walking through sand was wading through knee deep water, sandals dangling on feet he lifted in high stepping advancements until he was stationary in front of your folding chairs. Knee length jeans appeared to be self tailored by a pair of kitchen scissors and a pink hoodie hung off broad shoulders along with a camera dangling off an equally thick strap. “Are we ready?”

Yoongi slipped off his chair first, offering a hand to you. You took the offer delicately, feet hitting the sand with a minimal puff of debris. He was a breath away from addressing the photographer until he spoke to Yoongi’s publicist Namjoon instead, the only other individual wandering around beyond Mingyu’s box of equipment. 

“No faces, right?”

“Uhm, you can get my face. Just...my face,” Yoongi smiled kindly, squeezing your hand in reassurance, “That’s preferred actually.”

The photographer blinked at the smaller man in front of him for a passing beat before addressing Namjoon again, “So...no faces then?”

“Seokjin,” Namjoon warned tiredly, shoving his glasses up the bridge of his nose with a crooked knuckle, “Cooperate.”

A wheezing laughter broke out from the photographer’s lips, Seokjin’s lips, the noise carrying upward into the coastal breeze of early afternoon. There was a minuscule tug on the twine of Yoongi’s fingers and he found himself, perplexed, glancing at you. Despite the fond expression on your lips, he could sense the confusion in your aura too. He gave a second comforting squeeze until Seokjin’s laughter quieted away into periodic hiccups placed between the raise of his free hand until it landed on Yoongi’s shoulder. 

“I’m just joking,” A kind smile was left in the wake of Seokjin’s giggles, patting twice at Yoongi’s shoulder before he was off wading through the sand again. 

You tugged down on Yoongi’s hand, squeaking, “Are we supposed to follow…?—”

He pulled in the opposite direction, leading you through the ruts Seokjin’s fussing left. When you caught up to him, shoulder bumping into his arm, he laughed quietly, “I guess so.”

“Okay!” Seokjin’s sweeping announcement sent a domino effect through the small caravan of three people now subject to the wind in the center of the beach. Yoongi bumped into him, you bumped into Yoongi, Yoongi was sure Namjoon was laughing from where he watched on. The photographer turned, catching sight of intertwined hands first and he lifted an eyebrow as he addressed Yoongi.. 

“Just your face, right?”

Instinctively, Yoongi pulled you closer even if the inquiry was spoken without any ulterior motive, instead a genuine confirmation. “Just my face,” Yoongi nodded sharply, “In fact, if we can limit the pictures to shadows and features—”

Seokjin held up a solaced palm, “No worries, I know what’s going on here.”

Yoongi felt your gaze on the side of his face but he situated his thinning eyes to the man in front of you as he began to fiddle at the various knobs and buttons on the back of his camera. His smile erased into something of confusion when he found Yoongi eyeing him, rushing in a series of startled noises to amend, “It’s understandable that you would choose to keep your partner anonymous if they are not in the spotlight themselves. I’ve covered it before—” Yoongi’s expression softened only slightly when Seokjin lifted his camera to his face and the lens twirled closer to the point of Yoongi’s nose. The shutter clicked over, making Yoongi blink, and Seokjin pulled the device away to squint at the preview. A thumbs up followed, paired with the purse of tulip shaped lips that spread into a kind smile, “—your secret is safe with me!” 

Part of him forgot that there was a limited group who were aware of the full situation even in scheduled events like a photo shoot, a timeline for what was supposed to be something of life changing unity. The weight in his pocket wasn’t one that would hold any higher meaning, rings faux quality and meant to superimpose elegance where Namjoon had pulled them from a plastic prop bag. This wasn’t his bulky backpack with his deepest regret hidden in the front porch.. Instead, it was just another gimmick to save face and time for his favorite writing journal that he’d unpacked from his suitcase only to move over into the shoulder bag he carted around everywhere. 

And, to some people, it looked like he was, truthfully and honestly, engaged to you. 

There was a twitch of your hand in his and Yoongi relaxed with that pressure in mind, nodding once. A grateful smile laced the seam of his lips and he backed off of his stance with a nod, “Oh, right. Thank you…”

“Of course,” Seokjin beamed, gesturing vaguely again, “Should we get those face shots first?”

You were turned gently around the pivot point that was your connected hands, free palm slipping gently into the crooked fingers Yoongi offered face up. As for your hand he’d previously held, you slipped it away, just quick enough to rub the clamminess against your thigh before returning it to its previous position. Slowly, you lifted your gaze to Yoongi’s. 

He didn’t even try to hide his fond smile as the camera shutter whirred over your shoulder. 

“Do couples actually do this?” You complained through clenched teeth, rigid smile coating your mouth even if no one could see you but him. Something genuine twitched upward in your lips when his smile grew a bit brighter at your whined complaints, “This is so awkward.”

“That’s great, perfect,” A few more clicks and the sound of Seokjin’s thumb against plastic buttons. “A few more...could you touch their face, maybe?”

Yoongi didn’t give you time to complain, cupping his palm to your face, stroking his thumb gently under your eye to soothe the tension that immediately curled upward in your shoulders. 

“Better or worse now?” He teased, tilting his head to look between your wide eyes. 

Your fingers responded to him, slipping around his wrist to keep his hand cradling your face. In the same moment, you took your hands that remained intertwined and molded his hand around your waist, stepping closer to him in the process. Your thumb pressed against his racing pulse point and he swallowed, a moot attempt to calm his heart that he was sure you could hear and feel. 

“I don’t know,” You shot back, smile loosening, “You tell me.”

Yoongi shook his head, a genuine laugh emitting at your antics while his thumb continued it’s strokes to the apple of your cheek and his hand scrunched it’s way to the small of your back, holding you against him. 

Seokjin jogged backward across the beach with some vague instructions, haphazard words sticking in Yoongi’s brain to act on. Pretend and dance. The implication of the words roused a single syllable laugh from your lips, head tipping back, more of an amused smirk settling into your expression when you came to.

“This should be good.”

Yoongi cocked an eyebrow, “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I don’t know,” You repeated the challenge from before, a daring confidence seeping into your aura now. 

His touch fell away from your face, holding his hand palm up instead. “Give me your hand.”

Your expression didn’t falter as your hand landed in his, head only tilting when he squeezed your hand and started to move you. 

“You know, the sand doesn’t exactly make this easy.”

“Is that your excuse for squishing my toes?”

Yoongi’s expression crossed into horrified for a fraction of a second, “I haven’t stepped on you!”

“Not yet.”

“What if I dipped you?” He tightened his grip on your waist. 

“Then they’ll see my face,” You squeaked when he half jerked to do so, lightly smacking his chest in retaliation. 

“The picture will be cropped.”

“Yoongi—”

“I’m going to do it.”

And he did, a full pivot that bent you at the waist, half hovering over your angled stature. The slow spread of his laughter across his features came in time with his foot giving out as support underneath him, sending your figures stumbling a few paces. He managed to ground himself while you clawed at his shirt in an equal amount of startled joy, dragging yourself up by tight fists on the open collar of his shirt with your forearms pressed to his chest. 

“I think you need some dance lessons, Min Suga.”

If you were anywhere else in any other circumstance with any other person, Yoongi would have kissed you. He told himself that, a firm response to his conscious that was trying to will his muscles to do so. He was wholly aware of the desire, one stirred by your proximity and your presence and you. And, given a few more seconds of silence aside from the lip of foam across neatly created ruts in the sand and the mechanical flick of a camera shutter, he might have excused the situation and the circumstance and the presence of another person. 

But, Seokjin, who was none the wiser to any of it yet assumed the relationship before him was very real, tried to combat a kiss regardless. A loud, satisfied wah! Came as he approached in messy steps that sent sand flying everywhere below his still attached sandals, startling your embrace apart to find him hunched over the preview screen. 

“Great,” His smile was knowing and his wink confirmed it, “Shall we move on to something else? Hands, maybe?”

Yoongi took to threading his fingers around yours to combat the heat that curled behind the thin layer of makeup on his features, staring straight at the overlap of your index and middle fingers around the bend of his thumb. You cleared your throat into the painful silence and the ambiance of waves continued to be blissfully unaware. 

Seokjin sliced into the tension with confusion, “Uh, yeah, that’s great but...rings?”

Yoongi felt like those waves had just become self aware and barreled out of gravity’s clutches, swallowing him whole and effectively dragging him into their depths. 

“I mean, if you guys aren’t doing rings, that’s fine too. There are all kinds of symbolic ways to outwardly show your unity, I just assumed it was with rings but perhaps that was wrong of me. We can do something else—”

The band meant for his finger was just too small but Yoongi jammed it on anyway, aided by the clamminess slowly engulfing every inch of his skin. Scrambled movements nearly sent yours tumbling to the sand below but he managed to secure it between the pinch of his thumb and index finger, joints twitching periodically as he let his gaze meet yours again. The tips of your fingers barely brushed his curled knuckles and he moved the ring out of your reach. 

Yoongi swallowed, taking the crook of your left hand in his free one. “Let me.”

The hollow echo left by the screen door clattering shut on his shoulders felt like the raw crescendo before the soul gripping bridge in a song. Except the final chorus wasn’t the round trip loop, a tie up with a neat bow on top that made a song a story. His story wouldn’t lead him back to the rickety screen door and the creaky floorboards underneath the heavy piece of wardrobe furniture in his parent’s, your, business foyer. 

Yoongi didn’t think the last time he’d open the top drawer would be to put the velvet box back, its contents still very much intact, his heart very much not. The plane ticket and apartment key mocked him, a reminder of his unfinished heart song, one he supposed would remain a rough draft with no clear path to an end. 

At least, that end wouldn’t include you. 

He felt selfish for the hot tears that pricked the back of his eyelids, the direct result of your excitement, your adamant exclamations of how perfect your futures were about to become. The guilt was eating him alive, that he couldn’t simply feel happy for you without his conscience drifting to the ring he’d bought you and how selfish, horribly selfish, his confession would be after you’d just poured your one track soul to him. He couldn’t remember half of what you’d told him due to his own personal inhibitions. 

He couldn’t tell you he was hopelessly in love with you. He couldn’t do that to you.

Yoongi let the drawer shut for the final time, choosing to drag everything else out so as to not see the black box again. One tear became three, lipping down his nose and dropping onto his fumbling fingers as he jammed the lock into the knob, turning the mechanical click one more time. 

And then, he simply went to bed. He had a flight to catch, after all.

“Is it true?”

He stopped flipping through the paperwork, non disclosure agreements and consent forms you’d scribbled your support onto in the dull blue pen Namjoon had handed you. You sat in the chair from before, makeup wipe Mingyu had handed you damp against your thigh as you instead took to fiddling at the diamond band still wrapped to your finger. 

Yoongi pressed the pages shut, leaning into the back of your chair, “Is what true?”

You turned to peer up at him, diamond tucked between your fingertips, “...that you get to keep props sometimes.”

“You want to keep the ring?”

“It’s pretty,” The band slipped easily off your finger, cradled in your palm, “A little big, but that’s okay. Who doesn’t want the evidence of their first fake engagement?”

“Not your first magazine cover shoot?”

“No one will ever see my face. I’m basically a hand and head model.”

“You can keep the ring,” Yoongi conceded with a laugh, “Are you done with this paperwork? Nothing else you want to read?”

“I am and if you are as well—” You jumped off the chair to stand in front of him, “—I want to take you somewhere.”

“Don’t you have work to do today?”

“I’m working right now. Wait right here.”

 He watched, silent, as you skipped over to where Seokjin was chatting with Namjoon in the small gravel area beyond the sand. Seokjin’s expression flitted to you while Namjoon’s went to him, raising an eyebrow while you tugged on the photographer’s sleeve to cup your hand around his ear. 

“Yeah,” Yoongi heard Seokjin exclaim, scrambling backward away from your whispers with a frantic smile, “Yeah, of course. I have a few hours before my flight leaves. Lead the way!”

You approached him in a similar, giddy fashion, taking his wrist. He raised an eyebrow, stumbling a few dramatic paces when you tugged on his arm. 

“Yeah. Lead the way.”

“Why are we at a dance studio?”

You tugged on the strap of his bag rather than his hand this time, ignoring him as you coaxed him through the glass doors. It was dimmer inside, lights shadowing the rounded front desk and the flutter of various flyers pinned to a cork board in the corner with the small ceiling fan that whirred overhead. Even then, Yoongi still startled at the noise, yes noise, of greeting the man twirling in an office chair at the front desk let out. 

The man knew you by name, stretching forward rather than standing up to take your hand over the desk. He directed his attention to Yoongi next, standing but in a quieter fashion than his previous actions suggested, gradual in the way he held his hand out. 

“And you’re...Suga, right?”

“Yoongi,” He corrected quietly, slipping his hand into the man’s, “Nice to meet you…”

“Soonyoung,” You and the man provided at the same time, effectively earning mingled laughter. “I thought I heard from somewhere that you were in town. Planning a wedding, right?” Soonyoung leaned away to pass his gaze between your two figures, “I guess the rumors must be true if you’re hanging around with this one.”

That earned a halfhearted swat from you and more giggles from the man as he shuffled around, presenting a clipboard to the top part of the desk. “Are you needing studio space again?”

You nodded, pressing a pen between Yoongi’s fingers and sliding the paper underneath his curled hand. He blinked absently at the words name, time in, and time out. You continued to talk while he feathered the general outline of his name above the line, “If anyone asks, it was his idea to rent studio space.”

Puzzled, Soonyoung slipped the clipboard from Yoongi to squint at it. “Will someone ask? Why would someone ask—” 

Again, your hand was on the strap of his bag, dragging him around the corner, “If, Soonie, if!” 

An echoed got it! was the last thing Yoongi heard until you shut him inside a dark studio space. He watched his shadow light up in the mirror when the lights crackled to life, tint uneven on his lips, shirt he wore to the shoot a bit haphazard across his collarbones, black fringe windblown and stuck in blinking eyelashes. 

“Am I allowed to know why you brought me here yet?”

“I told you,” He watched in the reflection as you crossed the wood floor, crouching next to a small set of outlets with varying cords dangling out of them. You jammed the short white one into the end of your phone, prodding around with your index finger until the soft sound of something top forty began playing through the speakers. You stood, approach to his figure marked by swaying, off beat movements, “I’m giving you dance lessons.”

“Are you going to show me how to do that?” Yoongi accepted you when you took his hands despite his dismissive words, “Because if so, I don’t want them. I want a refund, in fact—”

“I told Seokjin to follow us here and take a picture of you signing up for dance classes. They’ll run the story like you did it directly after the cover shoot photos,” Dramatically, you swung your twined fingers together to the rising beat of the music, “Cute, right?”

Yoongi hummed, continuing to allow you to lead him in messy circles around the studio, “I thought Namjoon was my publicist?”

“Maybe you should hire me,” Your eyes cut in zigzags down his features before you dropped your chin, movements relaxing enough for him to take over, “This soft image suits you better, anyway.”

“You’ve been reading the articles?”

“Free publicity. Need to see how my business is being represented” You shook your head when he squinted at you, “I’m joking. They’ve never mentioned the business directly. The pictures don’t give enough clarity to location.” 

You looked at him again, “So yes...I have read a few.”

“And they’re portraying me as…” Yoongi’s nose wrinkled, “Soft?” 

“Quiet. Gentle. One who shows his love in simple ways,” One corner of your mouth turned up in a smile, “Frankly, it’s rather unfair that they thought anything otherwise.”

Another broken chisel of Yoongi’s heart slotted itself back into place, healing with the warmth that spread quickly to the tips of his toes. He squeezed your hands, “I’m glad you still see me that way.”

“The Agust D video though,” You gripped his hands back, tilting your head, “The bleached hair and the makeup. Perhaps I understand the savage hype—”

Yoongi shoved you away, a halfhearted attempt as you still clung on to him with the last link of your knuckles tucked between the empty spaces in his spread fingers. Laughter followed suit, mingling with the silent, shoulder bouncing emission of his before you were brought close to him once more. This time, there were no cameras. No Namjoon to type reports to Taehyung and Seungcheol, no Mingyu to tuck plastic ends of brushes into sea breeze hair, no Seokjin to fool. Second time failed to be the charm, Yoongi’s face leaning a fraction of a space closer to you until you dropped your gaze again. 

“We can leave soon, if you want. Seokjin should be out of town by now.”

Yoongi didn’t move until his silence coaxed your eyes back to him. “I was dragged here against my will for dance lessons,” He let go of your hands, stepping back to shrug himself out of his cross shoulder bag and place his appendages on the high rise of his hips, “and I intend to get them.”

Lessons came less in the form of serious intention and instead manifested in you teaching him what not to do as he observed with his back against the mirror and his pen against his notepad. The yellow pages were no longer empty, the tray of ink shoved through the middle of his pen now considered to be used. The radio hit on max volume couldn’t drown out your laughter and if Yoongi ignored the tiny, unfamiliar space the joy was confined to, he could convince himself that everything was back to normal. That this was just another off day between carting flowers and chairs and catered crock pots to venues where he got to watch your joy overfill his heart with a warmth that he had to make space for more by manifesting that into something tangible. 

Filled lyric notebook and all. 

“This is going to look like a stock image.”

Yoongi couldn’t contain his snort, adjusting his stance a bit to fit your comment. Legs angled wide from his hips, arms folded neatly to his chest, nothing relaxed about his stature. He turned to where you were mirroring his position. “You’re probably right.”

Jeongguk leaned so far across Yoongi he stumbled out of his similar position, tripping to a stop between the two of you as he looked up with wide eyes. An apology came soft but his inquiry came an octave lower, “...what is going to look like a stock image?”

The item on the agenda was picking a venue, or rather, make it look like you were picking a venue. With the rumored wedding date less than days away, finishing touches were to be in order, but the press would be days behind by virtue of what was being actively publicized as a private wedding. And by the way you were standing just in front of a mock row of chairs beyond a meticulously decorated arch, pastel pinks and yellows and blues and purples, it looked like you’d just been cut directly from a wedding magazine’s ad section for structure rental. Yoongi wasn’t sure how the press would frame it. The house wasn’t the rumored location for the wedding, anyway. The beach was. But the press was only available for a short time, their hired stint by Yoongi’s company lasting until their flights left in the evening after they would capture what would eventually be the last of Yoongi’s wedding planning ventures. 

He shifted in the plush grass, squinting closer at two flower pots that made symmetry to the front display of the mock wedding alter. The way they moved with the wind was artificial, and his focus slid to see if those beautiful petals on rungs of the arch were fake flowers as well. 

“Do people actually have weddings here?” He thought back to his years as an employee. You’d always arranged for off property events. Your set up in the field behind the house suggested otherwise. 

“Not yet,” You nudged Jeongguk where he’d scrambled to stand between the two of you, managed to fit his broad stature in the minuscule space, “Jeongguk has been heading the project to get us a space to do so here. We could offer a discount on the venue if they used our services. Extra profit.”

“But for now it’s just a mock set up,” Jeongguk nodded. “That’s why I don’t understand why we’re here...shouldn’t we be getting the last of everything set up at the beach?” He turned to Yoongi with a question in his round irises, “And Yoongi, when is your fiance’ getting in? Have you arranged for transportation from the airport? Should I go get them?”

“Jeongguk,” You touched his arm, squeezing gently, “Why don’t you take the rest of the night off? I’m going to need you to be at full capacity the next couple days.”

“But I can come help—”

“Jeongguk.” 

Yoongi glanced behind him as the sound of tires on gravel descended, watching as the familiar SUV that had been trailing him through the weeks made it’s exit. Somewhere in his pocket, flight details buzzed from Taehyung. His gaze found your serious expression when the car peeled out of sight, speaking kindly to your coworker, “I’ve got it. Please take the night off. Tell Jimin the same.”

It hit him then that it wasn’t just you he’d be leaving to deal with the aftermath of his press playtime. In fact it was you that he’d be leaving to deal with it, your knowledge effectively making it ten times harder to sate what would essentially be a town’s population left confused and without him. The panic of it made his lips part but you cut him off before he could speak. 

“Do you want to go down to the beach for a little bit?” Your eyes widened, gesturing to where Jeongguk was still very much in earshot in the trek for his car. “Make sure everything is in order…”

Part of him was relieved that you seemed to want to talk to. The tension left him in a sigh, “Absolutely. I’ll drive.”

“Hold your hand out.”

Yoongi blinked, still trying to shake off the vibrating blurs in front of his lenses from the force in which his head had smacked into yours. He rubbed at the space that throbbed in an attempt to lessen it, “What?” 

“Unless you don’t want my gift. I can keep it.”

He was slightly disoriented but he didn’t miss the embarrassingly fast thrust of his hand toward you. “No,” He said simply, “I want it.”

You beamed, taking his wrist to press your fist against his palm. Slowly, you spread your fingers, depositing the smooth object against his skin. Then, you folded his fingers together over it, gently pushing his curled digits towards his chest. 

“It’s a…”

“Orchid!” You nodded, bouncing slightly where you sat, “It’s a pin, if you want to put it on your backpack. Or you can just display it. It’s yours.”

Yoongi turned the glass piece over in his palm, stroking his index finger through the smooth rivets of glass where white and purple mixed in a marble like texture underneath the surface. His smile was teasing as he passed it to his opposite hand, “Anything to remind me of nearly dying in sinkholes trying to help you pick these, huh?”

“Shut up,” You dug your fist into his thigh, leaning closer to him again. Dangerous territory for the endeared roar of Yoongi’s heart in his ears. “Where’s my present?”

“What?”

“You told me to remind you that you had something else for me. You know, other than the orchids gathered by near death experience,” You blinked at his confusion, “This is me reminding you.”

The weight on his bag could finally be released, a weight that had previously tucked into that wooden drawer and forever had resided on the tenderest part of his stuttered heart. All his pent up emotions, ones swallowed down and confined to the red lines crossing horizontally on his yellow notepad, could be released, could fly off the page and relieve a bit of his intense yearning. 

At the very least, he could say I love you out loud. 

But he couldn’t bring himself to do it. He couldn’t bring himself to do that to you. 

So, instead, Yoongi reached past you, bringing his lyrics back into his lap. His flips through the pages were calculated, counting until he made it to the eighth draft. Meticulous fingers peeled back everything in its way, tugging until it was a clean rip in the paper. Gently, he held the page out to you. 

“A piece of paper—”

“It’s the song the label wants to release as my first single,” Yoongi blinked at you until your teasing sobered up, dropping back a bit from where you leaned over him to take the page with you, “The first draft of it anyway. I want you to have it.”

It’s for you.

Your eyes widened, squinting through its contents as the sun began to bath dusk pastels into the landscape surroundings. Yoongi added softly, “Something to remember me by.”

“You make it sound like you’re dying.”

“That’s what you said,” He laughed gently.

“Yeah, but the way you said it. The way you keep talking. This song…” You frowned, “You’re only moving a plane ride away. A phone call away at that. We don’t have to say goodbye.”

“I’m leaving tomorrow.”

You tried to reach for his hand, “But not for good. This isn’t the last time we’ll ever see each other.”

Yoongi evaded your touch to make it hurt less. The more time between your last touch on his skin, the easier it would be to forget. He stood to not have to see the hurt in your eyes, holding his notebook against his chest as he reached for his backpack. 

“Speaking of, I have to be at the airport fairly early tomorrow,” He adjusted the straps of his backpack, pointedly shoving his hands into his pockets. “Come on, I’ll walk you home.”

“Remember the last time we were here?”

“Similar circumstance, too,” You brushed spread fingers across the small hill of sand in front of your crossed ankles. 

Glittering fairy lights strung to a timer on varying ends of the venue set up reflected on your skin and in your eyes when you eyed him. White chairs in a ten by thirteen grid buried into the sand, a velvet pink rug cut between the fifth and sixth chairs in the row, leading upward to where a white sheet took the place of where the wedding party would presumably stand. There was a custom arch, too, one Jimin had sweated over to have only the best pink and purple orchids threaded through the white rings and rungs. The venue space existed even when there wasn’t an event scheduled, that part of the beach roped off to tourists and locals alike, but it had certainly been magnified at the premise of the false wedding that was supposed to be occurring the Saturday following the current Thursday.

“You’re really leaving tomorrow?”

“Day after.”

“Ah,” You nodded, scooping up some of the sand and letting it drain between the spaces in your fingers, “Rather than being left at the altar, you’re doing the leaving.”

“I’ll have someone sent to help you clean everything up,” Yoongi touched underneath his chin, letting his fingers slide to the back of his neck, “I’d stay and help but—”

“No need,” You waved a hand, “Maybe making Jeongguk do it will suppress most of his questions.”

“Right…” Yoongi’s lips pressed into his cheeks, “Sorry about that, by the way. I hope he doesn’t think too horribly of me.”

You ceased all movements, turning to him. He paused in plucking miniscule specks of dust from his jeans, seizing at the softness of your tone. “Why are you saying a definite goodbye again?”

“I’m not.”

“Then you can make sure Jeongguk doesn’t hate you when you come back and visit. Or when you text me. I’m not asking for much. Even a happy birthday would suffice.”

He hadn’t felt a chomping sense of all consuming guilt since he’d lied about not saying goodbye before. 

“I’m sorry—”

“Don’t be sorry,” The curl of your hand wrapped around his index and middle fingers where they rested in the sand, “Just don’t say goodbye to me again. Not like before.”

The suffocating weight was back, like a crater sized boulder resting directly in the thinnest part covering his most vital organ. Yoongi let himself nod. 

“Okay, angel. I won’t.”

You smiled away from his gaze, letting your fingers slide just barely away until the two of you were no longer touching. Instead, you scrambled, gathering your feet underneath you to crouch next to him. 

“Want to help me pick some orchids?”

“Can I take them off the decorations?” You smacked him, standing yourself to brush sand from the backs of your thighs. “What? No one is going to see them anyway.”

“Don’t remind me,” It was scoffed but he sensed the sincerity. He didn’t want to remember either. “Come on, I think there’s a patch further up the shore—”

Yoongi fully woke the third time his cell phone rang on his bedside table. The light bathed his stack of packed luggage in the corner when he dragged it closer, ignoring the caller ID in route to accept it and press it against this ear. 

“Yeah?—”

“Yoongi,” Taehyung sounded as exhausted as the sand heavy behind his eyes felt, “I booked you an earlier flight. You’re to get on it.”

“Why?”

“Do it. Details are in your email. Don’t look at social media, if you can help from it.”

“I won’t look at social media,” Yoongi found it within himself to snort, rubbing at his eyes with a tired knuckle, “How early is this flight? I still have to pay the wedding planner.”

“Let us do that. We’ll direct deposit it. It’s the twenty-first century, we should do it that way, anyway.”

“Taehyung,” He sat up in bed, letting his duvet and sheets curl around his torso as he squinted at the soft white filtering through the sheer curtain of the singular window in the room, “I’m not leaving without telling them goodbye. They’ve helped me, us, tremendously through this. The least I can do is tell them thank you in person.”

“Besides, what’s the rush for me to get back? I don’t have a schedule for at least another two weeks.”

“Yoongi, they know.”

In the silence left by that vague yet horrifying statement, Yoongi swore he heard a camera click. Then another. Then a flash to pair. 

“They know what? Who is they?”

“The press. And not that the engagement is fake,” Taehyung rushed to amend as if that made it any better, “They found out where you are. Someone must have been tipped off through the pictures we published and sent their own team to investigate. And they found out the identity of the wedding planner. Which, I kind of commend you, having them step in for those pictures was genius. Are they wanting any extra money for pretending to be engaged to you? Seungcheol said he’d pay whatever they want. You should see the headlines, marrying the wedding planner, the story just keeps getting cuter!” 

“You told me not to look at the headlines,” Yoongi cut off numbly. He was on autopilot moving about the room, yanking things back out from their neatly packed suitcases, managing to locate a pair of sweatpants and a hoodie that vaguely matched. “I’ll call you later.”

“The flight, Yoongi! Don’t do anything stupid please—”

There was a small group of reporters waiting on him in front of the hotel, ones he managed to shake off with relative ease but it did nothing to calm his nerves as he sped through familiar streets to get to you. He found the same scene in the parking lot of Be Happy, a handful of reporters crowded around with their cameras and phone mics and notebooks, shouting out questions that were still so far off base from the reality of the situation that it forced a headache behind his ears and on the spot below his fringe almost immediately. He shrugged them off too, leaving them at the gates to the drive that you hadn’t opened well into business hours, jogging until he reached the front door. 

It was locked, understandably so, forcing him to tap knuckles gently at first and harder the more frantic he got while calling your name. “Angel, it’s me. Let me in, please, let me help.”

Yoongi saw red, red and pink, and more red when you fiddled at the locks, dragging the door open to reveal tear filled eyes that only amplified at his presence and the volume of the shouts outside. He touched you only enough to shuffle you backward, letting the door shut behind him and he was halfway through locking it when you thrust something toward his face. 

It was a blurry picture from the night before, your face fully on display as you accepted something that was very much not an orchid from his grasp. It was a weed, something Yoongi knew the name of when his only thought wasn’t occupied by the tears lipping angrily down the slope of your nose. 

“I don’t know why it shocked me, really. That someone found us. Even if I hadn’t done that photo shoot with you, it wouldn’t have mattered. People would have assumed it was me, anyway. People were already starting to question with all the things your company allowed to be released. I was getting weird phone calls to the business phone and I just assumed they’d all go away when you did,” You swiped your phone away from him, letting it clatter harshly to the circle table, “I didn’t think the universe was selfish enough, that you were selfish enough to leave me like that again.”

“You should have told me you were getting weird calls,” Yoongi rasped hoarsely.

“Right, and what would you have done?” You blinked, “Called it all off? And then what, left me again?” 

“Why do you keep saying that, angel—”

“Don’t. Do not call me that,” You held up a hand, collecting yourself until the streams of tears weren’t as thick on your skin, “I keep saying that because it’s what happened. You left me here without so much as a second glance back. Then, when you needed me again, something to save face for a writer's block, you came back.”

“Why couldn’t you have just come home before that?” You were sobbing again, unable to help it. Yoongi felt all the healed pieces of his heart scar for a second time, “You were always writing when I was here. I could have helped you.”

“And I did help you. But I hurt myself. I had to live through all the reasons why I fell in love with you with no plausible endgame that wouldn’t shatter my heart. Again,” You laughed despite the unattractive sniffle you sucked in, “You did this to me again.”

He could hear his heart in his ears, “I didn’t know you felt that way.”

“How could you have?” Another laugh, one that made Yoongi wince, “You forgot to not forget me. Even then, you never let me get a word in.”

“I’m sorry,” Yoongi breathed. “I’m so sorry.”

“Great,” He watched your fists curl at your side, setting your shoulders, “Then if you’ll excuse me—”

“What—”

“I have a wedding to get ready for,” You shrugged, “That’s what everyone expects, right? Then that’s what we’ll give them. In real time, not on some corporate media delay.”

“I’ll fix this. I will, I’ll—”

“Yoongi.” You paused across the room from him, facade clearly shattering as you begged, “Please just go. You probably need to pack for your flight tomorrow still, right?”

“Angel.”

“Go.” 

“You’re to call it off. Now.”

Seungcheol sighed into the phone speaker, overlapped by Taehyung interjecting, “We can’t do that, Yoongi.”

“It wasn’t a suggestion, it was an order. I do not care how you cover this up, how you choose to handle it, or if you have to eliminate my contract. I don’t have a preference and I don’t have any ideas,” Yoongi sighed into his fingers pinching the bridge of his nose, “All I ask is that it’s called off. That the media knows it’s not happening and that they leave me and everyone in my hometown alone.”

“All I can think is to suggest that the wedding is postponed indefinitely due to some sort of complications—”

“Great, do that. I’m not taking my flight, either. Neither flight.”

“You have schedules in a few weeks.”

“I’ll handle that when the time comes,” Yoongi sighed, covering his face with his hand, “I just...I really need to stay here for as long as possible.”

Taehyung continued to mutter to himself while Seungcheol murmured, “May I ask why?”

“It’s a long story,” Yoongi eyed the bouquet of pink in his fist, swallowing toward the heavy tides as they propelled towards the shore on the heels of heavy winds, “I’ll have to tell you some other time. But right now...I have to go.”

In any other circumstance, Yoongi would have sobbed seeing you ascend the aisle. And frankly, in the given circumstance, he wanted to as well, breath welling in the base of his throat when you hesitated upon seeing his figure, choosing eventually to drop your head and stalk for him. When you were in earshot, he said, “You didn’t pause.”

Tear tracks were still evident on your skin, fresh in fact, when you glared in confusion, “What?”

Yoongi gestured with his free hand, cuffs on his suit jacket riding up over the jewelry dangling from a delicate wrist bone as he pointed for the place beyond the last row of chairs. “You’re supposed to pause until the proper music starts. Standard wedding procedure.”

“Good thing this isn’t a wedding,” Your fingers brushed at your cheeks, trying to cover up, “Why are you still here? I figured you’d be long gone by now.”

“Change of plans. I don’t think I’ll be leaving for a little while now. Turns out I have a fiance’ here,” He took one step toward you, kicking up sand with the polished toe of his dress boot, “Weird, right? Who would have known…”

A short huff left through your nose. “You’re lucky you’re cute. Otherwise, I wouldn’t find this funny.”

“I don’t think this is funny. Not what I have to tell you, at least.”

 “Well get on it with it,” You kicked up some sand without moving, “I have wedding details to finish.”

“I’ve kept this in for far longer than I should have. I thought it would be selfish of me to say it, especially when I really wanted to. After all, I was leaving. I wasn’t just leaving to go to university a few towns over or to accept an internship. I was signing to release an album. A real life album, something I’d always dreamed of doing.”

“And in my ideal situation, you would come with me. You would have taken the scholarship for that business school and at least stuck by my side for just a few more years. It was selfish of me to even have the thought. I feel guilty about it every day.”

“The extension of that thought was why I had it in the first place. Why my conscience would even think to conjure up such a painting of the future, one that included you in the short term but would assure you in the long run. Hopefully. I always hoped that.”

“When it didn’t work out that way, I didn’t want to give you any indication that I had wanted that in the first place. You had your mind set up and you were so excited. So excited. I couldn’t do anything to pull you away from that. I didn’t want to. I still don’t want to.”

“And I’ve regretted it every day since that night,” Yoongi used the bouquet as a wand, waving it vaguely as his free hand dug around in the pocket of his jacket. “Have you ever looked through the drawers of that wardrobe piece in the foyer of the first floor?”

You blinked, welled up tears not able to break from the streams you’d previously wiped away, “I could get all but the top right open after your parents moved out. I guess I lost the key to it.”

“It’s because I had the key,” The black box balanced between his fingers, tucked underneath the first knuckle on his thumb and the pad of his index finger, “This was in there.”

Yoongi popped the box open, revealing the glittering band inside. It was real, unlike the prop you’d happily collected from the photo shoot, polished in its original condition where the dusted outer edges of its container didn’t fare the same. “This is what I had to give you that night. It’s not what you think,” He shrugged, shifting to let the box slide fully into his cupped palm, “Or maybe it is. I wasn’t proposing, certainly. But I didn’t want to give you this. Not the draft of that song. Nothing else.”

“And it had a message attached to it so—” Yoongi thrust the flowers toward you, waiting until you took them so he could fully cradle the ring box in both hands, “—if you’ll allow me to be just a little bit selfish for a second, I’d wholly appreciate it.”

“I’m in love with you. I always have been and at this point, I think I always will be. My goodbyes and my horrible communication all were done with the idea of protecting you in mind but now I know it did nothing but hurt you more and for that, I apologize.”

He stepped twice, bringing him to stand directly in front of you. “I don’t think what would have happened if I would have told you all this that night. I can’t predict and I don’t want to think about it. I can’t change it,” Yoongi shut the ring box, gripping it tight in one hand as his opposite appendage tested your wet cheek, finger breaking the trail in route to cradle your face, “but I’m telling you here and now that I love you, angel. I really, really do.”

“I can tell you what would have happened.”

Yoongi frowned, attention split between clearing your tears and watching your teeth try to collect your trembling bottom lip. 

As if it clarified, you added, “I would have told you the same thing I’m about to tell you now.”

“I love you. Then, now, always,” You sniffled into quiet laughter, “Even a few Min Suga scandals can’t push me away.”

The seam of your lips tasted like salt and strawberry lip balm and you, one touch of your mouth as a result of the words Yoongi had waited years to hear come out of your mouth effectively sweeping up all the pieces of his shattered heart into a dustpan and fusing them back together, leaving it to soar in his ears as the moon fondly watched his hand on the side of your neck draw you closer. 

“I have two questions,” You mumbled against his lips. “Can I have the ring now? I think I’ve waited long enough.”

Yoongi laughed, pecking your mouth one more time in fear you’d dissolve into the ocean waves and he’d wake up in his apartment in the city. His grip fumbled the box back open, just as shaky as he had been in pushing the fake ring onto the proper finger as he nodded, “Yes, you certainly have. Second question, shoot.”

“Do I still have to marry you tomorrow?”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

“Better you than J-Hope,” You grinned through your tears when he laced your fingers together to squeeze your hand, dragging you in for more sweet affections from his pouted mouth. 

“Right,” Yoongi punctuated his words through stamped kisses down your jaw, “I’ll remember you said that when I introduce you two.”

“Besides. I’m only wary about the wedding being tomorrow,” Your features scrunched when he nosed your cheek, “We need a little more time to plan, don’t you think?”

“Maybe just a few years. Maybe just a few months,” You shrugged when his gaze returned to yours, laughing as the realization flickered over in real time to Yoongi’s expression, “Just some more time I think would be good.”

Yoongi hummed, letting go of you to pry apart the stems in your hand picked bouquet, careful in plucking one of the flowers away from the center before reaching to pleat it behind your ear, lips following to settle on your cheek. 

“Good thing I know a wedding planner.”

Min Yoongi, better known as rapper, singer, songwriter, and producer Min Suga released his second studio album on Friday. Titled ‘Orchid’, it’s rumored to be a series of poems written for and about his spouse with which he recently celebrated marriage to from the privacy of his secluded, beach side hometown. This release comes nearly four years after his debut album and some fans have speculated the songs seem to be speaking to each other, as though the track lists tell the story of the couples love from Min’s perspective. The album is projected to debut number one, proving that perhaps the wait is, in fact, worth it in the end. 

[bangtanblurbs]

autumn leaves

song: autumn leaves by BTS

first experience: my first listen of autumn leaves was when HYYH pt. 2 released. thanksgiving had just ended -- it was 2015. i was well into my fourth year of undergraduate studies and going through both a rough patch in some respects but also in others -- hitting my stride. i remember my first listen through of HYYH pt. 2 was in my tiny dorm room, perched on my bed, avoiding the responsibility of studying for my final exams. autumn leaves followed skit in the tracklisting, and before skit came baepsae. talk about whiplash... my emotions were all over the place. immediately i was taken by the unique backbeat and the beautiful blend of devastating vocals with emotional raps. for me, autumn leaves was immediately a favorite of mine from the album -- following closely behind butterfly. i can confidently say today though that the song is one of my top ten bangtan songs of all time. something about the sound, the lyrics, and the emotions i can hear in their voices makes it one of the most powerful rap ballads in the bangtan repertoire. i can remember distinctly i came to this revelation around christmas of 2015 as i continued to loop HYYH pt. 2 and really feel each beat and sound within the individual tracks. 

at this time i was going through a period of great change in my life - and autumn leaves is the perfect song for change. it’s a song about losing a love but also about feeling as if you are losing a piece of yourself. there are many ways to interpret the song outside of just being another sad love song -- that is something that struck me. the lyrics speak to several facets of what happens when you give pieces of yourself to others, or when you reach crossroads in your life. finding this song at this particular moment in my life was like finding energy and light at a time of extreme darkness. it was healing. soothing. 

feelings: i have too many. as always. autumn leaves is special to me because when i listen to it i’m reminded of both the place i was in when the sound found me, but also more recent development in my life that continue to relate to the song. when i first heard autumn leaves, i’d recently ended a relationship i’d been far too invested in despite knowing it was going to be a dead end - for about three years. i felt like i was at a point in my life where i needed to figure out who the hell i was without the one i’d loved. it’s funny though - i was happy to be free of that relationship, to be free of him, the pressures he’d put upon me. what do dead leaves mean if not a new spring right around the corner? perhaps i was feeling lost, but in my mind it was only temporary -- the dead must fall away to bring forward the spring. 

that being said, i did mourn. not in the way you might think, but in the way that one mourns for lost time, lost identity. so often we, as women, give up our identities when we are in relationships. we allow others to define us in terms of those that we are in relationships with. i’ve realized this now that i’m older -- now that i’m more at peace with my bisexuality -- the notion that our patriarchal society defines us in terms of the men within our lives rather than our own talents and identities. this particular blog isn’t a space for my feelings on that topic though -- what i will say is that autumn leaves comforted me. perhaps i felt that i was at a point where my leaves were dying -- but does that mean the tree is dead? absolutely not. spring would come. my life would be reborn with a new focus taking over. 

this being said -- i’ve always been one of those people that holds onto the past. i always wanted to be solid, non-changing, someone with convictions that they carried along from life. i think this stems from experiencing the death of a close friend while i was very young. i cherished the memories associated with her to the point where i didn’t want to lose the person i was when i knew her. so that’s always complicated change for me -- made the moments where the last leaves fell from the autumn trees that much harder. sure, spring was on its way, but what did that mean? would i lose the memories and the moments when my leaves where at their brilliance the previous season? or would i still carry those with me? what if i needed to correct course and completely rewrite who i was over the past -- would that mean losing who i was when i was loved by those i valued in the past? of course not -- but for some reason the more emotional sides of me didn’t see things in such a fluid way. lost was more profound when i was younger because it was also accompanied with these fears over the loss of my identity. 

as i’ve gotten older i’ve realized that identity can have staying power whilst also being something that is fluid. transmuting something doesn’t mean destroying or overwriting it. it means building upon the base and modifying it so that things are more brilliant. the me that existed before and during my long-term relationship was the same me i’d carry into the future, but with many more improvements for my own wellbeing and ability to express myself. for me, autumn leaves is just that. whilst on the surface it may convey the emotions of a breakup -- it also simply conveys the feelings that we get when we progress from one period of life to another. we leave parts of ourselves behind in order to improve. does that mean we are fundamentally changed? absolutely not. it means that we have learned from the past -- that we have made progress. in the same way that trees grow and change over the years. perhaps they look differently (taller, greener in hue? more branches?) but they still provide us with lushness and shade. 

personal connection: perhaps i’ve jumped ahead... i’ve already delved into this in the feelings section. that being said... i hope that my story can bring comfort to someone else. or perhaps help you all think about the ways in which bangtan songs can promote healing in your own lives. 

since my initial experience with the song i’ve had many other moments where i’ve turned to autumn leaves for comfort. i didn’t just leave it in the past -- it’s come with me as i’ve gotten older and moved into new spaces in my life. particularly i quite literally moved and started a huge new chapter in my life. and on this, autumn leaves has been a song i frequently find myself searching for. there’s a line in the song that resonates with me -- it’s in the bridge: “i hold on to these faded memories / is this greed? / i try to look back on these lost seasons / i try to turn back” 

initially i’d been excited for my big move from atlanta to washington dc. i thought it’d be the moment where i finally showed people back home that i wasn’t a failure, that all the pride i’d held in myself and my intellectual accomplishments was valid... but partnered with that came the intensive homesickness, the feeling of being an alien. i wasn’t really welcome here in dc. i still don’t feel welcome, but that’s a story for another day - another song. the reality is though, i moved just as the seasons turned to fall. it felt like my old life was falling away, i was bidding adieu my old life -- the community that had raised me since i was eighteen -- it was all gone. i was scared, terrified my friends wouldn’t keep in touch, afraid i’d have to change who i was to experience success (mask my accent, dye my hair, use the language of the elites)... while it’s not a breakup in the way the autumn leaves reads, i felt like i was having to plead with myself not to let go of who i was just for the sake of being accepted here, or for the sake of making my day to day life easier. the beat of the song brought me comfort as i walked to school, where i received the fake smiles of professors and classmates... i pleaded with myself -- to never let the parts of me that had gotten me to where i was fall away... to always let those dead leaves be the fertilizer for who i was becoming, for the me that would deliver myself closer to my dreams. 

even now -- i listen to autumn leaves and think about what i’m going to carry forward as the seasons change and we begin to work our way into a new normal in this pandemic. what parts of me will remain? what relationships will i keep? what *should* fall away, and what will i beg to keep around rather it’s healthy or not? i’m not sure. but closing my eyes and listening to the steady sound of autumn leaves brings me nothing but comfort. 

song breakdown

musically: autumn leaves is one of the most iconic songs from the HYYH era. the beat is iconic, the mix of vocal line and rap line from verse to chorus is completely seamless, it’s almost like a ballad rap (so iconic of the HYYH era, with songs like love is not over). the asian style beats, and synth... the sounds of the song are flawless from start to finish. the underlying beat of the song is so smooth, it feels almost like constant crashing waves, the ebb and flow of the beat with a few accents to highlight the emotional pick-ups of the verses. 

now -- it was controversial at the time -- many claim that autumn leaves samples beats from deadroses by blackbear. rather that’s true or not, i don’t know. but i find that listening to both songs back to back, they’re speaking to a lot of similar themes but with their own distinct sound and messages. there’s something about the genius of the back beat mixed with the emotionally charged rapping that sets autumn leaves apart -- also the use of vocal line is completely distinct and adds to the emotion in the sound. 

vocally: i don’t have as much to say about the vocals in this song. they’re beautiful, with vocal providing honey belts throughout the choruses, which sound more like a repeated bridge. we also see the slower, more emotionally accented rap style from each of rapline. the integration of the vocals and rap are iconically HYYH and BTS. we see the raps pick up, and slow down providing for pre-choruses to build into the beautiful vocal ballad ranges. 

autumn leaves performed live -- it’s something incredible. something i’m thankful i was able to experience. bangtan obviously never disappoint, but you can really hear the emotions in their voice with autumn leaves. the perfect adlibs, the changing rap paces, the roughness of rapline’s lower registers... it delivers the sadder themes of the song perfectly. 

lyrically: time for a DEEP dive yet again. autumn leaves is about change, the loss of a love. of course meanings can be layered, it can be about change, but on the very surface its a song about loss of love because of changes over time. 

jin and jungkook start out the song beautifully. the lyrics lead in directly addressing the theme: “fall like those dry leaves / just falling without strength, my love.” indicating that the song is like a letter - it’s a message to a love. the speaker is comparing their situation to a dead leaf, useless... time has run out... time to leave and fade away... something new to come a replace. falling without strength, it seems as if the speaker is saying they’ve got no more fight in them anymore, they’ve given up and realized continuing the fight is futile. it’s time to just let everything fall away, fade into black. “your heart just goes far away / i can’t catch you / i can’t catch you anymore, anymore / i can’t hold onto you, yeah” as much as the speaker would like to hold onto the moment they are in, hold onto the person they’re with... they can’t anymore. the other person is too far away. time has led to them drifting further apart, their relationship falling away like a dead leaf.

yoongi starts off the first rap, leading in with heavy emotions and continuing the story, and theme of a tree moving into fall. “those fallen leaves that look so insecure / seem like they’re looking at us.” the leaves have already fallen off the tree now, they’re dead on the ground -- peering back up at the speaker and their partner. i interpret this as the leaves are looking back at something they used to be a part of, something familiar to them, just as leaves are a part of our lives, trees spectating our lives as we live. these leaves were a part of their lives -- and now they’re gone, a piece is dead now. “if i touch your hand, even if it’s all at once / it seems like it’ll all become crumbs” -- this line illustrates again the analogy that the leaves are like the speaker’s significant other, someone that might just crumble away like it was never even there before, like a dream, it’s that distant. “i only looked / with the autumn wind” the seasons have changed, it’s that time, it’s been that time, and now the wind is a force that finally pushing the leaf off the tree, finally pushing the relationship or moment of life to end. “your words and expressions that become cold at some point / i can see that our relationship is fading / an empty relationship like the autumn sky” this line directly refers to the relationship like the seasons -- there was a spring, beautiful and blooming, love blossomed. and in summer it burned. but as time went on, the clouds went away and the rain stopped (the autumn sky doesn’t bring the spring showers to nurture the relationship anymore) and the fire consumed everything, burning it out and leaving nothing. “an ambiguous difference compared to before / today of all days, the much quieter night” there’s nothing left -- there no more crackle of the fire burning, no more love. it’s empty, and gone. but nobody knew when it became this way or why, it just did. “one lead left clinging to a branch / it’s shattering, i see the end.” there’s something hanging on -- perhaps it’s just the memory -- perhaps it’s just the part of them that is afraid of change, that wishes they could stay in the warmth. but even so, it’s beginning to crumble, it’s beginning the process to fall away. “dead leaves becoming dried / the silence inside your aloof heart / please don’t leave me / please don’t leave me, crumbling dead leaves” from dead to dried, the emphasis is made that at some point things have moved past ending or that they have been done for quite some time and for them to now also be dried. that being said they’re dried, not gone, the memories exist the emotions have left their place. someday the marks of this relationship will impact and provide the basis for another with someone else -- for better or worse.

then, we reach the bridge-like chorus. it’s simple in lyrics despite emotion packed in tone. “i want the you that meets my eyes / i want the you that wants me again” this line indicates that the partner in this situation has walked away and had decided not to even acknowledge the speaker. to pretend they don’t exist, to remove them from their life -- perhaps to not even keep them as a memory. “please don’t leave me / please don’t fall / never never fall / don’t go far away” the speaker begins to beg, holding onto the last few minutes of whatever they believe is left of the relationship. the begging of “don’t fall” is at odds with the previous verse about a leaf already fallen -- perhaps the chorus is coming from a more desperate state, or a moment before the inevitable happened (the season changed, the leaves fell). 

the post chorus brings in jin and continues with the same lament - the same desperate begging. “baby you, girl i can’t let you go / baby you, girl i can’t give up on you” the speaker is determined to hold onto the moment before the final fall. they are unwilling to let it all go -- hanging on to the last moments but also to the memories it seems. “like those falling dry leaves / this love, like dry leaves / never never fall / it’s fading.” at this point the chorus has progressed to where the leaves are fading and falling -- morphing into something that is no longer a leaf anymore. what is the speaker holding onto any more? just as memories too fade -- is there anything even left?

the next verse brings in namjoon, it plays off of the themes and tones in yoongi’s verse. it begins with the leaves already having fallen. there’s no more grasping onto what was, it’s much more about moving on and the ways the memory frames our ability to go forward. “like all the dry leaves fall / like all the things i thought would last forever are leaving / you are my fifth season” the speaker couldn’t imagine this happening -- a fifth season, there is no such thing. the leaves have fallen, despite him never imagining that it would occur, he’s dumbstruck. there’s a level of naivety here -- speaking to the things they thought would last forever -- which harkens back to the entire HYYH era theme. youth. learning growth. namjoon is speaking to new steps in life happening after finding out that what was familiar and comfortable is gone, and will not return as he is stepping into a fifth season and uncharted territory. “even if i try to see you, i can’t look / you’re still green to me / even if the heart doesn’t move, it moves by itself / lingering feelings hung out piece by piece like laundry” namjoon is charging here that he’s placing more emphasis on the past and the memories he holds rather than wanting to confront the reality that the other person has changed. they’re still green - young, fresh, healthy... he can’t help but still be in love because he cannot confront the fact that the other person has in fact changed. and at the same time all of this change and loss has made him raw, he cannot conceal his feelings even when doing mundane day to day things... his emotions hung out for all to see. “only crimson memories fall / from above me / even if my branch doesn’t shake / they constantly fall” the colors have changed from green to crimson, he is forgetting the hard times -- the memories that are rotten. the other memories, even if he keeps trying to hang onto them, they’re also going - being tainted by the dark and unhappy reality of things begin done. “right, my love must fall / in order to rise” he realizes, he need to cut the baggage, cut his false belief that things are still good, so that he can start a new season and try again. embrace his youth once again and heal. “even when you’re near, my two eyes / are far away, it’s happening / i’m being thrown away like this / inside my memories, i become young again” he emphasizes again that he cannot confront the reality of loss of this other person but realizes that it’s completely out of his control - he is the one being thrown. but he knows he can retreat to whatever space he needs to in order to cope or heal, he can hide inside his youth in his mind. he can stay there until he heals and can emerge once again. 

the chorus the repeats again, but this time it moves into the beautifully delivered bridge by taehyung. he begins with his low and smooth range “why can’t i give up on you yet / i hold on to these faded memories” which calls directly to namjoon’s verse. the seasons are changing, but he cannot let go of the past. things are fading but they remain his refuge. “is this greed? / i try to look back on these lost seasons / i try to turn back” he begins to realize that there’s an element to these emotions that might be toxic, that he wants but he knows he cannot have what he wants, or that he wants too much. he wishes he could retreat back to the summer, or the spring. turn back time and hide in those brighter moments. 

the final verse is beautifully delivered with hoseok’s unique style. he offers an unexpected conclusion to the hopelessness of yoongi’s verse and the denial and dismissal in namjoon’s. “burn them brightly, woosh / it was all beautiful, right, our path / but they’ve all faded” hoseok remembers fondly the memories, reflects positively on the way that things had been going... but he recognizes that that path exists no more -- those leaves are dead and gone. he uses the word “burn” which is often what happens with dead leaves, they’re burning brightly those memories -- like they’re seared into his mind and heart. they’ll never leave his essence. “dry leaves come down like tears / the wind blows and everything grows apart all day” this line beautifully captures the mourning process and the confusion that follows -- the learning to unlearn and untangle your life from another person’s. to move away from something that was so permanent in your life and mind. “the rain is falling and you’re shattering / until the very last leaf, you you you” the weather references in this verse are fitting for the theme of seasons but they also take control away from the speaker - make reference to the fact that even as they speaker would like to, he cannot control his emotions just like he cannot control the situation and relationship coming to an end. the very last leaf -- he tried to hold on, he waited till the end, but finally the hope is gone. 

the chorus repeats with some additional lines bracketing it by taehyung. ultimately the song leaves us with a feeling of being unsettled as things came to an ended. time passed by and things changed -- and end was inevitable. memories are what is left to hold onto. seasons change, just like we grow up or change. things in our lives will run their course, especially relationships. we learn from them, and even if we don’t want them to -- they leave scars... no matter how much we plead. but the reality is, we can retreat to whatever place in our mind or memory that we need to in order to repair ourselves to try again.

performance: the main video that is available online for autumn leaves is a performance from HYYH on tour. i cannot pinpoint the location of the filming, but it is the same as it was when i saw BTS live in 2016 in macau for HYYH the epilogue on tour. you can find it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrM53Y9hHV0&ab_channel=lestwins1524 

the performance is very much understated but beautiful. vocals and raps are delivered with more emotion than was captured in the recorded version. members do not perform any choreographed dances, but lights and graphics highlight each member as they come into focus to deliver their portion of the song. it’s beautiful and it’s just what was needed to portray the emotion and depth of the themes in autumn leaves. 

in my own personal experience, seeing this song performed live was incredibly profound. the entire arena was silent. all eyes on bangtan and listening for each of the incredibly raw verses to be peformed. the crisp emotion laden in the vocal line choruses. the song is beautiful. it’s somber and mature. it exemplifies the drama of the HYYH era -- with lyrical and performance genius that is unparalleled. i’ve uploaded to this post my horrible video but i hope you enjoy ~~

tl;dr: autumn leaves might seem like another breakup song, but there’s more to it. it beautifully emphasizes the power of memory, time passage, and the desire to hold onto past versions of themselves. which for many listeners is far more profound than just a breakup -- there’s so many times when we need to leave behind moments in our lives, friends, family members... and while we want to hold onto something that is familiar, we can’t. they’re leaving, we are moving on... seasons come and go no matter how much we wish they’d just stay constant. dead leaves fall away, even when we’d wish the summer and spring would stay, they can’t. life is cyclical in nature. which harkens us back to the themes in spring day as well. the sun will always come out, the seasons will change... but we have to confront the fact that sometimes we will experience pain, loss, and change. 

[hlupdate]

Variety’s Grammy-nominated Hitmaker of the Year goes deep on the music industry, the great pause and finding his own muses.

“We’ll dance again,” Harry Styles coos, the Los Angeles sunshine peeking through his pandemic-shaggy hair just so. The singer, songwriter and actor — beloved and critically acclaimed thanks to his life-affirming year-old album, “Fine Line” — is lamenting that his Variety Hitmaker of the Year cover conversation has to be conducted over Zoom rather than in person. Even via videoconference, the Brit is effortlessly charming, as anyone who’s come within earshot of him would attest, but it quickly becomes clear that beneath that genial smile is a well-honed media strategy.

To wit: In an interview that appears a few days later announcing his investment in a new arena in his native Manchester (more on that in a bit), he repeats the refrain — “There will be a time we dance again”— referencing a much-needed return to live music and the promise of some 4,000 jobs for residents.

None of which is to suggest that Styles, 26, phones it in for interviews. Quite the opposite: He does very few, conceivably to give more of himself and not cheapen what is out there and also to use the publicity opportunity to indulge his other interests, like fashion. (Last month Styles became the first male to grace the cover of Vogue solo.) Still, it stings a little that a waltz with the former One Direction member may not come to pass on this album cycle — curse you, coronavirus.

Styles’ isolation has coincided with his maturation as an artist, a thespian and a person. With “Fine Line,” he’s proved himself a skilled lyricist with a tremendous ear for harmony and melody. In preparing for his role in Olivia Wilde’s period thriller “Don’t Worry Darling,” which is shooting outside Palm Springs, he found an outlet for expression in interpreting words on a page. And for the first time, he’s using his megaphone to speak out about social justice — inspired by the outpouring of support for Black people around the world following the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police in May.

Styles has spent much of the past nine months at home in London, where life has slowed considerably. The time has allowed him to ponder such heady issues as his purpose on the earth. “It’s been a pause that I don’t know if I would have otherwise taken,” says Styles. “I think it’s been pretty good for me to have a kind of stop, to look and think about what it actually means to be an artist, what it means to do what we do and why we do it. I lean into moments like this — moments of uncertainty.”

In truth, while Styles has largely been keeping a low profile — his Love On Tour, due to kick off on April 15, was postponed in late March and is now scheduled to launch in February 2021 (whether it actually will remains to be seen) — his music has not. This is especially true in the U.S., where he’s notched two hit singles, “Adore You,” the second-most-played song at radio in 2020, and “Watermelon Sugar” (No. 22 on Variety’s year-end Hitmakers chart), with a third, “Golden,” already cresting the top 20 on the pop format. The massive cross-platform success of these songs means Styles has finally and decisively broken into the American market, maneuvering its web of gatekeepers to accumulate 6.2 million consumption units and rising.

Why do these particular songs resonate in 2020? Styles doesn’t have the faintest idea. While he acknowledges a “nursery rhyme” feel to “Watermelon Sugar” with its earwormy loop of a chorus, that’s about as much insight as he can offer. His longtime collaborator and friend Tom Hull, also known as the producer Kid Harpoon, offers this take: “There’s a lot of amazing things about that song, but what really stands out is the lyric. It’s not trying to hide or be clever. The simplicity of watermelon … there’s such a joy in it, [which] is a massive part of that song’s success.” Also, his kids love it. “I’ve never had a song connect with children in this way,” says Hull, whose credits include tunes by Shawn Mendes, Florence and the Machine and Calvin Harris. “I get sent videos all the time from friends of their kids singing. I have a 3-year-old and an 8-year-old, and they listen to it.”

Styles is quick to note that he doesn’t chase pop appeal when crafting songs. In fact, the times when he pondered or approved a purposeful tweak, like on his self-titled 2017 debut, still gnaw at him. “I love that album so much because it represents such a time in my life, but when I listen to it — sonically and lyrically, especially — I can hear places where I was playing it safe,” he says. “I was scared to get it wrong.”

Contemporary effects and on-trend beats hardly factor into Styles’ decision-making. He likes to focus on feelings — his own and his followers’ — and see himself on the other side of the velvet rope, an important distinction in his view. “People within [the industry] feel like they operate on a higher level of listening, and I like to make music from the point of being a fan of music,” Styles says. “Fans are the best A&R.”

This from someone who’s had free rein to pursue every musical whim, and hand in the album of his dreams in the form of “Fine Line.” Chart success makes it all the sweeter, but Styles insists that writing “for the right reasons” supersedes any commercial considerations. “There’s no part that feels, eh, icky — like it was made in the lab,” he says.

Styles has experience in this realm. As a graduate of the U.K. competition series “The X Factor,” where he and four other auditionees — Niall Horan, Zayn Malik, Liam Payne and Louis Tomlinson — were singled out by show creator and star judge Simon Cowell to conjoin as One Direction, he’s seen how the prefab pop machine works up close. The One Direction oeuvre, which counts some 42 million albums sold worldwide, includes songs written with such established hitmakers as Ryan Tedder, Savan Kotecha and Teddy Geiger. Being a studious, insatiable observer, Styles took it all in.

“I learned so much,” he says of the experience. “When we were in the band, I used to try and write with as many different people as I could. I wanted to practice — and I wrote a lot of bad shit.”

His bandmates also benefited from the pop star boot camp. The proof is in the relatively seamless solo transitions of at least three of its members — Payne, Malik and Horan in addition to Styles — each of whom has landed hit singles on charts in the U.K., the U.S. and beyond.

This departs from the typical trajectories of boy bands including New Kids on the Block and ’N Sync, which have all pro ered a star frontman. The thinking for decades was that a record company would be lucky to have one breakout solo career among the bunch.

Styles has plainly thought about this.

“When you look at the history of people coming out of bands and starting solo careers, they feel this need to apologize for being in the band. ‘Don’t worry, everyone, that wasn’t me! Now I get to do what I really want to do.’ But we loved being in the band,” he says. “I think there’s a wont to pit people against each other. And I think it’s never been about that for us. It’s about a next step in evolution. The fact that we’ve all achieved different things outside of the band says a lot about how hard we worked in it.”

Indeed, during the five-ish years that One Direction existed, Styles’ schedule involved the sort of nonstop international jet-setting that few get to see in a lifetime, never mind their teenage years. Between 2011 and 2015, One Direction’s tours pulled in north of $631 million in gross ticket sales, according to concert trade Pollstar, and the band was selling out stadiums worldwide by the time it entered its extended hiatus. Styles, too, had built up to playing arenas as a solo artist, engaging audiences with his colorful stage wear and banter and left-of-center choices for opening acts (a pre-Grammy-haul Kacey Musgraves in 2018; indie darlings King Princess and Jenny Lewis for his rescheduled 2021 run).

Stages of all sizes feel like home to Styles. He grew up in a suburb of Manchester, ground zero for some of the biggest British acts of the 1980s and ’90s, including Joy Division, New Order, the Smiths and Oasis, the latter of which broke the same year Styles was born. His parents were also music lovers. Styles’ father fed him a balanced diet of the Beatles, Fleetwood Mac, the Rolling Stones and Queen, while Mum was a fan of Shania Twain, Norah Jones and Savage Garden. “They’re all great melody writers,” says Styles of the acts’ musical throughline.

Stevie Nicks, who in the past has described “Fine Line” as Styles’ “Rumours,” referencing the Fleetwood Mac 1977 classic, sees him as a kindred spirit. “Harry writes and sings his songs about real experiences that seemingly happened yesterday,” she tells Variety. “He taps into real life. He doesn’t make up stories. He tells the truth, and that is what I do. ‘Fine Line’ has been my favorite record since it came out. It is his ‘Rumours.’ I told him that in a note on December 13, 2019 before he went on stage to play the ‘Fine Line’ album at the Forum. We cried. He sang those songs like he had sung them a thousand times. That’s a great songwriter and a great performer.”

“Harry’s playing and writing is instinctual,” adds Jonathan Wilson, a friend and peer who’s advised Styles on backing and session musicians. “He understands history and where to take the torch. You can see the thread of great British performers — from Bolan to Bowie — in his music.”

Also shaping his musical DNA was Manchester itself, the site of a 23,500-seat arena, dubbed Co-op Live, for which Styles is an investor and adviser. Oak View Group, a company specializing in live entertainment and global sports that was founded by Tim Leiweke and Irving Azoff in 2015 (Jeffrey Azoff, Irving’s son, represents Styles at Full Stop Management), is leading the effort to construct the venue. The project gained planning approval in September and is set to open in 2023, with its arrival representing a £350 million ($455 million) investment in the city. (Worth noting: Manchester is already home to an arena — the site of a 2017 bombing outside an Ariana Grande concert — and a football stadium, where One Love Manchester, an all-star benefit show to raise money for victims of the terrorist attack, took place.)

“I went to my first shows in Manchester,” Styles says of concerts paid for with money earned delivering newspapers for a supermarket called the Co-op. “My friends and I would go in on weekends. There’s so many amazing small venues, and music is such a massive part of the city. I think Manchester deserves it. It feels like a full-circle, coming-home thing to be doing this and to be able to give any kind of input. I’m incredibly proud. Hopefully they’ll let me play there at some point.”

Though Styles has owned properties in Los Angeles, his base for the foreseeable future is London. “I feel like my relationship with L.A. has changed a lot,” he explains. “I’ve kind of accepted that I don’t have to live here anymore; for a while I felt like I was supposed to. Like it meant things were going well. This happened, then you move to L.A.! But I don’t really want to.”

Is it any wonder? Between COVID and the turmoil in the U.S. spurred by the presidential election, Styles, like some 79 million American voters, is recovering from sticker shock over the bill of goods sold to them by the concept of democracy. “In general, as people, there’s a lack of empathy,�� he observes. “We found this place that’s so divisive. We just don’t listen to each other anymore. And that’s quite scary.”

That belief prompted Styles to speak out publicly in the wake of George Floyd’s death. As protests in support of Black Lives Matter took to streets all over the world, for Styles, it triggered a period of introspection, as marked by an Instagram message (liked by 2.7 million users and counting) in which he declared: “I do things every day without fear, because I am privileged, and I am privileged every day because I am white. … Being not racist is not enough, we must be anti racist. Social change is enacted when a society mobilizes. I stand in solidarity with all of those protesting. I’m donating to help post bail for arrested organizers. Look inwards, educate yourself and others. LISTEN, READ, SHARE, DONATE and VOTE. ENOUGH IS ENOUGH. BLACK LIVES MATTER.”

“Talking about race can be really uncomfortable for everyone,” Styles elaborates. “I had a realization that my own comfort in the conversation has nothing to do with the problem — like that’s not enough of a reason to not have a conversation. Looking back, I don’t think I’ve been outspoken enough in the past. Using that feeling has pushed me forward to being open and ready to learn. … How can I ensure from my side that in 20 years, the right things are still being done and the right people are getting the right opportunities? That it’s not a passing thing?”

His own record company — and corporate parent Sony Music Group, whose chairman, Rob Stringer, signed Styles in 2016 — has been grappling with these same questions as the industry has faced its own reckoning with race. At issue: inequality among the upper ranks (an oft-cited statistic: popular music is 80% Black, but the music business is 80% white); contracts rooted in a decades-old system that many say is set up to take advantage of artists, Black artists more unfairly than white; and the call for a return of master rights, an ownership model that is at the core of the business.

Styles acknowledges the fundamental imbalance in how a major label deal is structured — the record company takes on the financial risk while the artist is made to recoup money spent on the project before the act is considered profitable and earning royalties (typically at a 15% to 18% rate for the artist, while the label keeps and disburses the rest). “Historically, I can’t think of any industry that’s benefited more off of Black culture than music,” he says. “There are discussions that need to happen about this long history of not being paid fairly. It’s a time for listening, and hopefully, people will come out humbled, educated and willing to learn and change.”

By all accounts, Styles is a voracious reader, a movie lover and an aesthete. He stays in shape by adhering to a strict daily exercise routine. “I tried to keep up but didn’t last more than two weeks,” says Hull, Styles’ producer, with a laugh. “The discipline is terrifying.”

Of course, with the fashion world beckoning — Styles recently appeared in a film series for Gucci’s new collection that was co-directed by the fashion house’s creative director, Alessandro Michele, and Oscar winner Gus Van Sant — and a movie that’s set in the 1950s, maintaining that physique is part of the job. And he’s no stranger to visual continuity after appearing in Christopher Nolan’s epic “Dunkirk” and having to return to set for reshoots; his hair, which needed to be cut back to its circa 1940 form, is a constant topic of conversation among fans. This time, it’s the ink that poses a challenge. By Styles’ tally, he’s up to 60 tattoos, which require an hour in the makeup chair to cover up. “It’s the only time I really regret getting tattooed,” he says.

He shows no regret, however, when it comes to stylistic choices overall, and takes pride in his gender-agnostic portfolio, which includes wearing a Gucci dress on that Vogue cover— an image that incited conservative pundit Candace Owens to plead publicly to “bring back manly men.” In Styles’ view: “To not wear [something] because it’s females’ clothing, you shut out a whole world of great clothes. And I think what’s exciting about right now is you can wear what you like. It doesn’t have to be X or Y. Those lines are becoming more and more blurred.”

But acclaim, if you can believe it, is not top of mind for Styles. As far as the Grammys are concerned, Styles shrugs, “It’s never why I do anything.” His team and longtime label, however, had their hearts set on a showing at the Jan. 31 ceremony. Their investment in Styles has been substantial — not just monetarily but in carefully crafting his career in the wake of such icons as David Bowie, who released his final albums with the label. Hope at the company and in many fans’ hearts that Styles would receive an album of the year nomination did not come to pass. However, he was recognized in three categories, including best pop vocal album.

“It’s always nice to know that people like what you’re doing, but ultimately — and especially working in a subjective field — I don’t put too much weight on that stuff,” Styles says. “I think it’s important when making any kind of art to remove the ego from it.” Citing the painter Matisse, he adds: “It’s about the work that you do when you’re not expecting any applause.”

[citowon]

4, 13, and 14 for the end of the year ask meme (*´ω｀*)

thanks for the ask ♡ a lot has happened lately but i hope i can get back on the request grind again! fair warning, my answers get lengthy under the cut. i’m chatty and sentimental.

4: total number of words you wrote this year citowon words: 35,221 total words (approx): 96,971 the fun thing about this is that i wrote a LOT of fic this year. i always do, but 2021 was probably my best writing year ever, and at the beginning of 2021 i didn’t expect this much success at all! not all of it is published on citowon nor ao3, but there’s a bunch of little scenes i’m very happy about and want to continue into 2022.

13: favorite writing song/artist/album of the year i’m a HUGE music lover and i’ll listen to any genre, so i switch it up all the time based on whatever my vibe is, not the text. i made some playlists for a few characters and fics, but i have to give the reward to limbo by royal blood, but for a pretty unexpected reason. see, sometimes i’ll loop a song if i really like it, but i usually can’t go more than 45 minutes before i have to skip. i’ve listened to limbo for over 2 hours at a time. my record was 4 hours and 40-something minutes one all-nighter over my us history exam! the album it’s off of, typhoons, is one of my top 5 releases this year and also has gotten me through so many writing slogs. none of the songs have gotten old, and trust me, if they could be, i’d know by now considering how many times i set the full album stream on loop. despite that, it feels wrong not to mention the tower (theme from the work) by rivers of nihil. i haven’t made a list, but i feel confident that the work is my no. 1 favorite 2021 release, and this song is one that inspired so much content i’d like to get out soon. it’s beautiful and harrowing, and i think a lot about some character dynamics by running them through the song, you know?

14: a fic you didn’t expect to write this one is strange and also really fun to answer, because there’s so much i didn’t imagine myself doing! i made a #fic-ideas channel in my private discord server, which includes so many stupid jokes, sleepy text, and just straight-up wild concepts. in november 2020, i wrote a very simple scene-or-two-plus-a-bad-summary chikaita doc about chikage’s past catching up with him, and itaru getting kidnapped because of it. the original was... really garbage. i reopened it in august, tried to figure out what the fuck was going on for about thirty minutes before the concept came back to me, and then wrote another few paragraphs, and forgot about it again. october, i made some ocs, and it light a fire under my ass to keep getting the words out. it’s now one of the docs i’m most passionate about continuing, and- i’m usually a fluff writer, but i feel like this one specifically is very grounding since i apply a lot of real-world logic to it (be honest: if you just got kidnapped because your boyfriend kept his espionage double life a secret from you and you had the self-preservation itaru does, would you stay with him?) and it’s a very welcome return to angst, which is what i did before i joined the a3 fandom.

in a more sobering example than that i also impulsively wrote a vent fic, kazunari opens like four cabinets, a few days after a pretty rough patch with some loved ones (content warning for suicide attempts/idealization and underage drinking), and out of respect i’m not elaborating any more than what the fic itself says. i remember the night i wrote that fic, it was the one day where i had a super chill online class and that was it, so once that ended i was just alone with my thoughts, and barely keeping myself together, so i just had to write something and get the thoughts out of the way. i felt just disgusted with my everything afterwards- you know, writing fanfiction, what i was going through, how nasty my thoughts were, just depressed things- but then the next day i reread it, and then again, and then again, and it was so cathartic that i couldn’t help but love it. didn’t even edit it properly before i posted it. it’s strange in a way, because it’s one of my favorite pieces all year now. i like to think of it as a character study, just as much as it is a vent piece. you see, i’m a theatre kid, and when i’m writing, i envision everything like it’s being acted out. the number-one rule with every single theatre teacher i had is to never just cry on stage. you have to do something with it. you can’t wallow, or else the scene withers, melts together and becomes a slogfest. my last high-school production was a very real, very harrowing drama, but it was so easy to forget because the playwright did such a good job balancing out the weight of the plot with so many jokes. that’s what i tried to do with this fic. after all, even in the worst of times i try to be as witty as i can be! i’ve read this fic over and over so many times, and i could tell you exactly how taichi and kazunari speak every line in it. they never really get caught up in just sadness, there’s always something that they push in front of it so it has substance, like they’re not allowed to be just sad. and there's a lot of little things in the fic, too, that represent something going on there. i won't go so far to say it was all fully planned, but there's so many eensy things i love about it. the blueberries, the way kazu responds to taichi telling his story, how they trade the bottle and the glass, "the worst part”, the unwritten actions made, the pacing. kazu has so many lines here that i love, but "they get the best of me sometimes but i’m better than i was in high school” has to be one of my favorite lines ever.

i feel like it’s such a cop-out not even to reference a citowon fic. there’s so many things i love that y’all’ve requested! i’ll never shut up about how thankful i am for y’all. my last pick is one that’s a contender for my favorite citowon of the year, masumi and a reader that’s siblings with izumi. i’m super proud of how i wrote him here! obviously, i get his whole obsessive almost-yandere thing is his charm, but i’ve always taken it as him being that one arrested development clip like masumi: i have feelings for you narrator: the feeling was friendship, but he had never felt it before so writing him actually falling in love with someone- and then having that family resemblance to compare his feelings with- was an opportunity i ate up, and i really couldn’t have expected if it weren’t for someone requesting it, since i wasn’t too interested in masumi before i got this request. i feel like this fic was just as much of a character study as it was an x reader, and a really interesting dive into how his brain works. writing this fic actually shot masumi up a few places in my book, and ever since i’ve been having so many thoughts about him, which is one of the reasons why i’m so impressed with this fic. on another note, i’m really fond of how tsuzuru and citron advise masumi. i grew up learning that every story has a moral if you squint, and i’m a believer that you believe the things you consume. tsuzuru’s little scene about how what will be will be especially hits imo, it’s something i take very seriously, while i think of citron’s bit about not rushing as something i wish i knew in the past. masumi’s a chaser, but only that fervently when it comes to izumi. so when he has this moment of reconsideration now that he might not be so into izumi, i think of tsuzuru and citron being a really needed reality check, and really puts his (real and deep!) feelings for reader into perspective compared to his izumi obsession. even with my requests, i only write things that i want to write, and this fic is one that i pick up all the time as a bedtime story of sorts. i’m super thankful for the ask on this one, on a meta level it’s not only a fic that i love, but also one that really helped me realize where my writing skills stand and what i’m capable of 🌟

[hldailyupdate]

This Charming Man: Why We’re Wild About Harry Styles

Variety’s Grammy-nominated Hitmaker of the Year goes deep on the music industry, the great pause and finding his own muses.

“We’ll dance again,” Harry Styles coos, the Los Angeles sunshine peeking through his pandemic-shaggy hair just so. The singer, songwriter and actor — beloved and critically acclaimed thanks to his life-affirming year-old album, “Fine Line” — is lamenting that his Variety Hitmaker of the Year cover conversation has to be conducted over Zoom rather than in person. Even via videoconference, the Brit is effortlessly charming, as anyone who’s come within earshot of him would attest, but it quickly becomes clear that beneath that genial smile is a well-honed media strategy.

To wit: In an interview that appears a few days later announcing his investment in a new arena in his native Manchester (more on that in a bit), he repeats the refrain — “There will be a time we dance again”— referencing a much-needed return to live music and the promise of some 4,000 jobs for residents.

None of which is to suggest that Styles, 26, phones it in for interviews. Quite the opposite: He does very few, conceivably to give more of himself and not cheapen what is out there and also to use the publicity opportunity to indulge his other interests, like fashion. (Last month Styles became the first male to grace the cover of Vogue solo.) Still, it stings a little that a waltz with the former One Direction member may not come to pass on this album cycle — curse you, coronavirus.

Styles’ isolation has coincided with his maturation as an artist, a thespian and a person. With “Fine Line,” he’s proved himself a skilled lyricist with a tremendous ear for harmony and melody. In preparing for his role in Olivia Wilde’s period thriller “Don’t Worry Darling,” which is shooting outside Palm Springs, he found an outlet for expression in interpreting words on a page. And for the first time, he’s using his megaphone to speak out about social justice — inspired by the outpouring of support for Black people around the world following the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police in May.

Styles has spent much of the past nine months at home in London, where life has slowed considerably. The time has allowed him to ponder such heady issues as his purpose on the earth. “It’s been a pause that I don’t know if I would have otherwise taken,” says Styles. “I think it’s been pretty good for me to have a kind of stop, to look and think about what it actually means to be an artist, what it means to do what we do and why we do it. I lean into moments like this — moments of uncertainty.”

In truth, while Styles has largely been keeping a low profile — his Love On Tour, due to kick off on April 15, was postponed in late March and is now scheduled to launch in February 2021 (whether it actually will remains to be seen) — his music has not. This is especially true in the U.S., where he’s notched two hit singles, “Adore You,” the second-most-played song at radio in 2020, and “Watermelon Sugar” (No. 22 on Variety’s year-end Hitmakers chart), with a third, “Golden,” already cresting the top 20 on the pop format. The massive cross-platform success of these songs means Styles has finally and decisively broken into the American market, maneuvering its web of gatekeepers to accumulate 6.2 million consumption units and rising.

Why do these particular songs resonate in 2020? Styles doesn’t have the faintest idea. While he acknowledges a “nursery rhyme” feel to “Watermelon Sugar” with its earwormy loop of a chorus, that’s about as much insight as he can offer. His longtime collaborator and friend Tom Hull, also known as the producer Kid Harpoon, offers this take: “There’s a lot of amazing things about that song, but what really stands out is the lyric. It’s not trying to hide or be clever. The simplicity of watermelon … there’s such a joy in it, [which] is a massive part of that song’s success.” Also, his kids love it. “I’ve never had a song connect with children in this way,” says Hull, whose credits include tunes by Shawn Mendes, Florence and the Machine and Calvin Harris. “I get sent videos all the time from friends of their kids singing. I have a 3-year-old and an 8-year-old, and they listen to it.”

Styles is quick to note that he doesn’t chase pop appeal when crafting songs. In fact, the times when he pondered or approved a purposeful tweak, like on his self-titled 2017 debut, still gnaw at him. “I love that album so much because it represents such a time in my life, but when I listen to it — sonically and lyrically, especially — I can hear places where I was playing it safe,” he says. “I was scared to get it wrong.”

Contemporary effects and on-trend beats hardly factor into Styles’ decision-making. He likes to focus on feelings — his own and his followers’ — and see himself on the other side of the velvet rope, an important distinction in his view. “People within [the industry] feel like they operate on a higher level of listening, and I like to make music from the point of being a fan of music,” Styles says. “Fans are the best A&R.”

This from someone who’s had free rein to pursue every musical whim, and hand in the album of his dreams in the form of “Fine Line.” Chart success makes it all the sweeter, but Styles insists that writing “for the right reasons” supersedes any commercial considerations. “There’s no part that feels, eh, icky — like it was made in the lab,” he says.

Styles has experience in this realm. As a graduate of the U.K. competition series “The X Factor,” where he and four other auditionees — Niall Horan, Zayn Malik, Liam Payne and Louis Tomlinson — were singled out by show creator and star judge Simon Cowell to conjoin as One Direction, he’s seen how the prefab pop machine works up close. The One Direction oeuvre, which counts some 42 million albums sold worldwide, includes songs written with such established hitmakers as Ryan Tedder, Savan Kotecha and Teddy Geiger. Being a studious, insatiable observer, Styles took it all in.

“I learned so much,” he says of the experience. “When we were in the band, I used to try and write with as many different people as I could. I wanted to practice — and I wrote a lot of bad shit.”

His bandmates also benefited from the pop star boot camp. The proof is in the relatively seamless solo transitions of at least three of its members — Payne, Malik and Horan in addition to Styles — each of whom has landed hit singles on charts in the U.K., the U.S. and beyond.

This departs from the typical trajectories of boy bands including New Kids on the Block and ’N Sync, which have all pro ered a star frontman. The thinking for decades was that a record company would be lucky to have one breakout solo career among the bunch.

Styles has plainly thought about this.

“When you look at the history of people coming out of bands and starting solo careers, they feel this need to apologize for being in the band. ‘Don’t worry, everyone, that wasn’t me! Now I get to do what I really want to do.’ But we loved being in the band,” he says. “I think there’s a wont to pit people against each other. And I think it’s never been about that for us. It’s about a next step in evolution. The fact that we’ve all achieved different things outside of the band says a lot about how hard we worked in it.”

Indeed, during the five-ish years that One Direction existed, Styles’ schedule involved the sort of nonstop international jet-setting that few get to see in a lifetime, never mind their teenage years. Between 2011 and 2015, One Direction’s tours pulled in north of $631 million in gross ticket sales, according to concert trade Pollstar, and the band was selling out stadiums worldwide by the time it entered its extended hiatus. Styles, too, had built up to playing arenas as a solo artist, engaging audiences with his colorful stage wear and banter and left-of-center choices for opening acts (a pre-Grammy-haul Kacey Musgraves in 2018; indie darlings King Princess and Jenny Lewis for his rescheduled 2021 run).

Stages of all sizes feel like home to Styles. He grew up in a suburb of Manchester, ground zero for some of the biggest British acts of the 1980s and ’90s, including Joy Division, New Order, the Smiths and Oasis, the latter of which broke the same year Styles was born. His parents were also music lovers. Styles’ father fed him a balanced diet of the Beatles, Fleetwood Mac, the Rolling Stones and Queen, while Mum was a fan of Shania Twain, Norah Jones and Savage Garden. “They’re all great melody writers,” says Styles of the acts’ musical throughline.

Stevie Nicks, who in the past has described “Fine Line” as Styles’ “Rumours,” referencing the Fleetwood Mac 1977 classic, sees him as a kindred spirit. “Harry writes and sings his songs about real experiences that seemingly happened yesterday,” she tells Variety. “He taps into real life. He doesn’t make up stories. He tells the truth, and that is what I do. ‘Fine Line’ has been my favorite record since it came out. It is his ‘Rumours.’ I told him that in a note on December 13, 2019 before he went on stage to play the ‘Fine Line’ album at the Forum. We cried. He sang those songs like he had sung them a thousand times. That’s a great songwriter and a great performer.”

“Harry’s playing and writing is instinctual,” adds Jonathan Wilson, a friend and peer who’s advised Styles on backing and session musicians. “He understands history and where to take the torch. You can see the thread of great British performers — from Bolan to Bowie — in his music.”

Also shaping his musical DNA was Manchester itself, the site of a 23,500-seat arena, dubbed Co-op Live, for which Styles is an investor and adviser. Oak View Group, a company specializing in live entertainment and global sports that was founded by Tim Leiweke and Irving Azoff in 2015 (Jeffrey Azoff, Irving’s son, represents Styles at Full Stop Management), is leading the effort to construct the venue. The project gained planning approval in September and is set to open in 2023, with its arrival representing a £350 million ($455 million) investment in the city. (Worth noting: Manchester is already home to an arena — the site of a 2017 bombing outside an Ariana Grande concert — and a football stadium, where One Love Manchester, an all-star benefit show to raise money for victims of the terrorist attack, took place.)

“I went to my first shows in Manchester,” Styles says of concerts paid for with money earned delivering newspapers for a supermarket called the Co-op. “My friends and I would go in on weekends. There’s so many amazing small venues, and music is such a massive part of the city. I think Manchester deserves it. It feels like a full-circle, coming-home thing to be doing this and to be able to give any kind of input. I’m incredibly proud. Hopefully they’ll let me play there at some point.”

Though Styles has owned properties in Los Angeles, his base for the foreseeable future is London. “I feel like my relationship with L.A. has changed a lot,” he explains. “I’ve kind of accepted that I don’t have to live here anymore; for a while I felt like I was supposed to. Like it meant things were going well. This happened, then you move to L.A.! But I don’t really want to.”

Is it any wonder? Between COVID and the turmoil in the U.S. spurred by the presidential election, Styles, like some 79 million American voters, is recovering from sticker shock over the bill of goods sold to them by the concept of democracy. “In general, as people, there’s a lack of empathy,” he observes. “We found this place that’s so divisive. We just don’t listen to each other anymore. And that’s quite scary.”

That belief prompted Styles to speak out publicly in the wake of George Floyd’s death. As protests in support of Black Lives Matter took to streets all over the world, for Styles, it triggered a period of introspection, as marked by an Instagram message (liked by 2.7 million users and counting) in which he declared: “I do things every day without fear, because I am privileged, and I am privileged every day because I am white. … Being not racist is not enough, we must be anti racist. Social change is enacted when a society mobilizes. I stand in solidarity with all of those protesting. I’m donating to help post bail for arrested organizers. Look inwards, educate yourself and others. LISTEN, READ, SHARE, DONATE and VOTE. ENOUGH IS ENOUGH. BLACK LIVES MATTER.”

“Talking about race can be really uncomfortable for everyone,” Styles elaborates. “I had a realization that my own comfort in the conversation has nothing to do with the problem — like that’s not enough of a reason to not have a conversation. Looking back, I don’t think I’ve been outspoken enough in the past. Using that feeling has pushed me forward to being open and ready to learn. … How can I ensure from my side that in 20 years, the right things are still being done and the right people are getting the right opportunities? That it’s not a passing thing?”

His own record company — and corporate parent Sony Music Group, whose chairman, Rob Stringer, signed Styles in 2016 — has been grappling with these same questions as the industry has faced its own reckoning with race. At issue: inequality among the upper ranks (an oft-cited statistic: popular music is 80% Black, but the music business is 80% white); contracts rooted in a decades-old system that many say is set up to take advantage of artists, Black artists more unfairly than white; and the call for a return of master rights, an ownership model that is at the core of the business.

Styles acknowledges the fundamental imbalance in how a major label deal is structured — the record company takes on the financial risk while the artist is made to recoup money spent on the project before the act is considered profitable and earning royalties (typically at a 15% to 18% rate for the artist, while the label keeps and disburses the rest). “Historically, I can’t think of any industry that’s benefited more off of Black culture than music,” he says. “There are discussions that need to happen about this long history of not being paid fairly. It’s a time for listening, and hopefully, people will come out humbled, educated and willing to learn and change.”

By all accounts, Styles is a voracious reader, a movie lover and an aesthete. He stays in shape by adhering to a strict daily exercise routine. “I tried to keep up but didn’t last more than two weeks,” says Hull, Styles’ producer, with a laugh. “The discipline is terrifying.”

Of course, with the fashion world beckoning — Styles recently appeared in a film series for Gucci’s new collection that was co-directed by the fashion house’s creative director, Alessandro Michele, and Oscar winner Gus Van Sant — and a movie that’s set in the 1950s, maintaining that physique is part of the job. And he’s no stranger to visual continuity after appearing in Christopher Nolan’s epic “Dunkirk” and having to return to set for reshoots; his hair, which needed to be cut back to its circa 1940 form, is a constant topic of conversation among fans. This time, it’s the ink that poses a challenge. By Styles’ tally, he’s up to 60 tattoos, which require an hour in the makeup chair to cover up. “It’s the only time I really regret getting tattooed,” he says.

He shows no regret, however, when it comes to stylistic choices overall, and takes pride in his gender-agnostic portfolio, which includes wearing a Gucci dress on that Vogue cover— an image that incited conservative pundit Candace Owens to plead publicly to “bring back manly men.” In Styles’ view: “To not wear [something] because it’s females’ clothing, you shut out a whole world of great clothes. And I think what’s exciting about right now is you can wear what you like. It doesn’t have to be X or Y. Those lines are becoming more and more blurred.”

But acclaim, if you can believe it, is not top of mind for Styles. As far as the Grammys are concerned, Styles shrugs, “It’s never why I do anything.” His team and longtime label, however, had their hearts set on a showing at the Jan. 31 ceremony. Their investment in Styles has been substantial — not just monetarily but in carefully crafting his career in the wake of such icons as David Bowie, who released his final albums with the label. Hope at the company and in many fans’ hearts that Styles would receive an album of the year nomination did not come to pass. However, he was recognized in three categories, including best pop vocal album.

“It’s always nice to know that people like what you’re doing, but ultimately — and especially working in a subjective field — I don’t put too much weight on that stuff,” Styles says. “I think it’s important when making any kind of art to remove the ego from it.” Citing the painter Matisse, he adds: “It’s about the work that you do when you’re not expecting any applause.”

Harry for Variety. (2 December 2020)

[pebblysand]

of breakable clay [extended author's notes on chapter viii of castles]

oh my god. it’s out. jesus christ.

okay first off, before i dive into anything, i know i’ve already done this in the actual a/n but i would like to wholeheartedly thank @whiffingbooks over on discord for helping me with figuring out the structure of things fic. although i have to admit i did not, at all, do what i told you i would do, talking it out was massively helpful in figuring this one out, so thanks a million. secondly, i would like send all of my most sincere and affectionate thanks to @whizzfizz on here, who mother-of-god basically designed this entire chapter and listened to me rant, and rant, and rant about it for days on end without complaining. i’ll go into a bit more depth later on, but THANK YOU.

now, a few facts on this chapter before i dive further in:

wordcount: 19168. i legit would apologise for this but i promised i wouldn’t so i’m not going to. that’s growing up people. don’t apologise for yourselves haha.

soundtrack: so i’ve never mentioned this but each chapter kind of has a soundtrack? like a song that i listened to on loop while writing this. here, i would basically point you to the entire spotify of a band called barns courtney (there’s one album and a few eps), i basically listened to all of their songs on loop this past month. i feel like they have such a strong gryffindor energy, in the good, the bad and the ugly. this chapter is definitely sort of an ode to gryffindors so their music was a very big inspo. if i had to point you to one song, it would probably be dopamine.

favourite line: ‘I dig my fingernails into the inside of my palms and it feels like the blood that comes out is already boiling.’

what is this chapter about? now, that’s an easy one. survival.

okay, now, spoilers under the cut.

ugh. holy fucking shit. i’m actually at a stage right now where i strongly believe that no one on earth will want to read this because everyone probably hates me right now for the choices that i made, especially after i made you wait almost three months for this shit. i always feel like whatever i’ve put out was the hardest chapter to write so far but this one was really out there in terms of struggles - i’m really sorry it took so long, but here we are.

there are reasons, though. first, as i said in my may round up, i didn’t really start writing this until about a month ago, because a lot of things were happening in my life that i needed to take care of. i took exams (which i passed!!!!), my mum had a health emergency, ireland added france to their mandatory quarantine list (it has been removed as of yesterday thank. fucking. christ) and i started a new job. it was a lot.

anyway, this being said, when i did get to writing this chapter, as mentioned above in the thank-you section, i kind of first struggled with the structure of it. now, you will see this is a recurring theme this time around but for this, my instincts were telling me one thing, and my brain was saying something else.

basically, what came first here wasn’t the actual content of ginny’s letters (more on that, obviously, in a minute) but the ‘mood’ i wanted for the chapter. i wanted to recreate, both for harry and for the reader, this sort of idea of being completely immersed in a book or a story. like, you know the kind of mood where reality just kind of blends out, where you start reading something and just. cannot. stop. i don’t think he’s much a reader (at least not canonically) and so i wanted this to take him by surprise, for her to take over his life with her words. i explained in the previous a/n [link] i chose to have ginny’s war be told through letters (basically, i thought it would be the best way to narratively tell her story), and i really wanted harry to experience what she’d lived through almost first hand.

now, interestingly, my idea for how to do this originally was to have the letters sort of be interwoven into the events of 1999, throughout the next couple of chapters (meaning this one and chapter nine). i had this idea in my head of him living through ‘real life’ things but not being able to take his mind off her letters, with the letters also sort of echoing the events that were happening in 99, etc. having the two plot lines develop at once and meet in the middle, kind of.

and i tried to write that. for a long time. spoiler alert, it didn’t work. i think the reason is that every time i sat down with it, i felt like i was doing a disservice to both stories. i mean: 97/98 is important, but 99 also is, you know? and by taking the narrative in and out all the time, it was like you couldn’t concentrate on one thing. it was just very messy and didn’t have the intensity i was originally aiming for because it kept being dragged out of whatever was the main action at the time. i wanted harry to get sucked into the narrative, for her letters to take over his life, but in the end, the impression i just got was that the whole thing was confusing af. instead of deeply caring about both, i couldn’t bring myself to care either for ginny’s story, or for his.

also, i just kept hitting a wall: a wall called harry. basically, i knew that the next two chapters (i.e. eight and nine) would stretch from january 99 to june 99. and for the love of god, no matter how many times i turned it around in my head, there was - to me - no way that harry as we know him would just pace himself to read her letters throughout all those months. like, harry fucking potter isn’t the kind of guy who ‘paces’ himself. he’s the kind of guy who doesn’t sleep for a week to get through it all, you know? this is everything that he’s wanted to know since last may, he’s been desperately looking for answers up to this point, there is absolutely not way in hell that he’d wait it out nicely until june. it felt ooc to have him read the letters over a few months. and i just kept hitting that wall over and over. i considered, at one point, building him reading the letters into flashbacks but flashbacks of flashbacks were, again, quite messy, and i don’t think her letters would ever be something he’d volunteer to re-read, so. clearly, it wasn’t working.

then, i think on a random sunday a few weeks ago, i just went back to the drawing board and was like: okay, say we just write all of the letters and go from there, what would happen? by the end of the day, i’d written 12,000 words and that was that, really.

now, the second difficulty, once i’d decided that was…. what you all probably want me to talk about.

i know this is probably not what you want to hear but: i didn’t really plan this? like, i understand that a lot of people have sort of a headcanon about what happened to ginny in that year in hogwarts but i … don’t. like, as planned as this fic is (which it is, i know where i’m going, i promise) that was always a bit of a blank-space-tbd in my head. i think that this story, as hinny as it is, is mostly about harry. and while i knew what i wanted for harry from her telling her story (for him to get sucked in, for him to realise that his war wasn’t the only war in the world ‘cause he’s been bloody self-centered so far, for him to realise that his plan to protect her didn’t exactly work because it didn’t cater for who she is, etc.), i wasn’t really sure what that story was. i mean, i knew it was going to be bad and traumatic, obviously, but i didn’t know what would happen. and still, to me, what i wrote is a version of that year. it’s not really my headcanon (i still don’t really have one), and i definitely accept other versions, if that makes sense.

this being said, i obviously had thought about it a little. i remember writing chapter one with that line: ‘They have sex for the first time, that day – his first time and it feels like hers, too, but he wouldn’t dare ask, not anymore, anyways’ and thinking i wanted to leave the door open. to me, it was a door completely open: it could have indeed been her first time, or she could have seen someone else (consensually) during that year, or she could have been assaulted. i honestly didn’t know but yeah, that was always a possibility in the back of my head.

then, to tell you the truth, when i wrote the first version of this chapter (the 12,000 words i mentioned earlier), it wasn’t there. i sat down and decided that i wasn’t going to go there. firstly, because, while you probably don’t know this, i’ve written about sexual assault before. my previous long fic, children, in another fandom, dealt (in part) with that. and i didn’t want to be the-fic-writer-who-writes-about-sexual-assault. especially because trust me, there are people who are a lot more legitimate to talk about this than i am. i also didn’t feel like it was necessary to the story, i could do without it and still explain ginny’s early behaviour in the fic, explain her trauma, and have harry realise the things i talked about before. secondly, i’ll be honest: i know this isn’t what people in this fandom want to read. the hinny pairing is mostly about love and fluff (which i love, btw, don’t get me wrong) and i was like, ugh, i don’t want to face the angry comments. i’m writing this a/n the morning before posting so i admittedly don’t know what the reaction will be but i do anticipate a lot of annoyance with me. i knew that a lot of people wouldn’t like it if i went there, and it was just easier not to.

but then, as i started editing, there was a comment (and this, ladies and gentlemen, is a testament to how much your comments fucking matter, okay?). a comment that i remembered reading on the previous chapter and could not get out of my head, no matter how much i tried. well, hello, @whizzfizz. i’ll happily give credit where credit is due. it read:

This made me think of something you mentioned earlier in the fic (possibly Ch1) about Harry not being sure if he was Ginny’s first but that it felt like it. I wonder if this is something that is going to come up in her letters to him.

and, so, it turned. around and around in my head, and i couldn’t get it out. and i kept saying to myself: no, you’re not going there. no, you’re not going there. and then, one night, i caved. i was like, fuck, i need to know if this person really meant what i think they meant by this. and so we talked. a lot. and, i did a lot of thinking. about women. about wars. about violence against women as a an inevitable weapon of war. about ginny being harry’s girlfriend, or ex-girlfriend (more on that later), and what that would have meant in their world. and @whizzfizz, you said something that in the end really sold me. you said: ‘at this point, i don’t think it would be realistic for it not to have happened.’ and, that was that, really.

because i was right, initially. amycus/ginny (ugh, the idea of a pairing makes me throw up in my mouth a little but yeah, there it is) isn’t necessary to the story. but i believe it to be necessary to what this story is trying to show. the plot held well without it, no questions asked. 12,000 words of the da and their battles, of ginny’s rebellions. it was fine. but i think i wanted more than fine. to me (and i appreciate how fucking pretentious that is, please slap me in the face *eyeroll*), castles is more than its plot. i’ve said it before and i’ll say it again: this is about what is behind ‘all was well.’ it’s about trying to paint a realistic picture of their lives. and that includes the war. and realistically, as far as i’m concerned, knowing how humans fight their wars, knowing our history and the history of violence against women construed as a weapon in literally every conflict there ever was, there is no way that this didn’t happen. ginny says it herself: for us girls, it’s just the way wars are fought.

so, i did go there. and the whole fandom probably hates me for going there, but i sort of stand by it, i have to say. to be honest, on a sort of subconscious level, i kind of wonder: didn’t i always know i was going to go there? like, this fits perfectly into the plot to the point that i think it was probably in my head for much longer than i care to admit. now, i’m so, fucking excited to write next chapter because i finally get to write happy things, and hinny getting back together on rock solid foundations of openness and sharing, and trust, and i’m so, so glad. there are a couple of scenes in the next chapter that i’ve been working towards for months and i’m so, bloody excited to write them. everyone might hate me and i might just be writing this fic for myself now (lol), but again, i stand by the decisions i took. to me, it fits.

phew. okay, now that huge thing is out of the way and explained, here are a few more jumbled thoughts:

the more i think about it, the more i think that my reason for not wanting to be the-fic-writer-who-writes-about-sexual-assault is a bit ridic. children and castles, in that way, are so, so different. like, i appreciate the overlap between the silk fandom and the hp fandom is probably ridiculously small but if you’ve read both stories, they’re obviously very different. one thing that both stories centre on, though, is consent. and to me, that’s probably the most interesting element of ginny/amycus, and the most interesting element of writing characters within a restrictive pov, rather than an omniscient one. like, do i think ginny/amycus is rape? yes. 100%. do i think that ginny thinks it’s rape? that is a much more interesting question. she says it a number of times but i think to her, this is all about control. i think that because of what happened to her with tom, she’s someone who is terrified of losing control of her mind and of her own agency. so as not to lose that, she’s willing to do whatever it takes. it is a ‘you can control my body, but not my thoughts,’ sort of narrative. and, she never says it outright because i think psychologically she’s just not there yet, but tom is everywhere in these letters. and as her world just spirals out, she hangs onto the very few things that she can control: her relationship to harry, and her willingness to do what it takes for them to survive. she initiates the ‘relationship’ with amycus in an attempt to control her fate. later, as she explains to harry she feels a lot of guilt over what she did, and like a lot of sexual assault survivors, she thinks it was her responsibility. because i’m in harry’s head most of the time for this fic, i’m not sure i’ll ever really get to discuss that at length, but it’s definitely something that i wanted to show. another interesting question is: does harry think it’s rape? i think at that point in the fic, he doesn’t have the education, nor the vocabulary for that. i think instinctively (because he is someone who is very instinctive), he doesn’t blame her. if he blames anyone, it’s probably himself. he understands the necessity to do what you have to do to survive and thinks that no, no matter what she claims, that was not consented. that’s kind of what comes out in his annoyingly inarticulate letter to her at the end. beyond that, though, i think he’s a bit lost, just like she is.

on a mildly related note, there is something that i've been seeing a lot in the comments and that i feel like i should maybe address? namely: harry's reaction to ginny dating other people. i assume similar comments will be made about his reaction to ginny/alecto (meaning that he still decides to write to her, at the end of the chapter). i've seen a lot of people observe that he's much more 'chill' about it in castles than in canon. fair point but is he, though? like, he isn't happy about it in castles. and he's jealous as well. but he was never entitled in canon. he was jealous, yes, the chest monster and all that, but he never really did anything about it, and never really impeded on her right to see other people. now, this being said, i agree that in sixth year he might have thrown a tantrum, had she done what she did in castles, but that was sixth year. it was before the war. before he lost half a dozen people. before he had to adult bloody fucking quickly. this being said, i do think castles-Harry is more 'subdued,' i suppose, than canon harry. this is a choice i made early on, which to me is related to the fact that he kind of lost his 'voice' during the war. i mean, it took him six months of people talking shit behind his back to do a press interview to defend himself. i think with ginny, it's a lot of the same. he's a boy who blames himself a lot, and generally doesn't particularly think he deserves the people in his life. to me it's an evolution of his character within the the world of castles. i'm happy to agree to disagree on it, but to me it makes sense within the character evolution and the way the fic's gone, so to speak. now, obviously, he'll grow out of that in due course, but we're not quite there yet.

regarding their relationship, now, i have to say: one headcanon that i did have for this was her not outright telling everyone they’d broken up. i’m sorry, that plan was shit. i just don’t buy for a second that she would willingly have gone ahead with it, and i don’t buy for a second that tom wouldn’t have used her had he known they’d been together, ex girlfriend or not. plus, i think she needed something to hand onto, and that was her relationship with him. her letters. the belief that they would be together again. without it, i don’t think she’d have survived. and i think that summer after the war, they were totally on the same page, for different reasons. both of them kind of saw their relationship as the one thing that kept them afloat, the one good thing they had, partly also because they’d idealised it for so long. she says it as some point, it wasn’t a relationship, it was a lifeline (another sentence i came up with as a response to a comment, lol) and while that is toxic and was meant to crumble at some point, it was necessary for them, both during the war, and in the early days after it. i think her last letter to him is painstakingly correct on that one.

regarding canon, i know i’m bending a couple of things here, which i just wanted to quickly acknowledge: 1) i know jkr has said it’s teddy remus lupin. i just can’t believe, for a moment, that someone who hated himself as much as lupin did, canonically, would name his son after himself. naming his son after his best mate who died to young to become problematic though? i totally see it. so yeah, creative licence, it’s teddy james lupin in this house, lol. 2) when they meet neville in dh, he kind of hints that they’ve only just started to use the room of requirement a couple weeks ago. the text however, only says they’ve only been staying in it full time a couple of weeks ago. i needed them to have somewhere where to meet with the da and stuff, so i bent that a bit. it’s not strictly canon, but it’s also not not canon, if that makes sense.

on seamus blowing things up and talking about eight hundred years of oppression? full disclaimer, while i am french, i have been living in ireland for long enough to become eligible for citizenship in less than six months (yay!). i know some people have said that seamus is a bit of a cliche in the books/films and all (the only irish character keen on blowing things up, haha *eyeroll*), but i actually kind of love it? like, the whole thing about the cranberries and zombie at the start of the fic has been in my head for much longer than i care to admit. i love the idea that there’s this whole muggle war going on at the exact same time that no one ever talks about and actually, i find the idea of wizarding ireland v. muggle ireland and the whole political structure fascinating. like, is wizarding ireland an independent state? what’s the story there? i have a whole seamus fic in my head, partially on this topic, that i might or might not write one day.

lastly, i know this may sound a bit weird but i need to say it: once i’d figured out what and how i was writing it, i bloody loved writing this chapter. first stylistically, i really wanted to mimic the style of how i’d written the magazine article in chapter 5 (i.e. not writing out the whole thing but writing out in text the excerpts that harry focused on) and i love how that turned out. i think it was a good way to balance her words and his, kind of merging them into one, big narrative. second, as a writer, it was so fucking interesting to write someone who knows how to write, which believe it or not i’d never done before. additionally, i loved the challenge of editing this because it was like: i’ve got to edit this, but not too much? i was very careful about modifying and polishing too much of ginny’s speech in the letters because i obviously wanted it to sound like someone who was just writing as the words came to her, without polishing the words, the punctuation, etc. like i usually would. i wanted her to have quirks (she says ‘you know?’ a lot) and i played with her capitalisation and punctuation a bit too. i know these aren’t necessarily noticeable details but it was definitely something that i thought about and that was very fun and interesting to write, as a format.

wow, okay. this was LONG but i think i have everything i wanted to say. if you’ve read all of this (whyyyyy?), thanks so much for sticking around. if you’ve got any questions, anything i didn’t address, do let me know, anon or not, my ask box is open. now, i would love to say i’m going to chill or something, but the truth is that i have to a) actually do a last read through of the fic, lol and b) put it out. this is what i get for writing the a/n before finishing the damn thing, i guess. i’ll rest tomorrow, lol.

lastly, in terms of next chapter, realistically, i’d say eight to ten weeks. i have a full time job now and also, writing this was fucking exhausting and i need to take time out for a bit before coming back to it with a fresh mind. i will be writing other stuff though, i promise. i have a couple of prompts to get to (thanks!!!) and a couple of other ideas so i will probably be posting in the meantime, just not castles.

lots of love,

p.

[winterrose527]

but I've never felt this way for no one

for @simple-aphorisms who gave me this delicious prompt. apologies, I went full feral.

I got my driver’s license last week, just like we always talked about…

If he had to guess, he had heard the opening lines to that song roughly 40 bajillion times. Ever since it had come out over the winter, every party he went to devolved into a raucous, off-key chorus no less than three times as everyone stopped what they were doing to sing that song.

He wasn’t going to lie. It was, for lack of a better, less cringey word, a bop. The first weekend it had come out, he’d listened to it a fair bit. The first time he’d ever heard it at a party, was because he had been the one to put it on.

So he got it. Olivia Rodrigo was a talent. Possibly the next Taylor Swift, though that was a debate he never wanted to get into or hear again after the Great War between Sansa and Theon that had lasted for seven days and eight long nights.

That being said, nothing, and he meant nothing – not even the day her full album had come out and he’d come out into the living room to see Jon and Theon crying to Enough for You – had prepared him for this car ride.

He was sitting in the back seat of Myrcella Baratheon’s Range Rover, Grey Wind sprawled out on top of him. His sister Sansa and her best friend Myrcella were in the front seat, where they had been for the last three hours as Myrcella drove them all back to school from Winterfell, where they’d gone for the long weekend.

Of those last three hours… no less than 2 hours and 45 minutes of it had been dedicated to Olivia Rodrigo. The lion’s share of it to this song.

Now he considered himself a patient man. He was possibly alone in this opinion, but nevertheless he did. But on the thousandth rendition of red lights! Stop signs! He’d lost it.

Not his temper, his mind.

Because the thing was. Myrcella Baratheon was singing at the top of her lungs. Putting her little heart into it.

It wasn’t like she had a bad voice or anything. In fact, she had a beautiful voice. The first time he’d ever heard it he’d gotten actual chills.

The trouble was, this was a song about a break up. And he was fairly certain they were still very much together.

He had, after all, woken up in her bed that morning. And what they’d done after that had given him every indication that they were together.

The thing was though, that’s all he had.

An indication. A feeling.

Okay, a lot of feelings. A mess of them.

These were the facts as far as he understood them.

Early on this semester, around the same time this blasted song had come out, he and Myrcella had been at a party. She’d come with some girls from the Art History program, he’d been there with a few guys from his rugby team. Sansa was nowhere to be found, and neither was Jon or Theon.

He’d seen her from across the room, standing with a couple of girls, and crossed over to her.

Myrcella Baratheon was just the sort of girl you had to cross a party for.

“You’re here!” she exclaimed, as though she’d been waiting for him all night.

“Where else would I be?” he asked.

“On the dance floor maybe,” she grinned.

“Doesn’t sound like me,” he grinned back.

And then her hand was in his, pulling it gently, her eyebrow raised, “Not even if I asked reeeeally nicely?”

So they’d danced. Things had gotten pretty messy. There was a sloppy dance floor make out, followed by a rather aggressive one up against the side of whatever house they were at. A cold walk back to his. His bedroom. Clothes removed. And then just her.

And ever since then it had sort of just continued on like that. They were always together, since her friends were his, and there were always more dance floors to make out on.

He and Myrcella had been having sex with regularity for the past two months, and as far as he knew, Myrcella didn’t do casual sex. But she was also the only girl in the known universe who didn’t press the what are we? talk.

Not only did she not press it, she seemed unconcerned with it entirely.

It was unnerving.

And now, here she was, singing her pretty little heart out to one of the best break up songs of all time with conviction.

“Sing it, Robby!” Sansa turned around.

“No,” he grunted.

Myrcella’s eye flicked to his briefly in the rearview as she banged on the steering wheel.

Sansa turned back around and pointed to a sign for a rest stop, “Oh can we go in there? I want a coffee.”

The last bars of the song played as Myrcella pulled in, dropping Sansa off in front of the complex.

“I’m going to fill up with gas,” she told Sansa who promptly ran inside and then glanced at him, “Are you going in?”

“So you can leave me here?” he asked.

She bursted out laughing as she drove to the gas pumps, “Well you have been rather grumpy but not enough to justify abandoning you on the side of the road just yet.”

Myrcella parked and turned off the car and he got out and slammed his door shut, undoing the gas cap.

“What are you doing?” she asked him. Suddenly she was next to him.

“You hate pumping gas,” he reminded her.

She was such a priss about things like that. It was so annoying and hot.

“You have a unique ability to be a complete ass and a total gentleman all at the same time,” Myrcella informed him, “Anyone ever tell you that?”

“Not lately,” he growled. Watching the numbers go up. Ignoring her fresh face and her golden curls pooling out of the neck of her cream fleece. “Because I am not dating anyone else. Are you?”

“How would I be dating anyone else?” she asked him, “I mean just logistically in your brain how would that work? Do I have a time machine? Oh because if I did have a time machine I would definitely use it for sex reasons. Because I’m Theon. You incredible asshat.”

“What did you just call me?” he asked, angrily closing the gas cap.

“An asshat,” she repeated, “Meaning your head is so far up your ass you are literally wearing it as a hat!”

“Why are you singing the song like that?!” he growled at her.

She bit her lip, “Well, because it’s an incredible song.”

“Are you singing it about someone?” he asked. “You were near to tears on the last one!”

“Well maybe,” she brushed her fingers up his chest, “I was thinking how I’d feel if you ever decided you didn’t want to be with me. Though that was before this conversation.”

His hands went to her waist, pulling her towards him, slipping underneath her fleece and t shirt to her bare, warm skin.

“You called me an asshat,” he told her.

She grinned, her arms looping around his neck, “Well you’re acting like one.” She laughed, “And I must be one too, because even when you’re a total asshat, I’m pretty sure I love you anyway.”

“Baby,” he lifted her up, nuzzling his nose against hers, “I know I’m not perfect, but I’ve never felt this way for no one.”

She laughed. Cackled. Her head thrown back, exposing her creamy neck that he couldn’t help but kiss even at a gas station.

“You do realize you just quoted Olivia Rodrigo, don’t you?” she asked.

He hadn’t realized that. Apparently after 40 bajillion listens it had somehow just come out.

“Well,” he teased, “She is the next Taylor Swift.”

“Oh no!” she wrestled out of his arms.

“What’s wrong?” Sansa asked as she came to them holding a tray with three coffees in it.

“We’re leaving Robb here,” Myrcella told her, “Say your goodbyes.”

“Myrcella!” he laughed.

“Why don’t you call Theon for a ride you reductive asshat!” Myrcella argued.

With that she started walking around the car and he chased after her, picking her back up and carrying her to the passenger seat.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“I’m driving,” he told her, “You’re too worked up. You’re being a little crazy.” And then he kissed her cheek, “But uh I love you anyway.”

He felt her grin even though she rolled her eyes as she buckled her seat. Sansa got in the back and he went around to the driver’s seat and got in. It took him a few minutes to adjust the seat because his girlfriend was teeny, and he used the time to plug his phone into the USB.

“Do you know what the best thing about being the driver is?” he asked them.

“What’s that?” Sansa asked from the back.

“You get to control the music,” he informed her.

And as he pulled away from the gas station, and the opening bars of Driver’s License came on through his phone, Myrcella Baratheon leaned over and kissed his cheek.

He’d forgotten how much he truly loved this song.

[sunsetinmyvein]

The Tension’s Overflowing P2

Surprise! If it wasn’t obvious, that wasn’t the end. :P Both @tooshhhy​ and @imagine-that-100​ sent me the same context of “ I’m drunk on public transport and you’re high and we both keep looking at each other knowingly” and the more I thought about it, the more I was like “Hm. I can make these link up.” which was why it was taken a ‘smidge in my own direction’ lol. So, here’s the second prompt from my fantastic prompt list. 

Part One

It hadn’t been a great idea to down that last drink before I left the bar. I didn’t feel nauseous (thankfully), but I sure as shit felt lightheaded. My co-workers had wanted to go out after work for a drink, since a bunch of us had the day off tomorrow. Which was nice, until it got late and they wanted to bail and head home for the night. I wasn’t going to waste half a pint that I’d paid for. That’s ridiculous. However, we’d been out since we knocked off, and it was nearly one in the morning now. That was a decent while to have been drinking. I probably should’ve allowed myself to waste that money and leave the half-drunk pint on the table. Because now, sat on the tube on the way home, having the carriage spin slightly every time I moved my head wasn’t an ideal situation. At least I could be grateful that it was fairly empty and I could wallow in my thoughts in peace and quiet. But that peace was short lived.

  I was snapped out of my drunken haze when a man got on at the next stop and sat across from me. His unruly curls were a fucking mess, his leather jacket looked well worn, and the sunglasses sitting on the bridge of his nose just came across as obnoxious. But that… that looked like Matty. His hair was different, and he didn’t usually have stubble adorning his chin like that, but I was about 98% sure that was Matty. He must’ve been high, or drunk, or something, there was no other reason that he’d be wearing such dark shades at this hour. Which was annoying because it meant that I couldn’t tell if he was looking at me or not. If he’d even recognised me or not. I hadn’t seen him in years. Despite that it was me who had suggested the distance between us, it had been him who ultimately enforced it. As tour took off and the full-length album came out, he was suddenly incredibly unavailable – even if I had wanted to hang out. Time differences and busy schedules meant that we lost touch, and things just… fizzled out. Ross was the only member of the band that I still kind of kept in contact with these days. I had all but forgotten about that drunken night where I passed out at his place. But now, being faced with the man in question, everything was being dredged up again. This was the absolute last place I wanted to be. As I sat there over analysing this development in my Wednesday night and progressively sobering up the more that I realised the situation, I was suddenly even more mortified when he got up and crossed the carriage.

  I shrank back in my seat as he sat next to me. “Hey.” He said quietly, without looking at me.

“Hi.” I mumbled back.

“Been keeping well?” He asked.

I just nodded, letting the silence linger for a second before deciding it was probably polite to ask him as well. After all, we were stuck here together and it was likely he wasn’t going to go away, if the things I knew about him still rung true. “You?”

“Pretty good, y’know, touring and stuff.” He said with a dry chuckle. “Things are pretty different these days.” He added with a shrug.

“I can imagine.” I agreed. This conversation made the whole damn train carriage feel stifling. Why would Matty have thought that this was going to be anything other than awkward when he came over here? He should’ve just left it. Should’ve just continued in awkward silence and left without saying a word. That would’ve been much easier on my brain. That would’ve been a million times-

  “I’m sorry.”

I stared at him in bewilderment as I tried to process those words. “What?” I asked, watching as he took his shades off and rubbed at his eyes.

“I’m sorry.” He muttered again. “For being a cocky prick when I was younger.”

He was apologising...? If I wasn’t fucking thrown for a loop by just seeing Matty after so long, having this conversation right now while half-cut was just making my brain reel. “Are you saying you’re not a cocky prick now?” I asked, again taking in the sunglasses, jacket, the overall look.

“No, I am.” He laughed with a nod. “I’m just more self-aware about it now.” And just like that, the awkward atmosphere broke away. I couldn’t help but laugh, which just made him laugh more. It all but echoed down the mostly empty train as I was reminded of hundreds of good times I had pushed to the back of my mind. When our laughter finally subsided, he nudged me with his shoulder. “I’ve missed the shit out of you, love.” I could smell the wine on his breath as he said that. He was a lot more drunk than what he was letting on.

I sighed deeply, feeling like I might regret my next words but being unable to stop myself saying them anyway, “I missed you too, Matty.”

  We caught up for a bit, mostly about the band and his life, as mine was nowhere near as interesting in comparison. The more we chatted, the more it suddenly felt like a slot of my life had clicked back into place. As the stops passed by outside the window, I realised I was now fairly close to where I needed to get off.

“Where are you even going?” I asked as I turned back to Matty. Last time I had been to his place, he lived nowhere near here - but that was years ago now.

“I, erm…” He stared out the window for a moment, squinting thoughtfully. “I don’t know.” He shrugged.

“How can you not know?” I asked with a loud laugh.

“Where are you going?” He shot back.

I frowned at him for dodging the question, but answered anyway, “Home.”

“Then that’s where I’m going.” He grinned.

My eyebrows shot up in surprise as I shook my head, “No way.”

“Yes way.” He argued.

  “I’ve not seen you in years and you want to come to my place?” I asked in shock, my words coming out quicker than I expected. “Where are you living these days?” I tried to press him, hoping he would at least give me a rough idea of where to relocate him. He just made the motion of zipping his mouth shut. “Come on, Matty.” I huffed with a roll of my eyes.

“I just won’t tell you where I live and then you have to take me back to yours.” He said defiantly as he crossed his arms, looking awfully proud of himself.

“I’ll get it off your licence.”

“What makes you think that I have it on me?” He asked confidently. “You gonna frisk me for it?” He smirked.

I just stared at him in disbelief, “You’re an idiot.”

“Yeah, maybe. But you love me.” He retaliated with a wink.

I felt an uncomfortable flutter in my chest as he said that, but was still too drunk to process it properly. “Yeah, don’t remind me.” I mumbled.

“Why not?” He asked, looking curious.

“Just stop talking or I will put you in a taxi and leave you there.” I threatened as I tried my best to look serious, but I had a feeling by the expression on Matty’s face that I had failed.

“I will never stop talking!” He boomed loudly. I was incredibly grateful that there was nobody else here for me to feel embarrassed in front of. “At least until I am sober enough to regret this tomorrow morning.” He added before standing up, wobbling slightly on his feet before grabbing a rail to steady himself. “Come on. This is your stop, yeah?”

  After quite a large amount of effort, I was able to escort the (as it so turned out) very drunk Matty to my front door. “Matty, you need to support some of your own weight.” I groaned as he leaned himself onto my shoulder. I wasn’t used to his hair being so wild and curly like this, it kept getting everywhere any time his head was near mine. He pushed himself away from me, steadying himself before taking a few steps. I watched as he went to walk up to my front door and instantly realised a potential issue. “Watch the steps.” I said, but he didn’t seem to register it. “The steps Matty, the steps-” I scrambled to stop him from breaking his nose on the pavement as he absolutely did not see the steps, proceeding to trip over them and plummet face first into the pavement. Thankfully, I was able to catch him just before the impact. He just laughed. “Fuck sake. Is this what it was like when you were trying to get me home?” I huffed as I managed to get him up all four steps and tried to find my keys.

“No, I just carried you.” He slurred drunkenly into my shoulder.

“What..?” I frowned to myself. That didn’t ring any bells and I thought I would’ve remembered something like that.

“I just carried you.” He repeated.

“No, I heard you. Why?” I corrected.

“You fell asleep on the bus and I didn’t wanna wake you up, so I mostly just carried you back.” He explained as I pushed the door open. The thought of that was a lot more endearing than I expected it to be.

  Matty instantly hauled himself off my shoulder and stepped inside as soon as he could.

“I like what you’ve done with the place.” He commented as he walked into the kitchen.

“I’ve accumulated a lot of shit since you were here last.” I agreed. He poured himself a glass of water and continued snooping around. I watched as he poked through my bookshelf, moved his way onto my records, and eventually stopped in front of the TV cabinet as he crouched down to examine the DVDs at the bottom. It was surreal to see Matty in my flat again. I didn’t expect in a million years that this was likely to happen. “So, you want me to get you a blanket or..?” I prompted, feeling keen to go to bed since it was now well past one in the morning.

“Aw, we’re not gonna hang out?” He pouted.

“Not at this hour, no.” I chuckled.

“But I want to.” He whined, pushing himself back onto my lounge room rug and staring at the ceiling.

“And I want to sleep.” I argued.

  “We’ve not hung out in years.” He continued, opting to ignore me.

“We can another day.” I assured him as I draped a blanket over the side of the couch.

He just groaned loudly, sitting in silence for a few moments as I watched his mild tantrum in amusement. “Fine.” He eventually sighed.

“Everything is still in the same spot if you need anything.” I said as he pulled himself up off the floor.

“And you?” He asked.

“What?” I frowned back, confused as to what he was getting at.

“Will be..?” He raised an eyebrow in question.

“In my room..?” I offered. He nodded to himself as I said that, looking pensive as his gaze flicked from my bedroom door back to the couch. I waited for him to say something else, but it looked like the gears in his head were turning as he tried to figure something out. “All right, well… Good night.” I said with a nod.

“See you in the morning, love.” I heard him call out in a sing-song voice after me. I was grateful to still be drunk enough to not overthink that upcoming situation too much.

  * * *

  Memories came flooding back as soon as I woke up the next morning. Right, there was a man presumably still asleep on my couch. A man that I used to have many, many feelings for. This was not how I expected to spend my day off. I was grateful that I hadn’t been too drunk this time to have patchy recollection – this time, I remembered everything that I had said. Whether Matty remembered everything that he said… that was going to be another story. I hadn’t heard him throwing up throughout the night, so perhaps he had already bailed. It wouldn’t surprise me. Gradually, I got myself presentable and slowly made my way out into the lounge room. I heard Matty before I saw him, his loud snores emanating from the couch. Stepping quietly around it I took in the sight before me. Matty looked like a mess. His curly hair was all over the place, he had drooled onto the couch pillow he was lying on, he had one shoe still on while the other was near the coffee table, a leg half kicked over the back of the couch, it was truly something to behold. And thus, something I couldn’t resist snapping a quick picture of and sending it to Ross before he had the chance to sort his hungover self. As I stood at the edge of the kitchen, texting Ross about where his friend had ended up, a particularly loud snort caught my attention. I looked up, seeing Matty frowning in his sleep and then sleeping beauty’s eyes snapped open. He quickly squinted as he took in the light in the room, before spotting me watching him.

  “Why are you looking at me like that?” He groaned as he rolled over and pressed his face into the back of the couch.

“Why are you on my couch?” I shot back as I slipped my phone into my pocket.

Matty paused for a moment at that, sitting up slightly as he looked down at the couch. “Why the fuck am I on your couch..?” He questioned quietly. Looking up for a moment, he took in his surroundings. “Your place looks different.” He noted.

“You came back here last night because you refused to give me your own address.” I informed him. He just groaned again.

“Sorry.” He mumbled.

“It’s fine.” I chuckled, grabbing a new glass of water and trading it out for the half-drunk old one sitting by the foot of the couch.

  “Why were you even on the tube last night?” I asked as I sat down in the recliner beside him.

He pinched the bridge of his nose as he sat up properly, “Uh… I was out with a mate, and that was where he had to go so I kind of just… got on? I guess?” He answered, sounding incredibly unsure of his explanation.

“You didn’t have a mate with you..?” I questioned, suddenly wondering if Matty had really been that drunk to have imagined getting on a train with someone.

“No, no, he was on the other line.” He elaborated. “I just felt like I should get on too, I suppose.” He laughed drily. “Glad I did, in hindsight. Who knows where I would’ve ended up had I not bumped into you.”

“Probably passed out in that carriage, still slumped into that seat.” I smirked at him.

“Would’ve woken up cuddling with some homeless guy.” He grinned back, then instantly winced. “You got any coffee?” He asked quietly. “And maybe some paracetamol?”

“Yeah, give me a minute.”

  Once he had a coffee in his hand and some painkillers in his stomach, Matty seemed a bit more ready to face the day. For how drunk he had appeared last night, I expected him to have been more hungover today, but he looked fairly well composed. I switched the TV on to offer some background noise as he drank his coffee, but as soon as there was any new stimulus in the room Matty found himself with a million thoughts to get out of his head about whatever was playing. It was good to know that some things never changed. The more we spoke, the easier it was to fall into familiar habits of hanging out in each other’s company. He had gotten up just before eleven, but now it was fast approaching five, and I hadn’t heard him mention anything about going home.

“How you feeling?” I asked as Matty came back from the bathroom.

“Huh?” It looked like he took a second to comprehend what I meant. “Oh, fine.” He shrugged.

“Not hungover?” I frowned.

“Nah, been okay since the coffee.” He said with a dismissive wave of his hand as he flopped back onto the couch next to me.

“Then… why are you still hanging around?” I asked in confusion. It didn’t seem to make sense if he was feeling well enough to go home that he was still sat in my lounge.

“Because I want to hang out with my friend.” He said like it was the most obvious thing in the world. “You said we could another today - today is another day.” He added as he wrapped an arm around me and pulled me into his side.

  That took me aback for a second, both for the sudden intimacy and because that meant that he remembered the small details of what was said last night. I had dismissed his apology for the most part, given how drunk he seemed then. But maybe there was more to it than drunken ramblings. “Yeah… I did…” I said apprehensively, unsure if I wanted to start the line of questioning that was on the tip of my tongue. “You remember everything you said on the train?”

“Yeah. Of course.” He nodded.

“You say that but you seemed pretty drunk. I wouldn’t have expected you to remember much.” I argued.

“I remember important things, even when wasted.” Matty countered with a pointed look.

“Important?” I questioned immediately.

“Getting to see you after so long and finally apologise, that was pretty important to me.” He elaborated as he ran a hand through his curls.

“It was?”

“Of course, it was!” He said instantly. The tone of his voice almost sounded offended that I’d even ask. “I also remember nearly giving myself a concussion. Thanks for stopping that.” He chuckled.

  “Yeah, uh, it’s no problem.” I mumbled. What he was saying was just raising more questions than providing answers. “So, you meant everything you said then? About missing me?” I continued.

“Sure did.”

“You miss me?” I felt like my thoughts were just spiralling deeper and deeper for each thing that he said. I hadn’t properly allowed myself to think about Matty in years, but now it was just all flooding back. I had missed him, a lot more than I let myself realise.

He let out a deep sigh as he moved away slightly, turning on the couch to face me. “I can see myself falling into old habits if we continue like this, so let me explain. I didn’t mean to come across like I did when you admitted your feelings. I was an idiot, you caught me off guard, I didn’t know what to say so I just defaulted to what was easy to say. I genuinely hadn’t ever thought about it, it hadn’t crossed my mind that you thought of me that way. You asked for space, so I wanted to give that to you. Then I just… got pulled away from it all. But in hindsight I should’ve made more of an effort to stay in touch and make sure we were on the same page. Because the more I was away from you, the more I realised I missed you a lot more than I expected myself to. Turned out I probably did return your feelings. That hit me pretty hard last night when I saw you. It took me a few minutes to work up the courage to come over and say sorry, because you had every right to tell me to fuck off.”

  Matty watched me intently, clearly awaiting my reaction, but this was just all too much to take in at once. This made things back then, now seem very different. This made things last night, now seem very different. “You… you were into me?” I finally spluttered in bewilderment.

“Stop questioning everything I say.” He laughed. “I don’t say shit I don’t mean.” I made a thoughtful noise as I tried to make sense of this. If he was into me then, did that mean he was still into me now? Is that why he was so hellbent on spending time together last night? Everything I had pushed under the metaphorical rug in my brain was now quickly ripped back out and cluttering up my mind floorspace. “Do you have an opinion on any of this?” He prompted.

I stared at him for what felt like a solid minute before one thought finally floated to the top of the pile of junk. “I really, really want to kiss you right now.”

He looked surprised for a second, his gaze flicking to the space on the couch between us before he looked back up at me with a devious look. “Then maybe you should.”

  Don’t overthink it. Don’t overthink it. Don’t overthink it. I pushed myself forward on the couch, grabbing a fistful of his jacket and pressing my lips to Matty’s in such urgency that I nearly missed. My brain stopped after that, unable to remember what I was meant to do in this situation other than make the initial move. I had had enough willpower to kiss him, but didn’t have enough to take the lead. Thankfully, Matty was willing to take the initiative for me. As soon as his hand found my waist, as soon as he kissed me back, the feeling of excitement at the reciprocation shot right through me. I brought my hand up to sit in curls at the base of his neck as the overly rushed kiss started to find its pace. This moment had played on my mind for years. How this would feel, how it would play out, if Matty would be a good kisser. It turned out that I couldn’t have predicted how unbelievable it would feel to kiss him, no matter how hard I tried. My stomach twisted as he deepened the kiss, suddenly feeling far too many years of pining getting expressed all at once. It was odd feeling his stubble brush against my chin, that hadn’t been something I had accounted for all the times I had imagined this. His hand brushed against the small of my back, leaving my skin feeling like it was practically tingling where he touched. I let out a jagged breath, trying to piece my shattered mind back together for a second.

  “Fuck me.” I breathed in exasperation, moving back slightly from him.

“Really?” Matty asked a little too eagerly as he planted a kiss on my neck.  

“No, Matty.” I laughed, trying to keep my voice steady despite his teasing. “I just… this is… ridiculous.” I muttered.

“In a good way?” He asked in a voice that sent a shiver down my spine.

“In a very good way.” I answered bluntly. “I just can’t believe I waited, what? Three years? To do this.” I explained.

“Well, I’ve got plenty of time to make up for what we lost.”