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calumcest · 4 years ago

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i know we’re gonna uncover what’s sleeping in our soul

[ao3]

so! my fic exchange fic for the absolutely lovely @lifewasradical who had the most brilliant reader profile i have to say you are truly so big brain in your preferences (perhaps because they overlap with mine no i am not biased). thank you so much to @allsassnoclass for hosting this you are wonderful and i adore you

thank you to bella and ainslee for listening to me chat shit about this fic and to my anonymous friend for also patiently listening and encouraging me and also telling me to stop fucking writing i need to hear that shit

The most exciting thing about Luke’s twenty-first birthday is the same as everyone else’s.

On a person’s twenty-first birthday, they get access to their soulmate.

The most exciting thing about Luke’s twenty-first birthday is the same as everyone else’s.

On a person’s twenty-first birthday, they get access to their soulmate. At least, in theory. In practice, it’s a little more complicated - most people’s soulmates aren’t exactly the same age as them, so some people have to wait a few years, and some people find out they haven’t got a soulmate, and a small handful of people find out their soulmate has already passed away. It’s a complicated process that’s built up over generations - when Luke’s grandparents were younger, it was still the norm for governments to inform people of the identity of their soulmate on their twenty-first birthday, but privacy and mental health concerns in recent years following a few nasty high-profile situations where people discovered their soulmates were serious criminals led to the passing of international legislation restricting access to the information. Now, the only way a person can find their soulmate is by writing to them, or the dreaded letter that arrives the day after their twenty-first birthday informing them that their soulmate has predeceased them.

Luke’s sort of the baby in his circle, so he’s the last to find out. His brothers are both older and so by the time Luke really understood the system they’d already found their soulmates; Alex and Jack had already known they were soulmates when Luke had met them, also being a few years older; and when Calum had woken up on his twenty-first birthday to see it best be you, dickhead scrawled on his arm in Michael’s messy handwriting it had only really been a formality, confirming what everyone already knew.

Luke, though, has no idea who his soulmate could be. There’s no one he’s ever felt that alleged special affinity with, no matter how hard he’s tried to force it. He’s never felt entirely safe with someone, the way that Ben describes it, never felt at home with someone, the way that Michael describes it, never felt at peace, like, deep in your soul, like the universe is balanced just right around you the way that Calum describes it. He has felt the desire to punch people in the throat before, as Alex and Jack both describe it, but he thinks that’s probably more of a them problem than it is a universal experience.

And it’s not that Luke’s particularly unusual in that - the vast majority of people don’t know who their soulmate is before their birthdays. Ben and Jack both had to fly to different countries to meet theirs, and Alex and Jack had been on opposite sides of the USA, and the way Michael talks about it, Quakers Hill would seem to be on a different continent to Mount Druitt. It’s what Luke tells himself every time he looks in the mirror at four in the morning, alcohol and often something else swimming through his veins, and sees the fear of what if I’ll be one of the lonely ones? etched into the cloudy blue of his eyes. You’ll be fine. Almost no one knows their soulmate before their twenty-first birthday. Lots of people don’t even know them then. You’re not even twenty-one yet; just be patient.

Except, now he is twenty-one.

It’s two minutes past midnight, and Luke’s sat on his bed, already a little buzzed, Michael and Calum flanking him, pen poised over his inner forearm. This is how it works - as soon as the clock ticks over to midnight on a person’s twenty-first birthday, their soulmate (if they’re already over twenty-one) is accessible. And the way to communicate is by writing to them. Luke still isn’t quite sure how it works, because it just does, so he’s never questioned it, but what one soulmate writes on their skin appears on the other’s, like a temporary tattoo. It fades after a few hours, but it’s usually there long enough for the person to notice; after all, who wouldn’t spot a new hi, hello, or the odd grocery shopping list appearing on their hand or arm?

“What do I say?” Luke says, a little nervously.

“Just say hi,” Calum suggests, and Michael scoffs. “What?” Calum says, turning to Michael and raising an eyebrow. “You got a better idea?”

“Well, it’s not very original, is it?” Michael says haughtily.

“It doesn’t have to be original, Mike, it just has to work,” Calum says.

“Okay, but what if it doesn’t work because it’s not original?” Michael says. Luke’s grip on the pen tightens.

“Who’s going to reject their soulmate because they said ‘hi’?” Calum points out. Michael crosses his arms, and shrugs.

“I would’ve,” he says.

“Only because you knew it was me.”

“Yeah, and?”

“Guys,” Luke says, anxiety leaking into the edges of his tone, and the two of them start a little, like they’ve just remembered he’s there.

“Just say hello,” Calum says.

“Hello?” Michael echoes. “What is he, some eighteenth century English lord? Say ‘hi’, Luke, or ‘hey’.”

“What, you can’t say ‘hello’ now?” Calum demands. “Anyway, it’s the principle, alright? Just greet them. It doesn’t have to be the best introduction in the world.” Yeah, Luke thinks. Yeah, that makes sense, right? It doesn’t have to be stellar; it’s just got to be something. So he nods, takes a deep breath, and lets the pen touch his skin.

Hi.

The word sits on his skin like everything he’s ever written on it before, doesn’t sink in or dissolve or do a little jig. Luke hadn’t been expecting it to - after all, he’s seen enough soulmates write things to their partners - but it looks just like when he used to hastily jot down his homework for the day because he’d forgotten his planner again, and it’s oddly underwhelming. It doesn’t look - or feel - like something he’s been anticipating for years is happening, despite the butterflies in his stomach. It looks a little lonesome.

“Well?” Michael asks impatiently.

“It’s been thirty fucking seconds, Mike, Jesus Christ,” Calum says, swigging from his beer.

“So?” Michael says, craning his neck to look at Luke’s arm. “Punctuality is an important quality in a partner, you know.” Calum scoffs incredulously, and Michael scowls. “Except if your partner is me. I have enough incredible traits to make up for it.” Calum just throws him a slightly-fond-but-mostly-exasperated look, and turns back to Luke, who’s still staring at his arm.

“Maybe they live in a different timezone,” Calum suggests. “Or maybe they’re younger than you.”

“Maybe,” Luke allows, and puts his arm back down on his lap, but doesn’t stop staring at it. “Maybe they’re busy.”

“Maybe,” Calum agrees.

“Maybe we should finish these fucking beers,” Michael says pointedly, and Luke finally tears his gaze away from his arm and over to Michael, who’s gesturing at the crate they’d lugged upstairs (‘they’ being Calum and Michael, because Luke refuses to lift anything heavier than a book). He’s got a point - it’s Luke’s birthday, and there’s a slim chance of his soulmate replying immediately, so he might as well enjoy himself.

“Alright,” Luke says, reaching for another bottle. “But don’t you fucking pussy out on me at two in the morning again.”

“What the fuck?” Michael demands indignantly, also reaching for a bottle. “When have we ever done that?”

-------

At two a.m., when Calum and Michael have stumbled blearily into bed together, Michael curling around Calum as they drifted off to sleep, Luke’s sat up in bed, staring at his arm. It still only says hi, and Luke’s trying to focus his alcohol-addled mind as much he can to will it to say more, to say hey, I’ve been waiting for you underneath Luke’s writing, but nothing changes.

And logically, Luke knows there are countless explanations as to why he hasn’t heard anything from his soulmate yet, least of which is that it’s only been a couple of hours. There’s a high chance his soulmate is younger than him, or asleep, or just busy, and a slim chance that they could be- well. Luke doesn’t want to think about that. It’s just- Luke’s been wanting this for years, always daydreamed about his soulmate, about the colour of their eyes and the sound of their laugh and the warmth of their touch. He’s conjured fantasy after fantasy in his mind about how his twenty-first birthday would go, about how he’d meet his soulmate and immediately fall in love, about the comfort and safety and fulfilment he would feel. Because that’s the whole thing about soulmates; they’re made for you, made to fill in the gaps in your soul that you can’t even see, and as Luke blinks at the single word written on his arm, a word that feels like it needs completing somehow, he realises he might want that more than he’d realised.

After a good ten minutes of staring and trying to engage any telepathy he may have, Luke decides that if his soulmate isn’t going to add anything, Luke’s going to have to do it himself. So he reaches for a pen, thinks for the briefest of seconds before a slightly-drunken thought tells him just introduce yourself, tell them about yourself, and he writes:

My name is Luke. It’s my twenty-first birthday today. I live in Sydney, Australia, and I have two brothers and a dog. What’s your name?

It reads like one of his French oral exams at school that he barely passed, but Luke’s satisfied with it, capping the pen and setting it aside. It’s good to give a bit more information, right? Surely his soulmate will appreciate more than just a hi, will be more likely to reply if they know a little more about him. Plus, he’s asked a question, and it’s only polite to respond to a question, isn’t it? They’ll be trapped into responding by social etiquette, if they’re of age.

Yeah, he thinks, satisfied, as he rolls over on his side and lets his heavy eyes fall shut. If his soulmate is old enough, he’ll have heard back by the morning.

-------

When Luke wakes up to the sun streaming through his window - fuck, they forgot to shut the curtains last night - he momentarily forgets what day it is, too focused on swearing under his breath and squeezing his eyes shut, debating whether it’s worth getting up to shut the curtains or not. He decides it is, and heaves himself out of bed, and as he’s padding over to the curtains, arms already outstretched, he sees two lines of text on his arm.

Luke had written more than two lines. He’d written a few, all bunched together in a long paragraph. And this handwriting is bigger than Luke’s, more confident, more assertive.

It’s his soulmate.

Luke stops dead, twisting his arm around so fast he thinks he might have given himself a Chinese burn, heart beating so fast that it’s all he can hear, and reads.

I’m sorry. I don’t want to be your soulmate.

And then, like an afterthought added reluctantly in a smaller script underneath: Happy birthday.

Luke stares at the words, reading them over and over, each hastily scribbled scratch of the pen like a tiny needle in his heart; not quite enough to tear it apart entirely, but enough to make it ache and leak.

So he has a soulmate. A soulmate who doesn’t want him back.

It doesn’t make sense, he thinks, a little disoriented, stumbling back towards his bed and reaching for the pen he’d left on his bedside table almost on autopilot. Luke’s soulmate doesn’t even know him. How can they not want to be his soulmate? What did he do wrong? How can he have ruined something that’s predestined, something that’s fated to happen?

What? he writes back. The ink is harsh black on his pale skin, dug too deep into the flesh of his arm, sitting on top of his skin rather than underneath it like the words from his soulmate - some kind of sick symbolism, maybe, Luke thinks dazedly. An impenetrable layer between them, and it’s his own skin and bone. He’s heard of people not wanting their soulmates, but only after meeting them, or finding out that they’ve committed some horrible crime, or something of the sort. He doesn’t know of anyone who doesn’t want their soulmate before meeting them.

“Hey,” Calum says suddenly and sleepily, clearing his throat and making Michael groan, stirring in his arms. “Did they write back yet?” Luke blinks, swallowing around a dry mouth.

He could lie. He could pull his sleeve down and say nah, not yet, and Calum would hum noncommittally and say sorry, mate, keep trying, I guess, and that would be it. He could keep it to himself, wouldn’t have to admit to those around him that somehow, he’s managed to turn his soulmate away from him before they even know him, that while they’re all in happy relationship with their soulmates, he’s managed to fuck his up before it began.

But on the other hand, he doesn’t know how long he could keep up that lie, because people would keep asking from time to time, and keeping it to himself feels like it would slowly eat at him from the inside out, teeth digging into the fabric of his soul and tearing it into even smaller pieces, and so he swallows, and says: “Yeah.” His voice is thick and wobbly, and it makes Calum’s brow crease, makes him struggle to sit upright leaning on his elbows, ignoring Michael’s noises of protest.

“What?” Calum asks, sounding concerned. “What’s wrong?” Luke wants to cry.

“I-” he starts, and then stops. He doesn’t think he can say the words aloud. Instead, he holds out his arm, sleeve still rolled up, and watches as Calum’s eyes flit over the words, then looks away quickly as he sees Calum’s expression shift from concern to pity.

“Oh, Luke,” he says softly, and now Luke doesn’t want to cry but can’t stop it, can’t help the tears that are pricking at his eyes, forcing him to swipe at them hastily before they can fall.

“I don’t get it,” Luke says, a little numbly. “I- how can they not- they don’t even know me.”

“I know,” Calum says, shoving Michael off him and swinging his legs out of the bed they’re sharing. “Oh, Luke. I’m so sorry.” But Luke doesn’t want Calum to be sorry. He wants his soulmate to want him back. Was it the stilted introduction? Maybe Michael was right; maybe Luke should have thought of a more striking opener, should have mentioned some interesting facts about himself, come up with something flirtatious and witty and suave. Maybe his soulmate took one look at Luke’s nervous, awkward introduction and thought nah, fuck that, I’d rather be alone than have this guy as my soulmate.

“I should’ve said something better,” Luke says quietly, letting himself be pulled into Calum as he sits down next to him and puts a warm, strong arm around Luke’s shoulder. “Michael was right.”

“Oh, fuck Michael,” Calum says, with feeling, and Michael opens one eye a crack.

“Wha’ve I done?” Michael mumbles, and then, like he’s just remembered what day it is, he shoots bolt upright in bed, eyes wide and excited. “Oh, fuck, did they reply, Luke? Did they say something? What did they say, was it-”

“Mike,” Calum says warningly, and shoots Michael a look that Luke doesn’t need to be his soulmate to understand - shut the fuck up, Jesus, read the fucking room. Michael falters, and then frowns.

“What happened?” he says, a little fiercely. “Are they a dickhead?”

“Yeah,” Calum says. “A proper cunt.”

“Hey,” Luke protests weakly, and Calum’s arm around him tightens.

“What did they say?” Michael asks. Luke hesitates, swallows, and then holds his arm out.

“Hang on, I need my-” Michael says, fumbling around on the bedside table for his glasses, and then swears when he realises they’re covered in fingerprints, wiping them hastily on his t-shirt before shoving them on his nose and squinting at the writing on Luke’s arm. He reads the words at least three times, going from a frown to a clenched jaw, and then looks up at the two of them, green eyes ablaze behind his glasses.

“What the fuck?” he demands, and whips his glasses off. “What the fuck?”

“I know,” Calum agrees, stroking Luke’s bicep. “It’s fucked up.”

“They don’t even know you. All you said was ‘hi’.” Luke bites his lip.

“I wrote a bit more,” he says. “After you went to bed. I just- just introduced myself. Said it was my birthday, I live in Sydney, have two brothers and a dog.”

“Alright, so all you did was fucking introduce yourself,” Michael corrects, leaning into his anger. “What the fuck sort of reason could they have for saying that?”

“Mike,” Calum says gently, and Michael’s gaze turns to him for a moment and then softens in understanding.

“Sorry, sorry,” he says. “I just- fuck. I’m sorry, Luke.” He sets his glasses aside, gets up and sits on Luke’s other side, wrapping his arm around Luke’s waist, and that’s too much for Luke - he starts crying in earnest, big, ugly sobs that come from the frayed patches of his soul that feel like they’ll never be stitched together because the needle doesn’t want to play ball. Michael and Calum just cradle him through it, whispering soothing words, humming quietly, pressing soft kisses to his shoulders and temples and forehead as they rub gentle circles on his skin. It’s enough to stave off some of the desperate longing leaking from the pinpricks in his heart, enough to give him a little splutter of a spark in his veins that reminds him hey, you still have people who love you. It’s not enough enough, and Luke vaguely thinks it never quite will be, but it’s enough to stem the flow of tears, to make him sniff and ask for a tissue through a thick throat, to make him clear his throat and try on a watery smile.

“D’you want us to tell your parents?” Calum asks quietly, taking Luke’s snotty, tear-stained tissue from him and setting it on the bedside table. Fuck, Luke thinks, as a fresh wave of tears brim in his eyes. He’s got to tell everyone else, now, too. Over and over, telling person after person yeah, my soulmate doesn’t want me. My soulmate doesn’t want me.

“No,” Luke says, even though he does want Michael and Calum to tell his parents. “I- I should tell them.”

“Okay,” Calum says gently.

“Can you-” Luke cuts himself off, biting his lip. Michael and Calum just wait, though, so Luke bids the scraps of his dignity farewell, and mumbles: “Can you tell Alex and Jack, though?” He feels both Calum’s and Michael’s arms tighten around him, feels Michael pressing a kiss to Luke’s shoulder as Calum says yeah, mate, of course we can. Of course.

(Happy birthday, the words underneath the line etched into Luke’s skin telling him I don’t want you say, now wet with the tears dripping from Luke’s cheeks onto his sleeves. Yeah, Luke thinks bitterly. Happy fucking birthday to him.)

-------

Telling everybody is exactly as painful as Luke had anticipated.

He manages to tell his family in one go, because they ask over his birthday dinner, and he almost manages not to cry into the stunned silence as he says it, only breaking when Ben sighs sadly and pulls Luke into his chest for a tight hug. Alex and Jack call around four to ask him whether he’s finally going to get laid (what, Lex, that’s literally how you wish someone a happy twenty-first birthday, what’s your fucking problem), and Luke makes big, wide eyes at Calum, who throws a quick glance at Michael, who snatches the phone out of Luke’s hands and hastily walks out of the room, whispering something fiercely with a knitted brow and his hand cupped over the receiver. When he comes back in and hands the phone back to Luke, Alex and Jack have switched tack completely, all attempts at normalcy and breeziness mitigated by the oddly gentle, hesitant tones to their voices. Luke hates it, hates the pity and the microscope he feels like he’s under, the fact that he’s done the whole thing wrong somehow before even starting it, so he mumbles his excuses and hangs up on them as soon as he can, lying back on the sofa and staring blankly up at the ceiling.

The first few weeks are almost equally bad - Luke just wants to forget about it all, pretend that everything is normal outside of his own head, make-believe that his world hasn’t had a harsh spotlight shone on it showing the cracks in the façade he’s been admiring as though it were worthy of the Louvre, but everyone’s walking on eggshells around him, whispering whenever he leaves a room and stopping abruptly as soon as he comes in, or throwing him concerned and pitying looks. He hates it, hates that his mum will come into his room every evening and ask him too-casually how his day’s been, hates that Calum and Alex will ask him how he’s doing and look too sad when he says he’s fine, hates that Jack and Michael will bluntly tell him fuck someone else, forget about them. He just wants things to be normal again, doesn’t want the constant reminder that even the person made for him doesn’t want him swelling up in his lungs and choking him day in, day out.

He does a lot of research in those first few weeks. The majority of the results are about soulmate pairings where one person has moral qualms with the other, and a smaller group are about pairings where one partner only sees a platonic future where the other wants a romantic future - those are rare, though, as the system is designed to take these preferences into account - and it’s only on Luke’s second week of searching that he finds something, a tiny footnote at the bottom of an article about being soulmates with a serial killer. Choosing love, it says, and when Luke clicks on the link it opens up an ancient-looking website that says Choosing love: soulmates and the autonomous self.

It’s not a long article, and it’s riddled with spelling mistakes, but the gist of it seems to be that the author thinks the soulmate system is fucked up in principle, not in practice - they readily acknowledge that their soulmate is perfect for them, but resent the idea of having love assigned to them. It brings in ideas of free will raised by such authors as- and then Luke stops understanding, eyes glazing over as he reads metaphysical libertarianism and fatalism and compatibilism. So maybe this is what Luke’s soulmate’s problem is, Luke thinks, rereading the first few paragraphs that he actually understood. But it doesn’t make any fucking sense - why would someone try and choose someone that might not be right for them, when the right person is at their fingertips?

(He asks one night, after a few too many hours alone with his thoughts. Why don’t you want to be my soulmate? But it, like everything he’s written over the past month since his birthday, goes unanswered.)

Luke tries to reach out a few more times over the next few weeks, with varying degrees of success. His soulmate is completely unresponsive when Luke asks where they live, or how old they are, or what they do for a living, or what they look like.

Can you at least tell me your name? he asks once. No response.

Okay, what about your initials? he asks the next day. Again, no response.

One initial? he tries, the day after that. Please. Just your first initial. Maybe it’s the ‘please’ that does it, or maybe Luke’s soulmate is just sick of being asked the same question three days in a row and doesn’t want to get half a letter? Write it in code? tomorrow, but when Luke wakes up the next morning there’s a tiny, slightly-smudged A written underneath where he’d asked for the initial.

That’s the last Luke hears from his soulmate.

For a while, he writes a few times a day, tries to say something witty or something clever or something interesting. He tells A about his job, tells them about how frustrating it is to have Jack as his co-worker and Alex as his boss (because seriously, Jack should be fired at least four times an hour, and he’s fairly sure your boss being your soulmate violates a fair few codes of conflict of interest), tells them about Michael and Calum and how he sort of wishes he’d gone to university like they did. A never responds, and so after a while Luke gets self-conscious and stops writing so often, just checks in once a day in the evening to give A a roundup of the previous twenty-four hours. Luke figures the person doesn’t care, probably won’t read it, but it’s like a more cathartic version of a diary, one that has the possibility of being read and talking back, however slim the probability may be. Every evening, just before he goes to bed, he rounds up his day, vents to A about Jack breaking a bass in the shop again, laments that he doesn’t get to see Michael and Calum as often as he’d like to, talks about the regulars who come in like clockwork for their guitar strings, muses about whether he should get up early and get a coffee on the way to work tomorrow or whether he should get as much precious sleep as he can. He fills his arm from left to right, twisting it all the way around until he has to hold the pen at such a strange angle that he can barely control it, getting out all his thoughts and grievances and little things he’s observed that day, and when he wakes up in the morning, his arm is completely empty again. A never writes back, never even indicates that they’ve seen or read Luke’s ramblings, but they never tell him to stop it, either. And while that probably doesn’t mean anything, it doesn’t not mean anything, either, and that’s as good as Luke figures it’s going to get for him. Plus, it becomes so ingrained in Luke’s daily routine that he barely even notices he’s doing it, and he sort of thinks getting a response might throw him off a bit.

(One night, so drunk he can barely stand, Luke scrawls I wish you wanted me. I wish I didn’t have to be alone. It’s gone when he wakes up the next morning, but there’s a tiny pen marking underneath where it had been, like A had gone to write something and then thought better of it.)

A week or so after that incident, Luke’s just taking out his earphones, still humming along to the song he’d been listening to as he shoulders the door to the shop open, when Jack appears right in front of his face, making him jump and drop his phone.

“Jesus Christ,” Luke mutters, picking his phone up from the floor and inspecting it for damage he can sue Jack for.

“Glad you noticed,” Jack says. “Come to the back room.” Luke stops, and narrows his eyes.

“What for?” he says suspiciously.

“What do you mean, what for?” Jack says, sounding a little affronted. “Don’t you trust me?”

“No.”

“Well, we need to fix that. We should do a team bonding day,” Jack says, just as Alex walks around the corner. “Hey, Lex, d’you think me and Luke can do a team bonding day?”

“A team bonding day?” Alex echoes, raising an eyebrow. “I thought torture was illegal in Australia.”

“That’s true,” Jack agrees placidly. “I’m not sure I can spend a whole day with Luke.” Luke scowls, aiming a kick at Jack’s ankle, just as Alex passes by and says: “I was talking about you, idiot.”

“I’m a fucking pleasure to spend time with,” Jack says, voice rising as Alex walks away. “You spend all your time with me.”

“For legal purposes,” Alex calls over his shoulder. Jack frowns.

“Legal purposes?” he says.

“Yeah,” Alex shouts. “The life insurance papers have to look convincing.” It’s Jack’s turn to scowl, yelling fuck you at Alex’s retreating figure and getting a you can’t afford my fees in return.

“Not on the fucking salary you pay me,” Jack shouts, and then turns to Luke. “Come to the back room.” Luke eyes him warily.

“No,” he says. Jack scowls again.

“Aren’t I your manager?” he says. “Come to the back room.”

“I think I’m your manager at the moment,” Luke says, because who’s manager is dependent on the whims of a certain Alex Gaskarth and Jack breaking another bass last week had outdone Luke accidentally selling an Epiphone for half its retail price. Jack, though, just waves a hand dismissively, then grabs Luke’s wrist and starts tugging him towards the back room.

“Hey,” Luke protests, trying to plant his feet and failing miserably - Jesus, Jack’s stronger than he looks. “This is kidnapping.”

“Kidnapping?” Jack says. “You know where you’re going.”

“But I don’t want to be,” Luke says, grabbing onto the desk as he’s pulled past and scrabbling to hold onto it. Jack just yanks harder, dislodging Luke’s grip, and forces him into the back room.

“What?” Luke asks warily, when Jack finally lets go, glancing around at the cardboard boxes filling their shelving units up to the ceiling full of new bass and electric guitars that Luke was meant to unbox two days ago but didn’t. “What have you done?”

“Nothing!” Jack protests, and then kicks the door shut behind them and grins. “It’s what I’m going to do.” Luke groans, tipping his head back, and shakes his head.

“No,” he says, taking a step back and holding his hands up. “Nope. I’m not getting involved in this.”

“You don’t even know what it is.”

“I know it’s something I don’t want to be involved in.”

“No you don’t,” Jack says.

“I do.”

“How?”

“Because it’s something you’re planning.” Jack pouts.

“Listen-” he starts, taking a step forward towards Luke, who instinctively takes another step back, and that’s all Luke hears because then his heel is hitting a cardboard box hard, forcing it back against the wall, and the box on top of that is wobbling and making the box on top of that one wobble even more, and Luke says shit and flings his arms out to steady himself, catching the metal of the shelving unit and pulling it towards him, making all of the heavy, heavy fucking guitars in it come crashing down on top of him. A few land next to him with ugly crunching sounds and accompanying twangs, and a few hit his legs and force him to the ground, and then a few are hitting his stomach and chest and crushing his organs, making him gasp for breath, and then a few are hitting his head, making him momentarily unable to see as his vision swims so much it almost disappears entirely, and then Luke must lose consciousness because the next thing he hears is a distant voice shouting, sounding incredibly worried.

“Luke?” they’re yelling. “Luke? Fuck. Oh, fuck. Shit. Luke, Luke, are you okay? Are you- fuck, fuck, Lex, help me, help me move- no, not that, you fucking idiot, that’s going to-” and then Jack’s face comes into view, uncharacteristic concern etched on his features.

“Huh,” Luke says weakly. “You look funny when you care about me.” And then he passes out again.

-------

When Luke wakes up again, he’s in hospital.

At first, it sends a jolt of fear running through him when he wakes up in an all-white, clinical-looking environment, but his brain supplies a helpful hey, remember when all those guitars fell on you? That was pretty wack, and then it sort of makes sense.

“Oh, hey!” someone says, and Luke’s head snaps to the left to find the source of the voice. It’s a pretty - very fucking pretty, oh God - man, standing next to a bunch of machines, some of which are bleeping, some of which are blinking. “You’re up.”

“I’m up,” Luke says, and finds that his throat is dry and raspy. He coughs, and tries again. “Uh. Who are you?”

“I’m Ashton,” the guy says. “I’m your nurse. Well, until my shift ends.”

“Oh,” Luke says. “Hi. I’m Luke.” Ashton grins, hazel eyes lighting up in amusement, and steps back from the machines he’s been fiddling with.

“Yeah, I know,” he says. “How are you feeling?”

“Uh,” Luke says, and looks down at himself. His right arm is bound in a cast, and when he tries to wriggle his toes he finds his left foot in a cast too, and winces when he takes a deep breath. “My body hurts.” Ashton huffs out a laugh, and moves to the foot of Luke’s bed to pick up a tablet.

“Yeah,” he says. “You had a bunch of guitars fall on you. You’re lucky you came out of it with just a few broken bones and a concussion.”

“And probably a huge bill for damages, if my boss is anything to go by,” Luke adds, and Ashton looks up from the tablet with a small smile.

“Nightmare boss?” he says, and then frowns. “Hang on, you’ve had a visitor claiming to be your boss. American guy?”

“Not the one with skunk hair?” Luke asks in trepidation, because the last thing he wants to deal with is Jack Barakat in a hospital environment, and Ashton shakes his head.

“No, but he was with him,” he says. “I think they’re both still here, actually. They were insistent that they wanted to be here when you woke up, but I can tell them to leave, if you’d like.” Luke hesitates.

“No, it’s okay,” he says. “The boss thing was, uh. A joke. Well. Kind of. He is a shitty boss. But. Not like that.” He swallows. Fuck. He should not be allowed to interact with hot men, honestly. Maybe Ashton will just think these incredibly lacking social skills are a part of the concussion and not just Luke’s main failing as a person.

“It’s still visiting hours, so if you want they can come in, but I’ll get the doctor to check you over first, since you’re awake now,” Ashton says, and Luke nods. Yeah. He should probably get checked over. Seems like the kind of thing you do in a hospital, right?

“Sure,” he says, and Ashton throws him one final grin before heading out of the room. Luke exhales shakily, lying back on the pillow and staring up at the ceiling.

Fuck. He hopes he’s sick enough to stay in hospital forever, and that Ashton’s on shift tomorrow, too, and the day after that, and the day after that. However long it takes for Luke to become socially adept, really.

-------

The doctor tells him something about broken leg and fractured wrist and broken ribs and bruised internally, but all Luke hears is will take a few months to heal fully but no lasting damage, and we’re just going to keep you in for today and tomorrow and monitor your situation, since you had a fairly nasty concussion. Jack and Alex come bursting in as soon as the doctor gives Luke the all-clear for visitors, rushing to his side and telling him how fucking stupid he is, what the fuck, why would he grab onto the fucking shelving unit to steady himself, but their eyes are shining with worry and their faces are a little red and puffy, and it makes Luke’s heart lurch in his chest in an oddly pleasant way. Alex tells Luke he’ll give him a pay raise if he doesn’t sue for workplace injury, and Luke laughs and then immediately groans in pain and says don’t make me laugh, I’ve broken my ribs.

(“Don’t worry,” Jack assures him, “Michael and Cal are coming in after us. You're safe on the laughing front.”)

Michael and Calum do visit after Alex and Jack, but only get to stay for five minutes before Ashton’s sticking his head in the door and saying Luke, your parents are here, and they’re not happy that everyone’s seen you before they have.

(“He’s your type, isn’t he?” Michael says loudly, before the door’s even closed behind Ashton, and Luke wants to die. He wonders whether he can force one of his broken ribs to puncture his lungs, or something.)

By the time his parents have finished fussing over him, his mum plumping up his pillows and his dad clapping a hand on his broken leg that makes Luke let out a choked scream of pain, Luke’s so exhausted that he just falls straight asleep, only waking up when he hears some shuffling around his bed.

“Mm?” he mumbles, blinking blearily, and finds Ashton smiling apologetically at him.

“Sorry,” he stage-whispers. “I’m not great at being quiet.”

“No, no, ‘s all good,” Luke says, swallowing like it’s going to get the horrible taste out of his mouth.

“How are you?”

“Fine, thanks, and you?” Luke answers automatically, and then belatedly realises he’s lying in a hospital bed with an IV in and a few broken bones. “Uh. I mean-” he says hastily, but Ashton just laughs, gentle and amused. It sends a shiver down Luke’s spine, although that might just be whatever Ashton’s just pressed on the machine blinking next to Luke’s head.

“Do you ever get a good answer to that?” Luke asks, turning his head to look at Ashton.

“To what?”

“To asking people how they are in a hospital.” Ashton smiles down at the tube he’s fiddling with, and Luke tries not to think about the fact that the other end of the tube is inside him, tries not to let his stomach turn. It’s probably not very sexy to throw up in front of Hot Ashton.

“Not really,” Ashton says. “But it’s free to care, right?” Oh, God. Hot Ashton is also Caring Ashton. Fuck. Luke is not in the right state of mind to deal with this.

“I guess,” Luke says.

“So, how are you?” Ashton asks, smile still playing at his lips.

“Uh,” Luke says. “Tired. My body still hurts.”

“You should rest,” Ashton advises him. “Pretty much the best thing you can do for your body right now.”

“Yeah,” Luke says, and then without thinking, adds: “I mean, I was resting, until…” he trails off, rational part of his brain kicking in and screaming what the fuck, Luke, that’s your fucking nurse, that’s so rude, that’s so unprofessional, you’re going to get kicked out of hospital and forced to try and heal your broken bones on your own (okay, maybe not so rational), but Ashton just laughs, bright and amused.

“Point taken,” he says, but he’s still grinning, so Luke figures he’s safe. “Sorry for disturbing your beauty sleep.”

“I’ll send my botox bill your way,” Luke says, and Ashton arches an eyebrow, stepping back from the machines at Luke’s side.

“I’m not sure that’ll hold up in court,” he says.

“Guess we’ll have to find out,” Luke says, eyes following Ashton as he crosses the room over to the door. Ashton huffs out a laugh, looking over at Luke as he pulls the door open and lets light spill from the bright hallway into the room, making him glow softly like some kind of weird, scrubs-clad angel.

“Sleep well, Luke,” he says, and then the light is gone.

-------

Luke does sleep well.

He sleeps for most of the next day, only waking up for a very groggy talk with a new doctor of which he takes absolutely nothing in, then for a very painful walk to the bathroom with a brisk nurse who tugs on his elbow too hard, and then when Alex, Jack, Michael and Calum all pile into his room as soon as visiting hours begin. He’s kind of glad they’re all there, because it means they can entertain each other rather than him having to partake in the conversation, so he can just lie back, exhausted, and watch them bicker over whether or not Luke would notice if they stole his hospital food. Wait, hang on-

“Hey,” Luke says, frowning. “No one’s stealing my hospital food. I need to heal.”

“But it’s salmon tonight,” Michael protests. “You don’t even like salmon.” Luke pulls a face. He really doesn’t like salmon.

“So, what, I should starve?” he says indignantly, even though he probably would rather starve than eat salmon.

“We can sneak you food,” Jack says earnestly. “Mike and I were thinking-”

“I told you, Jack,” Alex says exasperatedly. “Visiting hours are once a day. Luke needs to eat more than that.”

“No, he doesn’t,” Michael says. “Not if we bring him enough food.”

“He can space it out,” Jack suggests.

“Yeah, I’m sure Luke would fucking love to eat cold and soggy chicken nuggets,” Calum says sarcastically, and Alex nods and points at him, all thank God, finally someone speaking some sense.

“They’re not going to get soggy,” Michael protests.

“Yeah, do you know how many preservatives they put in those things?” Jack adds.

“And you think that’s what Luke should be eating to mend his broken bones?” Alex asks dryly.

“He’s fine,” Michael says breezily. “He’s twenty-one. His body’s been managing a poor diet so far.” Luke scowls.

“My diet’s fucking fine,” he says. “What’s wrong with my diet?” All four of them round on him in disbelief.

“Are you fucking serious?” Calum demands, at the same time that Michael says: “What isn’t wrong with your diet?” and Alex says: “When was the last time you even looked in the general direction of a vegetable?” and Jack says: “No, y’know, the man’s got a point. His diet could be worse.”

“Just because it could be worse doesn’t mean it isn’t bad,” Calum points out.

“Credit where credit is due,” Jack says solemnly, “he’s doing a better job than he could be.”

“The only way Luke’s diet could be worse is if he went all Monsieur Mangetout,” Alex says, and the four of them blink at him. “What?” he says defensively. “C’mon, Monsieur Mangetout? You know Monsieur Mangetout.”

“You wanna flex your French pronunciation skills one more time?” Michael asks, raising an eyebrow. “The floor is yours, mate.” Alex rolls his eyes.

“Fuck off,” he says. “My point is-” but they don’t get to find out what his point is, because then the door’s opening and Ashton’s sticking his head in. Luke wishes he’d been able to shower this morning - he’s sure his hair is sticking up all over the place, and that half the curls are flattened and frizzy, and he sort of wants to say sorry, Ashton, I swear I’m at least a little hotter than this most of the time.

“Visiting hours are over, guys, I’m sorry,” Ashton says apologetically, and all four of Luke’s friends groan. “Sorry, sorry, I know,” Ashton says, and then throws Luke a smile before closing the door as they start gathering their things together, the sound of chairs scraping filling the room.

“He’s hot, isn’t he?” Jack says to Luke, nodding at the door Ashton’s just closed.

“Yeah,” Luke says. “He’s also my nurse, so. Very illegal.” Michael pulls a face.

“Is it?” he asks. Calum and Alex both throw him hard looks.

“Yes,” they chorus.

“Fucking hell,” Jack grumbles, pulling his coat on. “Laws are really fucking boring.” In this case, Luke can’t help but heartily agree.

“Well, hurry up with the healing, and then he won’t be your nurse anymore,” Michael suggests.

“Pretty sure it’s still illegal,” Alex notes.

“So?”

“Jesus Christ, Jack,” Alex mutters, and pushes him towards the door. “We’ll come back tomorrow if you’re still here, Luke.”

“Us too,” Calum says, shepherding Michael in the direction of the door too. “Bye, Luke. Be safe.”

“Be safe?” Luke echoes. “What sort of fucking danger am I in at a hospital?”

“Falling in love, apparently,” Calum says, and then the door swings shut behind him.

Well, Luke thinks. He’s not exactly wrong.

-------

Ashton comes back at around seven p.m. with Luke’s dinner, although I don’t usually serve dinner, it’s not a nurse’s job, but Jenna’s just had to go home for a family emergency and I was the closest person at hand. It’s salmon, and Luke pulls a face when he sees it that makes Ashton laugh.

“You don’t like salmon?” he says. “We have veggie options too, if you want that.”

“No, no, it’s fine,” Luke says hastily, not wanting to come across like the fussy eater he is, for some reason. “Salmon’s good. I like salmon. It’s, uh, a good fish.” Ashton blinks at him for a moment, and then snorts.

“Sure,” he says, and sets the tray down on Luke’s lap carefully. “How are you doing?”

“Fine,” Luke says, which isn’t really a lie this time. “Everything still hurts, but.” He shrugs. “It’s alright.”

“You’re a trooper,” Ashton says, grinning. Luke nods solemnly, using his unbroken left hand to slot the knife into his right hand.

“It’s the top level care I’m receiving,” he says, and Ashton laughs again.

“Flattery will get you places,” he says, and Luke pauses, glancing over at Ashton.

“What places?” he asks, and Ashton winks, and sets a slice of chocolate cake down on the tray balanced on Luke’s legs. Luke looks down at it, and then back up at Ashton.

“That was on the menu,” he says. “You were going to give that to me anyway.” Ashton just grins, and heads back to the door.

“I would’ve withheld it if you hadn’t complimented my exemplary nursing skills,” he says, as he pulls the door open.

“I thought you said dinner service wasn’t part of the job description?”

“I might fight for it to be now,” Ashton says, pulling the door open. “Everyone needs to play God from time to time.” Luke snorts.

“That’s a completely non-alarming sentence to come out of your nurse’s mouth,” he says. “I think I’ll check my IV myself tonight.” Ashton’s lips hitch up in an amused smile.

“Enjoy your dinner,” he says, and then he’s gone.

-------

The next day, Luke is told that he can be discharged after a series of tests have been carried out, which are booked in for five p.m. - right in the middle of visiting hours, so he texts everybody not to come - and then get delayed until nine p.m. By ten, Luke’s still waiting for someone to come round as promised, and is getting incredibly restless, so turns to reach for his phone again - and stops dead.

There’s writing on his arm.

Writing that he, with his broken right hand, did not put there.

He yanks his arm close to him, then turns to fumble with the light above his bed because he can’t fucking see, and squints at the writing.

It’s just three words, small and scribbled like they had to be written fast or A would have lost the nerve to say them, but they make Luke’s heart thud against his ribcage like it’s trying to break a few more of his ribs.

Are you okay?

What?

Luke’s reaching for the pen in his drawer before he’s even thought about it, a million responses racing through his mind. What the fuck, being one, I thought you didn’t want to be my soulmate another, why are you talking to me now? What changed? in there somewhere too, but mostly: why?

It’s a good thing it’s only why, too, because writing the letters takes a fucking age and when he’s done, it sort of looks like something he would have produced when he was four years old. The reply is instantaneous, though, and Luke can barely believe it, feels like he’s hallucinating the way the letters are appearing one by one on his arm. He’s too scared to blink, like it’ll break the spell somehow, like looking away will make A think well, he’s replied, that’s good enough, but another sentence appears, letter by letter.

You haven’t complained about Jack in a few days.

So they have been reading Luke’s quasi-diary-entries.

Fuck.

Shit. Luke has no idea what to say. Should he tell the truth? Should he try and take a mile from the inch A is giving him, ask what the fuck is going on, press the question of why A doesn’t want to be his soulmate? No, that’ll make them clam up again. Maybe he just shouldn’t reply at all. After all, it’s not like A’s ever given Luke anything when he’s been pouring his heart out in the early hours of the night, is it? Maybe Luke should give them a taste of their own medicine.

He only considers that for a total of half a second before the pen is back on his skin, writing underneath A’s handwriting - God, it’s fucking surreal.

I’m in hospital. Broke a bunch of bones. There’s a longer pause this time, and when a few minutes of Luke staring intently down at his arm have passed with no further reply and he’s thinking fuck, that’s it with a sinking heart, a few more words appear.

I’m sorry to hear that. Get well soon.

Luke’s just about to put the pen back down to his arm, to write a quick thanks, because it’s about all he can manage to write legibly with the weird way he has to hold his pen with the cast on, when more scribbles start appearing.

How are you doing? Luke bites his lip.

Fine, he says. You?

I’m not the one in hospital.

True, Luke writes. My body aches.

You should rest. Best thing you can do for your body. Luke huffs out a laugh.

You sound like my nurse.

Your nurse knows what they’re talking about.

I’d be concerned if he didn’t. The reply takes a little longer to come this time, but after a few minutes more words are appearing.

Touché. Luke’s just staring down at the word, racking his brain to think of something to say to keep the conversation going because fuck, fuck, he’s talking to his fucking soulmate, when a few more words appear.

Goodnight, Luke. Get some rest.

I’d like to, but I’m waiting for more tests, Luke writes. He waits, and he waits, but no response comes.

Fuck, he thinks, rereading the entire conversation over and over, and over just for good measure. Fuck. He’s spoken to his soulmate. He’s spoken to A. He’s spoken to his fucking soulmate.

He reaches over for his phone, turns his arm this way and that and takes a photo, and sends it to his group chat with Michael and Calum. He sees Michael’s typing bubble pop up before the second picture has even sent, but then the door is opening and Doctor Nichols is striding in, and Luke hastily puts his phone down and nods along to the list of tests she’s rattling off that need doing before he can be discharged, mind covered in an impervious sheen of soulmate soulmate soulmate that stops any of it going in.

Fuck, Luke thinks, as he’s getting a bright light shone in his eyes and trying his hardest not to blink or look over at his phone, which is buzzing incessantly on his bedside table. Fuck.

-------

Michael and Calum agree that this is a positive step.

(Are you fucking kidding me? Calum says, when Luke voices hesitancy. They checked in on you. They fucking care.

rt, Michael says.)

Luke’s not so certain, though. The thought of it is sending delicious sparks dancing from his heart to his fingertips and down to his abdomen (or maybe that’s the medication, he’s not entirely sure), but he doesn’t want to jump to any conclusions, given A’s hard stance and silence for the past few months. But A would have received a letter if Luke had died, and the government are usually pretty quick to send those out, so maybe there is something to be said for the fact that they only waited three nights before asking after Luke.

Luke’s body is too exhausted to let him stay up psyching himself out over it, though, forcing him into a deep sleep as soon as Doctor Nichols has told him he’s free to leave the next morning and left him be, and when he wakes up the next morning it’s to someone opening his curtains.

“Hey,” they say, as Luke’s eyelids try to fight the fucking sun, and Luke shields his eyes with his hand to see Ashton silhouetted by the window.

“Weren’t you on shift last night?” he asks, and Ashton smiles, but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes.

“Life of a nurse,” he says tiredly. “Sorry for the light, by the way. Figured it would be a nicer way to wake you up than ripping your IV out.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Luke says, squinting and scrunching his face up, and Ashton huffs out a small laugh as he makes his way over to Luke’s side.

“This isn’t going to be pleasant,” he warns.

“That’s a shame,” Luke says. “I always thought having needles ripped out of me would be an enjoyable experience.” Ashton smiles again, and there are a few crinkles around his eyes. God, he really is fucking pretty.

“Are you looking forward to going home?” he asks.

“I’m looking forward to not having to eat salmon anymore,” Luke says.

“Hey, I offered you the veggie option,” Ashton says, and Luke winces as he feels the needle and whatever the fuck else being pulled out of his vein.

“I didn’t want to be a nuisance,” Luke says.

“Hold this,” Ashton instructs, and Luke reaches over to hold the gauze on his arm as Ashton reaches for a clear plaster. “You wouldn’t have been a nuisance. You’ve been an exemplary patient.”

“Is that a compliment?” Luke says. “I’m good at lying around being useless?” Ashton grins.

“You’re not useless,” he says. “Patients keep me in a job.” Luke grins back.

“I’ll try my best to get seriously injured again, then,” he says, and as Ashton turns away to the trolley he’s put Luke’s cannula on he catches the tail end of a small smile playing at his lips.

“Legally and professionally, I can’t encourage that,” he says, and Luke snorts.

“But personally?”

“No comment.”

“So you want me to hurt myself?”

“Is that what ‘no comment’ means these days?” Ashton says, throwing Luke a glance over his shoulder as he pushes his trolley over to the door, eyes twinkling. “Get some rest, Luke.”

“Wait,” Luke blurts, and Ashton stops. Luke blinks, like he's waiting for Ashton to say something, even though he's the one who'd asked him to stop, because shit, he hasn't thought this through. Something in his brain just said stop, ask him out, ask him out. And really, he thinks, why not, because if he embarrasses himself he'll never have to see Ashton again, and he's no longer Ashton's patient, so he takes a deep breath, says fuck it, and mumbles: “Uh. Look. Would you- would you want to go out? With me? Not- not now, obviously. Some other time. But- y’know. Would you?” Jesus Christ. Ashton hesitates for a moment, and then throws Luke a slightly sad, kind smile.

“I’d love to, Luke,” he says, and Luke’s heart soars for a moment, flying higher than it’s ever gone before “but I can’t.�� Fuck. Luke’s heart should have read Icarus.

“Why not?” Luke says. “I’m not your patient anymore.” Ashton shakes his head.

“Still not allowed,” he says. “Only exception is if you find out you’re soulmates.” Well, fuck.

“Oh,” Luke says, and hopes the wobble in his voice isn’t as audible to Ashton as it is to him. “Okay.”

“I really- fuck. Sorry. I just- I’m sorry, Luke.” Ashton smiles at him again, barely more than a twitch of his lips, and then he’s gone.

Luke leans back against his pillows and stares up at the ceiling, heart pounding.

Maybe he’s just not meant to be with people whose names start with the letter A.

-------

Luke sits around at home for a week before he decides he’s so bored and so sick of being fussed over by his parents that he insists on coming back to work. Alex, in turn, insists on picking him up and dropping him off every evening, like he’s doing a fucking school run, and Jack insists on Luke doing nothing besides working the till so he can sit down. It’s fucking boring, because all the fun parts of the job are helping little kids buy their first guitars or talking to seasoned professionals about the ins and outs of the instruments, not smiling politely and waiting while they swipe their cards. He has nothing to do between people paying, so he spends most of his time on his phone, swiping through his various social media apps and wishing his hand weren’t in a cast so he could at least play guitar. It’s not exactly the worst way to spend his time, though, especially now that he’s found that forum of people pretending to be middle-class Dads which is oddly relatable and funnier to him than it probably is to anyone else. He’s in the middle of scrolling through it in a particularly quiet lull on a Thursday afternoon, screenshotting the best ones to send to Ben and Jack, when the shadow of a person looms over him.

“Hey, I- oh,” they say, and Luke looks up from his phone hastily to find-

“Ashton?” he says, surprised.

“Hi,” Ashton says. God, he looks good; he’s wearing a leather jacket over a faded grey Guns ‘N’ Roses t-shirt and black jeans, and his hair is falling into his eyes a little, and Luke sort of wants to kiss him and sort of wants to die.

“Uh, hi,” Luke says. “Sorry. I just, um. Wasn’t expecting to see you here. How can I help you?” Ashton blinks at him, and then smiles.

“I need some new strings for my Strat,” he says, and Luke nods. Of course Ashton plays guitar. Hopefully he doesn’t play, like, fucking drums, or something. That would probably be too much for Luke’s little heart to handle.

“Sure,” he says, turning to the selection of strings behind him. “Ernie Ball Regular Slinky alright?”

“Sounds good,” Ashton says, and Luke pulls a pack down and sets them on the desk in front of him, busying himself with adding up the cost like he doesn’t know it off by heart.

“How are you doing?” Ashton asks as Luke furiously types in numbers to avoid looking at Ashton, making Luke pause and glance up at him.

“You’re not on the job right now,” he says, and Ashton huffs out a laugh, raking a hand through his curls.

“Doesn’t mean I can’t care,” he says. “So?”

“I’m alright,” Luke says. “Bored, mostly. Kind of shit not being able to use my hand.” Ashton makes a small noise of sympathy, and Luke dramatically presses a button on the till and announces: “That’s fourteen dollars, please.”

“You won’t have to have the cast on for long,” Ashton says, digging around in his pocket for his wallet. Luke tries not to watch the way the movement exposes a sliver of his stomach. Thank fuck the scrubs had made Ashton entirely shapeless, because Jesus Christ.

“I feel like I’ll have to relearn how to use my hand normally when it comes off,” Luke admits, accepting the twenty Ashton hands him and fumbling with the till for a five and a one.

“That’s pretty normal,” Ashton says, accepting the change. Luke’s fingers brush against Ashton’s palm, and he tries not to let them twitch at the contact. “You’ll be used to it after a day or two.”

“Maybe I’ll grow attached to it, though,” Luke says, and Ashton snorts. “I mean, everyone has to be nice to me now.” Ashton looks down at the cast, which has Luke sucks big dicks written on it in huge, black letters courtesy of Jack, and then back up at Luke pointedly, who sighs. “That’s just Jack,” he says, and right on cue, Jack pops his head out of the back room.

“What’s me?” he says, and then brightens. “Hey, Nurse Irwin!”

“Hi, Mr Barakat,” Ashton says.

“Hey, idiot, Luke’s sexy nurse is here,” Jack shouts, and Alex’s head appears out of the office.

“What?” he says. “Oh, hey, Nurse Irwin.”

“Hi, Mr Gaskarth,” Ashton says politely. “How’re you?”

“Great, thanks,” Alex says. “Better now that you’ve patched my best employee up.”

“Hey,” Jack says, affronted. “Aren’t I your best employee?”

“Did Nurse Irwin patch you up?”

“Not yet.”

“Maybe you’ll be my best employee after that, then.”

“Good to know my nursing skills are what keep your business running,” Ashton puts in, and Alex grins.

“Think it’s more than just your nursing skills,” he says cryptically, and then disappears back into his office.

“Jesus Christ,” Luke mutters under his breath, feeling his cheeks heat up. “Uh. I’m sorry. Here. Um. Have fun?” Ashton smiles, a little teasing, a little amused.

“Will do,” he says. “Look after that arm for me.” Luke’s heart skips a beat. For me.

“Well, I was planning on smashing it up a bit more, but now that you’ve said that…” he says, and Ashton laughs, eyes twinkling.

“See you around, Luke,” he says, pocketing his strings and heading for the door. Luke watches him go, and then groans and puts his head in his hands.

“What the fuck?” Jack says. “Why didn’t you ask him out?”

“I did,” Luke mumbles into his palms. “The day I got discharged. He said no.”

“What?” Alex pipes up, sticking his head out of his office again, because apparently he’s still listening too. “Why? Does he already have a soulmate?” Luke’s stomach flips. He’s been trying not to think about that possibility. But surely Ashton would have said that, right? It’s the kindest way to let someone down. And he had said he would have loved to, however much out of politeness that may have been.

“Apparently it’s still not allowed, unless you’re soulmates.”

“Well, you could be-” Jack starts, but immediately falls silent upon a stern look from Alex. “Fine. Well, since you’ve got nothing better to do in your spare time now, you can start by reorganising those CDs you fucked up the other day.” He nods at the cardboard box that’s been sitting behind Luke for a few days now, and Luke rolls his eyes, and bends down to pick it up with a dramatic sigh.

“Fuck you,” Luke says sullenly, and gets to work.

-------

Nine days after Luke’s discharged from the hospital, another message appears on his arm.

How are you doing?

Luke’s heart skips a beat, and he reaches for a pen with fumbling fingers, slotting it into his hand as best as he can manage.

Better, Luke writes. I’m out of hospital.

I’m glad to hear that.

Why do you ask? Luke decides to chance it. Fuck it, he thinks. Why not?

You still haven’t been writing. Luke swallows.

My writing hand is in a cast.

Oh. Luke frowns.

Could you not tell from my handwriting?

Honestly? No. Luke scowls.

My handwriting isn’t that bad.

Isn’t it? Luke’s scowl deepens. A is fucking rude. Before he can come up with a suitably haughty response, though, they’re writing something else.

Can you just write me something in the evenings to let me know you’re okay?

Luke stares at it for a moment, something bitter rising in his throat. He doesn’t owe A that. A’s done next to nothing but ignore him, and now they’re demanding something from him?

You never let me know you’re okay, he writes back, a little petulantly. There’s a longer pause this time, like A’s really thinking about the answer, because when the words come they’re written like they’ve been rehearsed prior to pen touching skin.

Do you want me to?

Luke hesitates. Does he? Of course he does, it’s his fucking soulmate, but they don’t want him, and it might make him more attached to them and make it hurt more when they inevitably reject him again.

(Oh, who is he fucking kidding.)

Yes.

Okay. That’s it, they don’t say anything else, and Luke doesn’t want to chase them, so he puts the pen down and stares at the conversation.

Okay. So they’re- so they’re sort of talking now. That’s something, right? Maybe they can at least be friends.

(He pushes away the that’s going to hurt too much, Luke, that’s going to hurt far too fucking much that flashes like a neon warning sign in his head, rolls over and goes to sleep.)

-------

After that, he falls into a sort of routine.

He goes to work, plays on his phone, jumps whenever the door opens in case it’s Ashton, like his strings are going to break within a week or two, then goes home or goes to Michael and Calum’s to watch them play videogames (he’d discovered fairly early on Xbox controllers and casts don’t mix), then gets ready for bed and writes A a quick I’m okay message. Sometimes it’s just that, just I’m okay, and sometimes it’s I’m okay, had a good day at work, or I’m good, really tired, or I’m okay, Jack broke another bass guitar today, I don’t know what he has against those things. A always replies with Thanks, I’m okay, but it’s something. It’s almost enough, and Luke can make do with that.

Six and a half weeks after getting out of the hospital, Luke gets his arm cast taken off. His leg still has a few weeks to go, and he’s told his ribs are healing nicely, congratulations on refraining from strenuous exercise (Luke almost laughs in the doctor’s face), but Luke’s not really thinking about that. Logically, he knows the chances are next to nothing, but he can’t help but look out for Ashton, just in case. He doesn’t see him, of course, but when he half-jokingly mentions it to Calum and Michael that night, Michael makes an offhand comment that sticks in Luke’s mind.

“Looks like Ashton’s helping you get over A,” he says, eyes glazed over as he stares at the screen in front of them.

“What do you mean?” Luke says.

“He’s all you fucking think about despite only meeting him, like, four times,” Michael says, and then swears loudly as Calum shoots him. “You cunt.”

“Should’ve been paying attention,” Calum says, with a shrug.

Luke’s thinking about that remark as he’s getting ready for bed that night, staring at himself in the mirror as his right hand tries to remember how to use a toothbrush. Maybe Michael’s right. Maybe Ashton is the antidote to A. Or, at the very least, he’s proof that Luke can like people that aren’t his soulmate. The thought makes him smile around his toothbrush, a warm feeling blossoming in his chest. Yeah, his soulmate might not want him, but maybe he’s not doomed to be alone, after all.

He spits and rinses, and then wanders into his room, picking up his pen to write his daily I’m okay message to A. A millimetre before the pen touches his skin, though, he hesitates. He might as well ask the question he’s asked a hundred times before, now that A actually speaks to him, even if it’s only to say the same three words every night. The worst that can happen is he gets ignored again.

I’m okay, he writes, and then, why don’t you want to be my soulmate?

Thanks, I’m okay. The response comes immediately, like A’s been waiting for Luke to check in, but nothing else follows it. Luke watches his arm for a few moments, waiting for more to show up, and then sighs, turns his light off, rolls over and falls asleep.

-------

When he wakes up the next morning, he hobbles into the bathroom, yawning and stretching, and as he’s reaching for his toothbrush he happens to glance in the mirror - and stops dead.

There’s something new on his arm.

He looks down so fast he thinks he might have snapped his own neck, heart skipping a beat.

I want to choose who I love.

So it is that, Luke thinks, testing the weight of the words on his heart. They aren’t as heavy as he’d expected them to be. In fact, he thinks, as an image of Ashton flashes through his head, he sort of respects it. A can have their chosen love. Luke can find someone else.

(Another image of Ashton flashes through his head.)

He hobbles back to his room and sits down on his bed, picking up the pen and thinking. Fair enough sounds a little passive aggressive, as does that’s fair, but Luke can’t think of anything else to say, so he settles for that’s fair and adds a little smiley to try and mitigate any potential hostility that might come across in the words. He blinks at the phrase for a moment, half-hoping for a response, but it’s eight in the morning and the words must have come at around four or five for them to still be there, so A’s probably asleep. So Luke shakes himself out of it, reaches for his toothbrush, and forgets about it.

-------

A week after that, Ashton comes back into the shop.

“Hi, Luke,” he says, waving and grinning as he closes the door behind him, because of course he’s a fucking gentleman who doesn’t let the door swing shut heavily like almost everyone else who comes in. “You sell drums, right?” Oh, Jesus. He’s not a drummer. He is not.

“Uh,” Luke says intelligently, like there aren’t two drum kits set up opposite him. “Yes?”

“Sweet,” Ashton says, ambling over with his hands in his pockets. He’s wearing short sleeves today, because it’s November and the weather’s starting to really warm up, and Luke can’t help but thank whatever deity may exist that he lives in the southern hemisphere, because Jesus Christ, Ashton’s arms are a fucking sight to behold. “I need a new snare.”

“Sure,” Luke says, tucking the pen he’s been holding behind his ear. “For- for you? Or- like, as a gift?” Ashton throws him an amused look.

“Who gifts snare drums?” he asks, and Luke shrugs, trying not to think about Ashton drumming. Good fucking God.

“People have gifted stranger things,” he says, and waves a hand at the drums opposite.

“Oh, hey, you got your cast off!” Ashton says brightly. “How is it?”

“It’s fine,” Luke says. “Still feels a bit weak.”

“I’m sure you know how to strengthen it,” Ashton says solemnly. Luke blinks at him. Is he- surely he’s not- is he- “Oh my God,” Ashton mutters, cheeks a little pink, like he’s just realised what he’s said. “I meant- I meant that the doctor should have given you a few exercises. Fuck. I did not mean- I’m not- fuck.” Luke can’t help but burst out laughing, warmth curling in the pit of his stomach as Ashton throws him a sheepish smile. God, he’s fucking cute. Luke is far too far gone on this man.

“Yeah, I forgot them,” he admits, because I didn’t take them in because I was too busy looking at every nurse that walked past in case they were you sounds insanely creepy. Ashton throws him a slightly exasperated look.

“Luke,” he says admonishingly, and Luke rolls his eyes, but he’s still smiling.

“What was that you said about me being an exemplary patient?” he reminds Ashton, who shakes his head, grinning.

“I should have reserved judgement,” he says, making his way over to the drum kits Luke had pointed out. “Hey, do you have any sticks for these?”

“Oh, shit, yeah,” Luke says, hobbling out from behind his desk to the basket that stores test sticks and then over to Ashton, ignoring his protests of you shouldn’t be putting weight on that foot, Luke, let me get them, tell me where they are.

“It’s fine,” Luke says. “It’s getting taken off next week.” Ashton throws him a look.

“Yeah, next week,” he says. “These things have specific healing times for a reason.” Luke just waves his hand dismissively.

“I have another foot,” he says, and Ashton tuts, but a small smile is tugging at his lips.

“Hey, Luke?” a voice shouts - Jack, whose head pops out of the back room. “Oh, hey, Nurse Irwin. Luke, can you make a note that we need to order more of the Dunlop Hendrix Wahs, the SolidGoldFX NU-33s, the-” shit, Luke thinks, looking around him wildly; there’s no fucking paper, and Luke’s got a broken foot, so he can’t get back to the desk before Jack’s finished rattling this list off. As he’s spinning on the spot, the pen he’d tucked behind his ear dislodges itself and threatens to fly out, and he slaps a hand up to stop it before realising hey, pen, I have skin, I’ll just write it on my arm and write it on paper later.

“The Hendrix Wahs, the NU-33s, and what?” he calls, scribbling on his arm.

“The Hydra Stereo and Reverbs, and the Boss Pocket Processors.” Luke nods, frowning as he notes it all down, and then looks back up at Jack.

“Got it,” he says, and Jack gives him a thumbs up and disappears back into the back room. “Sorry-” he starts, turning back to Ashton, and then drinks in his ashen face, and frowns. “Are you okay?” Then he notices in the corner of his eye some writing on Ashton’s arm, and thinks huh, that’s weird, I’m pretty sure that wasn’t there when he came in - in fact, I’m certain that wasn’t there when he came in, because I made a mental map of every inch of his body, and looks down, trying to surreptitiously read it.

Hendrix Wahs, NU-33s, Hydra S&R, Bass Pocket Processors.

Luke’s list. Luke’s list, in Luke’s handwriting, has just appeared on Ashton’s arm. That doesn’t make any sense.

“Wait,” Luke says slowly, and looks back up at Ashton’s stricken face. “Wait. You- hang on. How did my list just appear on your arm?”

“How do you think?” Ashton says quietly. Luke blinks.

“I don’t know,” he says. Ashton stares at him.

“I- what? What do you mean?” he says. Luke frowns.

“This doesn’t make sense,” he says. “How did my list appear on your arm?”

“Jesus Christ, Luke,” Ashton whispers, and then grabs the pen out of Luke’s hand and scrawls hi on his own arm. It sits there next to Luke’s list, looking oddly harmonious for two things that are completely unrelated, and Luke stares at it for a moment before looking down at his own arm.

There, right next to the messy scribble of his list, is one new word.

Hi.

Oh, fuck.

“Oh, fuck,” Luke says faintly, and steadies himself against a nearby keyboard. “Oh my God. You’re- you’re A?”

“You’re Luke?” Ashton sounds just as faint as Luke.

“I- yes? Fucking- how did you not- you met all of my friends? Michael, Calum, Jack, Alex? At the hospital?”

“I only knew them by surname,” Ashton says. “I- fuck. You’re Luke.”

“You’re A,” Luke says, and then a thought occurs to him and he swallows, and grits his teeth. “Fuck. You’re A.” The words come out harder this time, tinged with bitterness, and it makes Ashton’s eyes snap up to him, big and wide and so pretty it would take Luke’s breath away if he had any left to give.

“What?”

“You- you don’t want this.” Luke gestures a little feebly, not wanting to be too specific, but Ashton just looks at him like he doesn’t quite get it. “Y’know. This. Us.” He swallows. “Me.” Ashton’s gaze softens.

“Oh, Luke,” he says. “I- fuck. I do. I want you. I just didn’t- I didn’t want Luke. But I want you.”

“But I am Luke.”

“I didn’t know that, though,” Ashton says. “I- oh, fuck. You’re my soulmate.” The word sends a chill down Luke’s spine. Jesus. He’d sort of almost come to terms with the fact he’d never meet his soulmate, never have a soulmate, never hear those words out loud, and now here he is, standing with one foot in a cast at work, talking to the hot nurse he’s not been able to get off his mind for two months who just so happens to be his fucking soulmate who had semi-torn Luke’s heart out from its resting place on his birthday.

And now, he’s not sure how he feels about it.

“You didn’t want me,” he says, more than a little accusingly. “And now you do.” He doesn’t ask anything in particular, but Ashton seems to know what he’s pointing at anyway, because he bites his lip.

“Look,” he says. “I- I just didn’t want to fall for someone because it was assigned to me, or whatever. I wanted it to be a choice, not something I was forced into. And then I did fall for you, without knowing you were my soulmate, but obviously I- I couldn’t, because you were a patient - or a former patient - so I just- I thought that was it, but. Fuck. I fell for you on my own, and it turns out you’re my fucking soulmate.” Luke swallows. When he puts it like that, it makes a lot more sense. Luke can kind of get that. And the fact that Ashton’s saying he fell for Luke but just couldn’t act on it is definitely helping matters - Luke’s easily buttered up by an ego stroke.

“You broke my heart,” he says, matter-of-fact, and Ashton swallows.

“I hoped I hadn’t,” he says, like that makes it any better.

“You could’ve at least waited ‘til it wasn’t my birthday anymore,” Luke says. “Or explained yourself. I thought it was me.”

“You thought what was you?”

“I thought- I thought I’d put you off, somehow. That I was the problem.” Ashton’s eyes go wide, and he shakes his head.

“God, no. Jesus. No, no. I just- I wanted to be clear, and I thought the less I engaged the better, y’know? Like, the less you’d have to latch onto, the easier you’d forget about me.” He hesitates. “I shouldn’t’ve done it on your birthday, though,” he says. “I’m sorry. And- I’m sorry for everything else, too. It was never you.”

And, okay. Luke’s the type to hold grudges. He’s petty and he’s childish, and he doesn’t forget shit like this. But he’s also an adult and he’s (to some degree, at least) capable of rational thought, so he shoves away his first instinct that says spite him, go on, make him hurt like he hurt you and thinks about it. Yeah, Ashton fucked up. He should’ve waited until it wasn’t Luke’s birthday, and he should’ve explained himself, and he just should’ve been a lot more communicative from the beginning. But the past week or two, Luke’s actually been okay with the idea that A doesn’t want him, so he can’t really hold that against Ashton anymore, not when his heart has patched itself up the past five months and shrugs off the idea of not having his soulmate in the way he’d always wanted. And he does understand Ashton’s reasoning, even if he doesn’t agree with it, so he clears his throat, and, just to make sure, says:

“So- so you do want it now?”

“Fuck, I- well, I want to see where it can go,” Ashton says. “I- I don’t want to make any promises. But I’d like to try.” Luke blinks at him.

Ashton wants to try. Ashton, who is Luke’s fucking soulmate, wants to try the two of them on for size.

“Okay,” Luke says. “Okay. Yeah. We can try.”

“Yeah?” Ashton says, a little nervously.

“Yeah,” Luke says. “I mean, I’ve been sort of infatuated with you from a distance since meeting you, anyway, so.” He shrugs, and Ashton grins and opens his mouth to say something, and then there’s a yell from behind them.

“Hey, Luke,” Alex says. “Oh, hey, Nurse Irwin. Luke, can you call our accountant? I need the books going over by- uh. Why are you both smiling like you’ve committed a crime? You’ve not committed a crime on these premises, have you?”

“What?” Luke says. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

“What’s wrong with you two?” Alex says suspiciously. Luke glances over at Ashton, who shrugs, tiny and imperceptible, like sure, go on. Fuck.

“Uh,” Luke says, and swallows. “Turns out Ashton is, um. Kind of my soulmate?” Alex blinks at him.

“Who’s Ashton?” Luke blinks back, and then points at Ashton. “That’s- that’s your soulmate? Ashton’s the dickhead?” The back room door opens.

“Who’s a dickhead?” Jack asks, intrigued.

“Ashton,” Alex says.

“Who’s Ashton?”

“Nurse Irwin.”

“Oh. Hey again, Nurse Irwin. Why are you a dickhead?”

“He’s Luke’s soulmate.” Jack looks at Alex, and then at Luke, and then back again.

“No, he isn’t,” he says calmly.

“He is,” Luke says.

“Fucking hell,” Jack says, and then goes back into the back room and closes the door.

“Hey,” Alex shouts, frowning. “Get back out here. Luke’s just found his fucking soulmate.”

“I’m not dealing with this mess,” Jack yells back, muffled by the door.

“What mess?” Ashton asks, bewildered. Alex whips around to stare at him.

“The mess you made,” he says. “Y’know. When you broke little Luke’s heart on his twenty-first birthday.” Ashton has the good grace to look embarrassed, and even winces slightly. Good, Luke thinks, a little childishly. Public humiliation probably makes them even for Luke’s birthday being ruined, isn’t it?

“I didn’t mean to,” Ashton says, sounding very much like a five-year-old.

“I don’t care,” Alex says. “You two sort shit out between yourselves.” Ashton blinks at him.

“Right,” he says, and turns to Luke. “So. Uh. I feel like now is the time to ask you on a date.”

“What, with my chaperone watching?” Luke says, throwing Alex a pointed glance, and Alex throws his hands up in exasperation and heads back into his office. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Ashton says, with a small smile. “It’s sweet how protective they are of you.” Which, yeah, but like, fuck, because if Ashton thinks this is protective, he’s got another thing coming when he meets Michael and Calum. Luke bites his lip.

“Wait ‘til you meet Michael and Calum,” he says, a little warningly, a little gleefully.

“So is that a yes?”

“A yes to what?”

“Me asking you out.” Luke blinks.

“Ashton, I asked you out, like, two months ago,” he says. “And you’re my soulmate. Obviously it’s a yes.”

“Well, I don’t know,” Ashton says, a little defensively. “It’s good to check.”

“What, so now you’re the king of communicating?” Ashton throws him a slightly hard look, but it softens when he sees the smile on Luke’s lips.

“I sort of deserve that,” he admits, and Luke grins.

“Part and parcel of going on a date with me,” he says, and Ashton grins back.

“At least I to go on a date with you,” he says. “Softens the blow.”

Yeah. Luke could get used to the way his heart is trying to communicate with him through the medium of interpretive dance.

(It’s a good thing his soulmate’s a nurse.)

-------

Hurry up, Luke scribbles on his arm as quickly as possible. I didn’t pay for parking.

Jesus, Luke, comes back almost immediately. I’m on my way back.

I can tell by your handwriting.

You’re one to talk.

Fuck off.

xxx

Luke puts the pen back in the glove compartment and taps his fingers on the gear stick, peering at the revolving doors to try and spot his boyfriend. It only takes about thirty more seconds before he sees him walking out, looking around for a moment until he sees Luke parked badly and illegally and jogs over, shaking his head fondly.

“Idiot,” he says, when he gets in the car. “If we get a fine, you’re paying it.”

“You’ll have to bargain with Alex to give me a raise, then,” Luke says, throwing the car into reverse without bothering to look over his shoulder.

“Jesus, Luke, look where you’re fucking going,” Ashton says, even though there’s no one there. Luke shrugs, puts the car into first, and pulls out of the spot he’d been parked in.

“What?” he says. “We’re right outside a hospital. It’s fine.”

“Fucking hell,” Ashton mutters, but when Luke glances over he’s smiling.

“So?” Luke prompts. “What did they say?”

“It was fine,” Ashton says. “There are procedures in place for this sort of thing, y’know. They had the government papers confirming you’re my soulmate, and the ethical review was fine, because you just broke a few bones so I barely looked after you.” Luke scoffs.

“Just broke a few bones?” he echoes, a little indignantly. “I broke half my fucking body.”

“Well, you did toss about fifty guitars onto yourself,” Ashton says, fumbling in the glove compartment as Luke pulls out onto the main road.

“That was to get out of whatever Jack was trying to force me to do,” Luke says. “And it worked.”

“Was it really worth it?” Ashton says, pulling the pen out of the glove compartment and raising his eyebrows.

“Of course it was,” Luke says immediately. “I didn’t have to do whatever dumb shit Jack had in mind.” Out of the corner of his eye, Luke sees Ashton roll his eyes.

“That was a perfect set-up to say of course, Ash, I wouldn’t have met you otherwise,” Ashton tells him, and Luke grins.

“Would’ve said that if I meant it,” he says, and Ashton sighs, but he’s grinning.

“I don’t know why I bother with you,” he says, and Luke grins back.

“Because I’m your soulmate,” he says. “And worse than that, you chose to be stuck with me. This is all your own fucking doing.”

“Fucking hell,” Ashton mumbles again, but he’s scribbling something on his arm, and when Luke glances down he sees a slightly shaky heart drawn right where his wrist meets the back of his hand, and smiles out at the road.

“Love you too.”

#lashton #malum #5sos fic #5sos fanfic #5sos slash #jalex #YES I KEPT IT UNDER 15K #sorry i am literally going to crow about my achievement on that front #no one come for me for the title #IT WORKED OK...its not just my addiction rearing its ugly head agian

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script-a-world · 4 years ago

Note

Got a question. I’ve been working on a story for many years now. I’ve recently realized that my world shares some similar world elements to an already existing and popular franchise (unintentional, I only just started watching it). This is okay, right? I still want to write it because I know it is different, but I’m concerned with people saying I’m ripping them off, not to mention issues getting published.

Constablewrites: What about your story is different to the other one? Being similar to a popular property can actually be a vital selling point (what the publishing industry refers to as a comp title). “Hunger Games but it’s in space” is a perfectly valid elevator pitch, and when you have more room to expand you can get further into the details that make it different. “Hunger Games but… well, mine is a graphic novel?” is gonna be a harder sell. So if you don’t currently have that clear departure from that other story, work on developing it.

Tex: To borrow from Constable’s example, the Hunger Games weren’t made in a vacuum, either (Wikipedia):

Collins has said that the inspiration for The Hunger Games came from channel surfing on television. On one channel she observed people competing on a reality show and on another she saw footage of the invasion of Iraq. The two "began to blur in this very unsettling way" and the idea for the book was formed.[2] The Greek myth of Theseus served as a major basis for the story, with Collins describing Katniss as a futuristic Theseus, and Roman gladiatorial games provided the framework. The sense of loss that Collins developed through her father's service in the Vietnam War was also an influence on the story, with Katniss having lost her father at age 11, five years before the story begins.[3]

The only authors I’ve seen blatantly saying that their stories are completely original are oblivious to the point of pretentiousness - in a lot of cases, it’s better to source your inspirations, because it allows publishers clear guidelines on your story’s marketability and in which niche to direct their efforts.

Publishing houses, if they’ve got enough experience, can use that crossover of themes and inspirational source material to help you edit your novel and do things like produce summaries and source artists for covers and other marketing material. So long as you know it’s different, you can probably find a way to defend your manuscript as such, and the right ears will hear the tune you’re selling them.

Delta: To continue the above example, The Hunger Games also bears a resemblance to Battle Royale by Koushun Takami, which predates it. Though I’m sure the cultural divide helps explain the lack of overlap, it does demonstrate that it is totally possible to have similar ideas and still be separate. Take the movies White House Down and Olympus Has Fallen as another example. I once described them as the same pitch, developed by two different directors. They are completely different in tone, theme, and many pertinent details, though the premises are functionally identical. Yet both were independent blockbuster movies.

If you’re worried about being influenced by another work, perhaps to your work’s detriment, I would recommend simply not consuming the existing work, but at the same time it’s important to read and watch as a creator yourself, to fine-tune your skill. So don’t be too afraid of consuming similar content; as long as you don’t intentionally plagiarize, I doubt you’d have anything to worry about.

Constablewrites: The “unintentionally duplicated movie” is very much A Thing in Hollywood, where very very similar movies come out within a year or so of each other, meaning the chances of one taking its ideas from the other are pretty slim. Pixar was a bit plagued by it in the early days, with A Bug’s Life/Antz or Finding Nemo/Shark Tale. (Also Monsters Inc/Ice Age, but no one noticed that those are the same plot.) Occasionally I’ll hear from agent/slush reader friends something like “There hasn’t been a carnival movie in ages so why do I have six of them on my desk wtf”. Some synchronicity is just to be expected.

Mirintala: I was in a writing class recently where the instructor talked about reading submissions for an anthology that had been an open call and they had gotten four or five stories with the same premise (I don't remember exactly but it was similar enough, like cannibal werewolves on a train. It happens pretty often. Collective unconscious just gets caught up on something maybe?

#the-writers-wrench #original ideas

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consumedkings-archive · 4 years ago

Text

ancient names, pt. viii

A John Seed/Original Female Character Fanfic

Ancient Names, pt viii: the space between us

Masterlink Post

Word Count: ~6.9k (????)

Rating: M for now, rating will change in later chapters as things develop.

Warnings: Language, some “light” religious blasphemy (it’s Far Cry 5). Strong canon deviance from here on out. Some more PTSD symptoms/descriptions, though mild.

Notes: This chapter is like, nearly 2k longer than most others and folks, we got it all: identity crisis, PTSD symptoms, the irritability of being surrounded by Seed brothers, the irritability of perhaps not having eaten or had any real water for like two days, Jacob being a shithead, the "sees love interest in x state of undress" trope, YOU NAME IT. When does the fun stop?? We'll never know. tl;dr Elliot pops off like 6 times and honestly, who’s surprised anymore.

I hope you guys enjoy, it feels a bit like this chapter got away from me and not a lot of exciting stuff happens but it did feel important to have this lull of a chapter between all the action and drama. Thank you, as always, to my angel @starcrier the best proof-reader a girl could ask for an also a remarkably thoughtful and sweet friend who for some reasons decides to bless me with her presence to this day.

Thank you so much to everyone who comments, reads, reblogs, likes--all of it is always cherished by me, and it really does inspire me to keep going. <3

tagging my lover my life my shawty my wife @empirics bc she still wanna go here even when i babble at her nonstop

John had hoped that Elliot would go to sleep, but he knew the chances of that happening were slim to none and he wasn’t surprised when, out of what he could only assume was pure spite and anger, she stayed awake the entire drive to the compound. She stayed awake through John recounting what they had experienced of the cult already, what they knew about Faith; Elliot stayed oddly silent, in the way that swelled with the knowledge that she probably knew more than what she was letting on, but John didn’t push.

Jacob stuck to the side roads, the back roads, keeping them as far from the most populated areas as possible: and John could see that it drove Elliot batty, knowing they could just stop at Fall’s End. The radio’s gospel songs echoed eerily in the cab of the truck. After about five minutes of it playing—and, coincidentally, about two minutes after Elliot had smoked down the entirety of her first cigarette—she blurted out, “Can you turn that shit off?”

“Why?” Jacob asked evenly, and John passed a hand over his face tiredly as he heard Elliot take in a huge breath, as though she needed to make sure she properly had enough oxygen to spit her venom out.

As John began tiredly, “Deputy, mind yourself and close your mouth,” Elliot bulldozed him to say, “Because I’ve got a head wound that seems to get exacerbated by idiotic cultists,” their voices once again overlapping until their words strangled each other, Elliot glaring at John. He really wished she would stop looking so betrayed when he took the side of one of his brothers; it wasn’t as though she and him had ever really felt like a team , anyway.

Except for the ranch, dispatching of those Swedes in tandem. And except for when they’d been driving, and Elliot had actually looked happy for a second, even with their hands cuffed together. And except for—

Knock that shit off, John thought to himself, just in time for Joseph to say, “It seems as though your time together has made an improvement on your temperament, Deputy Honeysett.”

“What gave you that impression?” Elliot prompted, despite John’s not-so-subtle pleading look.

“Well,” Joseph continued, “we always do try to have faith , you know, especially in our brother. But considering the animalistic state you were delivered to him in, I would have expected much more poor behavior out of you.” A gentle smile tugged at his lips, an expression John could see reflected in the rearview mirror. “I like to see the impact he’s had on you.”

John couldn’t quite sort out how he felt about his brother’s words. He wanted to be proud; he wanted to think, yes, see? I’ve tamed her, the hellcat, look at her keeping her hands to herself. He wanted to, but there was a complicated feeling wound up in it, because he saw the way Joseph’s words struck Elliot, the way they collapsed the iron-clad battlements of her expression, the way they folded her up and crushed them in his proverbial fist. It was exactly what Joseph did; disarmed, unwound, pulled each tangling thread until they were so knotted all you could do was cut it out.

So yes, John felt an immediate burst of pride in his chest at Joseph’s words, and that pride was almost instantly wiped away at the look on Elliot’s face. It was as though she couldn’t stand the idea that he had made an impression on her, in any way. Disgust, he thought, fending off the insult of her abhorrence of his influence, hatred. She has always been spiteful and venomous, underneath it all.

“Just wait until you outgrow your usefulness, Seed,” Elliot managed out, her voice crackling with something violent. “You’re the only one I want to see dead before I hand you over to the government.”

Joseph rolled his window down. “I see that your manners still need some polishing, though.”

Elliot looked at John. Her gaze was hard, but he returned it nonetheless, expectantly. She asked, “Proud of yourself, are you?”

“Elliot,” John began, moderating his voice so that he didn’t sound as pleased as he felt (and of course he didn’t know why he was doing that; there was no reason he should work so hard to preserve Elliot’s feelings, and yet… ) so that she wouldn’t be right about him, “it doesn’t…”

“Shut up,” the blonde snapped. Her voice rattled, with anger and with the sick inside of her. She pressed herself back into the corner of the bench seat in the back; she looked like she wanted to melt into the truck’s frame. “I’m fucking tired of your voice.”

“Watch your mouth,” Jacob said from the front seat.

“You shouldn’t be smoking,” John interjected tartly, feeling himself scramble for something—anything—that felt like normal between them again; the normal that had happened with being forced into each other’s company. “Not until you get better. You still sound sick.”

“ You got those cigarettes for me,” Elliot quipped, vitriolic, “and what the fuck isn’t clear about shut up?”

As soon as the words left her mouth Jacob pushed on the brakes, hard, the movement slamming the back of her head against the window in the back of the truck. The blonde let out a volley of swears, her hand flying to the back of her head instantly.

Jacob said, his voice prickling with hostility, “I told you to watch your mouth.”

“Jacob—” John began, having braced himself against the driver’s seat, but he could already feel Elliot seething.

“You fuckhead ,” Elliot bit out, spiteful as ever, her fingers coming away sticky and crimson. “You absolute piece of—”

“Jacob,” Joseph murmured, “let’s not waste time on the road.”

“Elliot, stop squirming,” John insisted, his voice more urgent now. “You’re going to get blood everywhere.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, is it inconvenient for you that your brother reopened my fucking head wound ?”

“That isn’t what I meant,” John growled. “Stop squirming.”

His voice came out more authoritative than he had intended, wound up-tight and hard by the antagonizing nature of Elliot and Jacob’s exchange. The blonde’s jaw clenched, but she stilled; his hands went to her face, tilting her head so that he could take a look at the wound. Reopened, yes, but only just.

“Don’t move,” John said firmly. He could feel Joseph’s eyes on him, and he thought he knew what he was thinking—that once again, he had reaffirmed Joseph’s words, that he had made some kind of an impression on her, that had he told Elliot two days ago to stand still so he could look at a wound that she probably would have sunk her teeth into his arm like a wild animal.

“Didn’t grab any bandages when we were at the ranch, huh?” John asked, trying at something closer to civil.

“I wasn’t thinking particularly beyond bare necessities,” Elliot replied dryly, her voice muffled by her chin tucked against her chest. John made a noise of agreement—he hadn’t thought to grab any, either, having anticipated they’d get the fuck out and be at the compound by now—and sighed a little.

“Well, let’s rip your shirt.”

“Why aren’t we ripping your shirt?” Elliot prompted, and John blinked at her incredulously.

“Do you have any idea how much this shirt costs?”

“Oh, you pretentious little manchild —”

“Fine!”

John didn’t rip his shirt. Instead, he peeled the shirt off, shrugging out of it and folding it to press the gathering of fabric to the wound. Elliot straightened back up into a sitting position, reaching up; her fingers fluttered over John’s, almost shyly, replacing the pressure of his hand with her own so that he could pull away and let her hold it herself.

“You should have just ripped it,” Elliot said, her eyes flickering over him before she caught herself and looked away. Were John not convinced she was running a fever, he might have thought he saw her blushing. All the same, he felt the corners of his mouth tick in something close to a smile.

“It’s easier to scrub blood out than it is to stitch it back together.”

“That’s our John,” Joseph acquiesced from the front sagely. “Ever-giving.” He paused, tilting his head to peer at Elliot and John in the back, “All we ask for is a little civility, deputy. After all, it is our sister that’s been kidnapped.”

Elliot replied, “You seem very concerned about that.” And then, “By the way, they have Joey too, which wouldn’t have happened if you didn’t pass her off to this idiot,” and she jerked her thumb at John.

“If they wanted to kill Faith, they would have already,” Jacob replied, hitting the bridge to the island and flipping the cruise control on as he blithely ignored her comment about Hudson. “Since she was alive when the two of you saw her. Isn’t that right?”

Elliot muttered something of an agreement, as though Jacob were not saying the things she had already said, as though she so desperately did not want to agree with him about something that she would rather choke on her own words than say it out loud.

“We have some search parties sent out,” Jacob continued, his steely gaze sweeping across the road as he flicked the turn signal on—certainly, pure habit at this point. “To pin them down. Once we have them located, we can work on getting Faith back and wiping them out.”

The blonde beside him was quiet, now. As Jacob pulled the truck into the compound—which looked nothing short of a ghost town, now—John glanced over at her again, nursing the wound with his shirt. She looked only tired, as though she’d spent all of her energy in just this car ride alone.

Jacob put the truck into park and turned it off; as they filed out of the car, John swept his gaze over the compound; everything seemed peaceful, as if nothing were happening, a low breeze drifting over the houses and church while the early afternoon sun drenched it in a harsh, unforgiving light. Though it was quiet, the stillness of the compound unsettled him, and the knowledge that many of their followers had been tucked away in the bunkers for safekeeping made his skin crawl.

“John.” Joseph’s voice shook him out of his thoughts. “Why don’t you take our dear deputy to one of the guesthouses to get settled in? There’s no reason why she can’t rest while we’re getting the radios set up to contact her...” His voice trailed off as he seemed to search for a word, and then eventually mustered up, “Friends.

“I’m not your dear anything,” Elliot said slamming the truck door behind her. Joseph’s lips quirked in a small, muted smile, his eyes beneath the yellow lenses of his glasses nearly unreadable.

“Not yet,” Joseph relented.

John's hand reached Elliot’s shoulder. “Come on,” he said, shaking the way Joseph’s pinning gaze unsettled him, just a little, like there was nothing that was happening that his brother wasn’t cataloging for later.

“Don’t touch me,” she muttered, shrugging his hand off of her but following him nonetheless. John could hear his brothers exchanging words in low voices on their way into the church, and that little sting in his chest lingered, more firmly: the idea that Joseph was pawning off responsibility to him to make him feel like he was doing something important remained.

Elliot pushed the door to a guest house open. “You really just took your whole shirt off instead of ripping a little piece, huh?” she said. It might have been her attempt at casual conversation, but John couldn’t say for sure. It was always so hard to tell what was going to trip that hairpin trigger into enemy territory again.

“It’s Versace, Elliot.”

“Oh, boo .” She pulled it away from her head. “I think you just wanted a reason to be shirtless in front of me.”

John blinked. He didn’t know what to say to that, the most friendly, nearly flirty thing Elliot Honeysett had said to him in many years—which was saying a lot, considering the last time they had spoken in a friendly manner, she’d hardly said more than a stammer of a sentence to him before Joey Hudson swept her away.

“Wouldn’t you like that?” he managed out after a moment, taking the shirt back from her as he got his mental footing back. “I saw you looking. No need to be shy about it, though—we’ve already established you find me handsome.”

Elliot scoffed, but he saw her face flood with red just before she turned away, pacing to the bathroom at the back of the house. “Found, once, years ago,” she said over her shoulder. “Don’t let it inflate your ego, Seed.”

He called after her, “Too late,” and she slammed the bathroom door; the very definitive sound of the shower running echoed in the empty house, and John exhaled a small breath in relief.

As he inspected the bloodstain that had gathered on the front of the shirt, he felt a pleasant little thrill in his chest; a stain was a small price to pay for having made Elliot squirm her way out of that conversation, he supposed, and he remembered the way Joseph had said, I like to see the impact he’s had on you.

Not so wild now, John thought, are you, hellcat?

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

The benefits of a hot shower were never to be underestimated.

Though Elliot had gone into her shower feeling bedraggled, worn down, furious, and more than unseated—both by Joseph’s assertion that there was a yet to be had with the friendliness of their relations, but also by John’s casual confidence in her attraction to him.

She wasn’t attracted to him. John had held her under like he was going to drown her, really drown her. He’d wanted to tattoo wrath right on her chest.

Elliot’s fingers fluttered over the spot where John’s had dragged, just a day or so ago now, as he said, I think it’ll fit nicely right here, don’t you think? Maybe just over her heart. The same place dream-John had touched, the same place her skin had been burning when flower-eyed John, spilling petals from his mouth, had gripped her face in his hands.

They were getting mixed up in her head now, all of these Johns: the John she had spooned for warmth with in the forest, the John that hadn’t complained when she anchored her fingers into his arm for steadiness, the John that held each side of her face while her body and mind split, somewhere in the middle, bringing her back down before she slipped away permanently; they all wove and intermingled themselves with the others that she knew, the Johns that kidnapped her friends or kidnapped her or held her under or leered at her in a bar when she was young.

It was almost— almost —romantic, the kind of ferocious dichotomy she would have read in a book somewhere, sometime, in a place where she still had the leisure to do something like that: read a book, take a nap, browse television channels.

Almost, but not quite, because there was and could never be something romantic about John Seed.

Elliot startled out of her thoughts when someone knocked on the bathroom door, the sound echoing in the small bathroom much louder than she thought the knocks would have actually been.

“You’re not climbing through the window right now, are you?” John’s voice came through the door. Elliot quickly wiped the amusement she felt creeping into her face and ducked her head under the water, the heat of it stinging her wound in a sort of catharsis.

“If I was,” Elliot called back, “what would you do?”

“Very funny, Elliot.” And then: “I’d probably kick this door down.”

“How very caveman.”

“Well, you know—desperate times. Plus, I hear women like that kind of thing.”

She rubbed her face with both hands to stop the smile tugging at her mouth. She had to keep focused: she had to remember the way John had practically glowed, radioactive with pride at Joseph’s praise that he’d made an impact on her, that he was changing her. For the better, they thought. For them. Elliot had hardly seen John around his brothers, but the short amount of time that she had (and wasn’t drugged out of her mind) it had become very clear to her that the relationship between them wasn’t as easy to swallow as she would have thought.

But it was easy, when she was given the luxury of a hot shower that molded all of her muscles into relaxation, to feel like they were on a team. It was easy—especially when John had handled her so carefully, like his hands hadn’t inflicted pain on numerous other people, like he hadn’t carved sin after sin into flesh as a macabre brand. Easy, Elliot thought, willing herself to turn off the hot water, because she couldn’t stay in a shower forever. Easy to forget. I can’t forget what’s happened.

“Any chance you’ve got some jeans out there?” Elliot said, stepping out of the shower and finding a clean (clean?) towel hanging; she didn’t have much time to be picky, so she wrapped it around herself and squeezed some of the water out of her hair. Outside, she could hear John stomping around, fumbling through things, and once she’d gotten mostly dried off she opened the door.

“Oh,” John said, like he hadn’t been expecting her, standing just a foot away from the door and holding a collection of clothes in his arms. Jeans, it looked like, and a few shirts. His own shirt was back on, the dark bloodstain turning the navy blue nearly black on the front.

“Oh?” Elliot prompted. She held her hand out for the clothes while the other kept the towel in place.

“It’s just that you look...” He paused, and then handed her the clothes, regarding her almost warily. “You look—”

And he stopped again, and Elliot thought, well go on, spit it out, then, her eyebrows arching upward expectantly.

“Nice,” he said after a moment. As though catching himself, he amended, “Normal, I mean.”

Elliot’s expression deadpanned. “I am normal, John. You’re the one that’s part of a cult, remember?”

He squinted his eyes at her. The spell was broken; the clock had struck midnight; he was no longer enchanted with her, numerous days of grime scrubbed off of her body.

Rather than argue the logistics of his family’s venture being a cult or not, John said, “Change quick, it shouldn’t take long for them to get the radio ready.”

“Yes, boss,” Elliot replied demurely, mimicking the words he’d used when she’d told him to shut up and be a good blanket. John’s eyes flashed to her face and then away, but she didn’t spend too long trying to parse out what his expression was; she closed the door and busied herself with shimmying into the clothes, leftovers from Eden’s Gate members, it seemed. Relatively clean, too, considering she usually saw peggies in various states of disarray and neglect.

After she’d pulled the rest of her clothes on, the white shirt—clearly meant for a man—nearly swallowing her up, she kicked the old, dirty clothes out of the way and opened the door.

“Would you have really kicked the door down if I was climbing through the window?” Elliot asked, scrunching her hair. The back of her head throbbed, but in a pleasant way; the wound had been thoroughly rinsed, and though it still ached from Jacob’s foot slamming the brakes, she didn’t think it was concussive. Yet.

John leaned against the door, regarded her with a dry expression. “Why?” he asked. She opened the door from the “guest house”—it was really more a bunkhouse than anything—and shrugged.

“I hear women like that kind of thing.”

A swift, easy breeze drifted through the doorway as Elliot stepped outside, taking one moment—just one moment—to close her eyes, and breathe, and think, I’m so close, Joey, to rescuing you. I’m so close, I swear I’m on my way to you. Please, just hold out for a little longer.

“—than woman.” John’s voice rattled around in her head, and she opened her eyes looking at him over her shoulder.

“What was that?” she asked.

He sidled up behind her, his hands in his pockets, and bent just a little at the waist so he could say into her ear, “I said, it’s a good thing you’re more devil than woman,” and against the wishes of her mind, the skin of her neck prickled with goosebumps.

She scrunched her shoulder up to her ear to fend him off. “That’s right, John,” she replied evenly, “I am a devil, and don’t you forget it.”

Elliot saw movement out of the corner of her eye, her body stiffening a little before she turned her gaze and saw that it was Joseph, standing at the steps of the church.

“Children,” he called, his voice welling with some kind of emotion that Elliot couldn’t quite pin down—perhaps amusement, or something else. “Are you done? The radio is ready for you, deputy.”

“Born done with this one,” Elliot replied, feeling the small smile that had been fighting its way onto her face slip from her features. There was just something about Joseph that put her on edge; every second she spent in her presence reminded her of the way he’d looked at her, that night in the church, when he’d said, God will not let you take me.

Like she was the only person in the room. Like she was the only person that had mattered.

Elliot liked to think that she was not the kind of person that would be so easily won over by a cult—but she also knew that they looked for people like her, people with a history of trauma, people who had fewer parents than a child ought to have, people whose one functioning parent was only barely functioning and only crested the standard when they had a few drinks in them. She was exactly the kind of person that Joseph nurtured, cradled, forgave, and she thought that for a second in that church, that night, she had thought about how nice it would be to feel that. Once.

But she had a family, and people who cared about her and relied on her and would miss her. Like Joey.

With long strides, she crossed the small courtyard to the church and stopped in front of Joseph, waiting for him to move aside so that she could go in.

“Feeling better?” Joseph asked her mildly, and when he didn’t move aside she shouldered past him. “You look like one of us.”

“Peachy,” Elliot replied flatly; she purposefully ignored his last words, rinsing them away by focusing on the task at hand. The inside of the church was dim, with only the Eden’s Gate window at the back. Her stomach dropped unpleasantly; a surge of panic washed through her, and she was suddenly reminded of the feeling of Eden’s Gate members shoving past her, watching her through fringes of dark, dirty hair, and Joseph, hands outstretched, waiting.

And John, prowling in the background, ever a predator waiting for his prey.

Joseph brushed past her, walking down between the rows of seating to where Jacob had set up a table, the radio crackling as he adjusted some settings on it. Elliot pushed her way down as well, hating that her steps faltered, that Jacob’s piercing eyes caught every step that didn’t quite hit the way that she wanted it to. Behind her, she heard the easy, confident cadence of John’s steps, the door to the outside shutting.

For the first time since getting in the truck, Elliot felt like she was in the belly of the beast. If only, a voice inside of her said, if only you had known this then, instead of now.

“Well,” Jacob said, “are you going to call them or not?”

She snatched the radio out of his outstretched hand, her heart hammering in her chest. So close; she was so close. If she wanted to, she could tell Jerome and the others where she was, flush the Seeds out well and good once and for all.

But she couldn’t, because she still needed them. At least, she needed one of them, to get Joey back.

Elliot adjusted the settings on the radio to the proper channels, swallowing thickly, and hit the button on the side. Joseph lingered under the window, a few feet away, his back to her; behind her, she heard John’s steps pacing closer to her.

The radio clicked, static buzzing patiently on the end. Her mouth felt dry. “Jerome?” she asked, tentatively into the static. “Jerome, do you—read? It’s me.” And then, quickly and feeling like an idiot, “Elliot, I mean. It’s me, Elliot.”

Silence stretched on the other side for just a moment. Then, the static crackled, and a familiar voice broke over the radio, “Elliot? It’s so good to hear your voice again. Thank God, we were—” Jerome’s voice broke up a little, and then picked up, “—about you. Where are you? Did you get away from John?”

Relief immediately flooded her system, the sensation almost painful; her heart thudded painfully against her chest, and she gripped the table with her free hand to keep herself steady.

“I—” Elliot paused. Her gaze flickered to John, who now lingered to the right of her; Jacob loomed to the left, and Joseph, ever the pinnacle, ever the point of the pyramid, just in front of her. The closest to heaven.

John’s gaze weighed down on her, pinning her, so that instinctively she wanted to squirm right out of it.

“—I’m okay, don't worry about me," she said after a moment. "I'm on my way to get Joey. Jerome, I need you to listen to me."

“Tell me where you are,” Jerome insisted, his voice crackling through the radio with urgency. “We’ll help you get Hudson back. It’s been quiet, here.”

John rolled his eyes, barely veiling his contempt. Elliot shot him a look and cleared her throat, trying to ignore the way that the pastor’s words clutched and pulled at her heart. Jerome’s voice was like a balm to her nerves; she realized, quite suddenly, how much she actually missed being around people who weren’t the Seeds, or members of Eden’s Gate—someone who actually cared about her.

“Please listen to me,” she tried again. “There’s someone else here. A different group, a new—cult. They’re here and I think they’re going to wipe everyone out. I don’t have a lot of time to explain, but you need to take everyone out of Fall’s End and get them out of here, okay? Everyone, and just evacuate as fast as you can.”

“What? Elliot, what are you talking about? ” Jerome’s voice faltered for a moment, and then he said, “Please don’t try and Atlas this thing, deputy.”

Elliot pressed her hand to her forehead. When she lifted her head, Jacob’s eyes were fixed on her, and he said, “Two minutes, deputy.”

Of course, she thought, both exhausted and infuriated. This fucking Darwinian psycho wouldn’t want to give them a fighting chance. "There wasn't a fucking time limit on this radio call before."

"You're calling the people that want us dead," Jacob deadpanned. "One minute."

Elliot wanted to say that not even a full minute had passed, but she knew better. She bit down on her cheek until she tasted cooper, trying to refocus her attention.

“There’s no time, Jerome,” she insisted, talking faster now as the proverbial clock ticked down. “Take everyone from Fall’s End and leave, okay? I’m getting Joey and we’ll meet up with you a town over, or further way—just don’t stop driving. I can’t explain anymore. I have to go. Jerome?”

There was no answer on the other end for a minute; she could picture Jerome and Mary May arguing back and forth about what they needed to do for this, for her, and her heart ached a little in her chest. Finally, his voice crackled through: “I hear you, but Elliot—let one of us come and help. We’ll get you and Joey out of here.”

“Give Mary May a hug for me, okay? And get Dutch, and everyone, and get the fuck out of here.”

“Elliot.” Jerome’s voice had changed. Her hand had gone to turn the radio off, but it stilled. “Tell me you’re alright and mean it.”

It wasn’t his Resistance Business voice, anymore, and nor was it his pastor voice. It was his dad voice, firm and unrelenting, but not unkind. It welled with gentle affection.

Elliot felt her vision wobble a little. It was embarrassing, that Jerome could disarm her this far away, without seeing her or knowing what the last two days had been. She swallowed thickly and ducked her head against her chest a little when her breath shuddered in her chest.

“We’re worried about you, kid. All of us.”

“Deputy,” Jacob said, impatient, and Jerome continued, “You can tell me if it’s not okay.”

“I’m alright,” she managed out into the radio, willing the tears back away, back from where they had come from. “I’m alright, Jerome, I promise. Please get everyone out of here.”

She put the radio back down on the table and switched it off; she exhaled sharply, once, through her nose. Her chest felt tight, and her body ached, every muscle and tendon and joint in her body feeling deeply bruised. She thought, for one awful, terrible moment, that she might actually start crying right here in front of all of the men she least wanted to do that in front of.

“I guess we’ll see if they make it out,” Jacob said, his voice painstakingly casual and clipped all at once. Elliot felt something hot and sticky flare in her chest, like all of the oxygen had been sucked right out of the air around her. "And if they don't, well—probably means they weren't ever meant to."

She didn’t want to think about the Resistance not making it out; she didn’t want to think about the slow, oozing creep of the cult sidling up on them, of Ase’s fingers on their faces, lovingly planting their gutted corpses with fresh, vibrant blooms.

“Shut the fuck up,” she managed out, her voice wobbling. Jacob’s mouth curved at the corner into something like a wicked smile; he might have been infuriated by her petulance, she thought, if her voice wasn’t thick and wet with unshed tears. She straightened up, digging her nails into her palms, thinking, I could kill him right now, wrap my hands right around that big neanderthal neck and strangle the life right out of him.

But she couldn’t, even if at that moment she really wanted to, because talking to Jerome for even that short time had reminded her about what it felt like to have people around her that cared about her; it had reminded her about being around people that she trusted, that trusted her, that shared the same beliefs. That wanted to take care of her.

She had almost forgotten that, being handcuffed to John Seed for almost two days straight.

“We’ll pray for their safe departure, of course,” Joseph said. His words echoed, tinny and hollow, in her head. She blinked furiously. Elliot was only vaguely aware of John pacing back across the room and saying something to her, but she couldn’t hear what it was; not really.

I am so tired, she thought, over the sound of John talking to her. I am so tired, and I want to go home.

“When will your peggies be back?” she asked, interrupting the sound of Jacob and John blustering back and forth. Joseph paused, and then cocked his head at Jacob expectantly. She waited for one more beat and then said, louder and with more fervent impatience, “I said, when will your little cockroaches be back from finding Joey and Faith?”

Jacob replied, bitingly, “Within the next few hours. They’re going to pin down a location and get back to us.”

“Great.” Elliot turned on her heel, marching herself down the same hallway that just a little over a week ago, she had been walking down with Burke and Whitehorse. “Fuck off until then, you piece of shit.”

It felt like her lungs might burst, or her heart might beat right out of her chest, before she made it out of the stifling darkness of the church. She pushed the door open and hurried outside to take a lungful of fresh air, air unpopulated and unshared with Seed boys.

I’m just one girl. The thought was a desperate one, one that turned over and over again in her mind. That these things were just happening to her, that she had no agency in her life, that it might always be like this. Forever. I’m just one girl.

Elliot walked to the bunkhouse, pushing each step into the dirt in the hopes of feeling more grounded, each breath of air slowly bringing her back to the earth. When she made it inside, she closed the door quickly behind her and paced, rubbing her face. The bunkhouse no longer felt surprisingly clean. It only served as a reminder of where she was, where she wasn’t, where she might never go again.

She pushed her hands against her face until spiderwebs crawled behind her eyelids. They blistered, red fractals of light swimming in her non-vision. She was only a girl, and she was alone—no family and no friends nearby to help, and that was supposed to be good; if Jerome listened to her, they'd be out of Hope County within a few hours.

There was no more room for error. Fall's End evacuating meant there was no rescue party coming, in spite of her words. It meant that she was really only going to get one shot at getting in and getting out, for good. Get Joey, get Boomer, get out. Period.

The door clicked open. Footsteps echoed against the hollow wooden flooring. It was John; she could tell by the way he walked. “Elliot.”

It wasn’t a question; it was a statement, not a how are you, but something else, something that Elliot didn’t know what he meant and or what he was saying or what he thought to gain from it. Did he ever do anything that didn't have any personal gain for him?

“John,” Elliot said, her hands pressed into her face, “can you just leave? I am so tired of hearing your voice.”

“Elliot,” John said again, “take a breath.”

“I am breathing, you fuckhead,” she snapped viciously, turning to face him—John, in his stupid fucking designer shirt, his head cocked to the side as he watched her, the venom in her voice landing but not hitting the way it should have. “Do you have any idea what it’s like to be alone? Really, truly alone? Like, for fucking good, unless by some godforsaken miracle your insane brothers don’t kill me as soon as I’ve served the purpose of fetching Faith back.”

“I do," John replied angrily, "and they don’t want to—”

“Oh fuck off, John.” She raked her fingers through her hair. There was a nasty, wicked monster, crawling up from through her, fingers sliding between the slats of her ribs to get a good grip. “You should see yourself whenever Joseph says anything. You practically fall over to kiss the ground he fucking walks on, and for what? For him to give you a little pat on the head? You’d do absolutely anything he asked you to. You’re fucking pathetic.”

That hit the way she wanted to. She saw the hurt slide across John’s face, and then the anger, a power-point presentation on How To Make One Man Hate You.

“You have a lot of nerve, deputy,” John bit out (and she didn’t miss the way he no longer was using her name, like he wanted to distance himself from her), “to talk to me like that, given that you would probably be lying dead in a field with flowers coming out of your eyes without me. Not to mention that you need us to get your little friend Hudson back—”

“It’s your fucking fault!”

She felt the rasp in her throat, the claws of sickness shredding her delicate insides as her voice flexed painfully in volume. John was staring at her, and she thought, I have to stop yelling, I have to stop, this is just what they want, for me to lose control, but she couldn’t, the words welling up inside of her, wrecked and vicious, and she felt like all of the blood had fled from her hands and feet; she was ice, now, frigid and unyielding.

John’s mouth twisted, like he was shaping the words he wanted to say before he said them. He started, less heated this time, “Elliot—”

“It’s your fault,” she interrupted, clenching her fists at her sides until her hands itched and burned with the intense need for circulation. “It’s your fault—I should—I should be leaving with Fall’s End and leaving this absolute fucking nightmare behind, or—or maybe that shouldn’t be happening at all because this is my fucking home and you and your stupid family took that from me, and I fucking hate you, John Seed, John Duncan, whatever the fuck your name is, whoever the fuck you are, I don’t care and I hate you!”

He stepped forward, his hands lifted, like he was going to touch her; perhaps rest his hands on her shoulders, take her face the way he’d grown so accustomed to doing when her breathing shallowed and her eyes unfocused. But she pushed his arms out of her immediate vision, and while infuriatingly he didn’t get out of her space she still bit out, crushing the words on their way past her teeth, “Don’t fucking touch me, John,” and his hands dropped back to his sides.

She tried to ignore the strange, fleeting disappointment: as though she had been anticipating his grounding touch, as though she had wanted it, her body betraying her words and her head.

No more, she thought through the haze in her mind, no more of that.

He shifted on his feet. “You’re tired,” he said after a moment, which sounded not like the thing that he wanted to say but instead the thing that he decided was safe. “You should rest. The search parties will be back soon, and you’ll need to be at full capacity.”

Elliot stared at the bloodstain on his shirt. It felt like all of her insides had been scooped out, emptying her; her stomach twisted, both with anxiety and hunger.

“Yeah,” she replied numbly. “Alright, John.”

He turned on his heel, walking through the door to the bunkhouse and letting it swing shut behind him. The room felt colder without another human body in there; emptier, lonelier. Elliot sat herself down on the wooden floor and pushed her face into her knees.

This wasn’t supposed to be me. Her ears rang, her heart thudding painfully in her chest, a black stone falling over and over until her ribs bruised and cracked. This wasn’t supposed to be my life.

She closed her eyes tight, arms looped around her knees, pressed against the wall of the bunkhouse, and willed herself to sleep.

#far cry 5 #john seed/deputy #john seed/ofc #far cry fic #ch: john seed #fic: ancient names #otp: death keep off; i am your enemy #ch: elliot honeysett

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edda-blattfe · 5 years ago

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Floyd, Jamil, Rook, Lilia, Sebek, Sam (does he count? If not then Trey) react to The princess and the frog (cause Dr. Facilier was amazing), Aladdin and Sleeping Beauty!

@yandere-wishes also asked if I could do Jamil along with Jack and Epel for Aladdin, so I’m just gonna merge those two together since they overlap. Anywho, hope y’all enjoy! Sam counts in my book!

The Princess and the Frog

-I’d like to think Sam did grow up in New Orleans, or at least someplace like it in the TW universe. This movie reminds him of home.

- Tiana’s mamma: And the princess kissed that little frog.

Bby Tiana: *gaggs*

Jamil: You and me both, kid.

- Every single one of those boys would all fight for Tiana in a heartbeat, they respect her that much. Girl dreams big and works to make every bit of it real without trying to cut corners. Even Sam can’t say anything bad about her! Now, filthy rich Mr. La Bouffe and Charlotte are an entirely different story...

- Dr. Facilier is Floyd’s favorite character of all time. He just resonates with the chaotic bastard on a spiritual level.

- Floyd: You think it’s really that tough to be a frog?

Lilia: Want to find out?

- At some point Sebek asked if Gumbo was really as good as the characters made it out to be. He got a lecture on Cajun cuisine and is now contractually obligated to try some once Sam gets the shipment of spices in.

- *tounge scene happens*

Rook: Look at all of that tounge action!

Sebek: Can you not be that way? This is a family movie.

Rook: No. I am, physically incapable of ignoring a perfect opportunity to make people uncomfortable.

Jamil: You should get that on a t-shirt. It’ll be like a warning label to the rest of the world.

Sam: I know a guy, he can slap something together for a decent price and have it here by Tuesday.

Floyd: Can I get one too?

Sleeping Beauty

- If Lilia really did live during the reign of the great seven, then he’s not gonna shut up about how “it didn’t go down that way”. He’ll also joke about how the characters are represented. Bet you anything that Maleficent suffers the most from his little factoids.

- Rook: *points at Diablo* Look, it’s Crowley’s great grand papa!

Floyd: The resemblance is uncanny! D’you think they have the same taste in birdseed?

Sam: Nah, he’s more of a sunflower seed man.

Rook: Really? I’ll keep that in mind.

- This has nothing to do with the color corespondence, but I genuinely believe Sebek would like Fauna. She’s so sweet, soft in every aspect, and an incredibly patient person -her being a fairy kinda helps too. She’s like the grandmother he’s always wanted! He’s a little sad that there’s no way she was really that nice, otherwise she wouldn’t have been one of Maleficent’s enemies.

- Floyd: Why would the fairies take the princess to the palace before midnight on her birthday? Isn’t it kinda obvious that the big bad would already be there waiting?

Jamil: They’re optimists, Floyd. They don’t think about all he things that could go wrong. That’s why pessimists live longer.

- * Maleficent transforms into dragon*

Sebek: That can’t be fair, the prince is just a little squishy human!

*Philip downs Maleficent*

Sam: Little squishy human score 1, big dragon lady, 0.

Aladdin

*enters Epel and Jack*

- Jamil admires Aladdin’s cunning and resolve, but doesn’t think much of him otherwise.

- Rook liked Aladdin from the moment he questioned the guard’s resolve to catch a bread thief and only grew more fond as the movie progressed. Then Jasmine came onto the scene with her own wit. Now, Aladdin x Jasmine is his otp.

- Floyd: *insults the guards in the movie*

Sebek and Jack: *adamantly argues that they’re just trying to do their jobs and don’t deserve that shade*

- *Jasmine shows up*

Epel: *glances between Jasmine and Jamil, then back again* You two look kinda similar.

Jamil: How exactly do you figure that?

Rook: Long, dark hair, almond shaped eyes, slim build, lovely facial shape....yeah, I can see it.

Jamil: *doesn’t knows how to react to that. Just keeps sipping his soda*

Floyd: You should cosplay her next Halloween.

Jamil: *chokes on soda*

(Kalim: That awkward moment your manservant looks more like your daughter than you do...wow, the whole Jafar marrying Jasmine thing got a whole lot creepier.)

- Everyone loves Genie, he’s way too much fun for anyone, even Jamil, to not like even a little bit.

- Epel: Couldn’t Jafar have just used the hypnosis to make the sultan marry and give his throne to him? It wouldn’t have caused as much trouble.

Everyone else: ........

Sam: Kid’s not wrong...

- Jack doesn’t understand how no one noticed Jafar was using the Sultan to get his way....did no one pay that close of attention or did they not care?

- Lilia: Aw, I want someone to take me on a magic carpet ride!

Jamil: Careful, Kalim might volunteer.

- The cringe from the Jasmine/Jafar kiss seen was strong in this group. Only Floyd could stomach what was left of the popcorn after witnessing that display.

- *the sultan declares that Jasmine can marry whomever she pleases*

Sam: Babies marrying babies.

Epel: But they’re both around our ages.

Sam: Exactly. Babies.

#twisted wonderland #floyd leech #jamil viper #rook hunt #sebek zygvolt #sam #epel felmier #jack howl #lilia vanrouge #headcanon #headcanons #ask #the princess and the frog #sleeping beauty #aladdin

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moneyshvt · 5 years ago

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☆ . · . simay barlas, twenty-two, female, she / her . · . ☆ AYLA CLEARWATER lives in that huge mansion over there! no, not that one. look for THE LARGE NATURAL STONE FOUNTAIN and that’ll be it. the SPORTS PHOTOGRAPHER has offered occasional glimpses of LIGHT GREEN walls and an impressive collection of EMPTY PICTURE FRAMES in the background of social media posts, but all of that is nothing compared to seeing the opulence in person. they’ve remained CLEVER as ever since moving to tercet court one year ago, but it seems like they might’ve gotten a little more of NARCISSISTIC too. maybe that’s why they’re rumored to have such a FRIENDLY relationship with everyone else who lives on this street. ☆ . · . ooc info: ollie, they/them, 21, est . · . ☆

𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐒𝐓𝐎𝐑𝐘

— she was adopted when she was just under two years old from turkey, so the clearwaters have always felt like her family to her. she knew the greater part of growing up that she was adopted, it just never was an issue for her. it was a fact, but it really wasn’t an important fact. she has no desire to try to find her birth parents or family, though she has visited turkey.

— the clearwaters are a triple threat in sports : her grandfather retired mlb player and coach, her father a retired prominent defenseman in the nhl and current dartmouth men’s hockey coach, and her older brother ( 26 ) is making a splash in his third year in the nfl as a wide receiver. however, her parents made sure she and her brother had a ( fairly ) average “middle class” bringing up, though they had their fair share of money in the bank. didn’t have to struggle, really, but didn’t get everything she wanted either. had a summer job scooping ice cream for two years in high school.

— grew up in norwich, vt, real big on nature and hiking and all that jazz and lowkey misses it in the heart of la.

— when she was ten she got one of those kid’s polaroid cameras ( u know the ones where the film is only a little bigger than a postage stamp ) and she was obsessed. she worked her way up through cameras over the years, having a natural eye for it.

— one of the first games she ever shot was one of her brother’s high school football games which sounds sweet but it was actually because she was so bored out of her mind and wanted something to do. needless to say, though, that was the start of it. some might say it was kind of inevitable she gravitated toward sports somehow — she was a clearwater at heart. since then she has gained a lot of knowledge and respect for all different kinds of sports.

— for college she was torn between dartmouth and nyu. she ultimately chose nyu because it was somewhere new.

— she went to nyu for advertising and photography, shooting various nyu sports teams while she was there and throughout her years, managed to shoot a few rangers, knicks, and yankees games as well. she held two summer internships with the yankees ( on her own merits or because of her family name, she may never truly know ) and ultimately graduated from nyu a year early.

— she then spent the better part of a year after graduation road tripping as you do and ended up in california. it’s all about who you know, and in picking up a favor for a friend in cali she stumbled into the perfect opportunity. from there she landed a role on the company that handles the photography for staples center and other notable teams, most notably the kings, lakers, and dodgers ( photography company based on this irl one ).

— she moved into tercet court not long after she knew she would be in la for much of the time being. it’s definitely not her house, considering she makes just enough to live on. it’s a family home, purchased initially by her father who’d wanted to sink some money into tangible assets instead of the stock market and to have a west-coast home available for the family. hey, worked out pretty well for her.

— she has predominately been tasked with shooting the kings the past year or so, though she started with shooting dodgers games last summer and is doing so this summer as well. she’s also shot a handful of lakers’ games when a friend needs someone to cover. three of her photos so far have been used in large ads and banners in the city ( including most recently her current MONEY SHOT of the game winning goal in a come back win ) --- very cool moment for her. several others have been used by local publications and websites.

— she does a little freelance work as well ; mostly for friends or friends of friends, though she’s been considering lately trying to make her skills and business available in a more professional manner. she does do a lot of photographing for herself --- a lot of candids ; she thinks they capture the true spirit of a person moreso than when they’re posing or prepared for a photo. but not in a creepy way --- she’s been the victim of the paps enough times by association with her family to know the correct boundaries and limits.

𝐌𝐈𝐒𝐂

— lowkey loves playing games with the paps, though she’s probably the only one that finds it funny. as a photographer herself she has a good eye for where they’re hiding and will also snap photos of them in turn just for her own amusement.

— she hopes someday to be the team photographer for a team, hopefully in one of the “big four” ( nfl, nhl, nba, mlb )

— she played field hockey and lacrosse through high school.

— ayla thinks she’s better at shooting people. part of what she loves about being a sports photographer is how active and unpredictable it is to shoot a game. she’s had to learn a lot to try to predict what she can.

— very much a morning person. has never had a problem waking up in the morning. who’s jealous bc i am. goes for a run at sunrise, and has showered, gotten ready for the day, and is at a local cafe shop editing photos / making graphics and drinking an iced mocha by 8. truly couldn’t be me...

— so desperately wants to be that girl with tons of cute aesthetic plants in her apartment but tragically plants always die in her care no matter what she does. probably has gotten one of those tiny tabletop sand zen gardens to make herself feel better tho she still keeps trying with plants. so far the only ones that have lived any length of time are the air plants.

— she really wants a greyhound but is afraid to make the commitment to actually adopting one.

— her personal insta ( the non-sports one ) has a modest following. a few thousand, probs.

— she has struggled a bit with people who think her opportunities have only arisen because of her family pedigree ( which some have gone so far to tell her they’re “not her family” --- which, don’t even go there, lads... ), and that has made ayla work all that much harder to prove that she’d gotten where she has on her own merits.

— she has a rule ( and in the case of the nhl there is a rule enforced by a signed contract ) about not getting involved with anyone she shoots ; it’s considered a conflict of interest. i imagine she has a really good relationship with the players though --- probably doesn’t hurt that she is pretty. at least one of them have hired her to shoot their wedding this summer even though she is wildly under qualified.

𝐏𝐄𝐑𝐒𝐎𝐍𝐀𝐋𝐈𝐓𝐘

alya is a chill and laidback person at heart. her approach to the fame attached to her due to her father and brother has been to laugh it off good-naturedly. she’s generally well liked, with a hint of sass and humor. she comes across as a bit of an air-head at times, but that’s part due to a persona she put on from a young age. she has an observant eye that drew to her photography in the first place and will often allow her to draw certain conclusions about people. she’s well versed in all the sports she shoots, something that tends to surprise a lot of people, but how is she supposed to be good at her job if she isn’t ? if she gets bothered during games she typically shuts people down with wide eyes and some obscure bit of knowledge in her cute, raspy lil voice. dareisay... elle woods, what like it’s hard ? energy ??

a few of her downfalls include her narcissism and need to be liked. she looks to look and feel pretty, by her own standards, and is a queen of the self-timer and remote self photography : has two instas because of it -- one for her sports photography and one that’s a “personal” and mostly just pictures of herself. her need to be liked is something she doesn’t even realize. she likes to be seen in a positive light.

𝐀𝐏𝐏𝐄𝐀𝐑𝐄𝐍𝐂𝐄

alya stands at 5′4″ with a slim but athletic build. her hair is naturally brown, but is dyed to have blonde highlights. she does not need glasses or contacts and has no tattoos.

she’s almost always wearing the same pair of beat up timberland’s she’s owned since freshman year of college. she likes to be able to move easily ( bc homegirl absolutely cannot walk in heels at all ). despite what the tabloids like to call her unfortunate choice in footwear, she likes to look cute, often pairing them with short, flowy sundresses or skirts + crop tops. when she shoots games, however, she’s dressed rather practically in skinny jeans, a crop top, and a cardigan. her hair is often kept down and loose, or in a messy bun.

𝐎𝐎𝐂

it me. ollie again. i also play fitz ( miguel bernardeau fc ). yes the overlap between fitz and ayla is not great but i truly only know one thing that that one thing is hockey asldfalsdjf sO. if y’all seeing me rping with myself on the dash bc i think it’d be fun to bounce fitz and ayla off each other mind ur own business...

#linksintro #( it's not a whole lot diff from the first time around alsdfj )

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hengame5-blog · 4 years ago

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Facelift and Also Necklift

Why no One Has facelifts any Longer

Content

Air Liquide In The Uk.

points That influence The look Of Cellulite Include.

how Long Will The results Last?

exactly How To prepare For The treatment?

small Injuries & Procedures.

What Is A Hifu Facial?

Numerous therapies are readily available, however the impact is mostly temporary. The dimples arise from fibrotic bands called septae, which cause the fat to be separated right into little pockets. As these start to bulge via the fascial connections in the skin, this creates the formation of dimples and also bumps. Cellulite is usually created orange-peel skin, because of its structure as well as look. Lynton Skincare An unique skincare range created to operate in harmony with any visual therapy, improving treatment end results and also lasting outcomes. EXCELIGHT ® A compact multi-functional platform with clinical quality IPL technology, delivering outstanding hair removal and also skin renewal therapy results. ProductsLUMINA ® A specialist, award-winning laser as well as IPL maker.

Air Liquide In The Uk.

Menopause is a natural part of the aging process which most ladies experience in between 45 and also 55 years old. Handling the uncomfortable as well as irritating signs can be tough however when it occurs prematurely, it can be a huge shock. It shows up in 90% of post-adolescent ladies, even those who placed a lot of initiative right into keeping their bodies slim and also well toned, yet is rarely seen in men. Most of us have something that we wish to improve, yet few of us actually recognize just how to set about it as well as what's involved. You are welcome to check out one of our centers, book a totally free, no obligation appointment as well as find out more regarding your visual treatment options.

As these fat cells gather as well as push skin upwards, the connective fibres that affix skin to the underlying muscle mass pull down, causing skin to distort and dimple. Nevertheless many individuals still wish to understand how to minimize cellulite as it can make them really feel uneasy.

Does HIFU work everyone?

HIFU may not be appropriate for everyone. In general, the procedure works best on people older than 30 with mild-to-moderate skin laxity. People with photodamaged skin or a high degree of loose skin may need several treatments before seeing results.

Plenty of ladies have cellulite, you are not alone and there is nothing to be shamed around. It's suggested that poor blood circulation of the lymph can create cellulite, varicose veins as well as a weakened immune system, which if true, would certainly imply that completely dry cleaning is really useful. Workout assists with weight loss as well as tighten underlying muscles, which helps to improve its appearance. Those who consume way too much fat, carbs or salt go to risk of establishing more cellulite. Since you understand exactly how to eliminate cellulite, checked out the new Origins GinZing moisturiser. Elemis' body-beautifying advancement has been verified to make locations of cellulite appear smoother and stronger.

points That influence The appearance Of Cellulite Include.

This elegant oil has minds along with beauty with scientific-sounding gelidium cartilagineum and cedrol to promote fat loss as well as limitation fat storage, plus white ginger remove aids to lower swelling. Crafted with apple stem cells to assist smooth the look of skin, along with antioxidant-rich mango as well as papaya, one round with this luxurious scrub is a a fast when it comes to improving your skin's appearance.

Some fruit as well as veg is far better than others, brightly coloured ones being the most effective. Try celery, oranges, grapefruit, peaches and also plums, they're low in natural sugar as well as high in fiber. Foods high in vitamin C are also terrific cellulite-busters because they increase degrees of collagen in the skin, advertising elasticity as well as keeping points firm and also tight. Omega-3 fatty acids, which you can locate in oily fish such as salmon, tuna, mackerel as well as sardines are known to reduced cholesterol. This has a knock on impact, due to the fact that by lowering your cholesterol you'll be improving your circulation, which has an anti-inflammatory effect.

There are a few cellulite misconceptions regarding the sources of cellulite that can be complex. When it concerns lotions and also lotions that advertise themselves as 'cellulite smoothing', Dr Rhodes states these are unlikely to work, as they aim to 'eliminate contaminants from the body', but cellulite isn't caused by toxins. Frequently, "producers promote insurance claims that they offer the best cellulite lotions and gels but do they really have the researches and also results to back their claims," asks Dr Edwin Anthony, Cosmetic Surgeon. To target your cellulite, ensure to include a lot of squats as well as lunges in your regular to target the upper leg and also glute muscular tissues. This will aid to boost blood circulation and also trigger far better hormone equilibrium.

What is the fastest way to reduce facial swelling?

More on reducing swelling in your face 1. Getting more rest. 2. Increasing your water and fluid intake. 3. Applying a cold compress to the swollen area. 4. Applying a warm compress to promote the movement of fluid buildup. 5. Taking the appropriate allergy medication/antihistamine (over-the-counter medication or prescription). More items•

One of the biggest misconceptions concerning cellulite is that cardio is the response to a smooth derriére. However the truth is, you require a combination of exercise styles, especially muscle-building movements to improve the tone of the skin. So also if you can't eliminate cellulite, you'll sock it a seriously smooth strike. In between the age of 28 and 54, skin suppleness reduces by 27 per cent, generally affecting the arms, tummy and bottom.

for How Long Will The effects Last?

How long after Botox can you have HIFU?

If you had already done fillers, then the plan should be allowing 3 to 4 months before undergoing ultrasound treatments. By that time, you will decrease the risk of dissolving the hyaluronic acid injected previously.

We have a great deal of celeb people as a result of them not desiring long-periods of downtime with hectic schedules. 100% of participants also saw an enhancement in skin laxity complying with therapy. The Onda is changing the therapy of cellulite, outcomes go over as well as long-lasting, be one of the very first practitioners to experience the Coolwaves ™ revolution. There are a lot of different choices around for cellulite therapy-- from lotions that declare to attack coarse bands to surgical alternatives, that featured risks, downtime, pain, and also certainly, that significant price.

What is the difference between HIFU and ultherapy?

Ultherapy uses micro-focused ultrasound (MFU) beams, while HIFU stands for High-Intensity Focused Ultrasound. While the former is more focused than the latter, they both send a beam through skin layers to get the collagen going. HIFU treatment and Ultherapy both treat the skin at 1.5mm, 3.0mm, and 4.5mm.

' Also, ensure you foam roll in your workouts to minimise the look of cellulite' is Dr Hextal's advice. ' Cellulite can come to be a lot more visible as you age and your skin ends up being thinner as well as sheds flexibility. This exposes the rippled connective tissues beneath,' discloses Dr Dressmaker. What you do need to understand is that cellulite is totally normal as well as can be located on pretty much all ladies - no matter just how fit and toned you are.

exactly How To prepare For The procedure?

minor Injuries & Procedures.

Trust fund a guy to have something to say about Kim Kardashian wearing a bikini and letting the globe see something that torments us all - cellulite. We asked skincare expert Jill Zander to tell us all we require to understand.

To maintain cellulite at bay, you require to be consuming your suggested everyday allowance of water. Operating is one of the most noticeable selection for interval workout, but swimming and also cycling are likewise great workouts to attempt if you intend to deal with cellulite. Comply with up with a body oil to nurture your skin and you'll be seeming like you have actually had a correct pamper at the very same time. Although introducing body cleaning right into your everyday regimen could seem like a great deal of initiative when just discovering the moment to moisturise is hard sufficient, the advantages truly do represent themselves. And when you obtain utilized to finding an added five mins to utilize your body brush, it will certainly become part and parcel of your day without a reservation.

Is HIFU better than RF?

HIFU delivers more precise and more intense fractional ultrasound energy while RF is based on a bulk heating strategy. Second, each technology works in different, but partially overlapping skin layers. HIFU goes much deeper into and beyond the dermis, being able to reach the SMAS layer.

Diuretics generally make us pee a lot as well as also decrease bloating as well as fluid retention. lose stomach weight in vitamin C are likewise outstanding cellulite-busters since they boost levels of collagen in the skin, which advertises elasticity and also maintains points firm and taut. Blast your upper legs with cold water before you get out of the shower to obtain blood flowing to the location. All of us tension over it, but the majority of us are plagued with it - if you're covering due to your cellulite we've got some suggestions as well as tricks to lower it without considering cosmetic surgery. Given that starting to utilize the Onda, we have actually carried out about 1000 therapies which has actually indicated there is a great deal of data to look at.

' Dry brushing can aid to increase circulation as well as collagen production,' claims Shotter. And also the thicker and stronger skin is, the less dimples will certainly show through. View your salt intake, as salt encourages your fat cells to swell.' Excess amounts can result in bloating as well as water retention,' clarifies Wong. The factor extra females get cellulite than males is the framework of our collagen. WAG Coleen Rooney has normal endermologie sessions (a non-invasive deep cells massage therapy making use of a hand-held massaging head). Refined fatty foods, such as sausages, cheese, biscuits as well as cake, are especially bad. They're frequently packed with ingredients, salt or sugar, which can create toxin-overload in the body.

This will certainly provide the doctors a clear image of where the cancer is in the prostate.

HIFU can be given to the whole prostate when there might be cancer in more than one area, to make sure that all areas of cancer cells are dealt with.

You will have regular tests to monitor the cancer that is not treated.

If you have focal HIFU, you could have low-risk cancer in an additional area of the prostate that is not dealt with purposefully.

You may have an MRI scan and also a number of examples of prostate tissue taken.

These might consist of PSA tests, MRI checks, as well as prostate biopsies.

A constant rise in your PSA degree can be an indicator that the cancer has actually come back.

You could likewise have other examinations, such as a CT check, MRI scan or bone scan, to see if the cancer cells has spread to various other parts of your body.

Tone, tighten and strong skin on your face with this introducing treatment.

If you're questioning exactly how to eliminate cellulite, we're here to inform you that it's not impossible, and luckily, it's not also concerning pricey creams and also remedies. Consuming lots of water-- try to drink in between two as well as 4 litres of water each day to aid eliminate contaminants. Demi Lovato sent a tweet on behalf of females with dimpled skin. " I do not have excellent boobs, I don't have absolutely no cellulite-- obviously I don't-- and I'm curved. If cryolipolysis is something that makes women feel empowered at all, that's excellent."

How successful is HIFU?

Results: HIFU overall success rate was 84% (biochemical relapses in only 4 patients out of 25). Success rate was represented as follows: 94.2% in the low risk group, 83.4% in the intermediate risk group and 0% in the high risk group.

' It does tend to raise with age because of hormonal changes', she includes. The only time I'm spiritual about cleaning the life out of my upper legs is a few weeks before a holiday, in the vain hope it'll ravel my orange-peeled skin. As well as with my break turning up, I looked for activity from a pro as well as while the Cellcosmet Swiss Anti-Cellulite Therapy isn't a magic potion for non-dappled gams, it certain assisted. Obviously, if you're actually bothered by your cellulite, you can look for the assistance of a pro-- much like Way of life Editor, Carla Challis, did. This kind of cellulite just has superficial abnormalities and they are fewer in number than seen with various other types; however it is frequently come with by stretch marks.

youtube

Update as you expand your organization, adding 24+ therapies to one multi-functional platform. Great Housekeeping takes part in different associate advertising and marketing programs, which suggests we may make money compensations on editorially chosen items purchased with our links to seller sites. While getting rid of cellulite can be complicated, otherwise impossible, there's plenty you can do if you're feeling worried about subjecting your thighs and also bottom on the coastline. Certainly, these are not without their prices and also it's ideal to visit a suggested, totally certified professional to prevent damage to the skin. However, also if you stopped all of these, you can still have cellulite due to genetic tendency. There are specific way of life variables that can have an influence on the quantity of cellulite you have. According to Dr Williams, cellulite often tends to start appearing adhering to the age of puberty.

An accumulation of fluid can occasionally cause cellulite, so, together with alcohol consumption a lot of water, include diuretics in your diet plan. Finally, foods called "diuretics" are also efficient fending off cellulite.

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theawkwardterrier · 5 years ago

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things left behind and the things that are ahead, ch. 31

AO3 link here

The winter Emma turns thirteen, her childhood roundness starts turning into curves (rounded curves, but still), her clothes draping around her in new ways. She’d known that these sorts of changes were meant to be coming - Mom is always very straightforward - but to actually experience them is a different matter.

She manages to conceal things for the most part under some of the heavy sweaters that Nana Barnes had once made for Rosie. She pulls them out of the boxes in the basement where Dad stores the old, outgrown items of clothing that he can’t seem to make himself donate, and adds them to her own wardrobe. The sleeves come only just to her wrists (she’s already taller than Rosie now, and it’s a good thing her sister has long arms), which looks weird, and Mom asks about them because Maryland winters aren’t really cold enough for Nana’s thick Brooklyn wool. But wrapping them around herself feels better, easier, than to try to figure out something else.

Except Emma loves spring, and on the first really warm day, she can’t help but put on her favorite dress from last year, yellow with flowers and a pleated skirt, even though it’s tight in strange places. She wears a sweater over it when Dad drives her to school, keeps holding her books against herself and avoids stopping to talk to her friends in the hallways, and she can’t tell if the tradeoff was worth it.

Mom and Dad don’t say anything at dinner, but there is a glance traded between them in the overlap of Drea’s story about her science teacher and Nate asking if they can go to the library tomorrow because his friend Arnold told him about a book about a mother mouse who goes on adventures that’s apparently very good. The other two don’t seem to notice the way Mom tilts her head from her side of the table and Dad nods from his, but Emma sees.

(That would never have happened when Rosie was still there, because their biggest sister would have seen the way Emma kept picking at her plate, and suddenly everyone would have been focused on a very involved recounting of everything that was happening with the drama club that week. And then later, Rosie would have come into Emma’s room to sit on her bed and explain everything, even how they were going to fix it, and would have made her laugh too. But Rose is 500 miles away, having a great time at college, and so there’s no one to get their parents to look away from Emma.)

That night, she’s in the kitchen baking with Dad. It’s a ritual with them, at least twice a week. He used to make a cake or cookies in the afternoons when Emma was little, but she joined him one day and never looked back, not even tonight.

Tonight they’re making cupcakes, vanilla with pink frosting on top that they’re shaping like spring flowers with their new piping bag set, just like they’d planned. It’s so normal that Emma forgets about that traded glance, stops thinking about how the apron she’s always used doesn’t slip on quite the right way anymore.

Dad waits until she’s finished frosting one of the cupcakes and set it down before he taps the top of her arm for attention.

“Mom - she’s not working on Saturday,” he says, his signing taking on a hesitant quality that she associates with topics much more awkward than her mother’s weekend plans. “If you want to go shopping with her - you might find some new spring dresses. I think you might be a little old for me to pick out your clothes.”

She doesn’t know how to thank him for not making her ask, for not making it strange or shameful. “You got me all of my favorite stuff,” she offers shyly, and gives him a hug around the waist.

Mom does take her shopping over the weekend (on Sunday in the end; Mom sometimes has to work even when it wasn’t planned) and they find things that actually fit, that make her feel like herself again, even if herself is still changing.

“Come to the yard,” Mom says once they’ve put the bags away in Emma’s room. Emma sighs, the movement involving chest and shoulders and puffed out cheeks. She knows what that means. Their house in New Jersey had a high fence to discourage neighborly prying, and when they’d moved to Maryland, they had a big yard far away from other houses: useful when the children had each taken their turn learning to throw a punch.

"You never know when you'll need something like that," Dad says. They all know that part of it has to do with Mom's work, and part of it comes from the way Dad grew up, but Emma’s never run into either, really.

Mom starts with a bit of a refresher. Making a fist with the thumb on the outside and wrist straight still comes naturally although Em has never really liked the idea of actually punching anyone. But then they move onto other things, moves with her legs and something about using her own weight and leverage to flip a big stuffed model over her shoulder, what to do if someone tries to hurt you when you’re sitting instead of standing. They’ve never done anything like that before. Nate watches from the back window, confused, but when Drea sees what’s happening, she only makes her slim shoulders even smaller and walks away.

"Why are we doing this?" Emma asks when she is finally sweaty enough to have earned a break. She watches carefully for the tiny tics of a lie, nearly impossible to spot on Mom's face, as she takes a drink.

"It's a good skill for a growing girl to have," Mom says, and that her face is entirely truthful just makes Emma feel more out of sorts as she goes in to look through the cookbooks for something that she can bake tonight to make herself feel better.

At dinner, Dad tells a story about a time when he and Uncle Bucky had to fight four bigger boys. It’s funny, the way he shows Uncle Bucky looking down at him because Dad was littler then, the way he shows everyone squinting at each other like a standoff. But he catches Emma’s eye when he talks about pulling hair or kicking up between the knees if necessary, and she knows that he’s trying to train her in another way.

(The next time they go to bake, there’s a new apron folded on the counter, her name embroidered across the top. When she puts it on, it fits perfectly.)

Mom and Dad are being weird, she writes to Rosie. They keep talking about how to fight if I need to.

Mom and Dad are just being Mom and Dad, Rosie writes back. The rest of the family does phone calls every week or two, but since Rose moved into her dorm in September she’s said that she loves getting Emma’s letters. Emma likes writing them, likes seeing her thoughts organized on paper, and likes getting Rose’s back, the Massachusetts postmark on the replies and the little creases that represent how far its traveled to her. They know the kinds of things that can happen in the world, so sometimes they can be a little protective.

That hasn’t been Emma’s experience with her parents. She’s been trusted to use the oven by herself for years, and no one checks to see that she’s reading “appropriate” books, the way her friend Rachel Clarke’s mother does. When she’d had strict Mr. Farrell in fifth grade, Mom had told her sternly not to let him intimidate her and Dad had helped with her reports and packed the best snacks in her lunch bag, but neither of them had stormed into the principal’s office and gotten him fired. But things have been different for Rosie, and not just because she’s older, so Emma assumes that in this she’s gotten it wrong somehow.

The day after school lets out, she and Drea walk into town to get ice cream. It’s so hot out that their cones are melting as soon as they start back home, and keeping control of the dripping takes attention and agility. It’s too hard to hold a conversation, but Emma notices when Drea jumps and glares over her shoulder at the car speeding around the corner.

“Did it get too close?” she pesters, her hands sticky but finally empty as they approach the house. “I would have noticed if they drove so close.”

“No,” Drea says slowly, finally answering, though her fingers drift slowly shut and linger on the word for a strangely long time. “They didn’t get too close. They just—They were shouting at us.”

“We didn’t do anything wrong.”

“Sometimes,” Drea tells her, a peculiar look on her face, “a girl walking - that’s enough.” Seeing the confusion on Emma’s face, Drea wraps an arm around her sister. “We’re okay. The wrong ones - that’s them. We should be able to walk down the street looking however we want.”

Emma looks down at her peachy pink blouse and the striped skirt that matches it. She had bought them only a few months ago. The buttons running up the center of the skirt had seemed a cute touch, fun. She hadn’t even really considered them when she left the house that morning, but now they seem awkward, a mistake.

She starts to have an inkling of why Mom keeps taking her to the backyard even though she still refuses to put in much effort there. Maybe next time she’ll try to be different.

The following Saturday, Emma wakes up to a sweet-smelling breeze blowing through her open window and knows that today will be a gardening day. A few hours later, they are all outside.

(Not Rosie - she was invited to go on a trip with one of her new friends and now she won’t be back until almost August.)

Over by the new flowers they are planting, Dad playfully adjusts the sun hat Mom is wearing, even though it would make more sense for her to do it herself - she has on her gardening gloves as usual, but Dad always sticks his hands directly into the earth and already has dirt under his fingernails and in the creases of his palms. As they both kneel at the edge of the flowerbed, he puts his fingers to Mom’s cheek as he kisses her and it leaves little streaks against the cream of her skin. He brushes it away with the edge of his wrist and says something that makes Mom laugh.

She knows that Drea, checking for bugs at the other end of the bed from Emma, is saying something. Nate, who already finished the small bed he was working on, has gone to get his pad and drawing pencils. He sits with his mouth open slightly and tongue poking out, listening to their sister. When he sees Emma look up at them, he raises an eyebrow to ask if she wants him to interpret, even goes to put his pencil down, but she shakes her head and runs her finger over a soft leaf. She doesn’t need chatter right now, just the blue sky and the warm sun, her family around her, her hands busily working on a task they already know exactly how to do.

Later, after they have finished with the flowers in front and then the vegetable garden in back, when they have made sure the peach trees are thinned enough and then cleared or collected the June drop fruit (Dad will try to ripen them up and use the best of them to make jam and cobbler in the next few days; she has an idea about adding raspberries to their usual cobbler recipe that she thinks he’ll like), once Nate has convinced Dad to make a little peach syrup to try with lemonade and they have decided that they’ll try again with the more flavorful crop later in the summer, after Emma has had a bath, put her capri pants with their muddy, grass-stained knees into the laundry room, eaten dinner in her cotton pajamas with the still-warm breeze playing against the kitchen curtains...later, she asks Dad to come read with her.

He doesn’t chide that she’s too old for it, a teenager now, doesn’t remind her that they slowly dropped off with such routines years ago. Instead, he picks up his book and swings a hand toward her: “Come on.” Though she can’t catch the title as she makes her way upstairs, his book is pretty, with brightly colored trees on the front; it’s been a while since she saw Dad not reading notes or textbooks or something for a class assignment and she realizes that this is summer vacation for him too.

She hasn’t actually been read aloud to since probably third or fourth grade, when the chapter books she was picking made it harder and harder for her dad to sign the stories to her; she kept peeking over his shoulder, eager to know what happened next, her eyes racing over the words faster than he could convey. For the next few years they compromised instead, each reading their own book together in the evenings, until that eventually stopped too.

Curling up beneath his arm is still so familiar, even if it’s not routine anymore. She opens Up a Road Slowly and starts to read, but she has barely even finished a chapter before her blinks are pressing long, the book drooping over her chest. Vaguely, she feels Dad kiss her hair as he picks the book up from her chest. She knows that in the morning she will find it bookmarked at her page, resting on top of the copy of Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, that Tina Lasko gave her for her birthday because all the girls in school were talking about it, but that Emma stopped reading (the beginning was okay, but then she heard what was going to come later and put it down).

Just before she falls asleep, she thinks that she would like to live in this day forever, never grow up, just have this day and this day and this day...

A few nights later, she sets the table fresh from her bath, her curls still long and darkened down her back, dampening her nightgown. They were out in the garden again today, just doing a brief check of things, before she and Nate rode their bikes into town to go to the library - she hasn’t finished her book yet, but Nate wanted company and she was bored enough to agree. Mom’s just come home and they will eat soon and it has been another wonderful day.

She isn’t sure how it starts, really. Dad sets the platter of meatloaf on the table - his is better than most, not mushy and with vegetables and a sauce that isn’t just ketchup; Emma would rather have chicken if he’s asked her, but Dad likes to make it for Drea sometimes, special - and before he turns to get the potatoes, he asks if she is going to try out for the basketball team this year. Eighth graders are allowed to be on the team at her school, even if it’s pretty rare for them to make it.

And even though the answer could easily be yes (she’s not really tall, but her aim is good and she and Drea are pretty well neck and neck for wins at H-O-R-S-E) somehow she finds herself getting worked up over just that question. Before she knows it, even as something inside her says that this doesn’t make sense, that she should calm down, she has slammed down the knives she is holding so she can use both hands. And ignoring his gentle responses, looking away from the steadiness she has always loved, she tells her father that he never stops pushing her, he and Mom are so bossy, they never just let her be, why can’t she just enjoy her summer, why is he always asking questions, he doesn’t understand, she hates him.

She closes her bedroom door hard, then opens it again to give it a real slam that she can feel even through the thick wood of the frame and floor. Face down in her pillow, she screams, the feeling grating and growling its way up her throat, then cries for a while even though she doesn’t understand why.

Later, she sits up against the wall, her pillow hugged against her chest. She has her book open in her lap, but she has barely turned a page.

The light flips off and then on again, off and on, then twice more. She knows it’s Nate - he’s the only one who flicks the outside switch for her room four times instead of three to let her know he’s there - but she doesn’t move or make a sound. He pokes his head in anyway. Seeing her on the bed, not crying anymore, he comes in and sits at the foot.

“We ate, but Dad says there’s a plate for you. You can get something from the fridge, maybe.”

He says it exactly like normal, as if she hadn’t just exploded downstairs, as if she wasn’t just awful to her father.

“Is he mad?” she asks, and even the angry face she puts on for the sign is tentative. “Does he hate me?”

Nate shakes his head. “Rosie slammed a lot more doors than you. Dad loves her. He loves you.”

When she goes downstairs, Dad is washing the dinner dishes. She sits at the table looking down at her plate and he gives her a little smile over his shoulder before he turns back to the soapy water. It makes her want to cry again, but instead she stands up and goes to tap him on the shoulder.

“I’m sorry,” she signs, the circling on her chest reminding her of the times he rubbed her back to help her sleep or when she had a cough or as she cried because someone had made her feel bad. Now, the tears do come, filling her eyes. “I was mean to you. I hurt you.”

Dad wraps his arms around her, his chin atop her head. His hands are wet against her back, against her bare arms as he gently moves her away so he can speak.

“It’s hard - I know,” he says. “Kindness is hard work sometimes,” and his understanding, the way he doesn’t reassure that she has not hurt him, just makes her want to keep ahold of herself so she never does it again, even though she knows that he would forgive her then too.

Mrs. Walker calls asking if Rosie is back to babysit the next afternoon. She used to watch Brian and Sandra every few weeks when she was in high school. When Drea tells her no, Rose won’t finish her trip for another few weeks, Drea gets offered the job instead, and when she says that she has plans, Mrs. Walker suggests Emma.

As she gets her book and a sweater so Mom can drive her over, she asks Drea, “Are they desperate?” She’s feeling as if she must have been desperate in order to agree to do this in the first place. She was only looking for something new to break the monotony of the days because her school friends don’t live in town and she had turned down the offer of day camp or the school’s summer program. Plus, she was eager for the forty cents an hour that she had been offered. (She knows that Rose would sometimes hold out for up to seventy-five, and she charged a dollar after midnight , but that’s Rose.)

Drea, leaning against the doorframe, shrugs. She isn’t busy, she just didn’t want to go. “Husband on a business trip - she wants a break, time alone.”

That’s obvious once Emma has waved to Mom and knocked on the door. Mrs. Walker opens it right away, her handbag already over her elbow. She has a little notebook out and tears off the top page, handing it to Emma and waiting - foot just this side of tapping, but still - for her to read it.

Brian is apparently staying with his grandparents in Delaware which leaves her only watching Sandra, who is just a toddler and meant to go to bed by half past six anyway. That’s a relief: Brian is seven and bossy, and one reason Rose is such a popular choice for the Walkers is that she’s bossier. Sandra is content to dabble her feet in the inflatable pool for a while before coming inside to play while Emma warms up the pasta bake that Mrs. Walker left in the refrigerator. Getting Sandra for bed makes her feel simultaneously brilliant (no one had to tell her to save bath time for after dinner - she’d figured that out all on her own even before she saw all that drippy red sauce and Sandra’s preference to eat with her hands) and entirely foolish (apparently babies do not stay still when you’re trying to put a diaper on them - even when there are pins involved!).

It’s still light out when she sits down to read in the big armchair facing the street. The drapes are open and when she looks up every so often, she can see parents getting home from work, then families taking walks and visiting neighbors, kids running and biking in the street, narrow columns of barbecue smoke that she can nearly smell. She gets up to check on Sandra every ten or fifteen minutes though she seems to be sleeping fairly deeply just like Mrs. Walker had said she would, the room dark and warm.

When she comes downstairs again after peeking into the baby’s room, Emma notices a car coming slowly down the street. It’s a white Ford Mustang, fairly new looking. (Mom was always having them play different “spot the car” games when they were driving to Maine or Brooklyn, finding certain license plates or keeping track of which car had been on the highway with them for the longest amount of time; they got really good last summer.) The driver waits for the kids to run to the sides of the street, then keeps driving.

Five minutes later, Emma looks up from her book to see that the car is back again, circling the block in that same slow manner.

She checks the clock. Mrs. Walker was supposed to be going for a hair appointment and then to a movie with a friend. She told Emma that she wouldn’t be out later than 8:30. It’s quarter to now.

Her book is pretty good, and she’s getting close to the end, but she finds herself losing focus, glancing up as the car circles another time. The bugs are coming out and the sun is going down. Lots of people are inside now. The driver doesn't have to wait to drive along. None of the neighbors brush their curtains aside to watch the next slow slide down the street, the way the passenger side window rolls down and Emma thinks she can see someone leaning over the seat, staring toward her, though the inside of the car is so dark and she can't tell for sure.

She goes to check on Sandra, and even though nothing is amiss there, she finds herself sitting against the crib, the slats propping her back up. She tries to think through a plan.

She doesn't want to leave Sandra, doesn't want to wake her to go over to a neighbor's house to ask them to call. They don't seem worried, and besides, she can call herself. When they moved to town, Mom had taken Emma to the police station and introduced her to the officers. She remembered being in an office, tall men all around, watching her from very high, and a few women with big hair.

"In case of emergency," Mom had told them, as if she was able to give them orders, which apparently she was, "Emma knows the number of the station and, if possible, will tap out her name in Morse code against the receiver rather than a simple SOS to help you identify her." They had practiced it at home - a short tap, four long taps, a short, one last long - and even once with the agreement of the local emergency workers. A firetruck had come to their house and the firefighters had waved at them. Nate had drawn a picture of it that hung on the fridge for months.

She could call them now. A policeman would be here in only a few minutes; they would be able to find where she was using the phone line, and the Walkers lived much closer to the center of town than her family did. But what if it is only someone from nearby out for a drive in the warm summer air? Does she want to call the police for that?

A real babysitter would know these sorts of things. A real grownup would know when the right time was. Emma just wants to ask her parents, wants them to take care of it all.

Downstairs again, she sets her jaw and finds the phone, stretching the cord so it sits on the table beside her chair just in case. Then she goes to find a pad of paper and when the car returns, she writes down everything she can see about it: the make and color, her estimation of the year, the license plate number, the sort of scratch on one door. She lists how many times it has driven by already and approximately when. She thinks it is what her mother would do.

And then another car pulls up beside the strange one, this one her own familiar station wagon, drives around and parks in the Walker’s driveway. Mom steps out and goes over to where the car is still meandering, bends her head toward the driver's window and speaks for a moment.

The car drives away. When Mom comes up the path to wait for the last few minutes before Mrs. Walker returns, Emma opens the door and steps out to hug her tightly.

"Why was the car waiting around?" she asks as they walk up their own driveway. Mrs. Walker had come back smiling and paid Emma an extra ten cents.

Mom answers, "The driver wanted to find Oakdale Drive, but was confused and lost on Oak Way. I gave directions." In the moonlight, she peers over at Emma and stops her with a hand to her wrist. She brushes Emma's hair back from her face with gentle fingers. "I know you must have been scared," she says. "But you noticed and made good choices. You were smart, careful to protect yourself and the baby." She runs a finger over where Emma’s torn off list sticks out from the top of her book.

When she has trouble sleeping that night, imagining eyes looking out at her from within darkened cars, she thinks of Mom's words and tries to remember that she is brave.

On the Fourth of July, it doesn’t get dark until late. There’s plenty of time to go for the party at the Deaf club in D.C. and still be able to find a spot to watch the fireworks.

Emma watches Dad out of the corner of her eye. There are kids at her school whose hearing parents never come to these sorts of events, who won't even drop them off, so she knows that she should be grateful that her whole family is here. Drea and Nate stand in a group of kids they’ve met before, Mom over in the corner with Eric Blanchard's father who is the chapter president, and Dad signs with some other parents. No matter what she tries to tell herself, she feels a little embarrassed watching him. The other parents are Deaf, and even though Dad's pretty good at ASL, he's not exactly a native speaker.

At least he's not trying to make everyone watch the slides from their trip to the Grand Canyon last summer again. (People did seem pretty interested when he had brought them a few months ago, but still.)

Her focus is broken by a wave in front of her. She brings her eyes back to Albie Duncan, who is grinning at her so that she can see the chip in his canine tooth.

"Question," Albie starts, and she tilts her head to allow it, even as his grin turns nervous. "Want to go on a date with me?"

She considers. Albie's a year older than she is, but sweet and he does good impressions of the teachers. She's never really thought about him being handsome, but she guesses that his hair is good, thick brown and swooping up in the front, and she does like his smile.

"Okay," she nods. "My parents - I'll check with them. Where do you want to go?"

Albie lives a couple of towns over, but finally they agree to get ice cream at a place in the middle. Emma hopes they'll be able to find it without too much trouble.

When she looks away from Albie, she finds Dad still standing with his group but looking at her. The smile he gives her is one she has never seen before, sort of sighing and twisted at one corner, even as his eyes look the same as they always have.

Drea drives home from the fireworks with Mom in the front guiding her. Nate falls asleep pretty quickly, curled up against Dad in the backseat.

Emma, on Dad's other side, watches out the window for a while as the other towns nearby celebrate Independence Day too. Before long, her head drops against his shoulder.

He angles his hands toward her, and as they pass beneath the streetlights, she can just make out what he is saying.

"Don't grow up too fast, okay?"

She closes her eyes and gives a little nod into his shirt. She plans on growing up at exactly the right speed.

More chapters here

#Steggy #Steggy fic #things left behind fic #Steve Rogers #Peggy Carter #the Carter crew #I think I'm going to be off next week - ya girl needs a break #especially after this week's outing (aka Too Much Too Mediocre)

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ever-searching · 5 years ago

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Primal OC Challenge - Cain

Boss Name: Kullervo (warning: Wikipedia article mentions incest and suicide)

Quest Overview: You finally track down the location of missing crystals. It turns out that Cain has managed to gather them in a single location through persuasion, bribery and misinformation, and before you manage to stop him, he proceeds to summon a primal. As he turns into the vessel of Kullervo, a tragic vengeful hero of northern legends, it falls to you to strike him down before he can wreck havoc on the world that wronged him.

(I saw @mathemagiks's brilliant version of this meme and got inspired. Not tagging anyone, but feel free to tag me if this post inspired you!)

(The rest is behind a readmore because this turned out long. And possibly melodramatic.)

Trial Name: The Quiet Plateau (located in the mountain range near the Silver Bazaar in Western Thanalan)

Battle Music: Nightwish - Ghost Love Score

Appearance: Cain retains his general appearance while transformed into Kullervo, but most of his colour scheme almost inverts. He wears a blue tunic and white trousers, and his hair turns such pale blond that it almost looks white. His eyes become violet-blue, and they emit a faint glow. Instead of a thaumaturge’s staff, he wields a slim two-handed sword.

Start of Battle Quote: “If it’s me against the world, so be it, then!”

Battle Overview: The battle against Kullervo/Cain is split into two phases and an interlude.

In phase 1, Cain will use a combination of lightning and water attacks. Examples include Braided Lightning, where even his hair becomes electrified and he swings his braid in a wide arc, dealing damage and inflicting Paralysis effect on those who get hit. He also uses Surge of Inspiration, causing all players to get hit by a small lightning or water AoEs which should not overlap.

One curious mechanic of phase 1 is Sound the Horn, where Cain blows into a hunting horn and summons one or more spectral creatures depending on what element he used last (and what line he says). The lightning-based variant summons a Thunder Hound, which needs to be tanked by the off-tank and destroyed quickly; the water-based variant calls untargettable Watery Steeds, which will rush forward from the sides of the platform and cause water damage and a Dropsy debuff on those who get hit; the steeds won’t cross the whole platform, though, so there are small safe spots near the middle.

At first, Cain seems determined and defiant. When the players chip away a certain amount of his HP, however, he will start wavering and the interlude begins.

Oh wayward son Where does your path lie? Your home is gone No arms to hold you, voice to guide you Ocean drowns your cries...

(A sample of the interlude music here)

During the interlude, Cain will be wrapped in an impenetrable black cocoon, and the party will instead fight against Shade of Despair and Shade of Solitude. These Shades themselves do little else than auto-attack, but the party will have to watch out for random AoEs in the meanwhile. The shades must be destroyed before the party’s ‘Hope’ gauge (which starts from 100) reaches zero.

After the Shades are destroyed, the screen turns completely black for a moment, and the party gets hit with Desolation, dealing damage proportional to the Hope they had lost.

“...In the end, I’m still alone.”

As Cain emerges from the cocoon, he loses his boots and gloves, and his braid unravels. His voice lines gain a more desperate and/or bitter edge.

In phase 2, Cain gains a few new skills, such as Calamitous Thunder, which hits the primary target with a large cone attack and a Vulnerability debuff, more or less forcing a tank swap. He will also use Impulsive Strike, which makes him leap on top of the two healers while driving his sword to the ground. This is a stack-up mechanic which requires the party to split before Cain finishes casting, as the second marker will appear only after the first leap (and players don’t have enough time to run away after that). His group-wide AoE skill is called Bitter Waves.

Party Wipe Quote: “Today is the day it all ends.”

Defeat Quote: “Even my best... wasn’t good enough...?”

Once players defeat Kullervo, his aether dissipates, and Cain falls to the ground - his clothes in tatters and hair disheveled.

Loot: Kullervo/Cain drops weapons with a dark colour scheme, bronze and red highlights and Finnish names:

AST: Taivaankansi ("sky lid"; firmament)

BLM: Revontuli ("fox fire"; northern lights)

BRD: Noidannuoli ("witch's arrow"; lower back pain / lumbago)

DNC: Kaunosielu (”beautiful soul”; daydreamer)

DRG: Kaihomieli ("wistful mind"; one who yearns for something unattainable)

DRK: Surmanisku ("killing blow")

GNB: Henkivartija (”spirit/life guardian”; bodyguard)

MCH: Uranuurtaja ("trail-carver"; pioneer)

MNK: Kalmankoura ("corpse's hand"; old name for eagle fern)

NIN: Varjokuva ("shadow picture"; shadow / silhouette)

PLD: Uroteko ("act of bravery") & Jalopeura ("noble deer"; lion)

RDM: Mielijohde ("mind stem"; spontaneous idea or desire)

SAM: Kaukokaipuu ("far-longing"; wanderlust)

SCH: Ajastaika ("time from time"; year)

SMN: Selkokieli (“clear language”; simplified and more precise language)

WAR: Hurmevuo ("stream of blood")

WHM: Lintukoto ("bird home"; paradise-like place where birds migrate)

#primal AU #primal meme #Cain #primal OC challenge #I've had parts of this in my mind for long but this meme allowed me to finish it #I know Thanalan has nothing to do with Finland but *handwaves dismissively*#Kullervo felt like a good primal equivalent for Cain #I probably got a bit carried away oops

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cinnamonrollstark · 6 years ago

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Irondad Bingo: Trope: Sick Fic

@irondadbingo

□□□

Your toothbrush is the red one. Damn thing has your name on it- you've got no excuse to forget. The bathroom is twenty-two steps from the bedroom, and a sharp left turn away. It shouldn't be that hard.

But somehow, it is. If it weren't, Tony wouldn't get cavities in the back of his mouth, or piss his pants in search of the toilet. This is meant to be a natural occurence, and it likely would've afflicted his father were he to have lived long enough, and yet, it feels like an intrusion on his life, a bomb dropped for absolutely no reason other than to throw him off course.

If it were as easy as simply reminding himself of these things day to day, then Pepper wouldn't have to find him in the hall, confused and frustrated, and scared because he doesn't know which way to turn next. She wouldn't have to brush his hair or remind him to wash it when it gets oily. But she does. And that is how it goes.

Dementia robs him of most luxuries. It was always Tony's longtime goal to find happiness one day, and as soon as he'd found it, the rug had been ripped from underfoot, and he'd landed in an abyss, with no direction, no map, and no way to get out again.

And yet, some days, the confusion clears. He is lucid, happy. These days are getting rarer as of late, few and far between, but when they occur, he never takes them for granted. He steals lucid moments of sunlight, wind combing through his slowly graying hair. He hugs his daughter, who grows with such rapid force that he's entirely sure he's missed years of her life in between the clarity. He stands at the bank of the lake, toes dipped in the water, letting sand tickle the soles of his feet. He takes these moments in as deeply as he can, as often as he can.

Today is no different. It's been three months since he was last completely lucid, and lately his ability to walk and talk as he once normally did is fading. It's somewhat early in the summer, about a week into June. Crisp light filters in through scattered windows in the lake house, framing Tony's figure as he looks out the window. The day has been slowly slipping through his fingers, and he knows what's coming. For all the planning and paperwork they've put into this, it's far harder to come to terms with as it actually happens.

Slim arms weave through his own, his hands in his pockets, and wrap around his waist. Pepper, the familiar scent of her perfume. Her breath elevates his chest against her own, her chin on his shoulder. "What're you doing?" She asks, swaying a bit against his body.

Tony lets out a soft exhale and turns to face her, returning the embrace. "Just thinking," he admits, not quite able to look directly at her. "Not gonna lie, Pep," he clears his throat, "I'm scared."

Pepper runs a soft hand across his hair and smiles with tears in her eyes. "I know," she swallows, and the pain in her voice is evident, "but you know it's going to be okay."

This is a quiet, loving lie. They tell this to themselves to feel better about what will happen later tonight, what they've been expecting for months now. They are settled in their decision, of course, but are nowhere near happy about it.

Morgan is not quite old enough to understand it in its entirety; at eight, she is obviously intelligent, but the rapid decline of her father's health was beyond her comprehension in its earliest stages, and now, as it is coming to an end, she is more so confused about what will happen after than why it is happening at all.

Many long talks with her, mostly on Pepper's end, as Tony is often unable to get a clear point across, have lead her to a stable acceptance of the subject.

Peter, on the other hand, has been so against the idea from the beginning that Tony's been fearing the worst- that he wont show up at all. He's 19, now, taking a gap year between high school and college. Other than lower-level villain defense, Peter isn't up to much at the moment, and his freedom to participate in the last clear days of Tony's life makes his absence all the more painful.

◇◇◇

Pepper's fingers lather shampoo through Tony's dark hair. She plants kisses on his soapy, wet cheeks, and cries as calmly as she can. It's moments like this, moments when he's aware and lucid that she misses him all the more. Every good moment has felt like the last in recent months, and now that is truly how it is.

It feels odd getting dressed for the last time- casual, comfortable, but something other than his standard pajamas- and his wife helps him pick out his last pair of clothes. He's gotten quite skinny, still muscular, but much smaller. Her arms fir around his waist so easily that her wrists overlap. She whispers that she loves him into his neck, and he tells her he loves her right back.

Tony pays a visit to Morgan's room soon before the doctor arrives. His daughter is sitting on her bed, eyes locked outside the window. She hugs a stuffed animal to her chest.

"Hey Maguna." He sits on the edge of the bed with her, and she glances warily at him. "You doin' okay?"

He runs a hand over her soft but messy hair. Her lips pout out in the way that they do when she's about to cry, and he kisses her cheek as the tears spill over. She doesn't sob or wail; it is resigned mourning.

"I just don't get why- if you're okay right now- why you have to go."

Tony takes in a deep breath. He had a feeling this question would come, as it is a perfectly natural reaction. He swallows the lump in his throat and hugs her from the side.

"Its because I'm okay right now that I know it's time to go. Thing is, kiddo, that things haven't been so easy for me lately. Things that everyone else can do without even thinking. And I don't always get to look at you, and see you for you."

He has to pause in order to not break down- six months ago, he forgot who she was. Simply didn't understand why this stranger of a child was in his house. It hadn't made sense to him when she'd burst into tears, and why he'd followed suit, as if some part of him knew what a self-betrayal it was to forget his own daughter.

"And I always want to look at you, and know you. And know your mom. And your big brother. I don't lose those things because I want to; it's just not in my control. But this is."

Morgan nods, a tear slipping from her cheek and over her lip. "I know," she admits. "I just wish you could stay."

◇◇◇

They eat dinner as a family, waiting in anxiousness for the arrival of Doctor Kleptach. Three chairs filled, and four spaces set for the meal. There is an emptiness that has yet to be filled, and it certainly isn't meant for the doctor.

Pepper keeps catching Tony's eyes, trying to reassure him that Peter will be coming, there is no way he'd miss this, but Tony isn't so sure. It feels as if Peter has completely separated himself from the family, as if he's rejected this new reality. Tony can't blame him; the last time the kid saw him, he was lost in the hall, wetting himself because he couldn't locate the bathroom in time. It must have terrified him, or at the very least, grossed him out.

It's coming down to the last twenty minutes before the doctor arrives, and Tony is certain that he wont be seeing Peter again until... well, until the time comes.

But there's a timid knock at the door, a catch of breath in each person's chest- and a tidal wave of fear that the doctor has arrived early. It's Tony who stands and makes his way to front of the house weakly, terrified that this means his time has been cut short. The doorknob turns, the door slides open-

And he's there. Peter launches himself into Tony's arms and he holds him there for a moment, hugging around him tightly. Tony tries not to focus on the way that Peter is quietly sobbing against his chest. When he finally let's go, Tony sees it in his eyes- this willingness to fight his own disagreement for the betterment of everyone else.

It's when he sees Peter standing there, red-eyed and tear stained, that he knows he can't go through with this. As much as it may have felt right, once, Tony still has a family. And though he falls apart, so often, now, he still has his good days.

He pulls him in, again, another embrace, and no longer for the last time. There will be many to come, and many to remember, even as he slowly loses those recollections, and moments in time that seemly do not exist any more. He is here, breathing and living right now.

When he turns to see his family, who stand awkwardly by the table, emotionally weary, he nods- and Pepper seems to understand, a slow-spreading smile on her cheeks. "Really?" She asks, breathless.

Tony grips Peter around the shoulders and smiles. "Really."

◇◇◇

Over the course of Tony's last years, he still lives out his good days. Most times he can be found, sitting on the patio of the lake house, across the table from his wife, trying his best to play stuffed animals with his daughter, or telling the few old stories he remembers again and again and again to the boy he is so thankful to call a son.

He does not always remember their faces, but they will always remember his, and that is enough.

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sugaxjpg · 6 years ago

Text

event horizon; m

⤷ The city of Crystalfall had, just like any other small town, the good, the bad, and the ugly. You were familiar with the first one, and Min Yoongi, in all of his despondent and reckless glory, taught you about the rest.

✓ Couple: Yoongi x Reader | Criminal!AU

✓ Filed under: angst, fluff, smut

✓ Look out for: violence, drunk driving, and drugs; a relationship slowly getting toxic

✓ Words: 30,782 (yes, I know)

Author’s Note: Inspired by the setting of “Riverdale”. I’d like to put out a PSA and say that this fic has moments that are quite toxic/abusive, and by no means I approve this kind of behavior, nor am I romanticizing this. It’s all fiction, and I treated it the best way that I could. Nevertheless, feedback is always welcome and, oh boy, I hope the ‘read more’ works on tumblr mobile.

⤷ Song rec: Chase Atlantic - Triggered

⤷ This story is dedicated to @pantaemonium. Happy birthday to my beautiful, talented, unique wife. Love you lots.

According to physics’ theory of general relativity, the event horizon of a black hole is a point of no return. It does not matter how you have reached that specific part of the universe, nor how you feel once you touch its insubstantial traces ― in that speck of victory and defeat, the only thing that holds any sort of significance is the fact that, even against your best attempts, you cannot go back to where you once were. The gravity is too strong, the pull is more than you could ever take; you are trapped in a position paused in time, unable to comprehend the nothingness that lays beyond; how even the light curves and attempts to escape from that cosmic abyss.

Your story began the same way it ended: with a poorly thought-out decision, and a promise of better days. For the lack of a better definition, Min Yoongi, with all of his melancholic and dream-like existence, became your event horizon.

Tempestuous and dense clouds had long fallen over the suburban town once you entered that pleasant diner place, hearing as the rhythm of the rain danced against the foggy windows, almost overlapping the dim ringing of the bell that signaled your arrival. With no hesitation, you walked towards your usual table, ordering a hot cup of chocolate after greeting the friendly employees, and waited for your friends to come to your peculiar reunion.

The diner, decorated by a clear 50’s style, was permeated by a delicate aroma of vanilla and cinnamon, holding tightly to the warmness that could not exist outside. For a few hours now, the summer rain had monopolized the small town, balancing out the overwhelming heat waves that had hit you the week prior. From the corner of your hot pink sofa, you watched the droplets running down the glass next to you and, even if for an instant, you swore you could perceive the characteristic smell of petrichor that came alongside it; floating amongst humid strands of glass and quivering branches.

Your beverage arrived in a couple minutes, faster than your friends did. The delectable taste of your hot chocolate, present in so many past meetings, awakened your nostalgia promptly. You had no idea why you had been summoned to the diner that summer afternoon, but the blunt request had been the first message that popped up on your group chat that morning, illuminating your screen the same way that the sun’s rays brought brightness to your bedroom. Joohyun’s text came in the form of an abrupt and dry “3pm at Mercy’s. Good news!!” followed by the confirmation from your other friends. It wasn’t as if impulsive meetings had never been set up in the same fashion aforetime, but it was odd regardless, especially because of the lack of details.

Joohyun had been your best friend ever since you could remember and, just as far back, you could recall occurrences in which her decisions snowballed into ridiculously large problems. Back in third grade, when she decided that she wanted to lie about who gave her the answers of a test and ended up involving the entire school board; or perhaps during your junior year of high school, when she accidentally started a sexual rumor about you after misunderstanding your euphemism in Biology class. You two were almost polar opposites, but, in the end, you complemented one another, and your friendship had a harmony that you struggled to put into words. The two of you just worked, and that was all you needed to know.

Yet, you were annoyed as hell at her. You hated her cryptic 10am messages.

The sound of the bell ringing called you away from your meditations, and suddenly you could hear the vague melody of an indie song playing in the background, coming from the speakers above your head — the composition came crashing on your perceptions like waves that broke at the bay, soothing your worries instantaneously. You had no idea how you hadn’t noticed it before.

You looked up and smiled lovingly at your approaching friend, eyes following the hypnotic motion of her mermaid-like hair, brown as chocolate, as she walked hurriedly towards your table. “There you are,” you spoke calmly, “I thought you wouldn’t show up.”

She breathed out and raised her eyebrows in a expression of exhaustion. You could see underneath her eyes the marks of her sleepless night, and had to fight back the blooming of your inner preoccupations. Perhaps you could ask her about that later. “Sorry, things are a mess at home,” Joohyun said, agile while placing her bag on the table and sliding on the sofa opposite from you. Against the bright pink leather, her slim figure stood out even more. “Were you waiting for long?”

“Five, ten minutes at most,” you responded — it wasn’t as if you ever expected for her to be punctual. “You know where the others are?”

Your friend nodded. “Hoseok and Namjoon are together, they won’t take long,” Joohyun told you, running one hand through her hair, trying to fix the mistakes only she could perceive. “They were driving by that fast food near the supermarket by the time I called, which was like, two minutes ago.”

You chuckled. “Checking to see if you would be last one to arrive?”

She sighed, shoulders falling in a silent confirmation. “You know me too well.” Then, before you could even consider an answer, her charcoal-colored eyes oscillated to the half-filled cup on your hand, her eyebrows raising in interest. “Let me have some, please. You know that I love hot chocolate.”

“I do.” You slid the mug towards her. You weren’t the biggest fan of the drink — it got quite nauseating after the third slip — but you had gotten it for your friend. You did know her very well, so you were positive she would be eager to get her usual sugar rush by the time she arrived. “Now, why did you call us here for? An intervention?” you asked.

Joohyun took a second to respond, closing her eyes to fully appreciate the rich taste that filled her mouth, and humming out in delight. It was fascinating the effect that hot chocolate had on her, it was almost as if her exhausted look had completely faded away by the moment she looked back at you, eyes slightly widened by animation. “Don’t you want to wait for them?”

“I’m curious, you know that,” you verbalized, a tinge of guilt staining your words. “There’s no need to torture me any further.”

And that was the complete truth. Ever since you received her message, that was all that you could think about. It was as if Joohyun’s text was the Sun, and your thought process circled around it like Mercury, fast and restless, waiting for an answer to appear in the star-covered horizon. It was far too tempting to be there and not wish for it to be uncovered immediately — besides, the boys wouldn’t care, you knew that.

Your friend smiled back, setting the mug on the wooden surface. Around its alabaster border, was imprinted the touch of her lips, red as cherry. “You’re lucky I can’t hold myself back.” She leaned forward on the table, placing her hands on top of yours in sheer expectation, her palms warm. The world came to a halt. “Okay, so... you know about The Cave?”

Your eyes narrowed in suspicion — you did not like that one bit. “Vaguely…”

But you knew about that place very well, and you were positive that, coming from her, such mention could never be the precursor of good news. The excited look that was projected over Joohyun’s doll-like features did not say that The Cave had been burned down or something alike, but that it was vivacious as ever, ready to take more victims in.

As much as you already knew where this conversation was heading, you still felt the impact of her words as they departed from her throat. “I might have gotten us a way in.” She smiled openly.

It was your time to lean forward, eyebrows furrowing into an image of your inner exasperation. “Joohyun, are you insane?” you whispered, guided by preoccupations. Not for you, but for her — she was going, regardless of your opinion. “That place isn’t for us. Do you want to be killed?”

Just as you had foreseen, your best friend disregarded your words instantaneously. “Oh come on, just—“

Once again, the ringing of the bell broke the serenity of the establishment, making the two of you move away from one another, backs pressing against your respective seats. The leather couch was often so comfortable, but now it felt like it was trapping you against the table, feeding off your nervousness and sticking to your skin; there was a bad feeling looming over your head.

From the door came two silhouettes — Namjoon and Hoseok — and the smell of fried food. Your stomach was fast to present its hunger the second that your eyes met the brown bags on their arms, slightly stained by circles of oil. God works in mysterious ways, after all.

Namjoon was the first one to speak, moving quickly to seat across from you. His pallid green jacket was covered in droplets of rain and, somehow, it matched the aura of that lugubrious diner flawlessly. “Hey guys.” He placed the food on the table, and angled his hips backwards, trying to place his body on the small space between the surface and the couch. “What did we — dude, just move over, it ain’t that hard.” He pressed his shoulder against Joohyun, who gave a little jump to the side while poking her tongue out at him. “What did we miss?”

Instead of answering promptly, your fingers were agile as you reached out for the brown bag. “Oh my god, fries,” you almost whined those words of relief as you peeked inside, salivating. Just then did you realize your lunch had been only a half-eaten apple, and your body could not be angrier at that poor fitness decision.

Hoseok scoffed as he sat down next to you. If you hadn’t been pressing against the opposite wall already, you were sure he would have asked for you to move over as well — the kid loved to take up space. “Your deduction is impeccable, Sherlock,” he told you with a grin. His dark red hair was one shade deeper because of the rain — it was a bit pushed back, but it still it managed to send droplets down his forehead. “You’re welcome, by the way.”

You nodded and shoved a fry in your mouth. The assuagement was immediate, and you swore you could hear a chant of angels inside your head. “Thank you,” you said — both at your friends and the faceless creator of such divine meal, “you guys are awesome.”

Joohyun’s fingers were fast to curl around the bag’s edge, pushing it towards her, “YN, give me some,” her voice came out in an order. Your eyes flickered between the fries in her hands and the empty cup of hot chocolate next to her as if to say ‘are you sure about that?’, a memo she promptly grasped. “Today is my cheating day. Let me live.”

Namjoon chuckled as one of his arms reached out to get the other bag, which the two of you had miraculously overlooked. Hoseok had been wise to get two extra-large portions, he had to recognize that. “Whatever you say, baby,” he mocked her, and then turned his head in your direction. The anemic lights of the overcast sky curled around his features impeccably, painting the picture of his puzzlement. “So, what were the two of you talking about? Sharing is caring.”

“Did you hear that? Sharing is caring.” You pulled the bag from your friend, ignoring her full-mouthed complaints. “Joohyun here was just telling me her suicide plan,” you complained.

The girl rolled her eyes, clearly irked at your up-right attitude. “YN, why are you so dramatic? I get that you’re the mom friend, but don’t spoil the fun.” She turned towards the newcomers with a fresh, commercial-worthy smile — another miracle that her teeth were not stained by her copious amounts of chocolate and fries, but that was a subject for another meeting. “Boys, I was just talking about that place, The Cave,” she explained.

Next to you, Hoseok stopped chewing. “The abandoned industry complex at the east side?” He swallowed the food with weird eagerness, his eyebrows raising in muted excitement — oh my god, did the other bag have cheddar on those fries? You needed to check it out. “Damn. What about it?” he asked.

She licked her reddish lips — both from excitement and the need to get the remnants of salt out of her mouth. Joohyun, once again, allowed for her inner exhilaration to push her forward on the table, her black eyes scintillating in a frenzy of adventurous emotions, pendulating between the two boys. “I might have found a way for us to go in,” she spoke out, her hiss-like tone making the entire scene comical — she looked like a supervillain, in the most awkward of ways.

And, of course, your friends reacted precisely as you expected them to — like kids.

The thrill that washed over Hoseok’s face made it seem as if he had just received a present, glistening inside his eyes like the stars that decorated the night sky. “Sweet!” he exclaimed, voice one pitch higher. “How did you manage that?”

You tugged the oil-stained bag out of his hands in a gesture that was a bit too harsh. Noticing that you had forgotten the cheese-free portion, the other girl acted quickly to get it. “Hoseok!” you reprehended, anguish filling your lungs. “It’s on the east part of town, in case you forgot. It’s a place for gangs and, I don’t know, contract killers,” you said, reaching down the bag. Definitely had cheddar on it. “Do you seriously think that’s a good idea?”

Unaffected by the urgency of your tone, Hoseok shrugged your worries away. “So? We just stay out of trouble. And give me back my fries.” He pulled the portion out of your hands. That constant fighting for food could not be healthy friendship-wise. “Go on, Joohyun, how did you manage that?”

Namjoon grinned wickedly. “Her boyfriend probably got her a free ticket.”

As he spoke, the other girl saw glimpses of his chewed food inside on his mouth. Joohyun cringed her nose in disgust. “Gross. First off, we’re not dating,” she hurried to deny, even if the pale shade of scarlet around her ears told no lies. You all knew very well that they weren’t dating because of the other guy — some weird outlaw from the sewers or something, a ninja turtle for all you cared — hated compromise, and not because she didn’t want it. “Second: yes, he did get me in, but that’s not relevant. I can take people with me, so, please?” she whined, prolonging the last word into an irritating ‘pleeeease?’. “Guys? It’ll be fun.”

Hoseok drew back against the pink couch, running his hands through his wet hair. You had no idea how he hadn’t traced a path of orange cheese through it, but your friends seemed to be in the mood to do the impossible that day. “I’m in,” he said. Not a surprise.

Across from you, the other boy spoke up, “I might have to see when I’m free, but I’m in too.” Namjoon agreed. “When is it?”

“Tonight,” she responded.

“Count me in, then.”

You groaned out in pure irritation. Quite honestly, your mood would’ve been so much worse if you didn’t have your escapism by food to tame the tides of your chaotic thoughts. “You guys can’t be serious,” you complained, looking around to see if, amongst any of their features, you could find any remnant of reason. Nothing. “Am I the only sane person left living?”

“Between the four of us, yes,” Hoseok answered, but did not seem to truly feel any sort of empathy towards your cautious attitude. If he hadn’t been eager to get a confirmation from you, he would’ve teased you much further. “You’re coming or not, grandma?”

You crossed your arms, defensive. “No fucking way.”

Namjoon raised his eyebrows as he shoved three more cheese-covered fries inside his mouth. You had started to think that maybe they should’ve gotten more. “So Miss Responsibility is just going to let her friends alone?” he teased, mouth half-full. He really needed to learn some basic manners.

You narrowed your eyes, looking your friend up and down. “Kim Namjoon, don’t you dare take advantage of my altruism.” You pointed at him. And it was your time to reach for another fry — rather angrily, if you could say so yourself. You couldn’t stay mad at them for long when your fingers were covered in cheddar. “Even if you have a good point,” you added.

“So…” Hoseok raised his eyebrows in unspoken expectation, leaning playfully towards you. “What is it gonna be?” he asked in a cheese-scented exhalation.

Your patience could only go so far. “Fine!” You threw your hands up in a theatrical signal of your surrender. The others smiled victoriously, sharing words of encouragement amongst them — a pack of demons, that was what they were. “But I’m leaving early, and I’ll complain the entire time,” you added.

“Seems good enough for me.” Hoseok placed his palms on the surface, and got up to his feet. “I’m getting us some more food, since the two of you seemed to forget that we are all sharing,” his eyes vacillated between you and Joohyun. “The usual?”

The table was filled with nods and hums of agreement and, in the next moment, Namjoon was getting up to go alongside Hoseok, claiming he probably would pick the wrong things — again. When you and Joohyun were alone once anew, your friend suspired, turning her head towards you.

Joohyun placed her palm against the back of your hand. Amongst the lines of her dark irises, you could almost read the the words that encompassed your head like vexatious insects — it seems like you will have to deal with it, “Loosen up, baby.” She pouted, crooking her head slightly to the side. Oh, she was finding joy in that small victory, and you knew it. “We’ll have fun, I promise. Something tells me that you might even find someone interesting,” she teased. “Only the Lord knows how much you need to put that sexual energy into something else… or someone, really.”

You scoffed, rolling your eyes at the absurdity of her claims. “You wish, Joohyun.”

She pouted. “We’ll see about that.”

Outside, the rain had stopped drumming against the opaque windows, and the fragile incandescence of the sun had started peeking over the diaphanous mountains of the storm clouds. There was a certain whimsical feeling to that scene, an uncharacterized emotion that resounded inside your chest, erupting in-between your lips in the form of a prolonged sigh.

If Joohyun had been mistaken that afternoon, that would have made the upcoming weeks much, much simpler for you.

Crystalfall was, by definition, a small town.

With its astonishing twelve thousand inhabitants and mundane church meetings every Sunday, it stood as a gentle agglomeration of buildings in — as Hoseok would say — the middle of no place, right next to nowhere at all. It had received that name for its dazzling waterfall and source of drinkable water which had, primordially, catalyzed the migration towards the land, many years before you were ever born.

Just like most small towns, boredom was mandatory a good amount of the time, and there was little to no task to be fulfilled during summer break, once you went back to its veridian fields and sun-kissed afternoons, taking a time off university. In fact, besides Namjoon — whose family owned a considerably large farm nearby, and had to take his afternoons off to take care of the crops and animals —, none of your friends seemed to find anything thrilling to do, instead choosing to spend time in the house, watching movies or talking for hours about the most frivolous of subjects. And, quite honestly, you liked it like that. You had always appreciated the simpler aspects of life.

Crystalfall was no big deal, but it was home, and you loved every part of it.

Well, almost every part.

You had been lucky enough to be raised on the west side of town, where most of the families did. It was, as Joohyun would say, a sheltered castle of dreams, a countryside paradise — a boring piece of utopia. There was little to no crime amongst its inhabitants, and the biggest outrage that took place had been the time in which a few middle school kids dared to steal some bread from the chapel, a matter that rapidly got taken care of.

That, however, had been amongst the locals of the westside; the east didn’t hold the same amount of benevolence amongst its people. You hated to have your mind so fundamented on that basic dichotomy of good and evil, but it had been the only way you could describe the ridiculously large differences between the two parts of that same town. While the west was a “boring utopia”, the east bordered on a bone-chilling anarchy; the womb of a few of the worst criminals your state had ever had — gangs, murderers, drug dealers, kidnappers, rapists: you name it, they had it all.

You constantly felt threatened by that, like it was the presence of death itself looming over your life. As much as the thugs of the east side often messed around with their own kind and, besides that, you were sure that there were good individuals living amongst those incarnated devils, you could never really felt safe in those parts of Crystalfall — so, in return, you avoided it the best way you could. It worked. For some time.

Nevertheless, now you had thrown all those efforts out of the window, for your friends were dragging you right into the lion’s open mouth.

You could barely keep up with their pace as they ran down the deserted streets, their heavy steps reverberating throughout the obfuscous night. Joohyun’s hand was holding tightly to your own as she pulled you to walk faster, unable to hold back her excitement. She glimpsed back just so you could notice the phantasm of a smile being casted over her roseate, petal-like lips. Her hand felt warm and inviting against yours, contrasting with the hyperborean winds of dusk. “Come on, we’re late!” she exclaimed, almost as if talking to herself. “I promised him we’d be here by eleven.”

“I never saw you as someone punctual,” you complained, but were sure she did not hear your voice amongst the fragile traces of wind. Behind you, Hoseok and Namjoon were whispering something you could not catch.

The industrial complex had been deactivated around fourteen years ago and, now, it didn’t go beyond a mere phantasm lingering stubbornly amongst the memories of the senile locals. Nowadays, most inhabitants of Crystalfall knew it as the perfect spot if you wanted to meet your local drug dealer, or perhaps mingle with people that seemed to be a better fit for jail than for a small religious community. Bottom line: even if The Cave was the closest to a club that your town could ever get, it didn’t mean it was a good alternative.

Through shattered windows came the dust-filled rays of a deep damascus light, casting down the earth that piled up on the outside of the relinquished complex and, as you moved closer, you could start to make out the vague melody of an Eagles song echoing past it. Instead of what you had expected, however, there were no gangs piling up on the outside of the abandoned construction, no obnoxious fights to break the tranquility of midnight. The Cave, in all of its hellish expansion, appeared to be bigger than you had expected, mayhaps because of the overwhelming desolation that impregnated each and every broken tile; each centimeter of the atmosphere. It was a zombified beast living off the liveliness of its occupants.

The four of you arrived at the large, corroded metal door. Joohyun said something to a couple of big guys that stood by it and, by the mention of her (not) boyfriend’s name, they appeared to put their guard down a bit. As much as they were not precisely frightened of the people from the westside, they were absolutely horrified at the concept of allowing undercover cops into their world, and the consequences they would have to face by the hands of their own counterparts.

Nevertheless, your friend took care of the matter rather effortlessly and, within a couple of minutes, the entrance was being unlocked for you. With a hesitant suspire, you followed the three of them into the epicenter of bad decisions that was The Cave.

Okay, perhaps you imagination had taken the best of your judgement, for you did not expect the decoration of the place. It wasn’t much — and by no means fancy — but it was gorgeous regardless.

The Cave still looked like an industry complex, with its large rectangular-shaped construction, wooden boxes and empty buckets piling up at the corners, and dense concrete floors, but whoever was in charge of changing up the place did not disappoint: the large metal bars that sustentated the tall triangular ceiling had been covered in christmas lights, pouring down the room in beautiful orange cascades; inducing the ambient to border on the spectral, since it was its only light source. All over the walls, kaleidoscopic posters covered up the dry grey painting and the broken bricks, speaking in silent promises — all-you-can-eat contest; make your bets at the winners of sunday’s dog fight; Maurice’s Bear: knockout version; and other advertisements for less puritan, adult-centered services. Not that dog fights were that good.

There was a strong smell of alcohol and something burning around the static air; the Eagle’s song had then changed into a band you did not recognize. Passing your eyes swiftly over the crowd, you could see some large men playing poker on a secluded table — one of which had an disgracefully large snake tattoo over his right cheek and forehead — and, right next to them, a group of girls laughing loudly at something they were discussing. There were other, smaller groups scattered around the place, talking vehemently in roaring voices, minding their own business as the night progressively moved forward.

“Won’t you look at that,” next to you, Joohyun’s tranquil voice sounded, dragging you back to your position. Her flaming crimson lipstick was burning under those conflagrant lights, standing out against her skin and her dark hair; curling upwards on her lips as a timid smile germinated upon them. “I see my man. I’ll talk to him real quick, I’ll be right back.”

Before you could even figure out what to respond, she had already tapped you on the shoulder, and was walking firmly towards a crowd of leather-covered strangers. You had no idea how she had seen her pseudo-boyfriend amongst them. You sighed. “Sure. Have fun.” You turned around to meet your other friends. “Seems like it’s just the three of us, g—”

“—Dude is that a dart throwing competition?” Hoseok pointed across the room, over your shoulder, and Namjoon followed his stare with furrowed brows and the hint of competitiveness shining inside his eyes. Part of your soul cracked then: you knew exactly where that was heading. “I’ll totally kick your ass this time.” He laughed.

You opened your mouth to protest, but you were far too slow. In the short time span that took you to verbalize one syllable, the two of them were passing by your side, completely ignoring your presence. “Over my dead body, Jung,” you heard Namjoon snicker.

Exhaling from your nose, you closed your lips. “That’s great,” you mumbled to yourself. That night was going to be amazing, wasn’t it? “Predictable. But great.”

Then again, your adventure had barely begun. Out of alternatives, you found yourself going towards the bar and asking for a glass of water — the last thing you needed was to lose full control of your actions and moral judgement in a place like that, especially when you were taken there under the unspoken mission of babysitting your friends. You couldn’t allow yourself to be taken away by the compelling necessity that was to drown your problems away in oceans of cheap liquor, no matter how gorgeous those polychromatic bottles looked on the walls.

You had precisely ten minutes of peace before the changes in your life started to take place.

With your peripheral vision, you noticed a broad silhouette arriving, moving quickly to seat on the bench next to you. Primordially, you thought nothing of it — there was no reason to — and continued to pay attention to the flowery details of your dahlia-colored summer dress; thoughts traveling many miles away from that overflowing place. It was only when a voice — deep and thunderous — sounded next to you that you understood your position. “You’re here alone, sweetcakes?” it inquired.

Just by the tragic usage of that pet name, you knew the two of you were off to a rocky start.

Trying your best to keep your expression neutral, you looked him up and down — from his ginger beard to his piercing ice blue eyes, then back to the overabundance of reptiles tattooed on his exposed forearms — finally, away from him and back to the strangers in the crowd. The was the last thing you needed for that night was a viking cosplayer wanting to ask you out. “I’m with my friends,” you responded, rather dryly.

He hummed, and placed his arm on the counter. “No boyfriend, then.” The red-haired smiled openly. He was clearly a large guy, and from the bad side of Crystalfall — you had no idea how he could take rejection, and you weren’t very excited to find out. “You’re not from this part of town, are you?”

You decided to keep your posture as respectful and detached as you could possibly manage. Answers were difficult to come up with when you were that uncomfortable. “Is it that obvious?” you said, turning your head to take another peek at him. He was definitely much older than you, most likely around ten years, and his breath reeked of cigarettes and cheap alcohol. “I don’t want to be rude, but I’m not interested in finding a boyfriend either. If you know what I mean.”

“I do.” He winked. He did not know what you meant. “Maybe we can have fun just for ton—”

His speech was paused abruptly and, for an instant, a loud sound broke the static, followed by even a louder one, of flesh meeting leather. Your discombobulated mind needed a few instants to fully comprehend that those noises had been the sound of another man patting your viking counterpart in the back, perhaps with the force that could be comparable to a heimlich maneuver.

Ah, the night was getting better by the minute.

“Hey, man,” the newcomer greeted, skirting his large figure. As he came into view, you could perceive the petulant smirk that curled up on his flower-like lips, and the murderous glint that lit his dark eyes aflame. Quite the combo, if you could say so yourself. “It’s been a while.”

The red-haired man paused. His thrilled face withered into one that you could only describe as a mixture of irritation and apprehension — the same sentiment when a wasp is banging against your window, but you’re not insane enough to open the glass and watch as nature gets the best of you. Some things are better left unbothered and, apparently, that guy was one of those. “Yoongi,” he spoke that name as if it burned his tongue. “What can I help you with?”

His feline grin did not subside: in fact, you were sure it grew a few millimeters. “I’m glad you asked. I’m here to talk with an old friend.” He signaled with his head towards you — who, as anyone in that place could tell from your flabbergasted features, had never seen that man before in your entire life. “If you don’t mind, of course.”

Though, from his tone alone, it was clear that there was no space for debate. “I don’t.” The other man stood up, and only then did you realize the noticeable size difference between the two. In a way, that observation was chilling, for there was certainly some sort of compensation from the part of the smaller one — in that side of town, it was nothing good. “We’ll catch up later, sweetcakes,” the viking told you.

You opened your mouth to respond, but the so-called Yoongi laughed in disgust before you could verbalize anything. “No, you won’t.” He patted the guy on the back once again, this time a bit lighter; smiling freely as the other groaned something intelligible, then turned around to leave. “Keep movin’, dude,” he said, his speech clearly filled with mockery. “Let’s catch up later.”

Yoongi exhaled in artificial relief, placing his drink over the counter. The liquid was red as fresh blood, contrasting against his golden-kissed skin. “Well, he won’t bother you any further,” he told you, turning around to face the barman — who, you noticed, had been extremely entertained while witnessing that peculiar exchange. “Fill this up for me, man?”

The boy blinked, barely understanding the sentences that dripped in the space between them, before nodding energetically. “Yeah. Sure thing, Yoongi,” he agreed as he reached for the cup.

There was something about that man’s demeanor that got the best of you — perhaps the way that he held himself with such imprudent confidence, or the puzzle that formed just beyond his obsidian irises, inviting you to dive deeper into his mysteries. Phosphorescent, halcyon lights dripped down his features with perfection, his skin glowing slightly under the overwhelming brilliance — his semblance living on the thin line between human and seraphic. He was dazzling as a model, as desirable as the devil.

Yoongi looked just like a bad decision would, only a bit more tempting.

“That was a bit overdramatic.” You took a sip of water, trying to hide the smile that started creeping up your roseate-tinged lips. Even your friends would be able to tell that a guy like that could never mean good news — so why were you so drawn to him? It was so weird. “What are you, Yoongi, the big boss around here?”

Clearly he hadn’t been expecting that inquiry, for he promptly scoffed at your words. “Nah, not really,” he said, stare still locked to the barman, following the ruby liquid that was poured on his crystal-clear cup; two cubes of ice. “We don’t have leaders around here.”

“Anarchy. Always good for the soul.” You raised your cup in a silent cheer, watching as he laughed at your words — strangely, you found yourself enjoying that sound a bit more than you should. “You didn’t need to step in, though. With, you know, that guy.”

As he turned his head to find your eyes, you swore you had forgotten how to breathe for an instant. Underneath heavy eyelids, his look was sharp and gelid as a dagger, piercing directly at your soul. “Were you enjoying the talk?” he spoke slowly, voice an octave lower.

“Not at all.” You cleared your throat — you could not tell why you were so nervous all of a sudden. “Why the violence?”

The charming stranger smirked. “I wasn’t violent.”

“Yeah right.” You rolled your eyes, and placed your cup back on the surface. Yoongi followed the motion of your slender fingers with clear interest, and his stare lingered on your skin, following up the path up your arms. “You slapped that man's back like he was choking on his inner demons.”

He shrugged, leaning against the surface with flawless grace — his every action was a dance, a frail path of endless daydreams being painted through the atmosphere. “It was nothing.” Yoongi ran one of his hands through his hair. His skin was marked by pallid blue veins, his hair was stygian as the nocturnal skyline, morphing into the adumbration of the poorly-lit room: you would be lying through your teeth if you claimed you didn’t feel attracted to him. That was bad. It was really bad. “So… you’re here with friends, right?”

“You overheard that.” You grinned. From the other side of the bar, the barman placed the drink on the surface with a mumble-like ‘there you go.’

It wasn’t a question, but he responded regardless. “Yes. And I overheard that you’re not from this part of town.” Yoongi spoke further, his sculptural lips forming his sentences with endless fluidity. He looked up at you. “What is a west beauty like you doing in a dreadful place like this?”

“Babysitting my inconsequential friends,” you overlooked his hidden compliment, even if you could not dissimulate the shade of geranium that bloomed upon your cheeks. “What is an east hunk like you trying to get out of a conversation like this?” you asked back.

He hummed and elevated one of his eyebrows. “You often have these trust issues, or is it just with me?” he provoked.

You smiled. “I often do. But you’re magnifying them.”

“Fair enough. You’re not from here.” Yoongi took his drink to his mouth, and the strawberry liquor — you assumed — stained his lips with an anemic shade of rufescent. “I’m just trying to get to know you. Which is hard, since you haven’t even given me your name yet.”

Presenting that stranger with any sort of information about you was most likely an unwise decision, but you did it regardless. “It’s YN.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Exotic,” he mocked, “I’m glad I got something out of tonight. Quite the day off.”

“Stop fucking with me.” You pushed his shoulder in a playful manner, watching as, on his lips, blossomed the traces of a diverted smile. He seemed to be such a nice guy, maybe you had judged him too soon. “Why, did my damsel-in-distress moment interrupt your business around here? Are you a dealer or something?” you joked.

Yoongi shook his head in a silent disagreement, forging a surprise far bigger than the one he witnessed. “Wow. Because I’m in a bad side of town? Talk about judgement.” He rolled his eyes. Then, against your expectations, his face grew serious, and he turned back to look at you. “But why? Want me to hook you up on some crack?”

Your lips parted in amazement. “I’m—“

He could not hold back his laugh then, and it was his turn to push his shoulder against yours. “I’m just messing with you, chill,” he said. “You should’ve seen your face.”

Overtaken by relief, you breathed out. “Damn, why did you do that for? I was going to say yes.”

“Sorry, couldn’t hold back.” He grinned — oh, he was definitely handsome. “I’m here just to have some fun, believe it or not. I was talking to some old friends, you know, catching up. Taking my mind off things.”

You agreed. “I should do that, but I’m constantly worried about something.”

“That seems like a chore,” Yoongi spoke with honesty, his tone as sacchariferous as caramel. Just by hearing his voice in such soft, casual manner, you could feel your chest being filled up with oceans upon oceans of interest, its growing tides crashing just at the bottom of your throat. That couldn’t be good. “What’s in your mind now?” he asked.

“My friends. Like those two, Hoseok and Namjoon, over there with the darts.” You pointed at the other side of the construction just in time to see Hoseok get the maximum ponctuation, his dart standing out right at the central red circle of the target. He jumped out in endless bliss, pointing at Namjoon and laughing victoriously. Next to you, Yoongi chuckled at the scene. “They love to go a bit crazy on the alcohol, and they always end up in insane places. This one time, Hobi took a cab and woke up two towns away, it was crazy.”

“Let me guess, you picked him up?” Yoongi asked.

You pouted. “It’s that obvious?”

“You seem like someone who would do that.”

“I’m his friend, it’s the least that I could do.”

“No one could’ve picked him up instead?”

You shrugged, unsure of what to respond. You didn’t know where the man was getting at. “I mean, I don’t know.”

“I do. I think he called you because he knew how you’d react.” Yoongi was talking fast, and saying all the correct words. You could tell that he had a sharp, quick-witted mind, for he responded to your sentences with zero vacillation — as Joohyun always said, smooth talkers are a dangerous type; they knew just how to carry you away. “You’d pick him up, maybe scream at him about being reckless, and let it pass. Am I right?”

Your shoulders fell in muted concordance. “Unfortunately.”

Yoongi smirked. “Thought so. You’re a Good Samaritan, west beauty.”

From the vague touches of playfulness amongst his precisely-built syllables, you though he might have been making fun of you. “Is that... bad?”

He took an instant before answering. “Not if you don’t overdo it. People might take advantage of that.”

You frowned and turned your gaze away from him, allowing for your attention to float back to your two friends. Hoseok and Namjoon were discussing loudly about one of them cheating, and nearby expectators were laughing along, perhaps a bit more invested than you’d believe possible: the two never had issues making friends. “I don’t overdo it,” you said in an annoyed whisper — it sounded as if you were trying to convince yourself.

“Yeah? So why are you here?” From your peripheral vision, you could see as he leaned his head to the side, trying to catch a glimpse of your dimly lit features. Still, guilt made your gaze oscillate to the opposite direction with almost flawless timing. “Throwing your night away because you wanted to make sure they were okay. They’re adults, you can’t babysit them forever. If they only get a pull on their ear every time they fuck up, they’ll never learn to weight the consequences.”

You scoffed, crossing your arms before your chest. You knew he was right. “Pretty talk for a guy in a thug bar.”

“That doesn’t invalidate what I said.” Yoongi spoke with tranquility, as if he already knew what your advances would be. It was odd, very odd — how genuinely he seemed to care, and how well he read you. “It’s like that saying goes: don’t set yourself on fire to keep other people warm. Help them out, sure, but I can tell you’re wearing yourself thin because of it. That’s not the best idea.”

You sighed. “I guess.”

He found your determination to keep your walls up to be, at the very least, entertaining. Still, he wouldn’t bulge — he never backed away from a good challenge. “Let me ask you something.” Yoongi placed his arm on the table, moving a bit towards you. His voice morphed into a profound, concentrated tone, words coming out in a whisper-like formation. Yoongi’s breath was sugary, carrying along the aroma of strawberry. “Would they do the same for you?”

Your eyebrows moved together, and you looked back to meet his stare. “How so?”

He shrugged and leaning back on his bench. It was a weird dance he was performing there — getting closer and then far from you, oscillating the inflections and volume of his mellifluous voice in a way to draw you nearer. “Would they pick you up if you were in trouble, would they accompany you somewhere they didn’t want to go because they were worried about you…? The list goes on,” Yoongi explained.

You thought for a second. Reality was rather dreadful once you came to terms with the fact that your friends weren’t as worried about your safety as you would like them to. “Joohyun would, I’m sure of that. She’s my other friend.” You cleared your throat. “But I’m not sure about the guys.”

Yoongi hummed, but did not buy the truth you were trying so vehemently to sell him. He examined your features like an attentive predator, trying to find the cracks on your mask. “Where’s Joohyun now?” he asked.

You knew exactly what his intention was the second that inquiry poured from his cinnamon-colored lips. “With a guy.”

One of his eyebrows raised. “She left you alone, then?” Yoongi questioned, traces of bitterness ornamenting his speech. “In a sketchy place, filled with strangers, knowing fully well you didn’t even want to come.”

You chuckled, humorless. “Yeah. Sounds so shitty when you put it like that, though.”

He sighed. “Tell me something.” Once again, he tilted his body closer to you. “Would you do that to her? If you had come to see me, and she was the one who was left behind, would you feel good about that?”

There was no need to ruminate on that inquiry, for you already knew the answer. “Not at all. I wouldn’t do that.”

Yoongi pressed his lips together and raised his eyebrows in an expression that spoke ‘that’s what I thought’. “Well, then that’s something to work on,” he said, then seemed to dive into an instant of thought. Maybe there was pity within his stare, but you could not be sure, perhaps you were just projecting. “Hey, all I’m saying is that you have to give yourself some value too. Gotta keep yourself together so you can help others with their broken pieces. All that crap.”

His words were so cliche that you would not help but laugh at the ridiculousness of it. “Where did you read that? In a minion meme for suburban moms?”

“I just came up with it.” He smirked, clearly proud of his impromptu work. “Cool, right? Some calendar shit right here.”

You took one of your fingers to your cheek and pretended to wipe away an invisible tear. “It was inspiring, to say the least.” You giggled. There was a certain insubstantial wave of security that encompassed his proximity, and it allowed for you to have a free conversation with him. That man was really something else. “Thank you, Yoongi. You’re cool.”

He raised his empty cup in a silent cheer. “Always a pleasure, YN,” he grinned, the lowered the object back on the table. Yoongi cleared his throat. “So... when do I see you again?”

You looked at him. There was something at work in your spirit that you could not quite comprehend — your eyes examined the exquisite person that was Yoongi, and it seemed as if your heart was filled with nostalgia, completely overthrown by a sentiment that did not belong alongside that stranger. Joohyun was right: smooth talkers were the worst, they could tear your walls down and make it seem like you did it yourself.

And that was your first mistake when it came to Min Yoongi: you trusted him far too easily.

“I’ll tell you what,” you started, turning around on your bench. Over the counter, your fingers were almost touching, and you swore you could feel the warm aura emanating from his skin. “Whenever you want to, I’m down.”

From the delight that was casted over his features, you could see that he couldn’t be more pleased at your response. “Alright. Let’s go have some fun one of these days.”

You leaned in, interested. “Got something in mind?”

“I might,” he disclosed with a grin. “Listen out. This might sound a bit crazy, but stay with me.”

So, you did.

It was a bit over two in the morning and your companion for the night had already left when you reached out for your friend amongst a crowd of strangers, poking her on the shoulder. “Joohyun, sorry to interrupt, but I’m going home,” you said as she turned around, her eyes wide and cheeks painted by a faint tone of cherry. “You can get a cab, right? Hoseok and Namjoon will probably leave together.”

The response, however, did not come from her. “I’ll drive her home. I didn’t drink.”

You looked to Joohyun’s side, meeting the face of her (not) boyfriend. He was definitely not your type, and you were sure she could do a lot better if she didn’t have such a gargantuan weakness towards bad influences. Not that you could judge her after what you had pulled that night. “Alright, man that I don’t know,” you were sarcastic as you spoke, and you noticed that the unknown guy did not appreciate your attitude. “You’re good?” you asked her.

Joohyun smiled warmly at your protectiveness — you didn’t know then, but she appreciated it deeply. “I’m good, YN, you can go,” she guaranteed with a nod. “Thanks for the heads up.”

“Sure thing.” Your eyes flickered towards the guy for another instant, but he was already paying attention to a discussion that happened behind your figure, his lips somewhat parted as his eyes squinted in absolute attention. Quite the airhead that your friend had gotten there. “By the way…” You breathed out. “You were right. I did meet someone interesting.”

Her eyes lit up in a level of excitement that, almost certainly, had been enhanced by alcohol. “That’s great!” she exclaimed. “Tell me everything later.”

“Will do.” You agreed with a movement of your head. “Thank you for bringing us here tonight, and you—” You poked the guy, who blinked a few times as he crashed back into reality. “Thank you for getting us in.”

He mumbled something that you believed sounded like “whatever, chick I don’t know,” even if his speech was a bit too groggy for you to follow. There was no alcohol in his breath, and he certainly didn’t seem high. He just seemed a bit slow and, combined with his clear dislike for you, he most likely didn’t feel like having a proper conversation anyways.

Well, you took that as your invitation to leave. Next up, saying goodbye to Hoseok and Namjoon, and making sure that they hadn't stabbed each other’s eyes out with darts.

Their ebullient screams of exhilaration got to you before their images did, mingling with other, equally loud laughs. From what you could see, their little show of competitiveness had resulted in quite the audience agglomerating around the two of them, finding the situation a bit funnier than it was — and thank booze for that. You could only imagine what kind of circle of hell The Cave would be if most of its crime-leaning users weren’t drunk out of their minds.

“Namjoon, Hoseok,” you called out, trying your best not to get hit by one of the passersby. “I’m leaving. Are you guys alright?”

“Yeah, we didn’t drink,” Namjoon answered, his gaze still locked on the target. His fingers were holding his dart so strongly that his fingertips turned white, his concentration was so intense that he most likely didn’t notice his roseate tongue poking at the corner of his plump lips. “Can’t miss these shots.”

Namjoon made his sensational shot, but it came nowhere close to the central circle — in fact, it almost missed the target completely. Hoseok slapped his shoulder, unable to hold back a resounding laugh. “Clearly, you can. I’m still winning, man,” he teased. “Keep on trying, though, this is what dreams are made of.”

You could not help but smile alongside your friends, a certain sensation of amiability spreading throughout your chest. You really cared about those guys, and you were more than blissful that you all got a great night out of what, at first, appeared to be a nightmare. Perhaps they were right, perhaps you really should let yourself go more often.

But, well, you had already started, in a way.

With a final check on your friends, you allowed for your gaze to travel around The Cave for the terminal time that night. Truly, those christmas lights made everything much more ethereal, and you certainly wouldn’t mind coming back there another time — especially now that you knew someone of those lands.

Yeah, you wouldn’t mind at all.

Without further ado, you made your way to the front door, and welcomed yourself into the obfuscous veil of dusk. Around your legs, your summer dress danced, blown away by the tremulous touches of that hyperborean breeze. You placed your hands over your thighs in an attempt to keep the fabric in place, and stepped onto the dust-covered ground.

Yoongi was leaning against the brick walls, his black leather jacket morphing with the crepuscular aura of the night. Twilight danced on his skin as he raised his green bottle up to his lips, delighting on the ambrosial taste of his liquor. Once he heard you stepping outside, shoes making dry sounds against the earth, his head turned towards your figure. He smiled then, satisfied. “Said goodbye to the kids?” he inquired, even if he already knew the answer.

Your heart leaped inside your chest — he had scared you. “Yeah.” You inhaled the cool air. Behind your back, it seemed that the vibrations of the slow rock song stretched out into the infinity of the nocturnal winds, booming inside your spirit ― a clear cacophony if compared to the beating of your heart. “They didn’t seem to care much, they were kinda busy.”

“If they are your friends, they did care.” Yoongi took the bottle back to his lips, taking the remnants of the drink. The green glass used the luminescence of a nearby pole to cast emerald-colored shapes over his somber features. “Maybe they’re just taking you for granted. Happens.” He sighed once he lowered the bottle.

You looked at him and frowned. A dense mist had fallen over the asleep city. With its cloud-like nature, it curled around relinquished constructions and dispersed the lambency of fluorescent lights, those which flickered rhythmically amongst the colorless expansion, painting the white smoke by what resembled a purple hue amongst the penumbra of midnight. For an instant, you stood there, amazed at the way that landscape resembled a daydream; Yoongi’s image bordering on a mirage.

At last, you spoke out, and your words carried not the weight of certainty, but of fear. “Maybe.” You allowed for a despondent, timid smile to materialize at the corners of your rose-painted lips. “Do you go around coaching people or is it just me?”

“Just you.” Yoongi responded with no hesitation. Against the pallid touch of moonlight, he appeared to be a lost phantasm, a bittersweet soul looking for a way to anchor himself back to hope. Perhaps he had just found it. “Not a lot of people listen to me. I’m avoided most of the time,” he said, “Not that I care about it.”

Weeks later, you would ask yourself profusely how the hell you could have ignored the blatant red flag swirling in the air, right in front of your face. Then, however, you had succumbed to your ephemeral, curious bliss, and instead chose to ignore the warning signs that started to emerge within your head. “They should,” you told your new friend, hoping your words carried along the touches of your gratitude. “Thank you again.”

Yoongi smirked as he licked the remaining drops of liquor on his lips. “You’re welcome, west beauty,” he responded. “See you next week, then?”

“Wouldn’t miss it,” you responded, voice dancing just above a timid whisper. Your timbre, as light and ethereal as a tulip’s petals, carried along into the cool breeze, dispersing into the skyline. It wasn’t just a promise, it was a request to the stars. “It’s a date.”

The week that followed your night in The Cave passed in a rush of contrasting emotions and haze-covered dialogues.

After Namjoon had scrambled to arrange another meeting at Mercy’s the next day, you took your time hearing your friend’s stories about the former industry complex before you said anything about your upcoming adventure. The boys were clearly excited, talking continuously about the individuals they had met and the dart competition that, according to Hoseok, he had won; but, according to Namjoon, it had been a close tie.

“We’re even thinking about, like, forming teams or whatever, apparently some guys from the east side already have one,” Namjoon had vocalized, ignoring the other boy’s continuous protests. “But that’s about it. What you have to share, Joohyun?”

With a smile and a flick of her hair, the girl started pouring out her stories. As much as she promised to spare the spicy details of her romantic endeavors, she could not hold the same mercy towards the gossip that surrounded the group she had been thrown into. Joohyun spoke, in a voice as velvety and sweet as candy, about the time that someone was thrown over the bar and crashed against all the beverage; or about the man that constantly threatened to hang his counterparts on the christmas lights, but was terribly afraid of heights — making his plan virtually impractical.

Though, that was not the point of her monologue, and the two of you knew that very well. “But… there’s something else. Something more important.” She turned to you, a smirk already creeping up on her lips. “Isn’t it?”

You took a deep breath, and leaned back on the couch. All eyes were on you now, dripping seas upon seas of expectation. “Yeah…” You cleared your throat. “I might have… a date?”

Hoseok almost choked on his saliva. “Are you for real?”

“As serious as a heart attack,” you answered.

Then, as expected, the questions started flooding the space between your bodies. Who the lucky guy was, what he did, how in the living hell he managed to drag you out of your bed and into an emotionally threatening situation, so on. You answered them with a lingering smile on your lips and the sensation of change creeping up on your back; the feeling that something incredible was at work all around you.

It had been years since you felt that kind of infantile nervousness; the sensation of butterflies caressing the insides of your chest, their wings quivering in expectancy. As one day fell into the next and Yoongi’s messages became more and more frequent on the screen of your phone, that feeling only intensified, burning at the edges of your ponderations like wildfire, sending shivers up and down your skin. It had been an audacious — careless, hotheaded — decision, but you managed to neglect the consequences that approached on the horizon.

You could not comprehend the effect that Yoongi had on you and, quite frankly, it felt a bit frightening. Call it a crush, mere carnal desires, or the treacherous side effects of curiosity — the point was that, even against your best attempts, the idiosyncratic man kept returning to haunt the corners of your mind; his voice singing amongst your most profound of reveries, whispering the promises you could never wish for. If it had been anyone else to approach you in that place, you would have never accepted to accompany them in a date; so why had it been so easy with him?

Back then, you could not see the reality that curled around his figure like venomous, thorn-encrusted vines — Yoongi looked like a supernova, but he was just a black hole, sucking you into his gravitational field with every movement of his pallid lips. Though, some truths were very well hidden under a veil of enigmatic sentences and thaumaturgic glares. Eventually, they would all come crashing down.

Still, you were far from that fateful moment — a couple months, to be exact. No, you were still looking down to the abyss, still feeling the tingling of excitement washing down your figure. First, you had to fall to the bottom of the well and, only then, you could start your way up.

At last, the anticipated day arrived. Your animation awakened alongside the primordial traces of aurora, and the obnoxious ringing of your phone, which shook you out of a dreamless sleep. Upon answering the unfitting call, you were met with Joohyun’s voice on the other end of the line, wishing you good luck and requesting for you to keep her updated on recent occurrences. With a tender smile, you thanked her, and said that you would be more than glad to have a night of gossip after that entire deal was done with — fries, ice cream, and terrible movies; just the way you two adored so much.

Once you hung up the call, however, a new surprise awaited on your device.

Slowly, you were starting to realize that you had a tendency to gravitate towards people that enjoyed cryptic messages far too much for your own liking — and your new friend was no different. Yoongi had texted you saying to meet him in the parking lot of a local supermarket, a bit after seven, where he would be buying some supriments for your undisclosed date.

Countless times throughout your week of daydreams and presuppositions, you had pushed the boy to share the surprise he had prepared for the two of you, but you remained unsuccessful. Yoongi would merely chuckle at your radiating desperation, claiming that all that you should know is that it was a special occasion, and there was nothing you could say or do that would make him change his mind about disclosing it. His one and only hint had been that it would be in a known spot around town, hiding in plain sight.

But that didn’t help much, did it? It was a vague as possible.

Which, again, was a common theme with him.

Asymmetrical to the suspicions that started to propagate within your chest, you moved forward with your date and, before you could tell, the horizon had already adopted the lambent haze of the setting sun, burning amongst the buildings like a golden aura.

If one were to follow the path of the tenuous — yet dreadfully suffocating — summer wind throughout the pacate streets of Crystalfall, they might have catched a glimpse of your figure against the scalding sun. You walked towards the center of the town with your heart in your throat and your hands shaking, dress waltzing in the air alongside the rich scent of lilacs and roses — courtesy of downtown’s famous flower shop, always open for late lovers. All around you, vivacious trees trembled underneath the magnificence of the season, their leaves casting hypnotic shadows against the crepuscular asphalt, hiding in shades of green and brown.

It was an instant paused in time, paused in memory. Some days are so permeated by exquisiteness that you could not help but believe that they were made for grandiose purposes; that their heavenly symmetry could only mean the new beginning of a phase in your life. Either by coincidence or fate, that was precisely what that date was.

You saw Yoongi’s car — a black 67’ chevy impala — the instant that you arrived at the back entrance of the supermarket. Other than another blue truck at the edge of the parking lot, the place was completely desolated; its monochromatic cement painted by an intense hue of apricot, reflecting the overwhelming summer heat on your exposed legs. Not much later, as you walked towards the vehicle, you saw the reason of your chaotic thoughts emerge behind it.

In the background, the sounds of the traffic was muted, and the trees had become static — the universe had come to a halt, and the only aspect still in focus was him. His hair was disheveled, slightly pulled back and touched by droplets of sweat and, on his lips a pout was formed, permitting for a prolonged sigh to depart from in between them, losing itself amongst the heavy atmosphere. You moved closer with hidden reluctance, accompanying the manner that the muscles of his shoulders tensed up as he placed something inside the car; his back curving so he could take a last look at the job he had done.

As Yoongi adjusted his posture and placed his hands over the trunk’s edge, ready to lower it, you swore your mind had gone completely blank. Instead of the leather jacket that your gaze had expected to meet, the summer heat had forced your new friend to cover his chest only with a white tank top. The piece of thin fabric allowed you to see his built in its full form and, more than that, paved the way so your eyes could trail up and down the black lines on his skin. Yoongi had always had a vague touch of demonic, wicked allurance to him, but that was just too much — that was temptation in its rawest form, wrapped in ashes and smoke.

Though, you had barely no time to fully take in what he was presenting you. Upon perceiving your presence, he looked up at you and his lips twisted into a cheerful smile. “West beauty,” he greeted, closing the trunk. Your eyes vacillated between his inky hair and the dark tattoos that covered up his exposed arms, drawings contrasting so beautifully against his skin. “You showed up.”

Fighting against the rapid beating of your frantic heart, you forced yourself to exhale your worries through your nose. With steady steps, you paused before him, paying close attention to the way that his caliginous eyelashes casted small shadows against his cheeks — every detail seemed to be precisely architectured so he could pull you deeper into perdition. “Wouldn’t miss it,” you responded, signaling with your head towards the car. “Shall we?”

He agreed with a nod, and made sure to open the door for you before swiftly moving to his seat. Once the two of you were inside and the low murmuring of the ignition broke the silence, your voice resumed. “By the way,” you begun, turning around and watching as he bucked his belt with a low clicking noise, “if you’re planning to murder me, I’ll kill you.”

“Seems like a fair trade.” Yoongi chuckled. “You can put the emergency number on dial if that makes you feel any safer.”

You forced out a sarcastic laugh, crossing your arms before your figure. Beyond the parted windows, a dense cloud covered the rays of the radiant sun, and the world fell into fugacious darkness. “Very funny,” you vocalized. “It already is.”

Light had long vanished beyond the mountains once the two of you arrived at your destination — the waterfalls.

In all its natural purity, the cascades of Crystalfall stood like a forgotten deity against the horizon, crashing down on a valley encrusted by lime-covered rocks and altitudinous pine trees like an enormous lion roaring into the midnight, many miles away. The water was a bright shade of cyan once it was bathed by the lambency of daytime, though, at night, its translucent flow had succumbed into an abyssal tone of indigo, its droplets reflecting like pearls against the effulgence of the moon before, at last, they morphed into the furious white vapour that floated above the lake like smoke.

For the first time in you life, you fully grasped its magnificence.

You had gone there only once, when you were a kid, but the experience was impossible to compare. With Yoongi by your side, you could notice every little detail of nature reflecting within his figure — the crystalline beauty of the water drops that flickered like diamonds inside his eyes; the sound of whispering trees that echoed within his speech; the feeble caresses of the wind against your skin, resembling the ghost of his fingertips against your own.

After sneaking past the ocean of dry foliage and unbothered animals, the two of you stayed just over a verdigris hill — where, even with the distance, you had a sensational view of those gargantuan landscapes, and the thunderous sounds of the water did not bother the volume of your speech. In an aura of romanticism that you had not expected, Yoongi had planned a picnic for the two of you — which ended up being an overabundance of sweets over a red towel. As you were starting to notice, he might have been a bit weak when it came to the flavour of strawberries, for that was the common element amongst his packages. Not to mention the main dish: strawberries and chantilly.

Though, you were not even close to complaining about any of that. Yoongi lived with a thin layer of bliss covering his every movement; his eyes continuously oscillating back to you, silently inquiring if you were enjoying his company, if he was playing his part correctly. And, heavens, he was. There was no way he could have made that first date any better.

Minutes decayed into hours and, before you could notice, the sands of time had passed by, echoing alongside the boisterous roaring of Crystalfall. With the same fluidity of the cascading waters, the two of you prepared your picnic, and dove into all sorts of conversations — hope-filled sentences; silent requests of a kinder future for the two of you; slender cracks of the past you sought so hard to cover. You came to understand the mystery that was Min Yoongi a bit better and, besides that, found out that the two of you weren’t as different as you first pictured.

He was an eclipse: dull and obscure, but surrounded by a threadlike line of light. Beyond the twilight, an entire universe was hidden.

At some point, as snow-colored clouds tenderly held back the silver illumination of the midnight moon, Yoongi held your hand; his thumb caressing your soft skin in a constant assurance of his presence. In an unforeseen flash of euphoria, you swore that your hearts were beating in unisound, and the ballad of nature could be heard alongside his mellifluous speech — those beautiful words he had no problem using to break your walls down.

You swore that you were meant to be, that he had been handmade for you to love.

Who were you to deny the requests of fate?

“You met me in a very weird time of my life, Min Yoongi,” you spoke out, stare scrutinizing every minute detail that whispered amongst the slender trees; trembling alongside the mumbling leaves. Life in Crystalfall might have been a simple one, but its paradisiacal elegance was not mundane whatsoever.

With one of his arms pulling his body upwards, he looked up at you — his abrupt gaze was blinding as a glimpse of sun through dense storm clouds. “Is that good?” he asked.

There was a second of silence before your answer came out. “You tell me.” You suspired, inhaling the cold mountain air, purifying your lungs. That had become your small fragment of heaven, and you wished you could stay there forever. “It’s so out of character for me to have accepted your invitation — like, come on, you’re from the east side, no offense. I met you last week, I know barely anything about you.”

He raised one finger, pausing your speech. “Don’t forget that you met me in an abandoned factory that was turned into a bar for thugs.” Yoongi added, the hint of a smile creeping up on the corners of his lips. “Sounds like every parent’s dream.”

You chuckled, finding his reaction rather adorable. “You won’t have to worry about that. My parents are out of the picture,” you said. From the way that confusion was casted like a shadow across his face, you were certain of which doubt had sprouted in his head. “They didn’t die, don’t worry, they’re divorced. But they don’t speak to each other and sure as hell don’t speak to me.”

Yoongi turned his body around, his chest now facing you. Something gleamed within his semblance, but you could not define which emotion it was. “Well at least you know who your parents are,” he spoke. “I’ve skipped from foster home to foster home my entire life, raised in the streets, all that. Not the best of influences, if you ask me.”

“That’s so rough, sorry about that,” you attempted to verbalize your compassion the best way that you could, placing your hand over his. You could not even begin to imagine how it could have been for him — to be raised with no family, no safe port, surrounded by the worst that humankind could offer. In a way, it was no surprise that Yoongi had been attracted to the east side of town, you figured that it was the only reality he had ever known.

He shrugged it off, though, perceiving your empathy as an image of pity. Yoongi hated to feel vulnerable, hated to be treated as something to be protected. “I deal with it. I’m not the same person anymore,” he said. The boy must have seen the confusion that was projected over your features, for he hastly changed the subject. “Now you know more about me, though. You’re from here?”

“Kind of. Raised here, born four towns away,” you told him. “My aunt takes good care of me.”

He seemed puzzled at the prospect. “And she’s okay with this date?”

You took a deep breath and redirected your gaze away from him; the phantasm of a smirk already showing its signs. “Well, I didn’t exactly give her all those details about the thug bar. But she’s happy I’ve met someone,” you spoke. On your tongue, the sweet taste of chantilly still lingered, and it instigated you to reach for another strawberry. “She says that I needed it.”

Yoongi hummed in an unspoken concordance, paying close attention to your moon-bathed features, seeking for cracks on your controlled demeanor. “You’ve been feeling lonely lately?”

In some way, his question hurt something within your spirit, throwing salt in a wound that you didn’t even know it was there. Though, there was a time and place to face those demons, and your first date just wasn’t it. “Not exactly. I just stay in my head a lot,” was what you responded instead. Even if you felt secure by his side, there were some parts that you simply did not share with anyone. “I love my friends to death—“

“—Even if they take advantage of your altruism,” he interrupted.

“They care about me, in their own way.” You took a bite of the strawberry, unable to meet his gaze — it was able to look directly at the most vulnerable parts of your soul, and that was the last thing you needed them. Smooth talkers. Always the smooth talkers. “Anyways, I love them, but we seem to always be in totally different frequencies, you know?”

“I do. I feel the same.” Yoongi intertwined his fingers on your own, making your gaze navigate back to his own — those pupils that held everything and nothing at all. “I think everyone feels left out at some given point of their life, it’s normal. It doesn’t have to be a bad thing to be alone, or even lonely.”

“I never really cared about it, it was kind of the norm of my life.” You breathed out, and looked down — your hands, bathed by the pallid, silver-like illumination of the moon, stood out against the deep carmine of the towel. “The more I grow up, the more I feel like I’m out of sync with everyone.”

“The more I grow up, the more I realize there’s no rhythm to follow.” Yoongi threw back, watching as your eyes widened in confusion. Your expression showed an emotion that he could not identify, as if you had just realized something important, something that had been hidden right underneath your nose. “Damn, west beauty, just march to the beat of your own drum, whatever works.”

You could not hold back a laugh — a tender, liberating chuckle that erupted at the bottom of your throat, exorcising all the mischievous devils that had been encompassing your head for too long. “Thanks, Coach.” You smirked. “Freud got nothin’ on your bar psychology.”

“Shut up, you brat.” He laughed, taking one of his hands to push your shoulder playfully. “You really got no respect, uh?”

You rolled your eyes. “Says the man who offered me crack.”

“Jokingly,” he corrected, “Also, before my goldfish memory makes me forget to say this, just enjoy the moment. Some things aren’t meant to be understood, and we can’t be narcissistic enough to feel like we’re the chosen ones, that we deserve a special answer. Just don’t be a prick, you know?”

“Wiser words have never been said.” You smiled longingly. Something was flourishing inside the walls of your fast-beating heart, and you could not control its roots radiating throughout your entire being. “You sound like you would like a simple lifestyle. You know, on the westside.”

“Yeah, maybe one day, when I’m tired and bitter, I can get a farm like the rest of the old people in Crystalfall.” Yoongi smirked faintly at the prospect — it didn’t sound so bad when he said it out loud. “I’d have to dedicate my entire life for that, though, and I can’t stay still for too long.”

You raised one eyebrow, placing your elbow on the towel, merely a few centimeters away from him. “You’re here with me now.” You lowered your body to the same position as his. He has so close you could perceive the sugary aroma that sprouted in between his lips.

His gaze fell to your parted mouth, somewhat stained by the red tinge of strawberry. “I mean in the same city.”

“Oh, so you’re leaving me the second this date ends?” you asked, playful.

He paused at that. Yoongi’s eyes were atramentous as the night that surrounded the two of you, but there were no constellations scintillating in his pupils — there was only a fathomless fall, an unsolvable puzzle. “I didn’t say that.” He took one of his hands to your cheek, caressing the place with his thumb. You heart got trapped in the confinements of your throat as, gradually, the boy started to lean in, his nose brushing lightly against your own. “Besides... I can make an exception for a west beauty like you,” he whispered.

Yoongi’s lips tasted like a storm, like he was hiding hurricanes beneath his tongue. The boy kissed you patiently, slowly, taking his time to caress your lips with his before he parted his mouth enough to deepen his actions. Your mind was miles away, but you had the impression you heard a low, shriveled groan reverberating in the space between your mouths as your tongues met. Time ceased to run for an instant, then, it all came crashing down.

Your eyes remained shut for a second when the boy moved away, your full attention still focused on the phantasm of his kiss, the sensation that still waltzed on your lips. At times, merely the right kiss is enough to make someone fall — the precise impact that would make you lose your balance, to decay into the pit that was those amaranthine black eyes.

That night, at least, it was.

Once you opened them, you were met with a weak smile from his part. “Can I ask you something crazy?” Yoongi’s lips touched yours as he spoke.

“Depends,” you said underneath your breath, utterly taken away by his beauty.

With stardust in his eyes and the cosmos expanding at every inhale, Yoongi was the ruler of your own shared universe, holding your hands through the infinity of time and space. When he spoke, you felt as if his words were written in the stars, guiding you towards the future you were meant to live. “I want you to run away with me.” He took his fingers and placed one strand of your hair behind your ear. “Not forever, just for a little while. We can get in this car and just go around some places, be nameless for some time. I feel like you and I could use some relaxation.”

You raised your eyebrows, walking in the thin line between worried and intrigued. If it had been anyone else, you wouldn't have even considered such preposterous idea — however, it was Yoongi, and he knew how to push all the right buttons. “Like a road trip?”

He shrugged. “You could say that. What’s your answer?”

“Oh, what the hell.” You placed a small kiss on his lips, and whispered against his parted mouth. “I’m in.”

And then he took you for another kiss.

Right then and there, you made the decision that would shape the weeks to come. There you stood, staring down at the abyss that was Min Yoongi, wondering what could follow your jump. The air was thin and smooth as silk, brushed against your skin like the gentle caresses of butterfly’s wings. It was static and devoid of sentiment; phlegmatic; empty. Beneath your feet, only darkness.

“Whatever this is,” you thought in a flash of reason, “it isn’t love.”

And jumped. Fell.

The first three weeks passed by with little to no incidents, and you had started to believe you had found paradise on earth.

After you had accepted the man’s proposal for a miraculous getaway, the two of you made your plans as if it would be the last adventure of your lives — from the route that you would follow to the attractions you would see. Taking advantage of his free spirit’s memories, Yoongi made sure to highlight the best cities he had seen nearby, his face growing serious every time he looked up to meet your anxious gaze. He would speak smoothly then, following the rhythm of the melody only the two of you shared, and tranquilizing your negative thoughts promptly.

“West beauty, I want to share the world with you,” he would say, his fingertips touching the skin of your cheek as if he could write poetry on it. Yoongi’s voice was like a rich verse, a sublime rhyme that continued to echo within your soul. “I know it’s crazy, but I’m sure you'll love it. Just give me a chance.”

It was crazy, and you knew it. You felt as if you had been possessed by a recklessness that was completely alien to you — pushing you to pursue that insane road trip by the side of a man you knew nothing about, but yet that understood you so profoundly. Of course you were beyond worried — you had every reason to be — but, once again, you had long commited your first error, and your misplaced trust would take some time to fully disappear.

So you went forward with it. You came back home, invented some strangely believable story about meeting some college friends to your aunt, and packed your bags as adrenaline rushed through your veins, electricity sparking at your fingertips. You had spent your entire life following rules so thoroughly that the mere prospect of running away — for some time — with a man you barely knew was impossible for your aunt to even conjure. There was nothing holding you back from entering the most dangerous situation you had ever placed yourself in.

But oh well — some of the most unexpected blessings can disguise the most pernicious of curses.

Two days after your date at the waterfall, just as Sunday’s sun was starting to set, you met the boy at the Yellowside bridge — which connected the two parts of the town, split only by a slender river. Just as he had promised in a previous message, Yoongi had parked his cars amongst the veridian-painted trees, in a blind spot covered by bushes. It was a gorgeous afternoon: chilly, yet pleasant; silent, yet permeated by the whispering of leaves and the quiet crashes of the river’s water. There was a vague scent of flowers and humid ground mingling in the air, dancing along the singing of birds. It was perfect, after all.

Yoongi was leaning against the passenger side of his vehicle, eyes scrutinizing something on his phone. Behind him, the horizon was painted by thin brushstrokes of apricot and burning amber; setting the strands of his black hair on fire, shining like a golden aura around his angelic features. To catch him in such breathtaking landscape was an unique experience, so fantastic that your worries were silenced for an instant.

It didn’t take long for him to grasp the sound of your hurried footsteps against the dry foliage. “I’m here,” you said as he looked in your direction. Your hands were holding tightly to your backpack, and you felt like you carried the weight of the world in there. “Ready to go.”

In that simple sentence, you promised him everything that you had. And he accepted promptly.

Your partner in crime showed his gentlemen side that day — he opened the passenger door for you, then moved to place your backpack on the back seat, along with his own baggage. Yoongi’s car had the same scent as last time — strawberries, with a vague touch of mint.

The next instant, he was already sitting next to you and turning the ignition. “To infinity and beyond,” Yoongi claimed, closing the door with a loud exclamation. The sound resembled a gunshot to your arrhythmic heart, making it skip a beat. That was crazy. You were crazy. There was no way that could end well. “Let’s enjoy life together, west beauty.”

Nevertheless, as his car started to move, you didn’t verbalize any of your inner worries. A few minutes later, they were merely a ghost at the back of your mind — you came to the realization that the two of you had the world ahead of you, and it was yours to take.

In the progression of a few hours, the sky was painted by a deep shade of blue, then succumbed into a star-encrusted stygian. The roads expanded before you like paths into infinity, illuminated solely by the lights of his car — a small comet crossing the endless universe in respectful silence. On the radio, a slow song played on repeat, each melody decaying into the next one, dispersing its beautiful notes amongst the indoors air. With dreamy eyes, you followed the trees moving next to you, turning into a obfuscous blur of forms and sizes. A personal cosmos had opened itself for the two of you, and you adored the tranquility it brought along.

Three hours later, you arrived at the first of many motels. The purple luminescence of the neon sign ondulated on the surface of nearby puddles, a mystical aura walzed within every detail of that place. As you opened the passenger door and stepped into the cool air, you felt as if your entire life was opening like a flower in front of you.

In the strangest of ways, being on the run felt like home.

And so, you dove into it.

Before you could even notice, the days morphed into weeks, and the weeks into almost a month. Yoongi loved you kindly at first, taking his time to explore the nature that was born within your figure. He caressed your fingertips with endless delicacy, delighted in the honey of your tongue and drowned in your sweet soul, touching every crack, loving every wound. His hands were made of promises, his words were soft as silk and, together, they drew poems across your skin.

“I think that I’m in love with you, west beauty,” he would whisper against your mouth as the auric sunlight creeped through the cracks of the curtains, losing no time before dwelling in your kiss once again. Yoongi suspired against you, mind still slumberous, and limbs still intertwined around your half-naked figure. He was like the moon — mystic, lonely, overpowering. He controlled the tides of your ocean with endless delicacy, crashed against you and then retrieved back with tenuous kisses against your lips.

For those moments, you would feel free. You had convinced yourself, in a haze of impromptu decisions and impermanent pleasures, that you had fallen for him. You had sewed your mind in such way that you vehemently believed that you loved Min Yoongi just as much the moon loves the stars, like the clouds kiss the sun. You loved him like the Yellowside river’s water runs on, like the seasons pass, and you two were left with brown leaves and naked twigs — vulnerable and weak. You loved him like prismatic flowers blossomed during the spring, like earth embraces the cold droplets of the falling rain. You loved him like you. Like him. Like the two of you.

God, you loved him.

Yet, somehow, someway, you knew the two of you were not meant to last — so, you were left to whisper to him your deepest secrets, attempting to keep your head above water; your heart above desire, as you succumbed into the fathomless ocean that was Min Yoongi. You continued to fall for him, in between caresses, in between lamenting sighs; but, then, your every movement became coated by a thin layer of reluctance; the poltergeist of a broken heart beating inside the walls of your chest, banging against your ribs in unspoken pleas for mercy.

Those paranoid flashes of reason, however, did not last for long. Yoongi silenced your demons with the touch of his tender kiss against your lips, muted their whispering voices with the booming sound of clubs — asking for you to dance the night away, to be carried by the rhythm of freedom, to scream out in deserted roads and hear as your pain was washed away by the ice-cold winds of change. You did all of that for him: from the never-ending hours spent inside his vehicle to the constant moving between motel rooms, you accepted his words, took them as your personal truth, and allowed for them to guide you into a land where there were no problems in sight. A land in which he was your world, and you were his.

For some time, that was sufficient.

When Yoongi asked for more of you, there was no fiber in your being that even contemplated the idea of turning it down. As he kissed an invisible route through your neck, past the mountains of your breasts, and into the lines of your stomach, there was nothing within you that made you hold back the river of your own desire. In that muffled motel room, the only sound that pierced the static was the constant spinning of the fan’s blades, and your voice, tender as the vernal season. “Yoongi,” you mumbled against the skin of his neck, goosebumps spreading across your own. You wished to feel him so badly that it was consuming your soul, setting your mind on fire — there was nothing else that mattered. “I want you.”

And, heavens, only God knew how much he wanted you too.

Tracing the pattern from your clit to your entrance, Yoongi grunted as he felt your liquids running down his digits; listening to your soft sighs as he pushed past your folds, teasing his way in — but never fully doing so. For a few times, there was all that he did: brushing lightly his fingers from your opening to your clit, never applying the satisfactory pressure or entering you. You despised his patience sometimes.

In dissonance, as soon as he moved back his head and his hooded eyes met your own, needy ones, all the remnants of his self control were lost. He could tease you another time — then, he needed to have you.

With a passionate kiss, the man took you in his arms and, with a strong pull, elevated your hips from the soft mattress; fingers not wasting a single second before pulling down the cotton of your underwear. He groaned against your mouth once he felt the sensation of your center against his hard, clothed member, pressing down just right.

An ambrosial taste of nectar was pouring form in between his lips, rushing through your veins, intoxicating your senses with its mephitic sweetness. Against your chest, you could perceive the fast beating of his own heart, resounding like drums inside your ears alongside a deep, rusty grunt of desire. “Baby,” he whispered — begged. “Let me have you, please.”

There was no need to ask, for you had already given him every sign of consent that he needed. Who would you be to decline such compelling proposal?

And so you gave yourself to him — again and again; until your legs were trembling and your weak lungs could not take in the dense air anymore. You gave yourself to Yoongi as if the world would reach its ending in the following morning; as if the pleasure of his enticing touches were enough for you to live on. You dove into the melody of his moans and whines; cried out in need as he prolonged your euphoria just a little bit longer; fucked you a little bit deeper; ruined you a little bit further.

In those moments, everything felt as marvelous as it could be.

Before you knew it, those instances had been incorporated to your routine. And, for that, Yoongi was dangerously creative. He would have you the way he wanted it, when he wanted it: he would fuck you mercilessly against the wall, take you in the hot tub at late hours of the night, would accompany you in your showers, making you beg for him with the right movement of his digits and the flick of his tongue.

You loved the way he looked then: his eyes so filled with flames; his breaths so raspy, so deep; his cheeks painted by a vague tinge of cardinal. Droplets of sweat decorated his abdomen and his forehead, shining around his opaque gaze as he took you deeper, rougher, whispering sweet nothings into your ear. “You’re all mine, west beauty,” he moaned out once, voice rotten by desire and certainty. “You take me so well, baby, I love you so much—”

He did, he really did. Yoongi, in all his breathless bliss, could only compare your image to the empyrean, cherubic beauty of angelic sculptures, embellished by the eroticism of forgotten nymphs. He adored the way your body — more specifically, your ass — moved as he fucked you so mercilessly from behind; jumping up and down on the motel bed at the will of his strong thrusts. “You like this, baby?” he asked in a hushed tone, fingers digging to the curvature of your waist. You cried out his name in a clear agreement. “Yeah? You like my cock? You like when I fuck you like this?”

“Yeah, oh my god,” you whimpered, turning your head on the pillow to look at him. God, your mouth was so swollen, you had been biting the pillow so hard you barely noticed it.

But Yoongi did. The dream of decorating such gorgeous, immaculate features — those lust-filled, cherry-painted lips he venerated so much — with the whiteness of his release made him thrust against you even harder. “You feel so good, you’re so tight,” he praised. It had become even more difficult to find the right words to speak now that his high was hanging like sword over his head. “You’re such a good girl, aren’t you? You’re so good.”

“Y-Yeah, Yoongi…” you cried out, hands holding tightly to the pillow as if it was the last fragment of reality that could chain you down to the delicious present of his actions. Your hair was disheveled, spread all over the mattress like a cascade. “Harder, please,” you requested in a whine.

Yoongi moaned again and again, opening his eyes just enough so you could perceive the way his irises shone in absolute concupiscence — he looked like something straight out of a daydream, a tempting demon lurking in the shadows of your desires; from the way his hair was gleaming in droplets sweat to his parted, gasping red lips. “Take it baby,” he said. Ordered. Once again, you did as he said, perking up your hips and feeling as he hit your sweet spot. “Yeah, that’s my girl, come on.”

Fuck, how he loved to have you that. Yoongi could cum just at the mere sensation of your wetness, the way you moaned and cried under his rough touches; fighting to reach your climax as his member thrusted in and out of your soaked center. He was so hard it was almost painful to endure, cock pulsating inside you as his hips slowly started to lose their precision, movements growing erratic, stained by pleasure.

His climax washed over him, breaking upon his cloudy perceptions and erupting on the tip of his tongue in a long, drown-out moan. Yoongi could make a vouch in the name of the stars, in those glorious times of victory and defeat, that you were the closest to heaven he would ever get; the bliss in your eyes could never be comparable to anything else that he had ever witnessed.

There was one detail, though, that needed to be taken in consideration: those had been just your adventures behind four walls, in the confinements of your neon-lit rooms.

Other times, you two wouldn’t even get to the motel, and had to make good use of his car. And that was your favorite time. In all honesty, you did not hate it one bit — in a way, you preferred it over the bed, or any other location he had ever took you.

“You know I can’t hold back when you tease me like this,” Yoongi said once, struggling to park his car in a nearby alley. For all he cared, he could put it right beneath an open semaphore and have you then and there, open and ready for him. He didn’t care if anyone saw it, frankly, it only made his job a bit more fun. “Can you stop with that? Fuck,” he complained.

You smirked, and your hand brushed against his clothed member once again; fingers delicately tracing the outlines of his erection. In his black pants, his cock throbbed in the thought of how you would feel around it, the concept so concupiscent that made him bite his lower lip in sheer desire. There was only so much he could take. “Stop with what?” you teased, clicking your seatbelt in anticipation — the black stripe dragged against your chest, pushing your low-cut blouse slightly to the side.

Lucky for both of you, he wasn’t in the right mental state to play those tempting games, and his head had been utterly focused on finding a right place to camouflage his chevy — the alley ended up being a bit broader than he first thought, so it made his torturous times a bit easier to endure, even if he was growing terribly annoyed at the constant, mocking movements of your hands against his arousal.

To be fair, Yoongi was a patient man, but he had been bothered by your presence far longer than that. Ever since he had seen you get out of the bathroom with that luscious short skirt, your body had been all that he thought about — the repercussion of the bar’s song had turned into white noise inside his skull, the faceless silhouettes of strangers could never compare to the way the fabric moved upwards as you danced, presenting him with appetizing glimpses of your ass in that white lacy underwear.

By the end of the night, when the two of you were departing from that overflowing establishment, he could no longer keep his hands away to himself. Now, Yoongi was patient, but he was no prude when it came to public displays of his desire — his touches lingered from the sides of your breasts to the curvature of your waist; moving down to squeeze your ass as his lips sucked on the flesh of your neck, placing red-bitten caresses all over your skin. The motel was just too far away, and he needed to have you at that very instant.

The second that his car was parked amongst the consolidated shadows of a nearby construction, Yoongi helped you onto his lap, your back towards him, hands moving up and down your exposed thighs, seeking for the cotton of your panties underneath your devilish skirt. With his pulse echoing like thunder inside his head, the boy stared in hidden fascination as he pulled your underwear haphazardly from your center, presenting him with a luscious view of your dripping sex.

Producing a low, satisfied groan, Yoongi took one of his fingers to your entrance, delighting on your wetness. “Won’t you look at that,” he provoked, voice deeper than usual. “It seems like there’s no need for me to play with you tonight.”

You bit down on your lower lip, pressing your ass against his erection as if to prove your unspoken point: you weren’t the only one who had been a bit carried away. But, hell, could someone blame you? The simple hypothesis of being with Yoongi inside his car was enough to send shivers down your spine, the images of past meetings flashing like a projected movie inside your mind. The position and the friction that his car gave you was just perfect, and the thrill of getting caught by oblivious citizens only enhanced your excitement.

Yeah, the motel could wait.

“Lean over, baby,” Yoongi requested in a whisper against your neck, his hands moving upwards on your chest, pressing your tits together. The contact was rough, showing you just how much he needed to have you.

Placing your hands over the wheel, you did as he requested, listening as the sound of his zipper sliced the silence of the closed ambient. All over the rain-covered windows, thin layers of fog covered the outside world, blending with the obfuscous luminescence of nearby signs, bleeding in geranium and sapphire.

As Yoongi pulled down his pants and you heard the sound of plastic filling the air, your voice resumed its speech. “Don’t you want to turn on the radio?” you asked. “I know how much you love fucking me to some good music.”

“I do.” His palms came in contact with your waist, pulling you body back down on his lap. Against your asscheecks, you could feel the touch of his cock, hard and ready for you. “But I love hearing you more,” he completed.

Leaning your head back, you placed it against his right shoulder. Through the curtain of your eyelashes, you watched as he undressed you, opening the buttons of your blouse one by one. “Yoongi,” you called. “You can do this later.”

Light as a feather, his lips came in contact with your exposed neck. “I can,” he agreed, opening the last one. His palms traveled from your stomach to your breasts, cupping them over your bra — the same white lacy underwear that was driving him crazy. You moaned softly at the sensation of his rough touches, your ass perking up against his erect member. “I know I can. But I love when you get like this.”

You swallowed dry. “Like how?”

“Like this.”

As if he had been expecting your inquiry, one of his hands flew to his mirror, and oscillated it towards the two of you. On the reflection, you could see yourself — cheeks flushed, half-parted lips and hooded eyes — and the eroticism that gleamed inside Yoongi’s eyes. You had discovered that he had quite the liking for mirrors when, by mistake, the two of you had received the honeymoon suite of a fancy motel, and ended up with a mirror on the ceiling.

But that was a different story.

“Baby,” Yoongi called you, pressing down on your boobs with a bite against your neck. Against your back, his erection throbbed against your skin, and felt yourself clenching in anticipation. “I’m gonna put it in, alright?”

And you agreed with a hum and raised your figure a bit, because that was all that you could do then.

Yoongi rubbed himself against your wet folds once, twice, feeling their moisture as a deep groan broke behind his teeth. At last, just when you’re about to complain about all the time that he was taking, you feel the lethargic, heavenly sensation of his cock sliding inside you, stretching you out.

Then it was your time to steal the spotlight. With a heavy exhale through your nose and your palms finding support on the wheel, you begun moving your body up and down, dwelling in the aphrodisiac sensation of his member inside you. Some strange way, it felt a bit more personal than your lust-covered mind had foresaw — with Yoongi whining and moaning against your back, inhaling your sweet scent with every slow rise and fall of your figure. Every time your absent-minded gaze flickered towards the small oval mirror, you would see him, with his mouth parted and eyebrows furrowed in absolute focus, accompanying the bouncing of your breasts as your rhythm increased in speed, the sound of your wetness filling his ponderations with lewd ideas.

His digits dug deeper onto your hips as he felt the approaching waves of his high, unexpected and merciless. “Oh yeah,” he moaned out, throwing his head back. Yoongi’s eyes were closed in endless bliss, the sound of his flesh hitting yours repeatedly was all that he could hear. Underneath his thighs, the leather of his car seat was sticking against his sweaty skin. “Take it deeper, baby, come on. Fuck my cock.”

Once again, you could not help but fulfill his request.

As his cock pounded in and out of you, his own breathing was growing heavy under the angelic characteristic of your form; reason long forgotten. “Just like that, yeah,” Yoongi spoke in a whisper. Neediness was plastered all over his face, gleaming inside his irises as they fell to the obscene movements of your body against his. God, you were everything he wished to have at that time; the movement of your hips against his was driving him to the edges of his sanity. “Fuck, you’re so hot, baby, I can’t believe you’re mine,” he disclosed.

“Yoongi,” you whimpered out his name in a personal prayer, knees and thighs trembling as you felt your delight increasing by the second. Your mind had went completely black, hyperfocusing on the hypnotic, harsh thrusts of his cock in and out of you, the rolling of his hips against your own, fighting for more. The heat in your lower body was becoming unbearable, ready to come crumbling down at any given instant. “It feels so good, I’m—”

He groaned as he felt your walls tightening around him. “Can you come for me, baby?” he asked. The sobs and whines that left your lips were as addictive as nicotine, immersive as the song of a siren; you struggled to blurt out a prolonged, moan-like confirmation. “Yeah? Do that for me, baby.”

Of course you could — for Yoongi, you would go to the moon and back. Euphoria took over your senses as your orgasm washed over you, his name coming out in broken sighs in between your swollen lips, dissipating in the foggy atmosphere of his warm vehicle. Behind you, the man cursed at the way your walls pulsated around him, taking him just right.

Yoongi placed his hands on your ass, squeezing your flesh strongly as you kept sitting up and down on his erect member. The man, utterly overwhelmed, whined against your neck something that resembled the fragmented syllables of your name, his cock filling you up again and again as his limit fastly approached. “I’m gonna come,” he moaned out, throwing his head back against the seat. His abdomen clenched, his lungs produced a trembling exhale. “Fuck, just feel me, baby, come on.”

Even if the ghost of oversentibility had started to haunt your bones, you ignored the exhaustion of you limbs, and continued to fuck yourself with his cock, waiting for Yoongi to reach his high. Instead, you focused on the luscious way that his voice resounded all around you as he thrusted upwards, diving into the astonishing way you wrapped around him.

It did not take long for Yoongi to find his release, holding down to your hips as he did so. With a few terminal, spasmodic movements, he finally came undone, and let go of your figure for an ephemeral second.

Though, you knew that it would take a bit more than that for him to be fully satisfied.

“Look at that, what a mess.” Yoongi chuckled behind you, and his index finger met the path between your folds — you were so sensitive that you leaned forward, placing your hands on the wheel for support. The sound of wetness was lewd, but you loved it, and you loved Yoongi’s touch even more. “So much fucking cum,” he praised, breathless. “You take it all so well.”

Your lips were swollen from both his touch and the constant biting from your part, and they pulsated as you attempted to form a comprehensible sentence — with the afterglow of your orgasm still weighing down on your muscles, and his fingers tracing circles up and down your core, there was not much left for you to work with. “I should…” You swallowed dry, fingers holding tightly to the leather as he moved towards your clit. “I should clean up.”

“Why? We’re not done yet.” He chuckled behind you, the sound reverberating inside your bones; sending shivers down your spine. You knew that devilish tone like it was your second language, it was his way to telling you that the two of you would not be getting any sleep anytime soon. “Let’s get to the motel first.”

Of course, the fun was barely starting.

However, as much as those first weeks had been incredible, every sea of roses still had its thorns.

There were other, less pleasant times in which his presence wasn’t that perfect. Instances in which strangers at the bar would widen their eyes once they met his, or perhaps would whisper cautiously once your partner was recognized, their previous conversations turning into alarmed whispers, following the same melody as the hissing of water against burning charcoal. Your gut warned that something was wrong, that a piece of the puzzle wasn’t fitting, but you ignored it. Call it love, call it idiocy, even innocence — the point was that Min Yoongi had you at the palm of his hand, and even the biggest of red flags couldn’t wake you up from your enamored fantasies.

Well, at least not yet.

Hoseok [11:02pm] Hey, where are you? We’re worried, Namjoon said he couldn’t speak to you, and it’s been almost a month since we saw you.

You [09:38am] Hey, I’m out of town with a friend. I’m safe, don’t worry about it. Sorry I couldn’t answer sooner.

Hoseok [09:38am] Damn. When are you coming back? We need a to talk about a problem real quick.

You [09:43am] I don’t have a prediction. You’ll guys will have to figure that out without me.

With a low hum of approval, Yoongi slided your phone towards you across the white-painted table. “Nice one,” he praised. “Baby steps, I guess.”

You nodded as you inhaled deeply, fingers moving to lock your device again. In the background of the establishment, the ringing that signaled the arrival of another customer ressounded. “I’m really holding back to ask what it is, though,” you said, “what if they’re in trouble?”

He shrugged, clearly not worried at the prospect. His hair, crepuscular as a raven’s feathers, contrasted against the golden luminesce of the afternoon sun that came from the restaurant’s window — in a way, the place reminded you of Mercy’s and, combined with Hoseok’s messages, you only missed your friends further. “You’re not the only person in town. They’ll figure it out,” he spoke as his fingers traced the pink straw of his strawberry milkshake. “Besides, they waited two weeks, it’s probably not that important. Just ignore them.”

Unable to continue staring at the dark screen of your phone — you felt as if it would light up again at any given second — you turned it around, facing your pale yellow cover instead. “You’re probably right.” You sighed. You certainly did not feel as if he was, though. “This feels wrong, I don’t know. I’m not used to saying no to my friends when I know I can help them.”

One of his hands reached out for you, and the warmness of his palm met your own. It was bizarre: his expression did not hold the same amount of heat. “Hey, listen,” Yoongi spoke almost in a whisper as he leaned in closer to you, as if he had been sharing a secret. “I know you’re a very non-confrontational person, alright? I get it. But listen: can you imagine if people didn’t defend themselves ever? Because I don’t know if you’re aware, the world isn’t filled with good intentions.”

You licked your lips, trying to find the words to respond with. There were traces of vanilla stil hiding in your mouth, and the sweetness of it made you nauseated. “I know, Yoongi, but these are my friends,” you responded.

Once such a serene experience, now the mere holding of his gaze felt alien to you. You continuously felt as if you were being analyzed under a microscope, as if you tiniest of actions could be a reason for his disapproval to flourish again. “I know, baby,” he said back, leaning his head slightly to the side. “That doesn’t mean they wouldn’t take advantage of you.”

Your eyes flickered between the world outside and the fathomless expansion of his irises, trying to find a way out of that conversation. You hated when he talked to you like that, like you were a kid. “Your point?” you asked, rather emotionlessly.

He suspired. “My point,” he said, leaning back against his seat. His hand felt like fire against your own, burning your spirit to ashes. “is that there are bad things in the world, and we don’t run away from it. We face it, head high, even if we’re scared shitless, and we tell it to stick it right where the sun doesn’t shine. You can’t allow people to take advantage of you when they are fully aware of their actions, do you understand me? You deserve to value yourself more than that.”

As you were starting to learn, Yoongi had a tendency to monologue about the most tedious of subjects, verbalizing each word as if he was absolutely certain of its veracity — as if you were far too dumb to realize something so obvious. “That isn’t exactly nice of me,” you said.

“You can be nice without being used as a rug.” He took a slip of his milkshake, and it was finally over. Your vanilla drink was practically left untouched, and the ice cream was now a warm, thick liquid at the bottom of your tall cup. “You know that saying, ‘treat others like you’d treat yourself’? Yeah. I think you need to work on the second part, and internalize a little bit of that love towards you every once in a while. They’ll live without their helicopter mother around.”

You chuckled at that last part. His words seemed empty, but you still found yourself leaning towards them — damn smooth talkers. There was no other kind as manipulative as they were. “I’ll try.”

Yoongi smiled openly, victoriously. You had forgotten to look away from the eclipse, and now it was blinding you, muting your senses. “You better,” he verbalized, pushing his empty cup to the side. Every movement was choreographed, every sentence was practiced into a splendiferous delivery — now, the grand finale. “Because, you know, I don’t want you being all walked over by those people. You should, like, just block them at once. I can tell how their messages make you anxious.”

You smiled weakly, attempting to keep your own act together. “Thank you, coach. I don’t think they are, though,” you said. But you didn’t know anymore: Yoongi’s words always made so much sense. How could he be wrong when he was claiming to want the best for you? Your thoughts were a miscellaneous of excuses and torn-apart conversations, flying in circles, pathless and disoriented.

“You’re welcome, west beauty.” He winked at you, then placed the palms of his hands against the table, using it as a sustentation to get up to his feet. Yoongi’s figure, wrapped in that infamous black leather jacket, was now a vortex of twilight amongst a prismatic landscape, sucking all the light in, pouring nothing of it out. “I’ll pay the bill, just a second.”

“Alright.” You nodded, and watched as he walked towards the counter.

That conversation, however, left a sour taste on your mouth, and the faint touch of a bad feeling just at the bottom of your stomach. As if guided by an impulse you could not comprehend, your hands seeked for your phone in a rush of adrenaline. You turned around, and were met by a new cascade of texts from your friend.

Hoseok [10:13am] It’s important. You’re with someone from the bar, right? I can’t recall his name rn, but we have to talk.

Hoseok [10:14am] The guy that Joohyun was hooking up with was very alarmed when he found out that you had been seen with him. He’s not good news, I need to know that you’re actually safe.

Hoseok [10:15am] From what I’ve heard, he has fucked some people over, and now he owes them money for some weird job. The guy didn’t know much, but he knew it was bad, blood was spilled and shit.

Hoseok [10:15am] Namjoon heard some dark stuff as well

Hoseok [10:15am] His name’s Yoongi, right? Min Yoongi or something like that

Hoseok [10:16am] Ring me up when you can, alright? Let’s have a talk. I’m worried sick.

Your heartbeat increased once your eyes met every new word, fingers growing weak around your phone. It was as if Hoseok’s messages has shaken awake the worries that had been silenced within your chest, chained by the ties of denial. Once your story ended, a few weeks after that day, you would look back at that very instant and, in a bitter memory, would claim that it was when you begun to see beyond the good — and into the bad and the ugly — of who your lover really was.

“Ready to go?” Yoongi’s voice was piercing, making your heart skip a beat. You looked up at him with widened eyes, mouth slightly parted in a way to form words you couldn’t build. You were nervous. He noticed it. “Is everything alright?” he asked, suspicious.

You cleared your throat and placed your phone back in your pocket. “Yeah, sorry,” you said, forcing a timid smile. “Let’s move.”

Later, in an impulsive decision made at two in the morning, you deleted the texts you had received that afternoon. That was what Yoongi would have wanted. He would tell you that he was no longer that man, that you had nothing to worry about. Everything was going to be alright, and he was there to protect you, not hurt you. He would never do something like that. And, for the time being, you would believe in that.

However, as you would soon come to understand, Min Yoongi was a huge, disgusting fucking liar.

Trouble started showing up eventually, and your make-believe paradise progressively transformed into inferno.

Every time Yoongi showed you a glimpse of his darker side, you overlooked it. You buried your preoccupations underneath the cold motel sheets, hoping they would never be uncovered, that the monsters underneath the bed would never come back to take what you owed them. However, there was a point that it reached dangerous levels, and you could not pretend as if everything was okay any longer.

It started gradually — minor discussions over stupid matters; bar fights, which caused a bloody nose here and there; stealing; reckless behavior on the wheel. One day he was stealing expensive champagne from local convenience stores, the next he was gifting it to you like it was his very own version of salvation, promising you he had bought it instead. One day he was pushing you away and, the next, he was holding you tighter than ever before. It was emotionally exhaustive, psychologically torturous, to follow the harsh — sometimes unpremeditated — switches of his personality. You constantly felt like you were walking in a place filled with mines, ready to be exploded at any given second.

There were two occurences, though, in which you truly feared for your life. Moments in which all your excuses, all your justifications, fell flat in face of real threat. There was nothing you could tell yourself that would mask the true nefastus aura that surrounded Yoongi once he got into that wicked state of mind — he was just like any other reckless beast from the east side, and he had no worries for your well being. Whoever that version was, you did not love it.

The first one was at the parking lot of a club.

Yoongi had nurtured the awful habit of, just as the night was starting to get tiresome, he would disappear, claiming he saw someone he knew amongst the crowd or, if he was at the motel with you, you’d wake up in the middle of the night to find him gone. Just like all bad things in life, you managed to get used to it and, after the fifth time that it happened, your sadness had turned into a slight displeasure at the pit of your stomach.

More often than not, he would come back as if nothing had happened, and would not answer any of your questions about where he had been aforetime. That was what you had expected that special night, but neutrality was the last thing you received once he reappeared.

Like usual, Yoongi had vanished to talk to some faceless old friends, and you were waiting for him outside of a booming club. For twenty minutes you stood there, alone, leaning against the cold wall and watching as drunken groups staggered in and out of the booming construction — lovers holding onto one another; friends laughing loudly against the wind; or perhaps loners trying their luck for the night.

At some point, a man joined you outside, claiming he just needed to smoke a cigarette. “Rough night?” he asked.

“Rough month,” you responded, friendly. “I’m waiting for my boyfriend,” you said. If you could even call him that. “He usually takes his time when his drunk.”

He nodded, and continued the conversation. The stranger was particularly nice to you. He kept the dialogue somewhat casual, and maintained a respectful amount of space between your bodies. You were under the impression — which quickly got confirmed — that he only wanted a friend to talk to, and wasn’t trying to get anything else out of you. Comforting, the feeling allowed for you to relax under his presence, and you though, in an instant of bliss, that perhaps the long wait for your boyfriend wouldn’t be so bad.

More often than not, you were incorrect when the subject was Min Yoongi.

He came out of the club like a tornado just at the instant that you were laughing at something the kind stranger had said, and he opened the double doors with a movement far to rough for your liking. There was barely enough time for you to look at him, lips slightly parted in surprise, and to take in the uncharacteristic expression that had overtook his features, barely illuminated by the phosphorescent lights of the construction.

Yoongi was not sober, that you could tell. His posture was a little curved, and his eyes were not as white as you would like — besides, his forthcoming actions worked in the favor of your thesis.

He didn’t take long to jump into conclusions, for his vision and mental processes had been funneled by primordial emotions. “And who the fuck are you?” Yoongi spoke out in a groan, his speech slightly dragged. He looked directly at the other man, and took a step closer. “What is this?”

You swallowed dry, and tried to reach out to him. Next to you, the stranger threw his cigarette on the concrete. “Yoongi, it’s fine,” you said. He pulled away from your grip. “We were just talki—“

Now, Yoongi might not have been the biggest guy around, but he was certainly one of the fastest. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” He swiftly walked past you and pushed the man away with all the force he had, stepping in front of you with determination bleeding from his red-tinged eyes. You didn’t know if he was drunk, if he had consumed something else, but, frankly, that was the least of your worries then. “Stop looking at my girl like that, you cunt,” he spat.

Your eyes widened, pulse increasing to a point in which you believed your heart would just give up at any point. Through the anemic clouds of nicotine-painted smoke, you saw as the other man’s gaze faiscated in anger, his hands curling into fists. “Yoongi, he wasn’t—” you started, but it was already too late. The other man’s punch had sliced through the air and hit your boyfriend directly on the nose, sending him to stagger backwards. “Yoongi!” You called out, horrified.

Still, he wouldn’t back away. With the animal gaze that overtook his caliginous eyes, you were absolutely certain he had taken some sort of drugs, for he barely touched the blood on his nostrils before he was charging forward at the stranger; looking as if he had barely felt the impact, even less the pain.

Everything that followed had been saved like a blurry sequence of events inside your head. You could remember Yoongi charging towards the other man, punching him straight in the face with a groan and then, even less than a second later, the stranger had charged against him, throwing the two of them on the asperous concrete. You had no idea how, but Yoongi had been able to throw his weight over the man, and rolled around his figure so he would be on top.

The second that he started throwing constant punches against the other guy, something inside of you screamed that you had to stop that before it was too late — after all, there was no one else around.

With a bravery that did not belong to you, your fingers hooked on the collar of his shirt and, with a force that was moved by your panic, you mustered enough strength to pull Yoongi up by a few centimeters. You were by no means strong enough to take his entire body away from the other man, but the pull seemed sufficient to make him lose his balance. “Stop! The two of you,” you cried out and, with another pull, Yoongi rolled to the side, getting away from him. You took the chance and held your hands out, each of your palms facing a different man. “That’s enough, come on.”

Much to your relief, the kind stranger seemed to agree. “This is bullshit, man.” He spat, staining the concrete with his blood. His face was covered in splashes of purple and red, and the scene was terrifying to witness. As he spoke, blood splattered out of his mouth, covering his teeth in a thin layer of maroon.“You’re fucked up.”

Yoongi breathed out, enraged. “Stay the fuck away from her,” he ordered. You wanted to help the other man just as much, but you were afraid of how Yoongi would react. “I know what pieces of shit like you want.”

The other staggered to get back on his feet and, for an instant, you thought he would fall back down. It was bad — very bad. “Whatever, dude,” he said, his speech slightly groggy. Running the back of his hand against his nose, a thick trail of carmine was imprinted on his skin. He groaned. “You’re fucking crazy.” Then, he locked eyes with you. “You should get out of… whatever the fuck this is. Before it’s too late.”

You swallowed hard, but did not trust your own voice to formulate a sentence in regards to that. “You… should call someone,” was what you said. “It’s not looking good.”

He nodded and, with a mocking grin, mumbled something you didn’t quite catch. You were worried sick for that stranger, but you couldn’t even show it. Next to you, Yoongi’s eyes were burning with the endless flames of his anger, following the silhouette of the man as he turned his back to the two of you and moved closer to the club. “Let’s get outta here,” he whispered, “That guy is coward enough to call the cops on me.”

Unable to think of anything else, you did as he requested, helping him to get back on his feet. Yoongi’s face was by no means as bad as the other guys, but his nose was bleeding and trailing red paths down his face and onto his lips; there were dark purple marks beginning to show around his cheekbones and jaw. His eyes were bloodshot, and you did not have the courage to ask him what was in his system — to be fair, you didn’t even want to know.

The two of you walked across the construction in absolute, sepulchral silence, following the path of your arrival. Yoongi didn’t want to pay for a spot — fifteen bucks an hour was absurd —, so he parked his car in an alley nearby, where he was sure no one would complain. He seemed to have calmed down throughout those transitory instants of quiessence, for even his respiration had taken a much more tranquil rhythm. You though, in a flash of assuagement, that he had come back to his normal, collected state.

Though, it wasn’t the right conclusion.

Before you could even react, you felt his hands holding unflinchingly to your shoulders, forcefully pushing you against the asperous, frigid brick wall of the alleyway. Your eyes widened in a mixture of surprise and horror, watching as his own, blood-colored gaze scrutinized every minor detail on your semblance. Yoongi’s red-stained mouth was curved downwards and his eyebrows were hanging low, twitching lightly as he bit back his fury.

With a hard-bitten groan, he placed a bit more of his weight on you. It didn’t really hurt, but his actions had chilled you to the core. Then and there, you could swear that he was able to murder someone. Perhaps he already did. “Fuck, don’t get in the middle of my shit!” He warned, fingertips digging to your shoulder blades. You could feel as his blood dripped down from his bruised knuckles and onto your exposed skin — the warm liquid seemed like a horrible forewarning. “You want to make me look like I’m a fucking pussy? Is that what you want? You wanna make me look like I can’t take a half-assed beating?”

Overtaken by trepidation, the words seemed to refuse to leave your throat. Your mind had turned into a blank canvas, painted by the scarlet and cimmerian shades of his devastating acrimony. You dream turned into a nightmare right then, paralyzing your members and soul. “No, I didn’t—”

Yoongi grunted. “You know what? Spare me of that bullshit. Doesn’t matter.” He interrupted, pushing you one more time before staggering away from your trembling body, his arms weighing down next to his fast-breathing chest. You were not sure if he was talking about the situation, or you. “Let’s go back. You fucking drive, I’m too wasted for that shit,” he groaned, and threw the keys your way. “If you crash my car, I’ll kill you.”

Which flawlessly ties into the second instance in which you feared for your life. It took place about two weeks later, when Yoongi had changed his mind about the dangers of driving under the influence, and swore he was more than capable to get you two from the bar to your motel.

Then again, Min Yoongi was a liar.

The car ruptured the night like a shooting star, passing by the tall trees in a blur of headlights and worried screams. The mumbling of the motor chilled you to the bone, shaking inside your chest like the drumming of a war; and the sudden swerving of lanes — which happened every time Yoongi saw an upcoming curve — seemed to be the last action that you would ever witness. He maintained the velocity much above the speed limit and, every time you asked him to reduce it, he would raise it even further just to delight in the way your panic increased.

Yoongi looked at the open road like he had been possessed, his unfocused eyes barely seeing something beyond his hooded eyelids. “It’s a highway, not a fuckin’ roller coaster,” he had complained, licking his lips. The car was impregnated with the strong smell of alcohol, and you thought you were going to throw up at any given minute. “Can you stop—“ He burped. “Fuck. Just stop screaming.”

Still, you were in under no condition to be rational. “Yoongi, slow this down!” You cried out in horror, fingers clenching to the leather of the seat. Your nails were already hurting because of how much they were being pressed down against the thick fabric, your heart seemed as if it was about to stop. Next to you, the half-open window sucked out your hair, blowing the dense summer air onto your face at full speed. “How much did you drink?”

You had the impression that the man tried to smirk, but he was too far gone to fully control the muscles on his face. Instead, the corners of his mouth vaguely turned upwards, his expression bordering on the one of a serial killer. “Doesn’t fuckin’ matter,” he told you as his fingers tightened on the wheel. Only one hand was guiding the car, for the other was hanging tightly to the — stolen — beer bottle he had brought along. “Shut up, damn, why are you so loud? Loosen up a bit. Shit.”

The wheel turned and there was a vague scratching of the wheels against the asphalt as he struggled to make a tenuous curve — you could already see the car losing its path and crashing against one of the thick pine trees, killing the two of you instantly.

Yoongi took his bottle to his lips and chugged the rest of it down, not hesitating for one second before throwing it out of his window with a crash you could barely hear. The white lights of the poles flashed over his features like a movie was being projected onto him, presenting you with a person you did not recognize.

“Yoongi, stop this car right now.” You banged your hand against the door, trying to get his attention. The motor groaned as the man pressed down on the gas pedal, making his stance known, and pushing your back against the seat with the new acceleration. Trees were passing by in disfigured blurs of black and brown, and you were sure you were starting to lose blood pressure because of the stress you were under — it wouldn’t be the first time you fainted because of panic. “Oh my god, I’m gonna die.” You cried out, breathless. “Please, Yoongi—“

Yoongi took the back of his hand to clean his stained lips, and then looked at your direction — you didn’t know if his attention on the deserted road would make any difference at that point. When he spoke out, the nauseating smell of alcohol burned down your throat. “As much as I want to right now, I won’t flip this shit over,” he told you with endless annoyance, his eyes filled with a mixture of disgust and petulance. You didn’t know who he was then, and the fright that you felt only increased once you met the eyes of that stranger. “But only if you shut the fuck up. Do that for me, princess, and you won’t have to worry about a thing.”

Even against every nerve in your body, you did as he requested, and bit down on your lower lip. At some point, tears started wetting your cheeks, but you ignored them. Eventually, tough, the car began to slow down.

About ten minutes later, you two arrived at the neon-bathed motel, and Yoongi crashed in bed with a final cascade of curse words and complaints towards you. You only felt relief once you realized he was sound asleep and, even then, you could not rest for the entire night. You were terrified.

The last drop, however, was in the final night you two passed together.

Yoongi had mentioned that one of his old friends was in same town as the two of you, and asked if you would like to accompany him to a local bar, if you wouldn’t feel too left out, since he needed to have a private conversation with the man. As much as the requested was a bit offbeat, you accepted it regardless, for you felt it would’ve been better than to be alone in a small room with poor TV signal, and worries bubbling at the bottom of your stomach. It was better to be with him than to wonder where he was, and that you had learned the hard way.

The two of you arrived there a little past midnight, and were amazed by the slow movement — most of the tables were empty and there were, at most, fifteen other people, staff included, in that secluded ambient. Before you could even mention it, Yoongi briskly excused himself, said that he would be having his “important discussion” for some time, and claimed that under no circumstances were you to interrupt his exchange — unless, of course, it was urgent.

Out of alternatives, you turned to face the shelves decorated with prismatic bottles. As you walked towards the counter, throat arid as a desert, you thought about the night you met him under those auric christmas lights, when he swore he could give you everything and a bit more. Yoongi had made sure to show you — again and again — how your friends had been selfish when they left you behind to fulfill their own objectives, but he was doing precisely the same thing then.

You were sure he would have a flawless justification hanging just at the tip of his tongue, though, as he always did. Yoongi wasn’t the biggest fan of being held accountable for his mistakes, and he wouldn’t start now.

With a disinterested expression hanging over her features, the purple-haired woman that worked at the bar moved closer to you. She held a piece of grey fabric in one hand and a cup in the other, and didn’t seem as if she was in the mood to make any friends. “What can I get you?” she questioned politely.

You licked your lips and thought for an instant. Behind you, two figures sat down, facing one another. “Just water is good,” you said, “thanks.”

She nodded and moved back to reach for your drink. It arrived much, much earlier than Yoongi did.

You sat there for some time, waiting as the night dragged along; filled by the exhilarated screams of embriagated customers and the constant buzzing of animated conversations. Exhaustion had overtaken your limbs, tingling on your fingertips and ruling over your mind by the time that one hour had gone by — and, with it, five glasses of water and two small trips to the bathroom. Maybe you should have stayed at the motel.

Lamenting the adventures you never got to live, you raised your gaze from the counter, and turned around on your seat. If you adjusted your posture and inclined your neck just enough, you could see Yoongi and another silhouette talking at the corner of the bar, completely immersed in a secretive subject. You thought about asking what it was about, but you were sure he would not share it — Yoongi was a man sustantained by secrets; a petulant monarch sitting in a throne of poorly constructed lies and enigmatic whispers.

Every time you looked at him you would picture a scene: the two of you trying to finish a puzzle, but there’s a piece missing. You don’t know if it’s with you, if you lost it, if you can’t find it. Or if it’s with him. If he’s hiding it from you. In a speck of courage, you would dare to take a look at him, meeting those eyes that are both everything and nothing at the same time. Empty as black holes, full as the brightest star. They push you like waves, then pull like the cold tides. There’s echo e and there’s muffling. There’s him. You don’t know who he is. Then you understand, once again, that the puzzle will not be completed, and you can only guess what that final piece would present. Perhaps one detail would change it all, perhaps it would have been precisely what you had always envisioned. You will never know. He hid it from you during all that time, and you doubted it would ever see the light.

Though, you soon would get an idea of it.

Behind you, a loud cough resounded throughout the establishment. “You saw him right?” One of the men asked, his voice so deep that, for an instant, you thought it was the same guy that bothered you in The Cave, months ago. The story was repeating itself, after all, in the most hypocritical of ways.

But no, you were too far away from home. It wasn’t him, and your friends were nowhere in sight.

The other hummed in concordance. “The Yoongi guy? Yeah. He got here with some chick I didn’t recognize.” He stopped once a sequence of deep, painful coughs ruptured his speech — you did not need to know him to be sure he was a smoker. “Fuck— Not that I expected it would be the same as last time, but ya know.”

“Yeah.” Another long pause. You felt as if your heart was just about to jump out of your chest; your fingertips were sweaty and quivering against the corner of the table. “You think they got him?” he asked.

“Nah. If they did, he wouldn’t be here, he’d be behind bars, where he fuckin’ belongs.” The other laughed. Paused. More coughing. “The guy knows what he’s doing around these streets, it’s not for nothin’ that he’s always on the run.”

The other scoffed at those words — as he spoke, clear traces of jealousy reverberated alongside his voice. “He thinks he’s some hot shit. One of these days we’ll find him dead in a ditch.” Then, a chuckle. “Can’t say that I’ll miss him. He’s bad news. I feel sorry for the girl he dragged into this. I wonder if she knows.”

“She doesn’t, they never do. For sure. She should get the hell out befo—”

But you weren’t listening any longer. That had been the last drop.

In an impetuous wave of anguish and betrayal, you got out of your seat and looked around to find him. He, who had played you so effortlessly; he, who had completely ruined you with his omissions and imprudent actions. Negligence personified; hypocrisy in flesh. Min Yoongi, in his natural inhabitant.

The man was the personification of Crystalfall — oscillating between the wickedness of the east and the utopian, artificial benevolence of the west side. You had been a fool to believe he was merely switching between extremes: Yoongi was both of them at the same time, and there was no way that you could have a touch of paradise unless you were ready to face the flames of hell.

You were not. Would never be.

Amongst the crowd, you saw him. Yoongi seemed to be in a heated discussion, speaking fervently with another man — his eyebrows furrowed and his mouth verbalizing poisonous words, head shaking to present his full frustration to the stranger. You wondered as he would punch him too if things got out of control; wondered if he would do something even worse. If one day you thought you knew Yoongi, that certainty had been too far for you to reach.

The other man ran one hand through his curly hair as you walked closer to them, disheveling his pale blonde strands with an anguished groan. He had deep violaceous marks under his eyes and, amongst the freckles on his skin, there was the obvious white line of a fresh scar. “All I’m saying, man, is that you have to get the fuck out,” he spoke with urgency, the same sentiment that gleaned inside his wide hazel eyes. Preoccupation fell like a stone at the pit of your stomach. “They know where you are, and they’re not being throw in prison for what yo—“

Yoongi saw you before he could finish. “—Hey, baby.” He cleared his throat, eyes darting to the man on his side. You knew him well to know that he was ordering the other to shut up before things got worse. “You’re good?”

Reluctant, you took an instant before responding — the stranger looked at you with cautious eyes, measuring your presence. You felt threatened by his rough posture, as if he could jump on you at any given instant. “I’m sorry to interrupt. It’s urgent.” You looked back at Yoongi with hollow irises, chest completely overwhelmed by a mixture of panic and disgust. “I heard some things about you and I… I wanted to talk.”

He opened his lips to respond, then seemed to take an instant to organize his thoughts — you could tell that he knew what it was about; the truth would be uncovered sooner or later, and it was time for him to pay his debt.

Yoongi sighed deeply. “Come on, baby,” he motioned with his head towards the exit. Beyond the wooden entrance, the night was darker than ever; merciless and algid. “Let’s continue this somewhere else.”

The outside of the bar reminded you of the night you met him, the promise you made to meet him again. You should have never accepted his date proposal, you thought in a glimmer of betrayal and disgust, you should have listened to your gut and never got close to that awful place.

With heavy eyelids, you blinked lethargically, barely feeling the comfortable warmth of Yoongi’s hand at the bottom of your spine as he walked you out of the establishment. You were tired, and had been for as long as you could recall. That memory could trail back to a couple of weeks or a plethora of insomnia-filled days ― not even that certainty you could rearrange. Then again, exhaustion was a paradox of itself: you were too fatigued to even care. You just wanted to sleep. Everything else could burn to the ground, for as much as you cared.

Well, everything else but the reason why the two of you had left so suddenly.

Even turning your head seemed like a huge task ― so, as you spoke, you did not. You proceeded to look straight ahead, underneath heavy lids, waiting for his car to mysteriously materialize into focus as you two walked down the relinquished streets.“Yoongi,” you called out, “you have to tell me what’s going on. You keep protecting your secrets, I don’t know who you are anymore.”

He chuckled as if he had been expecting that inquiry for quite some time. His hand trailed the invisible path from your back to your shoulders. You had started to despise when he touched you there. “I’m not protecting my secrets,” he guaranteed, “I’m protecting you.”

You took a deep breath, measuring his expression — where you once saw everything, now there was nothing to be found amongst the traces of his celestial features. Yoongi was completely hollow on the inside. “And why the hell would you do that?” bitterness countered your speech as you spoke out.

Yoongi crooked his head to the side, looking at you with endless adoration. There was an instant, mercurial and tenuous as the midnight breeze, in which you actually considered that such emotion could be genuine. Though, as he spoke out, his voice came out with no inflection, no sign of it. He was a liar, as you were starting to figure out, but a bad one regardless. “Because I love you, west beauty,” he confessed.

But you didn’t believe that. If Yoongi had told you that before everything else — the reckless driving, the stealing, the violence — you were sure you would have been head over heels for him, convincing yourself that he was your soulmate, the one you were supposed to be with forevermore. You were naive then, but now… now you were just tired. “You don’t mean it,” you said.

He was unaffected by your words. “I do.” His hand caressed your cheek, and you fought back the need to pull away — so, instead, you just looked to the side, trying to ignore the warm poison that dropped through his touch. Everything felt so fake now, so calculated. “Hey, look at me,” Yoongi requested.

“What?” You did as he asked. Looking into the depthness of his pupils, you thought, even if for an instant, that he could see your soul projected at the bottom of your irises — naked, stripped of pride. It felt pleasantly awful; horribly intimate. It was natural, in the oddest way imaginable. Yoongi knew who you were, but you could not say the same about him. “What are you looking at?” you whispered. His other hand moved to your cheek, then placed a string of hair behind your ear. “You,” he replied, now cupping your face.

You took a split second to examine his face. Yoongi’s eyes were obscure — tenebrous as the night sky, fathomless as the secrets that echoed within his head. When you looked at him, there was nothing but his piercing gaze; no sound but the harmony of his low, whisper-like timbre. You were completely trapped by the event horizon of his venom-filled aura, held hostage by the tranquility of his hand against your skin. His gravity was too strong. You were being sucked in. You inhaled deeply, trying your very best to organize the catastrophe of your hurricane-like ponderations. “You always stare at me, you know that?” He pouted, leaning his head slightly to the side. “Is there a problem with that?” You did not respond, for you could not find an answer. “Do you even realize you’re doing that?” Yoongi smiled. “Do you even realize how gorgeous you are?” he threw back within a heartbeat.

In the rapid instant that took you to digest the depthness of his words, your mouth hung low. In the following second, you were pulling yourself together. “Of course, I’m a catch,” you joked, unable to take that unforeseen complement. You were never the best when it came to that, so irony was quite often the miraculous escape you went for. “You’re lucky to have me.”

But were you lucky to have him? It surely didn’t feel like it.

However, Yoongi’s words left his plump lips with every ounce of honesty he could possibly arrange, “Yes,” he whispered lackadaisically, leaning in. “Yes, I am.”

Before you could verbalize the thousands of sentences that bolted throughout your mind, every conceptualization ― no matter how big or small ― dispersed into white noise. Your lips touched and, for a moment, you swore you could taste the stardust that melted at the corner of Yoongi’s lips; the constellations that were built and destroyed by the low, feather-like sigh that reverberated against your mouth. The pressure of his kiss was not prolonged, but ephemeral ― and, just are you were starting to melt under its touch, he pulled away.

When you looked back at him, you suddenly did not recognize him anymore. You had to say that it was one of the most terrifying, mind-bending experiences to look someone in the eye and realize, like a thunder that ruptures the skyline, that their semblance had switched into a persona you could not comprehend. Yoongi’s eyes were empty, devoid of any feeling he had presented previously. Abruptly, he was the same man that drove his car so recklessly; the same that would overstep his alcohol consumption; that would take drugs, steal, and push you against a cold brick wall in a fit of jealous anger.

That self-destructing man coexisted alongside the one you had fallen for, and you couldn’t tell who was about to take the lead. “Let’s go back to the motel, alright?” He requested, placing his hand on your lower back once again. “We should have a talk.”

As you would soon discover, that conversation was nothing but the calm before the storm.

No one told you that the cupid’s arrow could hurt so much — that the piercing of your skin wasn’t desired, but an endless anguish to, perhaps, have your chance at a delightful love story. No one told you there could come a time in which you would repudiate it, and the anguish you would feel when pulling it off could be even worse than the way it hurt you aforetime.

Still, you were about to find out that falling out of love what much more difficult than it seemed.

The bedroom door closed behind you with a dry clicking sound and, for a moment, it was the only perturbation that filled the consolidated atmosphere of that motel room. At first, none of you turned on any lights, so the only source of illumination come from the outside neon signs — it came in stripes, casting their lines of turquoise and violaceous over the messy bed. Yoongi never ordered room service, he said it spoiled his privacy.

“What was that about?” your voice resonated in the darkness, hesitant and rotten by agitation. At first, it found no answer.

Yoongi walked towards the bed with his head hung low, paying more attention to the motion of his feet against the pale pink carpet than the anguish that blossomed inside your chest. “Nothing,” he spoke in a mumble.

You took a step in his direction. “Yoongi,” you called again, this time more desperate. You were so tired of his secrets, of his half-assed excuses. “Stop it. Tell me what’s going on.”

He scoffed at the impatience that permeated your words, finding your nervousness to be a bit pathetic. In his mind, it wasn’t as if telling you something would make any difference at that point — it was still his cross to carry. “I owe money to some guys. Sue me.”

Upon hearing that forsaken confession, the clouds of anguish that circumnavigated your head exploded into nothingness — then, into outrage. Bitterness hung at the tip of your tongue, dripping out like a serpent’s venom in between your syllables. “Yoongi, you need to tell me what in the hell is happening.” You walked closer to him with heavy steps, even if they got muffled against the fluffy ground. “We can work on this together.”

Mercurial, the man moved around the room as if he already had his every act perfectly architectured — just like the night you met him. One second, he was standing by the bed and, in the next, he was getting on his knees and pulling his large backpack from under it. “We can’t. Not this time.”

“What do you mean? Why are you getting that?” the questions continued to pour out of your lips, even if you already knew what his answer would be. You were not half as naive as he thought you were: you just needed to hear it from his mouth. Closure what the minimum he could give you. “Yoongi? Talk to me, I’m not asking anymore.”

The man stood up with a long groan, and threw the object over the bed — it bounced twice, sliced by the phosphorescent lights from the outside. “God damn it, I—” He ran his hands through his hair, pulling at the roots. If you hadn’t been so monopolized by frustration, perhaps you would have been a bit more cautious at the words that you threw his way — after all, Yoongi had showed you countless times that he wasn’t the king of mature decisions. “I have to leave.”

Another step closer, and now you were right besides him. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

He threw himself on the mattress, shoulders falling in defeat. You couldn’t read his expression, it laid somewhere melancholy and disgust — not much different from your night at the highway. “I can’t stay anywhere around here, and I can’t take my car either,” Yoongi explained a bit further now, taking his time to measure his erratic words before they left the captive of his chest. “I have no money to pay them back. Not the amount they want, at least.”

You suspired, and sat down next to him, fingers interlaced over your lap. “So?” you voice came soft, in a whisper.“We can get more time.”

“This was my extra time.” He snickered, sarcastic; gaze lost on the thin blue lines that casted its brilliance over his fingertips — his knuckles were forever marked by bruises, decorated by marks of his past fights. Perhaps those scars had been there the night that you met him, you just never noticed. “In case you didn’t get it, I’m in no place to bargain. If I stay, they’ll murder me, or sell my organs in the black market so I can pay for what I owe them. Simple as that.”

You licked your lips. “Maybe we could—”

“—We couldn’t do anything. You’re annoying the hell out of me with all of these questions,” he interrupted, absentminded. Every time he got detached in such abrupt manner, you knew he was trying his best to control his anger.

Yet, you were in no position to care about his feelings at that point. “Yoongi,” his name came out weakly in between your lips and, for an instant, you asked yourself if you had even vocalized it at all, “look at me.”

He blinked lethargically and did as you requested. “What’s wrong?”

What was wrong is that you had made the mistake of thinking that he could change if you loved him hard enough, but that was clearly not the case. There was something sparking inside his clouded, luciferine eyes that told you everything you needed to know — he held no regrets. He was mad at getting caught, not at his past actions. “Tell me something. And don’t lie to me.” You placed your hand on his cheek, feeling the warmth of his skin underneath of palm. “What did you use the money for?”

Then, he did precisely what you expected he would: he lied through his fucking teeth. Yoongi got the checklist of his poor acting skills and crossed out everything that gave it away — the oscillation of his gaze towards the left, the flaring of his nostrils, and the licking of his chapped lips followed by a dry swallow. You knew him too well, you were no longer buying that cheap mask he used.

“It wasn’t anything illegal,” he verbalized with artificial tranquility, even if you could tell from the inflections on his timbre that he was, in fact, extremely bothered by your interrogation. “I was paying my friend’s rent. He was short… for the past six months. He was going to be kicked out.”

Liar. Min Yoongi was a fucking liar. You just needed one simple question to break the false placidity of his tone, and you could move on from there with much more facility — lucky for you, you knew exactly what would work.

“Why can’t you call the police?” You inquired, forging innocence.

Bingo.

He raised his hands in a mocking prayer, looking up at the ceiling. “Why can’t I— because!” Yoongi exclaimed, his voice bordering on a scream. Once again, his demeanor switched faster than you could follow. “Fuck, don’t you understand? This money is dirty, this is from stealing and murdering, not honest work in a fucking farm. If the cops knew I was aware of that, which I’m sure they will figure out, I’ll go to jail. I’m guilty by association.”

Then you saw it: something else flickering inside his irises, perhaps a hint of guilt — not because of his past actions, but because of his current one. Yoongi was lying by omission. “That isn’t everything, is it?” You asked him, eyes narrowing for a millisecond. You were trying your best to keep your expression under control so he wouldn’t feel as if you were judging him — which you were, and rightfully so. “Did you do something else, Yoongi?”

Yoongi was delicate — but not the same manner that a butterfly is, or maybe a torn-apart flower. He was delicate as a missile, ready to detonate at any given second. And, at that instant, you had pushed the big red button. “We have to do what we can to survive, alright? It’s not the time for miss perfection to come out and judge a reality she doesn’t understand.” He threw at you, getting back to his feet. You had never seen him like that, so rough, so defensive. “I might have some blood on my hands, I might not, it doesn’t matter now. There’s nothing you can do about it, so it’s better if you don’t even know. I’m not that person anymore.”

Bullshit.

You inhaled profoundly. “If you just let me speak—”

“—There’s nothing to be said. Deal with it,” he interrupted, pointing at something behind you. “Hand me that shirt, do something useful for once.”

With a sigh, you did as he requested, even if you preference would be to choke him with that old, stained piece of fabric. “You’re just gonna leave me behind, I assume,” you spoke out with patience, teasing your way into every new word with endless nausea. After all that had happened, you didn’t know if you wanted to be around him anymore.

“Yeah, sorry about that. Shit got out of my control.” Yoongi ran one hand through his raven hair, disheveling it a bit further. He seemed to be thinking a billion things at the same time, for his speech came out in a wave of rapid words, barely any connection between them. Amongst the darkness of that motel room, he looked like a frenzied demon looking for another soul to feed off from; since, apparently, he had gotten tired of playing with yours. “By the way, before I forget, I need you to get my car and leave it by the bar we met. I’ll ask a friend to pick it up, and you can get a cab nearby.”

But you didn’t care about any of that — fuck, you might even set that piece of shit car on fire if Yoongi continued with that damn attitude. “When are you going?” you asked instead.

He cleared his throat, shoving his clothes into his backpack. “Tomorrow morning, the earlier bus they got.”

With a suspire, you got back to your feet, looking down on him. “Which is?”

“Old Mountain, 5:15am,” he responded. “I already checked and bought my ticket, don’t worry about it.”

“Of course you did.” You chuckled, humorless. Your chest was utterly empty, devoid of any sort of emotion, and your eyes had started to burn under a thin curtain of tears — you would break down at any given second now. “Before you went out to meet with your friend and decided I was a boring game all along, I assume. Something else you forgot to tell me? Maybe how I’m completely worthless for you?”

Yoongi groaned, allowing for his inner infuriated to drip past his lips. “Oh my god, can’t you shut up for one damn second? Let me think.” He placed one hand on the bridge of his nose, trying to figure out if there was something else he needed to do. “Fuck, I don’t have to tell you everything. Learn how to respect people. I didn’t think I’d be the one to teach you that.”

Oh, that was just rich. Talk about reaching limits — you had just flung yourself over yours.

“No, I cannot shut up, you fucking megalomaniac asshole,” you spat out ― shock value long forgotten. For an instant, you couldn’t recognize the roughness within your own voice, nor the way it curled around you like thorns, piercing your skin with gushes of adrenaline. You had been bottling up your emotions for too long now. “You were the one preaching for weeks about how I should stand up for myself, and now that I do, you’re telling me to quiet down? You’re full of bullshit, do you know that?”

Yoongi looked up to meet your gaze, slightly flabbergasted. Something told you that he didn’t expect you to throw the same rudeness back to him, and he didn’t appreciate it in the slightest. “You know that’s not what I fu—”

You rolled your eyes. “Whatever, I don’t give a fuck what you meant,” you threw back, chest bubbling up with fury. “So you can get your bag ready, and I can get mine, and we can both pretend as if we don’t mean anything to one another tomorrow. Seems alright?”

His eyebrows moved together, forming a frown. You hated how he was the one pretending to look so confused, when you were the one who had been taken away from the truth. “Baby, I don’t—”

You took a step towards the man that you once loved, moved by an anger that did not belong to you. “Don’t fucking call me that, you selfish little prick.”

Yoongi stood up from the bed, his fists clenching — regardless, you could see it in his eyes that his demeanor was vacillating, uncertain how to deal with your explosiveness. But of course he did not want that: he wanted you to be quiet, for you to be agreeable. He wanted you to feel bad for your empathy, to focus on the love that — supposedly — you could only get from him. Yoongi wanted you at the palm of his hand, and he didn’t want you to talk back. “What the hell do you want from me, you crazy b—”

Then, something broke inside of you.

Like a switch had been turned on in your mind, you recalled every horrible experience you had by his side — the drunk driving, the pointless discussion and violence, the emotional manipulation. You had never been important to him. He didn’t care. He didn’t love you — if he did, he would have never placed your life on the line, he would have never blamed your kindness for the evils of the world. Yoongi despised your altruism because he wanted you to normalize his nightmarish behavior, so you could think that, perhaps, it had been your fault for being too sensitive.

When, all that time, it has been his fault for being corroded by egoism; reckless, and self-destructive. Min Yoongi was drowning in his own sins, and he was pulling you down to the bottom with him by convincing you that you couldn’t swim.

“—Fuck you, Min Yoongi!” you almost screamed, tears accumulating at the corners of your eyes. For an instant, the man remembered your first night together, the diamond-like droplets that came from Crystalfall. “Fuck you for making me believe you were different, that you actually cared about me. Fuck you for using me, for taking advantage of who I am. You have no right to do all of this to me and then just drop me like I’m nothing, alright?” Your hands curled into fists, and you pushed them against his chest. You wanted to punch him until his rib cage caved in, and you could take his heart in your hands so you could see if it ever even liked you — if it could even beat at all. “You’re just like the people you criticize, you hypocritical son of a bitch. You can’t keep your fucking word!”

Yoongi raised his hands in a quiet surrender, trying to stop the advances of your punches. “YN, please listen—”

“You fucking listen!” You cried out, the last word morphing into a frail whine as his fingers curled around your wrists, pausing your movements mid-air. You were too exhausted to fight, and he was using no force to keep you still — he didn’t need to. “You can’t pay back the money you got, you can’t keep your fucking word to me, you can’t do shit. You’ve been lying to me since day one, haven’t you? You’re playing with me. All this t-time, yo-you’ve—” hiccups interrupted your speech, “Fuck!” you exclaimed, and pulled away, turning your back from him.

In an explosion of anguish that was utterly alien to you, you acted out in sheer despair. The closest object to you got the tides of your anger thrown directly at it, and, with a strong motion, you hit it with all the force you had stored in your bones. The lamp shattered against the wall with a loud exclamation, and it was the final dot your argument needed. The room withered into silence instantaneously, Yoongi’s limbs were frozen in time. Seems like both of you changed through your little adventure — weeks before you had ever met him, the mere idea of damaging property was outrageous for you.

Now, it was nothing but a shattered lightbulb, and pieces of old wood all over an ugly pink carpet. How poetic.

You sniffed. “Don’t worry about it. I have the money to pay,” you told him, voice bordering on a mumble. The flame of anger that had been motivating your speech was completely gone then, leaving behind a trail of white smoke and regretful decisions. You had never felt that empty in your entire life. “I don’t owe shit to anyone.”

The motel room was static for a breviloquent period, filled only by the constant blowfly-like sound of the fluorescent lights flickering over your head. You wished you could turn back time, that you could warn your former self to jump off that sinking ship before it trapped you beneath tempestuous seas, making you unable to breathe. You wished to tell yourself that Yoongi’s kiss tasted like a storm because he hid hurricanes behind his cool facade; that his touch was catastrophe personified, destined to break you down into utter pandemonium.

But you couldn’t. You could only fix your world from that point forward.

Your breath was caught in your throat as you felt his arms curling around your waist, pulling you into a tender hug. His chest, rising and falling rapidly, met your back promptly, Yoongi’s hair fell over your clavicles as he leaned his forehead against your shoulder. Some part of your foggy mind warned that he wasn’t trying to calm you down, but to make sure you would not leave him behind then.

“Yoongi, don’t—” You choked on your own speech. Your throat was dry, your nose was clogged. Nothing was right anymore, and his touch felt like it emanated venom. You wanted him gone, you wanted his atrocious touch far away from where it could corrode you. “Please, don't hug me, I can’t deal with this right now.”

“I’m so sorry,” he spoke against the curvature of your neck, his voice coming out muffled and weak against your skin. You could feel him his cheeks getting wet by crocodile his tears, but you could no longer buy any second of his pathetic little act. Every emotion you ever had towards him had been replaced by utter disgust; and every emotion he ever swore to have towards you had morphed into the nothingness he truly felt. “I can’t believe I did this to you.”

Until the last instant, he would play the victim. That wasn’t his story to tell. “You’ve ruined me, Min Yoongi,” your voice came out firm, like an order; a certainty. There was nothing more that he could take away from you, for all that was left was the same merciless willpower that he had once swore to uncover; the lack of compassion he so desired to achieve. You would not bend. Not for him.

“I know, baby, I know,” he whispered and squeezed you tighter in that fake hug — but his timbre already too far away for you to listen, his touches were shallow and his arms felt like snakes getting ready to suffocate you. It didn’t matter anymore. “I’m so sorry, please, forgive me— baby, I’m so sorry.”

And, for the first time since you’ve met the human-shaped catastrophe that was Min Yoongi, you didn’t have to look at him to know that he was lying.

You [04:23am] hey, hobi. sorry I’m messaging you rn, I can’t sleep

You [04:23am] there’s a lot in my mind

You [04:23am] i’m coming back home, alright? tomorrow

You [04:24am] tell the others to meet me at mercy’s, 3pm.

You [04:24am] i have a lot of stories to tell

You [04:56am] i miss you guys

When you would start to think about how much your soul has changed through it all, you used no words — but an image. You would think of an empty, cerulean-bathed cave, with cold, frozen waters and sharp stalactites. You’d think of an ongoing, periodic sound of something dripping, and the upcoming darkness of the corners you could never see. You would think of gelid emptiness, of deprivation and misery; of crystals made of ice, and of touches of white and blue. You would envision a place that dances between the omnipotent trepidation and the enchanting beauty; a place that is awfully human, yet remarkably devoid of any sort of compassion.

You fell in love with Min Yoongi — or, rather, who you thought he was. You feel in love with a man that was kind and loving, you held your hand as you were about to fall asleep, who caressed your hair as the morning sun slipped past the cracks on the curtains. You fell for the man you had seen at the bar, who took you to witness the beauty of Crystalfall, who promised a world in which the two of you could reign supreme. A man that would ask you to scream on a desert road so you could scare away your demons, not a man that would, instead, yell at you into submission, and shape you into a person you could never be.

You surely did not fall for who he really was. Never in your life would you love someone who put your own line so selfishly on the line, driving embriagated, refusing to slow down even if you begged for him to do so. You could never love someone that was so filled by jealousy that a mere talk with a stranger was seen as a threat; you would never find alluring the way he slowly pulled you away from your friends, convincing you that they weren’t good enough — no, they were far from perfect, but they would never do what he did to you. They would never ruin you, would never leave you behind to rot from the inside out.

When you were to come back to Crystalfall, you were sure they would be there for you, and Yoongi would be far, far away.

The previous night was spent with open eyes and fast-beating hearts. After Yoongi’s terrible attempt at an apology, you removed yourself from the room with a half-assed excuse, and said that you would come back later to help him pack — which you never did. In a state that laid between grief and indignation, you sat down outside, hugged your knees, and forced yourself to look at the neon lights of the motel’s hot tub, trying your best to find the answers you could never reach.

And, for the rest of the night, there you stayed.

You had been expecting for the monsters underneath your bed to crawl out of the shadows and take you down to a place in which demons could torture you forevermore, but you never considered the fact that, perhaps, the real monster had been by your side all along, toying with your emotions and sending you to the edges of panic. Once, you had compared Yoongi to the moon, but forgot to bring up his dark side — the piece of nothingness that could not be illuminated even by the brightest of stars.

You had been naive to compare him to anything but a black hole.

Yes, he had been raised in hell, had walked through a life of crime and was presented only with the worst that life could offer. But until which point could his past excuse his present? You had chewed on on that question for days on end, but still could not find a proper response to it. Some of your thoughts were utterly condemning, saying that it was all on him to blame; while another part of you leaned towards the other extreme, claiming he was merely a product of his twisted story, and needed just a bit of kindness to change his ways. You were sure the answer laid somewhere in the middle, even if you doubted you could ever fully discover it someday. If Yoongi had not passed through all of that, would he be any better? Perhaps he would have been worse? You could never tell. All you knew is that he would not be the one you met that somber night at The Cave, and certainly not the one you had fallen in love with. And those were the positive memories you chose to carry along with you at the day of his departure. You had not fallen in love with the man you drove to the bus station, all covered in blood stains and scars, with deep puddles of purple underneath his tired eyes, but the kind, charismatic man that had took you to the waterfall, who had adored you as if you were his own masterpiece.

You did not fall for a monster, and it wasn’t your fault that he changed into one.

“You have everything you need?” your voice came out soft as you spoke, stained by melancholy. Next to you in that claustrophobic car, Yoongi nodded slowly, his hair contrasting against the foggy, rain-encrusted windows. “Okay. Let’s move before you miss your bus.”

Just like the night before, that morning progressed in a quiet, phlegmatic blur of heavy hearts and discombobulated thoughts — from the instant you two took his bags from the truck of the car, to the very instant Yoongi checked his ticked one last time, pointing at the bus he was supposed to catch. Through all, you were trying to keep yourself together: you could cry later in the car, or maybe in the arms of your friends, but not then. Not in front of him. Not when you swore that your dignity would be the one thing left standing after he had ruined everything else.

You would survive. It was not the first time that someone believed that the world was about to reach for a catastrophe far too big for it to handle, only to continue living through the ashes and the smoke. Vivacity would come again — with someone else, somewhere else. Kinder times are always waiting ahead.

As he involved you in a warm hug, you felt your soul cracking. You knew, at some level, that the two of you were never meant for do or die: you could never last. “Goodbye, Yoongi,” you verbalized those words with care, paying attention to the sour taste that they left on your tongue. It wasn’t just a farewell, it was a promise to the stars. “Take care of yourself.”

Yoongi held you into that hug for a little bit longer. What once felt like a comforting touch, was now suffocating you into a reality you were not meant to face. “Goodbye,” he whispered back as he pulled away, then took a step behind. For a moment, there was only the low humming of the bus’ motor reverberating in between your bodies. “Let’s meet again someday.”

“Definitely.” You nodded. But you knew you wouldn’t — the two of you were toxic for one another, and some things were better left in the past. That, at least, was what you hoped would happen.

He placed his right foot on the first step of the bus, then turned back to look at you. Yoongi’s eyes were overflowing with despondency, and you were certain, even if for a mere, short-lived second, that he was going to cry. “I love you, west beauty.” The man spoke with endless calm, yet profound adoration. It was the last time he had ever said that to you. Perhaps the last one ever. “Stay out of trouble, alright? You deserve a better life than whatever I had to offer you.”

You hesitated for an instant — those words, once so inviting, now crashed like cold water against your skin. Fyodor Dostoevsky once wrote that “being in love doesn’t mean loving”, and that had been the sentence that was echoing in your mind ever since Yoongi told you he would leave. You were in love with him, absolutely and wholeheartedly, but you could not love him. You barely knew him, he was a stranger from the east, a formless shadow filled with acrid demons. If that was love, you didn’t want to be loved.

“I love you too, Yoongi,” you lied — you could do that so effortlessly now, and you knew that he was the one to blame. “Will you come back to visit me someday?”

He simply nodded, uncertain. He couldn’t promise that, and both of you knew that very well. It was for the best if he didn’t.

Just as quickly as Min Yoongi came into your life, he departed from it, crossing the midnight sky like a comet; leaving only a diaphanous trail of ice behind. One second he was there, looking at you against the cadaveric luminesce of the cloudy sky, and on the next instant he was turning his head and walking up the steps of that old bus, leaving you behind like your story never held any sort of significance. Maybe it didn’t — not for him.

The doors closed soon after, and you stepped away. The bus was a pale blue shade, a pale blue feeling; its motor’s purrs resonaning alongside the raindrops that started to pierce the skyline. Completely numbed by his departure, you could only watch as the vehicle trailed away with a loud vibration, grey clouds of smoke exploding in thin exhales on its back. The smell of burning gasoline was strong and merciless, and it felt as poisonous as the sentiment that begun blossoming at the basis of your throat.

With a final inhale, you turned your back to the man you once fell in love with, and started following your own path.

Your story began the same way it ended: with a poorly thought-out decision, and a promise of better days. For the lack of a better definition, Min Yoongi, in all of his despondent and reckless glory, became your event horizon.

And, once you crossed it, there was nothing left of who you once were.

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