#it's moments like this — or that time i got charged 200 fucking dollars for have a pushpin in my foot — that i kinda wanna bomb a hospital

[l-cereta]

now why in hell's bells am i being charged $172 for an endocrinology 'appointment' which was me calling and asking an endocrinologist to change me off of patches and onto pills which she refused (my regular endocrinologist got me a prescription for pills like a week later) and the entire thing took like 15 minutes and also every single payment i've had to make before has been like 80 bucks

[camgirlsurvivalguide]

Goooood morning Survivors -- back at it with my favourite procrastination strategy: making e-books instead of shooting for OF! Love that for me.

Anyhow,

Tier systems and exclusivity marketing have always been at the forefront of my personal approach to my business. My two overarching goals with online SW are to make a lot of money (duh) while also keeping myself and my subscribers happy. For the camgirl migrators who used to live stream and then worked our way over to content creation platforms - I feel like some of our foundational knowledge has been forgotten, and I’m here to remind everyone that the way we used to do things is still a really good approach even on OF.

On M/FC, we focused our energy on premium members, and always offered more attention to tippers than to basics or non-tippers. This helped us focus on where the money was actually coming from, and rewarding tippers with more attention/special treatment plus access to things that others didn’t receive (videos, VIP status, club memberships etc) made tipping look more attractive to non-tippers. 

Somehow on OF, practices have shifted - and I argue they’ve shifted in ways that really don’t benefit all of us very well, or very often. I’ve paid for “shout outs” from top creators twice now, and both times it’s involved giving out a number of free trials to my page. Both times I’ve paid over $200 and received a grand total of zero fucking dollars in the end - the free trials were used over 50 times, and NONE of those new “subscribers” paid me a damn dime. The only people benefiting were the seller, who pocketed my $200, and the seller’s subscribers who got free access to my page for a month (and then proceeded to spend absolutely nothing). Maybe this works for others, maybe there are criteria that I need to follow more carefully, bla bla bla - the bottom line is I think this practice mainly circles around from top creator to top creator while providing the buyer themselves - aka me, in this situation - with next to nothing. Now if I sold a “shout out” with a free trial link to someone else and then gave all my subscribers a month of free access to a different creators page, sure, some of them may click it - but they’re also more likely to stick with me for the chance to get free subs elsewhere.

Make sense? Because when it makes sense, it just kind of sucks. For me, I mean. For the other two parties it’s great - but I’m out here trying to make me money first and foremost. The second piece, as per old M/FC knowledge, is I’m trying to make the people who actually support me happy so they continue to do so. 

This is where my e-book comes in. I’ve had more than half of my current subscribers for more than a year, with probably a third of that half having been subscribed for two or more years. At current, 125 active subs have spent $1000 or more on my page - and that’s out of just 275 total subscribers at the moment (it’s low bc I broke my fucking wrist and can barely lift a spoon to my mouth without dropping food, let alone shoot sexy content lol).

What I’m getting at here is that I’ve learned how to make people happy enough to stay long term and spend a lot. I do this using exclusivity marketing, which helps me maintain my own boundaries (I only really want a small group of top tier supporters seeing my most explicit content, which helps me keep leaks lower and makes me feel better about what I release) and allows me to charge $100 plus for a single video, because I know the individuals I’m sharing it with are way more likely to purchase expensive stuff. This is personal experience that I feel strongly enough about to sell to you as a tutorial book. As always, I’m never going to offer something for sale that I haven’t personally utilized with strong reward, so the book is a massive source of information not just for newbies but especially for long term creators. 

At this point, because of how I’ve set myself up, even if I lost access to every single social media account I own, I know I’d still be able to make a handsome income because I don’t rely on advertising or a constant influx of new subscribers for the bulk of my income. Advertising is always necessary, but if you set yourself up right, it’s not 100% crucial to be doing every single day. As always, I’m sleepy and I have a huge brain so I prefer to work smart, not hard. 

Anyhow, thanks for listening to me rant. I really hope the book benefits some of y’all because I think we could all use a bit more of this strategy and a bit less mad scrambling to secure new subs every day. Are you tired? I’m fucking tired. Doing things this way is a little less tiring. 

[lastoneout]

To put it into perspective $65K a year before taxes is about $5k a month and if you know anything about how bad the cost of living is at the moment you can do the math and figure out that that's comfortable but still not really enough in some places or barely scraping by in others.

Like if you just want to have a semi-decent apartment with a bedroom or two that isn't infested with cockroaches, offering AC so garbage it's deadly and will force you to drop even more money on your own portable/window unites which cost hundreds of dollars and skyrocket your electric bill(you cannot forgo AC in a place where it hits 110F in the summer), and run by a landlord that couldn't care less about helping you with anything at all, you are going to be forking over $2.5-3K AT LEAST and that's BEFORE utilities, most places do not include water/trash/electricity/gas. If you want internet here that sucks slightly less but still genuinely sucks you're dropping over $100 at least every month(we drop more than that and have been having so many grey/black outs I can't even stream half the time which is literally my job, and we cannot upgrade to fiber without moving). A family plan for two people with phones that are falling apart is $250 a month and that will go up when our phones finally break since we can't repair them on our own. A small grocery trip will still run you into the $100s and my food stamps covering my stuff specifically only goes so far to cushion the impact. We put off fixing his car as long as we can unless it's something actually serious(hello giant crack in the windshield and cracked tail-light casing and squeaky break pads please don't cause any sudden problems T_T). And if the vet bill is over $1k well...guess we go into debt or pray the cat will be okay without the really expensive tests!

My fiance makes $64K and he and I are VERY lucky to live in a relatively cheap city in an apartment we found through a friend where we don't have to pay rent, just utilities and some minor maintenance, and we STILL cannot even afford to get married because I would lose my state insurance if we did(our combined income would put us *just* far enough over the poverty line to disqualify me) and have to switch to the one he gets through his work, and I had 15 ER and doctor's visits this month on top of two surgical procedures and I take like 20 medications, so like, we would go fucking bankrupt on the co-pays alone. Hell I had to give up on a medication that was life-changing because it's over $400 a month and since I'm on Medicaid I don't qualify for the coupon program and we just cannot fucking afford meds that expensive. I also don't qualify for disability because he can cover my needs more or less, which is insulting and degrading and fucking ridiculous. And that's not even taking into account HIS medical needs. He hasn't seen a primary care doctor in years, only just got diagnosed with ADHD after years of me pushing him to see a doctor, and every time he has an emergency he has to go to urgent care which charges him like $200 even when it turns out nothing was wrong. I really pray he never needs to go to the ER. We mask everywhere not just because we believe it's the right thing to do, but because we literally cannot afford for him to get sick.

Unless he starts making more money or I miraculously recover from the things keeping me from getting a traditional job we will never be able to afford a house. Idk if we'll ever even be able to move. His income being that high does mean I don't have to work and we can still live relatively comfortably as long as nothing serious happens, but most of that money is going towards bills and keeping me alive, and the month he lost his old job was the scariest month of our lives. We had ONE MONTH to get him a new one and we did, one that initially paid a little less but still enough, but if we hadn't? We'd be fucked.

As an additional tid-bit, he was making a little under that when we met living in Flagstaff, a MUCH more expensive area(if you want anything better than a studio you're forking over $5k+ on JUST rent at least) and I was still getting a smidge under $2k a month at my job or or less(hourly wages at a movie theater as a team lead), and we moved to Tucson specifically because that combined amount was nowhere NEAR enough to exist in Flagstaff. In Tucson it's a comfortable but not really enough income if you're lucky like we are. In Flagstaff it's fucking poverty wages.

$65K a year sounds like a lot and I won't pretend it doesn't give me some privileges other people don't have access to, I"m more financially stable than I've ever been in my entire life, and while I try to keep my purchases to things I want that also serve a purpose, I can afford nice things sometimes like a playstation or concert tickets, I can buy gifts for my friends and family for special occasions, but it is FAR from being rich, and depending on your area you're way closer to the people scraping by making $17 an hour than being even within the same fucking zipcode as a truly rich person.

I've met rich people(though usually not the family members actually making the money), and tbh the hallmark they share is def making huge purchases and wild life choices without a second thought because they don't have to give a single shit and acting really weird if you suggest that it isn't normal to do stuff like that. If you have a comfortable income but can't switch to a more expensive apartment for funsies or quit your job bcs you just don't feel like working there anymore money be dammed or idk take a month long vacation overseas without considering the cost at all you're probably rich. Rich people don't give a fuck about spending money, they don't think about it at all. If you have to think about what you buy even if you do have the money to buy it just to make sure you still have enough for your needs and a small savings on the chance things go south you are not rich. If you cannot survive more than three months without a job you are not rich. $65k a year is barely enough to survive ONE MONTH without a job, it is NOT rich.

People on tumblr please get some real class consciousness challenge, you're not attacking your enemy, you're attacking someone else in the muddy trenches with you who just happens to own a nicer rain jacket while the actual rich people eat snacks from their covered, heated patio wondering why you're all making such a big deal about money.

We ask your questions so you don’t have to! Submit your questions to have them posted anonymously as polls.

[gukyi]

four weeks | kth

summary: four weeks. that’s how long you’re trapped on campus after missing your flight home because of a grossly overtime final. and as you’re walking around your empty campus, thinking that you could sink no lower, you find yourself alone in the art building with a certain freshman-year-dorm-neighbor from hell, and he’s got an offer that you don’t think you can refuse: he’s staying on campus this winter break as well, and he’s happy to let you live with him.

or, four weeks is all it takes to fall in love.

{enemies to lovers!au, roommates!au, college!au}

pairing: art and chemistry double major kim taehyung x female reader genre: fluff, angst, comedy, the whole nine!! word count: 20k warnings: alcohol consumption (be safe!), unwanted sexual advances (not between main characters and not at all explicit), and a ton of college tomfoolery. a/n: i’m finally finished with my very first semester of college! it was a lot, but finishing this fic was a treat after my damn finals, which were very stressful. this is part of the stranded for christmas collab, and i’m so honored to be doing this with such amazing, talented writers! please give them and their fics lots of love, and enjoy this super fun train wreck of a fic!

Admittedly, Global Politics in the Twentieth Century has never treated you particularly well. 

Your lecturer is about as interesting as grass growing, the readings are low quality scans of book pages with the tiniest font and absolutely no line spacing, and any friends you had in that class in the beginning of the semester dropped out of it by the time mid-September rolled around, leaving you trapped due to societal pressures and a History and Politics general education requirement you still have yet to finish. 

But, of all the things you could imagine Global Politics in the Twentieth Century doing to you, like charging you an exorbitant $200 dollars for a textbook you would never open anyway, burning your house down, or even straight up just murdering you, this is by far the worst. 

It’s bad enough that your final for Global Politics in the Twentieth Century is on the last possible day for finals at the latest possible time, but when the clock strikes 8:00PM and you have just about fucking had it with this semester, you realize that no one else is standing up. 

This panic intensifies as you begin thinking of all of the terrible things that could be the reasoning behind this: you’re just the dumbass who finished their final first and got all of the questions wrong, the clocks have yet to adjust to daylight savings and you think that it’s 8:00PM when really it’s 7:00PM, or, worst of all, your final is running overtime. 

You have only ever heard of horror stories about overtime finals. Things like having to cram the next three-hour final into one hour, or having to reschedule the final to some other time that is equally as conflicting. Stuff that is, to a normal human being, a minor to moderate inconvenience at best (and to an overdramatic college student—pure, unadulterated hell), but when this is the last final on the last day at the latest time, there are no other finals to be had. No other school-related scheduling conflicts barreling into you. 

It’s just your luck, really, that on the last day of the semester, at the latest time you are allowed to be here, Global Politics in the Twentieth Century would come back to bite you in the ass one last time. As if all the times you dozed off in class (or just plain skipped), forgot to turn in your reading analyses, and showed up late to your recitation are finally catching up to you. Like the very worst kind of karma that could ever befall you. 

Well, to be fair, it’s not as if the rest of the day has treated you any better. The entire time you’ve been awake on this fine December day has been an absolute trash can of a day. 

This is how the beginning of your very last day of the semester played out:

Your alarm went off at 8:00AM sharp, purposefully set that early so you could wake up and have a productive day studying before your final at 6:00PM.

You hit snooze and ended up waking up around 11:33AM.

You scrambled out of bed very inelegantly and attempted to get your life together before noon so you could at least have six hours worth of a productive study day before your final. 

You remembered that you hadn’t packed yet, so you spent the next hour frantically stuffing your belongings into the singular carry-on sized suitcase meant to last you through your month-long winter break. 

You also realized that you hadn’t done your laundry for the week (well, week and 6 days…), and you obviously want to bring clean clothes back home so you spend the next two hours doing your laundry and finishing up your packing.

By the time you finally managed to get the time to study, the panic had fully nestled itself into your bones, so you could not focus and spent the next three hours staring at your study guide and praying that osmosis would kick in so you could actually retain information. 

You left to go to your final five minutes later than you should have and then ran across campus (with absolutely no dignity left) in order to get there on time. 

You arrived at your final just in time, only for there to be technical difficulties with printing the exam because your professor is a procrastinator, just like you are.

The next thirty minutes were then spent contacting the IT department, attempting to fix the printer, having to go print in another building, and then coming back with the final exam to a room of aggravated students who thought that they would be thirty-minutes into the exam by now. 

You are taking the final exam. It’s stupid difficult and you’re absolutely going to tank it. 

You are watching as the final runs overtime for about half an hour.

You are watching as the final runs overtime for about an hour. 

You are watching as the final runs overtime for about an hour and a half.

And on your very last day of the fall semester, your final runs overtime by two whole hours because of some mystic force determined to ruin your life, and your flight heading back home took off fifteen minutes ago. 

You know, it could be worse. You could have failed all of your classes. Instead, you paid an exorbitant $500 to miss your flight, fail your Global Politics in the Twentieth Century final, and end up trapped on campus for all of winter break because you don’t have the money to buy another plane ticket at such late notice (or at all). 

So, it could be worse. 

You trudge out of your final exam and try not to burst into tears on your way back to your dormitory. Barely anybody is left on campus now that finals are officially over, but you still want to save that last shred of dignity. As you’re walking down the pathway, you begin to feel wet splotches on your face. For a moment, you think that they are fat tears rolling down your face, but you look at the cobblestone beneath your feet and realize that instead, it’s raining. 

The perfect weather to match your mood, if you’re being honest. 

Not wanting to get caught in a downpour, you end up taking refuge in the coffee shop connected to the art building on campus. It’s a genius business design, if you say so yourself, because there is no one more dependent on caffeine than sleep-deprived, eyebag-laden art students. Surprisingly enough, there are still people behind the counter bustling around, so you use the last of your university dollars to order a peppermint hot chocolate to warm your insides (but not your cold, dead soul). 

From there, you take a quick detour to explore the art building, a building you have, admittedly, never really taken much of a look at. It must be empty now, with everyone off campus—except you, of course—which gives you the perfect opportunity to wallow in peace while admiring art. 

Walking inside, you stare at your reflection in the enormous glass walls. Look at your tired eyes, slouched shoulders, lips pressed thin, and hands warmed only by the heat of your cardboard coffee cup. Count each acne mark and hair out of place. It’s almost like you’re watching yourself as you look in the mirror, a third person standing in the background. The audience. Like the person who’s looking back at you isn’t you at all. 

It's quite artistic, actually. Ironically enough.

But no matter how picturesque, how cinematic this particular moment of your life is, nothing can really soothe you after missing your flight, failing your final, and pretty much having the worst day of your entire life.

Just then, you hear footsteps echoing down the halls.

You assume that it must just be a professor leaving their office, or even maybe one of the hardworking security guards, but as you watch the glass walls to catch a glimpse of who's passing by, you realize that it's not a professor, or a security guard, or even a very large mouse scurrying across the floor.

"I thought I would be the last one in here," Kim Taehyung says when he spots you, stopping in his tracks with a canvas about half the size of him underneath his arm.

"So did I," you muse in response, not really wanting to turn around to save yourself the trouble of talking to him.

Still, Kim Taehyung has always been one hell of an observant guy, so by the time he's stopped behind you, he's already peering into the reflection of the glass windows to look at who he's talking to.

"Y/N?" He asks, walking up to you with his eyebrow raised. He comes over, standing next to you as you look at each other's reflections in the glass. "Never thought I'd see you in here."

"Me neither, to be honest," you say. Seeing as you aren't a visual studies major, you never really considered the art building to be a location of top priority. Until now, that is.

The last time you spoke to Kim Taehyung was the last day of your freshman year, when everybody was getting ready to move out, packing up their belongings and removing the fifteen thousand Command hooks stuck to their walls. You and him made eye contact as you placed the last of your boxes for the semester into those enormous Residential Services carts, glaring at each other from your adjacent rooms. 

“First year flew by, didn’t it?” Taehyung asks, smirk lacing his features. 

“Thank God it’s over,” you tell him. 

“Not gonna miss me, huh?” Taehyung winks, and it makes you want to take this cardboard box filled with all of the notebooks and lined paper and folders you used throughout the year and chuck it at his head. 

“Miss you?” You ask with a scoff. With the final box finally out of your room, you can officially lock the door behind you, closing the chapter on your very first year at university. “Please. Nothing makes me happier than the fact that I don’t have to live next to you anymore.”

“Why are you still here?” Taehyung asks, tapping his fingers on the side of the canvas underneath his arm. “Thought you’d be off campus by now.”

“I had a late final,” you say, pretending that your life and every aspect of it is fine when it is, in fact, not fine at all. The best case scenario is that Taehyung accepts your bullshit answer for what it is and heads off to do whatever it is that he does, leaving you alone so you can wallow in pity and ponder the meaning of life. The worst case scenario is that Taehyung stays. 

And Taehyung has always been very good at picking the latter. 

“Ah, sucks, for what class?” Taehyung asks. You can’t tell if he’s genuinely curious or just wants to interrupt your personal self-wallow time for as long as possible. 

“Global Politics in the Twentieth Century,” you tell him with a sigh. You don’t want to have to hear, say, read, or write that name ever again. 

“Oh, really? I took that class last semester,” Taehyung says with an eyebrow raised, surprised. “I thought it was super interesting.”

As if you needed any more proof that you and Kim Taehyung are exact opposites in every way. You are hardly surprised that Kim Taehyung enjoyed Global Politics in the Twentieth Century—not when the two of them have so much in common, like inconveniencing you, being annoying, and sort of always having it out for you. It’s like they were meant to be together. 

“I can’t say I thought the same,” you say pointedly, lips pursed into a tight line. 

“Ah, well, I never did peg you for a history buff,” Taehyung says with a shrug of his shoulders. 

“Why are you still on campus? I thought art students had to turn in their final projects on the first day of exams,” you ask, turning the focus onto him. It’s obvious that he has no intention of leaving you alone, so your next best option is to interrogate him until the tension between the two of you is so suffocating, so thick and heavy, that he wants to leave. 

“I had a couple of chem finals after I finished up my art classes,” Taehyung says. Right. You forgot he was doing a double major. “And, my parents are actually travelling this winter break, so I was planning on staying on campus. Didn’t really want to go back to an empty house, you know?”

After the day you’ve had, you can think of nothing better than opening the door to your home, knowing that you have the entire place to yourself and can spend the night in your bedroom, watching Netflix. 

“You’re staying on campus?” You ask. Great. The only two people who will be on campus this winter recess are you and Kim Taehyung. Fantastic. 

“Yeah,” Taehyung says, clearly unaffected. He seems particularly unbothered by the fact that he can’t go home, almost like he’s been looking forward to having the entire university to himself. “You’re about to head home, then, aren’t you? Just taking a quick break in the art building?”

Well, almost to himself. 

The chances of running into Taehyung this winter break, despite being probably the only two people on campus, is still slim. It’s a big campus, and there are people who are not part of the university that walk on campus all the time. 

And still, you don’t know what you’ll do if you lie to Taehyung and tell him you’re about to fly home, and then bump into him at the local coffee shop. You might just perish. That might be what happens. 

So, for once in your life, you suck it up and tell the truth. For once. 

“Actually, I missed my flight because of my final running overtime, so I’m sort of stuck here,” you tell him, and as the words leave your lips it feels like your whole body gets weighed down, like you’re cemented to the floor.

It’s only then that Taehyung actually turns to face you, so you aren’t standing shoulder to shoulder and staring at the rain pattering on the pavement outside. You look at him, meeting his eyes and to your surprise, they aren’t filled with mirth. He hasn’t got this pleased grin on his face. He’s not milking this situation for what it could be milked for at all. He could be standing here, bathing in the satisfaction of your timely demise, and he’s not. 

He actually looks quite sad. 

“Really?” He asks, genuine. 

“Yeah,” you say, and it’s then that you accept your fate, resign yourself to the fact that you’re trapped on campus with no way (and no money) to get home, and try to look for the silver lining. “So, I’ve actually got to get going, grab my stuff and everything.”

“Oh, do you live off campus?” Taehyung asks. “We should get together sometime this break. Who else are we gonna talk to, right?” 

Spending time with Taehyung on your lonely-ass winter break sounds like the absolute worst thing in the entire world. It’s been two years since the last time you were forced to be within fifty feet of each other, so even having this conversation is taking you by surprise.

“No, I’m still staying on campus. But my dorm is closing for the winter break, so I need to go and find an Airbnb or something to stay somewhere,” you say, feeling your heart break at the notion of spending even more money this winter break after having watched your $500 dollar airplane ticket get flushed down the toilet. 

Taehyung stays silent, eyes gazing at the lines between the linoleum tiles on the floor. He’s stopped tapping on the side of his canvas, a painting which you still haven’t fully gotten a glimpse of. In the quiet of the art building, the dust settles, and you wait for Taehyung to say something. Anything. 

After a few more seconds, you decide that the two of you have been standing in awkward silence for long enough. 

“Well, I’ll see you around, I guess,” you say nervously, letting out an unnatural and forced laugh as you turn on your feet and begin to head towards the exit. You have no idea where you’re going to go or what you’re going to do, but what you do know is that you have to be out of your building by noon tomorrow, so you’ve got less than a day to figure it out. 

And then, Taehyung says the worst thing he could possibly say at this given moment:

“Do you wanna stay with me?”

You stop dead in your tracks. 

“What?”

“You don’t have to say yes,” Taehyung immediately clarifies, as if that makes the offer any less sudden. “But I live in an off-campus apartment year round, so you could always stay with me if you’d like. You wouldn’t have to book an Airbnb or anything. But you don’t have to.”

You close your eyes, feeling your chest rise and sink as you inhale and exhale. You can’t believe you’re actually considering his offer. You can’t believe that Taehyung would willingly offer up his personal abode, his private apartment to you, the freshman year next-door neighbor who knocked on his door every six hours to tell him to shut the fuck up. You cannot believe that you are on the verge of accepting. 

“Are you sure?” You ask, both eyebrows raised. Yes, the idea of free lodging and no-hassle appeals greatly to you, but you’re not so certain that Taehyung or you actually want this. After all, you spent all of freshman year hating on each other’s living habits as personal hobbies of yours. “You don’t have to offer just because I don’t have a place to stay. Seriously.”

“No,” Taehyung says, taking a step towards you. It’s barely a foot, but it feels like he’s a thousand miles closer to you than he was before. “I mean it. If you want to stay with me, you’re welcome to. I have a futon in my living room that you can sleep on. I’m being serious.”

You cannot believe that he’s asking this. 

You cannot believe you’re considering this. 

You cannot believe you’re about to say yes to this. 

“You really mean it?” You ask one more time, just so you can be certain. You’d hardly be surprised if this whole thing was just a mindfuck. 

“I do,” Taehyung says. “No matter what, I don’t think anybody should be alone for the holidays.”

“Then yes,” you say, letting Taehyung catch up to you as you begin to walk towards the exit, step by step. “I’d really appreciate it.” You turn to look at him, your eyes meeting his own chocolate brown ones, nearly ink black in the dark. You can’t offer much, certainly not anything to top this gracious proposal, but you smile, and he smiles back, and you think that’s enough. 

Your first order of business is trekking back to your dormitory and grabbing your fully-packed suitcase. At least spending an hour shoving as many of your belongings as possible into a tiny carry-on has its benefits despite you not setting foot in the airport. 

“Been a long time since we’ve done this,” Taehyung comments mindlessly as you walk through campus, following the cobblestone path as a shortcut to his apartment. 

“Done what?” You ask snarkily. “Hung out with each other?” You scoff. You and Taehyung spent all of freshman year skirting around each other, desperately trying to avoid contact while also banging on each other’s doors every ten minutes. It was essentially two semesters worth of shouting at each other through walls and sneering when you actually locked eyes. 

“Talked,” Taehyung simplifies, because he’s right. 

“Isn’t that what we were aiming for?” You ask with a raised eyebrow, turning to look at him as your suitcase wheel skips on a stone out of place. “I thought we had reached that consensus already.” It’s been a year and a half since you last spoke to each other. You were almost confident that, without any overlapping classes, you would be able to keep that streak going long after graduation. 

As it turns out, things change. 

“I don’t know if we ever actually agreed on that,” Taehyung says, thinking back. “Almost like it went…” he pauses, and you can’t be sure if it’s for dramatic effect or because he actually doesn’t know what to say. “Unspoken.”

The irony is not lost on you. In fact, it hits you smack dab in the forehead as you watch Taehyung’s curious expression morph into the sleazy frat boy one he wore so much back then. He looks very pleased with his pun. It makes you want to sock him in the face. 

And as it turns out, some things never change. 

You resist the urge to punch him in the shoulder because he offered you a place to stay for this break and you sort of (actually, really) owe him big time right now. But that doesn’t mean you can’t send a disapproving frown, which seems to do the trick. 

“I distinctly remember how you were so excited to never have to live next to me again when we moved out,” Taehyung says like he’s remembering a fun trip to the zoo. Almost like he looks upon the last time you ever interacted with each other fondly. 

You mentally sigh. If only freshman year you knew what was going to happen in the middle of your junior year. If only your final hadn’t run overtime by two hours. If only you had booked a later flight. 

If only. 

“I don’t remember that at all,” you lie like a liar, saying the words as the picture of you snarkily spitting them at Taehyung at the end of your freshman year plays in your brain on repeat. 

“You sure about that, Y/N?” Taehyung says, turning to look you up and down. He’s always been such a people reader, and you’ve always felt so helplessly transparent in front of him. Even back then. Even now. “Because I don’t really think that your memory is that bad.”

“Nope, no, I don’t,” you say quickly, trying to get Taehyung to stop eyeing you like you’re a question on an exam that he thinks is suspiciously easy. 

“Well, I suppose it doesn’t matter then, does it?” Taehyung muses as you round the street corner and his apartment complex comes into view. “Since we’ll be living together, anyway.”

“Miss you? Please. Nothing makes me happier than the fact that I don’t have to live next to you anymore.”

Before you can wheel your cart down the hallway and kiss your freshman year goodbye, Taehyung opens his mouth and says one more thing. You almost don’t hear him, too busy reminding yourself that you’ll never have to see him again, but then he says, “One day, Y/N, you’re going to realize that we’re closer than you think.”

When you walk into Taehyung’s apartment, your eyes zero in on these three things: the navy blue futon pushed up against the wall by his television and the fact that it doesn’t look like the kind of used furniture from off of the street that most college kids typically resort to, the little wooden kitchen table that looks straight out of a family-owned Italian restaurant (looks like the two of you will be eating dinner together), and the paintings on the walls. 

“Did you paint these?” Is the first thing you ask once you’re inside, putting your suitcase up against the wall as Taehyung takes off his coat. 

“Those? Yeah, I did them early last year. My walls looked so damn plain without anything on them.”

In freshman year, Taehyung seemed like the kind of artsy hipster who shopped at Urban Outfitters and put vinyl records on his wall with Command Strips but never actually listened to them. 

But the pieces on his walls aren’t vinyls of bands like Arctic Monkeys and Modern Baseball. They’re paintings, oil and acrylics and even a bit of charcoal. Still life and portraits and shadows. 

You had never seen one of his paintings before. You never imagined you’d ever want to, or even get the chance to. And now, you’re standing in the middle of his apartment, and you’re surrounded by them. 

“They’re…” You trail off, eyes bouncing from wall to wall as you take all of them in. There’s at least ten, one, if not two on each wall in sight. His bedroom is probably filled with them. His apartment’s not enormous, rather small since it’s only got one bedroom, but the paintings make the whole place bigger. Make it feel full of life. 

“They’re alright,” Taehyung finishes. He’s already grabbing extra blankets from the storage closet in the side of the wall. “They were assignments we had during the semester so I figured that they’d be put to good use on my wall.”

“It’s very impressive,” you admit. “Kind of a flex, but an impressive flex.” There is something so perfectly Taehyung about the fact that he’s got art all over his walls, but they’re his very own pieces that he has framed and hanging, on display for the entire world to see if they’d like. 

“They’d collect dust otherwise,” he says with a shrug. He tosses two blankets and a pillow your way, letting them plop onto the futon. “Are those enough blankets? It can get fucking cold in here, so I don’t want you to freeze to death or anything.”

And for a moment, you think that Taehyung has actually outgrown his asshole-y freshman days, maturing into someone with an actual moral backbone.

“How considerate,” you say sarcastically, “but I think I’ll be alright. I’m a big, strong girl.”

“Just don’t come crawling into my bed if you want a taste of that weighted-blanket life,” Taehyung says, pretending to flip his hair. “Though, I wouldn’t blame you if you did want to sleep with me.”

With a pillow right at your disposal, you waste no time grabbing it and chucking it straight at Taehyung’s face. He easily dodges, having spotted the move from a mile away, and chuckles. 

“Come on, Y/N, you can do better than that,” he says disapprovingly, shaking his head as he makes his way to the kitchen. “Your arm was much stronger back in freshman year.”

Scowling, you watch as he puts on the kettle to boil, letting the water begin to bubble as he goes about his business like he doesn’t have a guest in his living room that absolutely can’t stand him. 

And you realize that maybe Taehyung’s a couple of years older, a couple of years wiser, but that doesn’t make him a couple of years any less unbearable.

If you were a sleep-deprived engineering student three cans of Monster deep who, in their 4AM haze, invented a time machine to go back to freshman year, and you told your eighteen-year-old self that you would be living under the same damn roof as Kim Taehyung in two years time, freshman year you would probably sock you in the face. And ask you if you changed majors. Which, you did.

It’s not a far reach to wonder why. By the time October rolled around, the two of you had already established yourselves as archenemies until the end of time. 

It was a natural progression, really. Two tiny dorm rooms right next to each other, two beds pressed up against opposite sides of the same paper-thin wall, and two disgruntled freshmen trying their hardest not to die of alcohol poisoning. 

Now, you don’t have a track record for going to sleep at a reasonable hour. In fact, you don’t think you’ve gone to bed before 11PM since middle school. But is it really that irrational of you to want to get some well-deserved shuteye at two in the morning after a long day of procrastination and a long night of doing the studying you should have done during the day? Your roommate is fast asleep across from you, having gone to sleep at midnight like a regular college student who has her life together, which means that she’s immune to the fact that right next door, you can hear nothing but pounding drums making the very linoleum floor of your dormitory shake. 

Scowling, you scramble out of bed, sliding on your shoes to go give a certain Kim Taehyung a bit of a reprimanding. 

Why the fuck does he listen to heavy drums at two in the morning? What the fuck is he doing? Does he not own headphones, or anything that might restrict the sound to his own two ears and nothing else? Does he not have any respect for the people next door to him that might also have to listen to the sound of a thumping bass while they’re trying to go to sleep?

Some of you have 9AM’s tomorrow morning. And by some of you, you mean you. 

You quietly shut the door behind you so as not to wake your roommate, dead-bolting it so you don’t get locked out and have to trudge down to the Help Desk looking like a tired piece of non-recyclable garbage, and immediately bang on Kim Taehyung’s door. He hasn’t got a roommate, and you know he’s awake, which means that if he doesn’t respond, you’ll know why. 

Surprisingly enough, he does, opening the door and immediately grinning once he sees who’s on the other side, like he can’t get enough of the fact that his mere existence bothers you. 

“It’s 2AM,” you tell him, in lieu of a greeting. 

He checks his watch. “That it is.”

“Would you mind turning down the music? I’m trying to go to sleep.”

“This late, Y/N?” Taehyung asks, an eyebrow raised. “No wonder you’re always so cranky.”

“Maybe it’s because my next-door neighbor plays loud fucking music when I’m trying to go to sleep!” You say, already beginning to raise your voice like a loser who can’t control her emotions.

Which is exactly what you are, actually. So this is very on brand for you. 

“Hmm, never thought about it that way,” Taehyung says innocently. He’s got a gleam in his eye that says otherwise. 

“I’m being very nice to you right now, Kim Taehyung. Please turn your music down. Because it’s loud and you’re probably bothering other people as well,” you say, restraining yourself. If you were any more sleep-deprived you’d storm into his room and pound in his face like it was the fucking drums he’s listening to. 

“But you’re my only neighbor,” Taehyung says, a bitter reminder that you were unlucky enough to be the second-to-last room in the corridor, and he, the very last one. 

You inhale, trying to not lose your cool despite having probably already lost it. Kim Taehyung makes you want to tear your eyeballs out. Or buy heavy-duty earplugs off of Amazon Prime. The thing is, one of those options costs you money, and one is entirely free. So, it’s not difficult to see which one you’re leaning towards. 

“Taehyung, please turn your music down, or so help me God. I’m asking nicely,” you can feel the carbon dioxide paths coming from your nose as you breathe, in and out and in and out. 

“Just for you, Y/N,” Taehyung says with a grin. God. You could just straight sock him in the face right now. “It helps me focus, but so does getting to see you.”

“Perish immediately,” you tell him sharply before pulling the door shut, marching back off to your room. 

True to his word, Kim Taehyung does turn off his music. Or puts in headphones. At least he’s conceded.

That is, until you wake up to a crash of glass later that morning at 7AM, coming from only one direction. 

The fact of the matter is, everything you and Taehyung did that year bothered the other so immensely that hatred, pure, unadulterated dislike, was really the only thing that could have come out of it. 

“You still listening to loud ass drums in the middle of the night?” You ask, eyeing the speakers by Taehyung’s television as you sit on his couch (as far apart from each other as possible) and eat some leftover spaghetti. 

“I invested in some AirPods as a treat to myself last year, so yes, but don’t worry,” Taehyung says. He’s mindlessly flicking through the available Hulu options on his TV, severely unimpressed by every one of them. 

“Wow, AirPods, sounds like you’re moving up in the world,” you say callously. “At least I don’t have to listen to it with you anymore.”

“I wasn’t kidding when I said it helped me focus,” Taehyung says, all matter-of-fact about it. “It was from a Spotify playlist of modern orchestral music. You should give it a listen, it really gets you into the zone.”

“My relationship with classical music has, unfortunately, been tainted by a certain someone,” you remind him, taking the time to shoot him a glare just in case he doesn’t already know who exactly is at fault. 

“What a shame, you might actually like it,” Taehyung says sadly, shaking his head. 

“So what are the speakers for, then? If not for your fuckin’ drums,” you ask, motioning to them again as you slurp up the last of your spaghetti. It’s not as if you’ve got some sort of sacred reputation to protect in front of him. He’s seen you at your best (the first day of freshman year, when there was still light in your eyes), and at your worst (2AM, coming out of a drunken stupor, and bedhead-ridden). Like an ex-boyfriend, or something. 

“My friends really like singing karaoke,” Taehyung says. He points to the bluetooth microphones underneath the television as extra proof. 

“Why does that not surprise me,” you muse to yourself. Taehyung always struck you as someone that needs people not to calm him down, but to elevate his already boisterous personality. Friends who are equally as unabashed as he is. 

“Since you’re here for a whole month, we should try it some time,” Taehyung suggests, taking the empty bowl from your hands and heading back to the sink to wash up. 

“You need help with that?” You ask, immediately getting up because even if Taehyung has a tendency to drive you up the wall, you’re still going to be a good guest.

“No, don’t sweat it,” Taehyung says with a shrug. “You know, I have karaoke for All I Want For Christmas Is You. Super seasonal, right?” 

You dust off your hands from where you’re standing, loitering in that weird halfway point between his kitchen and his living room. Checking the clock underneath his television, you realize that it’s already past ten. And while you haven’t gone to sleep this early in a while, being in Taehyung’s apartment makes you feel all sorts of strange. Subdued and exhausted, too grateful to be your normal aggressive and witty self. And after such a long goddamn day, passing out on his navy blue futon seems like absolute heaven. 

“Not right now,” you say, shaking your head. Karaoke is something that friends do with other friends. And despite currently living under the same roof, you and Kim Taehyung are not friends. 

(But perhaps you will be. And that’s the scary part.)

You sigh, absolutely tanked. It’s been a stupidly long day. “Maybe later.”

Living with Taehyung is a sort of strange limbo you never, in a million years, pictured yourself in. You aren’t close enough to be friends but you’ve matured out of being the true enemies you had both envisioned the yourselves as in freshman year. The both of you walk around his apartment like you’re afraid to talk to the other, waiting patiently for the bathroom when the other person’s inside, trying to keep yourself busy with nonexistent work (it is winter break, after all) and the apps on your phones. 

This is the sort of thing you dreamed of when you were a freshman. A Kim Taehyung that you could co-exist with peacefully. Someone who didn’t spend every waking moment of his life making every waking moment of yours unbearable. You used to find excuses to sleep overnight in the library (it was open 24/7, after all) just so you wouldn’t have to go back to your dorm and see his stupid face. Now, the two of you sit on opposite ends of the couch minding your own goddamn business and doing two totally unrelated activities. In silence. The only noises being his refrigerator/freezer combo when it starts making ice and the sounds of your fingers hitting the keyboards on your laptops. Maybe he’s playing a video game on the Playstation 4 he keeps out in the living room, but he has headphones on and isn’t saying a word. 

It’s a very strange sort of limbo indeed, because no opportunities arise for you to become friends nor do any arise for you to become enemies. At this rate, you’ll live together for the month-long winter break and when it ends, you’ll go back to never speaking to each other again. 

And that, strangely enough, makes you sad. Makes you want to reach out to him, try and build up a relationship that last ended in absolute chaos so that when you leave this place, it won’t have been for naught. You will have gained something from it, no matter how small. 

But just like usual, Taehyung beats you to it. 

“Hey,” he says one day, walking into the living room and already pulling on his overcoat. “You free right now?”

“Yeah, why?” You ask, shutting your laptop as you turn to him. He’s all dressed up and you’ve been wearing the same hoodie for the past forty-eight hours. 

“Let’s get hotpot. I’m freezing and I want some hot soup and meat.”

So, you go and get hotpot. 

Like any normal university with more than approximately three East Asians enrolled, there’s a hotpot place right off campus that many a college student frequent. You have, admittedly, not been since freshman year, but this winter break you seem to be reaching back into all of those memories anyway, like a can of worms. Memory worms. 

“I’m starving,” Taehyung says as the two of you sit down. He’s already opening the menu, eyeing all of the different ingredients he can order for a simple All-You-Can-Eat fare. “Plus, I’ve been craving hotpot for weeks now.”

As if on cue, his stomach grumbles and you can hear it from across the booth.

“Even my tummy knows,” Taehyung says, placing a palm to his belly to soothe it. “Have you gotten hotpot before?”

“Yeah, but it was a while ago. I just never had the time to go for a whole two hours and pig out on food,” you say with a sigh. It’s been so long that you barely remember what it tastes like. 

“Then we’ll spend every minute that we’re allowed to here, eating as much food as we want and gaining a few pounds while we’re at it,” Taehyung says, determined. The waiter comes by to pour you both some water and he already begins to order, pointing to about fifteen different things on the menu before the waiter whizzes off. 

“I don’t think I heard a single word you told that guy,” you say candidly. Taehyung listed everything off so quickly that it went right over your head. 

“I just ordered a lot of food, so be prepared,” Taehyung says like it’s a promise. He’s got this glint in his eye, one that tells you that you should be glad you came on a fairly-empty stomach because it’s about to be filled to the brim. 

And prepared you are. Within five minutes of Taehyung ordering, there are plates and dishes and boards of food in front of you and a steaming pot of broth in the middle. There’s so much on the table that you can hardly see the marble table top underneath. 

Taehyung dives right in, clearly an experienced hotpot eater. He grabs two bowls filled with various sauces and pops a couple of the vegetables into his mouth as he waits for the broth to boil. And when it begins to bubble, he immediately begins dumping everything in sight into it, from meat to noodles to vegetables. It all looks ridiculously appetizing. 

When the first round of hotpot is over and done with, you already feel yourself starting to get sleepy just from the consumption overload. Taehyung, on the other hand, has apparently no limit and is already ordering more, pointing to another fifteen things on the menu. 

“Never thought we’d be doing this, did you?” Taehyung asks, and you can hear the knowing tone in his voice. Like he already knows how you’re going to answer him. 

“I have to admit that I never did,” you say. It must the food that’s softened you up. No wonder Taehyung invited you to a place where you can literally eat as much as you want in a two-hour timeframe. 

“This is nice, though, isn’t it?” He asks. 

And for once in your life, you agree. It is nice. Not just the food (though the food is very nice) but being with someone on a winter break that would otherwise be overwhelmingly lonely. Eating out with someone, even if it’s someone with whom your relationship isn’t all that strong, isn’t that sturdy. It’s nice. Because it means that, somewhere along the way, you both wanted something to change for the better. 

“It is.” You nod. “Way better than all the times we fought during freshman year.”

“Remind me why we never went to our RA to resolve things like we should have?” Taehyung says, but he doesn’t make it sound like you both made a mistake. He asks because he’s curious, and because the past is the past. 

“I think we were both too fucking prideful for our own good,” you say, shaking your head. You now would disapprove of you in freshman year so strongly. “We thought that we could either resolve it ourselves or spend the rest of our lives hating each other.”

“Isn’t that crazy?” Taehyung asks, holding up his water like it’s a glass of vintage red wine from the 1800’s. “That we thought that we could just spend the rest of our lives hating each other?”

“I was prepared to do it,” you say, taking another piece of meat from the hotpot in front of you, letting the steam waft from it like a tiny campfire. “With how big this school is, I was convinced that you and I would never have to see each other again. Never have the opportunity to change how we felt about each other.”

“But that’s not how life works, Y/N,” Taehyung tells you, looking into your eyes like he’s trying to reach into your soul, pick apart the memories of freshman year and watch as your relationship deteriorated as each day went by. “It doesn’t matter if we see each other every day for the rest of our lives or if, after this, we never say another word to each other. You will always have the opportunity to change how you feel about someone, even if you aren’t with them. Even if you aren’t seeing them at all.” He takes a deep breath, and reaches over the steaming pot of soup to nudge your shoulder with his finger, ever so slightly. It makes you look up at him, meet his dark brown eyes with your own, foggy from the steam. “That’s what makes us human, Y/N. We’re human because we can change.”

Your heart, still and silent, begins to thump. 

“Do you wanna go to New York?”

“Today?”

It’s early in the morning on Christmas Eve, and the two of you are wide awake after Taehyung’s neighbors a floor below him called the fire department as an early wake-up call for the entire complex. You’ve always been a light sleeper—Taehyung made sure of that in freshman year—but even he woke up as the fire trucks pulled up to the fire lane next to the apartment building. He came stumbling out of his room in nothing but a t-shirt two sizes too big and sweatpants hanging low on his hips, locks of his hair sticking every which way, face illuminated by the blue, red, and orange lights of the emergency vehicles beneath the window. 

And he stayed like that, even as the noise died down and the sun rose. He marched around looking like he had just rolled out of bed, barely sparing himself a second glance in the reflection of his refrigerator. 

“Yeah,” Taehyung responds like it’s obvious. “If we hopped on a bus now we could make it there by nine and spend the day there. How about it?”

“You mean, right now?” You ask, just as clarification. College and its many features have forced you to grow used to spontaneity, but it usually came in the form of “I’m hungry, so I am going to eat an entire bag of Hot Cheetos at this exact moment” or “Yes, my bank account is crying but these pants are very cute,” and not, “Do you wanna go to New York?”

“In a bit. Buses leave from here every hour to go to New York, especially since it’s the holiday season. Tickets are ten dollars. We could do it, if you’d like,” Taehyung says casually, like he’s suggesting that the two of you go grocery shopping or something else equally mundane. 

“Just for the day?” You ask, a girl of both many questions and a shocked expression. 

“Sure,” Taehyung says with a shrug, biting into a tomato as if it were a goddamn apple. “We can go to a museum or two, eat a nice lunch or dinner, and go ice skating at Rockefeller. See the tree, too. It’ll get us in the holiday spirit, don’t you think?”

And normally an outing to New York would have you planning weeks in advance, organizing reservations and buying tickets for entry into exhibits, but it’s winter break and you’ve got more free time than you know what to do with. 

And maybe you’d hate to admit it, but you need someone like Taehyung to get you off of your ass and out of the house, do something fun and spontaneous like college students do in the movies. 

Taehyung is practically a movie portrayal of a college student in real life. He’s spontaneous, secretive, sage. He’s artsy and worldly, paints but is also extremely smart and well-educated. He lives in a quaint off-campus apartment by himself and spends his days making friends and keeping busy. He loves to tease you, and has that sort of lopsided smirk that all casanovas do. And he is, as much as you’d hate to admit it, always been something of a looker. He’s got the same sort of handsome, classic look that young European men in paintings from the eighteenth century have, a portrait of them in the prime of their lives. One wink and he’d send every preteen girl in the audience to their knees.

And you? Well, you suppose you’re the tragically unlucky female lead who has to live with him until classes resume. 

Taehyung’s standing in the kitchen, leaning on the counter island as he scrolls for bus tickets on his phone. “There’s a bus leaving from the station in thirty minutes. Think we can make it?”

It might be the fact that you’ve been holed up in Taehyung’s apartment for the past forty-eight hours that makes you say yes. Or it’s the desperation to do something, anything, literally anything, to keep yourself busy this break. 

Or maybe, just maybe, it’s that little voice in the back of your chest, one buried in the depths of your heart, that makes you go. Because there is something so wonderfully exhilarating about being spontaneous.  And there is something even more exciting about it being with someone you know. 

You grin. “Let’s do it.”

Two hours later, the two of you are standing outside Penn Station in New York City, staring at the road signs to try and orient yourself. It’s chilly and a little windy, but the sun beats down regardless, shadows of skyscrapers cast along the streets. 

You pull out your phone to pull up the Maps app, looking up directions, but Taehyung just begins to walk down 7th Avenue, not a care in the world. 

“Where are you going?” You say quickly, scrambling to catch up to him. This early in the morning, your breath still turns to fog as you jog towards him to meet his abnormally long strides.

“Do you want to go to the Met, MOMA, or Guggenheim?” Taehyung asks simply, like he’s trying to decide which type of Doritos to get in the chips aisle. 

“Uh…” you are, admittedly, not that particular to the art that you’ll see. Art does not have as much of an immediate relevance to you as other things in your life, like your bank account, or your final semester grades. “Why don’t you pick the museum, and I’ll pick the restaurant we go to?”

“Deal,” Taehyung says, that same devilish gleam in his eyes, a trick (or two) up his sleeves. Only this time, you aren’t afraid of what he’s got in store. 

You find that you are very much looking forward to it. 

Twenty minutes later sees the both of you standing outside the gigantic glass doors of the MOMA, surrounded by a pitch black exterior about as edgy and contemporary as the pieces of art inside. 

“You never struck me as a modern art kind of guy,” you tell Taehyung as the both of you walk inside, glass windows and ceilings on every side of you and a bustling crowd right in front of you. Modern art seems rather stuffy. And perhaps, two years ago, you would have equated Taehyung to such, but now, stuffiness couldn’t be the furthest adjective to describe him. He may be a little obnoxious and overwhelmingly charismatic, but he is certainly not stuffy. 

“I prefer Impressionism and the subsequent periods,” Taehyung tells you, another fact you never knew but happily stow away. “But I am, admittedly, a bitch for modern art, no matter how goddamn stupid it is.”

“Good to know we’re spending our money on a museum that will definitely be worth our while,” you say dryly, taking the two tickets from the woman behind the desk. You pick up a map while you’re at it, almost certain to get lost in this maze of a museum, but Taehyung is already zooming off, forcing you to scurry through the herds of people just to keep up his pace. 

“Do you know where we’re going?” You ask, entirely serious. You fumble to open up the map and suddenly you’ve got a piece of shiny paper larger than your backpack in your hands, overwhelmed. 

Taehyung stops, the two of you standing right by the middle of a doorway, blocking everybody’s path. And he places his hands on top of yours, lowering the map as you gaze up at him, wondering why the heck you haven’t moved to the side so you aren’t inconveniencing the thousands of people roaming the museum. His brows are soft, a little furrowed, like someone began to knit them together but then forgot halfway through. Like he’s thinking. Like he wants to tell you something. 

“No,” Taehyung says softly, large hands enveloping yours as he begins to fold the map back up, “I don’t know where we’re going.”

You open your mouth, about to prove your point, but Taehyung continues. 

“But I don’t need to. Because we’re supposed to get lost,” he tells you, honest, candid, and true. “That’s the whole point. It’s not about the destination, it’s about the journey.”

You scoff, heart a little warm on the inside but wit still sharp. “You sound like an infomercial for a cruise.”

Taehyung laughs, tilting his head back in the way that says that he means it. “I’m serious, Y/N. Please. We don’t need a map. We can guide each other. All we need is faith, trust…” He pauses, leaning in and waiting for you to finish his sentence. 

Begrudgingly, you give in, mostly because he’s too naturally charming not to. “And pixie dust.”

Taehyung grins, satisfied, before he catches you by surprise, takes your hand in his, and pulls you into the elevator. 

Much like the corrupt businesses whose main offices are only a few minutes walk away, you go from the top down. Taehyung says that it is like a very, very long slide. You say that it’s an extremely slow walk. 

He’s an art student. You don’t really know what else you were expecting. He stares at each piece until it bores into his eyes, fills up another cup in his soul, overflowing with color, with light and meaning and everything in between. Every now and then, he and you stop at the same one, inspecting each and every detail, and Taehyung will lean to the side and whisper in your ear. 

He will tell you what he thinks of the medium, what he thinks of this piece and what he thinks of the positioning of that specific object. He tells you not how he interprets it in the eyes of the artist, but what it means to him, and how he perceives it. And, as the hours pass, you realize that, while you have been in museums before, you had never felt like you were truly there. And here you are, standing in front of priceless pieces of art with a boy in love with art beside you, and he holds your hand as he takes you through what brings him more joy than anything else. 

(Well, besides perhaps, chemistry.)

When you reach the first painting and sculpture floor, Taehyung lets out an audible gasp. 

You round the corner and before you know it, you’re standing in front of what could very well be the most famous painting of the nineteenth century. 

“I forgot it was here,” Taehyung says distantly, like he’s forgotten who he’s talking to. In the ink black of his pupils, you can see the oil painting reflected, the thick blue and yellow brushstrokes, each and every line on the canvas. 

“Now, this piece I’m familiar with,” you say, standing next to him and staring up at The Starry Night, an artistic feat, worth more than probably a hundred times your tuition, and a legacy. The legacy that The Starry Night left behind is one that you see still reflected today. You see it in all of the other people in this little room, clambering over one another just so they can get a glimpse. You see it in the little children who draw self-portraits in art class, Sharpies and markers and crayons littering the page. 

And you see it in the boy next to you, who loved something so much he knew that he would be doing it for the rest of his life. He would be following a legacy, forever, until he forged one of his own. You look not at the art but as Kim Taehyung gazes at it, memorizing each and every stroke and imprinting it onto his brain. And you finally realize what art means: passion. It means that it fills you up, flows through your blood and into your heart, consumes you. And it means that the only thing you can do to prevent it from eating you alive is to spread it, and let others get a taste of the madness. 

“It really is beautiful, isn’t it,” you muse. You don’t know much about art but when there is something so mesmerizing, so stunning, in front of you, it’s difficult not to notice. 

You feel Taehyung turn his head, letting the gaze of his piercing brown eyes rest upon your figure for a split second before he turns back. “It is,” he says. 

The way that the two of you go through art museums, by the time you emerge, it’s already dark and the streets are beginning to empty as tourists and cityfolk alike find places to eat, walking into every bar, restaurant, cafe, and house on the hunt for a good meal, whether homemade or curated. You had spent nearly an hour in the gift shop alone, laughing at the overpriced t-shirts and kitschy pillows. 

“Where to next, m’lady?” Taehyung asks as you push open the glass doors and let the biting cold hit your noses. 

“You know, we were so busy in there that I didn’t even have time to find a nice place to eat tonight,” you admit sheepishly. 

“That’s alright,” Taehyung says with a shrug. “I like surprises. Spontaneity is my thing.”

“You don’t say,” you comment sagely, making Taehyung roll his eyes. 

Knowing that it’s nearly impossible to get a reservation now, you and Taehyung make your way south, following the flow of traffic heading towards Times Square and keeping an eye open for any places that look relatively nice and busy, but not too busy, the perfect sign of both a delicious and available restaurant. 

After walking for a few blogs, cuddling together (in a totally platonic way) to preserve as much body heat as possible in the now freezing weather, air no longer warmed by the sun’s rays, you stumble upon a tiny hole in the wall Mediterranean place. You can’t really see anything inside due to the fog on the window, forming from the combination of cold air and hot, but Taehyung does a quick google search and says that it’s a modern Mediterranean restaurant that specializes in pizza. Google says it has two dollar signs. You hear the word pizza, and everything pretty much goes out of the window. 

“Hi,” Taehyung says as you squeeze through the little hallway to get to the host, voice warm and silky. “Table for two?”

“Your last name, sir?” The man asks. 

“Oh, we don’t have a reservation,” Taehyung says with a shake of his head. You two are college students. It’s not like you plan ahead anyway. 

“That’s okay, we still ask for every customer’s name for a more personalized experience,” the host says. He leans forward, eyes wide, waiting for Taehyung to respond. 

“Kim,” Taehyung says simply as the host gathers two menus and a wine list. 

“Right this way, Mr. and Mrs. Kim,” the host says, and you open your mouth to correct him (Because you are not married. You’re not. You’re not even dating. This is not a date. It’s not a date, right?), but Taehyung puts a finger to his lips and tells you to zip it. It’s almost like he’s enjoying this. 

For the rest of the evening, the wait staff all address you and Taehyung as Mr. and Mrs. Kim, which is absolutely outrageous for multiple reasons: you are college students, you both look like college students, you’re not dating, you don’t act like you’re dating (other than the hand-holding and cuddling which was purely out of survival and nothing else), and most importantly, you’re not interested in each other like that. That part is obvious. Isn’t it?

When you order a glass of champagne each they call you Mr. and Mrs. Kim. When Taehyung has a question about one of the ingredients on one of the pizzas they call you Mr. and Mrs. Kim. When you order your food they call you Mr. and Mrs. Kim. When they come by to clarify Taehyung’s request of no anchovies they call you Mr. and Mrs. Kim. When they bring these massive pizzas and place them down on your table, wishing you a pleasant meal they call you Mr. and Mrs. Kim. 

Mr. and Mrs. Kim, they call you. 

“Everything alright, Mr. and Mrs. Kim?” Your waiter asks as you’re plowing through your individual pizzas very inelegantly. 

“Yes,” Taehyung grins cheesily. “Thank you very much.”

He’s positively beaming. 

“You’re really enjoying this, aren’t you?” You ask, a single eyebrow raised. 

“This pizza is really good,” Taehyung tells you. 

“Not that,” you say with a roll of your eyes. You know that Taehyung knows exactly what you’re referring to, he’s just being annoying about it, as per usual. “The whole ‘we’re married’ thing. You like it, don’t you?”

“The “Mr. and Mrs. Kim’ thing?” Taehyung says with a smile. He’s relishing in the feeling, especially when it’s obvious that you’re not as keen on the collective nickname. “I fucking love it. You don’t?”

“We’re college students,” you remind him. 

“So? That means that they think that we look old enough to not be college students. I consider that a win, especially because Jimin always says I look twelve,” Taehyung says with a shrug. 

“We’re not married,” you add. It’s the truth. 

“You’re right, we’re not, but Mr. and Mrs. Kim has such a nice ring to it, don’t you think? I love the way that it sounds,” Taehyung says. He basks in it. 

“We’re not even dating, Taehyung,” you say with a sigh, exasperated. Doesn’t he get it? It’s weird, being Mr. and Mrs. Kim, because you never have been. There never was a Mr. and Mrs. Kim. And quite frankly, there never will be. “We’re not even interested in it.”

“Who says?” Taehyung asks, and the path he’s directing this conversation down is not one you’d like to take. It’s rocky and bumpy and unclear, hazy with fog. You don’t do fog. You like when things are clear cut and visible. 

“I do,” you say with a frown. “Are you interested in dating me, Taehyung? Because I don’t know about you, but I don’t really want to date you right now. Or, like, at all.”

Taehyung pauses. His brows are furrowed again, but all the way this time. He stares down at his pizza, and he contemplates. You sit there and watch him, feeling the weight of every second as it passes by. Were you too harsh? Maybe you were. But it was the truth, and he deserves something honest, even if it’s brutal. 

“Oh,” Taehyung says, like he wasn’t expecting those words to come out of your mouth. What you said has been lingering between you like smoke, refusing to dissipate. “Well, I—I guess that makes two of us.” It’s obvious that there’s something else there, just underneath the water, but you don’t press further. It sounds like he’d rather keep it hidden. 

When you leave, the waitstaff bid you goodbye exactly as you had predicted. 

“Enjoy your evening, Mr. and Mrs. Kim,” they say cordially as you and Taehyung pull on your coats and hats and gloves and head out the door. 

“You too,” Taehyung says softly after a few seconds, like he was waiting for the words to fade away before speaking. “Thank you.”

Your bus leaves from Penn Station at 9:30 that night, and it’s barely seven. Plenty of time for you to continue exploring, see Times Square all lit up like it’s New Year’s Eve, go up to the top of the Empire State Building, or even take a peek into Central Park at nighttime, when the moon is high and the lanterns are lit. 

“How about we go ice skating?” Taehyung suggests as the two of you walk along the pavement, side by side. Your hands are buried deep into the pockets of your coat. 

“At Rockefeller?”

“Sure, why not?” Taehyung says. That sentence pretty much sums up your trip to New York thus far. “I’ve always wanted to go skating and see the tree during Christmastime. When else will we get the chance?”

Five minutes later you’ve paid for rental skates, a locker for your shoes, and a ticket to the rink. Visible right next to you is the enormous tree, the lights twinkling and cameras flashing as everyone scrambles to get their Instagram picture to prove that they actually went to the tree at Rockefeller Center in New York City. 

When the zamboni is finished and the employees have skated over the ice enough to increase the level of friction, Taehyung and you balance on your skates as you walk towards the entrance. Slowly, everybody begins to glide on, wobbling at first before eventually getting the hang of it. There are a couple of small children holding onto those little penguin skate assistants, laughing as their older brothers and sisters guide them along the ice. 

“I’ve never skated before,” you admit nervously, about two seconds before you’re about to enter the rink. 

Taehyung’s mouth drops open. “Never?”

“No,” you reiterate, even more nervous than before. “I have no idea what I’m doing, I just said yes because like you said we’re in New York and it’s nearly Christmas and we should just seize every opportunity that we have and—”

“Y/N,” Taehyung says, calming you down as he ushers you away from the entrance so you aren’t blocking other people’s paths. “It’s okay. You don’t have to worry,” he tells you, holding onto your wrists to make you look up at him. “I can show you how to. It’s easier than it looks, I swear. I won’t let you fall. You just have to trust me, alright?” He shakes your wrists to catch your attention, make sure that you heard him. “Alright?”

Deep breath. Inhale, exhale. 

“Alright.”

Everything is, in fact, not alright. No matter what Taehyung says, ice skating is way more fucking difficult than it looks. Taehyung steps onto the ice and it turns into second nature for him, gliding around a small circle to get warmed up as you cling onto the side railing like an idiot. You have no idea how to move, you have no idea where to go, you just shuffle along the railing with the rest of the children who are far younger than you, also trying to skate for the first time. 

This is embarrassing. 

“You’re a liar,” you tell Taehyung pointedly as he circles around, coming up to rest next to you. You’d point at his chest for emphasis, but you’re afraid you’ll fall without both hands on the railing at all times. “This is—” you pause, remembering that there are children present, “—very difficult.”

Taehyung just chuckles. “You have to be brave, Y/N, come on,” Taehyung implores. He holds out his hand, motioning for you to let go of the wall and take a leap of faith. 

“No, I will not be brave. Please let me be weak,” you beg, scared for your life. One wrong move and you’d go splat in the middle of the rink and embarrass yourself in front of all of New York City. 

“Come on, Y/N,” Taehyung says, holding his hand closer. “You said you trusted me. I told you, I won’t let you fall. Come on. Be brave.” And then he adds, leaning in to meet your eyes, “for me?”

He’s always been too charming for your own good. 

Tentatively, second by second by painstaking second, you remove your hands from the railing, first the left and then the right, as Taehyung pulls you right next to him, holding on tight. 

“See?” He asks as you begin to move on your own, Taehyung’s short glides pulling you along the ice. “Look, it’s not that bad.”

“I am scared for my life right now.” You blink. 

“Focus on me, okay,” Taehyung says, making you meet his eyes once more. “Eyes on me, alright. You’re doing fine. You’re skating, isn’t this fun?”

“I am terrified that I am going to perish on this very rink,” you repeat for emphasis. 

“Look, Y/N, look! You’re skating!” Taehyung tells you, and finally you glance down at your feet and realize that they’re beginning to move on the ice, all on their own. 

“Oh my God! I’m skating! What the—heck!” You say, eyes widening in excitement. 

“I knew you could do it,” Taehyung says, hands gripping on tight. You can feel the warmth from his palms seep into your own, feel the back of your hand burning from the touch. “You just had to trust me.”

“This is so cool,” you say, immediately very pleased with yourself. “I’m such a pro, I can do anything. Who said skating was scary?”

Taehyung opens his mouth to respond, but you shoot him a warning glare and he zips his lips. 

“Watch this, I can even do it on my own. You’re gonna be very impressed, Kim Taehyung, just watch me!”

Within the next moment, you’re letting go of his hand and pushing yourself away from him, gliding along the ice ever-so-slightly as you begin to balance on your own. 

But power is short-lived, and much like every leading male in Greek tragedies, your hubris gets the best of you, and you face the ultimate demise. 

The moment you attempt to pick up your left foot, your right toe pick gets caught in a dip of the ice and you go toppling over, collapsing onto the ice in a cold, bruised ball. 

Luckily, your coat takes most of the hit, its length preventing your knees from hurting into the next century, but that doesn’t make it any less embarrassing. Ashamed of yourself and even more mortified to have to face Taehyung after boasting about how amazing you are, you slowly push yourself off of the ice, wobbling like a baby deer. 

“What was that, Y/N?” Taehyung says with a raised eyebrow as he skates over. He’s clearly just recovered from a laughing fit. 

“Fuck off,” you mutter, and you don’t even care if children hear you. “I got excited.”

“Clearly,” Taehyung notes, eyes wide and knowing. He holds out a hand, and before you even have time to think of a snarky retort your palm is reaching out for it, letting him pull you up off of the rink. “Here. Come on.”

One hour and two fairly bruised knees later, you and Taehyung are taking off your skates and relishing in the feeling of your feet, flat on the ground like feet should be. 

“You alright?” Taehyung asks. You didn’t have any massive falls following the first spectacle, but you admittedly, still cannot ice skate very well. You’ll have to figure out a way to learn. 

You round out the night by going to look at the Christmas Tree. Now that it’s fairly late, the massive families with young children have all gone home, leaving only the young adults left to bask in the glory of the peak of Christmas decorations. 

“It seemed bigger in photos, didn’t it?” Taehyung asks as the both of you crane your necks to look at the tree in all of its glory. “Like it was the size of a small tower.”

“Yeah,” you agree. It looks somewhat disappointingly small, now that you’re here in front of it. “Today was a lot of fun, Taehyung. Your spontaneity paid off.”

“When does it not?” Taehyung asks, proud of himself. He even has enough of an ego to do a little hair flip, making you shake your head disapprovingly. “But I’m glad you enjoyed yourself. I certainly did.”

“What was your favorite part?” You ask. 

“Definitely when you were in your prime for one moment and a puddle on the ice the next,” Taehyung says, and for that, he earns a punch to the shoulder. “I’m kidding, I’m kidding. But I did really enjoy ice skating.”

“Yeah, because you can actually do it,” you remind him. 

“What about you?”

You think. This day has been so long, from getting woken up by Taehyung’s irresponsible neighbors and the entire city’s fire department outside your window, to hopping on a bus to New York, to museums and restaurants and ice skating and the city, you feel like you’ve lived three days in one. 

“The museum,” you finally decide. “I’m not really an art person, but I thought it was lovely. Nice and heated, too.”

“Yes, the best part about the Museum of Modern Art was its modern, state-of-the-art central heating,” Taehyung repeats, making you laugh. “I’m glad you liked the museum. I was worried you’d think it was too stuffy.”

You had thought that too. And then you watched someone fall in love with each and every piece, right in front of you, and you realized that there’s more to art than putting a price tag on it and critiquing it. It’s passion, materialized. It’s real.  

It’s Taehyung. 

“No,” you say with a shake of your head. “I thought it was beautiful.”

On Christmas Eve, it snows. 

Correction: On Christmas Eve, it snows a lot. 

Correction for the correction: On Christmas Eve, it blizzards. 

When you listened to “White Christmas” last night, this isn’t exactly what you had in mind, if you were being honest. Maybe an inch or two. Maybe even just a flurry. But certainly not nearly two feet worth of snow, effectively trapping you inside of Taehyung’s apartment complex until the next day because not even the snow plows are allowed to go out on the roads. Not until the snow stops. 

“Good thing we don’t live on the first floor, right?” Taehyung asks with a laugh that late afternoon, taking a peek out of the window to stare down at the white expanse below you. “I’d hate to be those guys.”

“It must be so cold,” you say sadly. You’ve spent the better part of today huddled up in as many blankets as Taehyung owns in his apartment and you have no intention of shedding even one of them. Not even as you sweat right through your pajama shirt from high school. 

“We can just make dinner here, tonight,” Taehyung says, fishing around in his kitchen to see what the options are. It’s already beginning to get dark even though it’s not even five o’clock. God, you hate winter. 

“What are we making?”

Taehyung fumbles through the cabinets and his fridge, hunting for anything that might make a good meal. Eventually, he pulls out two cartons of Trader Joe’s vegetable broth and every vegetable in his fridge. 

“Wanna make soup?”

Soup is very easy to make. You set the broth to simmer, chop up vegetables, and dump them in the pot. 

But the idea of you and Taehyung sharing his tiny kitchen space, both with knives in your hands is, well, a recipe for disaster.

Luckily no knife mishaps occur, but, like the children at heart that you are, you eventually end with pelting uncooked lima beans at each other in the most adult version of a food fight you have ever had in your life. No fuss, no mess, no tomatoes or key lime pies or spaghetti doused in sauce getting chucked across the kitchen floor, the dinner table. 

No, your little food fight ends with you and Taehyung kneeling down on the tile as you pick up each little lima bean, gathering them in your palms. 

You make to toss it out but Taehyung stops you. 

“Wait,” Taehyung says, a hand on top of yours as it hovers over the trash can, “don’t toss them out.”

“Huh?” You ask. 

“I’ll feed them to the birds,” he says, taking the pile from your hands and placing all of the lima beans, along with his own, in a Ziploc bag. 

“You have a porch out here?” You ask, looking around. You’ve never seen it. 

“No.” Taehyung shakes his head. “They land on my bedroom window sill so I feed them.”

When you were in freshman year, you remember how Taehyung always left his window open. You know this because even though yours was always closed, anytime a police car, fire truck, ambulance, or particularly loud motorist drove by, the sound was always loudest on the wall of your room that bordered Taehyung’s. You hated how he always left his windows open, even in the winter. Wasn’t he goddamn cold?

And now, even though it’s Christmas Eve and there’s a blanket of snow outside nearly two feet deep, Taehyung will go and open his bedroom window again and feed the birds lima beans like a fucking Disney prince, and it makes your heart flutter, ever so slightly. 

You end the night sitting on Taehyung’s couch, only a foot or so of space in between your bodies as he multitasks, channel surfing and gulping down your homemade soup. 

“I haven’t made soup in a while, but damn, this is good,” Taehyung says, drinking the rest of it before getting up to help himself to seconds. He sticks a hand out to take your bowl as well, and wordlessly you hand it to him. 

“It’s my magic touch,” you tease. It was not. Taehyung did most of the work. You don’t have much of an affinity for cooking.

“It’s my chemistry brain,” Taehyung corrects. “Chem is basically like making soup.”

“But it can kill you,” you tack on.

“But it can kill you,” he agrees, returning to the couch. This time, when he sits down, he plops right down next to you, your sides touching as you sit in front of his television, slurping up homemade vegetable soup. “How’s your major? What is it, again?”

“English with a minor in Psych,” you say over a mouthful of carrot. 

“Sounds like too much reading for me,” Taehyung comments. “I’d only like picture books.”

“Yeah, wonder why,” you tell him sarcastically. “But it’s going well. I’m thinking of maybe adding Consumer Psych as another minor since there’s a lot of overlap, but I’m not sure. I’ll think about it.”

“Sounds busy,” Taehyung comments. 

“Almost as busy as visual studies and chem,” you remind him. “Seriously, do you ever sleep?”

“Inspiration is a fickle mistress and the will to do my chem problem sets, even more fickle,” Taehyung muses like the two subjects aren’t the absolute bane of his existence. “But yeah, I mean, I made it this far.”

“Our majors are so different,” you comment. They are. Encompassing all sides of the college major spectrum, from STEM to art to humanities. The only thing you’re missing is a business minor. But only snakes would ever be interested in something like that. 

“It’s nice,” Taehyung decides. “Because this is forcing us to talk with someone with whom we don’t already share all of the same classes with.”

“I couldn’t imagine taking the same class as you,” you say, not because you’d hate having to be in the same room as Kim Taehyung or dread the potential to be paired up for group work, but because your tastes are so different. They’ve always been different. Art, English, chemistry, psychology. Headphones or speakers. Closed windows or open. It’s always been opposites with the two of you. 

“Maybe I’ll take a psych class so that way we can,” Taehyung says. 

“Maybe I’ll take an art history course,” you retort.

“You’d really take an art history course? They’re awfully boring, and I’m an art major,” Taehyung says, in disbelief. 

You ponder it for a moment, but then nod. Yes, you would. Even if it sent you to sleep. Because it looks genuinely interesting. “After today, I wouldn’t mind it. You showed me a lot about art, Kim Taehyung. More than I thought I would ever learn in my lifetime.”

Taehyung sighs, shutting the television off. You guys weren’t watching it anyway. You hardly realized it was on. He looks down at his empty soup bowl, and then at you. He always does that—always looks somewhere else before looking at you, like he has to muster up the courage by first staring at an inanimate object. And then he says, “You’ll never stop learning about art. Neither will I. It’s a constant cycle, learning and relearning and changing your mind and revisiting old pieces. Because art is all around us.”

He looks at you, like he’s trying to say something else but doesn’t have the words. “You just have to look for it.”

New Year’s Eve is often a time of reflecting on the year that’s passed, making a list of goals to achieve once the clock strikes twelve. Thanking your friends and family, your loved ones, for being there for you this year, and promising to be there for them as well next year. 

To you and Taehyung, it’s literally your last chance to get piss drunk this year without repercussions. You’ve never stayed here, at your university in the city, for New Year’s Eve (obviously). You’d be interested in getting all dressed up to go out. Taehyung would also be interested. 

And so, after a day of slouching around and making half-assed resolutions you know you won’t keep (like managing your time better. As a college student? Impossible.), you and Taehyung decide to get dressed up and go out, pulling out the winter jackets you don’t care if you lose, or if they get trashed, or if they stain with vodka. All you want is to lose your goddamn mind in a tiny club with a bunch of other wasted young adults who don’t want to stay at home on the last night of the year. 

You are, unsurprisingly, a self-proclaimed not-a-going-out person, but tonight is something of an exception. It’s your last night to do this this year, and honestly, you can’t really think of a better way to end the year. There’s been plenty of ups (that A+ on your paper on the ethics of Beowulf, yay!) and plenty of downs (Global Politics in the Twentieth Century, yikes), and no better way to say goodbye to them all than with alcohol in your system. But even if, during the regular college season, you’re something of a stick in the mud, you remembered to pack a nice party dress just in case, so you tug on a little black velvet mini-dress that sparkles rainbow in the light, covered with tiny glitters that get stuck in your hair and never come out. 

As you’re fishing around for some tights that you don’t care about so your legs don’t freeze off in the cold, the door to Taehyung’s bedroom opens. 

Out he walks in all of his New Year’s Eve glory, a full black ensemble complete with structured belt and a leather jacket. You turn around to look at him and he stops dead in his tracks, eyes blinking like he doesn’t know where to look. It gives you a clear view of him and his simple yet extremely flattering outfit. He looks like Danny Zuko. He looks like a boy you would avoid in high school. 

Funnily enough, seeing him now draws you closer to him.

“Wow, hot stuff, you clean up nicely,” You comment, tugging on some black tights with a hole in the back that no one’s going to notice. 

“I could say the same thing about you,” he adds on, a hand coming up to rub at the nape of his neck. “I didn’t even know you had this.”

“I packed it just in case,” you say with a shrug. 

“Came in handy, didn’t it?” He asks. He comes up to stand by you, holding his arm out for you to wrap yours around, two people on a mission to not remember most things about this night. “You ready to go?” 

Stuffing your phone and wallet into your purse, you quickly link arms with him as you walk to the door, your black boots clopping on the floor like the obnoxious high-heel owner you are. 

“Yeah, you ready?” You ask, doing a quick double check. You’ve got everything. 

“Let’s fuck some shit up.”

And fuck some shit up you do. By the time you reach the club that Taehyung had found online, you can already hear the bass pounding through the walls, feel the ground shake from the speakers alone. Go big or go home, you suppose. 

As you expected, the club is already packed with bodies. Every young adult within a twenty-mile radius is out tonight, eager to spend the last night of the year doing what young adults in the primes of their lives do best: drink. And you and Taehyung are no exception. 

Like everybody else entering the club at the same time as you, you make a beeline for the bar, already itching to get something into your system. You don’t love being drunk, and you like the taste of alcohol even less, so you just order a simple cocktail that should keep you occupied for a while. 

Taehyung, on the other hand, well. He seems to harbor the go big or go home mentality quite firmly. It’s obvious that he’s here to do one thing and one thing only, which is not remember what he did when he wakes up tomorrow. You watch, a little impressed and a lot nervous about what exactly he’s trying to achieve, as he downs several shots in a row, pays the bartender, and immediately pulls you into the crowd of people dancing in the center of the room. 

“The more I move, the faster my body can process the alcohol,” Taehyung tells you as your cocktail sloshes around in the glass in your hand. It’s an alright cocktail. A little too sweet for you, but you suppose that that’s your fault. 

“Wow, when you said you wanted to fuck shit up, you meant it,” you comment as Taehyung dances, jumping and swaying to the beat of whatever Top 40 pop song is blaring from the speakers. You can barely hear the music over the volume of the rest of the club, people shouting to speak to each other, the sound of feet hitting the floor. 

Within approximately fifteen minutes, Taehyung is already fairly tipsy and eager to keep going, bubbling over with excitement. 

You convince him to dance a little longer before he goes back to get more, trying to make sure at least a bit of the alcohol he had at the beginning of the night goes through his body. The song changes to something much sultrier, like honey dripping from the speakers themselves, and suddenly, the entire club’s atmosphere changes. 

“I love this song,” Taehyung says, and it must be the lack of control that causes him to place a hand on your waist and pull you in close to him, making you gasp. 

“Wow, okay,” you comment, blinking. Taehyung rests his chin on your shoulder, leaning down as he holds you tight, your bodies swaying in tandem. 

“You don’t mind this?” Taehyung asks. 

“Not if you don’t,” you respond. He’s practically drunk, and you’re even a little buzzed. There are worse things you could be doing. 

“This is nice, isn’t it?” He inquires aloud. It’s a good thing that you can’t see his face, can’t watch the haze in his eyes, otherwise you might lose your footing and collapse. 

“What is?”

“This,” Taehyung repeats unhelpfully. 

The next three minutes are some of the most confusing ones of your life as Taehyung rests a hand on your waist, palm rubbing up and down as the two of you dance together like it means something to the both of you. 

But it doesn’t, does it? You chalk it up to both of your minds not being as sharp with some alcohol in your systems. That must be it.

When the song ends, the mood disappears as well, and Taehyung’s back to his bouncy, tipsy self. He’s practically stumbling over himself once he determines that it’s time for more shots, and you’ve never seen Taehyung drunk before but you can tell that he’s nearly there. You’ll probably put a hard stop on the drinks after this round, since Taehyung is the one most familiar with the way back to his apartment and you wouldn’t mind going home and sleeping after this.

“Come with?” Taehyung asks as he eyes the bartender like he’s the love of his life. 

“No, it’s alright, Tae,” you say.

“You never call me Tae,” Taehyung comments mindlessly. Even when he’s nearly drunk, he still picks up on the little things. 

“I guess the alcohol is making me soft,” you admit. “You go. I’m gonna find the bathroom and hope that nobody’s having sex in it.”

“Okay,” Taehyung singsongs as you pull away from him, looking for a dingy hallway to go down. “Be safe.”

“You too, I’ll be back soon,” you promise him, and that’s when you go rushing down the hallway.

Things are certainly weird down here. It must be the feeling of the new year looming over your heads. Like this is the last night to do everything wrong without regretting it in the morning. The bathroom is, luckily enough, empty, so you rush in and splash your face with some water, not caring about if your makeup runs. You’d sweat it off, regardless. You stare at yourself in the mirror, and this feels so stupidly like a goddamn romantic comedy that it makes you want to laugh at the irony. 

Beautiful male art student lead gets drunk, confuses hardheaded and impenetrable female lead who doesn’t believe in love and supposedly hates beautiful male art student’s guts. Tension ensues. 

Your life may as well already have a shitty Rotten Tomatoes rating stamped on top of it. 

After collecting your thoughts and praying that that white stain on the wall isn’t what you think it is, you leave the bathroom and scurry down the hallway, eager to find Taehyung and make sure he isn’t bouncing off the walls after a second round of shots. 

He’s not. 

Instead, he’s still standing by the bar as a beautiful young woman speaks to him, long dark hair resting against her shoulders and a model-esque smile on her face. She’s leaning in with a suggestive look in her eyes, a hand coming up to rub at the side of his arm. 

You furrow your brows as you watch them from afar, a little hurt by the fact that beautiful male art student lead is confusing hardheaded and impenetrable female lead even more, but then you notice Taehyung’s hesitance. The way he backs up a little when she gets closer. How he stiffens when she touches him. 

And, well, fuck that. 

 “Tae,” you say, rushing up to him faster than you’d like to admit. “There you are, I was looking for you.” 

The girl next to him frowns at the sight of you, and it’s clear she feels no shame to hide the immediately dislike. Sure, you don’t have model proportions or a smile whiter than snow, but you have morals. 

“Who’s this?” You ask, trying to be nice. 

“Nobody,” Taehyung tells you, and his hand immediately interlocks with yours. Standing next to him, you can feel as the tension fades from his body, his whole demeanor relaxing now that you’re by his side. “She just wanted to talk.”

“Are you a friend?” She asks, because she knows. 

“I’m a special type of friend,” you say. There’s no way she’ll leave Taehyung alone otherwise. And this is definitely on the cocktail you drank (and nothing else, you swear!), but you even reach up to plop a kiss on his cheek for proof. Taehyung’s eyes widen as you do, but he plays it off as catching him off guard and grins, wrapping an arm around you to pull you even closer. “Can we help you?”

The girl is absolutely pissed, which means that you did your job. 

“No, it’s alright,” she hisses through gritted teeth before turning her sights on someone else. Someone without a friend to protect them. 

“Thanks,” Taehyung whispers once she’s gone. Even though she’s probably not coming back, Taehyung keeps you close, a hand on you at all times like you’ll fly away if he doesn’t hold on tight. 

“Of course,” you tell him. “You’d do the same for me.”

“She scared me,” Taehyung says, and if his red face is anything to go by, it’s clear that he’s pretty much reached his alcohol intake limit. “I’m glad you came.”

“I could tell you didn’t want to talk to her,” you say. 

“Because I wanted to talk to you,” Taehyung says, and it’s definitely the alcohol that’s erased his filter. “I was waiting for you to come out of the bathroom and she just came up to me and started flirting with me. I think she wanted to get in my pants. I didn’t want her to get into my pants.”

“I know.”

“I’d much rather be with you than with her. Than with anybody else. I would always want to be with you, instead.” He tells you, keeping your hands firmly intertwined as you lean against the bartender counter. 

And well, huh. That’s different. Taehyung’s aforementioned lack of a filter means that any thoughts that run through his mind immediately turn into spoken words, but you weren’t expecting those words. You never thought you;d hear them, not in a million goddamn years.

“Okay, Tae,” you say, patting him assuringly. He’s just drunk. That’s all. 

“I’m serious, Y/N,” Taehyung tells you firmly, pushing your comforting hand off of his shoulder and turning to face you directly. “I mean it.”

“I know, Tae.” you reassure him. It’s easier than trying to fight him, especially when he’s this hammered. You check the time on your phone. Maybe it’s time to leave. If you go now, you’ll be able to make it back by midnight. “Let’s go home, okay? I’m ready to go home.”

Wordlessly, Taehyung nods, and the two of you leave the club before people are even thinking about ringing in the New Year. 

When you reach Taehyung’s apartment, he takes off his leather jacket to hang on the coat rack and turns the television on. Only three minutes to midnight. 

“I had fun,” you say, trying to lighten the conversation. The way back was silent, the only noises the sounds of New Year’s Eve parties on every block you turned onto. Taehyung kept his face forward and his eyes ahead, even as you tried to huddle close to him to conserve the warmth. 

“It was sort of fun,” Taehyung halfheartedly agrees. 

“Did you drink too much?” You ask. His face is still beet red. 

“I don’t think I drank enough.”

Two minutes to midnight. 

You frown, brows furrowing. Why on Earth would Taehyung want to drink more? What would change if he had another shot, a can of beer or a little cocktail?

Slowly, you begin to peel off your own layers, resting your coat on the back of the couch and slipping off your boots. The both of you stand in his living room as the TV begins to buzz with excitement, the broadcast of Times Square lighting up the otherwise silent, tense atmosphere. He’s only a couple of feet away but it feels like he couldn’t be farther from you. 

One minute to midnight. Everybody begins to count down, and you feel yourself holding your breath. 

“Will you be alright going to sleep?” You ask. Even if Taehyung’s still drunk, he’s far less bouncy than he was at the club. 

“I’ll be fine. Goodnight, Y/N,” he says, beginning to walk past. 

Three. 

“Okay.”

Two.

“Okay.”

One. 

Something overtakes Taehyung, something quick and brief. He stops right next to you and flinches, like he wants to lean in and do something, anything, goddamnit, but stops himself before he goes through with it. Everyone on television is cheering, but this apartment couldn’t be less festive even if you tried. 

Taehyung sends you a small smile as the world rings in the new year, dashing off to his bedroom and slamming the door behind him. 

And you stand there, in the middle of his living room like the goddamn fool you are. Turning to the television, you watch over and over as every couple in Times Square kisses, clip after clip after clip, and like a goddamn idiot, you wish that Taehyung had done the same. 

The end of winter break approaches faster than you’d like it, just like it does every year. Before you know it, there’s less than a week left before classes resume and you go back to the daily college life. Less than a week left before you can go back to your dorm and pretend like this year’s winter break mishap never happened. 

Less than a week before you and Taehyung go back to never seeing each other. 

You’re sitting at his kitchen table, clearing out your backpack and recycling every paper, every syllabus and assignment and study guide from last semester, doing a deep cleanse of your life (because holy shit, you need it), when you come across the purchase you had made at the MOMA. 

“Taehyung,” you call out before you can stop yourself. 

“Yeah?” He asks from where he’s sitting on the couch, reading a James Joyce book. You love that novel. It was one of the very few you read for fun last year. 

You take the small paper bag in your hands, walking over to the couch. “I almost forgot about this, but since winter break’s starting to wind down, I just wanted to give you this as a thanks. For everything.”

“You got me a belated Christmas gift, Y/N?” Taehyung asks as you hold out the gift, clearly something thin like a posterboard or an art print.

“If it means I don’t have to buy you two things, then sure, consider this a belated Christmas gift,” you say with a laugh, sitting down a foot away from him as he slowly opens up the packet. “It’s sort of cheesy and very basic, but I just wanted to get you something nice as a thank you.”

Out Taehyung pulls is a print of van Gogh’s The Starry Night, big enough to fill up the empty spaces on his walls, so every inch of his apartment, of his life and his home, is filled with art. 

“Oh my God,” Taehyung says, mouth agape. “This is…”

“It’s basic, I know. But I know how much you loved seeing it in person, so I thought that a memory of that would be nice,” you say, trying to ease the nervousness that has bubbled up inside of you. 

“It’s wonderful,” Taehyung says, and you swear you’ve never seen him so happy, other than perhaps when you saw the real thing. “This is so fucking thoughtful of you.”

“I just—you told me a lot about the art we saw that day, but when we reached this painting, you were speechless. And I sort of knew, then, that it was your favorite piece. Because you didn’t have to explain it with words,” you tell him. “I could just tell. It was like your whole body warmed up the moment it came into view.”

“I’m touched, Y/N.” Taehyung beams. “This is all an art student could ever want, really. To be able to know that their love for art meant something to someone else.”

“I just wanted to say thank you for everything. Taking me in, cooking me food, being really nice me despite me entrenching on your living situation.” You smile. 

“I was happy to do all that stuff,” Taehyung tells you honestly. “I’ve had a lot of fun this winter break, even if we’re still trapped on campus.”

You loved getting to go home for winter break your freshman and sophomore years. You loved being able to escape from the college mindset and just relax, no deadlines, no assignments, no worries. 

But looking back on it, you think that you’ve had the most fun this winter break, stuck at school, a five-hundred-dollar plane ticket short, with your dorm neighbor-slash-nemesis from freshman year. Never have you done so much in so little time. 

“Yeah, me too,” you say, thinking back fondly. It feels like this winter break has lasted for years, but also as though it went by in the blink of an eye, 

“I have something for you as well,” Taehyung says, scrambling up to dash into his room. “Consider it just a Christmas gift, because I don’t really have to thank you for letting you stay at my apartment for free for a month.”

“Roast me, why don’t you,” you muse jokingly, rolling your eyes as Taehyung fumbles around in his bedroom before he emerges with an equally flat, similarly-sized gift wrapped up in some spare tissue paper. 

“I don’t recall you buying anything at the MOMA,” you tease as Taehyung hands you the gift, settling back down on the couch to watch as you open it. 

Slowly, you peel back the tissue paper, and when you reveal what he’s wrapped up for you, it drops to your lap. 

It’s a portrait of you, done entirely in pencil. It’s you smiling, with your eyes closed, lashes fluttering. He’s memorized your entire face, drawn it neatly onto this piece of sketch paper, like he was just passing the time and suddenly he had a picture of you on his hands. He’s even remembered where your freckles go. 

“What’s this, Tae?” You ask, like you don’t already know. 

“Uh, it’s you,” Taehyung says sheepishly. “I wasn’t planning on drawing you, I didn’t have a gift in mind, but I was practicing sketches the other day and an hour later I looked down and I had drawn you. And I felt bad for not telling you, because that’s weird, so I thought that you could see it.”

“You drew a portrait of me? Just randomly, from memory?” You ask, looking down at the sketch in your hands like it’s just ruined your life. 

“Yeah, so?” Taehyung asks. He looks terribly nervous. 

“So, that’s—people don’t just do that, Taehyung. You don’t just draw a picture of someone purely from memory while you’re practicing sketching,” You say, reeling back as he tries to lean in, attempts to explain himself. 

“What do you mean? I did that. I thought of you and I drew you, what’s so bad about that?”

“I don’t know if you missed the memo, Taehyung. I told you in New York. We’re not dating, Taehyung,” you tell him, so firm and certain in your conviction that you hardly pay attention to the way his shoulders sink. “We’re barely even friends. I’m not interested in you like that. Please don’t think otherwise.”

“Don’t tell me what to think,” Taehyung snaps, and he’s mad. Really mad, not like the fake anger from freshman year when you tried to get back at him by being an equally-annoying neighbor. “Don’t tell me how to feel. I drew you, Y/N. Not because I’m obsessed with the idea of us getting married, or because you’re my muse or some bullshit like that. I drew you because I thought of you, and I draw what I think of. Don’t tell me what to fucking think.”

“Do you like me, Taehyung?” You ask, on the verge of shouting.

Taehyung’s furious. “So what if I do? Huh? What difference does it make? You’ve told me over and over that you don’t like me back, so why does it matter? It’s not like I’d ever have a chance.”

“I told you because I didn’t want to confuse you,” you hiss, standing up and beginning to grab your belongings. It’s clear that this conversation is turning sour. 

“Confuse me? You didn’t want to confuse me?” Taehyung shouts. “You did a damn good job at that. Telling me in New York that you hated being called Mr. and Mrs. Kim, but holding my hand as we walked around the city and looked at art together. Kissing my cheek in the fucking bar but then patting me like on the back like I’m just a sadass friend of yours. Can you blame me if I was confused, Y/N?”

“I told you,” you say again. 

“I’m sorry, Y/N,” Taehyung bites. “I’m sorry that I fucking fell in love with you, even though half of the time you acted like it was alright. My mistake.”

“It was your mistake. I never said I wanted to date you,” you tell him firmly. You refuse to take the blame for something you had made so explicitly clear. 

“Can you fucking blame me for being hopeful?” Taehyung asks. He’s standing up, about to head back into his bedroom, absolutely furious. “You held my hand and kissed me on the cheek and I thought that meant that you felt it, too.”

“Taehyung—”

“Keep the portrait, Y/N,” Taehyung spits. “I don’t ever want to see it again.”

He slams his bedroom door. 

It’s a good thing you made friends with some upperclassmen when you were a freshman. 

After packing your belongings into your little suitcase and standing in the lobby of Taehyung’s apartment complex, you remember that one of your old friends who had graduated last year still lived in an off-campus apartment since he would be beginning graduate school at the same university. 

“Yoongi?” You ask when you hear him pick up your call. 

“Y/N? What’s up?”

“Long story,” you say with a sigh. “Would it be alright if I stayed with you until school started?”

“Holy shit, you’re on campus? What the fuck, yeah, sure, you know where I live. I’ll be here whenever you stop by,” he says without question.

Fifteen minutes later, you’re standing outside his door, double checking to make sure you’d got the right apartment. 

You barely get the first knock in before the door swings open to reveal Min Yoongi himself, clad in all black and looking very tired. 

“Are you okay?” You ask. He looks exhausted. 

“I could ask you the same thing,” he says, ushering you inside. 

“Have you been up all night?” You ask, resting your suitcase against the wall. 

“I took a brief nap between two and three, but yes, I have been,” he says like it’s natural. 

“You’ve always been a chaotic sleeper,” you say with a shake of your head. 

“The grad school grind stops for no one,” Yoongi says with a sigh. “What’s up? Why are you on campus?”

“It… it’s a long goddamn story. Do you have time?”

“I have a piece due for a small indie band tomorrow at noon that’s barely finished,” Yoongi says.

“Oh,” you say. You suppose the story can wait. Yoongi offered up his abode to you until classes resumed if you needed it, and there’s no way in hell you’ll be going back to Taehyung’s. 

“What do you mean, ‘Oh’? I got loads of time,” Yoongi says. He plops down on his couch and motions for you to sit next to him. “Tell me everything.”

Yoongi has always been a particularly good listener. Not just to other people’s words, but to music, to the sounds of the chords and the notes of the piano. He has an ear for things that most others would never notice. 

It’s the same thing for when he’s doling out advice. 

“To clarify,” Yoongi says when you’re finished telling your story, thirty minutes later. You had warned him that it would be a long one. “You had once hated his guts, but no longer hate his guts?”

“I stopped hating him after freshman year,” you admit, more to yourself than to Yoongi. It’s true. The moment the two of you stopped seeing each other, everything dissipated. 

“And now you like him.”

“We’re friends,” you say, tentatively. Maybe less than friends after the disaster that just went down in his living room. 

“But he drew you a portrait of yourself,” Yoongi mentions. 

“I said that it was complicated,” you say with a frown. 

“It doesn’t sound that complicated,” Yoongi says. And maybe he is a graduate student with more life experience under his belt than you, but you think that it’s pretty complicated. 

“What do you mean?”

“It sounds like he likes you, and you like him. I wasn’t really interpreting it in any other way,” Yoongi says casually. 

You reject the notion immediately. “I do not like him.”

Yoongi frowns. “Would you really be here, in my apartment having a relationship breakdown, if you weren’t confused about your feelings for him? Really?”

“I just needed to get out of his damn apartment, that’s all,” you say, avoiding eye contact. Yoongi has this very annoying habit of being extremely reasonable all of the time, and it bothers you immensely. 

“Sure, okay. Y/N, I’m not gonna dictate how you feel and try to change your mind, or anything. But if you can look me in the eye before the end of your break and tell me, one-hundred percent honestly, that you don’t like him, then I’ll believe you,” Yoongi tells you simply. “How about that?”

It sounds like a very doable deal. Maybe it’s not doable right now, but it certainly seems possible in the future. In the future, specifically. 

“Fine. But you’re making a big deal out of nothing,” you tell him matter-of-factly. Why does he care? It’s not like you’re worried about it. 

As it turns out, you’re worried about it. 

You’re worried about it because even though you’re not in the same room, not in the same building, not even on the same goddamn street as him, you’re thinking about him. Thinking about how much fun the two of you could be having right now as you relish in the last couple days of your winter break before the cold reality of school hits. 

Think about the things you could be doing. Exploring, going out to restaurants, finding new little gold mines in this city that you call home. And instead, you’re moping around your friend’s living room wishing that the two of you hadn’t ruined the whole thing. 

Maybe you had been too harsh. Taehyung has a right to be mad at you for lashing out at him. How was he supposed to feel? You held his hand and kissed his cheek and pretended that it was still freshman year, that the two of you were still just two people stuck together by unfortunate circumstances. Acted like nothing had really changed despite the years going by. Going through with all of these adventures with him knowing, in the back of your mind, that once classes started back up, you’d probably never make an effort to see him again. 

Drawing a portrait of you says one thing, but dancing around him says another. Every time you fucking see Yoongi in his own goddamn home you try to muster up the bravery to tell him that you don’t like Taehyung the way that he thinks you do, and you can’t. 

He sets up his pullout couch in his living room for you when you go to sleep that night, you dream of Taehyung. Envision him wandering the halls of a nameless museum, priceless pieces of art hung along every wall, from van Gogh to Monet to Picasso. He turns back around so you get a view of his face, dream up his curly black hair and soft eyes, sparkling with wanderlust as he roams the corridors, stopping to spare a quick glance at every painting he passes. 

And then at the end of the hall, he pauses in his tracks, looks up at the painting on the wall. You watch as the camera zooms in on what he’s looking at, what made him stop in his tracks the moment he laid eyes on it. 

It’s your portrait. A simple piece of paper out of a sketchbook, graphite on the coarse canvas. It’s barely more than a line drawing, your eyes here, your nose there, the little freckles that decorate your skin. It’s only in one color and still, even now, it leaves you speechless. Taehyung made that. He drew that, line by line. He made that for you. 

You wake up in a cold sweat at seven in the morning. Yoongi’s fast asleep in his bedroom, and you know he won’t be waking up until the hour on the clock reads double digits. Frantic, you scramble through your backpack until you pull out the sketch paper a little bit larger, a little bit thicker than the rest, still wrapped up in tissue paper. 

Pulling the paper away to reveal the canvas, you stare down at it in the hazy light of the sunrise, small rays beginning to stream through Yoongi’s window. Your fingers trace along each line, picturing Taehyung as his pencil scratched along the paper, over and over until it looked perfect. Taehyung made this. He sat down, thought of you, and drew this. 

A picture may be worth a thousand words but this one doesn’t say a thousand words. Instead, it only says three. 

Curiosity getting the better of you, you flip the sketch over to see if there’s anything else he’s drawn. There isn’t, but you find a little note in the bottom right corner. 

Y/N,

I hadn’t realized that I had drawn you until I was nearly finished with this. My bad, but it was too late to stop. I don’t know if I’ll ever give this to you, or if I’ll just have a guilty conscience for the rest of my life, but just in case I do, I want you to know this: art inspires me, and you are no exception. 

Tae ♡

When Min Yoongi wakes up that day and trudges out of his bedroom, he finds you sitting on his pullout couch, staring down at a sketch in your hands. When you turn to look up at him, he sees your red eyes and wonders how long you’ve been out here, crying. 

“I can’t do it, Yoongi,” you tell him. 

“Do what?” Yoongi asks, even though he already knows the answer. Why else would you be letting your tears drip onto your portrait?

“Tell you that I don’t like him. Because I do. And I can’t lie to him like that.”

Yoongi grins. He knew you’d come around, like you always do. You may have quite the stubborn streak, but you’ve got a big heart, and it always gets the best of you. 

He sits down next to you, glancing down at the portrait. It’s gorgeous. Taehyung did a wonderful job. He looks at you as you cry over a sketch of yourself, and he thinks that, even if he doesn’t really know this Taehyung character, the two of you will make a perfect pair. 

“You should tell him that,” he tells you with a nudge. You look up at him, scared for your life. “I think he deserves to know.”

The night before winter break ends, you ask Taehyung if tenants of his apartment complex are allowed on his rooftop. He says no, but also says that his landlord is out of town for the holidays. 

In the biting cold of a mid-January evening, you climb up the stairs of his apartment complex and push open the heavy metal door to the rooftop, a gust of wind nearly blowing you right over. Looking around, you spot Taehyung in nothing but a sweater and a scarf, sitting on the edge of the rooftop and looking out over the city. 

“Aren’t you cold?”

He turns around to find you standing next to him, wrapped up in a long coat, gloves, a beanie, and a scarf. 

“I’ve got a warm body,” Taehyung tells you, looking back out into the sea of lights. 

“This is scary, isn’t it?” You ask, sitting down next to him. Your feet dangle off the ledge, and normally you’d be insistent on sitting in the middle of the rooftop where no danger can befall you, but this feels a lot more personal. 

“Why did you want to meet me up here?” Taehyung asks, all business. 

“I just wanted to talk,” you tell him. “You know, since it’s the last day of winter break and all.”

“It went by fast, didn’t it?” Taehyung muses. 

“I remember failing my final and missing my flight like it was yesterday,” you remember fondly, laughing. It seemed like the end of the world at the time, but there’s always a silver lining. You just didn’t know what it was, back then. 

You think you have a pretty clear idea of it now. 

Taehyung chuckles, letting the two of you fall into a comfortable silence as you gaze out at the rest of the city. Taehyung’s apartment building isn’t particularly tall, but it’s got enough height to it that it feels like you’re looking out over a place you hardly recognize. There are so many things you don’t know about this city, despite having lived here for over two years. So many things you are aching to find out, and only one person you’d really like to do it with. 

“What’s your New Year’s Resolution?” You ask randomly, interrupting the quiet that had befallen the both of you. 

Taehyung jumps at the sound of your voice piercing through the atmosphere, caught off guard. You lean in, expecting him to answer. 

“Oh, um, I guess to draw and paint for fun more. A lot of the stuff I’ve been making in school I’ve been doing because I had to,” Taehyung says quickly. It’s sort of obvious that he made up the resolution on the spot. “Uh, what’s yours?”

You press your lips into a thin line, smiling to yourself. “To be honest.”

Taehyung scoffs at that. “Believe me, Y/N, you are more than honest. Brutally so.”

“To others, yes,” you reason. You always were a tell-it-like-it-is sort of person. “But I’m not very good at being honest with myself.” You swing your legs slightly as they dangle over the ground below, kicking into each other. Taehyung turns to look at you, waiting for you to continue. “Yoongi says I’m a very stubborn person. I always have been. Once I determine something is the way it is, it’s very difficult to change my mind.”

Taehyung chuckles to himself. He’s probably quite familiar with that aspect of your personality. 

“But I realized recently that sometimes, things change without you even realizing it, and that instead of being afraid of those changes, you should embrace them. So that’s what I’m trying to do. I’m trying to be more honest with myself, because I think I’ll make everybody around me, including myself, happier.” You continue. 

“Good for you,” Taehyung tells you mindlessly, turning back to face out towards the city. 

“Kim Taehyung, I’m not finished talking, yet,” you demand, forcing him to look back at you. “I hated you in freshman year. You were the worst thing to happen to me that year, annoying and full of yourself. And I didn’t know you in sophomore year. We stopped talking and decided that it was better if we never did again.”

He lets out a little huff of breath, visible in the cold night air. 

“But I do know you now. You offered me a place to stay when I missed my flight after what might have been the worst final I have ever taken in my entire life. You took me to New York, and we made vegetable soup together. You let me hold your hand and kiss you on the cheek, and you drew me a portrait,” you say firmly. He looks up at you and finally, finally, his eyes aren’t foggy. There’s no haze, no mist. You look into his eyes and you can see yourself reflected in the ink black of his irises. He’s beautiful. He’s sitting on the ledge of the roof of his apartment building in the middle of January with nothing but a sweater and a scarf on, and he’s beautiful. “You are the best thing to ever happen to me.”

Before you can even take another breath, Kim Taehyung places a cold palm on your scarf-covered cheek and pulls you into a bruising kiss, his other hand wrapping around your waist as you shuffle along the ledge, closer and closer. And even if his hands are cold and his lips are chapped, his mouth is warm and soft, wanton and desperate. You beam at the feeling of his lips on yours, wrapping your arms around his neck as you ring in the New Year for real. This is how it was supposed to be. This is what you had been waiting for. 

When you part, Taehyung’s lips are a cherry red to match the tip of his nose. His brown eyes are twinkling, and not from the light pollution of the city. 

“Can I be honest, too?” Taehyung asks. He’s got the biggest goddamn grin on his face. “I think I’m in love with you.”

The words are music to your ears. “My honesty is rubbing off on you,” you tease. “Because I think I’m in love with you, too.”

Smiling, grinning, positively fucking beaming, Taehyung wraps his hands around you and kisses you again. It warms your heart from the inside out, blossoms like a tulip in spring. When you started this winter break, you thought you had reached your lowest point, but you’re finishing it on a high that you hope never fades. He loves you, he loves you, and most importantly, you love him back. And as it turns out, the movie where beautiful male art student lead and hardheaded and impenetrable female lead are stuck with each other for four weeks has a happy ending, after all. 

↳ links are broken, but don’t forget to message me with any thoughts or feedback!

[arctic-hands]

Oh I forgot to mention my moment of panic yesterday. I finally got my abilify authorized yesterday after living on somewhat expired leftovers and went to pay on the CVS app, and THANK GOD my card was declined instead of the app charging me the $260 dollars I most decidedly did not have in my bank account.

Turns out they accidentally reauthorized an unused refill from November instead of the newer one, and Medicaid was like "uh uh, we're not covering that", but the pharmacist corrected it and I'm finally getting a new bottle

Which fuck, Medicaid means my copay for my psych meds is a literal dollar each. I knew meds cost more without insurance, but I had no idea that costs over 200 dollars just for a month's supply out of pocket. No fucking wonder there are so many untreated homeless people, mentally or physically ill, how are they supposed to afford any kind of treatment? Medicaid and almost all regular insurances require you have a home address.

Like I know I've been living in a bubble since I've been on Medicaid since I was a teenager (a year aside when pence took it away before I moved out of Indiana, and I had to try and navigate how to get on Maryland's, but I wasn't on medication during this time. Still in debt over my hospitalizations during this time tho). But shit that's obscene

[random-mha-thoughts]

Day After (Todoroki x Reader)

Pairing: Todoroki x Reader

Genre: Crack/fluff

Summary: Office parties are mostly a bad idea.  You never know if you might say something to someone who really matters to you.

Warnings: A little more cursing than usual

Word count: 2,031

Tags:  @yuki-osaki​ @liviitehe​ @iamsoftsodonttoucheume-blog​ @bunnythepipsqueak​

For @lovingshoto​‘s 200 follower special!

a/n: This took longer than I thought it would, only because I always fall asleep when I start writing I’m a tired college student

There’s a male Ashido character here based on designer_eyebags on Tik Tok because it’s fabulous and absolute needed for a crack fic like this.  Some other characters may/may not be OOC, depending on your own imagination of things.

I’m off from uni this week and next week because someone probably has Covid-19 at my school and I was gonna be on spring break next week anyway, so after I catch up with all my assignments and stuff, I’ll hopefully be writing more!

Enjoy and follow @lovingshoto​ please and thank you!

Also, spot the TikTok meme

"Unngghh."

My forehead presses against the cool desk, my stomach rumbling uncomfortably and my temples pounding to the beat of an EDM track.

"You look completely hammered, what the hell happened last night?"

I don't bother lifting my head at Jirou's voice.  "Many mistakes were made," I groan.  "I feel like death."

"It was smart of YaoMomo and I to skip then."  The light ruffle of papers trickles next to my ear.   "You still need to get these reports done by the end of the day.  Sorry, buddy."

God. Damnit.  I lift my heavy head up, regretting all of my life choices until this moment.  The office party last night is a giant blob of flashing lights, alcohol, and questionable decisions.  I never even knew that half the people here would get as smashed or turnt as they did last night.

Me included.

I don't know who was in charge of alcohol, but whatever was in those cups was colored and made all of us act just a little crazier than our mundane lives usually allow.  When Mirio said company parties are crazy, I now see he really meant it.  This morning when I woke up, my throat was drier than the desert in summer and my head felt like someone let a jackhammer loose inside.  I don't even remember how the hell I managed to get home.

Slowly, painfully, I trudge through my work.  Even on three tablets of ibuprofen, my headache barely gets better, and staring at a screen all day doesn't help.  I don't even have time to take my break because I barely made a dent in my work.  Not that I would want to.  This morning, I couldn't keep my breakfast down, so I'm scared to eat.

Around lunchtime, a thermos bowl is placed gently on the space next to my computer.  My eyes meet with my stone-faced coworker settling into the chair, sitting up proper as he is with his hands laced in his lap.

"Oh no."  My heart drops into my stomach as I whine out.  "Did I say something yesterday?  I remember most of what happened last night, but other things are a blur.  Please don't be mad at me."

"If I were mad, I wouldn't be here right now."  He pushes the dish over along with utensils wrapped in a napkin.  "Eat.  It's hangover soup, it should help your stomach."

Reluctantly, I open the dish, the savory-bitter smell wafting out as soon as I lift the lid, immediately causing my stomach to growl.  I'm still wary about his serious expression as I eat.  Todoroki is normally an emotionless person, but he has a different energy today.  I'm waiting for the shoe to drop.

As soon as I'm halfway through the bowl, Todoroki calmly asks, "Did you forget your brain last night?"

I groan.  There it is.  "I thought you weren't angry?"

"I'm not angry, I genuinely want to know what state of empty mind were you in to do all the things you did last night?"  Though his face is devoid of emotion, he's obviously being condescending.

I put the spoon down in the bowl.  "In my defense, I don't know what alcohol that was, it made me crazier than usual."

"Why did you drink at all?  You know people do weird things when they're drunk."

"Because that's what people do at company parties, Todoroki."  I lean my arm on the desk and rub my temples.  "I don't know who was in charge of the alcohol last night-"

"Did you summon me?"  A short pink head of hair with small horns peeking out appears behind the wall of my desk.  "I was the one in charge of drinks last night," he rounds the separator and sits gracefully on the desk, legs crossed, happily drinking pink tea from his clear glass mug.  "Did you enjoy my alcohol selection?"

My eye twitches.  This is the person I need to strangle and throw into a ditch.  But I can't, he's too fabulous and he's one of the best people we have actually.  "Because of you, I went a little too crazy last night," I grit out through my teeth.

"Oh, sweetie," he places a hand on my shoulder endearingly, "Alcohol only brings out the secret inner person you actually want to be."

"Yeah, and that's someone who needs to learn to take their alcohol like me," Bakugou walks past casually, drinking his (probably) third cup of coffee since morning.

"Oh please Bakugou, we all know you and Kirishima left early to fuck, you couldn't keep your hands off each other after one drink," Ashido stirs his tea just as casually.

Bakugou freezes up as the blushing pink man sips his tea like's he's talking about the weather.

"Oops, was that a secret?" the sassy pink man feints shame.

Bakugou, completely red at the ears, just stalks off grumbling to himself in embarrassment.

Ashido sighs, a smile playing on his lips.  "Not everyone can handle Grand Marnier, you know.  Aoyama actually put me onto it.  It's not for the faint of heart, but it definitely makes things more interesting.  Did you see Tokoyami?  Even-  Oh!  Here's the king of darkness himself!"

The man with raven-black hair that's usually spiked back has lazily gathered some of the hairs to pull it away from it face.  He probably felt so terrible this morning that he didn't bother gelling it up like he usually does.  Actually, Tokoyami looks just as hellish as I feel.  His sharp, bird-like eyes are dulled by dark circles as he trudges down the aisle.

Ashido throws an arm around his shoulders as he walks by, startling him enough to pull the earbuds out of his ears that are blasting hard rock.  "This guy right here was having the time of his life last night!  Just one drink and he loosened up, hands around everyone's shoulder telling them how much he appreciates them and mushy shit like that."

Tokoyami's pale face slowly reddens and his eyes widen, suddenly awake but having no energy to fight anything Ashido says.

"He even fit a lap shade on his head and started dancing around, I even have pictures to prove it!" Ashido continues gushing, pulling out his phone excitedly.

"Please don't bring it up," Tokoyami grits out, trying to be menacing, but his tomato-red faces contrasting his all black work outfit doesn't help his case.

"Don't be a spoiled-sport, it's so cute seeing you not dark and dreary for once!" the bright pink man gushes.

"I'm leaving."

Oh shit, if Tokoyami did that after one drink, I don't even wanna know what else I could've done.  I've already come to terms with my mistakes, but if there's more, I don't know what I would do.

Ashido sighs and puts his phone away.  "I guess he never wants to see himself happy.  Oh well, at least I have more blackmail material."  He winks at us and rises will a flourish, making his grand exit.  "I'll see you two around!"

There are some days when I really think Ashido might know more things than we think he does.  And that's a scary thought, because he could very easily have some dirt on everyone, including the boss and the more senior workers.

Todoroki taps his thumbs together in his clasped hands.  "That was...interesting.  But speaking of blackmail, I would also like to show you a picture that really upset me from last night”  He pulls out his phone and starts scrolling.

I cringe.  There's only one massively stupid thing I did that would upset Todoroki enough to really reprimand me Mom-style.  So I blurt out my rationale in hopes of him being less harsh on me.  “Okay, but in my defense, Kaminari bet me three dollars that I couldn't drink all that shampoo.  What was I supposed to do, say no?"

“No that’s not-"  His heterochromatic hair bounces as his head snaps up at me.  "You drank shampoo!? How did- When did you do that, I was supposed to be watching you the entire night!”

Shit, that wasn't it.  "Well, obviously you didn’t do a good job since I drank a whole cup of shampoo and you didn’t stop me," I try to brush it off defensively.

Todoroki's mortified face is as pale as the right side of his hair, covering his mouth with his clenched fist.  "How are you standing right now?"  He looks like he's about to have a heart attack.

"Considering how I threw up as soon as I got home - which I'll be honest, I don't even know how that happened - and I couldn't even eat this morning, I'd say my body did a pretty good job of rejecting it."

My office mate has no idea how he's supposed to react to any of that.  His phone is frozen in his hand as he glares at me like I have three heads.  "Well.  What I was going to show you doesn't compare to that."  He puts his phone away and tries to regain his composure.

I mentally sigh in relief.  At least drinking shampoo was the stupidest thing I did all night.

"If you really would like to know," his face softens, "I was the one who took you home last night, since you were thoroughly intoxicated."

"Oh."  Now I feel guilty.  Not only was I probably being a troublesome brat for him to take care of, I didn't even remember his kindness.  And he even made me soup for my troubles.  "I'm so sorry, and you did all this for me, thank you, Todoroki."

"It's fine.  It's due to the alcohol that you can't recall, I understand.  Though," Todoroki's cheeks flush slightly, "There is something I'm confused about."

Oh fuck, I did the thing didn't I?

"At first, I thought it was also an effect of the alcohol, considering you licked Asui's face while you were dancing with her, and you were generally more touchy with everyone the whole night."  He has trouble looking me in the eyes now.  "But, you were saying things to me that I don't think you would tell anyone else."

My entire mind goes into overdrive, scrambling to piece together the narrative lost in my memory.  There's one major concern I have.  "Was I vulgar?"

"No, it was nothing like that," he shakes his head, allowing me to relax.  "But, it was...charming, I'd say."

I bury my face in my hands.  "Just tell me what I said already."  I'm ready to regret everything.

"You...said you wanted me to stay with you, because you wanted me to be the first thing you see in the morning."  He has trouble getting the words out, but his voice was still delicate and endearing.  "You said seeing me every day at work is something you look forward to.  You told me how handsome I look, especially on the few occasions when I wear glasses."  His blush intensifies as I slowly feel closer and closer to dying.  "There were many other compliments.  And then...you...kissed me."

FUCK, I DID THE THING.

"Or, at least you tried.  If that was something you really wanted, I couldn't let you do it while you were intoxicated and couldn't remember it later."

An ashamed apology bubbles in my throat, but my extreme embarrassment doesn't let it come out.  How pathetic I am admitting my feelings to the person I like while I was guzzled with alcohol and shampoo.

"Not to say I didn't want to kiss you."

I snap my head up, fully taking in his tomato-red appearance as he averts he bores affectionate eyes into mine.  Oh.

"I don't know if you're up for it, but would you like to have dinner with me tonight?" Todoroki officially requests.

My heart melts at his innocent confession and relief.  "S-Sure," I squeak.

Todoroki gives me a small smile and pats my head.  "Finish that soup and hurry to finish your work for the day," he chides before getting up and heading back to his own desk.

My chest remains clenched and my cheeks hurt from smiling continuously.  The only thing I regret now is not seeing buttoned-up, proper Todoroki drunk.

[movieguy50]

Hey everyone,

I just want to give everyone a quick update as to what's going on with the scams or what's called operation drain and run out of the 200 that were arrested the other day most have been released must have been very forthcoming and giving information some of them have been detained further pending for their interview and or their charges are going to be dropped or reduced law enforcement agencies have confirmed that there are some more smaller cell operations of this type going on here in the United States and in Canada they are now getting in with the Canadian authorities to help with the investigation up there I can't tell you that 75 of the 200 people arrested the other day were members of Tumblr so basically yes they were right under our nose and we did not know it but I knew it.

I can also tell you that information from this point forward is going to be very slim because they are wanting to Big Cheese the people that are actually masterminding all this and they're going to have to start being careful what information they let out and that's totally acceptable to me I totally understand that and they did say the other thing about passing the info. on to you guys as much as they can. They said that I have been a big help in this there's been a few other people that have come forward they've also been assisting and helping out but I still need some more help so anything y'all got if it if it means you got scammed don't worry about being embarrassed you're not going to be judged or you're not going to be treated like shit just because you fell for it.

So now if you've noticed that I changed the format of my blog it makes it look like it's in a daily or weekly episodic TV show it's still called a slice of my world but it's also episode 1-18 this is starting to become a daily or actually it should say it bi-weekly thing of me posting and I have enjoyed it don't get me wrong but the title of this is called oh how things have changed and it's basically going to be a lot of difficult reading from this point forward but stuff that once you read it you'll understand why it has been so difficult I I'm going to Chronicle the night of January 20th of last year through the morning hours of January 21st which is what I considered the moment my life changed forever.

So we begin on January 20th 2020 I had to go to work I walked 4 miles to go to work because I didn't have a vehicle anymore and we were living in a motel so I had to you know make sure one of us is working until a lot of times where I was staying even hard for me to get a ride. So I work the 3:30 to close shift which basically meant I left between anywhere from between 12:30 and 1:00 in the morning I worked at a movie theater which by the way was probably the best job I had ever had in my life I I love that place I would love to go back to another one like it. So basically I got off work about 12:30 that night and normally I would have a ride to work on Monday nights this week it wasn't possible because of something that happened at the theater the manager got behind on his paperwork on and couldn't get out on time like he normally does I had to go to the store that night because we didn't have very much food so I went to store I got about 2 or 3 nights worth of food with enough till I get to my day off from work to go to the store and get more. That was a common occurrence so by the time I got done with the store and got home about 2:30 in the morning my wife was asleep she had been sick for about a month before this which now I have directly linked into being one of the first cases of COVID-19 in the united states'.

I came home and like I said she was asleep and I gave her a kiss like I usually do sometimes it wakes her up sometimes it doesn't this time it woke her up we start talking for a little bit I went outside and I did my usual ritual I go outside and smoke a little weed you know kind of relaxed a little bit for about 20-30 minutes yeah I went inside and cooked dinner now for a little background my wife had been sick for a while she had a heart attack November 8th in 2018 and then she had a stroke Easter Sunday of 2019 a stroke that she refused to go get taken care of even though I begged her and had other people beg her to go to the hospital she would not do it when she had the heart attack the doctor was not able to fix all the blockages to her heart because some of the arteries were too small so he told me privately that if she had another heart attack she wouldn't survive it I knew that I told her that about 3 months later so she knew but on this night I never had any dream or knowing that 2 hours after I got home from work she would be dead she had a massive heart attack I was just getting ready to start cooking dinner when she started really screaming about chest pain and I've never heard her go off like she did and even though I called 911 it still took the damn people 20 minutes to get out there otherwise I still think she'd be alive but then again maybe not so to try to make a long story short they would not let me ride in the ambulance with her to the hospital she was still coherent but when they did the ekg in the room where we were staying at I could tell the guy's eyes that she wasn't going to be much longer and I think the reason why they told me I couldn't ride with them was because for the same Theory I think that they didn't want my last memory of her to be of her fighting for her life and dying and I am thankful for that because I've had horrible nightmares about this whole thing and so after I made all the notifications and everything that day I went back to work two days later and I was told I could stay out as long as I needed to they were really really super awesome and amazing to me hell they were even responsible for giving me the money to get my wife buried because they donated money they put a pool in together to help me. The thing about it was is I don't know what upset me more the fact that I wish there was something more I could have done or the fact that I had to have a fucking cop show up to my door to tell me that she was gone even though I had already known it. So when I went back to work two days later it was very very hard because she used to work there too and she used to work at the podium on the weekends where she took the tickets and everything and told people where the theaters were and everything else and I wasn't there for 2 hours and I just doubled over it was just like a big flood of emotion but I made it that night but the hard part was with the weekends because those were the nights that she worked the most everybody loved my wife it worked up there and so I mean I didn't feel like I was so alone then the pandemic came I lost my job I lost my place where I was staying I had to go to my sister-in-law's house which was the biggest mistake of my life cuz I really found out what kind of people they were plus that's when I developed a curiosity for methamphetamine and then I met the bitch from hell not even 2 months later and keep in mind she was just supposed to be a companion we weren't like going to be boyfriend girlfriend cuz I still way too broke up about my wife's death that's all I wanted cuz I couldn't stand being lonely anymore just like I can't stand it now but she got me hooked on meth and I say she got me hooked because she kept bringing it around me knowing that I found something new that I really liked and I didn't ask her to bring it around I could have said no but this has to do with that 28 day period from June to July where she was drugging me putting the dope in my food in my drinks that's why I blame her.

Then after my ex got murdered at a house party I lost my sister-in-law and nephew and then my step daughter called me one day two weeks before Christmas to tell me that she lost her fiance her baby's daddy after he had a heart attack from A congenital heart defect that he had for 6 years the only bright spot of 2020 was my step daughter had a daughter of her own and that to this day that baby is my love bug

As where I'm at right now I'm going to be homeless by next weekend again unless I can come up with $250-300 dollars by Friday night it doesn't look like it's going to happen folks unless I can get some donations and get them quick I am taking donations right now if you can help I don't care if it's 5 10 15 20 $25 whatever it is it will help I don't expect nobody to give me the money all at once cuz I know a lot of people don't have that kind of money right now so just little donations will help right now I had to actually go to Walmart today and steal food God I hate myself for doing it I didn't get caught but still my conscience was getting the best of me for much of the evening I got enough food here to last me for 2 or 3 days if I end up getting to stay here but like I said it's not looking very good at this point I've tried local resources I've tried all kinds of Charities help and all they want you to do is hurry up and wait and I ain't got that kind of time and I told him that so I I'm asking for any help that anyone could give if I don't get if I can get at least $250 out of 400 I can go get me a motel room for the week and I'll get me by until I can come back here when my roommate comes back cuz then he'll have the money for the rent and everything else so I can come back here so I just need to really get by for a week I have not had any dope in nine days I'm going crazy but I need a place to live first before I can be doing that shit so I'll just have to deal with it if you want to help I'll give you my cash app I will put it at the end of this post for everybody so the last 18 months has not been fun I went to six suicide of Temps and I just been existing when before I had it all anyway so that's basically going to end this episode of a slice of my world I'm sorry if this was such a downer for a lot of people but you know I the more and more I feel like I tell my story easier everyday gets for me cuz I don't feel like I'm burying myself with all the emotion and having to keep it bottled up anyway I will talk to you y'all whenever I talk to you I may be on Hiatus for a little bit because I won't have a phone here after tomorrow unless I go someplace that has Wi-Fi and depending on my living situation I mean like I said I'm I'm hoping and praying somebody will be able to help out by donating a little bit of money to me so I can keep a place over my head somehow someway anyway y'all. I love you take care of yourself and I'll see you on the other side

Cashtag $jojo091069

PayPal

Venmo

Google pay

Message for those tags I left blank as I don't know them by heart yet

Love,. Sean

[harryandmolly]

Complicit // 1

summary: Shawn is under more pressure than he’s ever known. He craves release and comfort, the simplicity of sex. He gets more than he bargained for.

warnings: language, NSFW, me writing Niall’s accent

WC: 6.7k

-----------

“So… are we talking like, full on whips and chains and nipple clamps and shit?”

Shawn’s eyebrows are lost somewhere in his hairline, but at least it’s more life in his eyes than Niall’s seen in a while. Niall tries not to go pink at Shawn’s assumption, but he’s still not that good at talking about all this.

“No, no, mate. I mean, some of ‘em do that. I think, I mean, based on what you pay for it, they’ll do whatever you want.”

Both guys go quiet and squirm a little uncomfortably. They’re sitting in Shawn’s living room in his $3 million bachelor pad, furnished very tastefully and expensively, talking about hiring sex workers. It doesn’t look or feel great.

Niall sighs. “It’s not like Pretty Woman. These girls don’t even charge by the hour. They’re escorts, not hookers. They’re educated and articulate and the kind o’ woman you could have on your arm at any industry schmoozing event and no one would bat an eye. That’s the whole point.”

Shawn nods thoughtfully. He’s heard of agencies like this, obviously. He’s been around the industry long enough to know guys like him, and producers and managers and agents and other high-powered men, aren’t driving down Hollywood Boulevard looking for $200 an hour streetwalkers. But that doesn’t mean Shawn’s ever remotely considered utilizing a service like this.

“But… they’re dominatrixes?”

Niall tips his head back and forth, squinting as he looks for the words. “They’re dommes. ‘S a bit different. La Splendeur is the name o’ the agency. They hire women that boss you around a bit, in some form or an udder. I mean, have you ever tried that?”

Shawn flushes a little and scrolls through his relatively short sexual history. “... sort of? Like, she’s on top?”

Niall sighs and closes his eyes with a wise smile. He has much to learn.

“‘S just a suggestion. La Splendeur is the best of the best. Super discreet. Beautiful. Interesting girls. And it’s better stress relief than I’ve found anywhere else.”

“Including golf?” Shawn quips.

Niall barks a laugh. “Including golf. I’ll leave you the number and you can decide. I really like Karina, but it might be weird knowin’ we’ve both had our hands in that cookie jar. Up to you, mate. Totally up to you.”

+

Shawn has never been so anxious about a phone call in his life. He goes through his phone and turns off location services first, suddenly paranoid that they could somehow track his device and be able to broadcast this for the whole internet. Plus, he’s busy with pre-festival run promo, so he’s forced to make the call in the middle of the day. 

He goes to great lengths not to be heard, very publicly excusing himself to the bathroom and then running off to a quiet conference room down a hallway that was deserted. He shuts himself inside, stands in the corner by the window and dials, hands shaking.

The voice on the phone is smooth and easy, probably used to dealing with nervous wrecks like him all the time. She explains how it works -- the rates, the wire transfer, the security, the booking. Selecting his date comes down to an emailed photo portfolio, password encrypted and accompanied by a very stern warning not to share it with anyone, even potential referrals. Shawn supposes that makes sense -- they don’t want these photos getting passed around without the safety net of knowing that in return, the agency has the client’s private email address.

He’s twitchy all day before he can get home to his laptop, kick off his Saint Laurent chelsea boots, and pick his date.

‘Date’ is how he’s trying to think about it. Niall encouraged that, too. Shawn texted to let him know that he’d made the call (less than 24 hours after Niall had made the suggestion). Niall was over the moon, reminding him that it’s supposed to be fun and he shouldn’t feel weird about calling. It’s like a guaranteed great first date, just… a really expensive one.

Shawn opens the email to a PDF of professional and truly stunning photos. Each girl has a short bio and a series of shots that really don’t feel at all like advertisement for sex. He takes note of Karina, Niall’s favorite, a short and curvy Filipino girl who apparently excels at tennis, loves to sail and has an MBA. Her photos are gorgeous -- her on a beach wearing a tasteful cover-up and a flower in her hair with just enough cleavage to catch a guy’s attention, standing beside a tall window in a snug dress and heels, and grinning on a tennis court, a cute candid.

In total, there are about 25 women on La Splendeur’s roster of sorts, more than Shawn expected. They’re incredibly diverse in terms of race, shape and size, all accomplished and learned and surprisingly non-threatening, given the niche service they provide. Only one had him scrolling back up to look at her again and again.

Penny, 26, has a master’s degree in criminal psychology, is fluent in four languages, is an excellent skier and has a German shepherd named Pamela. Her photos show her lying barefoot in a cocktail dress on a lounge chair with a look in her eyes that says she already knows everything about you, looking over her shoulder to laugh at the camera during golden hour from above the Hollywood sign, and his personal favorite, a black and white close up headshot. She doesn’t look to be wearing a stitch of makeup. Her hair is wet and slung over and around her face like it’s in the wind. Her lips are parted, her eyes are dark, and Shawn has to meet her immediately. 

Penny. Penny. Penny.

God, he can’t fucking wait. He’s so keyed up he actually grins at the change he gets from a barista at Commissary because she gives him back two cents.

His instructions are clear and concise. He is to get himself to the Chateau Marmont and head into the bar, where he will give his name. Someone will escort him up to his suite for the evening, where he will be greeted by security, who will confirm the receipt of the wire transfer and wait until his date arrives. Check out time is 11:30am the next morning.

The big guy who lets him into the room seems friendly enough, but Shawn is sure his every move is being watched by a hawk. Even with rich and famous clientele, agencies can’t afford to take risks with their employees. At least he doesn’t feel like a nervous kid being scrutinized by his prom date’s dad while he waits. In fact, the guy, Gus, he says, sees him shaking like a leaf and murmurs that the mini bar is fully stocked. He excuses himself to wait outside.

Shawn pours himself a glass of bourbon on the rocks and looks around. He’s never been in a room at the Chateau. It’s a bit odd -- almost too comfortable to be a hotel. There’s a full kitchen and vintage furniture that looks like it belongs in a warm, comfortable apartment rather than the stoic uniformity of a hotel.

He’s rattling ice in his glass anxiously and staring out at the lights of West Hollywood when the door opens. He’s just distracted enough not to stand immediately when she walks in, and he realizes a little late that it’s rude, so he scrambles to be upright and almost drops his fucking crystal glass.

She’s smiling warmly at him like they’re old family friends. It’s not clinical or superficial or forced. It’s a real smile, and it’s so beautiful. She’s so beautiful.

I mean, wow.

She’s medium height, 5’7” probably, but taller in her spiky heels. Her hair is lighter than he saw in the pictures, probably from the summer sun. Her olive skin is gorgeously bronzed. Her brown eyes are darker than his, like espresso. Her eyes are wide set and framed by well tamed thick brows. Her lips are full and European. Italian, he’d guess.

So why is her name Penny?

Shawn almost rolls his eyes at himself. He doesn’t know why that’s sticking in his head now, of all moments. Gus gives her a nod and shuts the door. As she approaches, graceful and quiet even in her heels, Shawn blinks, staring at the door.

“Is… uh, does he stand outside the whole time?”

Penny smiles again and cocks her head, shaking it. “No, no. He’s my driver, not my guard dog.”

Shawn gives a weak chuckle and it sounds pathetic to his own ears. At the mention of dogs, his mind springs to Pamela the German shepherd. He wonders if she’s real or a line in a bio to make Penny sound quirky and likeable. He watches her lift her sheath of thick hair over one shoulder and reach for the glass of bourbon in his hand to take a sip. He decides he doesn’t care.

“Please, have a seat,” she suggests, gesturing to the sofa. He blinks too much and plunks himself down, clearing his throat.

She lowers herself beside him, facing him with her arm stretched along the back of the couch toward him. She folds her ankles and for a second Shawn thinks about the scene in The Princess Diaries when Mia falls out of her chair trying to pull the same move. Penny emulates Queen Clarisse instead. Shawn tenses against his own will. He can feel himself shutting down.

Penny takes another sip of his drink and eyes him carefully from over the glass. She’s been doing this long enough to know when a guy is locking up in front of her eyes. 

It’s like Operation. You have to move slow and careful, or you get zapped. He could be the kind of guy that would respond well to her dropping her hand to his knee while they talk, or it could send him springing across the room. Penny follows her instincts and instead flicks her heels until her multi-thousand dollar shoes clunk onto the hardwood below her. She curls up her feet beside her and tilts her head to rest against her fist.

“How long are you in LA for?”

It’s one of her favorite safe questions. It offers potential to discuss work if he wants to go there, but is vague enough to offer him an out if he wants it.

“Uh, for another couple weeks. I’ve got some meetings and events and stuff and then I think I’m bouncing around. New York, maybe. I don’t know my schedule as well as I probably should.”

Well, at least he’s talking. She hands him back his glass with a wink.

“Schedule schmedule.”

Shawn smiles. It’s tentative still, but sweet. She made the right move by taking off a layer of the untouchable glamour.

It’s her move again. She considers the board, eyes her options, keeps her fingers delicate on the tweezers.

“I listened to your music this week.”

It’s a risky shot, like going for the funny bone. She already knows, can tell by the way he carries himself, that he’s here to work something out of his system. This appointment isn’t about satisfying a rakish curiosity or an ego thing, or worse, a sex addiction. He needs something from her -- comfort, release. If it’s his music that’s driving him to need her, mentioning it off the bat like this could do some damage to the trust she’s working to build. She holds her breath.

He lights up.

“Oh, cool. All of it?”

She wiggles her naturally shaped eyebrows. “Right down to “Something Big.””

Shawn winces playfully and laughs. It sounds real this time. “Yikes.”

“No, it was cute,” she insists, her fingers stretching out along the back of the couch to nudge at his very solid arm. He goes a little pink.

“Do you have a favorite?”

Shawn doesn’t mean to put her on the spot. For all he knows, she just googled his albums to have something to say. But he asks anyway, despite himself, because he’d like to know which, if any, of his songs caught the attention of a woman like her.

“I like “Particular Taste.” It came on in my car the other day while I was on Mulholland. It’s a damn good car song.”

Shawn feels himself get a little smug. “Thanks. I like that one, too.”

They’re watching each other quietly, feeling the tension build. Penny wets her lips and leans in, getting ready to speak again.

“So how long have you been doing this?” Shawn blurts. His eyes go a little comically wide before he course corrects and inspects his nearly empty glass.

Penny is startled, but tucks some hair behind her ear and regroups. “Almost five years.”

“Wow. That’s… wow.”

Penny shares a wise sort of smile that reminds Shawn uncomfortably of Emily. “It’s nice work if you can get it.”

“Right,” Shawn croaks, glancing away.

Penny feels the gentle sting of having nicked the board just a bit with her tweezers. She reaches out the arm against the couch and lets her fingertips skim his lush curls. His chest shudders and his eyes dart toward the window. He raises his shaky hand with the empty glass to his lips for something to do.

Penny drops her other hand to his knee, giving it a gentle squeeze. 

“Hey,” she murmurs, all honey, “Would you like me to refill that?”

Shawn looks down at his drink and shakes his head. “N-no, that’s ok.”

Penny swipes her tongue over the front of her teeth and decides to toss her playbook aside the way she does on rare occasions.

She scoots in, cups his cheek in her hand and focuses his eyes on hers. His jaw twitches under her fingers.

“What do you want, Shawn?”

He blinks quickly, startled that she said something, confronted him with the actual situation they’re dealing with.

“I’m… I don’t know. Can… can we just talk for a while?”

She eases back a little, drops her hands in her lap. “Of course. About anything in particular?”

Shawn bites the inside of his cheek, then says, “How did you get into… escorting?”

He emphasizes the last word as a question, unsure if he’s using the right terminology. She nods reassuringly.

“Well, around the time I was graduating from college, I met a girl at a party who recruited me, for lack of a better term. She told me about the money, the tips, the security, the gifts. Sounded pretty good to a 20-year-old without a post-grad plan.”

Shawn’s eyebrows lift. “You graduated college at 20?”

She shrugs. “I skipped the 4th grade and AP tested out of most of my freshman year.”

He’s impressed. And intimidated. He fights the instinct to curl him up into himself. He doesn’t want to feel small beside her. He wants to feel impressive, too.

“That’s pretty cool. Do you do this full time?”

Penny laughs. It’s light and airy and maybe just a little… restrained somehow.

“Yes. You’re very curious about my line of work.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be-- I mean, I just… Sorry--”

She stops him from stumbling all over himself by planting a hand around his wrist.

“It’s ok. I’m just not used to being asked. Most people… they don’t want to be reminded that they’re paying for it.”

As soon as she says it, she hears the mistake in her words. Fucking amateur bullshit, she scolds herself, watching him cave in. His eyes drop to his feet and his chest rises and falls a little harder.

“Hey,” she prompts gently, keeping her hands off this time for fear of sending him flying, “Don’t shut down on me.”

He looks back at her blankly. “Don’t…?”

She presses her tongue out to smooth along her lower lip. “I’m here to help make you feel good, Shawn. I’m excellent at knowing how best to do that, but I think I’m gonna need an assist from you this time. So just… don’t think, don’t act, don’t react, just feel it. And tell me what you want.”

“I want to cuddle.”

He says it so suddenly he surprises himself. Without missing a beat, Penny nods, formulating a new gameplan in her head. She bites her lip and reaches for his twitchy hand in his lap.

“Ok. I can do that. I just want to get comfy first, ok?”

Before he can wonder out loud what she’s going to change into and how she got clothes in here without him seeing, she leans in and presses her lips to his delicately. His frazzled brain lights up like the 4th of July, sending thoughts flying like out of control fireworks. He kisses back after a second or two, firm but chaste. He murmurs subtly into her mouth.

Small victories.

When Penny walks out of the bathroom five minutes later, her makeup is wiped clean, leaving her face a little shiny and flushed. She’s in touchably soft clingy leggings and a Lululemon hoodie, looking like an athleisure ad. She’s still barefoot, her white painted toes winking up at him before she drops onto the bed and waves him over. He makes to climb up next to her and she hisses, gesturing to him with a wave of her hand.

“I took off my armor, Mendes, you need to do the same.”

Shawn swallows and smiles shyly. He kicks off his shoes, balls up his socks and drops his jeans into a heap by the bed. In his taut navy t-shirt and custom printed Calvin Klein boxer briefs, he settles in beside her, mirroring her position on his side.

“Ok, cards on the table, I think. Bad breakup? Tour anxiety? Voice struggles?”

Shawn’s chest rises and falls heavily with a deep, unrestrained sigh. There’s no reason to hide from her. She doesn’t know him. She doesn’t have expectations. She’s a safe space.

He stares down at the curve of her hip as he speaks. He tells the story from what he thinks is the beginning -- Emily’s first mention of the idea of the PR relationship with Bex. He explains the strategy and the trajectory, that they expect to be in and out of the public eye throughout the summer festival run and will not-so-quietly break up just around the time his album releases in the fall and Bex heads out on tour for her brand new EP.

Penny nods along while he speaks, pursing her lips and shifting slightly closer to him. She’s not working consciously, not timing the seconds between movements like she sometimes does, like she did even just on the couch a few minutes ago. But as he talks, she feels the tension start to drip off him and release to the point where she has no hesitation in slipping her fingers into the tight, short curls at the back of his neck while she runs her toes up and down the back of his calf.

He seems comforted by being able to touch her, too. He rests a hand in the dip of her waist and it wanders slightly up her ribcage and upper arm, twisting his long pale fingers in her hair. He watches it curl and bend for him. He can’t remember the last time he played with a woman’s hair like this.

When his cursory explanation ends, he closes his eyes and rests his head on his folded arm. Penny’s fingers tug gently at the nape of his neck for his attention.

“Sounds like a lot.”

Shawn’s chest stutters. His eyes well. He turns his face into the pillow, embarrassed by the hair trigger of his emotional reaction.

“S-sorry, I just… fuck. I don’t know why I’m--”

He cuts himself off with a final unintended whimper of defeat, a nice bookend on a chunk of shame he can hang onto and revisit in his head when he needs it the least.

His eyes are snapped shut. The tears on his lashes start to wick into the expensive fabric of the pillowcase beneath his head. He’s waiting for her -- he doesn’t know what for. He’s waiting for her to leave him there to cry it out, get back in her expensive shoes and clack away from his misery. He’s waiting for her to shove a hand down his boxers and give him what she thinks he paid for. He’s waiting for her to hate him like he hates himself right now.

Slowly, timidly, he opens his eyes. She’s there, blinking at him, face as placid and reassuring as he’s seen since she got here. She doesn’t look ready to run. She doesn’t look at him like the pitiful creature he’s acting like. She slides her long fingers up further to cradle the back of his head and make his wet eyes flutter.

“Would you like to hear what I think?”

Shawn pauses, then nods.

Penny wets her lips. “I think maybe you’re not very good at compartmentalizing yet.”

Shawn frowns slightly and starts turning circles on her lower back with the pad of his thumb, nodding at her to continue.

“This relationship stunt doesn’t define you as a man or as an artist. It’s publicity, the same way appearing on GMA is publicity. It’s not as honest, maybe. I can see that’s part of what bothers you. I can understand that. But this is a means to an end. You’re not using Bex; she’s aware of what she’s involved in. She benefits, too.

“So instead of letting this become something that bothers you in quiet moments, makes you question what this makes you look like or even who this means you’re becoming, you need to accept that this is a part of your job and it’s not who you are.”

Shawn blinks dumbly. He’s been trying to convince himself of this for a while, but he’s never come close to sounding as soothing and confident as she does right now. This woman listened to him yammer for seven minutes about his stupid pop star problems without rolling her eyes or waving off his concerns.

Thank god he’s paying her to be here or he swears he’d already be half in love with her.

Shawn closes his eyes and nuzzles his cheek against the pillow. “Can I kiss you?”

“Yes you may.”

He opens his eyes and watches her, settled by the distinct sensation that she’s allowing him to proceed as he’s comfortable. At the same time, he’s deliciously unnerved by something lurking behind her eyes, like she’s deciding how long to give him before she takes over. He hopes it won’t be long.

Shawn cups a large palm around her cheek, marveling at the silkiness of her hair in his fingers as he leans in, brushing his lips over hers. He hears himself murmur gently at the slick warmth of her lip balm. It tastes like rose water and coconut. 

He eases back after a moment, his head spinning.

“Jesus Christ, that’s incredible.”

Her long, dark lashes lift and lower lazily, casting shadows on her cheeks in the lamplight. “Kissing me?”

He shakes his head, marveling with a gentle groan, “Yes. Why does kissing you feel like the best thing that’s happened to me in months?”

“It’s simple. It’s stable. It’s honest.”

She says it like she didn’t have to think about it. She’s unwavering and direct and he knows she’s probably really good at all this because of who she is and what she does but he doesn’t think he cares right now if it’s not genuine. It feels too fucking good.

He smirks. “Do you have an answer for everything?”

Her full lips spread in a lazy grin. “Yes.”

“Thank god,” Shawn mutters just before pressing his lips back to hers.

Shawn has no idea what to expect. It’s been what’s had him on a knife’s edge since he booked this appointment. His curiosity has been his friend while zoning out in meetings, standing in security lines at airports, stripped down to his boxers in front of a team of people while trying on show clothes. An experience like this to look forward to was an intense enough distraction from his anxiety.

And now, lying in a bed next to her with her perfect tongue tangled with his and her soft hands roaming his body hungrily, but with purpose, his mind races -- what will this be like? What will this feel like? Is it really as good as Niall says?

She pulls back suddenly, her lips leaving his with a wet smack. His hips rut against her stomach in response.

“Time for you to stop thinking,” she rasps. Shawn squirms at the fucked-out quality of her voice. Is it at all possible that he’s got her as worked up as she has him? He’s already throbbing for her in his briefs, which he knows she can feel against her thigh.

He brushes his nose against hers a little desperately, silently begging for more. Even with his eyes closed, he can tell she’s smiling when she cups his cheek and rolls their bodies so she’s lying slotted up against him in every way that makes him crazy.

“You like kissing, huh?” she breathes. It’s not teasing, not really. It’s curious and gentle. He can feel the way she takes note of the things that have him panting a little harder, pressing into her more insistently. It makes him feel important and a little bashful. He nods anyway, lifting the corner of his mouth.

“You’re a good kisser, Shawn,” she sighs into his mouth, dropping her weight into her hips and sliding her hands up his chest to rest over his pecs.

If her tongue wasn’t teasing his lower lip, he’d be grinning like an asshole.

His hands are growing frantic. They can’t decide where they like better -- her supernaturally soft hair, coursing up and down her spine, or resting on the toned swell of her ass. So they wander, getting grabbier as they go, until she pulls away again with a long lick of her wet lips.

“What are you going to do to me?”

He hears himself ask it over the rushing of blood in his ears. He can tell by the way she smiles down at him that he looks horrified at his own question. She pushes some curls off his forehead and looks him over, slowly, carefully, admiringly. Shawn is on fire beneath her, but she doesn’t seem to mind.

As if in slow motion, she tucks a hand under his neck. The motion fixes his manic, desperate eyes on hers. His breathing slows. His heart drops into his gut. His jaw tightens.

“Anything I want.”

Her voice is hot and sharp. Shawn’s face screws up like his body is physically overwhelmed by the idea of all the pleasure she can offer him. His eyes snap shut and the groan he releases is inhumanly loud.

When he can force himself to look back up at her, Penny has straddled his hips and works on lifting her hoodie up and over a black bra that he’s sure only a woman like Penny could wear… like that.

Her breasts are full and soft, as evenly tanned as the rest of her, from what he can see, which is not enough. He gets a flash of a vision of her lying on the chaise on the balcony outside their Chateau suite without a stitch on her, sipping a mimosa and smiling when she catches him admiring her. He grunts and reaches for her, needing to take and touch and taste.

His hands are pinned beside his head before he gets far. He gasps. His eyes blur with her quick movement until they can refocus and realize she’s holding him down, her breasts a breath away from his mouth.

“Fuck,” he grunts.

“Listen to me.”

It’s clear and stable and calm like a beacon in a storm. Shawn juts his chin up defiantly, licking his lips.

“You don’t touch me until I tell you to. If you do, you don’t touch me at all, not for the rest of the night. Do you understand?”

Shawn’s fingers curl into fists beside his head. His body aches, straining for the control she’s sapping from him. He’s not used to willingly giving it up, not anywhere, not for anyone.

“Take a deep breath,” she advises, feeling him struggle with the release of it, of the reins he’s held for so long his hands are fucking raw. His whole body feels raw looking up at her.

He does as he’s told. Her eyes are nearly black in the low light. He feels his shoulders soften and the squeezing of his heart start to slow, just a bit.

“You’re gonna have to walk me through this,” he grunts, shaking his head, “I-- I’m… for so…”

“I know,” she soothes, not to placate him, not to baby him. She wants him to know she understands. He feels it in the way she looks at him, the way she massages her fingers around his wrists. 

He’s ok. He’s safe. He’s safe with her. It hits him all at once like a brick over the head. He swallows.

“I’m here to take care of you. I want to make you feel as good as I possibly can.”

He nods again.

She moves slowly, gracefully, like a lithe and dangerous predator. She pushes her leggings down her hips, sliding them off her feet until they’re forgotten in a pool at the end of the bed. His shirt and boxers join them, leaving his cock aching and leaking from the tip on his lower belly. He lies beside her, as instructed, with his arms over his head, grasping a pillow in his needy fingers.

She just… touches him. 

He thought at first she was just going for a slow tease, would wrap her warm fingers around his cock after thirty seconds or so to get him somewhere, but that doesn’t seem to be the plan. He’s flat beside her, legs slightly spread, tensing and relaxing with each brush of her fingertips.

Before long, he realizes what she’s doing and it stuns him into holding his breath for so long that the gasp he releases when he remembers he needs oxygen makes her jump a little.

She’s studying him. She wants to know every inch of his body, wants to see how every subtle touch affects him. She is reading him like an instruction manual. Her eyes flicker, narrowing and darting and taking it all in. She can see every goosebump, every subtle lift of his hips, every intake of breath, every clench of muscle and little smile when she finds somewhere ticklish. By the time her scan seems complete, he’s panting, shaking, vibrating with need, and he knows she knows his body better than he does now.

And she gets to decide what to do with it.

From beside him, keeping her eyes on his, Penny reaches back and unclasps her architecturally stunning bra, draws the straps down her arms, and drops it off the side of the bed, revealing what Shawn had suspected to be the most perfect pair of breasts of all time. He was right.

“God, you’re gorgeous,” he hisses, pressing his head back into the pillow to keep from lunging at her stiff brown nipples. He’s rewarded for his compliment with a sweeping hand down his stomach, her fingertips just skimming the line of pubic hair that reaches down from his navel. His hips roll up in response.

Penny turns. Shawn watches her hair swing low against her back like a pendulum, entranced before he realizes she’s standing and bending over to shed her black lace cheeky panties. He remains still, his head turned toward her as she bares herself, until she turns back and faces him and he chokes on air.

He’s seen beautiful women naked. Plenty of them. Really, he has. He knows somewhere in his addled mind that it’s the performance of it that has him so fucking high strung that he almost coughs up a lung when he sees Penny without clothes, that he really, legitimately feels like he’s going to have a heart attack just from looking at her. 

But he’s never been so goddamn hard in his life.

She takes a step toward the bed and lifts her leg to climb up next to him. He realizes with a jolt as he watches her legs separate that she’s soaking fucking wet. The insides of her thighs are slick. Shawn presses his heels into the bed to ground himself.

You can’t fake that.

Without a word, she positions herself on top of him, her strong legs on either side of his hips, her hands sunken between pillows by his head. Their eyes are locked. Shawn’s cock shifts against his stomach impatiently. Penny lifts a corner of her soft wet mouth. Shawn chokes on a whimpering sound he’s never heard himself make before. She drops her hips and he hears himself gasp.

“Oh!” he cries, throwing his head back as his hips thrust up to meet her. He vaguely feels the warmth of her lips on his chest, but he’s busy trying to fight back his orgasm that, with just the pressure, warmth and wetness of her pussy resting against his length, is roaring up in his abdomen.

“J-jesus… fuck…” he hisses, rolling his head to the side, sure if he looks down at her pretty face he’ll be coming like a freight train before she even has the chance to really do anything.

“You’ve never felt anything like this before,” she tells him smoothly. It doesn’t smack of arrogance or condescension. It’s simple fact. They both know it.

He shakes his head no, panting breath into the pillowcase.

“You never knew it could be like this.”

Again, he’s agreeing.

“I want you to remember this, what this feels like with me in your lap, wet for you, showing you how this can feel with me. I want you to look at me. Don’t take your eyes off me, Shawn.”

Another purring whimper escapes his throat. Slowly, he peels his sweaty cheek from the pillow and blinks down at her. There’s something feral that’s taken the place of what he saw in her before -- the white painted toes, the cozy hoodie, the gentle giggles. This part he sees now is going to swallow him whole. He’s going to let it, with pleasure.

Penny rolls her hips from left to right, swinging back again easily, with the rhythm of a dancer. The sound their bodies make is absolutely obscene. He grits his teeth through a hiss, watching her eyes flutter.

“You feel… incredible,” she pants slightly, establishing a slow, aching pace that makes Shawn’s brows draw together and his knuckles whiten against the pillow.

“I don’t know how long I can--”

“Don’t worry about that. I’ll tell you when you can come.”

She says it easily, like he’s in no danger of losing his fucking mind and spurting all over her stomach in probably only a few seconds. He realizes with a shiver it’s because she knows, for certain, without a shadow of a doubt, that he won’t come until she tells him.

“You’re so nice and hard for me, fuck. Touching you got me so wet. Can you hear us?”

Shawn is quaking, clinging to sanity, as her slick folds hug his cock, grinding harder with each pass of her hips. He doesn’t trust himself to speak anymore. He has no idea what could come out of his mouth at this point. He just nods eagerly, begging his eyes to stay open so he can obey her.

“Can you feel the way the head of your cock is rubbing my clit?” she nearly squeaks, sounding genuinely as close to orgasm as he is. His eyes go wide. His stupid mouth opens.

“Are-- are you gonna come like this?”

Holding her quick rocking pace, Penny springs up, snapping at his lower lip like a snake. He freezes, whining, and very nearly loses control of his tensed arms.

“Fuck yeah, I am,” she moans, and it’s the only warning he gets before her whole body goes tight atop him and she gushes all over his cock and thighs.

“Holy fuck, holy fucking shit,” Shawn gasps, rolling his hips to cradle her as she stutters through it, mewling and humming against his chest. He watches her eyes squeeze shut and open again slowly, looking up at him like she forgot he was there.

In the stillness, the room is so quiet, it’s loud. Shawn feels every cell in his body screaming, begging.

Penny licks her lips and shifts, getting ready to bear down. “You can come now.”

His hips take off at a sprint with her permission. She keeps up easily, using her weight in her knees to drive herself back against his every stroke, egged on by the wet slap of their skin and the glazed look in his eyes.

“Penny, I’m coming,” he warns her, because he feels like he should and he doesn’t know quite why other than he thinks she craves her permission for everything now. She squeezes her swollen lower lip under her row of straight white teeth and watches curiously, doubling down on the stroking of her hips.

“Shit! Oh fuck!” Shawn screams, hips roiling and rioting beneath hers as he comes hard, spurting against her swollen folds and between their clenching stomachs. His vision goes white. He can’t hear himself if he keeps talking, or yelling, and he can’t hear her if she’s trying to soothe him through it. It’s several seconds before he crash lands to feel her peeling her body off his and sees her shifting back over his thighs.

He doesn’t have time, or the mental capacity, to speak before she reaches between her legs and swipes a hand through her wetness and his. Her palm is slick, glistening in the low light. She reaches for his tired cock and gives it a squeeze.

“I want one more.”

His eyes bulge. “What?”

“One more, Shawn. Come again for me. You’ve been waiting for this for a week, I know you have it in you. Now fuck my fist and come for me.”

Shawn’s jaw drops as she pulses her fingers again. Despite everything he thought he knew about his own body, he feels himself already starting to harden in her palm again. He groans loudly, pulls his shaky legs so his feet plant below him, and starts lifting his hips.

“Ohmygod. Oh… oh my god,” he pants, eyes wild as they fix on her in disbelief. How did she know? How does she have this much power over him already? How does he make sure she never gives it back?

“Yes,” she praises, looking ravenous as his hips pick up speed and he grows fully hard in the clench of her fist, “Fuck, you’re so fucking good for me.”

His head tips back. He mewls a noise of overwhelmed pleasure and fucks his hips up even harder.

“Jesus Christ, I’m gonna fucking come again!” he shouts, pupils blowing out as he comes up on his forearms and bucks his entire lower body, quaking as he hurtles toward a second orgasm.

Penny lurches forward, swallowing the scream she knows is building in his chest with a searing kiss. His abdomen clenches as he bursts for her again, drenching her fist and his belly. It’s shorter and rockier than the first orgasm, sending him falling back to the bed totally limp and sated in only a few seconds. Penny mercifully releases him from her fist, using her other hand to smooth through his hair.

She’s concerned for a minute that she broke him. He just keeps staring at her, blinking too slowly, not speaking. She presses little kisses over his face, partially to encourage him, and maybe a little bit to distract herself from trying to make him come again because holy shit, she loved that.

“Never done that before,” he mumbles finally, his eyes sliding shut, like he’s finally secure enough to close them and believe she’ll still be sitting there when he does.

She nods, though he can’t see her. On her own wiggly legs, she manages to stand and get a wet washcloth from the bathroom. When she returns to wipe him off, he’s blinking at her curiously.

“Can I touch you now?”

She grins. “Yes you may.”

Shawn smiles gently. His eyes slide shut. He lifts a heavy palm to her thigh, rubbing her soft bronzed skin in a tender gesture of thanks. 

Penny tosses the cloth aside and folds up against him, manipulating his arm around her as she lies against his chest.

“Wanna see you again,” he whispers. She bobs her head.

“Anytime you want.”

He presses his face into her hair, inhaling expensive salon shampoo and exhaling at least three months’ worth of stress. He’s asleep in under ten minutes. She decides to let him rest and behaves herself enough not to wake him up for round two (or three, technically) for at least an hour.

----------

This is gonna be a wild one, guys. If you’re so inclined, the link to buy me a Ko-fi is in my bio!

Taglist: @smallerinfinities @the-claire-bitch-project @achinglyshawn @infiniteshawn @mendesoft @singanddreamanyway @alone-in-madness @abigfatmess @shawnitsmutual @awkwardfangirl2014 @september-lace @grittyisaho @sinplisticshawn @rollingxstone @yslsaint @randi-eve @fallmoreinlove @heyits-claire @itrocksmysocks @parkerspicedlatte @simpledomain @abeautiful-and-cloudy-day @thecurlsofgod @magcon7280 @bensbuttercup @tnhmblive @greedydevil

[aliciameade]

A Thousand Cuts

Title: A Thousand Cuts Author: aliciameade Rating: M for alcoholism and angst Pairing: Beca/Chloe Summary: Beca doesn't realize she needs to get her shit together until it's too late, or, my take on a prompt I was sent to write something based on Taylor Swift��s “Death by a Thousand Cuts.”

Also on AO3

My heart, my hips, my body, my love / Trying to find a part of me that you didn't touch

Gave up on me like I was a bad drug / Now I'm searching for signs in a haunted club

Our songs, our films, united, we stand / Our country, guess it was a lawless land 

Quiet my fears with the touch of your hand / Paper cut stings from my paper-thin plans 

My time, my wine, my spirit, my trust / Trying to find a part of me you didn't take up 

Gave you so much, but it wasn't enough / But I'll be alright, it's just a thousand cuts

“You don’t mean that.” Beca’s voice cracks over the words; she’s moments from crying and she knows it.

Chloe’s already crying. “The hell I don’t.” Her voice is steady despite the tears. Her jaw is set, the muscles in her left cheek tensing with how hard she’s clenching it.

“Where am I supposed to go?” That’s when the first tear finally hits Beca’s cheek. They don’t stop after that and she doesn’t bother trying to wipe them away. “I don’t know anyone else here!”

“That’s not my problem.” Chloe walks away so abruptly, steps so heavy it makes Beca jump. She’s digging through the trunk that sits at the foot of their bed and pulls out Beca’s duffel bag to toss it onto the bed. “Pack. And get the rest of your shit out before the end of the month whenever I’m not here or I’m throwing it all away.”

Beca’s sure this must be what it feels like for the earth to swallow one whole. Her world’s been ripped out from beneath her feet.

The thing is, it’s her fault. She can’t argue that it’s not. She could have tried harder, not allowed herself to grow complacent. Chloe was someone who loves with her entire being, every inch of her soul. And Beca adores her. Loves her. But she has struggled to keep up with just how much Chloe needs from her in return for all the love she gives Beca. Truth be told, it’s scared the shit out of Beca since the day they exchanged their first ‘I love yous.’ She had even prefaced her confession by saying she will probably mess it all up.

Fucking self-fulfilling prophecies.

“I’m going for a walk,” Chloe says as she pushes past Beca more physically than necessary. “Don’t be here when I get back.”

When the door slams behind her, Beca fights the urge to crumple onto their bed and weep. They’d just made love on it this morning and she thinks if she touches it, it may burn her flesh.

Instead, she grabs the bag Chloe threw onto it and starts stuffing clothes and toiletries into it. Her head pounds and her chest aches with the need to sob but she won’t give this tiny apartment, their first home together as a couple. She fills the bag until she can’t zip it and throws her laptop into its case to swing them both over her shoulder.

On her way out the door, she rips a photo of the two of them in front of their Christmas tree last year off the fridge—not to destroy it, but to stuff it into her bag.

She wonders if Chloe will even notice it’s gone.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Beca takes the train into Manhattan. Brooklyn feels too small, too familiar. She wants the city to swallow her since the earth only pretended to. She doesn’t have a single New York-based contact in her phone except for the ramen house Chloe and she love and the main number for her office. She doesn’t particularly like her job and has made no effort to get to know anyone there. 

In the future, she’ll realize this could be a theme in her life.

She ends up at a hotel by Union Square. She can’t afford it. It’s nearly $200 for the night and it goes on an already precariously charged-up credit card. She’ll move to a hostel tomorrow; tonight, she needs privacy and space and the freedom to have the breakdown she’s been staving off for the two hours it’s been since Chloe told her it was over and threw her out of their home.

Once she gets to her room, she drops her bags on the floor and immediately throws up.

It’s the longest night of Beca’s life.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

She doesn’t get the rest of her belongings back. She’s living in a hostel in a room she shares with five other people, at least one of which is new every night. She has to wait her turn to use the bathroom and to shower and most of the time, there’s no hot water.

The good thing, she supposes as she tries day after day to find a single good thing in her life, is that at $35 per day, she can actually afford her room and board and even feed herself twice a day and keep her phone bill paid.

Thank God for ubiquitous free WiFi.

But that one good thing, just keeping herself in room and board, doesn’t do anything to outweigh all the bad.

She hasn’t spoken to or heard from Chloe in two months. There was no final warning about coming to get her belongings or they’d be trashed. Chloe hasn’t checked in with her a single time.

Not that Beca’s reached out to Chloe either.

She’d thought escaping Brooklyn would help protect herself. Far from away all their usual haunts, she would be safer from the constant reminders of all the moments she and Chloe shared in the year-and-a-half they spent living together there.

Instead, she’s faced with bigger reminders in Manhattan. So many date nights spent there at restaurants and concert venues and theatres and sunset strolls through parks.

“Oh, my gosh, baby, this is so romantic, we have to take a selfie,” Chloe said as she grabbed Beca’s hands to spin them in a circle that almost had Beca tripping over her own feet. “Wait, no! Excuse me, sir?” Chloe asked a passerby. “Would you take our picture, please?”

“Sure,” he said as Chloe handed him her phone. “Tell me when.”

“Just take a bunch,” Chloe answered before Beca had even had a chance to weakly and pointlessly protest the impromptu photoshoot.

Then they were kissing on Gapstow Bridge with Central Park and the New York skyline behind them and Beca forgot why she would ever want to protest such a thing.

She can’t even walk through Times Square without her eyes pricking with tears at the memory of Chloe dragging Beca up the red stairs in the middle of a snowstorm to take a selfie at the top while they kissed wearing beanies and scarves and gloves.

The photo came out looking like they were in a snow globe and felt as magical as it looked. It’s saved in her favorites on her phone, but she refuses to let herself look through that album.

Even when she’s alone at night in a strange place that is her home but feels nothing like it, Chloe is everywhere. She can feel her phantom arms around her waist to pull Beca back against her to settle into sleep. In the shower, her hands travel over her body and she remembers all the times and all the ways Chloe has touched her here, and here, and here.

Alcohol doesn’t help, though Beca gives it her best shot.

It leads to her waking up in the beds of people whose names she only sometimes remembers.

A man she goes home with makes her leave when she won’t stop crying when he tries to touch her.

A woman she goes home with spends the night holding her. They even have sex, finally, in the early hours of the morning. But all Beca can think about is how it’s not right. How she isn’t Chloe and she doesn’t know how to touch Beca as Chloe does. It does nothing to help Beca forget or move on. In fact, it only makes her miss Chloe more.

She stops trying to escape into other people and goes back to drinking alone. It’s cheaper that way, too, which is a nice bonus. One bottle of whiskey runs her $40 which gives her far more drinks for her dollar compared to going to bars.

Eventually, she finds someone in need of a roommate through a coworker and she has a room to herself in Washington Heights. Her roommate is nice, a few years older than Beca, and works for the city’s child services department. She’s a good listener on the rare occasions Beca confides in her when her emotions become too much to take alone.

It turns into a relationship of convenience. They both acknowledge that’s what it is and that they’re setting themselves up for disaster if (when) it ends because someone (Beca) is going to have to move out when things become too messy.

But until that happens, it’s nice to feel at least somewhat normal again. She doesn’t feel like she’s ready to fall apart if someone looks at her the wrong way on the street.

She still thinks about Chloe at least once every minute when she’s conscious.

And usually, even when she’s not.

She knows she’s fixating. It’s too hard to not spend as much energy as she can berating herself for messing up and losing Chloe. It’s delicious torture to hate herself so much and replay the details of every moment of their relationship and pick out every time she fucked up and think about how she could have done it differently, how she would do it differently if she had the chance.

What’s most irritating of all is that there is no one singular cataclysmic event she can blame. It was her series of micro-aggressions, so seemingly small (to Beca), that piled up until replying to Chloe’s multi-scroll-long text message telling Beca that she needed more from her with “k” got her thrown out on the street.

And she knew—knows—she deserved it.

She wishes she could go back in time and slap herself and tell her to get her shit together before she loses the best thing to ever happen to her.

But she can’t. She keeps drinking and it’s never enough to forget Chloe.

Eventually, her behavior lands her out on her ass again, but this time, she expects it. What girl wants her not-girlfriend crying about her ex every time they have sex? At least there’s a discussion first and she’s allowed a couple of weeks to find a new place to live.

A year has passed since she fucked up her relationship with Chloe but, somehow, she’s managed to get her professional life into something resembling moderate success. She’s surprised when she downloads bank statements at the balance in her account to have when she goes apartment hunting. She’s done nothing but pay rent to her now-ex-roommate and buy what few things she’s needed to get by (mostly alcohol). She thinks she remembers an email from HR about a bonus or royalty payout around Christmas…?

It affords her the ability to get her own apartment, a one-bedroom in Harlem.

It also affords her the freedom to indulge in all her vices without someone passing judgment. She can drink herself to blackout. She can have anonymous sex. She can cry until she’s sick or lay on the floor and stare at the ceiling all night in a drug-and-alcohol-induced stupor. None of it really matters, anyway.

She fits right in with the people she’s finding herself forced to be around more often. She gets wasted with colleagues and A-listers under the guise of networking. She impresses men with her ability to out-drink them despite her stature. And if one of them offers cocaine? She can be the last one standing in the early hours of the morning.

She prides herself on her endurance, though not more than she prides herself on the fact that no matter how hammered she gets, not once has she drunk-dialed Chloe to beg forgiveness.

She hasn’t dialed her at all, for that matter.

She’s never apologized.

She wants to point out that showing up at her former apartment building when it’s dark and the streets are empty repeatedly pressing the buzzer for what used to be her apartment is not drunk-dialing nor drunk-texting.

“Hello?” Chloe’s voice crackles through the shitty speaker and Beca slumps against the wall next to the metal intercom at the sound of it. “Is anyone there? I swear if you kids are pulling this shit again, I’m calling the cops.”

Beca laughs to herself, memories of a group of teenagers that roams the neighborhood raising havoc of the relatively painless variety. Things like Ding Dong Ditch and hiding delivered packages from their recipients. It always infuriated Chloe and made Beca laugh and tell her to calm down, they’re just kids and they could be getting into much worse kinds of trouble.

She considers continuing to ring the buzzer just to keep Chloe on the line; it’s been so long since she’s heard her voice. Maybe she could just sleep on the building’s stoop?

She’s still thinking about it when she hears the familiar squeak of the door opening.

“Beca?”

She wonders if maybe she finally passed out to slip into dreamland because Chloe’s standing in front of her in plaid sleep shorts and Beca’s favorite vintage David Bowie tee.

“Hey, babe,” she slurs.

“What are you doing here?” Chloe takes half a step out of the door and starts to reach for her but stops short. “Are you drunk?”

“What if I am?” she says as she pushes herself away from the wall to stand upright again, though everything feels like it’s tilting. She points. “That’s my shirt.”

Chloe crosses her arms over her chest as if that will hide it. “I asked what you’re doing here.”

Beca has to think hard. She doesn’t remember how she got to Brooklyn. She doesn’t know what time it is. “I’m tired,” she answers. “I came home.”

“You don’t live here anymore.”

“I didn’t say I live here. I said I came home.” She tries to walk forward but trips and finds herself caught by Chloe before she hurts herself. “Cat-like reflexes,” she says with a chuckle before catching the scent of the laundry detergent and lotion Chloe always uses and the tears come out of nowhere.

She’s vaguely aware that Chloe’s helping her walk and it’s up the stairs and into the apartment they once shared, not out to the curb.

The last thought that passes through her mind as Chloe helps her into what was always Beca’s side of the bed is that even through her blurry vision she can see a picture on the refrigerator. A copy of the same photo she’d taken with her the day Chloe had thrown her out, placed in the exact place the original had been for so long.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

She wakes to the smell of freshly brewed coffee. Her head throbs but not too painfully; she rarely gets hungover these days. She knows where she is. She knows the feel of the bed, the softness of the sheets, the scent of breakfast and the sound of the quiet tings and thuds of cabinets opening and closing, of plates, mugs, spoons, and knives.

She doesn’t want to open her eyes. Maybe if she pretends to be asleep she could stay there all day without having to be embarrassed by her actions. She can just hold onto this unexpected return to a past life for a few more minutes before it’s ripped away from her again.

She starts when the sound of a mug being placed on the nightstand near her head comes unexpectedly.

“Morning,” Chloe’s quiet, husky morning voice whispers as she sits on the edge of the bed next to Beca.

Beca grimaces and pulls the covers up over her head. “No.”

“I have to go to work.” Beca didn’t even think about the fact that it was a weekday. Her own schedule doesn’t conform to the typical Monday-through-Friday model. “But I’m going to call out sick for the afternoon and come back at lunch.”

Beca slips the covers down until they’re under her chin. She knows she looks like shit but Chloe looks more beautiful than she remembers her.

“You can stay here until then. Help yourself to breakfast. We’ll talk when I get home, okay?”

Beca just nods, afraid that anything more than that will wake her from whatever dream she’s having. She feels Chloe’s hand on her leg, a brief touch before she’s leaving too soon.

Beca watches her gather her things and leave the apartment, locking it with her keys.

She knows she should go back to sleep. Sleep off the last bits of the drunkenness she can still feel swimming in her. But she’s been thrown back into her old life, her old home, and like so many mornings, Chloe’s just gone to work after making coffee for Beca.

Slowly, she sits up to take in her surroundings. The small studio looks much like she’s remembered it. There’s a lot more of Chloe in it now, though. More photos of her and friends Beca’s never met. The band posters Beca had insisted on putting up have been replaced with generic canvas prints from Target that feature the Eiffel Tower and a recreation of a poster for la tournée du Chat Noir avec Rodolphe Salis. It makes her smile; Chloe’s always had an obsession with Paris and it had only gotten worse after they went to Denmark—but not France—in college.

Driven by her roiling stomach she forces herself out of bed. When she stands, she has to do a double-take looking down at herself. She’s not wearing the clothes she’d left her apartment in yesterday. She’s not even wearing pants. Her legs are bare and she plucks at the shirt she’s wearing to see it’s one of her old concert tees.

A memory flashes of last night, of Chloe in the doorway wearing Beca’s shirt.

It makes her feel lightheaded and she reaches for the coffee Chloe’s left bedside before crossing the room to the kitchen. Everything’s still in the same place and it’s mindless yet spine-tingling to go through the motions of finding something to eat in that room just as she’s done countless times in the past.

She plops down at the small table that she once imagined proposing to Chloe over on a Sunday morning over a cozy winter brunch they prepared together and is about to dig into her bowl of Cinnamon Toast Crunch that Chloe miraculously has on-hand despite claiming to hate it when she freezes, spoon halfway to her mouth.

On the clothing rack in the middle of the room, the one they had to fight over for valuable space, hang all of Beca’s clothes she’d left behind when she was forced to flee.

Her chair screeches as she pushes it back to rush over and quickly flip through the blouses, pants, and dresses she hasn’t seen in more than a year. She tugs open the third and then fourth drawers of the dresser they shared to find them both still stuffed full of underwear, bras, socks, tank tops, shorts, and Beca’s beanies and gloves she’d really missed that winter. She drops to her knees and reaches under the bed to find the sharp plastic edge of a storage bin and pulls it out. All her shoes, still in their place.

If not for the changes in decor, she would believe she never left. Nothing has changed since her last morning with Chloe.

It’s overwhelming. Chloe had threatened to throw everything away if Beca never picked it up. Beca never did, but Chloe didn’t follow through.

Her head swims and her eyes prick with tears. She thinks she might be sick from the rush of emotions and adrenaline; Chloe hadn’t tossed their life in the trash even though she’d tossed Beca to the curb.

She isn’t sick, though. Instead, she strips off her shirt and crawls into the bathtub and turns on the shower to sit under the spray and cry.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Beca’s heart races when she hears Chloe’s keys in the hallway seconds before they rattle in the lock. She watches the door open slowly, Chloe peeking in carefully until they find Beca sitting at the table.

“You’re awake,” she says as she enters with less care now that Beca’s not asleep. “Did you find something to eat? I brought lunch just in case.”

Beca’s eyes drop to the bag in Chloe’s hand; there are familiar round plastic take-out containers stacked in it and Beca doesn’t have to ask to know it’s from the ramen place they frequented. “I did, yeah.”

Chloe sets the bag on the table and Beca watches her take off and hang up her coat. When she turns back around, she pauses. “Oh.”

Beca wonders what she’s looking at until she realizes it’s Beca’s clothes. “You didn’t throw my stuff away.”

Chloe takes a break as though she’s about to speak but instead she sighs and says nothing in reply as she sits down in her chair to Beca’s left and starts unpacking the lunch she’s brought.

Beca catches her hand when it’s busy setting up soup and sides and Chloe’s entire body seems to flinch, but she doesn’t pull her hand away. “You didn’t throw me away, did you.”

Tears are welling in Chloe’s eyes when they meet Beca’s but she still doesn’t speak.

“You don’t have to say anything,” Beca rushes when she realizes she’s the one who has to do the talking. “But I do. Will you hear me out? Give me ten minutes. Five.”

“Okay,” Chloe says quietly as she pulls her hand back to resume passing out utensils.

Beca waits until she’s finished, until Chloe’s no longer distracting herself with busywork and her eyes land on Beca nervously so she can finally say, “I’m sorry, Chloe.”

The End

[hustlemeanokay]

Warning - this got a little long winded... but it’s something that I just... I get long winded about lol. Also - I’m not trying to rag on anyone in the UK who dreams of living here... though I don’t understand it. It’s just - you should be aware and I don’t see this said enough. Yes, it’s delivered in a very passionate way, because it’s shit that is frustrating for people who live here. And I know the UK is far from perfect but the things that y’all do have down, y’all have it down pat. 

Okay, I get that the US isn’t a completely horrible place to live, currently. Like, we don’t get jailed for saying Trump’s a complete and total fucking moron. See, I can say that and not have my door busted in and be hauled off to some hole in the ground as a political prisoner. 

But when I hear people who live in, like, the UK saying they want to move to America... I swear my left eye twitches just a little bit. Like, I get it - the grass is always greener and all that but... seriously? Are... are they serious when they say that? They... they’re aware of the problems... right? 

Not the social and political problems - those are everywhere. There’s racism and sexism everywhere, there’s corrupt politicians everywhere. That’s not what I’m talking about - yes those things need to be worked on but their virtually identical no matter where you are. 

I’m talking about things like... health care. Paid time off. Employment laws. The cost of college. The cost of retirement. Fuck, the cost of living. Those things. These systemic problems that are just... glazed over. That effect every single person in this fucked up country. Unless you’re of the super rich - every single one of these things are a problem for you. 

Health care. They’re trying to get the whole pre-existing condition thing rolling again. Where, and I’m not even kidding, Trump’s dumbass admin is trying to roll back the Affordable Care Act - which would once again put pre-existing conditions back into play... which pregnancy was considered a pre-existing condition. I wish I was making this up. That’s just a small window into how fucked the system was and could so very easily be again. By the way, the ACA didn’t happen until the mid-90′s. So my generation is the first that was able to actually get pregnancy fucking covered under insurance with no bitch-sessions. And, just for comparison - for the UK peoples out there, we paid over $4000 for the delivery of our son over ten years ago and we had extremely good insurance then that we paid over $800 a month for at the time. That was just his bill, not mine. Just for him. Also - for example... we have insurance, it’s not great insurance but it’s insurance. We pay about $100 a week for it through my husband’s company now. And, to date, this year... we’ve paid... out of pocket, not including the company’s one time benefit of $1500 on an HSA card which is nice but ultimately gone in a heartbeat, so, out of our pocket... not including premiums... we’ve paid almost $10,000 in medical expenses. Only $1000 of it is out of ordinary, for my husband’s procedure that he had to have. The rest has all been RX’s, doctor’s visits, and labs. So yea. There’s that. 

Paid time off. You’re fucking lucky if you get any of that here. That’s why companies tout it as being a benefit. “Oh, this company has good benefits” Good benefits = they actually offer insurance, doesn’t mean it’s good - and you get some semblance of paid time off. Companies here aren’t required to pay you anything extra for working on national holidays and they don’t have to give you any paid vacation or sick days, at all. They are only required to give you maternity leave of 6 weeks or paternity leave, if you request it but none of that is required to be paid either. There’s Family Leave, also not paid time off. And, they will and can do anything to get around paying time and a half for overtime. And, getting into the whole Employment laws thing - companies rely on people not knowing the laws so they can get away with shady ass shit. This happens everywhere, from the corner store and the fucking McDonald’s all the way up to corporate offices. 

College. HA! There are a million bright brilliant people in this country that don’t have a degree because they couldn’t afford to go to college. Or, their parents made just a smidge too much for them to qualify for financial aid and they didn’t want to be burred under a mountain of debt. We’re talking tens of thousands of dollars of debt, what a way to start your life out, huh? Four years at a University? You’re easily looking at $40,000 plus. Easy. Like, wouldn’t be hard to do at all and that’s not even the “best” University either. That’s just like... that one over there. Oh, and student loans? Yeah, interest is charged on those bitches too. Can’t pay them? Oh don’t worry, you can put them on hold for like 36 collective months or something, but they’ll still accrue interest the entire time. And that interest isn’t fixed either, it’s variable. So, good luck with that. 

Retirement? Fuck that. You better hope and pray that social security is still around. For some, even if you do what you’re supposed to and can actually squirrel some away for retirement - you can have some rich fat fuck in an office somewhere decide that he wants your money instead and bam, your retirement is just gone. And that’s assuming you can even afford to have any of your paycheck set aside. Because the cost to live in this country can be insane. True, there are rural places where the cost of living is cheaper but you also don’t get paid shit there either. 

And you still have medical bills when you’re old. What about Medicare, you might be wondering? Oh - you mean medical insurance for the elderly? That shit’s not free anymore. Sure, going to the doctor might be. But if you need an ambulance, you’re still fucked. If you need a prescription? You’d better hope you signed up during that small window for your prescription drug plan, which carries a monthly premium, so you can get your prescriptions. Because, old people never need those, right? And what about care? Well, Medicare will cover some care, like certain kinds of home health care. But not all. And if you need to go into a nursing facility for longer than 100 days? You’d better hope you got buku bucks because Medicare only pays for 100 days. Then, you’d better magically grow younger or some shit. Or, hope you’ve been paying for nursing home insurance. And, hope you’ve been updating that policy to reflect the insane rising costs of those places. Or, if you’re lucky, hope you’ve got family that will help take care of you. To get Medicaid though, you can’t have more than $2000 in assets, at all. That includes life insurance policies with cash values. You can keep your house and like one car but that’s it - and you can’t rent that house out or sell that car once you get Medicaid or you’re benefits can be interrupted because somehow, you can turn $500 into $2000 or something. And - this is the really shitty part, say you are in a nursing home and you do manage to get Medicaid. Medicare still won’t pay a dime to the facility but Medicaid will. But... they’ll also take your entire social security check minus $60 a month. So, if you do still have a house and a car to worry about that you cannot rent out, you’ll have to somehow make that $60 pay for any incidentals you might need (think soap... toothpaste... deodorant... your favorite candies... you get the idea) and for property taxes... insurances... all of that. So... good luck with that. 

Basically... the slogan here is that you can have the American dream if you work hard. But what they don’t tell you is that even if you do get it? You’re probably not going to be able to keep it. 

You can work your ass off your whole life, get that house, build a small business, make it. Not get filthy rich, but do okay. And then you get old and can’t work anymore but it’s okay - you’ve managed to save a little and you’ve got your social security so you’ll be okay. Until you get sick. Or your health starts to go downhill. Then, you’ll watch all that you worked so hard for have to be sold off just to pay your medical bills and go to pay for your care. If you’re lucky, you’ve got kids that can help. But someone, either you or them, is going to have to lose something in order to pay for your care. 

If you aren’t rich, you’ll still not be able to make it. There’s never a break.

For a country that’s all about freedom... you’ll never have a single moment where you’ll be free. 

And for those in the UK starting to go off about VAT. We still pay taxes. We pay sales tax, property taxes, extra taxes added to our gasoline, to the liquor, to the tobacco products, to fucking tampons! We pay licensing fees, renewal fees, tag fees, registration fees, vehicle sales taxes and title fees. We pay federal income taxes, many states pay state income taxes, fuck - some cities have city income taxes. We have toll roads and toll bridges. We still pay taxes on top of all of this. So give me fucking VAT any god damned day of the week if it means I can go to the fucking doctor and not drop $200 fucking bucks just for them to renew the same fucking prescription I’ve been on for years so I can go to the pharmacy and pay $30 for a generic RX for one month. 

[prorevenge]

I don't know why your car won't start

All conversations and events are reconstructed to the best of my memory.

So here's the dealio, my older brother is a hude piece of shit. Like puts 200 dollars of charges on my dad's credit card piece of shit. One weekend he decided he was going to drive to chicago to see his friends. He is very irresponsible with his finances, and spends the majority of a paycheck in one week, claiming it is for gas. Well anyways, he barged into my room asking if I could lend him money. I refused, knowing full well I would never see it again. He kept prying at me. Trying to get me to agree. At the time, I had just gotten my first job (I was 14) and did not have a debit card or account yet. I only had cash. Sitting in my wallet was around 400 dollars I had earned from fixing computers for neighbors and friends. I wasn't going to give him any of it.

Later that night, I was lying in my bed, eyes were closed. I heard somebody walk into my room. I opened my eyes just a little bit. It was my brother. He grabbed all of the cash out of my wallet. I didn't do anything. A few moments later, I heard him start his car. I figured he had just gone to chicago and I was fucked. Around 15 minutes later, I heard him come back. Revenge time. I heard him close his bedroom door. I waited around 2 hours, until it was around midnight. I snuck downstairs, grabbed a flashlight, and headed outside. He had locked his car, so I headed back inside, and searched through my mom's purse for the spare. (Sorry mom. I didn't steal anything tho). I headed back out and opened the car door. I popped open the hood and took a look at what I could fuck up. He was destined to leave the following morning. I didn't just want to disconnect his battery. I opened up the fuse box that holds the relays for the starter, and just about anything that actually makes the car run. Using some pliers, I popped every single one out, took them to the driveway, and beat the shit out of them with a hammer.

​

I wanted to do something like put the bits on his seat, but he weighed like 210 and could easily break every bone in my 140 pound body. Instead I threw them out, and waited to collect my reward the next morning.

​

I woke up early, only running on 6 hours of sleep. He walked down the stairs carrying some bags, grunted at me and walked out the door. I was on my phone non-chilantly browsing reddit. Around 10 minutes later, I hear his car door shut. followed up by it opening, then the hood popping. At this time, my brother was pretty illiterate on how cars worked. The battery was connected, so he figured it had died. At 6 AM. He fucking storms into the house

​

Him: MY CAR WON'T START IAKHSDGLIKAGDH

Me: Oof. Maybe you could get mom to give youa jumpstart in a couple of hours.

Him: I CAN'T WAIT THAT LONG. I HAVE TO GO NOW!!!!!

Though I was 14, I had a 2004 ford ranger with 14k miles on it that I had been working on for 2 years, that would be mine at 15. He threw his keys down on the table next to me.

Him: WHAT ABOUT THE RANGER? CAN THAT JUMPSTART IT?

Me *getting more ideas on how to fuck with him*

Me: Probably

Him: WELL HELP ME THEN.

​

I got the keys and backed it out of my garage into the driveway. I purposefully came out at an angle, missing his car by about a 1/4 of an inch. He was so fucking sweaty and angry. I backed up more and tried to drive around his car to get to a position where I could jumpstart his car. Just as I got behind it, I turned the car off. I pretended surprised. "Ummmmm..."

I popped the hood, and took the relay out so it wouldn't start. My brother came over in a huff.

Me:It died

Him:FUCK

He tried to start it 400 times. He never got to go to chicago, and ended up towing his car to a shop, where they charged him 900 dollars to put in JUST NEW FUSES. I never got my money back, but honestly, I'm okay with that.

(source) story by (/u/RavingwolfYT)

[100-yardstare]

I can’t believe I missed ace awareness week. I wanted to blog a little about it, but my computer charger failed on me and it’s taken about a month for me to prepare for the bill to replace it. I feel yucky right now so I just felt like writing about what’s going on in general instead.

I’ve been on so many interviews. I was screwed over on my last big job interview (the one I ranted about last time) partially because I think my old boss that said she be a reference flat out told me she wasn’t going to do it AFTER I submitted her as a reference to the job, so I’m almost 98% sure I was passed over because of that. In addition one of the committee members that interviewed me got mad at me for calling her “ma’m”. She explained she wasn’t from Texas, and I apologized and said something on the lines of it must be a culture shock for her and I didn’t mean to offend. Somehow people think the term is used as an insult now, and that is beyond me. I guess I’m old school lol age is catching up with me and I’m not even realizing it.

So I’ve been on plenty of interviews since then but I keep getting passed over. The last one I had to take a aptitude test, and after receiving feedback from them as to why I was rejected, it’s apparently because I’m a slow calculator/clerical worker. Big whoop because I already know that. I am really feeling the negativity now as an adult looking for work about neurodivergent people trying to find a place in a neurotypical working world. I don’t want to disclose me being ADD to anybody in pre-employment screenings because I don’t want that label to penalize me. But one way or another being ADD does just so anyway.

Because it’s been about 9 months now without work I’ve been seeing my savings decline heavily. My medication bills are at least 155 a month, and on top of that I’m still paying off a stupid hospital bill from 3 years ago that was roughly 2,000 dollars for swallowing barium and a doctor looking at an X-Ray. So that comes to immediately at minimum 200+ dollars a month just on that. Add in the other stuff and I’m fucked without an income. I’ve applied to so many retail jobs too, but nobody gets back to me either.

I don’t go out much anymore because I can’t afford to charge for dinners, so I eat whatever my mom cooks. If she is too sick from her RA, then I try and cook, but because we don’t go to the store as often anymore to save on bills (my parents are having a hard time too) I have resorted to eating canned beans, soups, and others of likeness that don’t go bad. My father is also emotionally abusive to both me and my mom, and it’s gotten worse ever since he started having problems with his job. I can’t leave because I don’t have the money to live on my own. My hobbies have heavily declined. I used to make at least two big cosplay’s a year, and go to conventions, but I can’t do that because, OH NO, I don’t have enough money, and I can’t get a job. I cry all the time because I am so bored. I go out of the house only to volunteer once a week because gas money is tight, and to take my mom on errands. I dream constantly of going on trips. I feel trapped in this house I might as well be a ghost. I stare at my phone all day in hopes of either getting a response from an employer or validation from my social media, it’s pathetic. Imagine being so bored and trapped in your house AND being ADD. It’s like my mind is constantly going places and running around, and I just get emotionally exhausted because I have to tell myself, “no, I can’t afford to go eat at that place, I can’t afford to go on a roadtrip, I can’t buy the material to do my hobby”.

Here is what I learned from all this, which I’m sure a lot of you have already learned, or will learn. Getting a degree doesn’t do you shit. The world hates you and doesn’t care about you, yet values you only on how productive you are and how much money you can make. I see my friends trapped in this mindset right now, but what am I supposed to do? Tell them to give up on their dreams? My cousin is going to grad school for her SECOND Master’s because her other one isn’t getting her good jobs. She even has a full time job on top of it, but her car broke down, and with a full-time paying job she CAN’T AFFORD TO FIX IT. My friend is going to college to get a degree in computer engineering of the sorts, but she’s already 40,000+ dollars in loans. Tbh I’m so glad my brother dropped college. He was trying to complete a degree he didn’t even like, loathed as a matter of fact to the point of attempting suicide. My dad always told him trade school was bullshit, which is A LIE, so I’m sure he felt like he didn’t have any other options when he started. The trades are an awesome career path, and I have a deep respect for anyone who can become a welder, plumber, or whatever. Whatever he ends up doing I’ll be proud of him regardless. I’ve learned that there are other ways to make something for yourself. The traditional route of college doesn’t bring the American Dream, only our persistence and spirit does.

If you’ve gotten this far reading this, this is NOT to say drop out of school. But plan ahead. Don’t jump into college right after HS just because it’s expected of you. Don’t do a degree that you think is good just because it will make you money. One thing college did for me was teach me about myself. I have a massive learning disability, and I graduated. I worked hard for YEARS, thinking I’d never graduate because I had such a hard time keeping my grades up, managing my health, and all the sorts. But I did it! I graduated. The world has told me that doesn’t matter. The world is going to tell YOU that nothing you do matters or is of worth. But it is. You matter. You are NOT a burden.

I will say that all that has happened to me makes me a fierce advocate for those with disabilities and mental illness. My last job working at an ABA clinic showed me that babies (yes, literally BABIES) that don’t act neurotypical will be punished for it. I’ve seen in the work world that if you don’t act neurotypical, you are punished for it. Where I currently volunteer now there is a huge respect for disabled individuals. I see a lot of kids with cerebral palsy, autism, ADHD/ADD, and even physical disabilities. This one boy with CP couldn’t even walk before, let alone stand up, and now thanks to Equine Assisted Therapy, he can sit up and walk with assistance. He did that! That was his accomplishment and I am so proud of him. And yet a lot of people in the world will look at him with just another kid with disabilities that will probably not amount to much. See where I’m getting at? I’m so protective of these people because I am like them. One way or another, we have to stand up for eachother. My story with ADD may not be the same as a particular person with autism, CP, or mental illnesses, but we have to look out for each other. Going through all this has made me a stronger person and I will defend us with everything I’ve got.

FYI if any of you reading this wants to donate to a good organization this year for the holiday’s I’d HIGHLY recommend SIRE Therapeutic Horsemanship in TX. Great wonderful group of people and animals.

Yes, I’m in a horrible place right now. But I’ve learned. I sincerely hope things will change for me soon so I can better take care of myself and my mom, but of course I’m human and I’m going to suffer anyway in the moment. I hope 2020 is going to be better for me because this year was terrible. I crave financial independence, the ability to travel and see and experience new things, and be in a better spot professionally, and personally to do the things I want to do. Graduate school isn’t even an option right now because I can’t afford it, and as of now, I don’t care to go to graduate school. Maybe someday, years from now, but at this rate I’m so sick and tired of expectations from society I just say fuck it. I’ll get there at my own pace. And I’ll be successful without the worlds opinion on what makes me successful.

[miniminisb]

ˢᵒ ʷʰᵃᵗ’ˢ ᵗʰᵉ ᶜᵘˡᵗ ˢᵗᵒʳʸ

okay bUCKLE UP FUCKERS IT’S TIME FOR THE DUMBEST MISTAKE OF MY LIFE. I preface this by saying, I am a dumbass. I am a complete, irrevocable, plain dumbass. Do not do this at home. Do not pass go. Do not collect 200 dollars. Heed my warnings. also technically not a cult but basically a cult you’ll see just sit tight.

It was a nice sunny day in September 2017. The seasons were beginning to turn. I had just gotten out of my Intro to Logic class. I felt good. I thought to myself, “Man. Such a nice day. I think I’ll do my homework outside today. Enjoy the weather before it goes to shit.”

So there I was, barbecue sauce on my titties doing some, i dunno, categorical reasoning? Just, sitting beneath a tree, enjoying the day, when two girls walk up to me. They say they’re trying to start a club on campus, and they wonder if I have some time to talk real quick. I have some time before my next class. I’m pretty much done with this homework. I say sure.

Mistake number one.

They sit down and ask if I have ever read the Bible. My stomach immediately sinks. I don’t necessarily have things against organized religion, but… American Christians make me nervous. They really do. Growing up, you get a lot of people at your door and you get a lot of crazies telling you you’re gonna go to hell. They can pick pick the weak out of a crowd and target them for their schemes.

I am the weak.

So I chuckle nervously. I’m in danger! I say no, not really. Kinda. I grew up in a small town and would go to church with friends sometimes hahahahahahaha. They seem alright, kinda. They pull out their own Bible and start flipping through it for certain passages, giving the schpiel of “oh God loves you, Jesus died for our sins, yada yada” and I’m like, yeah, cool. Whatever.

Then it gets weird. They start talking about the end of the world, Armageddon, the apocalypse, whatever ya wanna call it. They say this time was prophecized in the Bible, snatching on weird passages to claim that North Korea is gonna drop nukes. They say that this will happen where the four corners of the earth meet, and are adamant to say that it’s referring to our area (I go to college at the Four Corners Region in the US of A).

They say how, because it’s gonna happen, it’s more important than ever to save your soul, get baptized, whatever. They ask if I have been baptized. And I say haha no, not yet, like I said I’m not really Christian, hahahah-

Mistake number two.

The girl in charge of the situation nods in a sort of understanding manner. They continue their schpiel, really starting to hit home that saving your soul and accepting the big J is important. They also said jesus was married to the city of jerusalem? For some reason??? Idk man if you’re christian can you explain this to me?

Same girl then goes, out of nowhere, “would you ever consider getting baptized?”

Listen guys. I know I put off big chaotic energy, give no fucks, can’t mess with me persona on here. But in the words of Kim Namjoon, who the hell am i? I am, without a doubt, a spineless bitch who doesn’t know how to stand up for herself when faced with the smallest amount of conflict and no outward reason to refuse people. Y’all, as I write this, I am shaking and my heart is pounding because yes, you can probably see where this is going. And yes, I am that dumb.

I chuckle nervously, fiddle with my hands, and go “haha maybe if my friend would want me to idk” just like, full on passive avoidance shrink-into-yourself of someone who desperately wants this shit to end but really can’t find an out.

And the girl looks me dead in the eyes. “Well, that’s good. But you would have to do it for yourself. Would you ever get baptized for yourself.”

“I mean, maybe? I guess? Hahah I dunno, yeah, maybe.”

MISTAKE NUMBER THREE.

The two bitches perk up. “We can do it now!” bitch what. I have like, maybe 20 minutes until class at this point. I’m shaking. I’m like, man, I just wanted to do my logic homework. And now, I get into fight or flight mode. I can’t miss class. I feel scared. These girls think north korea cares about fucking new mexico and arizona enough to nuke a place which, objectively, has little to no people living there. Like, what, you’re gonna bomb aliens? Whatever.

I really start to say. No. can’t do it. I have class. I really have class, it’s soon, can’t do it. No. And they keep pushing. “It’ll only take five minutes. It’ll be fine. You’ll be okay. Only five minutes.”

Now, what should I have done? I should have picked up my stuff and said “thank you, but no. I need to leave.” I should have said “you women are making me uncomfortable. I said no. Leave me alone. You are crazy.” I should have raised my middle finger to them which, conveniently, has a pentacle ring on it.

Instead, I caved and said fine.

M͏̤̤I̩S̖̙͝T̯̕A̧̗͙K̩͕̺̕E҉̞͙̞̮ ̤̙͕͔N̷̗͙̙ͅU͚͇̯̦͙M̩͙͖B̵̬̝̤̪E̪̺̟͙ͅṞ̼ ̩͉͍͎͎̼͘F̩̦͔̩O̘̭UṞ͉̯͍

The other girl who has remained relatively quiet, jumps up. “Great! I’ll call our minister, he’ll pull up the van!”

The what.

I don’t say anything. I should have. Listen, I don’t know how I was supposed to get baptized in the middle of the day on a Wednesday but fuck, I did not expect to get taken off campus. We have a fucking non denominational chuch on campus. So, who would’ve thunk? Not me!

“The what?”

The girls jump up and seem super excited. I am shaking as I pick up my bag and follow them to the parking lot. Meanwhile I’m screaming silently to myself what the fuck what the fuck what the fuck what the fuck. You know, like a normal person. So at least I wasn’t completely insane.

“We’re just taking you to our church, don’t worry.” And for some reason, that does put me at ease a lil. Cuz, like, I may be a stinking heathen who’s gone to church so many times that she can count it on one hand, but I do have the belief that nice pretty churches are save havens. So, I do feel a little okay.

I still get into a fucking car tho so there’s that I guess.

The dude pulls up. He is… idk he looked like one of those creepy religious fucks from like a horror movie. Dead behind the eyes. We all pack into the car. I’m trying not to cry, honestly. I’m really trying to keep this light cuz it is pretty funny when you step back but keep in mind I was terrified and I don’t know how to say no.

It is only after we pull away that I have the dawning thought. I’m basically getting kidnapped. They could take me fucking anywhere and no one would know and I wouldn’t be able to do anything to stop it. Three against one.

As we’re leaving my fucking campus I check the clock. I have, like. Five minutes until my next class. I am a dumbass.

The girl shows me like… an apocalypse video??? for some reason??? Like wow thanks bitch but you already told me the world was gonna end but aight.

I’m hardcore like, astral projecting at this point. Full on dissociation. I do not exist on this plane anymore.

We pull into a fucking starbucks parking lot next to some town homes.

“We’re here!” Where’s the church? Where’s the steeple? Bitch I just see modern condos what the HELL is happening. We get out of the car and go up to one of these fucking apartments basically. Fucking Youth Pastor John unlocks the place and.

Guys.

The church was just a fucking townhome. I’m like. Just. Guys the area where the congregation met was a fucking living room with like maybe six chairs and a podium. On the bright side, lovely open floor plan.

They guide me upstairs.

To the bathroom.

They hand me like… a fucking robe and say I can undress and put that on. They give me a moment but even then i’m like FUCK that. Undressing in a strange house? That’s where I draw the line! Nope, no disrobing for me, thanks! I still put on the robe because apparently it’s like, ritually significant?

Got into my new swanky clothes and they come back in. They start filling up a shitty plastic bucket with water in the tub. At this point, i’m just like:

They tell me to kneel in the tub and raise my hands in prayer. I follow orders, trying to ignore the fact that I am in a strange place that is very much not a church, that I am currently wearing weird periwinkle robes, knowing that people are in class right now just. Learning about fucking Mesopetamia or some shit i forget what the class was about.

The Hannah Montana from Hell Squad prays over me as they pour cupfuls of bucket water over my head. My underclothes are now drenched. My hair is wet. My knees hurt because I’m kneeling in a fucking bathtub.

“Congrats! Your soul is saved!” I have to get to class!

They give me a moment to take off the fucking robes and I collect my things. I step out and i’m like “great I’m late for class, take me back!”

“Oh, but you still need to have passover.”

Passover is a Jewish Holiday practiced in mid to late spring. It’s September. Y’all are christian. But I literally cannot leave, so I follow them into the kitchen where they put a veil on me. The other two girls put on veils as well. I’ve fully surpassed crying and reached silent resignation to my fate as the guy prays over some fucking communion wafers and some grape juice. I take the lil bits of food, luckily too since i fucking missed lunch because of them but at least I have some grape juice to fill me up.

“Now, we know that this is not the correct time for passover, but we needed to do it to save your soul. Now, practice Passover every year from now on to make sure you show your dedication to God and make sure your soul is saved.”

They do take me back to campus. I am in soaking short shorts and a red flannel. It is, to say the least, very moist and uncomfortable as I start to stick to the faux leather seats of this mini van.

I’m like “cool great thanks for having me!” as they pull up to my building, and as I try to get out, the quieter girl (who, genuinely, seemed to be fond of me) asked if she could have my number.

HEY YOU KNOW HOW THIS STORY STARTED? WITH ME LACKING THE ABILITY TO SAY NO TO PEOPLE? YOU REMEMBER THAT? HUH!?

But this time, ohhoho, I have a plan. I’ll give her a fake number! That’ll teach her! So I punch in a few random numbers really hastily because I am still in this fucking van and I am twenty five minutes late for a fifty five minute class.

“Cool can we test it real quick to make sure we have the right number?”

And, like a dog with my tail between my legs, I very quietly go “yeah uhm i think i put in the wrong number hang one second” and fixed it to my actual number. Like a goddamn moron.

I sprint out of the van. Walk into my class soaking wet with my head down at my professor is in the middle of a lecture. I find my seat in the back of the classroom on the other side, so everyone has seen me. My friend leans up to me as I sit down, and asks me where I have been. I tell her that I got lost during a hike and fell into a creek.

Now, what is the moral of this story, children? If anyone asks you if you want to get baptized on a Wednesday in the middle of September, simply say

[gorderos-blog]

Pay to Not Go to College!

    Yes, you read that title right! For a small combined fee of roughly $12,900, you can receive a PhD in your desired field of study with supporting documentation, a thesis you didn't have to write yourself, traditional graduation attire, legal notarization, and a half dozen lies regarding your accomplishments within your university! You even get to pick your own grade! Who knew the answer to our higher education needs was a website that only charges a nominal fee for you to not have to waste those precious years of your life AND not land your dream job afterward?     I've been putting this coverage off for way too long. One day at work, out of curiosity, I decided to search around the ol' interwebs and see if I could find a service dedicated to providing individuals with college degrees. It wasn't a hard search. There are several of these services as it turns out, but I'm going to be focusing on one today for the sake of this not dragging on any longer than necessary. I'm still learning about the dos and do nots when it comes to journalism of this nature, so in an effort not to get sued, I'm going to refrain from giving out the name of the website. Obviously I don't want to advertise this service and be responsible for innocent or curious people losing their money. I also don't want to land myself in any sort of legal trouble for name dropping and getting slapped with some sort of law suit. I will, however, be sharing screenshots where applicable, so don't you worry!     The biggest surprise without even looking at the degree ordering process is that the website is designed fairly well. It's inviting and pleasing to the eye with its mixture of blues and grays. Then we look at the text and realize that someone's trying to sucker us out of a lot of money.

    From what I hear, though, programming a website is hard and spaces between the end of a word and a comma are pretty easy mistakes to let slip through the cracks , so let's give them the benefit of the doubt.     The website has a bunch of sections on it and I intend to share the fun bits of it later, but I know what you're here for. You want your PhD in Chemistry or Biology, or maybe you need a Master's in Engineering or Dance. Don't worry, fam, I'm going to hook you up at least with a price point so you can start saving up. I'm going for the PhD in Creative Writing myself.     Unsurprisingly, the first few things it asks you for is boring information like your name, birth date, and title. Then it goes ahead and boldly asks for a scanned copy of either your government I.D./Driver's License or Passport. Then email address, blah blah blah, phone number, alright, onto the next section, and this is where the fun begins.

    As you can see, my PhD in Creative Writing will be issued to me, Mr. Blogger Dude for the year of 2018, graduated in the season of summer. I want to take this opportunity to thank everyone who got me to this point. Good job, me. And look at that, only $490, how convenient! You also have the option to select if you were studying full time, part time, at a distance, online, or in a combination of those!     It's going past this point that you realize this ordering process has zero chill. Before you've even completely decided on all the additional things you want to pay for that you're probably never going to be able to use, this section comes careening up at you:

    Why yes, strange website, I would love to give you my credit card information and my billing address. I can't possibly see how this could go wrong in any way, shape, or form. I don't actually have a credit card, at least not with the kind of limit we're going to be seeing, so I suppose this is the end of my college degree journey. If only I had thousands of dollars just laying around in the bank. Darn, oh well.

    Following that is the section entitled

Transcripts & Degree Related Items

, a series of boxes you can put a check next to if you decide the item in question is something you'll want, and this is how it goes:

Academic Transcripts - $200 (Can select quantity)

Sealed Transcripts - $200 (Can select quantity)

Student Records - $200

Acceptance Letter - $120

Graduation Letter - $120

Reference Letter (Up to three) - $200/reference letter

Letter of Appreciation - $120 (Have the university lie about things you did for them)

Internship Letter from Company - $250 (Nobody follows up with these anyway, right?)

Internship Letter from University - $250

Write Your Own Thesis - $1,500 (At least you tried)

Have Someone Else Write Your Thesis - $4,500 (You did not try)

University Diploma Folder - $135

Graduation Hood - $150

Graduation Cap - $150

Graduation Gown/Robe - $550

Certified Copies of University Degree - $200 (Can select quantity)

Lawyer Certification and Legalization - $450

Government Apostille - $800 (I had to look up what that meant, this is what I found: "Apostilles authenticate the seals and signatures of officials on public documents such as birth certificates, court orders, or any other document issued by a public authority so that they can be recognized in foreign countries that are members of the 1961 Hague Convention Treaty.")

Embassy Legalization - $2050 (Looked this one up as well: "Embassy / Consulate Legalization. ... Documents certified by the State and destined for countries who are not members of the Hague Apostille Convention require State certification, U.S. Department of State certification, and Embassy or Consulate legalization.")

Student I.D. Card - $250 (I had to look... just kidding)

University Alumni Card - $250

University Library Card - $250

Student Union Card/Student Association Card

    After we've picked out all of the things we need, the last thing we have to do is pick our shipping options. Standard shipping is free and usually ships within five business days, but I'm impatient and can't afford to wait that long. I mean, I am buying a fake degree online rather than earning a real one... online. Or on a campus, but who does that anymore? Express shipping it is! It's only an additional $135 on top of the ten grand, nothing too outrageous. As for our shipping method, we have two choices: Express Air Mail, or DHL/FedEx for ground. Planes can crash and burn and lose all of my documentation, so I think I'll play it safe and go FedEx for only $130. Express Air Mail is a little cheaper at $95, but an extra $35 for peace of mind never hurt anybody.

    The website then proceeds to ask how we heard about them. It was pretty easy for me: Google. I assume it'll be the same for you. As an aside, there's also an option for Yahoo for the one person out there still using it. Next we input any special instructions we may have.

      I probably should have added please, but this is a business transaction after all.     Then we subsequently fuck ourselves over by not reading the terms of service before accepting them, make sure our total is correct, and submit our order!

     Looks right to me.

    I love that you can adjust the amount with the small arrows beside the total amount. I left them a tip.     It's at this point that I would submit the order, wait about a week, and show the finished product. Shocking as it may seem, though, I do not have $12,905 to give them. Such a tease, I know. Now I could save myself $3,000 by writing my own thesis, but we mustn't forget that I'm a busy adult man who cannot spare the time to college, so I definitely wouldn't have the time to write a brilliant thesis. One day I'll have a money. One day.     Something that should be noted is that there is no indication on the website as to which university will be giving you your degree, but their section on Full Privacy and Satisfaction serves to definitively quell those voices in your mind that want to call BS.     "When you choose a bachelor degree  from us and you make the payment, you will receive an accredited degree from a reputable university. The degrees are legal and verifiable; nobody will know our little secret that you obtained your degree online.     We do not disclose information about yourself to third parties and we keep private the name of the universities from which we confer degrees.     You will not know the name of the university until you receive the degree. We believe confidentiality is essential in our business and we encourage you to keep it secret that you obtained the degree online in exchange of a fee.     When you choose  degree online course we accept payments and shipment from all over the world, because we are affiliated with universities in every country.     We have bachelor degree online course waiting for you to attend them. You will be enrolled in the online program and you will get the degree in a week from the moment you made the order. We are strict with deadlines and we fulfill all your requirements.     We believe that the satisfaction of the clients is essential in our business and this is why we want to offer you joy so you will come back for more.       If you choose a degree  course from us you will get many job offers and promotions, so you will be happy you have chosen us."     Peace of mind and assurance are wonderful things.     There are a few other interesting tidbits on the website such as generic images of individuals of Asian descent posing in awkward ways, a live chat functionality that I may play with in my own spare time, degree options from multiple contents such as North America, South America, Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe, Western Europe, and my personal favorite, the Middle East. There's a coaching section of how to find a job after you've received your degree that is a rehash of every search you've ever done on how to do well in an interview.     "You have to tell the interviewer about your degrees, knowledge, skills, and vast experience in the field. You should convince the employer that your knowledge and experience will benefit the company and that you have solutions for the existing problems of the company in order to help the company achieve its goals.     Choose the domains of activity at which you are the best and to impress the employers with your expertise, skills and knowledge in their field of activity.     Companies have job openings because they have a hole in the functioning of their business and you have to fill the hole. You should be the perfect solution to their needs and you should be able to sell your skills during the interview in order to persuade them you will find solutions to the problems of the company. The best way to find a job is to prove that you have a degree from an accredited university because employers look for persons with plenty of knowledge in their field of activity.     Use nonverbal communication during interviews. Use your emotional intelligence in order to pass over emotions and use your body language to show you are attentive, confident and competent for the job. You should maintain eye contact and smile often. A sincere smile makes the interviewer believe that you are comfortable and that you are a sociable and friendly person.  Be communicative during interviews if you want to get the attention of the interviewers and persuade him or her to offer you the job.     Create a good CV and resume speaking about the experience, education, skills and certifications you have. You should write a resume in which to write about what recommends you for the job. You should write a story about yourself that proves your skills and knowledge in the field of activity of the company.     Prove passion for the field of activity in which you want to work. Prove that you have a specific interest in the company and a passion in what you do. .     Consider an interview as a sales presentation in which you have to present your strengths, hide your weaknesses in order to attract the interviewer and get the job."     It's actually so nice they had to say it twice in another area of the website, and there's this little gem that DEFINITELY puts any apprehensions, hesitations, or mental protestations to rest!

   I, for one, am very glad that no one shall be able to see my payment information, as they will face consequences under provision of law. What law? Law. THE law. You can learn all about it once you obtain your own law degree from the website.       I suppose I should throw in a quick disclaimer here for the two people who may be willing to go out and try this for themselves: Don't. College degrees are serious business, and I'm pretty sure this is illegal in some way, shape, or form. Don't go around giving shady websites your credit card information, and look into legitimate options when it comes to pursuing a higher education.     All of that being said, thank you for taking this journey with me. It had its ups and downs, but I am definitely excited to be Dr. Mr. Blogger Dude, Creative Writing expert.     Thank you.

[rohobi]

Pretty Woman | (B)

PAIRING— kim namjoon x reader, Pretty WomanAU GENRE — fluff, smut, angst SUMMARY — based entirely off the 1990′s film ‘Pretty Woman’. Nothing below is my original work, all credit goes to the movie. Kim Namjoon is a wealthy businessman who arrives in Hollywood to meet with a tycoon of a shipbuilding company he’s in the process of raiding. Lost trying to find his hotel, he meets you, a feisty and straight up prostitute on Hollywood Boulevard. 

↪ A/N: I am appalled by the amount of youth who have not seen this film. I have linked the film for your viewing pleasure here because it’s a fucking classic.  Otherwise, just read this lmao complete summary of the movie. 

During a phone call with his younger girlfriend, she dumps him for being too controlling. Namjoon is frustrated and sick of the women in his life only after one thing; his money. Not taking her seriously, he rolls his eyes and asks her to escort him home -as he doesn’t live in LA and this is her playground. “This is a very important week for me darling, I need you at every moment. I thought my secretary cleared you?” 

“You never give me any notice and I speak more to your fucking secretary than I do with you.” 

“I am sorry if I made you upset, this deal is very important and I need you here this minute, please if you could-

She hangs up on him after telling him to “fuck off Namjoon, I am not your beck and call girl. I’m moving out, when you get back to New York, my stuff will be gone.” Putting the phone back into his suit pocket, he slumps against the bar, drinking the rest of his coke. 

Kim Namjoon finds himself accidentally ending up on Hollywood Boulevard in the city’s red-light district in his lawyers Lotus Esprit sports car, after forcing him to give him the keys. Not thinking his actions through, he speeds up the hill instead of down, where Beverly Hills is located. 

Forced awake by the three alarms clocks, you pull yourself out of your makeshift mattress on the floor and get ready for you shift on the streets. Wearing thigh high leather boots, a small denim skirt, a white tank, short blonde wig and a train conductors hat, you walk to work. 

Except, your landlords banging on your door for rent, stopping you from leaving. Opening the back of the toilet compartment for this months rent, you find the box where you kept your rent money empty.

Sighing. You put it back into the compartment as your landlord continues to bang on your door. Grabbing a red coat, you open the window and escape from paying rent with money you don’t have down the fire escape. 

You’ve always loved Hollywood at night. Busy streets, the distant sound of police sirens, homeless men in expensive threads offering advice on the key to happiness. 

But tonight, it’s different. Detective Albertson, the usual cop on these roads is interviewing men -key witnesses. It looks like another ones been killed -drug deal gone wrong. It’s been happening a lot these days, it’s a reason why you’re thankful that you’re strictly against drugs, never letting yourself sink to that low. 

Hooking was enough. 

Only when you get close, you realise it’s not one of the boys but one of your own.  

Slipping past the police, you walk into the alleyway as police attempt to identify the body. You silently lean over the man holding the camera as they cover her body. 

Marie. 

She was only 18, had a bright future ahead of her. You hadn’t seen her in weeks. Had she been in the dumpster this entire time? 

“Another kitten on the streets buying crack like it’s milk, the fuck these kids doing these days,” a police officer says, almost a little too passively. “How many girls are we going to find in the dumpster this week?” 

Feeling vomit rise up your throat, you run across the road to Irene’s usual hangout. You love your roommate usually but today, you’re angry. Fist bumping the bouncer, he lets you in as you walk through the mostly red lit club. Walking up to the bartender, a familiar of yours, he grins. “Nice to see you this evening, run out of books?” 

“Had to use them as kindling,” you smile back. “Hey pops, you know where Irene is?” 

He nods his head to the stairs. “Upstairs kid.” 

“Thanks.” 

You spot her in the far corner, combing her hair. “Irene.” you shout over the music. She looks up, happy as fucking larry. “Hey, y/n.”

“Did you take it all? Is it all gone?” 

She looks nervous, standing up, she shouts. “Carlos sold me some good shit, we just had this great party I hosted-

-I can’t believe you bought drugs with out rent money, whats wrong with you?” You interrupt her, hands on your hips. 

Her eyes glisten with tears. “I needed a little pick me up.”

You shout at her. “Well, we need rent money.”  

Grabbing your arm, she pulls you down to the bar for snacks. She gives you the same look she gave you when you knocked on her door 8 months ago. “I gave you place to say and some money, don’t irritate me.”

“I just saw a girl get pulled out of a dumpster for buying drugs Irene.” 

She puts a couple grapes in her mouth. “Yeah, I know. Marie. She was a crackhead for months. No one could help her.”

Girls fight in the distance, you both watch them crash to the ground in nonchalance. “Look Irene,” you whisper, facing her. “Don’t you want to get out of here?”  

“Where, where the fuck you wanna go?” 

You sink in your chair, “I guess, anywhere but here.” 

Namjoon can’t drive the sports car. That he knows well as he pulls up next to a homeless man carting through someones rubbish. “You know how to get to Beverly Hills?” he asks, leaning towards the window from the drivers seat. 

The man laughs. “Honey, you’re in Beverly Hills right now!” 

Namjoon drives away. “Of course I am.” 

Irene leans on the parking metre as you rub your heel against your designated Hollywood star. “Maybe we should get pimps?” she asks and you snort laugh your way to Africa. 

“And what, ruin our lives and he takes all of our money? No way.” 

She nods. “You’re right. We say who, we say when and how much.” 

A car skids behind them. Irene gasps. “Yo, catch this out.” 

“Wait a minute, that’s a lotus?” you gasp, watching it skid to a halt on the curb a couple metres away from you.   

“No baby, that’s rent. You should go for him. You look hot tonight. Don’t take less than a couple hundred. Call me when you’re done. Take care of you.” she pulls you into a hug. 

“Take care of you too.” you say back. 

In his confusion with how to drive the car, he skids over to the curb where he encounters a prostitute by the parking metre, you. 

“Sugar, you want a date?” you ask. Leaning on his open window, you watch in amusement as he tries to remember how to turn the car back on. “Do you not know how to drive your car, sir?” 

”Driving this car is the least of my worries, do you perhaps know the directions to Beverly Hills Regent Hotel?” he asks, turning back to you. You admire his stunning brown eyes and reassuring grin. 

”Do I perhaps know my own city?” you snort, chewing your gum, you look him up and down. Not bad. “I know it like the back of my hand. It’s gonna cost you $5 though.” 

“That’s ridiculous-

“-price just went up to $10.” 

He stares at you in disbelief. “You can’t charge for directions.” 

“I can do whatever I want to baby, i’m not the one lost.” 

"Alright fine. Please, will you help me? Can you guide me there?” he begs, holding his two hands up in a praying expression, a twenty hanging between them. 

You hop in. “Alright, down the road, make a right.” 

“So what’s your name?” he asks. 

“Anything you want it to be?” you wink at him. Namjoon stares at you, still waiting for a name. 

“Fine, my name’s Y/N.” 

After much discussion on how to drive the expensive sports car, it becomes clear that you know more about the Lotus than he does, and so he lets you drive instead. 

“This is gonna cost ya,” you mumble, spitting out your gum on the sidewalk as you run over to the drivers seat. “Never driven a car in thigh high leather boots before.” 

“I’ve never let a hooker drive my car before, new experiences for both of us.”

You snort laugh. “It’s gonna cost ya another $20. I’m sure you have the much on you, right?” 

He gapes at you. “Of course.” 

“So, tell me. What kind of money you girls make these days?” he asks, folding his coat on his pocket as you drive. 

“I don’t take less than a couple hundred dollars.” you lie, clutching onto the wheel. Your usual was 100 but, he looks rich. 

He gapes at you. “A night?” 

“An hour.” 

“You’re making that kind of money an hour and you’ve got a safety pin holding your boot up? You gotta be joking.”

You look at him seriously. “I never joke about money.”  

“Neither do I.” 

You drive through the night life silently. “$200 an hour, pretty stiff.” 

Without taking your eyes off the road, you put your hand on his crutch. Softly palming him through his suit pants. “Well, no but it's got potential.” 

He looks up at you with a blank expression. You put your hand back on the wheel and grin. 

Namjoon gives you a $50 note for the ride after you park his car outside the hotel, and then you separate. 

Re-calling his girlfriend one more time, or more accurately, his now ex-girlfriend, she screams at him to get a hooker and to leave her alone. 

He slumps himself against the elevator and then he looks out the window from his hotel penthouse room in thought. Maybe he should get a hooker. 

You go to a bus stop, where he finds you again moments later and offers to hire you for the night. You accept, needing the rent money and he hands you a roll of money in his hotel room. You lick your fingers as you count over $1000 dollars. Your heart races as you put the money in your boot, thats more than enough for rent for a couple months and a little extra for school. 

Pulling out your collection of condoms from your boot, held up by the safety pin. You offer him one of each colour, ready to put one on him when he stops you, asking to instead just simply, talk. 

Excusing yourself to the bathroom, you tell him you’ll be out in a moment and that the wine they just had really got to you. Thinking you to be taking drugs, he barges through the door as you hold dental floss behind your back. “I don’t do drugs, I just think you shouldn’t neglect your gums.” 

He stands at the door. 

You stare at him in the mirror. “Are you going to watch?” 

“No, it’s just,” He shakes his head. “Very few people surprise me.” 

“Well yeah, you’re lucky. Most shock the hell out of me.” 

Later on that night, he’s at his desk finishing up on his documents and you’re on the floor by the tv -boots off, eating strawberries and popcorn, and watching old movies. He sits on the couch beside you, dropping all of his paperwork to instead watch the way your smile lights up your face when something funny happens on TV. He finds it refreshing.  

Spurred on by the intense look on his face, you climb to your knees and crawl between his thighs. Rubbing your hands up his thighs, you palm him without breaking eye contact. He tries to kiss you but you hold a finger on his lips, informing him of your no kissing rule. 

You give him a blow job that night, and he falls asleep on the couch when he’s done. You run to his bedroom and fall asleep on the most expensive bed you’ve ever touched. 

You have the best sleep of your life. 

The next morning, you awake to a full table of breakfast. Namjoon didn’t know what you liked so he ordered everything from avocado on toast to bacon and eggs. 

Wearing a matching bathrobe, you sit beside him. He’s surprised by your natural hair, in fact, he thinks you look beautiful as you eat the toast with your hands. You ask him about his life, feeling overwhelmed over just how articulate and rich this man is. 

You liken his job of buying companies in financial difficulties and then selling them off to stealing cars and selling the parts. Namjoon begins to look at his business in a new light. 

Listening to music and singing in the bathtub that morning, Namjoon receives a call from his lawyer, Jackson, that insists he brings a date to the business to act as a buffer. Offering a laundry list of nice girls he knows, Namjoon cuts him off, smiling at you in the bath tub. “You don’t know any nice girls and besides, I already have one.” 

“Y/N,” he says, and you pull out the earphones, feeling embarrased over your moment of careless bliss. “Sorry, I love that song.” you whisper.  

“Y/N, I have a business proposition for you.” 

He asks you to play the role his girlfriend has refused, offering you $5,000 to stay with him for the next six days as well as paying for a new, more acceptable wardrobe for you. 

He gives you his credit card, requesting that you only purchase clothes that are elegant and conservative. He leaves not much later and you scream to your hearts content, jumping on his bed in celebration of $5,000! 

Picking up the phone you call Irene, and you both scream into each others ears. Holding up his card into the sunlight, you ask. “Where do I go for the clothes?” 

“Rodeo Drive baby.” 

You leave the hotel with the same clothes you walked in with, gaining the unwanted attention of men and scowls from women in the main lobby. Walking down Rodeo, you marvel at the expensive threads in windows before you look back at the card in your hands, kissing it. 

You enter a designer brand with a nice dress out front. Each customer service representative in the room, look at you in distaste. “Are you looking for something in particular?” a woman asks, following you as you look at the clothes. 

You smile at her. “Yes actually, something conservative but I don’t know really.” 

“Oh, conservative yes.” 

You hold the hem of a pretty lace dress. “I like your clothes here, nice stuff. How much is this dress here?” 

“I don’t think it would fit you.” 

“Well, I didn’t ask if it would fit, I asked how much it was.” 

She turns to another customer service rep. “How much is this Mary?” 

Mary crosses her arms across her chest. “It’s very expensive.” 

“Very expensive.” 

You turn to look at other clothes. “Look, I have money to spend here.” 

Mary cuts you off from looking at a dress. “I don’t think we have anything here for you,” looking you up and down, she adds. “You’re obviously in the wrong place. Please leave.” 

Leaving the store silently, tears glistening in your eyes. You walk back to the hotel, disheartened by the woman in this world. Walking through the lobby, you are stopped by a soft-hearted Hotel Manager, Barney, who asks that you dress appropriately in his hotel. 

You cry your heart out, telling him that is what you were trying to achieve today.  He asks what you were trying to purchase. You tell him that you were trying to buy a dress for a dinner this evening. 

Walking around the desk, he picks up the phone. You immediately think he’s calling the police but are instead relieved to hear that he’s calling Womens Clothing just for you. 

“I’m sending Y/N over to you, she is the very special family member of a very special guest here at the Beverly Hills Regent Hotel.” 

You smile, feeling the kindness from an otherwise strict man. 

Now having a dress for the evening, you ask Barney, the hotel manager to teach you etiquette. He spends a couple of hours of his own free time to teach you. Still confused by the silverware, he advices you to follow after Namjoon’s lead. 

“The rich just make it more difficult for themselves don’t they?” you snort laugh, picking up the many forks on the table. 

That evening, you sit at the bar in the lobby wearing a black cocktail dress. Visibly moved by you transformation, Namjoon begins seeing you in a very different light. Openly gaping at you as you walk up to him, you chastise him for being late. “You’re late Mr. Kim.” 

“And you are stunning.” 

The dinner is intense. You don’t know an awful lot about his business but he tells you on the way to the restaurant that this is a company he wishes to purchase, sell off and make lots of money from. Even potentially gaining a billion dollars.  

You ask him what the point is when he doesn’t do anything with the money. He laughs, holding you close to him. “I bought you for the week didn’t I?” 

“That is correct but I am a dollar in the sea of billions.” 

He thinks on that as he walks you to the table where two gentlemen await; a father and his adult grandson. As the dinner continues, the men admire your innocence, even comforting your lack of knowledge on the food and type of silverware to use. 

As you try to eat, the discussions get heated as they ask what Namjoon plans to happen to their family company. He is honest, tells them he plans to break it apart and sell the pieces. 

They are understandably hurt. 

You are understandably confused on how to use the apparatus to eat the snail escargot, whatever they called it. At the peak of anger, the snail flies out of your hands and into a waiters arms. It’s a welcomed distraction, as the men laugh but it doesn’t downplay the serious business at hand. 

Namjoon is called a bastard who uses corrupt politicians to his advantages.

The men wish you well as they leave. 

“We are similar creatures Y/N,” he says, walking you back to his hotel room. “We both screw people for money.” 

Later that evening, Namjoon has disappeared and hasn’t come to bed, its now 3am. Getting worried, you call the hotel elevator service if they have seen him. In nothing but a bathrobe, they take you to the hotels piano room where Namjoon has slumped himself over the keys to play a passionate piece.

You lean against the piano.

Namjoon stops playing, asking everyone in the room to leave. 

Grabbing you by the waist, he pulls you against the keys so you stand before him. Leaning his head on your stomach, you tangle your fingers through his hair. “You okay?” 

Saying nothing else, he unties your bathrobe to run his fingers over your lingerie. Lifting you up and onto the piano, you whisper. “I guess so.” 

He tries to kiss you but you pull away. 

Not letting it ruin the moment, he lays you down on top of the piano. Eating you out. The soft sounds of mismatched piano keys are the only thing heard from outside the room. 

The next day, he takes you shopping and oh boy do you get your revenge on those nasty girls from the day before. Spending thousands on clothes for you, Namjoon informs you that people are never kind to other people, they’re only kind to money.

You remember this as you walks into the store from yesterday in nothing but Chanel from head to toe, holding up bags from the likes of Gucci and Prada. “Hi,” you say, walking up to the same woman from yesterday. “Do you remember me?” 

“I’m sorry, I do not.” 

“I came in yesterday, you wouldn’t wait on me.” 

Walking around the store, you smile. “You work on comission right?” 

“Ah yes.” she says. 

“Well, big mistake. Huge mistake,” holding your bags, she looks at the labels on each, a gasp tears through her lips. “I have to go shopping now, goodbye.” 

You leave the store with a swing in your hips. The ladies watch on in disbelief. 

In his office, Namjoon is told if he makes one single phone call to the bank, he can ruin the family business owner he met last evening. He ignores Jackson as he talks about money, as he mindlessly stacks glass cups on each other. 

Namjoon is uncomfortable with the idea that he doesn’t build or make anything like you asked him if he did. Growing increasingly uncomfortable with a company that tears smaller ones apart, he gets an idea that might just change the entire course of his life. 

Back at the hotel, you await beside a candle lit dinner naked. Namjoon comes home and with a happy face, asks that you bathe together, hoping to wash away the grime he feels like he is. 

Namjoon takes you to a polo match in hopes of networking for his business deal. His attorney, Jackson, suspects you as a corporate spy, and Namjoon tells him how you truly met after watching you converse with another man. 

He’s ashamed of the jealousy he feels. 

But when he sees you smile so widely and it’s not because of him, he’s baffled. When had you gotten so close? 

Jackson later approaches you, suggesting they do business once your work with Namjoon is finished. Insulted, and furious that Namjoon has revealed your secret, you want to end the arrangement.

Namjoon apologizes, and admits to feeling jealous of a business associate to whom you paid attention to at the match. You fight in the hotel lobby, yelling at him for making you feel the cheapest you’ve ever felt in your life. 

“Somehow, I find that hard to believe.” 

You shake your head, dismissing his comments. “I wanna get my money and get outta here.” 

He stares at you for a long hard minute before emptying his wallet and walking away. You stare at the money before deciding not to take it. Namjoon chases after you as you’re about to get into the elevator. 

He sincerely apologies and you let him take you back into the room.  You sleep together that night, staying up late, talking about each others lives. You tell him how you got into hooking because you followed an old exboyfriend who abandoned you in the city. 

You couldn’t make rent after working three jobs and then you met Irene, who took you in and made hooking sound great. “The first time I did it, I cried the whole time. It’s not like it’s a star profession, a dream, something kids grow up wanting to be.” 

“You could be so much more.” he whispers, kissing your temple. 

You cuddle into his naked chest. “But then people put you down when you start to believe that.” 

“I think you’re very bright, a very beautiful and special person.” 

“You ever notice that the bad things are easier to believe?” 

He doesn’t nod but agrees with it wholeheartedly. 

Clearly growing involved, Namjoon takes you in his private jet to see La Traviata in San Francisco. Jackson isn’t too happy about him leaving in the middle of this deal for date with a hooker. Namjoon holds back, telling him to be careful with his word. 

In a perfect red dress with a necklace worth a quarter of a million dollars, you feel like a princess. You are then moved to tears by the story of the prostitute who falls in love with a rich man. 

You break your "no kissing on the mouth" rule for him and then, you make love with Namjoon. After that, you two are constantly together. 

On dates. 

Kissing. 

Having sex. 

And in the aftermath of it all, when you’ve spent your last day with him, you tell Namjoon that you love him, but he does not respond. Your heart breaks for the first time but you knew he’d never love you back. 

You’re just a prostitute in a nice dress. 

Namjoon offers to put you up in an apartment so you don’t have to pay rent and so you can be off the streets. Hurt at his charity, you refuse, saying that this is not the "fairy tale" you dreamed of as a child, in which a knight on a white horse rescues you. 

Meeting with the tycoon whose shipbuilding company he is in the process of trying to obtain. Namjoon changes his mind. He doesn’t want to be someone who destroys things, but someone who builds things, makes them better. His time with you has shown him a different way of looking at life, and he suggests working together to save the company rather than tearing it apart and selling off the pieces. 

Jackson is furious at losing so much money, goes to the hotel to confront Namjoon but finds only you. Blaming you for the change in Namjoon, he attempts to rape you. Namjoon arrives just in time, punches him and throws Jackson out of the room.

You cower behind the couch, a bruise on your face from where Jackson had hit you. He stares at your doe eyed expression in apology, feeling his cold dead heart race. 

With his business in L.A. complete, Namjoon asks you to stay one more night with him -- because you want to, not because he's paying you. 

You refuse. 

Then you part ways.

You never accept his payment, choosing to leave the money behind. Namjoon holds the $5,000 in his hands feeling lost and empty. 

Taking the clothes however, is a completely different story. Sweeping the streets clean of your hooker friends, you give them an outfit each and encourage them to all apply for jobs. They all give you money for the clothes -enough to sustain yourself for a couple of months. 

After each of your friends receive interviews, you teach them proper social etiquette and how to look strong in front of employers. 

“How do we turn our experiences into strengths,” one woman asks. 

You grin. “You got any talents?” 

“I guess, I can blow two guys at the same time and watch the clock in the corner of my eye? Does that count?” 

Crossing your arms over your chest and then your legs, you sit up straight. “Honey, you can multitask well and you work in a timely fashion. Next?” 

“I strictly only have threesomes? There’s more money.” 

Leaning forward, you laugh. “Easy, you’re a team player. You work well in a team to ensure a good financial gain to the company and you work only for a positive result.” 

The girls sink into the chairs, laughing wildly at the prospect of this actually working. You open up a business to get people off the street and into jobs, and at first it works and then, it really works. Money starts pouring in from donations and familiar investors but it’s not enough to keep a roof over your head. The prospect of becoming homeless scares you more than you’d like to admit. 

Across town, Namjoon re-thinks his life as heads to the aiport back to New York and has the hotel chauffeur detour to your apartment building, where he leaps from out the white limo's sun roof and "rescues you", an urban visual metaphor for the knight on a white horse of her dreams. 

So what happens after he climbed up the tower and rescues her?  She rescues him right back.

[shirlleycoyle]

The Movie Theater as We Know It Is Dying. We Can Make Something Better

One of the things this pandemic has taken from us is the summer blockbuster. The summer months came and went, and throughout that time movie-goers largely stayed home. For people like director Christopher Nolan, whose movie Tenet released in theaters after a delayed launch and performed below expectations, this is a sign of the end of cinema. Outside of the strict confines of Hollywood, though, small theaters and distributors are seeing new ways to show movies and create community. Along the way, they're redefining what it means to be movie theaters.

The blockbuster is a relatively new invention. Although the early days of cinema had movies that were huge hits—like the 1927 movie It, which turned Clara Bow into a star and smashed box office records at the time—one movie dominating theaters for an entire summer wouldn't happen for another 30 years. Steven Spielberg's Jaws and George Lucas's Star Wars ushered in the age of the blockbuster in the 70s, in a time when the landscape of cinema was moving away from the studio system and into uncharted waters.

Cinema is at another crossroads now, in the age of the pandemic. In New York and Los Angeles, two of the biggest cities for movies, theaters are not allowed to open, and haven't been since March. Rather than a Marvel movie topping the charts at the end of the year, Sonic the Hedgehog has dominated by virtue of just being able to come out. The success of Trolls World Tour had studios scared back in April; it made over one hundred million dollars premiering as a digital rental. In response, AMC threatened to stop screening movies from Trolls' studio, Universal. One movie theater chain, Regal, has closed all of its 536 theaters in the US, blaming New York's pandemic rules for the closure.

Tenet | Image Source: Warner Bros.

From the start, Nolan has made it a personal mission to continue to support movie theaters. Not only has he refused anything except a traditional, theater first release for Tenet, he has written op-eds about keeping theaters open and made a point to see movies in theaters himself. But the very real threat of COVID-19 has gotten in the way of seeing movies in theaters—by December, the movie had only grossed around $57 million domestically, though the international gross has been higher, at $300 million. The movie cost $200 million to make.

Tenet's dismal performance seems like the final nail in the coffin. Some of the movies that were supposed to open concurrently with Tenet, like the new Wonder Woman movie, have changed their strategies so that they're available to watch at home at the same time as they're available in theaters. Theater chains like AMC have struck deals to shorten the window between theatrical runs and movies becoming available on video on demand services. Even more recently, Warner Bros. has announced that their entire slate of movies for 2021 would premiere on HBO Max as well as in theaters.

The pandemic has forced movie theaters to change a system of distribution that has been in place for over half a century. This doesn't just mean figuring out how to show movies online, but how to serve the communities that rise up around theaters themselves.

When the pandemic started, Spectacle Theater was a 35-seat, volunteer-run theater in Williamsburg that showed movies from way, way off the beaten path. It immediately complied with the order to close in March, but it was difficult for the volunteers who run the theater to know what to do next. After one of the volunteers started streaming movies on their Twitch channel, the members of Spectacle decided to have Twitch streams of their own.

Spectacle Theater is a microcinema, with about 30 seats. Its space in Williamsburg, Brooklyn is so small that I have walked past it every day when I used to commute to the VICE office without noticing it once. Caroline Golum, a programmer from Spectacle who said they were speaking in their capacity as a member of the non-hierarchical, volunteer-run theater and not as its leader, said that some of its screenings would have as little as five people in the audience before the pandemic.

"We like to say that if we had a dollar for every person who was like, 'I love Spectacle,' but hasn't actually shown up, we would be on fucking easy street," Golum told Motherboard.

On Twitch, it's a different story. They got viewers in much, much higher numbers than their theater would have been able to seat, as well as attracting people from all over the world who had only been to their theater once, if at all.

“Christopher Nolan is encouraging theaters to open up in the middle of the pandemic. This was the wrong thing to be crusading for right now.”

"In May or in April, we did a series of screenings with Matt Farley and Charles Roxburgh who are two regional filmmakers from New Hampshire who make these shoestring budget genre films. They've been doing it for like 20 years. In an alternate universe, those guys would be famous and Kevin Smith would be a fucking nobody, and you can print that," Golum said.  "They were in the chat and people were asking them like, 'Where'd you film this? What were your favorite influences?' all this stuff. And they loved it."

"I think for filmmakers who don't have an avenue for public exhibition but make work that should be viewed collectively, it's nice for them to have an opportunity to know that their work is being seen," they continued.

Spectacle has worked with organizers and programmers from all over the world, giving them an international reputation. Programming on Twitch has allowed the people who have always wished they could have gone to Spectacle a chance to actually attend. Spectacle now has over 2,000 followers on Twitch, several hundred times more than would fit inside the theater. Spectacle is now offering a membership to their out of state and international fans so that they can support the theater monetarily from afar.

"I was just surprised by the number of people that were like, 'Oh, I've always wanted to go to Spectacle and I never got to,' or someone that lived in London was like, 'I've been following your programming and can never got to catch anything,'" Golum said.

Spectacle Theater | Image Source: Spectacle Theater

For Aliza Ma, director of programming at Metrograph, a renowned art house theater in Lower Manhattan, not being able to show movies meant a chance to reevaluate what a theater can be. For starters, opening a theater at this moment in time is not the right approach, she said.

"Christopher Nolan is encouraging theaters to open up in the middle of the pandemic. This was the wrong thing to be crusading for right now. It felt like a sort of misguided or misplaced machismo almost," Ma said. "Maybe the better thing to do would be to ask for some subsidies to get all these artistic institutions through this time of hardship instead of asking for the normalcy that we were used to, when that's just going to endanger our lives."

There are ways that a theater can serve its community without showing movies, and Metrograph has explored some of those options. Ma said that during the Black Lives Matter protests, Metrograph was able to open as a space for protesters to get water, charge their phones, and rest.

"When the protests were breaking out, we were in between having closed and trying to launch a new website," Ma said. She said that it felt wrong not to say anything about the mounting unrest in New York; protests against police brutality would march through Lower Manhattan, where Metrograph is located. Ma and the rest of the staff at Metrograph also wanted to take physical action.

"So we got together on a meeting and we said, 'We know so many people who are organizing in that neighborhood or who could be in that neighborhood, and you know, all we would need to do is get power strips for people to be able to charge their phones. We could get water bottles for people. We can just open up the bathrooms for people,'" she said.

Ma said that the approach that other theaters have taken, where they have tried to crunch the numbers on how many staff they can have on site and how little money they can charge for a ticket in order to break even, was not what Metrograph wanted to do.

"It's really sad. I mean, it's not really gonna make much of a difference at the end of the day. There's no thinking outside the box here. Movie theaters are an important social institution that could be reappropriated at this time…. I was really glad that, you know, when the protest started in April, that we were able to open our lobby to protestors. Just because we couldn't show movies doesn't mean we couldn't be another sort of support pillar for that neighborhood."

Pivoting to Twitch was an easy move for Spectacle not just because members of the organization already knew how to use it. The moviegoing experience isn't just about sitting in the dark in front of a huge screen—it's also about being with other people who love movies, and Twitch's chat function is an easy way to replicate that part of the experience. While geared towards games, at the end of the day, Twitch is a service where anyone can broadcast whatever they'd like; Spectacle is simply using the service in the same way one would use public access television.

Metrograph, for its part, built their own proprietary streaming service in order to make this work. Though there are video hosting services that they could have used, Ma said that they don't have all the features necessary to replicate the essential aspects of seeing a movie in a theater. Metrograph recently launched a new website, along with its own proprietary streaming service which functions very differently from buying a movie on demand, or watching one through a streaming service like Netflix.

Metrograph's online screenings have a pre-show that begins ten minutes before show time, as well as introductions, question and answer sessions, and sometimes a panel discussion. The actual movie starts later, and the archive of the entire screening remains as a VOD for 72 hours.

“Why are we relying on these corporate-backed streaming platforms when we are very vehemently opposed to corporate media?"

"A nice thing that I miss about showing up early to a film and is then being able to sit in the theater and just kind of watch upcoming trailers or whatever other ephemera ends up being shown in the pre-show," Ma said.

"Even though you're not in the same building, there's a collective sense that everyone's tuning in at the same time to watch something which is kind of comforting right now," she added.

Exploring these new avenues has also led to some dead ends. When I spoke with Spectacle Theater, it had just been served its first strike on its Twitch channel for nudity for showing the 1973 satirical French film Themroc. To get around this, Spectacle is now building its own streaming platform, similar to Metrograph, but with a couple of differences that would better suit its audience. For example, Spectacle's experiences with Twitch have led it to include a chat feature in its streaming platform, because it found that people watching its programming enjoyed being able to talk about the films without disturbing other people.

"I think we had a lot of reservations about the chat function because you rightly hear so many horror stories about the nature of these chats on gaming platforms. You know, obviously hashtag not all gamers, but it can be a bit of a cesspool," Golum told Motherboard. "At the end of the day, we don't really have to do much moderation because our audience is predominantly pretty chill. It's just people who like weird movies and want to hang out, it's a really good vibe in there. It's also really interesting to see how people engage with the chat when the filmmakers are in there too."

Golum also said that they would make their code open source, allowing other theaters to develop their own streaming video services with the backbone they developed.

Movie theaters are the site of a community, a place for people to not just see a movie, but engross yourself in the culture of cinema with your friends and family.

"The impulse behind that was: why are we relying on these corporate-backed streaming platforms when we are very vehemently opposed to corporate media and our whole programming ecosystem is designed to go against the grain of what you're seeing in movie theaters and festivals?" Golum said. "That was kind of the impetus was to build something that's, if you'll pardon the expression, for us by us, that will allow us to kind of control the narrative around what we stream and not have to worry about takedowns."

Across the country, some independent theaters are making some of the same pivots to online screenings as Metrograph and Spectacle.

The Roxie Theater in San Francisco is now offering an online membership similar to Metrograph, for example. Chicago's Music Box Theater started an online movie rental service called The Music Box At Home, where proceeds from the rentals go towards keeping the theater in business. Some cinemas, like Seattle's Northwest Film Forum, are screening ticketed movies through sites like Eventive, taking advantage of video hosting sites like Vimeo to give the viewer access to the film in question for a limited time. All of these are attempts to do more than just get people to watch movies, but to recreate what we like about going to the movies when we're all stuck at home.

While Twitch and bespoke streaming services are decent stopgaps, it's  clear that the technology necessary to create an industry where more kinds of movies are accessible outside of major cities has just not been invented.

Hollywood has existed in a system where a major blockbuster could buffer the loss from an arthouse indie movie that plays on only a few screens in Los Angeles and New York. It's a system that is controlled and defined by film distributors like Universal or A24, which set release dates and make the films available to theaters. As that system collapses, it's easy to see not just how it's done a disservice to those films, but also to people who would have loved them.

Brett Kashmere, executive director at Canyon Cinema, a distributor of 16mm films and experimental and avant garde cinema said that on their end, demand for work from their collection is still huge, especially from libraries, which is their primary audience. They just don't have the technology to deliver it.

"We're in the process of reviewing all of our artists contracts and figuring out if we need to put any language for licensing of work to a library for like three years," Kashmere said. "That's what libraries are increasingly interested in, is not actually purchasing a physical media copy of something, but they're also not really capable of actually dealing with digital files. So they don't want to buy a digital file and they don't want to buy a physical copy, but they want us to be able to stream."

Canyon Cinema's small size compared to much larger, more corporate distributors, is an advantage. It might not have the same capital backing, but it's able to make these pivots very quickly, allowing Canyon to catch up with the changing market during the pandemic much faster than Disney or Universal can. Similarly, both Ma and Golum said that their small sizes as organizations have allowed them to make decisions on the fly during a time when the future of the industry is uncertain.

"I think we were in a really privileged position being a small team that we could all just executively decide [open our doors to protesters], being on, you know, a similar political wavelength and having this camaraderie between coworkers," Ma said regarding Metrograph's choice to support the Black Lives Matter protesters. "I don't think this would have been possible with a bigger nonprofit institution, even if the personal political desire was there."

A scene from Made In Hong Kong, currently screening at Metrograph's wesbite | Image Source: Made In Hong Kong

In comparison, the solutions being rolled out by large movie chains like AMC and Regal seem untenably slow and ill-suited to the task. While Regal has permanently closed all its locations, AMC is now allowing potential movie goers the opportunity to rent out an entire theater to see a movie. Though new movies are coming out in a slow trickle, it's been clear that audiences do not want to go to movie theaters as the pandemic still rages, making this venture a questionable idea at best.

But going to the movies is about a lot more than just putting your butt in a seat. They are the site of a community, a place for people to not just see a movie, but engross yourself in the culture of cinema with your friends and family. As Spectacle and Metrograph demonstrate, there's still a need for that kind of community space among movie lovers.

These theaters are not just attempting to solve the problem of showing movies in a pandemic. They're trying to find a new space for the lobby where you talk about the movie with your friends, the exclusive showings with director Q&As, and the smart screening series put together by film scholars as well. Their success is an indication that the heart of cinema lies with these endeavors, and not necessarily the relatively new phenomenon of the blockbuster.

Before there's a widespread vaccine for Covid-19, movie theaters are either going to have to find ways to pivot to digital, or close their doors. Nolan tried his absolute hardest, but Tenet was not able to bring moviegoers back to theaters in a way that could stave off that reality. Nolan has said that people are "drawing the wrong conclusions" from Tenet's performance at the box office, saying that the movie has grossed a lot more money than most people thought possible during the pandemic. He went so far as to say that the decision to stream new releases on HBO Max on the same day they premiere in theatres "makes no economic sense."

Nolan isn't exactly wrong about this, but he's also not quite right. His own adventure in premiering Tenet in theaters despite the pandemic appears to prove him wrong. That big-budget studio blockbuster did not save movie theaters. If movie theaters are going to survive, they need to save themselves.

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