#it's the shortness and simplicity that makes it so tricky in the first place

[icedteaandoldlace]

Darn my hopeless romantic tendencies, I know kisses are murder to write, but I keep putting them in my fanfics!!!!

[conazo]

Valentino writing tips: language

I’m not an expert by any means, but I thought I might provide some insight into how I, personally, handle the nasty moth's dialogue.

Like all languages, Spanish is highly regional. We don’t really know Val’s actual background as a Sinner, so your guess is as good as mine. Given his VA is Puerto Rican, however, I write Valentino as someone who speaks Caribbean Spanish (like me!). The three Spanish-speaking countries/territories in the Caribbean are: Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, and Cuba. I'm not familiar with Cuban Spanish, so we'll focus on the first two for now.

Some of these are more specific to one place than the other, but I’m mushing them together for simplicity’s sake (don't come at me).

Fun quirks of Dominican and Puerto Rican Spanish:

A habit of shortening words, like “ven pa’ca” (“come here”) instead of “ven para ac��.” We frequently eat the letters “r,” “s” or “d” toward or at the end of some words.

Pronouncing “r” as “l” in some words.

Pronouncing “t” as a soft sound between a “th” and a “d.” Although this voice has a Spanish (from Spain) cadence, you can hear the modified “t” sound in “Valentino” here.

Fun Dominican and Puerto Rican words and phrases:

“Coño” as a casual curse, typically used as an expression of frustration (like “fuck!”). My username is basically a really intense version of coño, and is a very Dominican phrase.

“Diablo,” which means “devil,” is also commonly used as an exclamation.

“Hijo de la gran puta,” a classic that roughly parallels "son of a bitch," but literally translates to “son of a great whore.”

“Papi” or “papi chulo” (“cute daddy”) as a term of affection. “Papito” is the diminutive version of this phrase.

On that note, you can add “ito” to the end of just about anything to make it a diminutive (cutesy/smaller version). “Chulo” means cute, for example. “Chulito” is the even more affectionate/smaller version of that.

“Dique,” which is used to express doubt. Vox might say, “I am not obsessed with Alastor!” Valentino might mutter “diiiique” in response. This is a Dominican thing.

“Wepa,” which is something usually shouted in excitement. This is a Puerto Rican thing.

“Vaina,” which kind of means “thing,” often with a negative connotation. So, Valentino might look at one of Velvette’s designs, find it hideous, and say, “que vaina más fea, oof” (“what an ugly thing, oof”).

“Fó,” which is sort of “ew” or “gross,” usually re: bad smells. You shout it.

“Mano,” short for “hermano” (“brother”). Used between friends.

“Dímelo” (“tell me”) as a greeting. Something that would be said when answering the phone, for example.

“Cojer” as a means of saying “to take,” like taking something from a table. This word has a very different context in other regions. In Mexico, for example, the verb “cojer” is vulgar and means “to fuck.”

“Ahorita,” which in my experience means “later.” In other regions, it can mean “right now” or “later” depending on context.

Commonly used phrases in Mexican Spanish.

You’ll want to avoid these if you’d like his dialogue to be consistently Caribbean-inspired:

“Pinche”

“Verga”

“Wey”

“No mames/no manches”

“Qué padre”

“Chingar”

Calling acquaintances “primo” or “jefe”

I mention this Spanish dialect specifically because it's the most common one in the world. And hey, Val could be canonically Mexican or Mexican in your headcanon! That's cool, too. I'm just providing insight for consistency's sake.

Other insight:

“Ay dios mío!” is a generally overused phrase, in my opinion, and not actually said IRL as frequently as TV makes it seem. Just my experience, though.

“Ay” or “uy” are good filler sounds. You hear Val shout it when Niffty snaps at him.

Valentino canonically squeaks like a moth when passionate!

His voice takes on an echo/growl when he’s particularly angry.

Mixing English and Spanish is tricky. Spanglish is not uncommon in PR, DR, and the US, but usually only when speaking with someone else who is fluent in both languages. Valentino seems plenty fluent in English; he uses lots of contractions, complex sentence structure, and slang. He doesn’t need to inject Spanish phrases in favor of English ones when conversing with another English speaker. He does do it sometimes for emphasis (“the devil’s princesa” or “this chiquita”).

As cliché as it is, defaulting to a Spanish phrase in moments of alarm, anger, frustration, or affection is also not uncommon if you grew up in a Spanish-speaking home. If someone surprises me, I shout “coño” by default, for example.

Valentino uses pet names when referring to others, like "amorcito" (“little love”) and "Angie" over voicemail.

Generally speaking, Val likes to stretch his vowels to be theatrical ("he mooooved!"). He sometimes eats the ends of English words, like “fuckin’” instead of “fucking.” He also sometimes rolls his “r” for English words, like in “ungrrrateful whore!”

Val's accent isn’t consistently strong, which could be a stylistic choice, or he could just be prone to a kind of unique code switching, for lack of a better term. My friends say I speak English with a Spanish accent when conversing with my family, for example (it’s not intentional).

Okay that’s it, bye!

[windupaidoneus]

1, 2, 12, 31 for the ship asks >:]

smiles so so big. thank u my friend....... under the cut bc many words. also some of it is kinda spoilery SORRYYY. sniff

1) Who fell first? Who fell harder? depends who you ask. it's a tricky one due to. well. past life stuff... & also how their dynamic started out in current times. for the sake of simplicity though: emet fell much much sooner, & hilde fell much much harder. helps that the guy fucking died on him at his own hands ngl if i was already having conflicted feelings i couldn't quite place i think that'd get me too <- saying this about a self insert he introjected

2) Who is the one who fusses the most? Does their S/O mind very much? you knowwwww it's emet & it's not even close... hilde can fuss here & there but he's also really bad at taking care of himself & emet is number 1 complainer in the whole wide world. he WILL complain about hilde forgetting to take care of his skin, his scales, his meals, how he threw himself into life-threatening danger for the third time this month, how hilde cut his hair just short enough that he can't mess with it as much as he'd like, so on so forth. hilde doesnt mind. sometimes it makes him feel a little guilty but mostly they're proof emet cares, so it's a net positive to him. makes him feel loved

12) What is something their S/O does that makes them flustered? in hilde's case emet will do a lot of things specifically to fluster him so it's hard to list them..... he teases a lot. cant help himself. hilde is less the tease type but whenever he gets really assertive in a situation it does leave emet a bit dazed. depending on what kind of situation it may very well fluster the hell out of him. another thing though. referring to emet as his wife is something hilde did once for fun, he noticed it made emet shortcircuit for a moment & he just kept doing it afterwards (emet gets back at him by proposing first)

31) How would they describe one another. really depends who they're talking to... also at what point in time they're being asked. in the time where they're more stable & Fine though i'd imagine something like "a worrisome fool with a heart too big for his own good always recklessly throwing himself into some danger or another", & "i don't expect anyone to believe it, but despite everything i've seen his heart, and it is good". or on another day "why, the sweetest man you could possibly imagine - especially endearing when he nearly drinks from his pot of ink rather than his cup" & "oh, just the reason i've been late to every morning obligation i've had this past month". they both deeply care of course. emet views hilde as someone with a little too much kindness & compassion (mixes very well with his own crushing guilt but this isn't abt him) but he also knows the "ugly" sides of him very intimately. he once had some reservations regarding them, but nowadays he'd argue they make hilde's kindness hotter. & of course he finds the uglier parts thrilling. he would hardly ever describe him like that, because hes not telling people intimate, private things about his lover, but he's thinking them! hilde of course thinks emet is a grump with a kind heart because that's just what he is. there's a loooot emet has done that is downright unforgivable & he wouldn't deny it (& would've held it against him better/longer if the grief hadn't consumed him to the point it did) but he also wouldn't like. describe him as a seasoned war criminal LMAO. he sees emet for who he is now but also who he used to be, & how who he used to be still shines through despite all the things he's been through. which is reciprocated in a weird way. so he'd call emet a prodigious sorcerer, one praised for his willingness to lend a hand despite his protests, & would encourage people to not be deterred by his perhaps unpleasant facade. that he no longer is the villain he played in the countless stories in which he was a pawn of zodiark. that he is loving & good. sorry i'm getting a little too into it what were we talking about

[coffeefranchisehub]

What Is A Coffee Date?

A coffee date is a simple, relaxed meeting between two people over a cup of coffee. It is a casual way to get to know someone without the pressure of a formal setting. Many people enjoy coffee dates because they are informal, inexpensive, and allow for easy conversation. Coffee dates can happen between friends, potential romantic partners, or even colleagues. Whether it is your first time meeting someone or just catching up with a friend, a coffee date is a great way to connect.

Why Are Coffee Dates So Popular?

One of the main reasons coffee dates are so popular is their simplicity. There is no need for reservations or fancy clothes. You can meet at a local café or coffee shop and enjoy a casual atmosphere. Coffee shops often have a cozy environment that encourages conversation. The relaxed vibe makes it easier for people to feel comfortable and open up. Since it’s affordable, it doesn’t feel like a big commitment either.

Another factor that makes coffee dates popular is the short time frame. Unlike dinner dates or other planned activities, a coffee date usually lasts around 30 minutes to an hour. If things go well, you can always extend the date by ordering another coffee or taking a walk. If the connection isn’t there, it’s easy to wrap things up politely and go your separate ways.

The Perfect First Date?

Many people view coffee dates as the perfect first date. They’re ideal for meeting someone new without feeling overwhelmed. Since a coffee date typically takes place in the daytime, it feels safer and less intense than an evening outing. You can meet at a public place, and the casual setting helps ease first-date jitters. There’s no pressure for a meal or drinks, and coffee is a neutral option for most people.

If you are unsure about a potential partner, a coffee date gives you the opportunity to see if there’s chemistry without investing too much time or money. It’s a low-stakes way to assess if you want to see the person again.

How To Prepare For A Coffee Date

Preparing for a coffee date is easy. Since the atmosphere is casual, there’s no need to worry about fancy outfits or elaborate plans. However, a little preparation can still make the date go smoothly.

First, choose a coffee shop that is convenient for both of you. Picking a place with a relaxed ambiance and good seating options can create a comfortable space for conversation. Also, if the person you’re meeting has any dietary preferences, look for a café that offers alternatives like non-dairy milk or decaf options.

As for what to wear, go for something that makes you feel comfortable but presentable. A neat, casual outfit is always a good choice. You don’t need to dress up too much, but looking clean and put-together shows that you’re taking the date seriously.

When it comes to conversation topics, keep things light and friendly. Ask about their interests, hobbies, or recent experiences. It’s a good idea to have a few icebreakers in mind to avoid any awkward silences. Remember, the goal is to get to know the person in a relaxed way.

What To Order On A Coffee Date

Deciding what to order on a coffee date can be tricky if you’re not a regular coffee drinker. The good news is that most cafés have a wide variety of drinks, so you can easily find something to suit your taste. Whether it’s a classic black coffee, a latte, or even a tea, there’s no wrong choice.

If you want to keep it simple, go for a basic coffee or espresso drink. If you’re looking for something more fun, a flavored latte or cappuccino can be a good choice. For non-coffee drinkers, many cafés offer teas, hot chocolate, or even smoothies. The key is to pick something you’ll enjoy and feel comfortable sipping throughout the date.

If you’re not sure what your date likes, you can even suggest trying something new together. This can be a fun way to bond and make the experience more memorable.

Do’s And Don’ts Of A Coffee Date

There are a few general rules to follow when going on a coffee date. These tips can help ensure that your date goes smoothly and that you leave a positive impression.

Do: Be on time.

Punctuality shows that you respect the other person’s time. Being late can make a bad first impression, especially on a first date.

Don’t: Use your phone.

One of the most important things you can do on a coffee date is to stay present. Constantly checking your phone or responding to texts can make the other person feel like they’re not your priority. Keep your phone on silent, and only use it if necessary.

Do: Be a good listener.

Ask questions and show genuine interest in the other person. Let them share their stories and thoughts. A good conversation should be a two-way street, so make sure to actively listen instead of just waiting for your turn to talk.

Don’t: Overshare too quickly.

While it’s great to be open and honest, avoid diving into deep or personal topics right away. Keep the conversation light and friendly, especially on a first coffee date.

Do: Smile and be yourself.

A genuine smile can make all the difference. Relax, enjoy the moment, and show the other person who you truly are. Authenticity always makes a positive impression.

Coffee Date Etiquette

Good etiquette on a coffee date is key to ensuring a pleasant experience for both parties. One important rule is to be polite to the café staff. How you treat others, including baristas and waitstaff, says a lot about your character. Be kind and respectful to everyone around you.

Another important piece of etiquette is offering to pay. While coffee dates are usually inexpensive, offering to pay shows good manners. That said, it’s common for people to split the bill, so don’t be surprised if your date offers to cover their own drink. If you’d like to pay, a simple “I’ve got this” will usually suffice.

Finally, don’t rush the date. Enjoy the conversation, and allow it to unfold naturally. If things are going well, you can suggest ordering another coffee or continuing the conversation outside.

Coffee Dates For Friendships

Coffee dates aren’t just for romance—they’re also a great way to catch up with friends. Meeting for coffee is a laid-back way to reconnect with someone without the need for elaborate plans. Since it’s an informal setting, it feels natural to chat about life, work, or anything else. Whether you’re rekindling an old friendship or just want to have a lighthearted conversation, coffee dates work well for maintaining social connections.

Many people also use coffee dates to meet new friends. If you’ve met someone through a hobby, social event, or online community, a coffee date is an easy, no-pressure way to get to know them better.

Coffee Dates For Networking

While coffee dates are often thought of in a romantic or social context, they are also widely used for professional networking. Meeting over coffee is a common way to build business relationships or discuss opportunities. It offers a neutral, relaxed space for conversations that might feel too formal in a boardroom or office setting.

Professionals often use coffee dates to seek advice, exchange ideas, or explore potential partnerships. The informal nature of a coffee date makes it easier to establish rapport and discuss topics openly.

Coffee Date Ideas For Couples

For couples in established relationships, coffee dates can be a lovely way to spend quality time together. Whether you’re visiting a favorite café or trying out a new spot, it’s an easy and enjoyable way to take a break from the daily routine.

You can even make your coffee date a little more creative. Try visiting a specialty café that offers unique brews or themed drinks. Some couples enjoy exploring different coffee shops in their area, turning it into a fun adventure. You can also pair your coffee date with other activities, like visiting a nearby park or art gallery afterward.

The Importance Of Body Language On A Coffee Date

Body language plays a significant role in how you come across on a coffee date. Since the setting is casual and often involves sitting across from each other, it’s important to be mindful of your posture and gestures.

Positive body language includes maintaining eye contact, leaning in slightly to show interest, and smiling warmly. Crossing your arms or avoiding eye contact can send the wrong message and make you seem distant or uninterested.

Mirroring your date’s body language subtly can help build rapport. For example, if they lean forward slightly, you can do the same. These small, non-verbal cues can create a sense of connection and make the conversation feel more natural.

How To End A Coffee Date Gracefully

Knowing how to end a coffee date gracefully is just as important as starting it off on the right foot. If the conversation has gone well and you’d like to see the person again, you can express your interest by suggesting a follow-up date. Something as simple as “I had a great time—let’s do this again soon” works well.

If you feel that the connection isn’t strong, it’s still important to end the date politely. Thank them for their time, and part ways with a smile. Even if there’s no romantic or social spark, leaving on good terms shows maturity and respect.

Conclusion

A coffee date is a simple yet effective way to connect with someone, whether it’s for friendship, romance, or business. The casual environment allows for easy conversation, making it a popular choice for many people. With the right approach, good etiquette, and a little preparation, coffee dates can be enjoyable and stress-free. Whether it’s your first time meeting someone or just catching up with a friend, a coffee date offers the perfect opportunity to relax and enjoy meaningful conversations over a cup of coffee.

[kilar]

CAS - creativity - 'CrAL - Creative Audiovisual Lab'

In March 2023 I signed up to participate in 'CrAL - Creative Audiovisual Lab', a CTK Rijeka project. The projects goal is to encourage young individuals (aging 14-19 years) to participate in various interpretations and productions of audiovisual content. I signed up with three more students from Gimnazija Andrije Mohorovičića and together with our mentor Leonila Marač we stared with the project. Our mentor would present videos from the CrAL Platform YouTube channel, we would discuss different topics and get assignments to photograph certain subjects and present our photos or writing our own stories based on the photographs. The workshops lasted for about two months and we soon began the final and the most important task of the project; a three minute short film. This is where the work really began. The three of us had to make up an idea and really actualize it. At first we weren’t sure what to capture, we first thought about making a survey, walk around town with a camera and microphone and ask questions regarding a certain topic, then we though about making a skate clip, ideas were flying. After some time we agreed we wanted something very aesthetically pleasing. What we all had in common was love for cinematographic masterpieces. We wanted our short film to be impactful but also present us. After some time we agreed our film was going to be about our perspectives, the way we view the world around is. We wanted to show how beautiful life can be in all of its simplicity. We came up with an idea; we split three minutes by four and captured the scenes on our own until we finally meet up and edit it into a short film. The filming process was beautiful and extremely fun, however, finding my location was a little bit tricky. I had so many beautiful places in mind I couldn't choose where to go. I thought about piecing up a clip of all of my favorite spots but in the end I opted for my favorite, a place I come to when I need closure and peace, I set up the camera and played with settings, I would then take turns going and passing by the camera, then to check the video recorded, then re do it, and so on and so on until I finally felt like I got what I needed for my 45 seconds. In the end I edited it on an app my laptop has preinstalled, it was nothing grand but it did the job, I liked that part almost as much as the filming part. I like editing and filming. I've been doing it since I was a child. I find pleasure in holding a device which can capture moments. I used to edit photographs and video clips of me and my friends, spend hours watching cinematographic videos and movies, from murder mysteries to documentaries about our planet. I am a big movie lover. I found this project extremely inspiring and exciting since I plan on continuing my studies in the movie industry direction, cinematography to be exact. Our film was premiered at the CrAL awards ceremony in September 2023. Schools from Croatia who applied to this project were invited to Dječja Kuća Rijeka for an awards ceremony, all of us fit into a room and watched our movies, connected to the community, enjoyed ourselves, shared our art and stories. We did not win first place, but were very close, what mattered was that we created something that we liked, with mindfulness and creativity. 

[tstresors]

I’ve been an Allegra Goodman fan for years, but Sam is hands down my new favorite. I loved this powerful and endearing portrait of a girl who must summon deep within herself the grit and wisdom to grow up.”— Lily King, New York Times bestselling author of Writers & Lovers

What happens to a girl’s sense of joy and belonging—to her belief in herself—as she becomes a woman? This unforgettable portrait of coming-of-age offers subtle yet powerful reflections on class, parenthood, addiction, lust, and the irrepressible power of dreams.

“There is a girl, and her name is Sam.” So begins Allegra Goodman’s moving and wise new novel.

Sam is seven years old and lives in Beverley, Massachusetts. She adores her father, though he isn’t around much. Her mother struggles to make ends meet, and never fails to remind Sam that if she studies hard and acts responsibly, adulthood will be easier—more secure and comfortable. But comfort and security are of little interest to Sam. She doesn’t fit in at school, where the other girls have the right shade of blue jeans and don’t question the rules. She doesn’t care about jeans or rules. All she wants is to climb. Hanging from the highest limbs of the tallest trees, scaling the side of a building, Sam feels free.

As a teenager, Sam begins to doubt herself. She yearns to be noticed, even as she wants to disappear. When her climbing coach takes an interest in her, his attention is more complicated than she anticipated. She resents her father’s erratic behavior, but she grieves after he’s gone. And she resists her mother’s attempts to plan for her future, even as that future draws closer.

The simplicity of this tender, emotionally honest novel is what makes it so powerful. Sam by Allegra Goodman will break your heart, but will also leave you full of hope.

In Sam, Allegra Goodman presents a poignant coming-of-age story that explores themes of class, parenthood, addiction, lust, and the search for joy and belonging. Through the eyes of protagonist Sam, we witness the struggles and triumphs of growing up and finding one's place in the world. This beautifully written novel is a must-read for fans of coming-of-age stories and will leave you feeling moved and full of hope.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“Allegra Goodman knows. She knows families, their griefs and rages, their love and loss: complicated parents and complicated children. In Sam, she goes deep into the heart and soul, and voice of one girl. Sam is a deeply wise and empathetic portrait of this unforgettable girl, making her way into this tricky world and into the reader’s life.”—Amy Bloom, New York Times bestselling author of In Love

“Sam is one of the most evocative and tender examinations of youth that I’ve ever read, and Allegra Goodman fully understands the strange and dreamlike qualities of Sam’s world as she tries to navigate it, populated by adults who mean well but complicate every single moment. One of the best writers around, Goodman has made something truly beautiful, evoking a feeling that is hard to name but stirs inside us with every line.”—Kevin Wilson, New York Times bestselling author of Nothing to See Here

“What seems at first to be a simple coming-of-age story deepens under its own weight and shows itself to be a beautiful meditation on all the ways we love and fail each other. I was moved by the cumulative power of Sam, and I’m still rooting for the characters.”—Ann Napolitano, New York Times bestselling author of Dear Edward

“Bracing . . . Sam’s . . . travails gain heft through [Allegra] Goodman’s perceptiveness, specificity regarding Sam’s emotions, and arresting turns of phrase. It’s impressive how much emotional power is packed into this . . . contained story.”—Publishers Weekly

About the Author

Allegra Goodman is the author of five novels, two short story collections, and a novel for young readers. Her fiction has appeared in The New Yorker and elsewhere, and has been anthologized in The O. Henry Awards and Best American Short Stories. She lives with her family in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ The Dial Press (January 3, 2023)

Language ‏ : ‎ English 336 pages

[lunimy]

THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR RESPONDING!!!! So yes!! Monica’s story does take place in this world!! my plan with her is making her the average person™️ Most people don’t have to worry about demons at all, sure they kind of know they exist but why would they care about them? Most people don’t know much about demons other than they kill people. The demons aren’t present in Monica’s story, but she’s a background character in another one of my stories that does deal with the demons.

this got so so so long so i’m putting it under cut!!

So Soren!! my favorite guy ever!! When i created him i wanted him and ray to be opposites, but still be very similar. Soren has his own things going on while Ray deals with the government conspiracy, i believe is really important to show due to later conflicts that idk if i’ll be able to get into. i will now give you some general info about him!! soren has a really complicated relationship with his family, one of his main conflicts is that he wants to get his sibling out of the house but they don’t want to go with him, mainly bc their parents, surprisingly, actually treat them way better than they ever treated soren, he still doesn’t think it’s safe for them to live with their parents but convincing someone that their parents are actually bad is not easy. Another thing is that he actually goes to college, he works and studies so he doesn’t really have time for anything. because he goes to college he actually has close friends (ray doesn’t), soren has a higher ranking that ray in the council but he mainly does paperwork and stuff like that, soren is a really blunt person which can make him come off as mean but i swear he’s really sweet

Soren and Ray are incredibly dependent in each other, they know each other like no one else does, they work together often and are often seen as a pair, you can’t talk about ray without talking about soren and the other way around. i tried to avoid real hard talking about soren in my previous ask bc i thought it would have gotten too long but they are both huge parts of each of their stories, they love each other a lot but their relationship in general also causes so many problems for them, they live with each other so it’s expected. Many of their conflicts stem from ray relying too much on soren while soren is dealing with so much stuff and not trying to get help from the people around him. One of my favorite conflicts between them is that soren has other people he cares about other than ray, but ray doesn’t have anyone, so he sees this as soren abandoning him! they both aren’t in great places at the start of the story but part of their journey (specially ray’s) is working to trust other people and let them in their lives

THE DEMONS ARE SUCH A TRICKY QUESTION!! i haven’t been able to really define parts of the story bc I CANT DECIDE!!! i love stories which have demons as horrible creatures that you shouldn’t hesitate to kill but also i’m a fan of stories where demons actually are similar to humans, the compromise i’ve come up with myself is that most demons are like human, they think and act just like us, so there’s also demons that kill humans. the demons are technically called soul eaters but nobody really uses it unless it’s for official stuff like idk scientific papers. eating human souls makes them more powerful but they can very well survive without it, i haven’t really thought of categories but the more souls they eat the more powerful they are.

The council is easily my favorite part in the story!! it’s also the most defined part!! I will respond to all your question but first i think i should explain how the council works. So first of, i’ve been calling it the council for simplicity sake (canonically that’s also what people call it) but the actual council is actually only a really small part of the demon hunting facility. The demon hunting facility (DHF for short) is a placeholder name for now bc i want to be clear as possible if not it’ll get really confusing.

So, The Council is actually the highest rank within the DHF, it is formed by the 7 most powerful demon hunters alive, they control everything within the DHF and they also have a lot of power within the country. The council is incredibly secretive so not many people actually know who they are. The rest of the position have military names, i plan to change it but it works for now! Please ignore whatever it means irl bc that’s not really how it works in this world lmao.

The second highest position is the Generals, they are the ones in touch with the council, they deliver orders and make sure that everything is working. Then there are the colonels, they are the ones who hunt demons, they work closely with generals bc generals also handle information. Soren is a lieutenant general which in my story means he’s higher than colonels (Ray is a colonel btw) but he’s under generals. He is licensed to kill demons but he mainly works with paperwork such as giving orders to lower ranks for them to gather specific information to give the colonels, putting it into folders and boring stuff like that. Unlike generals he is not able to talk to the council. Every rank has an in between section! After colonels, there’s lieutenants, they are basically colonels back up, some of them can kill minor demons but everything other than that is out of reach, they mainly deal with paperwork. They also make sure the military works correctly. The military mainly does cleanups and gathers information. Finally there’s the staff of DHF, they do not go out of the building but without them the entire thing wouldn’t work, the staff is like assistants, secretaries, librarians and delivery people, depending on what they work as they get commands from different ranks, normally it is the generals.

so now into your questions!! If you pass the licensing test the council will give you the license, some people might be lucky, or unlucky depending on how you view it, enough to get training from the council itself (i imagine the council would come to you and say you could be good come to our classes), but most people don’t. you either train outside or pray for the best. Most people start climbing slowly, they start in the military and some of them get picked to become demon hunters. Something important to keep in mind is that despite being a demon hunter is incredibly dangerous, it pays incredibly well. So, the demons ARE the ones kidnapping people, they are doing it because trying to get information/weapons and all that stuff is really hard when you don’t look human, but also the council is trying to cover up the disappearances because it works as a great cover up in case anyone discovers they are killing people who discovered that not demons all demons want to kill people. If people start digging too deep they’ll discover the inconsistencies. Soren and Ray are both licensed demon hunters, there’s a lot of reasons why Soren doesn’t believe Ray but the main one is because Soren is working a lot more closely with the council he’s in denial he has likely caused the death of multiple people

hi hello ghost thank you for enabling me anyway i’m gonna talk you about my favorite guy ever Ray!!!

so general information that’s important: he’s between the ages of 19-23, i do not like giving my characters actual ages bc that’s way too much work anyway, he works in The Council, which is a government facility specifically made for killing demons/soul eaters, hes pretty far up in the council (they work in ranks and stuff), he is in a qpr with another of my characters called soren and they live together, also ray is very close to his family

Ray is such a fucked up guy and i love him for it, he’s sooo naive and childish and stupid and before the story even starts manages to fuck up so bad he gets his demon killing license revoked (that’s not something that happens often at all) but he tries his best!!!! the specific reason why he got his license revoked is not very fun (lots of death) so idk if i should get into it but i hope you don’t mind if i don’t specify

His story actually revolves around the disappearance of a ton of people which the higher ups are trying so hard to cover up, as they slowly uncover more and more information the government tries it hardest for them to stop and i soemthing i really want to do if i ever write this is at the start portray the council as something beautiful that’s out there to help other and slowly become this jail ray cant escape, it’s also really bad for him bc not even soren trusts him when he tells him something bad was happening :D!! i have so many notes on the structure of the council and how it works but i think i would take soooo long actually explaining everything, i actually call his story the main story of the demon world bc i have multiple stories within the same world and this one is were you learn the most about how everything works and it makes me so happy, feel free to ask me about anything :O!!

ooooooh thats soooo coool!!1 i find the world so interestig1!!1 iremember i read a couple of posts of yours about that most of ur ocs where in this world (?) does monica's story also take place in this world?? :OOO also ray sounds lovely!! i would like to know more about his relationships with his queer platonic partner soren! or about soren in general their relatonship sounds very interesting!1! also is there some kind of category in wich demons are split?? like are some demons that are harder to deal with, are demons sentient'????' do they interact like humans?? are they a higer power beyond comprehension?? or are they more like animals?? (or all of the above abdjhb) also!1 id like to know how the council works if u dont mind dbahjbad i really like how u r picturing the council, like id some kind of man made cosmic horror, if they are even human, are the council human?? how does the lisence thing works? do they have to go through some kind of training to get their licesnes or they just snatch sum people from the street that they think are capable of handling the work of killing demons?? are the demons involved in the desapearence of people??? and is it bc of fuck ups from part of the council, OH or are the COUNCIL involved in the dissapearence and thats why they are trying to encover it so hard, is soren a demon hunter under the council and that's why he doesn't believe ray???? aaa so sorry if these are a lot of questios khkbdjhbsjh ur world seems very very cool aa PLEASE FEEL FREE TO ONLY AWNSER THE ONES U LIKE THE MOST JKJBJH :'D

[real-jane]

Stupidity or Serendipity? - chapter 12, steady

[draco malfoy x hermione granger]

summary: hermione sets ron straight, and takes her final vow with draco in their new home.

series masterlist

🥂

Hermione’s flat was situated above the accounting firm of Marsh and Finkle, which never received any visitors; she suspected Marsh and/or Finkle had passed years ago, but nobody ever came to check on the place and she paid her rent every month through the mail slot all the same. She had submitted her intent to vacate the same way, and received a short note the next day, thanking her for being a good resident. The building bore two doors, side by side, sheltered by a large, green awning with a faded logo for M&F Accounting; the right door was Hermione’s. She always kept a wreath on the door, framing a lion door knocker. Today, she removed that wreath and packed it into a crate, along with her potted plants and a bag of decorations she used to change the wreath each season.

It had taken a few days, but the Grangers had found a perfectly lovely cottage for sale through their muggle realtor, so Draco had gone to Oxford for the day to take a look at it and make sure it would suit. They were hoping for something with three bedrooms, one of which would be Ermina’s, and of course a garden fit for a multitude of ideas. The grey skies would prevent Draco from being too dazzled if the cottage wasn’t suitable--he had told her before he left that a sunny day in Oxford was enough to find a public toilet agreeable. It was indeed a dreary day--soft rain had been falling all morning, but it gave Hermione a chance to pack her flat for their move without inducement to pop out on errands to enjoy the sunshine. She wore Draco’s green jumper and cozy tracksuit bottoms.

In her trouser pocket, Draco’s coin was warm.

She didn’t think she had many things, but trying to pack it all into organized boxes was proving tricky. Apparently Draco didn’t have many belongings, other than his well-curated wardrobe, for which he had an armoire with an extendable charm. According to Ermina, he was so simple otherwise as to be boring, and it was reflected in the utter lack of decorations in his Oxford rooms. Ermina seemed bothered by his simplicity, but it was comforting to Hermione that the joy he took from life wasn’t derived from his possessions. And anyway, it would make her feel more comfortable about liking little chatzakis and owning an aging cat. Draco had assured her he was happy to have her make their new house feel like a home, whatever it meant to her. Or what it meant for them.

Had the Manor ever felt like home, for him?

Did Narcissa hang a funny painting in the loo to make her family laugh?

Did Lucius have a chair he always left a jumper hanging over, even when his wife complained?

Was there a corner Draco kicked his shoes into so he didn’t track mud through the house?

Hermione’s throat was tight. He had done so much work to be in a good place, but he needed a home. He would have it with her, if she had anything to say about it. He’d have a hook to hang his coat on, and a pillow to lay his head, and everything they put into their new home would come in pairs--his and hers. But first, she had to finish packing up her flat, including their recent gifts from the Weasley bunch.

The wedding gifts they had received at Harry and Ginny’s house had been mostly practical--a collection of small muggle appliances from Molly and Arthur would give them no end of entertainment in the kitchen, while Harry and Ginny’s present of a mapped image of their birth constellations was more dear, more sentimental. It would hang in their new bedroom, above her dressing table. Luna and Nevilla gave them seeds for their first garden, Charlie and Dougal gave them matching pairs of dragonhide boots from their beloved Harriet, a Antipodean Opaleye who had passed away last year, and the twins had given them ‘erotic candies’, which had mysteriously caught on fire the moment Hermione threw them into the trash. Bill and Fleur had given them a book dedicated to deciding whether or not having children was the right choice, and Hermione had already dog-earred it to death (she was leaning towards No at this particular moment, as she packed approximately fifty spoons--how does one woman accumulate so many spoons??).

She bumped into Demetrius’ perch in the kitchen and nearly sent it crashing into the window; ever since Draco had moved in with his own owl, she hadn’t needed him for anything, so her barn owl was being well cared for by her former assistant, Natalie. Draco’s white owl, Angelique, spent her time in the spire of the church kitty-corner to Hermione’s flat, where she could be enticed down with a treat if a letter needed sending.

Insistent knocking echoed through the flat. Hermione frowned. Who could it even be? Anyone she cared about would’ve come through the floo. Draco wasn’t due back until dinner, and Ermina popped in and out at will. Hermione wiped her dusty hands on a towel and secured her messy top knot a bit more. She hopped down the stairs and opened the door to a soaked Ron Weasley.

“Hi,” she peeped, clearing her throat.

He furrowed his brow. “Is this a bad time?”

“No, I… no.” She crossed her arms.

Ron looked pointedly at her jumper and realization of who it came from passed over his face. Still, he persisted. “Can I come in?”

“No.” Hermione looked down at the doormat, which reminded her she needed to pack it still. “I’m packing, the place is a disaster.”

“So. You are moving.” Rain sloughed off the end of Ron’s nose; he had obviously been out in the elements for a long while.

Hermione closed the door and stepped out under the awning. “Yes. Only a matter of days.”

“Where?”

“Near my parents,” she said.

“Your parents? Are they...” He gestured towards his head to finish the thought. Did they know her? Were their memories returned? Did they have their wits about them? Or was she intimating a move to Australia, far beyond the reach of his manic outbursts… He could mean anything.

“More or less,” she peeped.

“I’m glad. How did that happen?”

“Draco and Harry worked it all out. It was kind of a… wedding gift.” She twisted the ring on her hand.

“I heard everyone got together. I wasn’t invited.”

“And that came as a surprise, did it?” Hermione snapped. “After you showed your arse on Christmas Eve.”

Ron toed the ground. “Well. I should have liked an invitation, nonetheless.”

“Bad enough you were at my wedding when nobody wanted you there.” Her cheeks flushed immediately, but she didn’t regret saying it. She hadn’t wanted him to be there--all signs had indicated he wouldn’t be supportive. And he wasn’t. Quite the opposite. Still, she couldn’t help but feel that total evisceration wasn’t the answer to his ignorance.

“Right.” He tried to put his hands in his pockets, but his trousers were too wet. “You’re upset. I’m still trying to… wrap my head around that. Is he here right now?” Hermione shrugged. Ron nodded, taking that as confirmation. “Can you help me understand?” he asked softly.

“Understand what?”

Ron wiped his face on his sleeve. “It’s the timing, Hermione. It’s mental! After less than a week , you decided Fuck It! Let’s get married.”

“It’s not that simple.” She shook her head.

“Isn’t it? Oh, do tell.”

Hermione sighed. “Why can’t you accept it’s more complicated?”

“Because that was supposed to be me!”

“It’s been eight years .”

“ Yeah , but--” He crossed his hands on top of his head in frustration and turned away from her. He took a haggard breath and whipped around, arms flailing. “I thought you’d see that we’d been kidding ourselves all this time, thinking we weren’t right for each other! And then the ring on your finger would’ve come from Me.” He shook his head. He pointed to the upstairs window. “Instead, it’s him . I still remember you screaming in Malfoy Manor, helpless to do anything, while his aunt tortured you. He was there! He didn’t do anything to help you! He’s a coward with a mark on his arm to prove it--”

Hermione stepped out from under the awning and slapped him. The sting crackled against his wet skin. Ron grabbed his cheek and looked down ashamedly. “I deserve that.”

“Not that you care,” she spat, “but Draco was a victim, too. He did what he could to keep his mother from danger and stay alive. It’s what any of us would have done.” She tried to go back inside but he grabbed her arm.

“So that’s why you married him? Because you both have trauma?”

She held up a hand to silence him. “That’s enough.”

“I want to be friends, ‘Mione, but I can’t understand--”

“Tough!”

“Do you want me to beg for forgiveness? What?” He knelt down in the dirt and Hermione wrenched her arm out of his grip. She hauled him up by the front of his shirt.

“Merlin’s sake, Ronald! Have a little bloody dignity. Go to therapy. Get yourself together.” She released him and brushed her hair off of her face, where it was encouraging the rain to run down into her eyes. “Leave me alone .” She turned to go back inside, fists clenched.

“Wait, ‘Mione!”

“Keep it short.”

“Do you love him?” Ron asked.

“Ron--”

“Please. Tell me.”

“I do.” She sighed. “I don’t care if it doesn’t make sense to you--”

“It does. Make sense to me.” He sighed. “I wanted to know. It means you’ll be happy.”

Hermione glared daggers at him. She whirled around to go inside and Draco stood in the open doorway, surprise evident on his face. “Hi,” he said softly as Hermione pushed past him. “Is the drowning weasel coming inside?”

“No.” She didn’t look back at Ron and Draco secured the door behind her.

She stomped up the stairs. Draco followed, but slowly, as she barreled through the small flat. The kitchen cupboards flew open as she angrily ripped dishes out and clanked them on the counter. A water glass slipped as she set down, hitting the tile just right to shatter in her hands and cut her palm.  “Shit!” She grasped her wrist and held her hand over the sink. There were small pieces stuck in her skin and she was bleeding.

Draco held his hands under hers. “Alright, calm down--”

“I am calm!” she spat, trying to pick out the glass. She was shaking too much. Draco grasped the back of her hand.

“Clearly.” He pulled the pieces out one by one and Hermione winced. Once the glass was removed fully, she ran her hand under the faucet as long as she could stand it. Draco pulled out his wand. “ Episkey, ” he muttered. The cuts healed and Hermione immediately went to work moving all of the broken glass into the bin. She didn’t look at him. “What did Ron want?” Draco asked.

“Same bollocks, different package,” she said. She pulled out her wand to levitate the remaining pieces and Draco grasped her wrist gently.

“Love, can you put the wand down until we can talk a bit?”

Hermione’s cheeks reddened. “What, am I too emotional to handle packing my own things?”

“You are obviously upset, and given the tail end of that conversation, I have no doubt the rest was equally upsetting.” Draco coaxed the wand from her fingers and set his hands on her shoulders. “But you don’t deserve to carry around all this anger, so if you want to talk about it, I’m here.”

Hermione glared at him. “What did Ron say to you on Christmas Eve?”

Draco stepped back and gave her a gentle shake of the head. “I won’t tell you, love. It was utter shite, and if I tell you, it means I am giving credence to it. If I keep it to myself, the lies die with me.”

She poked him in the chest. “If it was about me, I deserve to know!” Draco took her face in hand.

“It wasn’t. Take comfort in that.” He kissed her forehead and stepped around her to help pull glassware out of the cupboard.

“What happened to talking about it?”

Draco smiled down at her grumpy face and chuckled. “Do as I say, not as I do.”

“Draco, I’m serious!” Hermione tugged on his arm. “I want to know what he said to you. It matters to me; if you’re hurt, I’m hurt.”

He kissed her softly. “Sweet girl,” he sighed. “You’ve already told him where you stand on everything; why would I want to hurt your feelings with more of his nonsense?”

Hermione curled her fingers into the front of his shirt. “It’s my job to protect you--and I didn’t. I took you to the Burrow, despite my gut telling me it was a bad idea, and you got hurt!”

“I’m not hurt. He can’t touch me.” Draco looped his arms around her waist and lifted her up onto the kitchen table. He stood between her knees and she wrapped her arms around him.

“Please. Summarize it, at least.” Hermione rubbed the nape of his neck. Draco pressed his forehead to her shoulder and sat back enough to look at her.

“He mentioned my father,” he said. “The trial. What should’ve happened to my mum and me, what he thought I did to get acquitted.” He hugged her close again, to spare himself the utter look of pity on her face. “But he can’t hurt me, Hermione. I promise. I--I have you, what could touch me, now?”

Hermione let out a long breath. “Why are you so bloody reasonable?” She rubbed his back.

“I went to therapy while I was in Oxford today, so that helps,” he said with amusement.

“Did you?”

“Mmm. They could squeeze me in, it was a good opportunity to go. I did miss six months of appointments.” Draco stepped back from her. “Now, shall we call a moratorium on any conversation about the weasel so I can tell you about our new home?”

“I’m still grumpy with you, but I suppose.”

“Why?” he laughed.

“You don’t have to bear anything alone anymore, Draco Malfoy! Don’t keep things from me.”

“What if I want to do something nice for you as a surprise, like a birthday party or something?”

“Don’t! I hate surprises! I always cry.”

“You’re not crying, now.”

“I’m too mad to cry.”

“I see. Well, you look adorable in my jumper.” He gave her a peck on the nose.

“Thank you,” she huffed. “It’s comfortable.”

“Should I expect you to steal other items of my clothing?”

“Steal’ implies you might recover them once I get my hands on them. This is my jumper now!”

Draco curled his fingers under the hem, tickling her waist. “We’ll see about that. Please, I’m dying to tell you about our little cottage! I can’t bear it anymore.”

Hermione’s eyebrow crooked towards her hairline. “And… that is contingent upon my removal of this jumper?”

“Madam!” he gasped in mock horror. “I would never insinuate such a thing!”

“Oh, well.” Hermione hopped up off the table and padded towards the living room, crossing her arms over her waist and rucking up the hem of the sweater. “Just to be safe, though…” She pulled it over her head and shot him a daring look over her shoulder as she disappeared around the corner. Draco darted after her without a second thought.

***

Four and a half miles south of the flat of Helen and Mark Granger sat a georgian family home with five bedrooms (“Draco, that’s way more space than we need! We can’t afford something like that--” “Yes we can, and so what? We’ll knock down a wall between two of them and build you a library.”) and a large garden, which kissed up to the edge of a nature preserve. The shutters were hanging on by a nail and a prayer, and the trim was about ten years overdue for a refresh, but it had a lot of heart and a hearth in every room. Mark and Helen had a cleaning service in before they brought the first box through the threshold, and by the time Hermione saw the place, the windows were so clean that light came streaming through in sheets. The Weasley twins helped with the heavy lifting, while Helen and Molly helped Hermione decide which rooms needed which angle. Ermina was requested to choose her bedroom before anything more could be done; she chose the smallest room, which had a large bay window and built-in bookshelves.

For the main bedroom, Hermione chose a room with light teal flowered wallpaper with vines crawling towards the upper molding and a marble surround on the fireplace. Every bedroom had wallpaper, and she thought better of the red and green striped room, despite the footprint being slightly larger. Her dark wood headboard would look lovely against the teal wallpaper, and there was room for Draco’s armoire in-between the windows. Hermione’s vanity fit on the opposite wall, with their constellation print hanging above it as she had envisioned.

They didn’t have much in the way of furniture, not enough to furnish every room; Draco’s old bed went into the blue bedroom, their sofas faced off in the sitting room with Hermione’s low coffee table between them and Narcissa’s chiming clock on the mantle. Draco’s small glass and metal bistro table set became their outdoor patio seating, and Hermione’s farmhouse table would do as part island, part kitchen seating. The other rooms were a bit sparse, and they were sorely in need of bookshelves, but it was a good start.

As the sun set on moving day, Mark handed Draco a bag of italian take-out and a bottle of wine, Helen kissed Hermione’s cheek, and the twins absconded, just overnight, with Crookshanks to give him a much-needed bath. Ermina escaped to her room and locked herself inside.

Hermione settled on the sitting room rug in front of the fire, while Draco searched out a pair of glasses for their wine. All he could find, temporarily, were blue toile teacups, but it was just as well. Hermione stoked the fire. The light from the flames danced off the tall ceilings.

“We need rugs,” Hermione said, twisting a forkful of spaghetti. “This room begs a cushy rug.”

“Is that your only complaint? We need some rugs?” Draco wrinkled his nose. “Look at this wonderful place, darling! This is our home now. Rugs be damned.”

“I’m sorry! It’s lovely. You did great.” She leaned over and kissed him sweetly. Draco licked his lips shortly after and cringed.

“Mmm, spaghetti.”

“Spaghetti kisses are all I’ve got! I’m ravenous. Nice of...Mark and Helen to feed us.”

Draco sat back against the table and considered her. “Are you alright with that?”

“What? Not calling them my parents?” Draco nodded and she shrugged. “It’s been some time since I could call them that. Molly and Arthur have been my parents more than they have, considering everything. I’m glad to have them around.”

“It might be hard to shake them now,” Draco laughed. “Mark is insistent that he help install our new shutters--after he makes them, and paints them, and power-washes the siding.”

“He’s persistent.”

“Remind you of anyone?” He touched her chin. “My favorite of your qualities, Ms. Granger.”

“Is it?” Hermione’s head was swirling from wine and tiredness.

“Mmm. That and your barmy hair.”

Hermione adjusted her poofy bun and laughed. “This is my party hair, I’ll have you know! Merlin’s ghost, Draco… what day even is it?”

Draco did the calculations in his head. “It’s… the thirty-first. Cor--it’s New Year’s Eve, Hermione!”

“Cheers!” She held up her teacup and he clinked it with his own. They both drank deeply.

“Do you need a refill?” He held up the bottle.

Hermione held out her cup and he filled it to the brim. “Thank you, love.” Draco kissed her and sat back again, forking lasagna into his mouth. He offered her his spare napkins when she spilled a bit of pasta on her tracksuit bottoms, and took the soiled paper back again, stuffing it into the plastic bag which had delivered their food. Hermione watched his motions and sighed, happily. She set her to-go container on the ground and closed it. “I have a theory about you--do you want to hear it?”

“Shoot.”

“I think… and this is partially the wine speaking… you have felt, since the war…” She cleared her throat and reached for his hand. Draco offered his own and rubbed her fingers. “You’ve felt compelled to take care of someone else. And for reasons I still don’t fully understand, you chose me.” Hermione sat up on her knees and pressed her other hand to his heart. “I might need too much care, sometimes. I might ask for too much, I will forget teacups beside my bed. I haven’t lived with someone consistently since I had the dorms at Hogwarts, so I don’t know how to live with someone else--I’m bad at doing my laundry consistently--I mean, really bad! I have a lot of clothes, I can go eons without doing the wash and not run out of knickers--”

“Ermina will take care of that,” Draco laughed.

“No! I don’t want her to! She’s important to you, but she’s not my mother or my servant, Draco. I’m telling you this because you need to know I need comfort--being comforted is something I crave. You’ve spent the last… hell, week being my one source of comfort. And I’m scared you’re going to wake up tomorrow with buyer’s remorse about this lovely home because I forced you to marry me--”

Draco pressed his lips against hers firmly. He forced her to sit up on her knees and held her against his body. “Shhh,” he urged her. “You don’t have to worry. I could never regret choosing you.”

“What if you do?” Her eyes were full of tears, born of equal parts exhaustion and anxiety.

He shook his head. “No. I won’t. I may not have taken a formal vow to promise it, but I agreed to you. Buying this house for us was a dream come true.”

“What if we just say it, now?”

“You want vows?” Draco held their clasped hands against his lips and Hermione nodded. “Alright. But you have to stand up in front of this fireplace with me, it’s only right.” Draco helped Hermione stand and he took both of her hands in his. “This will be extemporaneous, if it’s all the same to you.”

“It’s better that way,” she peeped.

Draco squeezed her hands. “Hermione Jean Granger,” he began, mouth quirking into a smile as she immediately teared up. “How did we get here? My daft, beautiful witch. Once upon a time, I was a little snot-nosed boy with gelled hair, trying to emulate my father and fight my way through school, and the next thing I know… I’m married to the sexiest, smartest woman in the entire world. I would be the biggest fool to squander that gift.

“Hermione, I promise I will always support your impulses and drive. Your gut is never wrong. I won’t let you forget it. I promise never to make you feel like an inconvenience or burden; I will never dismiss your feelings. We will talk through any problem we might face. I am on your side. Forever. Unless it comes to our bed, and I’ll stick to my side.

“You will always be safe with me--intimately, you are my equal and your expression of the connection between us is important to me. I will worship you. Mentally, you are my equal. Your intellect is aspirational, and I cannot wait to work alongside you. Emotionally, you are my equal. You will teach me how to love better, and be loved, openly and without shame or fear.

“I love you. I promise to never let you forget it.”

Hermione stammered, but nothing came out. She openly cried. Tears streamed down her face and Draco had to use both hands to wipe her cheeks. “Your turn?” he offered. She sniffled.

“I don’t know if I can talk,” she hiccoughed.

“Try, sweetheart.”

She sniffed again and gripped his shirt. “Alright. Whew. I got this.”

“You do. You’re strong.”

“Okay. Whew. Draco Lucius Malfoy,” she began. “I have been alone for so long, and I’ve always… longed. For this.” She tugged on his shirt for emphasis. “That when I reach out my hands, there’s someone there for purchase. And not just anyone--someone who is reaching back for me.”

“I am.” He held her tight, arms folding her into his chest.

“I promise to help you remember that you have so much to offer this world,” she said. “When the past presses down on you, I will shoulder the burden of memory. You will not be subject to shame in my house. Every meal we share, every memory we make is a count towards healing, even when we don’t remember anymore why we needed it. I will help you process whatever you need. I will hold you if you need it, because you don’t have to be strong all the time. I will love you as long as you let me. I have been hoping for someone to love me for a decade… but I’ve just been looking for you.”

The clock on the mantle chimed twelve times--Narcissa’s clock. Midnight.

“Auld Lang Syne, and all that,” Draco murmured against her mouth.

"Draco, give me your hand," she said. She held out her hand for his left, which he offered her immediately. Hermione cuffed his sleeve methodically, until his forearm was bared. His bare arm. Where once a dark, ugly mark had been. Draco's eyebrows knitted together and he buried himself in shoulder--he couldn't believe that his arm was bare. He had no Dark Mark to speak of. Draco was completely free.

"You are free," she said. "This is a new year, my love. You are completely free."

🥂

splendid security

[spiders-hth-is-an-outlier]

Today in Strongly Worded Opinions (That You Didn't Ask For), I'm going to assert that there are too objective ways to measure whether or not a relationship is strong in story terms – by which I mean, unrelated to whether or not readers/viewers personally like the dynamic or the chemistry of the actors (in such cases as there are actors involved).

So for the sake of clarity, be ye advised: this isn't about shipping, fuck it, ship whatever you want idc.  Shipping a strong relationship isn't inherently better than shipping a weak one – heck, you could just as easily argue that it's the lazier, less creative route.  Also, I don't care?  I don't care, it's just fandom.  Follow your arrow.  This is about ways to discuss whether or not a relationship introduced into a text succeeds or fails as an element of the story – or really as I'm going to prefer calling it, if a given relationship forms a strong or weak story element.

For this I'm presuming that you're creating a relationship between a protagonist and a secondary character introduced as a piece of the protagonist's overall story – protagonist/protagonist relationships aren't really a different situation, but they do have more moving parts, so for simplicity's sake, let's   stick with a Main Character (we'll call that M) and a Significant Other (S for short).  Also, these relationships by no means have to be romantic; any relationship can be measured as weak or strong in story terms.

Also, I'm going to say everything here as though it were factually true, even though it's just my opinion, which is correct, but if you disagree then it's only my opinion, but I am correct.  Ready?  Okay!

Strong relationships have story functions; in reality nothing means anything and people just like each other because they do, but fuck reality, it's a huge narrative mess.  And my basic premise here is that the story function of a strong relationship falls under one (or more, if you wanna get real fancy) of these three categories:

The relationship can unlock under-explored elements of M's story or character through mirroring or intimacy (often shows up as “friends to lovers”).  There is backstory that hasn't been unearthed yet, or some reaction or experience in M's life that could advance the story, and S can serve as a means to get at it.  Maybe M and S share a similar trauma or life story; maybe S is the first person M feels able to open up to about something profound and relevant.  Maybe part of M's story is a conflict between how they seem to others and how they see themselves or their own potential; maybe S is the person who sees them the way they see themselves...or sees M as the person they're afraid they'll never be.  The story goal being met here is giving M a boost toward successful completion of their story arc, so even though there could be conflict, S is fundamentally pulling on the same side as M in the major story conflicts, in such a way that by the end, the reader should feel like M's success is at least in part because of what they gain from their relationship with S.

The relationship can function as a piece of the story's overall conflict, or as a secondary subplot conflict (often shows up as “enemies to lovers”). Traditional romance novel plotting effectively slots the love interest into the role of “antagonist,” because the romance's conflict is generally driven by people not getting what they want from each other until certain win conditions are met.  In this kind of relationship, M and S might be actual-facts competitors, or be divided by ideological concerns, or they might be forced into proximity by the plot but clash on some personality level.  The arc of this relationship is typically going to be about the M softening up as the relationship develops – if M starts out ruthlessly single-minded, maybe realizing that they're running roughshod over S in the process is part of their character breakthrough; if the story is about M realizing that they've underestimated the complexity of the world around them, maybe coming to recognize S as an equal is how that gets concretized for the reader.  Basically this is a story where S presents a problem that M has to solve, and the more central to the narrative solving that problem is, the stronger the relationship is.

The relationship can serve to divide M's goals (often shows up as “love versus duty”).  This is a story where M has to accomplish two separate things in order to fulfill their arc, but those two things aren't easily integrated. One of M's goals might be fulfilling a vow, or filial duty, or seeking revenge, and the other goal is some form of protecting or obtaining S.  If the story puts M in a position of having to choose, then the relationship is inherently strong; it's providing narrative drive, whether or not S is especially well-developed as an individual character.  This one can be tricky, because a very weak relationship can serve a superficially similar purpose, by demonstrating M's devotion to duty or obsessive pursuit of whatever when M rebuffs S to keep them out of harm's way or to avoid distraction or whatever. The difference is that in those superficial cases, the audience is meant to recognize that aw, that's sad, M has really had to Make Sacrifices – but there's really no dramatic tension involved; we know all along that M is going to Make Sacrifices in purusit of the real goal.  When this is done seriously with a strong relationship, the audience is meant to feel divided as well; Romeo and Juliet just doesn't work as a story unless the audience likes Juliet and Mercutio, unless they fully identify with the dilemma that Romeo is in when he has to either avenge Mercutio's death or spare Tybalt for Juliet's sake and the sake of their future together. That's a big fucking story moment, and it only works because the audience buys both relationships – Romeo's with Mercutio and with Juliet – as narratively strong, to the point where Romeo's choice is not a forgone conclusion.  This one is much easier to get wrong, I think, than the other two are!

What I'm saying here is that a strong relationship isn't really determined by how personally compatible two characters seem to be; a lot of movies that fridge a character's wife, for example, rely on actors convincingly portraying, in a brief window of time, two compatible people who care for each other – I'm thinking of, like, Richard Kimble and his wife in The Fugitive, who I think do sell the idea of a loving and happy marriage, but the relationship itself is a weak one.  The story only really needs the bare fact of it – “Kimble had a wife that he loved and then this happened” – to kick off the actual story; the relationship between Kimble and Gerard is a stronger one narratively, because much of the emotional tension of the movie, what makes it more effective than just a series of chase scenes, is the way their mutual respect evolves as they compete against each other, and the story question of “Kimble really needs an ally, is this the right person for him to trust?”  It's such a strong relationship that it comes as a huge relief of tension when he does make that gesture of trust and it turns out to be the right choice.  The audience is happy that Kimble will be exonerated, but the audience is equally happy that the conflict between these two charcters is over – we didn't like them being at odds because we didn't want either of them to lose!  Now, would these two people ever be close friends, let alone come to love each other?  No? Yes? Who cares?  Kimble loves his wife more, but has a stronger relationship in this story with Gerard. From a writing perspective, it's trivially easy to introduce an S and say “M loves this person,” but it means relatively little.  It's harder to introduce an S and say “some part of this story now hinges on how M navigates knowing this person,” but that's kind of what has to happen in order to create a payoff that's worth the effort.  A strong relationship provides skeletal structure for the story; it can't be stitched on at the margins.

This is an even tougher sell in something like a television series, where the introduction of S may come in well after the story is underway and the bulk of M's characterization is already in place.  That's why introducing a late-season love interest is a notoriously dodgy proposition!  To demonstrate weak vs strong relationship in action, I'm going to take an example of what I think was a failed attempt and pitch some ways to doctor it up into a strong relationship: Sam Winchester and Eileen Leahy.

This is objectively a weak relationship.  She doesn't materially affect the metaplot of the series, or drive any major choices, or reveal anything about Sam's character.  She's just, you know, generally nice and attractive and Sam likes her, which is a fine start, but then the writers just leave her idling in the garage forever.  But it didn't have to be that way! Say we wanted to make it a Type 1 relationship: super easy, barely an inconvenience!  Eileen is very like Sam, actually, in that she lost her parents as an infant and then had the entire rest of her life shaped by the trauma and the pursuit of revenge.  That's amazing.  How many other people, even hunters, share that specific experience with Sam Winchester?  Sam was physically changed by drinking demon blood in infancy; Eileen was physically changed by being deafened by the banshee or whatever it was in infancy.  Even just allowing them to talk about that would have made the relationship stronger.  Sam is affected by the fact that there is no Before Time for him; even now that they've long since had their revenge on ol' Yellow Eyes himself, he grapples with the fact that he's forever robbed of any memories of innocence or safety or a life that wasn't lived in the shadow of this killing.  Eileen also has had her life's quest for revenge fulfilled, and also has to reckon with the fact that it doesn't actually give her access to the innocence that was stolen from her.  Maybe she struggles with that.  Maybe Sam can open up to her because she knows what it's like to look back on your child self and feel that however strong you've made yourself, you're never strong enough to protect that child.

What if you want to write something spicier than Sam and Eileen talking about their sad feelings?  Okay, let's take a Type 2 story.  Eileen has been a lone hunter with a disability all her life; it's fair to guess that even if she can't match Sam's physical strength, the fact that she's survived at all means that she's pretty indomitable.  Maybe she's had to be ruthless, even brutal in her hunting style; maybe she has a shoot-first-ask-questions-never approach to hunting that she credits with her very survival, but that Sam finds excessively rash and bloody.  Maybe they fight about it.  Have her kill some ambiguous, maybe-not-dangerous monstery types, a werewolf or something, and Sam's like, hey, we really can't just-- and Eileen is like, look, I hunt how I hunt, come with me or don't.  I mean, this is a retread in some ways of early season conflicts about who to kill and when, but everything in the latter seasons is a retread anyway, so whatever, and it provides something interesting to have Sam deal with this whiplash of how there seem to be two Eileens, the smiley, jocular sweetheart who eats pancakes with him and the one who kills like she's swatting flies.  What if he wants one but not the other?  It doesn't really work that way, does it?  Is this something he can dismiss as a foible, or is this a dealbreaker? The dude is almost forty, if he distances himself from Eileen, how many more hunters does he think he has a chance to meet and marry?  If she won't even listen to his concerns seriously, is it really a good relationship anyway, or will Sam's needs always end up taking a backseat to Eileen's?

A Type 3 fix could just come down quite plainly to, what if Eileen is ready to retire?  She's had her revenge.  She's lived her life on the hunt.  Maybe she's done, and maybe she wants Sam to be done with her.  Doing this in season 15 would circle Sam back to his season 1 story conflicts in a nice way, I think – why does Sam do this at all, if it's not for revenge any longer?  Does he feel personally responsible for every dead person he could've saved but didn't – is that a reasonable boundary, or lack thereof, to set?  Is a compromise possible – could he continue to coordinate hunts while also getting out of the field and starting a family, or is that still putting his family in the shadow of too much violence and danger to tolerate?  What's Dean going to say?  He's pitched a fit in the past when Sam said he wanted out, but he's mellowed with age, hasn't he?  Maybe he'll get it now?  But maybe Sam also feels guilty and fearful, because he knows Dean will hunt without him, so now he's in more danger because of Sam's choices, if Sam makes this choice.  It's a little heteronormative, as story conflicts go, but it's thematically appropriate to Supernatural, and the fact that Eileen isn't speaking out of timidity but out of the same weariness that Sam has so often felt about the whole endless cycle makes it feel a little less “the little lady won't let me go on adventures anymore.”  This might not be my pick of the three, but the point is that it makes for a strong conflict, a legitimate divided loyalty for Sam to wrestle with, and one that doesn't have a clear right answer.

Anyway, hopefully that helps illustrate what I mean when I say that the narrative strength of a relationship doesn't have anything to do with how likeable an S character is – Eileen is very likeable! But that doesn't substitute for building her into the fabric of the story in some way.  My expectation is that a serious protagonist relationship should bend the story arc in a way that requires response, and if it doesn't, I don't take that relationship particularly seriously.  Canon can declare a relationship real by fiat, but it can't automatically declare a relationship meaningful without, you know, making meaning of it.

Oh, and there's not anything really wrong with weak relationships – most M's are going to have several in the story.  My point is just that the difference between a weak relationship and a strong one isn't really a matter of taste or preference, but has a functional meaning that can be tested and measured, and if there's argument to be had about it, the argument can take place on evidentiary grounds.  Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

[overx]

For curiosity's sake, how does Verse feel about other people who are capable of entering timelines, and other universes? What if the person in question can exit & enter in? Or only if they can enter in, but cannot exit out unless they get a third party help?

[[The short answer is, it depends!

The long answer is there are several main factors to consider for if someone traveling between universes/timelines is concerning to him or not. Verse doesn't "feel" strongly emotion wise, so for him everything is more about logical analysis.

Also for simplicity, rift, portal, and wormhole are all the same thing here. Since some muses come from fantasy worlds or sci-fi ones, I like to use them interchangeably. They may look different or be created in various ways, but they're all for traveling time/space/worlds.

How other's travel isn't important (usually). The multiverse is a strange place, and rifts and wormholes and such occur often, which might send a person somewhere they normally wouldn't go on accident. Not to mention some worlds even have magic or gods that can create these things! He'd help if someone ended up somewhere by mistake for sure, but he'd prefer if they got third party help FIRST (and sometimes even ignores requests if he knows someone else will help eventually). He also does try to close random portals when he can, to prevent trouble.

Others having the power to jump on command doesn't bother him as he isn't the only time guardian in the multiverse (see @codedhopes Owen and Enigma for example, whom he's spoken with on occasion). Although he might check in on characters who make lots of ways to travel a little too often, say a spellcaster making portals and leaving them open all over the place.

For some people, rifts naturally also open around them until they go somewhere they're meant to, even if they can't create them. Be it fate, or destiny, or whatever other word you like, some muses are meant to meet people in other worlds and make lasting bonds (this is a fun way to explain oocly characters that are good friends from totally different franchises and stuff). Although Verse can't see "fate" exactly, he can still see what would and wouldn't happen if events transpire, and try to guide everyone towards the better outcome. (Most of the time, at least. Sometimes what's SUPPOSED to happen and what people think is best are sadly different, and it takes tragedy and pain to get where one is meant to be.)

Generally though he mostly has a problem with muses that like to sew chaos or are unpredictable and violent. In these cases, he WILL go after them (though there are exceptions I'll have to explain another time bc this post is long). Villainous muses are the ones he would try to prevent from travel if at all possible, ESPECIALLY if they're really OP and could destroy or take over entire worlds. Depending on the person, Verse will either try to negotiate a deal with them to keep them in check or he'll fight them if he must. Often he can't kill or imprison these villains however, because even if they're dangerous, they still have a role, just like heroes. Things may even get worse for a world if the villain is defeated prematurely.

Lastly, characters who attempt to alter THEIR OWN history on purpose are a big NO. This is tricky and dangerous, and NOT something someone unexperienced should be attempting. Even if they have good intentions, Verse may still be forced to stop them. It's one thing to enter another world (not really time travel) and another to mess with events that already happened in yours.

TLDR: Who is traveling and why they're doing it matter a lot more than how they do it normally, but there are always unexpected exceptions.]]

[blu-joons]

DATING BTS HEADCANON A⇴Z ⇴ Min Yoongi

A ⇴ AFFECTION

He likes to make people think he’s not affectionate, but when the two of you were alone, he loved to cuddle you and hold you close. Around others, he tends to keep his affections silent, but when you’re alone, he gets very cuddly.

B ⇴ BEFORE DATING

Being such a mysterious character, Yoongi often left you questioning his feelings. From the moment he met you he knew he liked you, you made him laugh when he tried to be angry, and always brought the child out in him. Seeing such a difference in him, the boys knew he liked you too, pushing him to confess to you about how he felt before you became the one that got away.

C ⇴ CONFESSION

When it came to confessing, Yoongi was incredibly nervous. Several attempts had been made to tell you, but he never quite managed to bring himself to tell you. One night, the two of you were left alone in the studio, and as the courage finally built up in him, he told you how he felt, as you could hear the nerves in his voice as he spoke. Luckily for him, you told him that you liked him too, as the smile on his face grew, and his nerves disappeared.

D ⇴ DATES

Simplicity was Yoongi’s method for dates, he loved to keep things low key and intimate. Extravagant dates were rare, but that was what made them more special. Most of your dates involved going out for food or staying indoors and watching a movie. He liked to keep you safe in the dorm, whilst still making you feel loved and special. When it came to big dates, he’d make a day of it, he would pick you up, and take you out into the city, doing whatever you wanted to do, bringing you back to his place at night for plenty of cuddles and takeout, the perfect ending to what was always the perfect day for you both.

E ⇴ EXPERIENCE

He’d had a few brief girlfriends before he met you, but you were his first proper relationship, the first one he actually felt himself falling for properly. Life was hectic, and often people ran away from him when it got too much, but not you. He knew that living his life and being so open about having a girlfriend meant a lot of people expected the two of you to fail. But Yoongi wouldn’t allow it. He wouldn’t let the others win, he wanted to make things work more than anything, you were the one that he wanted to help him to prove the world wrong with.

F ⇴ FIGHTING

The two of you weren’t good at arguing, one, or both of you would get scared or nervous, and things tended to break down. Sure, you squabbled, Yoongi was good at little arguments, but when things got too big, he’d get frightened. If there was one thing he never wanted to do, it was raising his voice towards you. When things got intense, he’d take a step back and take himself to his studio for a short while, and once he felt like things had cooled off, he’d come back, and the two of you would talk things through. He could never sleep on an argument, but if time was what it needed, he would be happy to give it to it.

G ⇴ GETTING TO KNOW HIS FAMILY

You were incredibly nervous to meet his family, as he never really talked about them. The first meeting was a terrifying experience, they were quiet, like Yoongi, but as soon as they felt comfortable, it was clear for you to see just where Yoongi’s wit and good humour came from, they were all incredible people, just like Yoongi.

H ⇴ HOME

After a year of dating, he couldn’t wait to make the decision to move out, and in with you. The boys could get on his nerves at times, as much as he loved them. Being with you and having some time away from them was what he needed, and as he knew your relationship was ready to be taken to the next step, he knew he would be there to take it.

I ⇴ “I LOVE YOU”

It took you by complete surprise when he was the first one to say, “I love you.” The two of you were laid in bed, he thought you were asleep as he wrapped his arms around you. You were peaceful, and looked so cute, making him smile as he pressed a kiss to your cheek, whispering those three words. You pretended not to hear it, but the following morning, teased him for some time before saying it back.

J ⇴ JEALOUSY

Usually he didn’t get jealous, but if he was in a particularly needy mood, he’d certainly make it clear he wanted your attention on you. You’d know, because he would get affectionate in public, which he never did. When you could feel his hand on your body, you knew that he wanted you to be with him, and not anyone else. Most of the time his jealousy would be towards the boys when they tried to wind him up by getting too close to you, as he silently seethed at the other end of the room, keeping a very close eye on you, and them.

K ⇴ KIDS

You were reluctant to bring up the topic of starting a family, as you weren’t entirely sure where Yoongi stood. When he bought it up for the first time and told you that he wanted to have kids with you, you were surprised, but happy. It hadn’t been something he’d thought of before, but with you, he couldn’t help but look to the future and think about what it might include, especially the thought of being able to have a family with you.

L ⇴ LAUGHTER

Sometimes he was a hard nut to crack, but when you got him laughing, it was impossible to get him to stop. He could make you laugh too, either with a funny comment, or little noises that you made were enough to get you giggling. Together, you’d laughed your ways out of some tricky situations, you loved to make him laugh when he was getting stressed, forgetting about his worries, even just for a moment. Every day, he’d make you laugh, just by being him. Half the time he didn’t even realise he was doing it, but you definitely did.

M ⇴ MISSING

He’d try and pretend that he never missed you, but deep down he did. Around the boys he’d pretend he was fine, but when he got back to his hotel, he’d be checking his phone straight away, and if you hadn’t text, he’d ring you to see why. He constantly worried about you, and you could tell. He’d pretend he was fine, pretend that he didn’t really care, but you knew when he spoke and asked constant questions that he was worrying, and that he was desperate to make sure you were doing alright. Everything about being away from you sucked, but he tried to put the smile on his face the best he could when he was away.

N ⇴ NICKNAMES

He wasn’t big on pet names, so usually liked when you called him, ‘Yoongs,’ whilst for you, he tended to stick to the traditional ones, ‘jagi,’ or, ‘love,’ were his two personal favourites to address you by.

O ⇴ OBSESSION

Yoongi was obsessed with your face, he loved to kiss it and touch it. He was known to hide your makeup when he wanted you to look natural and play with your hair when he was sleepy.

P ⇴ PDA

Like was said, Yoongi wasn’t always the biggest fan of PDA, he tended to keep his affection for behind clothes, but if he was jealous, he wouldn’t oppose PDA. He liked to talk about you in interviews and V Lives, but he’d still be aware of people watching, and so tended to wait until you were home to give you a cuddle.

Q ⇴ QUESTIONS

From your first date, Yoongi loved to ask questions about you, he wanted to get to know as much about you as possible. Over time, his questions tended to search more for advice rather than information about you.

R ⇴ RANDOM FACTS

He’d never tell you this, but Yoongi loved to brag to everyone about the two of you, especially your sex life. He loved to brag to all the boys, at times he’d nearly been caught out when you’d been around, but luckily kept things quiet. Being in a relationship was something he was incredibly smug about, and he wasn’t afraid to remind the boys every day exactly what he went home to every night.

S ⇴ SEX

It normally is dominant on Yoongi’s part, but he still likes to make it intimate and romantic. If life is busy, he isn’t afraid of a quickie wherever it is you might be. He likes to wrap his arms around you, and lead you, taking care of you and appreciating every part of your body, reminding you just why he loved you. Afterwards, he’d always cuddle you for a while and whisper sweet nothings into your ear. Sex was often the time he was most open and emotional.

T ⇴ TEXTS

Every day he would text you, it could be something incredibly random, but the buzz he got when he saw a text from you on his phone always made it worth it. If you hadn’t text, he’d always be onto you making sure you were doing well.

U ⇴ UNIVERSE

You were his absolute world, you brought him out of his shell and gave him a lot more confidence. It was only when the two of you were apart, did he realise just how important you were and how much he needed you in his life, always.

V ⇴ VACATION

Going on holiday wasn’t one of Yoongi’s favourite things to do, but for you, he’d make an exception. He liked to travel and explore with you, usually quite close to home, but also liked having the time at home. It didn’t mind where in the world he was, as long as he was with you, he always felt like he really was home.

W ⇴ WHINING

If things didn’t go his way, he wasn’t afraid to whine to get your attention or what he wanted, making squeaky noises that he knew would get on your nerves.

X ⇴ XXXXX

Little kisses were your favourites from Yoongi, pecks that took you by surprise always made you smile. After long days he’d shower you in kisses, and give you cuddles to try and make himself feel better. When he wanted something from you, his hands would wrap around you, cuddles were everything to him, so he’d keep you close, deepening the kiss to make sure that you stayed close to him so that he could kiss your lips.

Y ⇴ YOU

You were his everything, the one thing he needed more than anything else.

Z ⇴ ZZZ

He didn’t need you to sleep, but it certainly helped having you there. He was incredibly cuddly when he was sleepy, he loved to lay in until late in the morning, snuggle under the duvet and rest, keeping you cuddled into his side.

---

Masterlist

[7hyuns]

million dollar man

johnny x reader

warnings; nsfw, slight angst, social class discrimination (? kinda), semi public sex

requested; yes a reallyyy long time ago by @cloroxteen sorry and thank you <3

a/n; please appreciate her this took so long

word count; 17.8k 

songs; when the party’s over - billie eilish, million dollar man / without you / music to watch boys to - lana del rey

The ceiling was leaking again. Noticing made a sudden fatigue creep into your body, your movements slowing to a stop as you stared up at where the droplets of water began to form before falling. You wondered how long the hole had been there, if it even was a hole or simply damp again, how much it would cost to fix. Whatever it was, you knew it would be too much for you to afford. As it seems everything always is. Even with taking a home that was so closely compact to the industrial part of your city, it seemed nothing was at all cheaper.

You thought how fitting it seemed that you had gotten a leak in your ceiling just as fall began. That gave you far less time than you were going to need to scrounge up the money to get it fixed, especially if you wanted to get it done before the threat of part of your ceiling caving in became all too real. Though you heavily doubted that was something you’d be able to do, and considered the all-too-likely possibility of having to do it yourself this time.

At least last year you had been able to work two jobs, and relatively comfortably considering the length the situation of Chicago’s businesses had been going on. It was only just before Valentine’s day that something had gone awfully wrong at one of the stores you worked at, and it found itself closed down. Forty-eight people had lost their jobs that day, which seemed to make finding another forty-eight times harder in the city. For a while you had thought getting by with the one job would be enough if you were cautious – and bought nothing you didn’t absolutely need – but even that seemed a strain these days.

Not only was it fatiguing to see your ceiling giving up on you, it was painful to think that with the way you were living, you would never have anything you wanted. Even if you did eventually work enough to have the things you needed, which seemed a push from where you were standing watching a puddle form on your kitchen floor. In that moment, living had never seemed more bleak.

You walked around the splattering water to reach the cupboard underneath your kitchen sink, looking for the rusted tin bucket that you’d kept from the other times this had occurred. Dropping the bucket with a clash of hollow tin onto wet tile floors, you heard the drops begin to echo onto the surface. Taking a wary glance at the thin puddle on the floor, you realised you would be better off cleaning it up before you relaxed. You couldn’t find the energy, however, and instead made the short trip from facing the back of your couch to sitting down in the small space of the attached living room. Even these short strides seemed too much for you to comprehend doing, and that feeling remained despite you already tucking your legs up underneath you as you sat on the worn fabric.

The couch itself had seen too many years since it had been gifted to your parents on their wedding day to still be considered comfortable by any means. That was only if you stayed still on it for too long, though, which seemed the only saving grace you could find in it. Much like all of your other large furniture items that you’d filled the two main rooms of your ground-floor apartment with, you hadn’t paid for it. Or even picked it out yourself. Your parents had been kind enough to give you the old stuff that had been lingering in the garage of your childhood home for fear of losing the memories attached to them.

Thinking of them when you had a moment to yourself made you suddenly regretful. For what, you weren’t sure. Maybe being away from them both seemed a better idea at the time you left, or maybe you missed the simplicity of life on the further outskirts of the city. Maybe it was only a longing for your childhood to come back so you didn’t have to think about all of the grown-up things for yourself anymore. You had regretted running off what seemed so far since the day you had done it, but there was nothing more you could do now. Sometimes you could barely remember why you had moved to the city anyway. Chasing big dreams, or following someone who was chasing big dreams. One of you had managed to make those big dreams become real, had turned them into a tangible thing.

Looking around your cosy home, it seemed simple to tell that the one who had struck out wasn’t you. You supposed, with the ever-so-wonderful hindsight, moving straight into the city by yourself at a time so obsessed with glitz and glamour hadn’t been such a fine idea. Though you knew the largest reason you had followed the someone else into the city in the first place had been to earn your own glitz and glamour life-style.

Sitting on your parents couch in a flat with a leak in the ceiling, you were beginning to think you should have done what all other American girls did when they were seeking success and education, and moved to New York. Even your friends had spoken dreamily of the big city, saying that’s the only place you could ever hope to find real culture and, as most of your friends insisted, real jazz.

Chicago wasn’t a place of real culture or real jazz, not in any shape or form. You could guess it was warmer in New York than it was in Chicago, too. If you had flourished in a certain area, or if you had a passion, maybe you could have taken the chance and followed it all the way to New York. But you didn’t and you hadn’t. Instead you had moved further into your home city at the worst possible time and found yourself, along with all of the friends who had stayed, shrouded in fear and crime.

You had to remind yourself that it wasn’t all bad. You had to, because otherwise life seemed far too bleak to keep up with. The light rain that was pattering against your window would get worse, you knew. If not over the course of the night then in the morning, surely. The thought filled you with subdued fear. You wondered if the bucket would be enough to keep your stable through the entirety of the fall and into the winter. That was a tricky line to walk, though. If you left it too long, the ceiling would cave, just as the man who had fixed it last time had insisted.

The night seemed to be taking too long, and there was too much weighing on your mind to consider staying awake any longer. You rose up and took long, dragged footsteps the short few paces to cross over the door-frame into your bedroom. You didn’t bother even turning the light on, feeling as though the weight of the world was suddenly resting on your shoulders. You kicked the door shut behind you, tugging your work short off and stepping out of your skirt to pull an older, looser shirt on to cover yourself.

When you had finally crawled into your bed it seemed colder than you had expected. Even the sheets felt icy and uncomfortable when you tugged them up to cover yourself. There’s little more I can do, you reminded yourself, closing your eyes and hoping for warmth. The thought made you want to laugh, with its consistency in your daily thinking. I hope, I hope, I hope. But what good had that been doing you in the last few years, really? You wondered whether the hope of meeting success had been enough for the boy you’d followed. Judging from where he’d made it in such a short span of time, you could only imagine it had been far more than hope that had given him what he had now.

 ///

The books had been handled badly in, “The Ox,” for such a long time that even with having worked there for over a year, there seemed so much to do. The owner, who was only ever briefly glimpsed around the bar once a month gathering his reports, never wearing a name tag, was called Sicheng. You had never found the confidence to ask too many questions about the man – what his last name was (though you had discovered within the pages of the book that his full name was Dong Sicheng and he was around your age), where he was from, why he seemed to have a lack of interest in his own business – though that was the same for many people.

Men in bars loved to talk to anyone that would listen, which happened to be the most difficult job of the women pouring their drinks. And, as usual, women – without the exemption of yourself – loved to gossip about the most interesting things they could find out. The happiest moments in your daily life was when you would be preparing to go home, or even when one of the women would spend their break in your mini-office instead of having to leave the building into the fall chill, would seek you out to tell you something exciting they had learnt. Dong Sicheng had become a natural inquisition for most of the people who had him as a boss, as there seemed to be so little available to learn about him. All they had known upon first getting their jobs was his name and that he wasn’t from Chicago, or even America at all.

Over time, with the information the women working at the bar had collected, you’d put together a vague, blurry image of Sicheng in your mind. His name was Dong Sicheng but oftentimes in letters he received he was referred to as Winwin. He was around your age, he was from China though you didn’t know where. And he was very anti-social. Once a month was about as often as he’d show his face. That didn’t seem too strange considering what it was the women said the men who grew too brave in their drunkenness for their own good.

Most of them said he was part of a gang that had come over from China to work with the American gangs, though you didn’t know how realistic that seemed. All the stories about him seemed in ultimate agreement that he worked in some kind of dirty business. Though, with the state the city was in, you weren’t sure you would confidently say that any business wasn’t like to be dirty. Either way, whenever you looked over the books, you knew that something was out of the ordinary. Too many odd payments were made or received with no reason given, or a short, ‘donation,’ if anything. You didn’t think it was probable that anyone would be making donations to some bar on a main street of Chicago when there must have been hundreds of others in the surrounding area.

You stretched out in your seat, staring blankly at the box of papers you had to sort through today. You didn’t think it would too difficult a task, and you thought if you moved quickly you could get it finished before the half-way mark of the day. Not that that meant too much, your work day would still end at the same time whether you rushed through it or not.

Despite knowing it was a littler amount than you had expected, it didn’t seem to make the first two hours pass any faster. By the first time in the day that one of the women who worked on the bar slipped into your office, every blink was beginning to feel like dragging sandpaper over your eyes. You could still feel the ever-present worry about the tin bucket on your kitchen floor; whether it had overflowed even though the rain was only light today, whether it had been knocked over by some mysterious force.

The woman had been working there just under a year, and was, to your surprise, younger than you. She had come from London hoping to find adventure in the ‘new world,’ which to her, had only been Chicago as of yet. Instead of finding her hoped for adventure, she had found a job in a bar that was possibly run by a gang member, but seemed altogether too quiet to keep her satisfied.

She was frowning when she walked into your working room, her brows drawn and eyes shying away from yours. You rose your eyebrows at her as she began to search the room for something else to look at. “Ada?” She offered you a tight-lipped smile. “Is everything alright?”

“No, I, I need to ask a favour.” She mumbled.

“Alright.”

When she looked at you, you made yourself smile reassuringly at her. This seemed to give her a shred more confidence, though she still seemed hesitant to ask. “I forgot to pick my medicine up this morning.” She declared, looking straight at you.

The difficulty she seemed to have asking the favour made you feel an odd sense of fondness rise in your chest. You smiled warmly at her. “Do you need to go and get it now?” She nodded. “So, what can I do to help you?”

She shuffled on her feet, tangling her hands with one another. “I was wondering if, you know if you had less work to do, if you could watch the bar while I go.” She paused, waiting to see if you reacted. “I would be quick! Not any more than an hour, I promise. It’s alright if you can’t, I could just, go, I could go later.”

You judged by her insistence on going now that going later wasn’t so open an option to her. You made yourself smile again to soothe her worries before you stood up. “It’s fine, I’ll be finished with this work within an hour, anyway. I’d be bored silly with nothing else to do.”

This seemed to soothe her enough for her to nod, though still not without hesitation. “An hour.” She repeated, though you assumed that was more to cool her own guilt.

You nodded. “I’ll see you then.”

After offering you an apologetic smile, she turned and left the room. The click of her short heels resounded until she reached the room where all of the workers left their belongings in the morning. When she was gone, you fell back into your same sense of empty tiredness. The fatigue wasn’t a calling for sleep, more so for some miracle gravitational shift that would change your life for the better. Or simply enough for me to not have to return home to a ruined ceiling. The sense of dramatics in your tired eyes made you wonder how much longer you had before that worry was for your whole home. Even the far away idea of it made your stomach turn in anxiety.

You pushed yourself up away from the table, flattening your palms to provide yourself some stability. For a minute, you stayed like that; breathing deeply and expecting the worst of your future. Yes, let’s follow an old friend to inner-city Chicago on the off-chance that we’ll find the same glamour he undoubtedly will. What a fine idea! And what a find outcome it had evidently been, standing in a room that smelt of woodchips and liquor, desperate to return home to a flat that smelt of mould and old furniture.

Once the angry butterflies having their own little riot in your stomach had relaxed, you stood up straight, and heaved in a deep sigh. “An hour,” you reminded yourself, though interacting with drunk men didn’t seem like it had an amount of time to take before it became awful. It’s only the start of the night, you cooled yourself. You turned, pausing only to wish that you were hidden away in the comfort of you bed once more, before walking out in the main area of the bar.

Despite it being early into the night, it was swirling with movement. The band that Sicheng had play in the bar for most of the week were in full swing, though the awe of their music was drowned out by a collection of drunken young men singing along. You slipped to move past them without alerting them of your presence. Finding your way to behind the safety of the bar at the back of the room proved a tasking challenge, with such a mess of bodies and drinks being jostled and knocked, creating even more of real mess that someone would have to clean when this place emptied later. You felt a stab of pity for them, seeing an older man spill half a pint of his beer onto the floor after stumbling into one of his group.

When you finally shut the little gate behind you, you steadied yourself again. The rising noise of music mingling with the murmuring cacophony of too many conversations happening at once was making your ears ring. Fall had meant the lights had to be turned on earlier in the day, with no natural lighting being enough for the workers to find their way around. Even that seemed to make your head spin. Reminder: no more looking for second jobs as a bar maid.

Someone called out at the bar’s edge, an older man with slicked back hair and a three-piece on, though he seemed to have lost the jacket to his suit. The other girl seemed busy loading a set of drinks up onto a tray, so you exhaled heavily and turned to face the man properly.

Putting on a customer friendly smile made you feel the sleepiness settle more obviously on your shoulders. How much longer can I carry my life on my back? That’s not where it’s supposed to be. But that’s where it was, and if you ever wanted it to be anywhere else, you had to work for it. “What can I get you tonight, sir?”

The man smiled, and you tried to guess whether this would go smoothly or make you wish you were anywhere else all over again. If there was any hint of your distaste for the possibility of him being anything other than amiable, he took it. A friendly smile lifted his lips. “Just two whiskeys, please.”

Your heart settled a bit. Nodding, you turned to prepare the drinks. The smell of the whiskey was potent as soon as you pulled the top of the bottle, like the smell of men mingled with the ash-trays that decorated the tables in here. You poured an equal amount into the two glasses and turned to place them on the bar in front of the man.

He smiled again, dropping the money he was clutching in his hand down onto the counter. He inclined his head in the way men said, ‘thank you,’ when they didn’t particularly want to say it. You supposed that was better than nothing. As much as there was no shortage of people crowding, ‘The Ox,’ they all seemed fairly too preoccupied with there conversations, or with shouting along to the band’s music, to be making frequent trips to the bar. That wouldn’t be good for Sicheng you supposed, but it was something you were grateful for.

Then the door opened, and the bruised blue light of the sky outside was visible again. The noise from the street leaked in only slightly, just by the sound of some argument happening on the street. Take the back when you go home today. Last time, you had been blocked in by the police breaking up another fight-gone-violent, and then by a crowd of people desperate for something to see. You weren’t in the mood for that to be how your day ended again.

You glanced over to the large group of men walking in. They were all done-up nicely; three-piece suits with fine jackets that made you assume they were businessmen, slicked back hair, and cigarettes hanging from their lips. You could have written them off normal customers for a bar like this. Though on your second glance you saw enough to make your stomach drop again.

He was dressed much the same as all of his other companions; his suit was a dull grey, his hair was pushed off of his face, though some of it had slipped from its position, and he blew a cloud of smoke from his lips as he looked over to the bar. You thought, I wish I was invisible. You thought, I hope he thinks I look as good as I think he does.

Either way, you wished your were busy with something else, so you didn’t look like you were blatantly staring at him. It seemed to late for a regret like that one, though. He had seen you, and was making it no secret. You were sure if anyone was paying attention, they could see his eyes blatantly take in your figure, or as much of it as he could with the bar covering you. He turned to the group where they were picking out somewhere to sit, and shouted something over to one of them. The boy looked younger than he was, and laughed at whatever comment he made, nodding and turning to say something to another one of them.

Then he started walking towards you. The crowds of people seemed less of a problem to him than they had been for you, as he simply walked calmly on his path to the bar. When someone stumbled into that path, he didn’t seem to notice them at all, letting them tumble their way back out of it. The ease seemed attractive to you, though you guessed it was because you wished you had that same sense of confidence. Just like when you were growing up alongside him, you had to remind yourself he only had the confidence that you didn’t because he was a man. Boys were always brought up to think of themselves as important, even if they weren’t from the city. Girls, well, that was less of a concern with girls.

By the time he reached the bar, the bitterness you had felt at the back of your throat for most of your childhood had returned. You suddenly wished he wasn’t there, that you’d never had to of seen him again. Especially not when I’ve spent all day thinking of my lack of success. Seeing him in his fancy suit with his fancy friends felt like salt was being poured into your wound.

He grinned as he reached the bar, looking you up and down again. When his eyes met yours again, you held back the pride of having him look so blatantly and pleasantly surprised at the way you looked. You made yourself raise your eyebrows expectantly instead. “What can I get you, sir?” You repeated the question as you’d said it earlier. That way you knew he couldn’t interpret it a different way. Is it different? You weren’t sure. Your ceiling back home was leaking, you had to find another job so you could get it fixed, and you were covering on the bar for someone – you didn’t want to think about how much more of you it would take to start chasing him again.

He tilted his head at you, his grin not faltering. “That’s cold.”

You remembered how you’d smiled at the man before, the smile that said ‘I-am-just-here-to-get-payed-and-I-don’t-get-paid-enough-to-deal-with-you’ and mirrored that action again. “Is there a problem, sir?”

A hint of insecurity was beginning to reach his eyes. His grin slipped just slightly before he lifted it back to its original place. “You haven’t forgotten me. I saw how you looked at me when I walked in.”

You didn’t know how to seem cold when he questioned you. My ceiling is leaking, I am looking for another job to fix it, and I’m covering the bar for someone. I don’t have time to be messing around with him. You sighed heavily, letting him get the better of you as he always seemed set on doing. “Oh yes,” you rose your voice so he couldn’t not realise you weren’t serious, “I remember now, you’re Johnny, we were in the same hometown.” You stared blankly at him. “Ready for your drinks now?”

He quirked a brow at you. “Having a bad day?”

The bitterness in the back of your throat tasted like heat and the aftertaste of whisky. “Perhaps I simply don’t like strangers making snide observations of me.”

The grin fell from his face completely, replaced by a look of offended annoyance. “Good thing I’m not a stranger then, isn’t it, ___?”

“You may as well be.”

“I know everything about you. A stranger would know nothing about you.”

You scoffed. “I see getting your own business didn’t make you any smarter.” You glanced around to check no one else was at the bar waiting on you while you bickered. If I lost this job…There was no one but you and Johnny. “And it would be knew.” You corrected.

He recoiled at the comment, and opened his mouth to speak again before pausing. “You’re right.” His expression turned into one of mock understanding. “The girl I knew would never be as cold as you are.”

The comment stung, digging underneath your skin to wait there until you needed substance to be angry with yourself later. “The boy I knew…” you searched his face to try and find any semblance of how he used to be. The boy you’d chased was long gone, that seemed clear as day to see. Seeing it so up-close to you hurt more than it had when you’d simply pictured it. “What happened to him?”

Johnny shrugged. “He grew up.”

“And became a rich man. I suppose that’d change a person easily enough.”

He laughed lightly, nodding. “Only for the better.”

“I’ve met enough rich men to prove you wrong there.”

“Maybe,” his grin had returned. Though it wasn’t like his old smiles used to be, it was still pleasant to see when it lit up his features as it did. “What about your friends, huh?”

Confusion became evident on your features. “What about them?”

He bevelled his head at you. “Are rich women much the same as rich men? I always assumed they were worse, since their money’s being held by the rich men.”

You laughed. “I would certainly be worse if a man was holding my money.” You paused for a moment before shaking your head and laughing again. “You think I’m friends with rich women?”

“Well, rich women tend to convene together.”

You shook your head in disbelief. “Tell me Johnny,” you began, placing your forearms on the bare in front of him, “why would I be working in a place like this if I was rich?”

He seemed stunted in his point. He shook his head and searched his face to catch any impression that you were joking. “You don’t,” he paused, as if thinking his original words would be too offensive, “you don’t have money?”

I have a leaking ceiling and I’m looking for another job, and now I’m covering work for someone, though you didn’t want him to know about all of that. “I don’t know where you got that impression.” You made yourself laugh again, trying to swallow how hard the reality of how stuck you were as it began to sink back in. Talking to Johnny had almost been enough for you to forget it for a moment. Though only a short moment.

His features had become drawn and serious. Not even that rang a bell of recognition for you. “You must be alright for money if the only job you need is a bar maid, though.” He suggested. You wondered whose conscience he was trying to subdue.

Something inside of you was begging with you not to tell him that that wasn’t true. It pleaded with you to agree, or to brush it off. To do anything that would mean he didn’t figure out your financial situation. You weren’t sure you could handle that kind of embarrassment today. So you only laughed and shrugged again. “I guess so.” You made sure the smile didn’t slip, and hoped that it looked real enough for him to note see through it. You breathed in deeply again, before he could continue speaking. “So, what can I get you?”

Disappointment clouded his features for a moment before he hummed. “Five whiskeys, please.” Even thinking about the price of the order made you feel far poorer than you already were. When the bitterness rose up again, you made yourself force it back. He worked for his money, you thought, but then, so do I.

You put his order onto a tray, “Should I bring this over to your table?”

“No, no,” he took the tray away from where your hands rested on it. “I’ve got it. Thank you.” He dropped the money onto the bar-top. You thought even that much cash would be close to how much you needed to get your ceiling fixed. And he has that to throw away on drinks. The bitterness had the same aftertaste as the overbearing smell of the whisky did.

He only came back over to the bar ten minutes before Ada was supposed to be back. There was a playful smile on his lips that moved up to meet his eyes, and you tried to make yourself copy the action. You failed, only succeeding in smiling a tight-lipped, half-formed look of vague disinterest in his direction.

The expression didn’t go unnoticed. “Too long a shift?” He joked.

If he was still the same Johnny he used to be, you’d say something like, ‘oh, god, you don’t know the half of it!’ But he wasn’t. There were things your pride couldn’t let you confide in him, especially not in a place like this. So you made yourself shrug, and hoped Ada would be late getting back. “I wouldn’t believe anyone if they told me they enjoyed working.”

Johnny laughed, and placed the tray of empty whisky glasses onto the bar-top. A few of glasses clinked when they tapped together. You glanced over at the clock. “Would you believe me?”

“I meant working class people, not businessmen in fancy suits.” You chided.

He nodded in mock understanding. “Businessmen work quite a lot, you know.”

You shrugged. “So do working class people.”

“You don’t.” He grinned.

‘Oh, god, you don’t know the half of it!’ You forced a laugh to pass your lips. “Being around men like you makes up for however much time you spend tucked away in an office.” You tried to sound teasing, but the aftertaste of bitterness lingered on your words.

He didn’t seem to note any animosity, only laughing with you. “When does your shift end?” He questioned, flattening his palms against the bar-top and looking at you expectantly.

Something about the way his hair was falling into his face, with his head tilted and jaw tightened, made you fell the angry butterflies in your stomach soften enough to flutter. He didn’t look like he used to. Despite his words, and the way his brown eyes looked dark enough to be considered smouldering in the golden light, you made yourself raise your eyes in disapproval. “Flirting with a bar maid? Is that allowed for a man in your position?”

He chuckled, and dropped his head for a moment. When he looked up, you felt a blush reach your cheeks as if you were still the same young girl with a silly crush on the boy who seemed so much greater than you could ever be. “Anything’s allowed for a man in my position.”

You scoffed, “I see your confidence hasn’t faltered.”

“I see your unwillingness to answer questions hasn’t faltered.”

Shrugging, you moved to flatten your own palms on the bar-top. Though the space between your heights seemed infinite, you tilted your head up only slightly. “I don’t have to answer your questions.”

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t want to.”

“Why?”

“Maybe they’re uninteresting.”

It was his turn to scoff. “Flirting’s too mundane for you?”

“I am a bar maid.”

Johnny hummed. “Are you now?”

You recoiled slightly, pulling your hands off of the bar-top and moving away from him. “What kind of question is that?”

“An interesting one.”

Shaking your head, you looked to the door that lead into the room before the staff exit. There was no sign of movement there. Ada was running three minutes late. Somehow that made you grateful. “An uneducated one, you mean.”

“You don’t dress like a bar maid. Or pour drinks like you do it regularly.” He pointed out.

You sighed. “Why’s that any of your concern?”

He furrowed his brows. “Because if you’re not a bar maid, that means you lied.”

“So? It’s not like you need me to tell you the truth.”

“What was that promise we made?” He asked, leaning further onto the bar-top. “That we’d never lie to one another?”

You scoffed again. “Well, we were nine. I can’t keep all the promises I made to everyone when I was that age.”

He fell into a vague silence. You weren’t sure if you were supposed to say something to fill the empty space, though you couldn’t think of anything. Not being able to have the right words to say to him made you feel strange, almost inept.

“Well, whatever it is that you do,” he began, “when does your shift end?”

You laughed, half in disbelief and half in surprise at the surrealism of what seemed to be happening. “When the bar closes.” He hummed in acceptance of your answer. “Why do you need to know?”

“I wanted to take you to the pictures.”

You laughed. “I’m sure that’s what you wanted to do.” You teased, still feeling the anticipation of Ada showing up despite knowing Johnny had already figured you out.

Johnny raised his hands in mock surrender. “You know me. I’m nothing if not a gentleman.”

I don’t, you wanted to say. Instead you made yourself smile the same smile that was a size too small for you. “As are all businessmen.”

He took the edge in your voice as comedy, and laughed loudly again, before shaking his head softly. “You know, it’s quite dangerous for a lady to be walking home in the dark at the same time as drunken men.”

You made a noise somewhere between a scoff and an amused chuckle. “Well, thank you for your concern, sir, but I’m sure I’ll be just fine.”

He didn’t laugh. His features grew drawn in seriousness as he stared at you. “Do you not want me to walk you home?”

The idea of him seeing the very exterior of your building, with its brittle bricks and boarded up windows where different flats had been shut off, made embarrassment flood through you. Though you were sure even if he happened to miss those things in the dark, he would want to come in for a drink. Then he would see the old furniture, the leaking ceiling, and he would know you had lied to him more than once.

You scoffed at him. “I think your intentions might be worse than you’re implying.”

A grin turned his lips up again. The sight of him relaxing enough to joke made the nerves in your stomach cool slightly. “Would you want them any other way?”

Humming, you saw Ada appear in the doorway. She offered you an apologetic smile, seeing as she was nearing fifteen minutes later than she had promised to be. You imagined the city at this time would be crowded to navigate on foot, so you only shook your head at her. Tapping your fingertips against the bar-top a few times, you offered Johnny a quizzical look before turning your back on him.

“Is your shift over?” He asked, following you along as you walked toward the gate that sectioned off the open area from the alcohol lining the shelves.

A breathy laugh passed your lips. “No,” you responded.

You passed out of the gate, passing Ada as you did. She paused, quirking a brow at Johnny following closely on your heels. Her hand found your wrist as she stopped you lightly in your tracks. “Everything alright?” She asked.

Smiling brightly, you nodded, moving to squeeze her hand, “He’s just an old friend.” You assured.

She studied him for a moment before releasing her grip. “Give me a shout if you need me, alright?”

You smiled at her one last time before moving to make your way back to your small office. Johnny stuck himself to your side, and suddenly getting through the dense crowds of people didn’t seem such a task. There was an energy of confidence radiating off of him that other people seemed to pick up easily enough, scampering out of his path as he walked. When you reached the closed wooden door of your office, you turned to look up at him.

“What are you doing?”

He smiled, tilting his head at you. “Maybe I’d like to see your real work-place.”

Scoffing, you began to push the door open, walking in with him close on your heels. “There you go with your false intentions again.”

Laughing, he stepped inside the small room. “So I’m the one that spends all day tucked away?” You glared over at him, though he only shrugged. “It’s like those fox holes you used to get your foot caught in back home.”

“You used to fall in them, too.” You defended.

He shrugged, walking over to your desk and looking down at the papers discarded there. “You do the books for this place?”

You tilted your head at him, raising your eyebrows expectantly. “Don’t think I have the intelligence for it?”

He smiled, lifting the latest paper you’d last been working, eyes drifting over the words before he looked back at you. “There’s nothing you don’t have the intelligence for.”

His words flattered you more than any of the times people had called you pretty. Strangely, you wished he would notice more of your skills in the work laying out on the table, though you knew that was little enough to show for your intelligence.

When Johnny began walking towards you, you found your breath growing baited. For a moment, it didn’t matter that you didn’t know him as well as you used to. It didn’t even matter that your ceiling was leaking at home, or that you were looking for a second job to try and get it fixed, or that you supposed to be working right now. Even though if I lost this job…

His eyes were searching your face for something. Whether that was hesitancy to kiss him, or a want to kiss him, you couldn’t tell. All you knew was that there was no hesitancy in your mind about him kissing you. Still, he seemed to have frozen in his position, only looking down at you, searching and searching for something you couldn’t see for yourself.

“Johnny,” you mumbled, his name feeling strange in your mouth, “get on with it.”

A grin met his features again. His hands came to cup your face, and for a moment the same searching look came back to him. You moved your own hands to grip the sides of his suit jacket, and tugged him closer. Close enough that you could feel his breath fanning across your face. There was the ever-light hint of whisky on his breath. That was the only thing you could find to dislike about his closeness to you.

When his lips finally met yours, you felt as if something inside of you was settling. Nothing else seemed to matter but the fact that you were finally kissing him. It felt unattached from the dreamy imaginations you’d had about the possibility of kissing him when you were younger. Then, you had always pictured his lips tasting like the candy he used to steal from the shop on the outskirts of the city, and you had pictured his hands feeling soft like the rose petals that grew in his parent’s garden. Now, his lips had the suggestion of whisky on them, mixed with the faintest memory of the cigarette he’d been smoking earlier. And his hands were rougher, and they seemed to shroud your entire face as he cupped it.

The girl version of you would probably have been disappointed at the idea of kissing someone who wasn’t the Johnny she knew. Things, you supposed, had changed quite significantly since you’d moved into the city. And with as little experience – or even basic knowledge – that you’d had with romance, you decided you knew barely enough to know what a relationship was back then. Now, with Johnny’s hands mapping out over your body, something in you decided that this could at least be a learning point. If not of love, then of affection.

When his lips left yours, a flood of disappointment moved through you. As much as a heavy whine wanted to pass from your lips, your pride wouldn’t let it, your lips locking closed. There was amusement lighting up his features, and no matter how hard you tried to force it you couldn’t bring up that bitter feeling again.

You wondered if you should whine again, or if you should complain, or maybe even just pull away and stop playing a game that was so childish in retrospect. At whatever glare had come into your eye, Johnny cocked his head. “Is there a problem?”

You pushed his hands away from you, scoffing as you did. “You’re a tease.”

He hummed, curling his arms around your waist and nodding. “If you don’t want me to tease,” he started, dipping closer to you again, “tell me what you want me to do.”

Drawing away from him slightly, you tried to study him like he had with you. You didn’t know what he’d been looking for, so in turn you didn’t know what you were looking for in him. You felt amusement mingling with excitement inside of you, and only when it met a burst of confidence did you let yourself speak. “Do whatever you’ve been thinking about doing to me all night.”

Another boisterous laugh left your lips. He spun you both around, turning and beginning to walk you both away from the closed door. When you felt the edge of the desk touch the tops of your thighs, you let him lift you. As one hand held you steady against him, the other swiped papers out of the way to make room to set you down. Part of you wanted to be anxious about the work getting muddled, about whatever work you’d already done in the day being wasted, but you couldn’t think about anything other than the way Johnny attached his lips to your neck. Flattening your palms against his chest, you let him begin to push your skirt higher up your legs. When you felt it bunch at your waist, you finally stopped biting back the whine that was sitting impatiently at the back of your throat.

He unravelled himself from you for a moment, “Quite bold of you to assume I’ve been thinking about you all night.”

You whined impatiently again, feeling his hands move higher up your thighs. “Of course you have. I’m a delight.”

He laughed, dropping his head into the crook of your neck to leave more kisses in the bare space there. When you felt his fingers hook into the sides of your underwear, a desperate moan tumbled past your lips. Johnny offered you a mock wary glance. “You’ve gotta be quieter than that if you’re gonna let me do whatever I want.”

You tried to shrug off the words. “I didn’t say whatever you wanted. I said whatever you’d been thinking about.”

“Same thing.” He pulled your underwear the rest of the way down your legs, stopping only to give you a quick glance as you kicked them off. A vague feeling of insecurity came over you then, with your skirt bunched into a roll of fabric at your hips and your underwear discarded on the floor. The feeling wasn’t given very long to grow, with Johnny crouching down in front of the desk shortly after.

There was a look in his eyes that told you he had a million teasing remarks sitting on the tip of his tongue for the sight that greeted him. Though he remained silent as he gripped the backs of your knees and tugged you closer to the edge of the desk. A surprised gasp left your mouth before you had the chance to recover from the shock. You wanted to say that the light chuckle that left his lips was because of something else – some joke his friends had said earlier that he’d only just caught on to – but you knew that wasn’t possible.

Johnny didn’t seem too keen on giving you a clear amount of time to overthink anything. You placed your flattened palms against the desk as he attached his mouth to your heat, curling your lip to bite back the moans that begged to leave your mouth. The noise from outside of the small office seemed distant and drowned out now that all you could fully focus on was the feeling of Johnny’s lips against you. It’s been too long, that’s all it is. Though you wondered if it was really that, or just something too difficult to accept. That maybe this was just another of Johnny’s many skills.

As the coil already began to start forming in the pit of your stomach, you were coming to the vexed realisation that that was going to be the case again. Oddly, even in such an intimate position of him having his head between your thighs, you felt that moving to thread your fingers through his hair would be too much. You wanted to think more about that, but the coil in your stomach was shifting into a pressure that made you try and stutter a warning to Johnny.

But all of a sudden the feeling stopped altogether, and he was pulling away from you slightly. Still with his knees against the floor, he bevelled his head up at you. Your head was spinning too much for you to be sure what expression was casting across your features, but you almost sure it was one of childish irritation. “Problem?” He questioned, running his hands up your thighs from your knees until his fingertips were dancing over your core.

You tried to push your hips forward to gain something more, but the short space you had on the desk prevented you. “Is that you’ve been thinking about?”

“Seeing your face when you start to beg?” He grinned, “Yeah.”

Sighing, you shook your head at him. “I’m starting to think you’re just a bad person nowadays.”

He pulled his fingertips away from you, bringing them to his lips before he spoke again. “Well, just this once, then,” he began, pressing a few light kisses to the inside of your thighs, “I’ll give in and, well, you know – be nice.”

“How kind.”

And then the room felt like it had gone underwater again. The noise that had previously just become loud background volume had turned back into distant, dreamy chatter again. Small moans fought past your mouth, but you reminded yourself of just how awful things would be if anyone caught you in this position. Well, I might finally speak to Sicheng. Nothing’s all bad. But the way Johnny moved his mouth against you made it difficult to think rationally about anything.

When the coil in your stomach began to push against you again, you imagined the worst; Johnny pulling away from you again, or maybe even someone wandering in. By the time you felt the coil snap, you were too distracted by the euphoria of it to think of anything else. It’s just been too long…but you weren’t even sure that by the time your bitterness for Johnny reappeared you would be able to say he had made you feel that good for any reason other than sheer talent.

He remained silent for a few moments, kissing the inside of your thighs softly as they shook slightly in the aftermath. When he rose to stand up, he placed your underwear back at your feet, pulling them up until they reached where your thighs met the table. You pulled in a breath to steady yourself and then let your legs drop onto the ground, lifting your underwear up until they were back into their correct place.

Johnny was looking at you with his head tilted. You glanced over at the old clock that hung above the door and saw it was two minutes until the under-boss for Sicheng would come and throw everyone out. You usually tried to get out five minutes or so before this happened – as did all the women – to give them a safe head-start. Thinking about walking home with packs of drunk men staggering around in every direction, with the high likelihood of rain, sounded like the last thing you wanted to do.

“You gonna let me drive you home or am I supposed to walk you back?” Johnny asked, pulling your attention back to him.

You made yourself laugh, even if the question didn’t directly suggest itself to be a joke. “I guess I’ll let you drive. Only because I wouldn’t want you making two journeys for me.”

He hummed, pulling the door open and waiting for you to walk out in front of him. “You’re such a delight.” He teased, falling in behind you as you made your way through the packs of people. It felt odd that not one of the people crowded into this room seemed to have checked the time enough to try and get out before the rush. Maybe you were just trying to think of anything other than the way Johnny’s hand was resting on your hip so he didn’t lose you as you directed the two of you to the main door. When your hand caught the handle, you hesitated, wondering if you should scrap this entire idea and go out your usual way. Something about leaving the building without telling anyone you’d finished your shift felt unnatural, and made a small tremor of anxiety make itself present.

But there was too little time left for you to push your way back through the crowds to the opposite side of the room. Instead, you pushed the handle down and pulled the door open to let the smell of the city into the main bar room. After a while of living in the middle of Chicago, you got used to the collide of different smells surrounding you at all times. Though in that moment, with your head feeling fuzzy and your legs feeling half as strong as they usually did, everything seemed more present than it really was.

Especially the cold. The second Johnny gave you a light push outside, the icy air curled around your bare arms and the sliver of skin exposed where your socks didn’t meet the end of your skirt. Part of you wanted to push yourself further into where Johnny had wrapped his arm tightly around your waist, but the other – still far more dominant – part of you refused to look like you needed anything from him. Rain was falling harshly against the ground, splashing up to greet your grey socks and darken in shade.

No matter how much you wanted to feel like you were entirely governing the moment between you and Johnny, you couldn’t do much more than let him guide you in whatever direction you needed to take to reach his car. You took the chance to glance up at him, and despite the lack of light, you could tell he still looked just as good as he had when he’d walked into the bar. His hair was growing damp from the rain now, as you imagined yours was, too. But more strands were starting to fall into his face, and he was looking straight ahead with the few directing lights shining in his eyes. He doesn’t look like he used to. Somehow that didn’t seem too important anymore.

He opened the car door for you, grinning tiredly as he gestured you inside. You didn’t know whether to laugh or thank him. If he was the same Johnny you used to be friends with, you would have just laughed and slapped his hand away from the car door. Now that you were both outside, in the real world, the bitterness had transformed into your usual non-purposeful nerves around the businessmen that came into the bar daily.

“Thank you,” you mumbled quickly, shifting in your seat as he shut the door for you. Before he walked to his side of the car, he offered you a quizzical look and then a polite smile. The same polite smile you’d offer a stranger if they had just thanked you for doing something kind for them. Your chest felt drawn and tight.

When he started to navigate his way away from the other swarm of cars beginning to come back to life after being sat in a parking spot all night, you began to try and articulate an excuse. Or think of another street you knew well enough to tell Johnny that that’s where you lived. It had to be somewhere nicer than the one you lived on now, but not so nice that it would seem implausible for you to afford it mostly by yourself.

Johnny turned out onto the main street by the bar you had been working out for a little over a year. A street you had walked up and down a hundred times. “So, where am I going?” He looked across at you, a few strands of hair reaching far enough down his forehead to begin to cover one of his eyes.

You hadn’t been given enough time to think of an excuse that would work well enough to go past Johnny. Instead you only rattled off your address and hung your head, too nervous to see the look on his face as he realised. Whether that was realised you had not-so-directly been lying to him or that you were poorer than he had first imagined, you didn’t know. All you knew for sure was how businessmen got when they were around people with less money than them. You didn’t want to think of Johnny looking at you like that.

The rest of the drive passed in silence. Not an awkward silence, but in the few sneak glances you took at Johnny you could only see him focused ahead on the road. Part of you was surprised that he even knew his way to your street, as you could safely assume he’d never been there before. The rain was hitting the roof of the car loudly, though you found yourself more entranced with the people rushing along the streets outside.

The car passed one of the larger shops in the city, with it’s ‘open,’ sign still high in the window. In the window away from the door, there was a sign that read, ‘Help Wanted.’ A small gleam of hope lifted into your chest. For once, you wanted to feed into the idea that luck was on your side. That hope translated quickly into worry. Worry that you wouldn’t get the job, or that if you didn’t make Johnny stop the car right there and get straight out to apply for it then it would be gone in the morning – even the worry that the other good things that had happened through the day were beginning to make you delusional to see what you wanted.

You stayed silent and let Johnny drive you the rest of the way home. When the car slowed to a stop, part of you didn’t want to get out, in fear of the dream-like haze of the day disappearing. Getting out of the car, closing the door on Johnny – it felt all too much like waking up from some sweet dream. I just don’t want to get out into the rain, that’s all. But lying to yourself seemed to be getting harder and harder.

Pushing the car door open, you tried to think of something to say. A goodbye, maybe, or maybe a flirty suggestion of seeing him again. If it was still the Johnny you had known, maybe you would make that joke. But the man sat in the car with you wasn’t.

When your pause had become awkward and unnaturally long enough for him to tell you didn’t know what to say, Johnny breathed in sharply. “Will I get to see you around, then? Or do I have to charm you into talking to me every time I see you?” He asked, making himself smile to soothe your evident nerves.

It didn’t work, but you appreciated his effort. “Maybe I like to see you make an effort.”

He laughed then, and you wanted to feel confident that it was genuine. The rain was falling harder. “Well, I better get used to it, then.”

A grin turned your lips upwards. Even if it didn’t feel like you were talking to the Johnny you used to know, the Johnny you had followed all the way to the city for the slightest hope of doing as well as he had, you thought you might be able to get used to this new one. “You better.” You assured him, pushing the car door the rest of the way open.

The light feeling had returned to your chest as you hurried to your door. An odd sense of gratitude was in your stomach that he hadn’t made any mention of your living space. You hadn’t gone back to the back room to get your jacket, so you gave morning you a congratulations for forgetting to take her key out of her breast pocket after leaving the house. Johnny offered you one more wave before he drove off, rain water rising from the floor and spraying up as you stood in your doorway to watch.

When he was gone and the door closed behind you, you let out a deep breath you hadn’t known you were holding. Reality was sitting at your kitchen table waiting for you to accept her, as much as you didn’t want to. You dropped your key onto the bowl that held it on the kitchen side, and looked at the floor. The rusty metal bucket had overflowed, water just starting to tip over the side.

You knew you should empty it out and put it back, but looking up, the small leak seemed to have grown larger. The man did the say the ceiling was at risk. You pulled out one of the two chairs at your kitchen table and sat down, staring at the forming puddle. Where earlier in the day irritation and bitterness had been rising to press against your chest, now there was only faint emptiness and a perpetual longing for something you couldn’t recognise. It made you think of the papers thrown all over the floor of your office back at work. It made you think of Johnny, in a strange way. It made you think of the help wanted sign in the window of the shop. Tomorrow, you promised yourself. When you got that second job tomorrow, things would only be on the up.

///

           By the time you got to work the next day, you were late. Or you would have been if Ada hadn’t told the under-boss that you had an appointment to be at that morning. You took that as a thank you for her being late back the other day, and a good thank you at that. Though that had been the only positive for the day. Applying for jobs always set you too on edge, made you too nervous. I’ve done it now, but it was the waiting you hated most.

           The rest of the day you had spent tucked away in your office, picking up your papers and re-organising them while ignoring the growing want to see Johnny that was spreading through you. You had gone a year and a half without so much as speaking a single word to him, you were sure you could go a few weeks.

           And yet, you couldn’t stop thinking about him. For the entire day as you finished the work you hadn’t done yesterday and the work you needed to get done today, you were thinking about him. From the way his hands felt on you to the way his lips felt on you. Even down to the way he spoke. All of it had made you feel almost like you had your friend back, only he was a little different. Maybe you just felt like you had a friend again.

           He showed up again when you had almost finished your day’s work. You had paused midway through writing a sentence to try and guess if the pattering noise you heard was rain or something else. It had made dread fill up within you, imagining the bucket filling up and soaking into your floorboards again. Though, partially, the blame for that is on me. But if it happened again, you didn’t know if the floorboards would hold steady or start to rot.

           Then you heard a knock on the door of your office, and out of fear of it being the under-boss coming in to press more about your late appearance you only yelled back a quick, “Come in.” And then he was walking straight into your office, hesitating only to see if there was another chair somewhere. When there wasn’t, he settled to lean against the walking, kicking the door shut absentmindedly behind him.

           You rose your eyebrows at him, like your natural instinct when you saw him in any mundane setting was to question it. “What’re you doing here?”

           He didn’t laugh in response. His lips didn’t even twitch upwards in a grin he couldn’t quite suppress. The only feeling you could distinguish from him was light vexation. “Doyoung mentioned that you went around there looking for a job.”

           It surprised you that Doyoung and Johnny even had any ties to one another. Their lines of work didn’t seem as if they’d cross at any point, though you supposed most men in any kind of business would seek each other out to grow their circle of affluent friends. Bitterness was resting in your chest again.

           “And?”

           Johnny made a face. “And why do you need another job?”

           You dropped your pen down onto the desk. “Do I need to tell you every time I consider making a decision now?”

           “We’re friends, aren’t we? That’s what friends do.”

           You thought about the events of yesterday and wondered what the answer to that was. “What do you want me to say?” You asked after a moment.

           He breathed in sharply. “I don’t know. Tell me why you need another job or something. This one seems perfectly fine.”

           Perfectly fine, but not enough. Nothing ever is. You didn’t want to have to tell him that though. But thinking of lies on the spot had never been your strong point. Now, sitting there right in front of an attractive stranger-who-isn’t-a-stranger, your skills seemed to have gotten even worse. “I need the money.” You muttered finally, keeping your voice low enough for you to hope that he wouldn’t hear it at all.

           The room was too small and the noise coming from the main room was too low. He heard, made a face of acceptance, and then fell into silence. You didn’t know whether his lack of response was a good sign, that maybe your work ethic had surprised him into silence. Though you could only guess his thought process was one of pity. The thought made you cringe.

           “You can’t get a job there.” He sounded apologetic.

           You looked up at him, screwing your face up. “What do you mean?”

           He loosened up, stepping away from the wall and further into the room. “Dirty money.”

           A light laugh passed your lips then. “I’m pretty sure all money you earn in Chicago is dirty.”

           He shrugged, though a hesitant smile was beginning to light his features up. “The job’s not for anyone who won’t be…you know, making the money directly.”

           You huffed. “Why’d he advertise it in the window, then?”

           “Usually everyone’s assumption is that every job in Chicago is a little bit illegal, at least.”

           Nodding, you picked your pen back up. All on the up. You didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. If it was happening to anyone else, you thought you might find it funny. But the leaking ceiling, the looking for a second job, the never being able to afford anything other than necessities – that was your life. You couldn’t laugh at it until it wasn’t anymore.

           “Why do you need the money?” Johnny asked quietly, the floorboards creaking as he moved closer to you.

           You laughed bitterly, not letting yourself look up at him in case there were tears in your eyes. “You know, the normal stuff. And…” you didn’t want to say it.

           “And?” He pressed.

           “God, I don’t know.” You sighed, suddenly feeling all too suffocated, pushing your chair away from the desk. “I’ve been looking for another job for a while now.” You murmured, hoping it would explanation enough for your sudden drop in interest to the conversation.

           Johnny felt back into a silence that you could only describe as pensive. The room itself seemed to still in its wait for his answer. The only sign that the moment hadn’t completely frozen in time was the noise and movement coming from the main room.

           He cleared his throat, swiping away invisible dust from his hands before mumbling a quick, “I could help you out.”

           You were shaking your head before he finished speaking. Often times, handouts either came because of pity or in expectancy of being payed back. You wanted neither of those things. “I’m not taking handouts.” You declared, picking your pen back up to provide some security for yourself.

           For a minute he looked hesitant. Really, truly hesitant – like he didn’t know if he should say what he wanted to. In a moment of boldness, he let the words slip out. “What if it wasn’t a handout?”

           “What?”

           “What if you, sort of, worked for me?”

           You put the pen back down. The action was beginning to feel repetitive. “I thought you didn’t want me working with dirty money directly.”

           “Who said my money was dirty?” You scoffed, looking back to the desk as he sighed. “I didn’t mean, well, I didn’t mean working, as in typical working.”

           Scepticism showed on all of your features as it ran through you. “Get to the point, Johnny.”

           The same hesitation came back to him. “There’s a lot of, parties, and dinners and stuff when you’re in business.” He started. You nodded and gestured for him to continue. “Everyone brings someone with them, but I, well, I don’t.” He went silent.

           “Are you asking me to come to dinner parties with you?”

           “Sort of.”

           “And you’d pay me for it?”

           “Yes.” It was a statement but he made it sound closer to a question.

           You breathed out heavily, the confusion making your head throb. “Why would you do that? Couldn’t you just ask a girl on a date?”

           He shrugged, as if making up a reason was too much for him to be bothered with. “I’d buy you nice dresses for them, if you wanted. You could come spend some nights at my house. Maybe, if you liked it, you wouldn’t have to work here at all.”

           “Johnny,” you mumbled, standing up, “I really don’t understand. What would I be doing?”

           His arms curled around your waist. “Pretending,” he said, “pretending that you’re in love with me and that we’re one of those icy affluent couples.”

           “Why pretend when you could go out and make the real thing for yourself?”

           “How would that help you?”

           “You’re doing this for me?”

           He shrugged again. “Well, half and half.”

           Despite yourself, you laughed lightly, dropping your head against his chest. “I’d be getting payed, like I get payed here? To go to fancy dinners?”

           “If you needed me to.”

           “What does that mean?”

           “Well, you know, if you spend some time at my place and liked it, you could just move in.”

           Part of you wanted to recoil, though you stayed in your spot. “That seems like a quick decision.” You huffed. “It all sounds very nice, Johnny, but what happens when you actually meet someone you love? Where would I go?”

           “Can’t you just let me answer that question if we get there?” Something about the ‘if’ gave you a childish hope.

           This is ridiculous. I don’t even know how to make conversation. What a stupid idea. But your ceiling was going to cave in. Even if it didn’t, it was still leaking. You had been looking for a second job for far too long now. You hated the smell of whisky and men packed into bars.

           You breathed out deeply, half in a sigh and half in exasperation at yourself. “Well, things really can’t get any worse.” You untangled yourself from him, searching his face again before answering. “I accept.”

           His lips lifted, the same amusement from the day before coming back to his eyes. The butterflies in your stomach fluttered nervously. I’m ridiculous. How stupid can I be? “You accept?” He grinned.

           “Sure. Why not?”

///

           The first dinner was three days later. You had been coming and going to your work at the bar as usual, too nervous to accept that Johnny’s offer had been real and not some desperate fever dream. In those three days, he’d come by for a few moments at least on each, usually muttering the same comment about you not needing the job anymore. You never had an answer other than a shrug, too embarrassed to ask, ‘is this real? Is this really happening? Have I really gotten lucky?’

           His car was waiting outside for you when you left, just as he had promised earlier in the day that it would be. When you climbed inside, taking a nervous glance at him like you would a stranger you got into a car with, he chuckled lightly. Sometimes you wondered if he looked at you as a stranger or as someone he knew. Or maybe something in-between.

           “I wanted to get you a dress.” He told you, driving you down the main-street in a direction you hadn’t been in before. It seemed uncomfortably surprising to you to see the lines of stores you had never had the money to even consider going into before. It was even more uncomfortable to imagine spending someone else’s money in them.

           “Are you sure?” You asked, though you weren’t sure why. If he decided he wasn’t, you were back to the starting line.

           “Why wouldn’t I be?”

           “I’m not seeing how beneficial this is to you. I’m not giving you anything back.”

           He grinned over at you, laughing softly as he moved one of his hands to grip your thigh. “Would you believe me if I said the pleasure of your company is enough benefit?”

           Scoffing, you shook your head, looking back out the window. “I just might, since I’m such a delight and all.”

           Laughing again, he slowed the car to a stop. When you looked up at the shop, you couldn’t stop yourself from gaping. From the outside, you could tell the inside was nicer than your house. And a single dress inside was probably worth more than everything you owned.

           You wanted to ask him if he was sure again, but instead you just let him come round and open the car door for you. You slipped yourself out, feeling his arm curl around your waist as soon as your feet hit the floor. He walked you both up to the door, and in an odd way you felt like you were about to be turned away. In your clothes, looking at the glossy interior of the building, you felt out of place and awkward. Like everyone would be able to tell the second they saw you.

           The woman at the desk smiled brightly as you approached. “What can I help you both with today?” She asked, smiling again. You felt surprise purely at her customer service. No one at the bar was payed enough to put that much effort into their delivery.

           Johnny sensed your lack of confidence in answering. “We have a reservation under Seo.” He told her.

           She nodded, still smiling, and looked down at the books, flipping around a few pages before looking back up. “Of course, sir.” He moved then, walking you both backwards.

           He grinned at the surprise on your face. You felt like a child in a playground far too big for them. He gestured to the door furthest away from the entrance. “That’s the ladies dressing room. Tell them you have the Seo reservation.”

           You nodded. “Where are you going?”

           Laughing, he gestured to a different door. “To the men’s dressing room.”

           “Right.” You shook your head.

           He pressed a chaste kiss to your forehead, shoving you lightly in the direction of the ladies dressing room. “Don’t be nervous.” He assured, turning away from you and towards the other door.

           You paused anxiously, tapping your knuckles quietly against the wooden door. The speed at which it sprung open in front of you almost made you stumble back. But the woman standing on the inside was smiling brightly, and there was something in the curves of age on her face that made a strange part of you feel safe, like her face itself was friendly.

           “Seo reservation?” She asked, moving aside to let you walk in.

           “Uh, yeah.” You answered, looking at your hands as you tangled your fingers together nervously.

           She smiled softly at you, the most typical way of showing pity. She caught your hands and pulled you in the direction of rows upon rows of dresses of all different fabrics and shapes. “Is this your first time here?” You nodded. “Do you know what your reservation says you’re getting today?” Johnny had failed to mention that, you shook your head. She laughed. “Well, you’re getting a dress for a dinner party, and another for today.”

           You didn’t even want to think about how much a single one of the dresses here would cost, let alone two. “Who, uh, who picks those?”

           She smiled softly again, giving you the same look you’d give to a child who had hurt themselves. “I’ve picked out some options for you to choose from.” You nodded, watching as she moved to a certain row and pointed them out. All of them were prettier than all of the things you owned.

           It took you longer than it should have to pick two of the dresses. Every one seemed too nice to see put back on a shelf somewhere until some other rich woman decided that was pretty enough for her. Thinking of ‘some other rich woman’ was also odd, though for different reasons.

           Putting the dress on was the strangest thing you’d done in a while. Stepping into the fabric felt like accidentally stumbling into Johnny’s world. You felt inept, and the tightness of the dress only served to make you feel suffocated. Though the woman gushed a thousand different compliments as she saw you finally dressed. You wondered whether that was part of the job, or genuine joy at seeing you out of your own clothes that now seemed impossibly drab in comparison.

           When it was finally time to leave, the woman explained that the dresses would be payed for at the front desk. She handed you two price tags and wished you a nice day. You clutched the paper tightly in your hands, too scared to look at the price for either. The idea of having to add two numbers that you could only imagine were inconceivably high together was making your head hurt already.

           Johnny was already out by the time you were walking back to the front desk. His back was to your door, and he was busy throwing money down on the counter. You felt a desperate need to ask if he was sure again. But then, as he’d said himself, why wouldn’t he be? He didn’t seem like the type of person to not know what he was thinking. Unlike you, who couldn’t decide whether or not you were even okay with having two dresses bought for you. Even if I could never buy it for myself.

           He turned around when he heard your shoes on the floorboards. He breathed in sharply, and made a quiet humming sound as you got closer. Despite your wish to keep your head up high, the nerves drove you to drop your head as you reached him, handing him the paper price tags. He took a quick glance down at them both, placing them on the front desk before taking more money out and sliding it over to the woman.

           The ease in which he did it made you breathe in sharply. You weren’t sure if that was because of how much it was to throw away, or the innate attractiveness of the action. The memory of that day in your office was slowly coming back into your mind. A flush of heat was creeping up your neck to meet your cheeks.

           “Johnny?”

           He hummed as he looked down at you, slipping his arm around his waist as the woman handed you both back the clothes. “Yes?”

           “Where are we going now?” You asked, trying to keep your steps in line with his ones as he walked you both back outside.

           “Lunch, maybe. Do you want something to eat?” He asked, walking round to open the car door for you.

           After you’d settled back into your seat, you looked at him, curling your fingertips around the inward sides of his jacket. “Like back to your house?” You mumbled, feeling his free hand grip your thigh.

           A complacent grin turned his lips upwards as he cocked his head at you. “Do you think I have a café in my house?” He teased. You groaned, gripping the sides of his jacket tighter. He pressed a light kiss to your lips, moving away before you could deepen it. “You know I didn’t mean you have to sleep with me for money, right? Because that’d feel a little too much for me.”

           You laughed, shaking your head. “I promise I’m not looking to get payed for this.”

           There was an odd look in his eye for a fleeting second before it was replaced with amusement again. “As long as you promise.” You nodded, and he hummed in disapproval. “You have to use your words.”

           You paused, wondering how long you could hold out if you decided not to say it. You didn’t decide to test it out. “I promise.” Then the warmth of his body was replaced with the cold air and he was moving back around to his side of the car. You slipped your legs inside properly and shut the door, hoping to close out the promise of more rain.

           The drive back was more excruciating that you had wished it would be. Even staring out the window at the passing of new buildings wasn’t enough to keep you distracted from the weight of Johnny’s hand on your thigh. Whenever you stole desperate glances over at him, he seemed entirely unbothered, face blank and eyes staring forward. Rain was beginning to patter against the roof, though for once it didn’t worry you. It only felt like background noise. You barely noticed when the car stopped moving, too focused on the focused look on Johnny’s face. It felt stupid, and verging on childish, to be so enamoured with the simplest things that he did.

           For a moment after he stopped driving, he caught your eyes, tilting his head at you. He was searching again, looking for something that he didn’t seem to be able to find. In a strange way, it felt a lot like you were doing the same. He pushed the door on his side open and slipped himself out into the rain. You mirrored his action, though he got to your side before the door swung open properly. He caught it before it could slam into him, cocking his head at you and quirking a brow.

           “Sorry,” you mumbled, letting him offer his hand to help you out. Whenever you’d been caught in rain before, it hadn’t seemed of any importance at all. Now, wearing a dress that cost more than you were willing to think about, an anxious need to be somewhere dry was overcoming you.

           Johnny didn’t seem to have the same concern. His pace was almost leisurely, his arm curled around your waist as seemed his favourite resting place. You couldn’t particularly complain about the offhanded affection anymore, the warmth in his hold far nicer than the biting cold of the outside air.

           If you had been gaping up at the exterior of his house, the inside was almost enough to knock you off your feet. It was nicer than any house you’d been in before, let alone your own. The hall that opened straight from the front door was decorated with golden-painted wooden furniture and ornate fixtures that made your picture of the price tags from today look like child’s play. You swallowed thickly, suddenly self-conscious of every movement you made against the marble of the floor. Everything seemed impossibly fragile, even if rationally it wasn’t. The idea of brushing against any of the items in just the hall made you nervous.

           “You like it?” Johnny asked quietly, curling his arms around your waist as you stared at the painting on the wall. He littered light kisses across your neck, and you tried to clear your head enough to answer.

           “It’s rich.” You mumbled.

           He exhaled a laugh, his breath fanning across the skin of your neck. “Rich in what?”

           “Being rich.”

           He shook his head, turning you towards him. “You’re alright.” He said quietly. “It’s okay.” He assured.

           You tilted your head at him. “I know.”

           “Do you know that you fit here?” He asked, cupping your face in his hands.

           You laughed lightly, shaking your head. “I don’t,” you mumbled, kissing his fingertips, “but I’m not sure I mind that.”

           He hummed, turning you in the direction of the stairs. “As long as you’re alright.” He mumbled, burying his face in the crook of your neck.

           Walking ahead of him felt unnatural, especially when you didn’t know what direction you were taking the two of you. But with his hands gripping tightly onto your hips and pushing you in the right direction, the nerves felt dulled and unnecessary. “You know I am,” you mumbled. His lips were still attached your neck, now leaving marks in their path downwards.

           When you stumbled into a closed door, Johnny detangled himself from you. The few seconds it took for him to push his bedroom door open seemed like too long to have his hands away from you. He tugged you into the room behind him, slamming his lips against yours as soon as you’d pushed the door shut behind you. His hands pushed your dress up as he spun you in a different direction. Your lack of awareness about your surroundings was something you knew you should be thinking about, but the feeling of his hands mapping out over your body seemed too good to waste with letting your mind wander anywhere else.

           When you felt the bed hit the back of your knees, you were reminded again of the day in your office. A flush of heat moved through you as you tightened your grip on Johnny, letting him lift you just enough to be able to put you down on the bed.

           The sheets were soft and silky underneath you, and even the mattress felt welcoming enough to cool any nerves left over under the surface. His mouth was travelling down your neck again, though this time he was pulling your dress down to get more access. The way he adjusted the fabric so carelessly caused your heart to rise into your throat, being able to imagine nothing but him throwing away that pile of money for nothing.

           He didn’t seem too intent on letting you have too much time to think. With his body hovering over yours and his hands getting closer to where you wanted them, your brain didn’t seem to want to work properly. You couldn’t particularly blame yourself. Small hums of his name were the only thing leaving your mouth, even if the strange fear of having another room full of people so close to you still lingered.

           Johnny moved further down your body, kissing over the satin fabric of your dress that was starting to feel all too suffocating as you laughed lightly at him. He grinned lazily, pushing your dress to bunch up at your waist like he had done with your skirt. You let your head fall back further into the comfort of the sheets and the pillows.

           He curled his fingers into your underwear, pulling them down your legs until you kicked them the rest of the way off. The familiarity of the action made your lips lift upwards. His lips pressed lingering kisses to the inside of your thighs, this time, he took his time to leave marks behind. Even if his actions weren’t supposed to be teasing, you couldn’t help but feel that way. A light whine left your mouth as you lifted your hips up from the mattress.

           Johnny only laughed, slipping his forearm over your hips and pushing them back down. He waited another moment, simply observing you as you huffed at him before he moved away from you. Rising up from the bed completely and sitting on the chair at the far side of the room.

           “You want me to touch you?” He asked, eyes full of that usual amusement. You swallowed the pride bubbling up in the back of your throat and nodded over at him. “Then earn it.” He declared.

           “Or I could just do everything myself.” You grumbled, drawing a laugh from him.

           “You could, but you won’t.”

           He was right. Your curiosity was too peaked to not even try to flatter him. “What do you want me to do?” You asked quietly, suddenly too embarrassed to look him in the eye.

           He hummed, as if in mock deep thought. The sound drew another frustrated huff from you, the heat from earlier still making your cheeks flush. The room fell into silence as you stared at the silk sheets. When you worked up your nerves enough to catch his eye again, he was observing you patiently. The look in his eye made you press your thighs together.

           For a long minute it felt like he was just taunting you, waiting to see how much you could take before you had to look away again. The feeling of being challenged was enough of a reason for you to keep your eyes focused on him, even if the confidence in your gaze was artificial.

           A hint of pride was in his eyes when he finally moved, gesturing down at his lap and beckoning you forward. The same air of confidence and power was radiating from him as when he made his way through crowds and watched people move out of his path. It was something you weren’t sure you disliked anymore. There was no bitterness in the back of your throat as you swallowed, only a vague ball of nerves.

           You rose from the bed, almost slipping off and onto the carpeted floor when your dress fell back into place and glided along the silk of the sheets. You managed to balance yourself easily enough, catching your feet onto the floor before you royally embarrassed yourself. It was only when you were stood right in front of Johnny, with his eyes raking over your form, that you faltered again, pausing and not knowing what to do with yourself.

           His hands spread across your hips, pulling you to sit over one of his thighs. When you were finally in place, his hands moved away from you to rest on the arms of the chair. He looked up at your expectantly. “Go on, then.” When you hesitated again, he laughed lightly. “Or do you need my help again?”

           You felt your shoulders tighten in irritation. “Are you gonna help?” You muttered, raising your eyebrows.

           He shrugged, his hands already moving to grip your hips again. He bevelled his head at you as he dragged your core against the fabric of his trousers. The amusement was the only thing you could find in his eyes as your moans grew louder. “I always give in too easily,” he murmured, pulling your lips back to his.

           The kiss was slow and easy, though you were more distracted by the feeling of his thigh underneath you than his lips against yours. Any moans that tried to escape your mouth fell into his instead of getting any further. Though it wasn’t long before he seemed to grow tired of not hearing you as he pulled away.

           By then, the coil in your stomach had already begun to tighten, and the noises you were making were growing in volume. Just when you thought you were going to feel the coil unravel, Johnny’s palms flattened against your hips to stop you moving anymore.

           You huffed in annoyance, trying to move yourself again but not being able to push further past Johnny’s hold. “Johnny,” you groaned, gripping onto his wrist.

           “I did tell you I wanted to hear you beg.” He chided, curling his arms around your waist and rising to stand.

           You gripped to him tighter in surprise, holding back yet another huff as he laughed at you. “What if I don’t want to?”

           He shrugged, dropping you ungraciously onto the bed, making you bounce slightly as you landed. He laughed again, “Maybe I won’t give in this time.”

           You hummed as he leaned down to hover over you again. “You always give in too easily.” You curled your arms around his shoulders and tugged lightly at the hair at the nape of his neck.

He pushed your dress further up to bunch at your hips again, pulling himself away from you for a moment as he dropped his suit jacket onto the floor. His shirt went next, and finally his hands went to grip his belt. When he’d finally gotten himself undressed, he put your hands together and rested them above your head. He paused for a moment, tilting his head at you as you nodded quickly. He wrapped the belt around your hands, tightening it until he knew you couldn’t get out of it yourself.

He reconnected your lips, pushing your legs further apart to fit himself back between them. The moan of surprise that left you as Johnny pushed inside of you was swallowed by Johnny’s mouth on yours. The pace he set was far slower than you wanted it to be, though he didn’t seem to take note of the whines that weren’t able to leave your mouth.

You pulled away from him, “Faster,” you whined.

He slowed down. “What was that?”

You bit down on your bottom lip. “Please,” you mumbled quietly, too quietly for you to fully hear yourself.

“What was that?” He picked up his speed just slightly.

You groaned, half in annoyance and half at the increase of speed. “Please, Johnny.” You said again.

“Please what?”

“Faster, please.”

He finally set a faster pace, letting his hand move between your legs as you moaned louder. When you finally felt the coil begin to form again in your stomach, you let out an embarrassed few murmurs of, ‘please.’ Johnny made no show of having heard you, or if he had, he made no show of caring about your begging.

He bit down onto your shoulder as you moaned louder. “Johnny, please,” you whined, feeling tears prick at your eyes of him denying you again.

He chuckled softly, nodding as his nose bumped against yours before he pressed his lips back to yours. This kiss was more rushed, his free hand wondering as you tilted your head further upwards to deepen the kiss.

He pulled his lips away from yours just as the coil in your stomach started to unravel. His lips didn’t seem to be able to choose one place to kiss. “You’re so beautiful,” he muttered, “so, so beautiful.”

Your head was too fuzzy for you to be able to form words. All you could fully compute was the silk of the sheets against your skin underneath you, and Johnny’s lips pressing lazy kisses to your neck as he slowed a stop. You weren’t even sure when he’d hit his own high, though you knew that he had.

He stayed still for a moment, just stroking his thumb across your cheek before he moved away from you. Oddly, having the heat from his body disappear from above you made you feel empty. He reached to undo the belt that held your hands, and then brought them to his lips to press fleeting kisses there.

“Thank you,” you mumbled, leaning up to kiss him lightly again.

Johnny hummed, moving away from you for a moment as you dropped back to lie on the bed again. You noted then that there was a chandelier hanging from his ceiling. The sight made a cross between a breathy laugh and a disbelieving scoff pass your lips.

“Here,” Johnny mumbled, making you look up at him. He handed you a white-dress shirt that felt clean and soft when you held it.

“Thank you,” you mumbled again, getting up to take the dress off carefully and place it on the chair Johnny had been sat on earlier. When you got back to the bed, you pulled the shirt on, only bothering to do up two of the buttons before flopping to lie on his chest. He pressed a drawn out kiss to your forehead. “Is there really a dinner party tonight?” You mumbled against his chest.

He laughed tiredly, his chest rumbling as he did. “We don’t lie to each other, remember?”

You breathed out a laugh, pushing yourself up from his chest slightly. You glared at him for a long minute before shrugging. “I suppose.”

“Better start getting dressed soon.” He mumbled, pressing his lips to your temple. Part of you wanted to groan at the idea of moving and leaving the house again. The other part of you wanted to wrap yourself in silky fabric and eat a meal that was probably more expensive than all of the food in your house altogether. You hummed in acknowledgement of his words, starting to try and think of all the reasons to detangle yourself from him and start making yourself feel pampered enough to spend a night around people richer than you.

///

           The dinner hall was more than you had expected it to be, which was saying a lot on account of your imagination being particularly overactive when it came to splendour. When you walked in, Johnny’s arm curled lazily around your waist with him dressed in his newest suit, his air tidy and slick again in a way that made him look like he could own the building, you felt immediately out of place. The people surrounding you were about as glamorous as him. And just as rich, you knew. Which meant, of course, far richer than you.

           But then you remembered just how indistinctive you must seem in the situation. Dressed in golden silk, with your hair fixed prettily, you were entirely sure no one would offer you even a second glance for no reason other than to look at your exposed legs. The idea made you feel more confident, so whether or not it was true that no one could tell you were their least favourite thing – as it was, a very common person in the working class – you weren’t particularly bothered.

           Johnny had warned you before you even set off for the party that it would be a dull affair. When you’d first stepped into the hall, with its golden floor – that Johnny insisted was not real gold but was only paint, though you weren’t sure, you didn’t think you’d seen real gold often enough to be sure – and its rows of high chandeliers, and its tables full of rich looking food and decorated glasses, you hadn’t though that possible. Now, sat on your velvet lined chair and listening to Johnny and a table full of older men talk about business, you gave into the possibility that he might be right.

           Their discussions came to a stand still only when the staff came out to clear the tables and ask after everyone’s opinion on desert. Johnny had turned to you, almost as if to check you were still there. You were distracted by then, feeling a stab of guilt in your chest for the staff who had to tidy up after you and everyone else.

           He reached out to stroke his fingertip across your bare collarbones. “I should get you a golden necklace,” he mumbled, “it’d look nice on you.”

           “Gold looks nice on anyone, I’d think.” You laughed.

           He shrugged, grinning as he listened to you speak. “Everything looks nicer on you.”

           Making a noise of mock disgust, you knocked his hand away, feeling it immediately seek out to rest on your thigh. The action made your eyebrows raise as you looked back around the table as people spoke amongst themselves. “What’re you up to?”

           He laughed, lifting his hand further up the skin of your thigh as heat flushed through you. “Can’t I just rest my hand here?”

           “No.” You decided, stopping his hand before it could get any higher.

           “Don’t tell me,” he began, putting his hand back to its original place on your thigh, “you don’t want to do anything in public?”

           Scoffing, you shook your head, “I would never.”

           He bit back a laugh, but his grin told you all you needed to know. “Is this,” he lightly nodded to the table full of unfamiliar faces, “what, too public?”

           “If we get caught, it’s your business.”

           “Hey,” he defended, taking his hand away from your thigh, “my job’s attached very intimately to yours.”

           “Then keep your hands to yourself.”

           “Do I have to keep my hands to myself if we go, well, somewhere else?”

           You rose your eyebrows. “Do you not have any respect for your associates?”

           He grinned again, clutching your hand in his own and shrugging, “Not these ones.” He pulled you to stand with him, tightening his arm around your waist as he looked down at the table with a false look of concern on his features. “Excuse us,” his voice was arid and professional as the others at the table turned to look up at him, “but my girl’s not feeling too well, so I’m just going to help her find the bathrooms.” The table rose in a quiet murmur of acceptances and quick – and most likely detached – worries for you.

           And then he walked you both out of the hall. Only when you got back into the entrance hall with its red velvet carpet leading into the double doors of the dinner room did you let yourself laugh in disbelief. “You’re insane.”

           “If you had to look at yourself in this dress all night, you would be, too.” He defended, pushing the women’s bathroom door open and pulling you along beside him.

           The woman stood at the mirror startled when she saw Johnny beside you, before you cleared your throat. “Sorry, I’m, I’m not feeling very well. I thought it would be best if I wasn’t alone.” It sounded more like a suggestion than a statement.

           The woman nodded in acceptance, smiling pitifully at you the way older women always did with young girls. “That’s quite alright, I hope you feel better soon.” She didn’t offer Johnny the same courtesy, only sharpening her eyes at him and moving past him.

           When the door banged shut behind her, the two of you snickered as he pushed you towards the closest stall. His lips quickly found yours, nose bumping against yours as his hands slid up your dress as soon as he had the lock drawn across.

           He pushed your back up against the side of the stall, his hands already trying to pull your underwear down. “This is quite possibility the least romantic thing I’ve ever done.” You scoffed.

           He pulled away from you, drawing an involuntary whine from your lips. He shook his head, “We can always wait until later, if it’s romance that you want.”

           Huffing, you pulled him back to you by his jacket, feeling the kiss speed up as his hands rushed to go back to where they had been before. His hands curled underneath your thighs, gripping tightly enough for you to have to catch a moan before it passed your lips.

           “Jump,” he mumbled, pressing your back further up against the wall.

           You hesitation for a second, pulling away to offer him a sceptical look before doing as he’d told you. He caught you, keeping you steadily pressed to the stall’s wall. The grip he had on your thighs drew a groan from your lips as his own travelled down your neck. His fingers curled around the sides of your underwear in a manner that was becoming all too familiar. When he’d finally gotten them almost all the way down, he chuckled, shaking his head at himself as they got stuck. He dropped your legs back to the floor, watching you laugh at him as you kicked them off. Johnny caught them before they hit the floor, tucking them into his pocket. You laughed breathily at him, letting him lift you back into your previous position.

           He dropped down to his knees, lifting your legs so they were resting across his shoulders as he placed his mouth straight onto your core. His lack of teasing drew a shocked moan from your lips, your head dropping back to hit the stall wall. As per his usual act, the second your fingers went to tangle in his hair, he pulled away from you. The feeling in your stomach faded as he rose to stand up again, a complacent look settling over his features.

           “Do you know how to be nice?” You huffed, wrapping your legs around his waist again.

           He struggled to unbutton his trousers, grunting at the effort. The complacent look came back as soon as he had them undone, as if he had done everything smoothly in the first place. “I could be a lot meaner.” He promised, pressing his lips to your neck as he pushed into you.

           You dug your nails into his shoulders, dropping your head onto his shoulder to bite down and keep yourself quiet. Back in the room at the bar, you had only been distantly aware of the crowds of people in the other room. Now, with the tables full of people you would have previously thought of as elite with only a hallway to separate them from you and Johnny, you couldn’t be more aware of anything.

           Even with that lingering in the back of your mind, Johnny still made it difficult for you to be able to think of anything other than the way the coil in your stomach felt like forming heat. His lips were on your neck again, leaving behind a series of fresh marks that you were sure would get you some odd stares when you returned back to the table. His hands were gripping your thighs, though you could practically feel his disappointment as not being able to map out over your body like he hadn’t done it before by now.

           This time, when his groans grew slightly in volume, you pulled your head away from where you had been softening your volume in the crook of his neck to be able to see his face screw up as he hit his high. His eyebrows furrowed as dropped his head back, the muscles of his arms tightening as his nails dug into the bare skin of your thighs. You had to drop your head back onto his shoulders when the coil in your stomach began to unravel again.

           By the time the two of you had caught your breath, you hoped that your legs would be steady enough to uphold yourself when he set you back down. On the slight heel of your shoes, your hope suddenly seemed bleak. You wavered, feeling Johnny wrap his arm around your waist to keep you balanced.

           You glared at him. “I thought we came in here to be more discreet.”

           He laughed, “You looked bored, I’m just trying to keep things exciting for you.”

           “I thought I was working? Is work ever supposed to be exciting?”

           A grin turned up his lips. “I think you’ll find this job a little more fulfilling than most.”

           He opened the bathroom door, taking a quick look out before walking the two of you back in the direction of the heavy oaken double doors into the dinner hall. “I don’t feel like I’m working at all.” You mumbled, shifting to look away from him.

           Johnny laughed loudly, pulling open one of the doors as a few sets of eyes turned to look back at you. “Don’t look at it like a job then.”

           You sighed at him, tilting your head up at him as he grinned arrogantly at you. “You’re impossible, you know that?”

           His smile softened, though it stayed dashed across his features as you both reached your table again. He paused for a minute as he pulled your chair out for you, the searching look coming back to his face. This time, he seemed to find whatever he was looking for. “I’ve missed you.” He said quietly, tucking your chair back in.

           You thought, maybe he isn’t so different as I thought he was. You caught his hand in your own, gripping it tightly as you smiled. “I’ve missed you, too.” You responded. And even if the words felt foreign on your tongue, you thought, I’m telling the truth.

[inventors-fair]

Commentary: “New” Name

So let’s try this: Under the cut, I’ll do everything card by card and commentary for each. Every card will be included, and you’ll see whether or not they’re a runner-up in the name. We’ll talk about what’s working, what’s not, and how the card can be improved. Sounds good? Sounds good!

In general: It’s interesting how a majority of these cards opted for “cool mechanical aspect” over pure flavor, and I like it! Wording for most of these was on point, and there were a couple of tricky ones that you guys handled quite well. Don’t forget that if you need help rendering a card in text or with MSE. That’s what we’re here for!

@dabudder — New // (in) Town — [RUNNER UP]

I’m a huge fan of Aftermath/Split naming conventions being broken. You could do “Best (in) Show,” “Tongue (in) Cheek,” etc. I believe that first ability should read “Target creature...of turn. If you control no other creatures, put a +1/+1 counter on it.” The “Then” isn’t exactly necessary. I think Town is fine as well, and I appreciate how it works late-game. It’s an interesting flavor choice as well, and I don’t know if you need the text for it. You have a loner at first, and a community later, right? But I saw your original flavor text, and I’m not exactly sure what you were going for. Regardless, though, the gameplay is good enough.

EDIT: I completely forgot to give this card Aftermath when rendering it! My apologies, Budder. Everyone, uh, just ignore that.

@fractured-infinity — Rite of New Beginnings

I appreciate the simplicity of this design. As a sideboard piece, I don’t think it necessarily has to be rare? It’s narrow enough for uncommon in my opinion. I have questions about whether or not the first wording has any precedent, or if it should simply be “destroyed.” Land sacrifice makes the breadth of this card a little awkward. I’m enjoy how the recursion calls back to the “Rite” aspect, how it’s almost like a seasonal ritual, a renewal.

@gollumni — Ignite Anew

The flavor here is interesting. We should talk about proper modern wording, though, and how cards should be formatted. The first thing to keep in mind is to have clear sources and complete sentences: “Ignite Anew deals 3 damage to target creature. It can’t be blocked this turn.” And with a card like this, I highly encourage you to add flavor text. Even if it can be conveyed through a card like this (and I understand where it’s coming from), you should take up that space on the card and expand it into its world. Very few cards with that space can get away with it.

@i-am-the-one-who-wololoes — Unknown Newcomers

This is a fun little effect that prevents precombat ETB effects and hasty attacks, which I like. It is quite narrow, though, considering that they can play things during their second main phase. In terms of wording, I think you can change “at least one” with “a” and get the same effect. I feel that the flavor text is telling a story in medias res, which is fine, but there’s not a whole lot to resonate with it. I feel that a broader method of storytelling would make it more effective; it’s still entertaining, though.

@illharg-the-rave-boar — New Friends

I was wracking my brain the other night, and I’m just wondering what sort of deck would need this card, and I’m not sure. In order for the card to be effective, you’ll need a couple creatures on the battlefield, and a couple creatures in your hand - and by the time you get to nine mana, shouldn’t you have a more or less empty hand? If you’re trying to get around counterspells for your creatures, what’s to prevent your opponent having a spell for this card as well? Instant speed is good, and makes me think about Dramatic Entrance, but with this I’d rather be playing something like Through the Breach or a similar effect. It’s just too big at a point in the game where the effect is almost negated by how far ahead you should be already.

@mistershinyobject — Embrace the New

Oh how I would have loved for this to be an enchantment. This, I believe, is a card where the “Then” clause should follow and be one sentence. What a build-around-me card. As a sorcery, it doesn’t really feel great to play because of how easily it could be responded to to negate the effect. An enchantment with the breakthrough counter being an ETB could make for a buildup long-term effect that I think this card is going for without the one-or-nothing potential failure. Good ability in theory, but I’d feel terrible about a four-mana cantrip in practice.

@misterstingyjack — Renewed Bond

Actually, behind the scenes, this inspired some designs with having Character Pair Decks, with two planeswalkers that share a kind of bond and play with each other. So there’s that! in terms of the card, it’s a decent uncommon in a post-WAR world, although it is rather narrow. Because of the “this way,” I believe that the if-clause should make this one large paragraph. It feels odd, as in-pie and in-flavor as it is, to have damage prevention on a Gruul card at first. But I mean, I get it, it makes sense. It’s unfortunate that you have to control two planeswalkers for this to work. I imagine if WotC made this card it would have to be a rare because of the reference. Then again, you’re the one bringing Chandra and Nissa together and not them, so who am I to talk.

@nine-effing-hells — A New Road Beckons

There’s a lot of nice stuff happening with this card and a lot that can be improved upon. As a mythic, what is this doing that would necessarily warrant that rarity? Getting lands is powerful, but not so much that it would warrant that much warning. This isn’t the green mythic I’d like to see in my pool. As a rare, I’d be much more receptive. I do enjoy how synergistic things look here. Why does III have you put the cards down from your hand? How many lands are going to be in your hand at that time, and what is the purpose of that effect? Two wording things: firstly, you don’t need that reminder text on the III ability; secondly, because a card you own can’t be put into a graveyard that’s not yours, you can say “your graveyard” instead of “a.” I believe that’s proper.

@partytimesdeluxe — Begin Anew — [RUNNER UP]

I used to play a Brago deck, you know! And it was powerful. And it had a lot of infinite combos. And it was a pain in the butt. This card? This card would have made a LOT of infinite combos happen a lot easier. Now, it’s a runner-up because of the idea and because Boon turned me onto it. I’m realizing now that it should at the very least be a rare, and hoo boy there’s the chance IMO that this could break UW in commander. For a powerful card, you pushed the envelope, and that’s commendable. In limited, this card would be quite interesting.

@reaperfromtheabyss — Patron of New Zendikar

At eight mana, this card in limited says “you get a bomb and draw no lands for the rest of the game.” And that’s a little bit of an issue. It’s a 16/16 all upside almost at a minimum. It’s easily blinkable, and massive in every regard. In short, good gracious, this card is just a little too powerful in anything you’d want to play it in. The ideas are all sound, mind, but man, this card would be an auto-include. Still, nothing like a giant thing to put into perspective how crazy card effect combinations can be.

@shakeszx — New Ideas

Again, we highly recommend adding flavor text, to add depth to the world and space to the card. I’d like to know more about where this character is, where things are taking place, all that good stuff. As-is, the strength of this card feels undermined. Additionally, a three-mana instant that can draw you four cards and discard one for UUR? I don’t like calling “busted,” but that’s a bit of a busted effect. It’s wording in an interesting way, though, and I’m wondering what else can be used with doubling effects in this capacity.

@teaxch — New Tricks — [RUNNER UP]

Again, Boon turned me onto this card. It’s super flavorfully cute. At first I misread this like Demonic Pact, but nope! And I liked it a lot more. And I realized that this card should be at least four mana. Kenrith comes to mind, and goodness gracious this is an equally almost-mythic effect. It’s just a fun card with a bunch of goodness attached, but I would cost it a lot less aggressively to prevent it from taking over games.

@tmstage — On Wings of the New Dawn

Just for wording’s sake, I think there should be a second line instead of an “if” clause: “As long as you control an Angel, creatures you control have first strike.” I don’t know how constructed formats would take to this card, if it alone would make mono-white viable. It’s a major and massive effect! If it was +2/+1, it might be a little more balanced. I’m worried right now about it potentially warping the environments in which it’d be present. But the feeling that you were going for in flavor text and flavor in general is pretty awesome, so there’s that!

@top-hat-von-rattle-bones — New // Known

I’m a little confused as to what your naming intentions were. New to Known? It’s a concept but not a common phrase like “rags to riches” or the like. Conceptually, I think this card would play well, and there’s not much else to say there. The self-exile on Aftermath works well. Don’t forget to ctrl+R to get reminder text in MSE. For “New,” I believe it should be two separate lines like in Opt. For “Known,” “graveyard” needs to be uncapitalized and it needs to target a card in your graveyard, I believe. Should it say “another” since it can target itself? That’s a question for the ages.

VasNirada — Festival of the New Dawn

I was warming up to this card, but the fact that you have to leave the cards in exile for seven turns feels rough, aligned with the fact that you have to exile your hand upon entering. I’d rather be playing something like Outpost Siege which lets me have an option and doesn’t make me exile my hand, or Light up the Stage which gives me another turn to play it. I think the fact that I wanted to love it makes up for it somewhat, right? Let’s talk about wording. Here’s how I believe each line should be edited:

“When ~ enters the battlefield, exile all cards from your hand. // At the beginning of your upkeep, exile the top card of your library. You may play that card this turn. // At the beginning of your end step, if there are seven or more cards exiled with ~, sacrifice it and return all cards exiled with it to their owner’s hand.”

How do you guys like this method of commentary? Is it too long, too much? Any comments or critiques are welcome! New contest tomorrow, so be prepared, and thank you for all your entries.

[lownctes]

♚◞  𝐰𝐞𝐞𝐤𝐥𝐲  𝐯𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐨  𝐝𝐢𝐚𝐫𝐲  *&&.  𝐛𝐚𝐛𝐲𝐥𝐨𝐧  𝐫𝐡𝐞𝐞 :  𝟎𝟎𝟑.

                    baby's  presence  on  camera  ,  answering  the  questions  for  the  weekly  video  diary  ,  is  the  exact  opposite  of  the  stage  presence  he  is  known  for  back  home  .  covered  in  glitter  and  gold  ,  BABYLON  is  full  of  confidence  ,  soaked  in  apathy  ,  decorated  in  an  ❛  i  don’t  give  a  fuck  ❜  attitude  .  baby  ,  though  ?  well  ,  baby  is  actively  avoiding  eye  contact  with  the  lens  ,  nervously  biting  at  his  nails  until  his  fingers  bleed  ---  baby’s  camera  presence  is  drenched  in  anxiety  .

𝐭𝐫𝐢𝐠𝐠𝐞𝐫 𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬:  mentions  of  abusive  relationships  ,  anxiety  ,  &  blood  .

𝐡𝐨𝐧𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐚𝐛𝐥𝐞  𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬:  @miinkyuu ,  @rowantm  .

◞  𝐡𝐨𝐰  𝐝𝐨  𝐲𝐨𝐮  𝐟𝐞𝐞𝐥  𝐚𝐛𝐨𝐮𝐭  𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫  𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐩𝐥𝐞  ?  𝐰𝐡𝐲  𝐝𝐢𝐝  𝐲𝐨𝐮  𝐩𝐢𝐜𝐤  𝐭𝐡𝐞  𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐨𝐧  𝐲𝐨𝐮  𝐩𝐢𝐜𝐤𝐞𝐝  ?

                    ❝  ah  .  ❞  a  tattooed  hand  comes  up  to  touch  the  back  of  his  neck  ,  fingers  splaying  over  the  lotus  flower  that  is  tattooed  there  .  his  nose  scrunches  up  ,  doe - eyes  crinkling  slightly  in  a  fit  of  embarrassment  .  ❝  i  feel  good  .  fine  .  i  don’t  know  .  minkyu  is  a  literal  doll  .  the  sweetest  person  in  the  world  ,  absolutely  beautiful  ---  he  could  capture  anyone’s  heart  with  just  a  look  ,  you  know  ?  and  i  know  he  was  ---  is  a  fan  of  me  as  an  idol  .  a  fan  of  BABYLON  .  that’s  not  why  i  chose  him  ,  though  .  i  chose  him  because  he  just  . . .  felt  comfortable  .  to  be  around  ,  i  mean  .  i’d  been  kind  of  . . .  anxious  ?  since  the  start  of  this  whole  thing  ,  considering  the  fact  that  i  was  kind  of  ---  no  offense  to  the  show  ---  forced  to  come  here  ,  but  talking  to  him  that  first  night  at  the  ,  um  ,  the  monte  carlo  party  thing  ?  it  was  nice  .  i  didn’t  feel  . . .  pressured  at  all  .  now  that  i  know  he’s  a  fan  ,  of  course  ,  it’s  a  bit  . . .  a  bit  more  tricky  . . .  ❞  he  tilts  his  head  ,  golden  tips  of  hair  falling  in  front  of  his  eyes  .  ❝  i  don’t  want  to  disappoint  him  .  to  destroy  the  magic  behind  BABYLON  ,  you  know  ?  i’m  not  ---  exactly  sure  what  he’s  expecting  ,  though  ,  so  i’m  not  sure  if  i  can  live  up  to  it  .  i  don’t  know  .  i  just  don’t  want  to  disappoint  him  ,  hurt  him  .  sounds  a  bit  silly  now  that  i’m  saying  it  out  loud  ,  but  . . .  ❞  a  shrug  falls  from  his  shoulders  and  his  gaze  shifts  ,  again  ,  from  the  camera  ,  before  he  moves  on  altogether  .

◞  𝐢𝐬  𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞  𝐚𝐧𝐲𝐨𝐧𝐞  𝐞𝐥𝐬𝐞  𝐢𝐧  𝐭𝐡𝐞  𝐯𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐚  𝐲𝐨𝐮  𝐰𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝’𝐯𝐞  𝐩𝐢𝐜𝐤𝐞𝐝  𝐨𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐰𝐢𝐬𝐞  ?  (  𝐧𝐨𝐭  𝐚𝐬  𝐚  𝐟𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐝  )

                    ❝  no  .  ❞  the  answer  is  quick  ,  abrupt  .  for  the  first  time  since  he’s  started  recording  ,  he  speaks  with  the  confidence  that  he  is  so  infamous  for  .  then  ,  he  pauses  ,  gaze  flickering  from  the  back  of  his  own  tattooed  hands  to  the  camera’s  red  recording  light  .  his  abused  bottom  lip  is  drawn  between  his  teeth  and  he  chews  momentarily  in  a  fit  of  nervousness  .  ❝  i  don’t  know  .  i  don’t  think  so  .  ❞  he’s  silent  for  a  moment  ,  hands  coming  up  to  touch  the  top  of  his  ears  ---  a  nervous  habit  of  his  .  ❝  i  don’t  want  to  say  no  .  that  sounds  ---  so  committal  ,  even  though  it’s  really  not  in  regards  to  the  question  ,  but  it  still  ---  it’s  a  bit  early  for  . . .  ❞  he  shakes  his  head  ,  waving  his  hand  at  himself  to  quickly  dismiss  his  rambling  .  ❝  i  don’t  know  .  i  don’t  think  so  ,  ❞  he  repeats  ,  ❝  but  ---  what  do  i  know  ?  this  shit  isn’t  really  my  . . .  expertise  .  ❞  and  he  leaves  it  at  that  .

◞   𝐢𝐬  𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞  𝐚𝐧𝐲𝐨𝐧𝐞  𝐢𝐧  𝐭𝐡𝐞  𝐯𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐚  𝐲𝐨𝐮  𝐝𝐨𝐧’𝐭  𝐥𝐢𝐤𝐞  ?

                    ❝  rowan  .  ❞  it’s  flat  ,  quick  .  there’s  no  hesitation  to  it  and  no  nervousness  that  paints  pretty  features  to  follow  .  he’s  confident  ,  absolutely  certain  .  ❝  he  likes  to  make  assumptions  based  on  nothing  ,  likes  to  pick  fights  that  aren’t  there  simply  because  someone  isn’t  so  absolutely  enthralled  with  this  show  as  he  seems  to  be  .  forgive  me  for  being  wary  when  i  was  forced  to  come  here  in  the  first  place  .  not  all  of  us  chose  to  be  here  ,  and  just  because  i’m  not  overflowing  with  excitement  about  being  here  doesn’t  make  me  a  narcissist  any  more  than  he  is  .  ❞

◞  𝐰𝐡𝐚𝐭  𝐰𝐚𝐬  𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫  𝐥𝐚𝐬𝐭  𝐫𝐞𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐩  𝐥𝐢𝐤𝐞  ?

                    the  silence  that  washes  over  him  is  heavy  ,  like  a  weight  hanging  over  his  head  as  glitter - smudged  eyes  simply  blink  and  stare  into  absolute  nothingness  .  he’s  pulled  back  to  the  question  only  by  the  red  recording  light  blinking  incessantly  amidst  his  blurred  view  .  ❝  it  was  . . .  nothing  pretty  .  ❞  he  pauses  ,  isn’t  sure  where  to  take  it  from  here  .  ❝  he  always  held  my  wrist  ,  never  my  hand  .  pretty  purple  ---  flowers  bloomed  on  my  skin  like  i  was  a  fucking  garden  .  i  had  to  cut  my  hair  because  when  it  was  longer  ,  his  fist  could  tangle  in  it  so  easily  .  ❞  golden  ,  contact - coloured  eyes  flicker  to  the  lens  of  the  camera  .  ❝  and  i  would  still  be  the  one  to  comfort  him  at  the  end  of  the  day  as  he  cried  into  my  fucking  shoulder  ,  tears  diluting  my  blood  ,  and  had  the  audacity  to  ask  me  why  i  made  him  do  that  ,  why  i  made  him  ---  hurt  me  .  ❞  hands  ball  into  fists  and  a  shaky  sigh  spills  from  perfectly  glossed  lips  and  into  the  warm  air  .  ❝  long  story  short  ?  i  was  a  pretty  little  flowerbed  for  him  to  beat  rotten  seeds  into  .  i  let  him  grow  pretty  purple  flowers  all  over  my  skin  ,  watered  with  anger  and  jealousy  .  and  i  became  his  own  personal  garden  of  his  own  design  .  ❞  spoken  like  a  true  gothic  romantic  ,  a  true  poet  ,  a  songwriter  .  then  ,  of  course  ---  ❝  i  was  a  fucking  idiot  for  sticking  around  ,  and  i  hope  he  rots  in  hell  .  ❞

◞  𝐰𝐡𝐚𝐭’𝐬  𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫  𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐚𝐥  𝐝𝐚𝐭𝐞  ?

                    he’s  thankful  for  the  simplicity  of  this  question  ,  and  the  answer  slips  from  his  tongue  like  water  slips  from  any  flat  surface  ---  with  ease  and  without  resistance  .  ❝  something  simple  .  i’ve  been  on  too  many  fancy  dates  ,  not  all  of  them  have  ended  in  disaster  ,  but  quite  a  few  of  them  have  .  ❞  he  lets  himself  laugh  ,  it’s  breathy  and  barely  audible  ,  but  bunny  teeth  are  on  display  briefly  and  his  nose  scrunches  slightly  .  ❝  i  think  i’d  like  to  stay  in  .  watch  their  favourite  movie  ,  listen  to  music  ,  maybe  i’d  try  to  play  their  favourite  song  on  guitar  or  piano  .  if  they  have  tattoos  ,  i’d  colour  them  in  with  markers  if  they’d  let  me  .  i’d  ask  them  to  play  with  my  hair  ,  tell  them  to  read  to  me  ,  maybe  i’d  ask  their  opinion  on  a  song  or  two  .  just  . . .  ❞  he  shrugs  ,  hand  coming  up  to  nervously  scratch  behind  his  ear  .  ❝  something  simple  ,  comfortable  .  something  that  won’t  trigger  the  anxiety  and  make  me  feel  like  i  have  to  be  golden  and  glimmering  and  perfect  .  there’s  beauty  in  simplicity  .  poems  for  the  small  things  .  ❞

[earningadvice-blog]

Learn Forex Trading

Forex Trading Tips Forex trading is a tricky thing. This is why we want to give you some Forex trading tips to avoid losses and maximize your profit. Knowing your current state as a trader is important. Analyze your needs. You must first know and recognize yourself before trading. It means that you should know how much risk you can afford and also how much you can invest. Your risk tolerance and capital allocation to Forex trading should not be too high or too low. Read More: Online Forex Trading Signals Planning your goals is of paramount importance, never deviate from your plan. Planning is the most fundamental thing towards achieving success in any field. Define what you consider will be success and what will constitute as failure. Also know how much time and effort you can devote and whether you aim towards financial independence or simply towards generating extra income. Most people miss out on choosing the right broker and end up losing money. An unreliable broker invalidates all the gains acquired through hard work, so choose judiciously. Account type and leverage ratio should be in accordance with your needs and expectations. For a complete beginner, it is necessary to undergo a period of study and practice through the use of a demo account. Make your choices in the most conservative way possible.

Begin with small deposits and gradually increase the size of your account primarily through gains. Focus on a single currency pair initially. A good idea is to restrict trading activity to a currency pair which you understand and sticking to the most liquid and widely traded pairs is a good practice. Do what you understand best and do not trade on the basis of rumors. It is best to work only in the field you are confident about and don't contribute to a losing state. Read More: Online Forex Trading Control your emotions because self-control plays an important role in trading as well as analyzing your success and failure regularly. Trading should be automated as much as possible, do not follow anything blindly. Simplicity is a very effective tool as simpler strategies yield better results. Going against the markets is not advisable, unless you have enough patience and financial resilience to stick to a long term plan. Forex is all about risk analysis and probability and no single method can generate profits all the time. At the end of the day, patience is the key to success, so always stick to your plan. Being patient is important but being inactive will lead to failures, don’t give up because failures can occur in every field. Follow Forex trading tips and success will surely be yours. Another important aspect to consider is that the Forex Buy and Sell rates are influenced by a variety of different factors. These may include currency rate differentials, global economic trends, political events, weather and even extreme situations such as war or terrorism. These are often referred to as fundamentals. Forex Trading Margins The margin is the amount of collateral required by Forex traders to maintain their open positions on the Forex market. Unlike stocks and commodities, there are no margin calls in Forex. If an account falls below the required margin requirements, then all open positions are automatically closed. For example, if an fx trader buys one mini lot of the EUR/USD pair for 1.50 at 1:100 leverage, then they will need $150 of their account in margin to maintain that open position. Forex Currencies Quotation System In the Forex market, currencies are quoted in pairs, for example, the GBP/USD or USD/JPY. The first currency in the pair is called the “base currency” and the second is called the “counter currency”. The basis for buying and selling is the “base currency”. For example, if a trader wants to buy EUR/USD, then he will buy Euros and sell Dollars. This means that he expects the Euro to gain against the Dollar. Every transaction on the fx market is double-sided, and performed with a buy/sell order. FX Rollover

If a trader holds an fx trade in the spot Forex market overnight, this position is rolled over. In most cases, you are likely to either pay or receive a rollover fee. The rollover fee is determined by the differentiation between the interest rates which are priced into the 2 currencies that are being traded in the currency pair. The trade transaction is settled after 2 days. If positions are held overnight, then the Forex broker closes Forex trades at the conclusion of the trading day, (5 PM EST) and new trades are simultaneously opened. For example, the USD/JPY pair is traded at 1.40, the JPY interest rate is 3.5% and the USD interest rate is 1.5%. The pip differentiation is 0.60 pips. As a result, if you were to be long on JPY and short on USD, your trade would be found at 0.60 pips higher than previously. The example was calculated out by completing the following calculation: (base currency interest ÷ counter currency interest) × (day/days) × (traded rate). Leverage on the Forex Market Leverage allows Forex traders to control more currency in a trade than they have deposited in their trading account. This is where the real power of Forex trading lies. Therefore, trading with the leverage system wisely can work in your favor, and bring you big profits. With 1:100 leverage, the trader needs 1 unit of currency to control 100 units in the Forex market. Thus, it would only take 100 units to control 1 mini lot (10K) in the fx market or 1000 units to control 1 standard lot (100K). Forex Trading Hours The fx market is based on "spot transactions". The reason for this is that trading takes place 24 hours a day, 5 days a week. Trading never ceases in the Forex market, apart for weekends and holidays. This includes Christmas and New Year’s Eve, when the Forex market closes early. Read the full article

[annoyedbritishperson]

Alien Anatomy

I’ve kinda been thinking about alien anatomy and here’s some vague conclusions I can come up with.

Insect: so there’s the idea of insect type aliens and if they’re anything like earth insects then their size would be limited by the amount of oxygen (or whatever they breathe) is around. So larger bug aliens could only exist with high breathable concentrations so their planets atmosphere must be a minimum of 30% of their preferred breathing gas. Also, exoskeletons can only be thick to a certain extent before they can’t breathe so larger sized insect aliens would have a thin (compared to smaller insects) exoskeleton; but that doesn’t mean that they can’t have the biological equivalent of steel making up their exoskeleton, they’d still need support if they’re on the larger size, flight could also get a little tricky if they’re on the larger size (basically they might have to go into different methods of it but idk, I’m not a professor on insect flight)

Reptile: so like insects their size would also be limited, but not by air/atmosphere composition but by temperature. The closer to the equator (on earth) the hotter the temperature, and, if you haven’t noticed, the bigger the reptile species. Only the largest reptiles live in the hottest places, you don’t exactly see a saltwater crocodile in Norway. To put it simply, it’s because of their heat regulation; they’re ectothermic. If they live/ evolved on a world with similar temperatures to ours then largest they could be would be a large monitor lizard. And don’t ask “what about dinosaurs? They were lizards”; taxonomically yes but their living descendants (birds) are exothermic, suggesting some sort of transition along the evolutionary line.

Mammalian: size can obviously stay the same maybe bigger/smaller than what we know (for mammals it’s mostly gravity and pregnancy limiting our size) whether they evolved on a planet with more/less gravitational pull. Mammal variations such as marsupials might get around the pregnancy issue since their young are born around the size of a jellybean and monotremes just lay eggs (btw the pregnancy issue is basically that the bigger the mammal the longer the pregnancy and the longer the pregnancy the more time you’re vulnerable to predators) though if you’re a pack hunter, pregnancy might be less of an issue since you are the predator and those in your pack could bring you food so that you wouldn’t be in any danger by hunting (the prey could choose to attack as a form of defense).

Birds: now you can bring in your dinosaur anatomy since they’re technically one in the same (though velociraptors were likely not unnaturally intelligent). This isn’t a rule based off of fact but if you base the bird/dinosaur design off of Jurassic park dinos then you’re out (THE THERAPODS (carnivorous bipeds: velociraptor etc) SHOULD’VE HAD FEATHERS! T. rex might’ve been the exception as they could’ve been big enough to regulate their temperature without insulation but I digress) they would also be able to get around mammals size issues as they don’t have to worry about since they typically lay eggs and have a lighter structure meaning larger size (have you ever held a bird? They’re strangely light, as if they’re constantly inhaling helium instead of oxygen)

Fish: all I know of their physiological limits is that it’s a little similar to the insects limits as oxygen concentrations (or any gas really) is almost always in higher concentrations in the atmosphere than it is diffused in the oceans. As long as they have some sort of propulsion and streamlining to a degree there would be less rules with this one ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Amphibians: they would have to be heavily reliant on the liquid they evolved from and their skin would be weak to infection (at least ones they haven’t evolved against) they might be able to metamorphose like bugs through their life too.

Mollusks: for those who don’t know mollusks include things like octopuses (yes its octopuses not octopi) and snails. Due to the lack of set bones you could have as many appendages as you please, ones around the mouth are likely as it would help with eating. Early in their evolution basically all mollusks had shells so it wouldn’t be unheard of for your alien to have one too though they could also have lost them (like squid or octopuses) or chosen to adapt them into a bone like structure (like cuttlefish) though that would prevent their awesome ability to squeeze into anywhere. Their skin could also be used to communicate or camouflage as they’re notoriously good at changing their colour and even shape to fit their surroundings.

Plant based life: by this I basically mean a moving plant. If they regularly photosynthesise then their need lots of leaves or their equivalent, they’d likely have a bark like exoskeleton to keep them from flopping about as they move, if they don’t, they’d likely stay small; like bowtruckles from fantastic beasts. If active then they would get rid of rooting into the ground as a method of nutrient extraction for something else, they could have a mouthpiece to transfer water directly to a xylem and have some sort of digestive system equivalent for minerals etc.

Planet: I need to put this in because it sorta affects all creatures. If they evolved on a planet with less gravity then they could potentially become space faring sooner as they wouldn’t have as much of a problem reaching escape velocity. There’s also more potential for flight and bigger “mammals” on these planets. Their orbiting star can affect them too; if they’re around a red dwarf then they’d have more time to develop but their planet could be tidally locked meaning there could be limited habitability on their planet, either too hot on one side and too cold on the other but there’s a small line between the two where liquids could exist and life could evolve, it would also bring in the fun concept of them being like “WOAH, NIGHT AND DAY? WHAT IS THIS?!” Since all the time it would look like twilight/dawn on their planet. If they’re orbiting a supergiant star then they’d have to evolve quickly since supergiant stars don’t live that long before going supernova; this could suggest that they’d have super short lifespans, a year (for us) might be super old to them and they could think were immortal since we live so long (even by our standards) their planet would also have to be much further away to be in the habitable zone so their star may be dimmer from their perspective and, as a result might not evolve eyes. Life on a planet orbiting a supergiant star could also survive with less of a magnetic field (they’d still need one though, but life could still exist with a weak one) so life on their planet could have less geographic activity, therefore less volcanoes and less earthquakes. Other mainstream stars like our own might not differ much when it comes to development and lifespans, it just matters how long they’ve been there/ how long through the stars life it is.

Blood: the colour of an animals blood depends on its needs. Since all animals we know of use oxygen I’m basing the colour on what we know of oxygen breathing life. Hemocyanin (blue blood) would be better used in cold climates so if your creature evolved on an icy planet it’s blood would likely be blue. It gets its blue colour from copper instead of iron. Remember, evolution works as survival of the good enough so if the planet was extremely cold in life’s early emergence then they’ll likely gain this colour and stick with it regardless of whether their planet is cold later in its life. Haemoglobin (red blood) is overall more efficient so if the planet isn’t that cold then red would be more likely to occur. Hemerythin (violet blood) is a simpler structure compared to the first two; going along with the rule of ‘survival of the good enough’ a lot of creatures could possibly have violet blood due to its simplicity. Biliverdin (green blood) is a pigment, it doesn’t carry oxygen and occurs when haemoglobin breaks down but makes animal more resistant to disease meaning that it would be more likely to occur if they evolved in a disease infested environment, likely as a result of lack of predators since disease would replace them in culling their population.

Limbs and organs: limbs such as arms and legs have no real set boundaries though it’s a good idea to make sure that they keep the same amount of limbs or less of them based on the creature they and other creatures on their planet have evolved from (e.g. we have four limbs in total because the first terrestrial vertebrates had four, animals like snakes etc have lost theirs over time but none have gained any limbs because you’d need to have severe evolutionary stress to specifically gain limbs or die: otherwise it’s too much effort for extra limbs). Organs you can go crazy with, you can have as many eyes as you want and in insect like aliens you could even forgo the need of a heart (or heart equivalent) due to their different respiratory system (you could get rid of lungs then too :P) you can have as many sensory organs as you want though you should take into account their planetary surroundings to make sure each organ is necessary (e.g. little to no constant light could mean no eyes/eyes that detect different wavelengths than us)

This has been an unnaturally long 1:30 am shitpost but I felt like I had to say something. Thanks for reading, laters.