#its a bit of wishful thinking ive never really let go of. for someone to reach towards me

[mgsdelta]

being poor is literally so miserable

[asahicore]

fast forward - pjs

pairing. jay x fem!reader

synopsis. After yet another romantic disappointment in the form of one Jake Sim, you go to the well you’ve always believed to grant wishes and ask for your one and true love to appear. That night, you go to sleep in your bed but wake up in a strange house. When you head downstairs, you find a man washing the dishes and telling you your favorite meal is waiting on the table for you. You’ve spent hours glaring at the back of that head, you could recognize it anywhere—it belongs to none other than Park Jongseong, your high school sworn enemy... and future husband, or so it seems.

genre+warnings. high school au, the type of e2l where they never really hated each other to begin with, they act like they're academic rivals even though they're not particularly academically gifted, jay has a thing about german the language, sunoo and kazuha besties, heeseung is a loser, jake and sunghoon are assholes sorry, ive liz is german, 02z get into a white-boy locker-room fight, attempts at banter etc, they're a little bit silly

word count. 26.6k

a/n. had the idea for this listening to fast forward by somi LAST SUMMER... and only wrote it this summer and only posting it now <3 i hope u guys enjoy reading this as much as i enjoyed writing it !!!!! jay is an absolute cutie here pls love him as much as i do.... as always let me know what u think and remember to vote for @zreamy president in the upcoming elections, shes the only one i trust to beta-read and hence to run a country <3 no it doesnt matter that shes scottish put this woman in the white house

There is only one thorn on the otherwise immaculate rose that is your life.

Every morning, you wake up feeling refreshed from eight hours of restful sleep. You go downstairs to the kitchen, a boiling cup of milky Earl Grey tea already waiting for you, and eat breakfast with your brother Jinwoo and father. Your mom dashes in, placing a kiss on your and Jinwoo’s foreheads, and on your dad’s lips, saying she’s late for work but will see you in the evening. “Have fun at school,” she bids every morning without fail. Your dad teaches Korean Literature at your school, so the three of you drive there together. He watches amusedly as you and Jinwoo bicker light-heartedly on the way there—even in the pits of his puberty, you and your brother get along like two peas in a pod. He still tells you about everything he learns at school and fills you in on the drama in his class, up-to-date with everything even though he pretends not to be interested.

You’re always one of the first to arrive at school, so you scroll through your feed or finish up some homework as you wait for your classmates to file in. Your friends circle your table and you chat about the last episode of the show you’ve been watching until the bell rings and they leave you for their assigned seat.

Class starts with your teacher handing out the math tests you took last week. “Jay and Y/N, great job, keep it up,” he says as he walks past you and the boy in front of you, and hands you your paper. Relief floods your body as you take in the bright red 82 in the top right-hand corner—not the best of the class, but enough for you to be satisfied. 

Good friends, good grades—nothing extraordinary, but it’s a life you dare say any high school senior would want.

There’s just that one thing. The thorn in your side that won’t stop poking.

You glare at it as it whips around in its seat and takes a peek at the grade on your paper before you get to snatch it away from view. It only gives you three seconds to rejoice over your grade. 

“Aw, Y/N. Good effort! Maybe you’ll do better next time!” Jongseong coos, holding up his test for you to see and glare even harder at. 85. Not that big of a difference, but it makes you want to punch the faux sympathetic pout off of his face. 

You’re about to spit something just as petty back at him, but someone whispers your name, and you turn your head in their direction. Beside you, Jake is smiling at you as he asks what grade you got. Your attention is swiftly taken off of Jongseong, whom you don’t even notice dramatically rolling his eyes, huffing in annoyance, and turning around. 

“82,” you whisper back, holding up your paper for Jake to see. His friendly, absurdly handsome smile makes your ears burn. “You?”

The corners of his lips fall down into a sad pout—the kind that makes your heart melt rather than gets on your nerves like someone else. “68,” he says. Leans in over the gap between your tables. Your heart jumps uncontrollably around your rib cage. “Do you wanna go over it together during the break? I think I need some help.”

One-on-one time with Jake Sim? You don’t need to be asked twice. You nod silently, almost mesmerized by Jake as his grin widens. He leans back in his chair. “Perfect. I’ll see you in the library, then.”

“Library, yeah,” you echo dumbly, but thankfully, your teacher tells you to all quiet down and starts the lesson. 

You’re antsy all throughout the rest of your morning classes and lunch break, so nervous that you barely manage to finish your yogurt. Of course, your friends, Sunoo and Kazuha, have a field day with this, and even you can’t help but laugh along as they jump between reassuring you that it’ll be fine, slapping your shoulders with excitement and making fun of your uncharacteristic quietness.

Jake arrives at the library five minutes after you, looking around the room before he finds you at the big round table in the back of the library. Your brain is too riddled with anxiety for you to make more small talk than “Hey,” “Hey,” “How was your lunch?” “Good, yours?” “Good.” And so you just jump straight into it.

You’ve only had a couple minutes of quiet explanation on your part and heavy nodding on Jake’s when Jay appears at the entrance of the library. He spots you and Jake immediately, and without any hesitation whatsoever heads towards you and sits down at your table, right across from the two of you.

“Hey, Jay,” Jake greets in a friendly manner, but Jay only responds with a nod of his head.

“Oh, don’t mind me,” he says when he notices you glaring. “I won’t bother you.”

As if he could be anything other than a bother, you think, but courteously keep to yourself. The childish rivalry you and Jongseong have got going on has no business spoiling a rare hour of alone time you get with Jake. As you go over the exercises he had the most trouble with on the test with you, your eyes often drift over to Jongseong as if to check on him—you’re cautious like he’s a spider in the corner of the room that might spring on you at any moment.

And indeed, the moment your gaze leaves him for more than a minute as you explain an intricate theorem to Jake, he’s out of sight, and panic shoots through you. Where the hell has he suddenly gone off to? you wonder, but not for long.

“There’s a much easier way to do this, really,” says a voice from behind you, and of course, it’s none other than Jongseong himself, quite literally butting his way into your tutoring session. Right between you and Jake, he bends over and rests his elbows on the table, taking Jake’s pencil from him and describing the theorem in a way that isn’t that much simpler. Your eyes shoot bullets into the side of his face while he, unbothered, explains this and that to Jake, who glances at you a couple of times but otherwise does not seem so perturbed by the sudden change of tutor. Either Jongseong doesn’t notice your glare or doesn’t care, because he doesn’t budge.

Just when they’re done with the exercise and you think you’ll get Jake to yourself again, another voice appears from behind, a much higher, girlier one. You notice the hand on Jake’s shoulder first, until slowly, your eyes drift to the face—you recognize Yunjin, head of the cheerleading squad, and she’s smiling at you, a smile that at once tries to cover and betrays her surprise at seeing you and Jake together. She doesn’t acknowledge you any more than that, gaze going back to “Jakey,” asking him if he wants to head to class together. You check the time—five minutes before the first bell rings. What do they need so much time getting to class for? It’s not like any room in this school is more than a three-minute walk away.

But Jake doesn’t even look back at you, just says “Sure!” with far too much enthusiasm for your taste as he packs his stuff. “Thanks, you two,” he says, looking at Jay first, then at you. You think his eyes linger on you for a second, but just like that, he’s gone, him and Yunjin walking side-by-side.

You watch them leave—they look good together, the cheerleading captain and the soccer team’s star. The white Vans she’s wearing have a bunch of red love hearts on them that look drawn on, and you think, Of course, Jake is the type to date someone cute, someone fun, someone who would draw on their shoes. Not someone like you, whose idea of a good Friday night is lighting up a scented candle and reading your favorite novel for the nth time. When they’ve left the library, you slump in your seat, crumpling the sheet of paper you had drawn a bunch of graphs and formulae on to make things clearer for Jake. Jay awkwardly clears his throat and finally returns to his seat, looking at you with his lips pressed in a tight line.

“Y/N?” he asks tentatively, and the sound is too much to bear, so you pack your things and head to your next class early, too. Your mind is racing with a million thoughts a minute—who is that girl to Jake, how come you’ve never seen them together before, how come he was so eager to leave with her, what was that smile she gave you about? In the fifty-five minutes of your biology class, which you uncharacteristically don’t pay any attention to, you’ve convinced yourself that they are crazy in love and that none of Jake’s actions or words towards you had ever meant anything, that you’d liked him so much you’d dreamt up the possibility of his liking you back, too.

Your next lesson starts—the smile Jake gives you as he walks into History is so bright, it dissipates any clouds hanging over your head. You do believe in male-female friendships, but despite yourself, you can’t help but think that anyone in a relationship wouldn’t give someone else such a perfect, warm smile. It just wouldn’t be right. And so, you reason with yourself that simply walking to a class together didn’t mean two people were a couple.

For an hour, you stare at the back of Jake’s head, and although you do eventually come to the more sensible conclusion that a smile may just be a smile, you also think it's unlikely that he and Yunjin would be a thing. If they were, why would they hide it? Jake is so nice, you wouldn’t be surprised if he’d exaggerated his enthusiasm upon seeing her. You’re sure you still have your chances. He even says see you tomorrow when class is over and slips out of the room to go to soccer practice. 

You feel like you’re walking on cloud 9 as you head from History to your next class—but when you remember that the next class is German, your mood drops significantly. Because the universe has it out for you, you and Jay are two of just ten students in your year taking German as your second foreign language option, everyone else having gone for either French, Japanese or Spanish. Your reasoning for it is that your dad has had an obsession with Germany since his year abroad in Bavaria, and twelve-year-old you had wanted to make him happy. Eighteen-year-old you regrets it slightly, but at least now your dad is ecstatic every time you tell him in German that the dinner he made was really tasty. Why Jongseong decided to take it beats you—he’s probably just insane.

But because you don’t really know anyone else in the class, and because it’s your last period of the day, you have no friends to run off with once the lesson is over, and he gets to bother you all the way from the classroom door to the staff parking lot. 

You’ve barely finished bidding Auf Wiedersehen to your teacher and Jongseong is already harassing you. “So, I didn’t take you as the type to be into guys like Jake Sim.” He says Jake’s name with such disdain, like he thinks he’s so much better than him, or like he hates him. It confuses you just as much as it annoys you; Jongseong didn’t seem to have a problem with Jake earlier at the library.

“And that’s your business, because…?”

You don’t look at Jongseong, who’s quickened his pace to keep up with yours, but you can feel the smirk on his face. It’s insufferable. “Oh, it’s none of my business. I’m just surprised, is all. You guys are so… I don’t know, different.”

You scoff. “If you think I’m not good enough for someone like Jake, I’d rather you tell me straight up, Jongseong. Or actually,” you say, looking up at him with a dry smile. “Keep it to yourself and leave me alone.”

He looks offended by your words, and it only adds to your already immense annoyance—he’s the one who just insulted you, so why is he looking at you with those stupid furrowed eyebrows?

“I never said that.”

“You didn’t need to.”

“No, Y/N.” He grabs your wrist and makes you face him, your stomach flipping in surprise that you quickly cover up. When he releases you, you cross your arms over your chest and wait for him to speak, keeping your eyes trained on a spot behind him. “I don’t think he’s too good for you.” 

This makes you look at him. You have to admit, your curiosity is piqued. Not like Jongseong to say anything even vaguely in your favor. “He’s just…” He sighs, searches for the right word. “Well, he’s just a bit of a dick, isn’t he?”

You freeze for a second. You’re so taken aback, your scoff comes out more as a laugh—Park Jongseong, king supreme of all dicks at this school, just called Jake Sim a dick?

“I’m sorry?”

He sighs again, as though you’re the unreasonable one. “He’s so… smug. A wannabe class clown and thinks he’s the shit because he’s on the soccer team. Have you seen the way he swaggers around school?”

You look at him with fake sympathy. “Jong, are you jealous?”

“Pfft. No way. I just think it’s a shame you keep going after these dudes who are not even worth your time, or whatever, so yeah…” he says, voice trailing off and looking down at his feet as he speaks. Hands in pockets and blank expression on his face, you can tell he’s trying to look cool, but the way he’s avoiding your gaze is a dead give-away. Even his ears have turned red. Jongseong is having one of those shy moments he has when he’s trying to be nice to you. Clearly, a simple act of kindness towards you is so hard for him that it radically changes the way he behaves. 

Like when you were fifteen and you just couldn’t get this stupid art project right, so he stayed behind for three hours after school with you, helping you draw and paint and cut and glue. 

Like when you were sixteen and your grandma just passed away, making you miss a week of school, and without a word, barely looking at you, he gave you a stack of handwritten notes of all the lessons you missed. To this day, you’re not sure how he did it—you weren’t in the same class that year.

Like when you were seventeen and Park Sunghoon rejected you in the middle of a crowded hallway. You’d run off to the girls’ bathroom to cry it out, but Jongseong quickly found you and spent the entire period cursing Sunghoon out instead of being in English, like you were both meant to be. He was uncharacteristically nice to you for a few days after that, never starting an argument for no reason or interrupting you when you spoke. When you snapped at him, telling him it only made you feel worse that he treated you differently, he smiled and told you how stupid you looked when you cried. It made you laugh more than it should’ve.

Like now, when he suddenly decides that Jake Sim is also a wrong choice for you. “Him and Sunghoon are good friends, you know that?” he says. “Birds of a feather, and all…”

So you know that Jongseong is not all bad. He has his redeeming qualities. He can even be nice sometimes, when he so wishes. But those moments are so few and far between that when he returns to his usual insufferable self, you wonder if you’d dreamt it all up. Which is why you can’t quite take him seriously right now. You roll your eyes and resume walking towards the parking lot, but of course, he continues to follow you. “Why do you even care who I go after?”

“I don’t-”

“You clearly do, otherwise you wouldn’t be bothering me like this.”

“Well, if all your attention is taken up by that douche, who am I going to go up against?”

“That’s what you’re worried about? That I stop arguing with you?” you say, disbelief clear in your voice.

“I’m offended, Y/N,” he starts, his sarcastic tone making you roll your eyes again. “That our little rivalry matters so little to you.”

“We’re not even the top students of our class, for God’s sake, we’re not fighting over anything.”

“I’ve actually got the best grades in German, thanks very much.”

“Whatever. I wouldn’t call it a rivalry so much as a mutual dislike of each other, because one of us woke up one day and decided to start going against everything the other said.”

“At least you’re self-aware.”

The exit to the parking lot now appears to you like the gates of heaven. You don’t even bother replying to him, thinking that he’ll just leave you alone now that you’re here. But as you step outside, he places himself in front of you and blocks your path, arms splayed out, eyes wide like he’s just seen a ghost.

“What are you-”

“Have you done the German homework for tomorrow?”

The sudden change of subject gives you whiplash. “What? No, Miss Schumacher assigned it just now-”

“Well, given your tendency for getting the word order all wrong, I can already tell you you’re not gonna have fun with it-”

You pinch the nose of your bridge, trying to calm yourself down before you lose what’s remaining of your mind. “Jongseong, were you actually dropped on the head as a baby? Go away. My dad’s gonna be here any second.” You try to walk around him, but he steps in front of you again. You peer up at him, undisguised annoyance in your eyes. Where are your dad and brother when you need them?

“I’m just saying, you’ll probably need help with it-”

“I won’t. And if I do, I’ll just use Google. Now get out of my way,” you say, and manage to duck under one of his arms.

Then you see it.

Well, actually, it takes you a second to understand what it is you’re seeing. At first, you think it’s one of those horny couples thinking they’re being really discreet by going to the staff parking lot to make out, when in reality they could be caught by any one at any time. They’re just far enough that when you do a double take, you realize that you do know the back of that head; that fluffy mop of brown hair. You sit behind it every History period, next to it every Maths and English period.

The girl is up against the wall, and you can’t really see her, what with her and Jake’s tongues being down each other’s throat and his body blocking her from your view, his hands on her hips, her arms around his shoulders. All the works. She’s wearing a cheerleader uniform, so she could be any of twenty girls—but you’re pretty sure only one of them wears a pair of white Vans with red love hearts on them.

Your heart sinks to your stomach.

You’re frozen in place when a whistle rings in the distance, and Jake and Yunjin separate, giggling to each other as they jog to wherever the sound came from. The sports field, probably. It’s Monday; the cheerleaders and the soccer team share the field for their practice. 

Jake spots you and Jongseong staring at them. He waves quickly, awkwardly at you, still smiling even when surprise coats his features. Yunjin tugs on his hand and just like that, they’re gone. 

“Y/N-” 

Jay’s voice fades in the background. You want to get away from this situation as quickly as possible—it’s embarrassing enough seeing the guy you like and thought you had a chance with kissing a girl that is arguably much more on his level than you are, but having Jongseong of all people not only witness it, but try to protect you from it, God knows why, makes it impossibly mortifying. You speed-walk to your dad’s car, huffing as you plop in your seat and slamming the door behind you. Your brother is already sitting in the passenger seat, and you don’t even argue with him about it. When you only give single-word replies to his questions, he shrugs and returns to playing Clash of Clans on his phone. 

The moment you get home, you fish a five cent coin from your purse, change into mud boots and grab your dog’s leash. Desperate times call for desperate measures.

After half-an-hour of trudging through leaves and soft ground, muddy from many a rainy November night, you and Pablo, your massive, fluffy airhead of a German Shepherd, find yourselves at the well in the middle of the forest. Ever since you were little, you have attributed magic powers to the well—not that anyone told you any sort of myth about it, but you remember reading a story about a magic well and decided that your well would be magical, too. You’ve never wanted to abuse its powers, so you’ve used your wishes conscientiously: things like getting a certain present at Christmas (when you were nine and the most important thing ever was getting the Monster High doll you wanted) or not stuttering during your presentation in class (when you really didn’t want to embarrass yourself in front of Park Sunghoon and his cool friends). Every wish you’ve made has come true. Whenever a faint voice of reason tells you that it’s because you always ask for very realistic things, you squash it and continue to believe in the well.

Because today, you’re not asking for something realistic. 

Today, you’re asking the well to show you the way to love.

You’ve grown up watching The Notebook and Pride & Prejudice. Your parents are high school sweethearts who are still, twenty-five years later, happily married. You devour romance novels and binge-watch Asian dramas, the more unrealistic and romantic, the better. You are convinced that soulmates exist, that love always finds a way, that it is there for anyone to see. That it can take form in a childhood friend, an archnemesis, a total stranger.  

But for some reason, it hasn’t shown itself to you yet, no matter how valiantly you’ve looked. 

You’re absolutely sick and tired of it. It is Jake kissing another girl, it’s Sunghoon leading you on for months and then rejecting you in front of everyone, it’s your ex-boyfriend-who-shall-not-be-named, your first love and first heartbreak, dumping you after a year and getting with the girl he had told you not to worry about a week later. At a party a few months later, he’d said, word for word, “At least I didn’t cheat on you.”

Coin lodged between your hands, you interlace your fingers and press your palms closely together, eyes screwed shut in desperation. “Hey,” you start simply, because you and the well are good friends. “It’s been a while since I’ve asked for anything, so I hope you can indulge me… This is gonna sound so cliché, but I’m really tired of getting fucked over by boys — excuse my French — and I just wanna meet the person who’s right for me, you know? Mom’s always reminding me that I’m only eighteen, and that I’ve got plenty of time to meet someone, but I just feel like if I don’t find someone now, I never will. And if I get fucked over again — sorry — I’ll just lose hope and write off men for the rest of my life. So help a girl out, will you? I’ll leave it to you how you wanna go about it, but… just show me that there’s someone out there. Please.”

When you open your eyes, you need a few seconds to adjust to the darkness. You toss the coin in the well. It doesn’t make a sound as it hits the bottom, as if it has been absorbed within the old brick walls. You know better than to question it—the well works in mysterious ways.

You’re quiet that entire evening, making up an excuse of a tiring day at school when your parents ask. Really, you’re just thinking about your wish, whether it’ll work, what might happen. You half-ass your homework—Jay was right, the German exercises throw you into a bout of despair, so you quickly close your textbook and bury yourself in your sheets, falling asleep hours earlier than you usually would.

--

For some reason, the first thing you notice when you wake up is that it’s still dark outside. It must be the middle of the night, you think. It takes you a few seconds to realize that you’re in a completely strange room.

Instead of your floral-patterned sheets, you find yourself covered by delicate silk sheets that your parents would never agree to buy you, no matter how adamantly you argued for the benefits of silk for your skin. If skincare experts online had convinced you of one thing, it was that silk would do wonders for your obstinate acne. You slide out of bed and find a pair of slippers on the floor, as if waiting for you. Even the pajamas you’re wearing are fancier, more grown up than the ones you have at home, a set composed of a pinstriped button-up and shorts. You look around, for some reason more surprised and curious than panicked. You could’ve been kidnapped, for all you know, but all you care about right now is this room. Rather than the pink and white walls that have surrounded you since childhood, covered with pictures of you and your friends, postcards of artwork bought at museums, and posters of your favorite movies, the walls here are beige and mostly bare, except for a painting of Japanese cherry blossoms above the bed and a family portrait on the opposite wall, above a wooden chest of drawers. 

The family portrait. A woman, a man, and what you can only assume are their children. They look like twins—two girls. Can’t be older than three years old. Out of the four faces, you recognize two of them. You recognize them far too well. One of them is yours, of course. You look slightly older, by a decade, maybe? You’re glad to know that you won’t fall off after twenty-five, like much of social media has led you to believe. 

The other face you recognize immediately, too, but it takes you a few seconds to truly believe it.

It belongs to none other than Park Jongseong.

A dry chuckle falls from your throat, as if someone has just made a very insulting joke at your expense and you have to pretend you find it funny. The well has a very odd sense of humor, you think. It’s probably just a prank, a magic-induced nightmare before the real thing. Except this already feels real, disorientingly so. The fabric on your skin, the picture, the room. It all feels too real, more tangible than any dream you’ve ever had.

You take a step closer towards the picture, as if looking at it harder will make Jongseong’s face fade into that of another man, the real man that will become your husband and father of your children. But alas, his features remain the same, frozen in time by the photographer’s camera. He, too, looks older—and not only does he not fall off after twenty-five, he becomes all the more handsome for it.

Is this how you find out that Jongseong was handsome all along? You stare at it until the familiar face becomes practically unrecognizable, like repeating a word so much it stops feeling like one. The straight nose, the almond-shaped eyes that seem to have softened overtime, whereas his jaw has remained as sharp as ever. Have his eyebrows always framed his face so perfectly? Has that dimple always been there? 

You look around again, and the bright numbers on the bedside alarm clock catches your attention. They read 9:57 p.m., but it’s the date that makes your stomach sink—today is still the 18th of November, but ten years later. You stare at the clock, at the unfamiliar number, a date so far into the future you can’t wrap your head around it. You could barely envision life after high school.

Downstairs, the sudden clang of pots and the sound of a tap running manage to rip your gaze away from the alarm clock. An overwhelming curiosity tells you to follow the noise. This is all a dream, so there are no consequences if you explore a bit more, right? 

You’ve never been in this house before, and you have no idea where your feet are taking you until you find yourself in the kitchen. It’s the only lit room in the house, and you’re creepily standing in the dark under a wide archway that connects the kitchen to what looks like the dining room. A man has his back to you, washing dishes and putting them out to dry on a rack next to the sink. He’s wearing a white cotton sweater, one that you feel you recognise without ever having seen before, and a brown apron is tied around his neck and waist. 

The first thing you think to yourself is Oh, his haircut hasn’t changed. In almost every class you share with him, Jongseong has made it a point to sit either next to you or right in front of you, so you’ve spent a lot of time glaring at the back of his head. You wouldn’t be surprised if he started developing two eye-shaped bald spots there. His hair is still short and spiky at the back and on the sides, longer on the top. When he lets it grow too long, it sometimes covers his eyes, and he obnoxiously keeps having to push it back like a heartthrob in an 80s movie. 

Something like a memory flashes through your mind, blurry like those images you aren’t sure came from a dream or from real life. Your surroundings are unclear, but Jay’s face is nestled against your neck, your hand in his hair. You can feel the softness of the close shave against your palm as clearly as if you were touching it right now. You ask him why he’s always kept it that way, and he replies that it’s simple to maintain. Then in classic Jay fashion, he adds, “And it makes me look awesome.”

Another memory, a clearer one, this time—this definitely happened. It’s halfway through sophomore year, a random Tuesday, and Jay walks in, holding his head high and looking smugly around himself. The bastard got a new haircut. Long gone, his messy, unorganized flop of black hair that looked like it didn’t know what it was doing; hello, sleek undercut. It accentuates all of his best features, which is terrible news for you. You had never even thought of Jongseong as someone having “best” features, but now they’re being thrown in your face. His nose. His jawline. His smile.

It ruins your day, and a few after that. You can’t quite put it into words when your friends ask what’s wrong at lunch—or rather, you don’t wanna face the humiliation of uttering something along the lines of “Park Jongseong looks good with his new haircut, and it’s bothering me.”

Here, it’s a familiar sight in an unfamiliar environment, the back of his head. Without really thinking, you take a step forward. Jongseong starts at the sound of your slippers against the marble floor tiles, but his face relaxes into a smile when he sees you.

“Oh, it’s just you, honey. I thought you were sleeping.”

Just you. As if the two of you being in the same kitchen is normal. You guess it must be, to this version of Jongseong. To him, you’re not the annoying girl he strives to best in every class—you’re honey. 

“I was,” you say, walking around the kitchen island to join him by the sink. Something in you needs to look at him, really look at him, maybe pinch yourself or pinch him to be sure you’re not going crazy. Maybe you caught wafts of some ancient algae that lives in the well and made you hallucinate?

“I left a plate out for you in case you woke up. Made your favorite. The girls weren’t so happy, seeing as it’s the third time this month,” he says with the special kind of smile reserved for parents talking about their children. The girls. A mention so casual, so obvious, your heart hurts. “But I think I got it really right this time,” he continues. “Honestly, it might even be better than the original.”

He goes back to washing the dishes and you watch the sponge in his hands as it scrubs away tomato sauce, the soap as it runs from the plates into the sink. A knot forms in your stomach, something like a deep sadness that overwhelms you all of a sudden, and tears form in your eyes, threatening to fall any second.

When you haven’t budged in almost a minute, Jongseong starts to say, in an intimate, almost worried voice, “Aren’t you going to eat, honey?” but when he sees your wet eyes, the tremble in your lower lip, he shuts the water immediately and dries his hands. With his thumbs, he wipes away the tears that have started falling from your eyes. “What’s wrong?” he whispers.

You can’t reconcile the man in front of you with the image you have of the boy that torments you in every class you share. You can’t reconcile the genuine concern in his voice with the snarky tone you’re met with every day. And yet, they respond to the same name, their features are identical, if not for the years that separate them, the stress of adulthood on one and the carefreeness of youth on the other. 

Your body reacts automatically to the soft touch—never in a million years would you let the Jongseong you know come near you like this, but here, nothing feels more natural than his hands on your face, your shoulders, your hair, as though they’re just as much his as they are yours. You realize the emotion in your stomach is not sadness—tears fall, but you’re not sad. You’ve never felt as home as you do now, and if one thing romantic novels have taught you, is that this must be love.

You look up at the man in front of you, eyebrows furrowed as you search his face for confirmation or some sort of an answer. There’s a tremble in your voice when you speak next. “I just… I think I love you, Jongseong.”

He chuckles. “Well, we established that a while ago, didn’t we? What with getting married and having kids. But I’m glad you still feel that way.”

The mention of marriage and children doesn’t faze you nearly as much as it should. You’ve only got one thing on your mind. “Do you love me too?”

You expect him to laugh—not out of cruelty, but because the answer is so obvious, it almost doesn’t deserve to be answered seriously. Like when your brother asks if he can have one more of your cookies and you tell him you’ll cut his hand off. Sometimes you think it’s easier to be sarcastic than be unabashedly nice to someone. Especially with Jongseong, whom you don’t expect kindness or patience from, you wait for him to stay something like, “No, that’s why I’ve stayed with you these eight years.” 

So when instead, he says, “More than anything on this Earth,” voice low and vulnerable, tears flow even harder. 

“Sorry, it’s probably just my period,” you say through sobs, although you have no idea where in her menstrual cycle this version of you is.

Jongseong chuckles again, pressing a kiss to your forehead. “You do get emotional around this time.” And you cry more, because you can’t believe someone other than your mother knows you so well that they know what your period symptoms are.

Rubbing soothing circles against your back and whispering soft words in your ear, he holds you for as long as you need to calm down. When you finally do, he tells you to go sit on the couch, that he’ll finish up the dishes then heat and bring your food for you. You think you’ve got your emotions under control, but the moment you bite the pasta, cooked to perfection with the most succulent tomato sauce you’ve ever had, sweet with a little kick of spice and a generous amount of parmesan cheese, tears start to fall again as if you had an endless stock of water behind your eyes.

“This is so good,” you mumble.

Jongseong smiles, his gaze full of affection miraculously directed at you as he tucks away strands of your hair so they don’t get in your eyes or in your food. “I’m glad, baby.”

You react to the nickname viscerally, words tumbling out of your mouth before you can even understand them. “You haven’t called me that in ages.” You widen your eyes at yourself, wondering how this was something you even knew. But when you look at Jongseong, all he does is smile more.

“You’re right, I haven’t. I guess I was reminded of college. You cried all the time back then. As much as it pained me, I can’t say I wasn’t happy to be the one you always came to for comfort.”

You haven’t been through college yet, so you should be unable to tell whether this truly happened or not—and yet, the memories of the body you’re in all confirm what Jongseong just said. But it feels impossible—going to university with him, letting yourself be vulnerable enough with him to not only cry in front of him but let him comfort you. Whatever could have happened in the years between the present you know and your time at university for things to change so drastically?

But before you can make sense of any of it, Jongseong speaks again. “Why? Do you like it when I call you baby?”

Your stomach flips. Heat rises to your face at his words, the tone with which he said them, the things he was alluding to—you know that having children means you’d popped your cherry at some point, that you’d had sex with Jongseong specifically, but to be confronted with the fact was something else. 

“Maybe,” you mumble, and proceed to stuff your mouth with pasta so that you can’t incriminate yourself further.

He puts on a recent movie, something you should arguably be paying attention to, since you’re literally getting a glimpse into the future of cinema—you could steal the idea, go back to your present and sell it for an outrageous price.

But Jongseong’s presence next to you makes it impossible to concentrate on anything but him. The warmth emanating from him, the scent of his perfume envelop you, give you a sense of just how real this all is—despite how comfortable being with him like this feels, you’re still not convinced you’re not just in an unsettlingly vivid dream. You take one of his hands in yours, examining each finger, turning his hand over, tracing the lines of his palm, smoothing your thumb over his nails—it’s an undeniably human hand. Warm against yours, slightly rough. He’s started using hand cream, you think, all these winters when his dry hands would crack because of the cold coming up to your mind, teenage Jongseong’s hard refusal to wear any sort of cream to protect himself. Memories bob up to the surface: fixing his cracked hands up with a plaster, your tear falling on his hand, the both of you in your school uniforms in what looks like the school infirmary; awkwardly gifting him some hand cream the Christmas of that year, not looking at him as you hand him the small package. Saying, “It’s a waste of plasters for something that could be fixed so easily.” Him treating you to warm, spicy tteokbokki because he felt bad for not having gotten you anything, even though this was the first time either of you had ever given the other one a present.

As your fingers trail up from his hand to his forearm, his shoulder, his jawline, more memories flood your mind. Clumsy first kisses; squabbles of the kind you were already used to; lazy mornings in bed; hours spent in your kitchen or his, before you shared one, cooking dinner together; the way you felt when he proposed, a feeling so intense remembering it is almost unbearable now. Your eyes and fingers examine his face in detail—even though you’ve seen him almost every day since the start of high school, this feels like the first time you really perceive him. The delicate bow of his lips, the strong nose, the softness in his eyes when he looks at you. Your heart beats uncontrollably as you hold each other’s gazes, but you feel inexplicably relaxed at the same time, two nearly opposing realities fighting each other inside of you—one in which you and Jongseong regarding each other with such affection is unthinkable, the other in which it is daily routine.

“Movie not to your taste?” he asks, voice gentle, breaking you out of your stupor.

“Hm?”

He nods towards the TV screen. “I see you’re not paying much attention.”

“No. I have… things on my mind.”

He raises an eyebrow, a smirk slowly growing on his lips. “Yeah?” You think your heart might actually flatline when he brings you in closer to his chest, and, face buried in your hair, says, “You know, I’ve been thinking that the twins might want a younger sibling to play with soon enough…”

You’re not sure whether he actually wants a third child or if this is weird dirty talk that apparently turns parents on—all you know is that this is something future you will deal with, not high school senior you. 

You whip up your head at him, eyes wide in panic that he mirrors immediately. “Or—or not. Later. Later?” You nod fervently, and the worry dissipates from his handsome features. “Okay, later,” he whispers, kissing the top of your head before returning his attention to the movie. 

A couple hours later, you’re laying in bed in the dark together—you can tell Jongseong is falling asleep by the regularity of his breathing and his stillness, but you’re wide awake. You don’t know how you’ve managed to spend all this time with him, acting like the wife he knows and loves, without imploding. But suddenly, the idea of waking up in your childhood bed, surrounded by your pink-and-white walls, going downstairs to be greeted by your brother and parents, sends a wave of panic through you. You haven’t felt this comfortable in a long time—Jongseong’s arm draped over your waist, the fact that you could reach over and feel his skin against your palm if you wanted. You don’t want to go back to a time where you hate him. In fact, you don’t know if you could hate him after this.

“Jongseong?” you say softly, the syllables unfamiliar on your tongue, even though the name rings brusquely through your head for the best part of every day.

It takes a few seconds, but he reacts eventually. “Hm? Did you just call me Jongseong?” he murmurs sleepily, as if you’d just called him Robert or Christopher and not the name his own parents gave him.

“Yeah.”

He chuckles. “Now that’s something you haven’t called me in ages. Makes me feel like you’re mad at me,” he says, turning over and burying his face in the crook of your neck. His hair tickles your skin, and one of your hands comes up reflexively to feel the softness of his close shave.

“...Jong?” you try.

“That’s a step up, but not quite what I want,” he mumbles.

You’re silent for a few moments. “Honey,” you say tentatively, voice a mere whisper.

“That’s better.” You can hear the smile in his voice.

“Will you be here in the morning?”

“Mh-hm. It’s Saturday tomorrow.”

“No,” you say, feeling out of breath. “I mean, will you be here?”

You’re aware you’re not making much sense—and yet, Jongseong needs no further explanation. “Of course, baby,” he starts, voice soothing. “I’ll be here tomorrow, and the day after that, and every day afterwards. ‘Til death do us part, remember?”

You let out a shaky breath. “Okay.”

“I love you, Y/N.”

“I love you, too,” you find yourself saying, and, more importantly, meaning. It’s the last thing either of you says before falling asleep.

--

Tears are streaming down your face when you wake up the next day. When you open your eyes, pink and white obnoxiously stare back at you. The clock reads 7:12, just three minutes before your alarm goes off, and unfortunately for high school you, the night hasn’t given in to Saturday morning—it’s Tuesday, and you have to go to school and act as if you hadn’t just had the weirdest, most realistic dream of your life. You don’t even get a weekend to shake this weird feeling in your stomach off, you’re going to have to face Park Jongseong full force. At least, this will become your friends’ favorite bit for the foreseeable future.

They’re already sitting in the classroom when you get there, animatedly chatting to each other. You plop down in your seat in front of them, and when they see the sullen look on your face, ask you what’s wrong.

“Did you wake up during the night to play Hay Day again?” Kazuha asks, eyebrows knotted with genuine worry.

“I’m not that person anymore,” you reply. “No, I just had a really weird dream. More like a nightmare, really. It feels like I didn’t get any sleep.”

“What was it about?” Sunoo asks.

Your eyes dart back-and-forth between the two of them as you brace yourself for their reactions. Not wanting anyone else to overhear, you lean in conspiratorially. They mirror you. “I was married to Park Jongseong,” you whisper. As expected, they burst into laughter immediately, and you lean back in your seat, crossing your arms in annoyance. “It’s not funny.”

“It’s very funny,” Kazuha retorts. “It’s ironic, even, considering how much you hate the guy.”

“Exactly!”

“But I guess even you know how ridiculous it is that you hate him, if your brain is able to imagine yourself being married to him,” Sunoo adds, shrugging. “It’s a good reminder that you’re literally the only person in this school with a vendetta against him.”

Kazuha nods energetically. “He picked up a pen for me, once. He’s a nice guy.”

You look around the room in panic. “Keep it down, will you?” you hush, despite the fact that no one is paying any attention to the three of you. You sigh, resolving yourself to telling them the entire truth. “But guys, I’m scared. I think this might be a sign.”

Their eyebrows perk up. “A sign that your hatred of him has actually been disguising a crush this entire time?” Sunoo asks, feigning innocence.

“No—what? Where did you get that idea?”

“Nowhere. Go on.”

“Whatever. Come here,” you say, gesturing for them to huddle again. “It’s the well.”

“Oh my God, Y/N, you’ve actually lost it,” Kazuha says, fascinated by your stupidity.

“I’m not going to tolerate any well slander, this is serious. I just wanted it to reassure me that there was someone out there for me. And then I had that stupid dream.”

Kazuha and Sunoo exchange a look like they’re parents trying to announce to their daughter that she’s adopted. “Y/N…” Sunoo starts.

“This is crazy. Like, love philters and writing Park Sunghoon’s name a hundred times are one thing, this is…”

“Crazy,” Sunoo said, nodding along. “This is crazy. There’s no other word for it. Your eighteen years of boyfriendlessness have finally caught up to you.”

“You guys don’t get it. What about that time I asked it to give me a good grade on our Literature exam and I literally came first out of our class? Or when I told it I missed Jung Hae-in and his military discharge announcement came the next day?” you say, aware that the look in your eyes is only confirming their suspicions—but you need someone to believe you, or at the very least understand you.

“One, you’re a good student. Two, that was pure coincidence,” Sunoo explains.

“But girl, if you want to marry Jay, that’s fine. You’ve got our blessing,” Kazuha says, shrugging.

“Yeah. He picked up her pen, once,” Sunoo adds.

“And you know, you guys clearly have some sort of chemistry.”

You scoff. “If you think that him refuting my every word and finding every opportunity to make fun of me, then yeah, I guess you could say we have chemistry.”

“You guys have banter,” Kazuha says as if it’s obvious.

“Oh, please. Banter is cute. I want to kill him every time he opens his mouth.”

Your friends both roll their eyes. “While I understand that most men are better off staying quiet—no offense, Sunoo—”

“None taken.”

“You have to admit Jay is not nearly as insufferable as you make him out to be,” Kazuha says.

“Are you kidding me? He’s always acting like a child. Rubbing it in my face when he gets a better grade, trying to start arguments for no reason, sucking up to teachers, stealing my erasers, for God’s sake, you’d think he’s twelve. I know that I’m not on the majority's side, but I seriously cannot understand how other people tolerate him at all.”

Sunoo sighs. “Because he’s nice to everyone. He never hesitates to help people, he’s even funny, sometimes, and—well, look at him.” He nods his head towards the door, and when you turn around, Jongseong is indeed walking in the classroom. “He’s not a bad-looking boy.”

“Gosh, Sunoo, maybe you should marry him,” Kazuha says, but since you laid your eyes on Jongseong, you’ve stopped listening.

You feel weird. You look at him, and you feel weird. It’s the same feeling you had during your sleep last night, a feeling that paralyzes you from head to toe, that starts in your stomach and spreads to your entire body, weighs you down in your chair. 

“Hey, guys,” he greets simply, and his voice wraps itself around your heart and squeezes. You can’t do anything but watch him as he takes his seat next to you, plopping his bag on the table and taking his notebook out. He looks at you, watches you watching him, then swivels around in his chair.

“What’s wrong with her?” he asks your friends.

“She had a dream that she m—”

“Do not finish that sentence, Zuha, if you want to live to see another day.”

“Yes, ma’am,” she replies, a satisfied little smile on her lips.

Despite yourself, you’re still staring at Jongseong, trying to figure out what the hell these emotions are that are raging up a storm inside of you. Instead of ignoring you, he turns to face you, resting his elbow on the table and his chin in his palm as he stares back at you, smirking. “What’s up, Y/N? Has it finally dawned on you how devastatingly handsome I am?” he asks, and you frown, because he’s not so far off from the truth.

“Please, kids, it’s 9 a.m., don’t flirt right in front of us,” Sunoo says, despair in his voice.

“She’s the one who started it,” Jongseong replies, still looking at you, his smirk growing.

For some reason, this startles you out of your trance, and you look away from him like you’ve been burned, preoccupying yourself instead with your notes for this class. “In your dreams, Jongseong,” you mumble.

“More like in yours,” Kazuha says, her and Sunoo giggling.

“Zuha!” you exclaim. Jongseong looks at you with raised eyebrows, and with his infuriating capacity to put two and two together, you’re scared he’s figured out what she meant, but you’re literally saved by your teacher who walks in at that moment and starts the class. 

The second the bell rings to signify the end of the class, you hurriedly pack your things and mutter an excuse about needing the bathroom, trying to get as far away as possible from the boy whose all-too familiar scent had messed with your thoughts all class, whose every brush of his arm against yours had made your heart race uncontrollably.

--

It hadn’t just been a dream. It couldn’t have been.

Just like there was no doubt the 28-year-old Jongseong from last night had once been the annoying boy you knew, the 18-year-old Jongseong was sure to one day become the husband of your dreams. A devoted partner and father, his presence comforting, his good looks indeed devastating, unwavering.

There was no mistake to be made. The well had worked its magic.

Whether you liked it or not, you would end up marrying Park Jongseong. You, of all people; him, of all people.

Was there already something of your future husband in the boy that snickered when you mixed up your genders in German class, or would he one day spring out of nowhere? Apparently, you’d be around to find out.

But for now, how to act around him? It felt unfair that you were privy to this knowledge of your shared future while he was ignorant of it. Blissfully, perhaps. You couldn’t imagine that he would rejoice much at this news.

Your mind is somewhere else the entire day. At lunch, your other friends try to get the thing that’s obviously bothering you out of you, but Kazuha and Sunoo are there to tell them not to bother. You’d needed to tell someone about it, but you don’t want the entire school to know about your marital premonitions. The two knuckleheads you call your best friends are already doing a good enough job teasing you about it—”There’s your husband, Y/N,” when Jongseong walks past; “So have you thought of baby names? Kayleigh and Mackayleigh, perhaps?” unsolicited, during Physics. You turn around to check on the culprit — because yes, Jongseong is the culprit here, you, a mere a victim — and when he notices you staring, nods at you as if to say, What’s your problem?, trying to look threatening in his white lab coat that’s three sizes too big and protective goggles.

It doesn’t help that Jongseong has a way of hovering around you. Even in classes in which your teachers assigned the seats for you, he’s never far from your seat. The two of you sit next to each other in German, your last class every Monday, Tuesday and Thursday. But today, the seat next to you is empty—what would’ve been a cause for celebration just yesterday is now a source of worry. You’d seen him just two hours ago in your previous class together, so where the hell was he now? He’s lucky that your teacher is an old German lady who always spends the first ten minutes of the lesson rambling about something in dialectal German no one understands but nods along to anyway. When he walks into the room, five minutes late, she just says, “Hallo, Jay,” and continues with her story. It’s about her first school trip to Berlin when she was fifteen and the country was still divided. You think.

He winks at you when he takes his seat and you roll your eyes. You pretend to listen to your teacher for thirty seconds, then hit him gently with your elbow. “Where were you?” you ask without looking at him.

He doesn’t answer immediately, probably surprised you initiated a non-hostile conversation with him for once. “I was just hanging out with my friends, something you clearly wouldn’t understand.”

And your friends wondered why you hated him?

“Still having imaginary friends at eighteen is really concerning, Jongseong. You should see someone about it.”

When you glance at him, he’s already looking right at you, smiling. You’ve never felt so conscious of your side profile. 

“Why? Were you worried?” he whispers, kicking your foot with his.

You look at him, horrified—where the hell had he gotten that idea? How was he so spot-on? You scoff, trying to diffuse the tension inside yourself. “No.”

He kicks your foot again. “I was five minutes late and you started to worry?”

“No. Stop.”

“I didn’t know you cared about me so much, Y/N.”

This time, you give him a harsh look, one that lets him know you really mean your words—“Stop it.” Finally, he relents, getting the assigned homework out now that the teacher has actually started the lesson. Your face softens—he looks hurt. Guilt tugs at your heartstrings.

Despite what you might say, you like the way things are with Jongseong. If some people always need to be crushing on someone, you always need to have someone you perceive as an enemy—it was Na Jaemin in elementary school, because he’d once made fun of your incapability to climb the monkey bars; Shin Ryujin, in middle school, for kissing your crush during a game of spin-the-bottle at your own birthday party; Park Jongseong, since freshman year, for simply existing. Your reasons for disliking him are trivial, you’ll admit. You weren’t sure you could even place a finger on what had first triggered your disdain towards him—one too many awful jokes, one too many times raising his hand in class and rattling off a perfect answer, then looking around himself proudly, one too many roars of laughter heard throughout the entire cafeteria. The fact that no one else seemed to be bothered by him only added to your aggravation. He just got on your nerves, and it seemed that you openly showing your dislike of him — him, who was so used to being loved by everyone around him, pampered by his family, praised by his teachers, popular among his peers — was enough to make him dislike you, too. So, after a few failed attempts at trying to be your friend, because Jongseong was unable to not be friends with everyone he met, he didn’t simply give up. 

If he couldn’t be your friend, then fine, he’d be your enemy.

At least, that’s how it appears to you, still now. It’s never gone dangerously far, but if there’s an opening to tease you or get on your nerves, he’ll do it. Not passing you the ball during soccer, or conversely, only aiming for you during dodgeball, not sharing his textbook with you when you forgot it unless you beg, loudly clearing his throat when you speak in class. And, lately, pouring salt on your wounds in the form of reminding you how impossible you and Jake Sim are. His motto must be if there’s a will, there’s a way. And when it comes to making your life hell, his will is infinite.

Everything is upside-down now. The question of how your relationship can possibly go from this to that obsesses you. It feels like you’re more capable of sharing a funeral, dying at each others’ hands, than a wedding. 

“Jong, your textbook.”

He squints at you. “Funny how I’m Jongseong when you hate me, Jong when you need a textbook,” he says, sliding his book closer to himself.

“It’s not my fault your name is a mouthful,” you retort, trying to pull it back to the middle of the table, but he’s quicker than you.

“Then maybe you should call me Jay, like everyone else on Earth.”

“Where’s the fun in that? Now give it here. Please?” you ask, mustering your best smile. Any other teacher would’ve scolded the two of you by now, but Ms. Schumacher is peacefully going on about the importance of word order and punctuation in the German sentence, oblivious to her two students bickering in the back row. Jongseong usually never sits at the back of the classroom—only here.

He gives in, smiling back, but there’s something behind it, something that tells you nothing good is brewing in his brain. “Only because you’re so pretty.”

Normally, this kind of remark would’ve warranted a slap on the arm or an array of insults, but if today is anything, it is not normal. You look at him like you’ve been stung, visions of your not-dream coming to you in flashes like you’re the titular character on That’s So Raven—the affection in your husband’s eyes, the kindness in his words, the sincerity in his smile. Again, you’re left to wonder if this man is already taking root inside of the boy next to you, if Jongseong’s future capacity to love you presently exists in his heart.

Does your future capacity to love him already exist in your heart?

You watch as his smirk softens into a grin, your flusteredness and lack of a response clearly amusing him, then as he circles the exercises Ms. Schumacher is assigning for the lesson. She seems to have forgotten there was homework due—Jongseong will be sure to remind her of it quickly.

He kicks your foot again, tells you to focus. His ears have turned red.

You wonder if those capacities haven’t existed from the start.

--

As much as you love a good friends-to-lovers story, characters hiding their feelings out of fear of ruining the friendship have never failed to frustrate you — just tell her, you dummy, it’s obvious she likes you too — and yet, you’ve never related more than now.

Whatever it is that you and Jongseong have, you don’t want to lose it. It adds entertainment to your otherwise average life. 

“Good thing she didn’t pick on you while we went over the homework, ‘cause you clearly put zero effort in. And I wouldn’t have helped you, even if you’d asked, by the way.”

You hum absent-mindedly as you put your notebook and pencil holder in your bag. Are you sure that these are even your feelings in the first place? Just because the well put a silly idea in your head doesn’t mean you have to believe it like it’s scripture. If what you saw is real, then it will happen in its own time. Things don’t have to start changing right this instant.

“Gosh, Y/N, what’s up with you today? You’re so boring,” Jongseong continues, following you out of the classroom. 

“Just tired,” you reply. Wouldn’t it be unnatural if you were to radically alter the way you behave with Jongseong? Love should come about organically. Sure, his presence has always provoked some kind of reaction within you, but that’s usually been annoyance. Whether he’s stealing the fifth eraser you’ve bought that month or running on the soccer field, beads of sweat running down his temples, hair sticking out everywhere, victoriously smiling when his team scores—you’re annoyed. Whether he’s sticking up his hand higher than yours or going to the school dance with Ahn Yujin—you’re annoyed. When you learned that she’d been his neighbor since infancy and that she had a boyfriend, who went to another school and only trusted Jongseong to take her to the dance, you were still annoyed—this time at yourself for feeling even the tiniest bit relieved that nothing was going on between them.

And this — his quick steps trying to keep up with yours, his dumb story about yogurt coming out of Heeseung’s nose today at lunch when they were laughing too hard — yes, you’re still annoyed. But you realize you’re not annoyed at him.

You’re annoyed at how he makes you feel.

“Y/N?” he says, but you’re too deep in your thoughts, only vaguely registering the sound until he repeats it, louder this time, and grabs your hand, making you abruptly stop walking. “Are you sure everything’s okay?” he asks with genuine concern in his voice. “You’re barely listening to me. I mean, it’s not like you usually really do, but you’d have told me to get lost, like, five minutes ago now…”

He chuckles self-deprecatingly, but despite his words, you’re focusing on something else yet again. His hand on yours, his loose hold on your fingers. Your brain is yelling at you—hold his hand, hug him. It’s like there are still traces of the 28-year-old version of you you visited yesterday, urging you to behave like her and not 18-year-old you. 

So, the well had let you know that you need not look much further to find what you wanted. Here it is, in the form of a boy you have convinced yourself you hated, and hated you, and yet, he’s holding your hand, asking you if you’re okay, worry knotting his eyebrows together. 

Hold his hand. Hug him. Instead, you retract your hand, let it fall limply by your side. Jongseong’s eyebrows shoot up.

He’s so close, the supposed love of your life. You don’t know how to reach out to him.

For now, you smile. “Get lost, Jong.”

--

you guys how the hell do i act around jongseong now that i know our fates are romantically intertwined

kazuha i think not treating him like the number one public enemy would be a good start

you so what… be nice to him? how do i do that

sunoo oh my god y/n when she has to treat another person like a regular human being

you he’s not just another person!

sunoo okayyyyy i see you little miss repressed feelings

you i hate u

kazuha just don’t roll your eyes at everything he says anymore and don’t start arguments for no reason

you he’s the one who starts them… but okay i’ll try

--

“Let’s pair up for the reading analysis today. You can stay with your deskmate or pick a partner, I don’t mind as long as you get the work done. I’m talking about you, Chaewon and Yuri. This is English class, not a gossip session.”

The second your English teacher has finished speaking, Jongseong swivels in his chair. “Let’s partner up, Y/N?”

“What about me?” Jake asks, eyes darting back-and-forth between the two of you.

“You can partner up with Minju,” Jongseong replies, pointing to the girl he’s usually seated next to. “Look. You guys will be great together. Say hi, Minju.” Minju waves shyly at Jake, braces on display as she smiles ecstatically. It’s not everyday that she gets to talk to one of the most popular guys in school.

Jake reluctantly switches seats with him, glancing back at you and Jongseong who just grins at him, fake friendliness plastered on his lips, until he turns around again. Your new partner’s smile softens and reaches his eyes when he looks at you. “Hi.”

You have to look away—you feel your face burn under his gaze. “Hi, Jong.”

He tilts his head. “What? Do you hate me so much that you can’t even look at me now?” he asks, and you can’t tell whether he’s joking or genuine.

You frown. “I don’t hate you.”

“Oh? That’s a recent development.”

“I guess,” you mumble after a few seconds. Is it really? You suddenly can’t remember if you ever really hated him, or if you’d exaggerated your own feelings.

His smile widens. “Well, good. I mean, you were going to have to realize at some point that I really am funny, smart, endearing, handsome-”

“Back to hating.”

“Let’s start the assignment.”

You agree on reading the passage first, but you realize halfway through that not a single word has been absorbed. “Hey. Why did you switch seats with him?” you ask, whispering so as not to be overheard.

Jongseong shrugs. “I thought you wouldn’t want to work with him, considering…”

“Right.” You’re silent again, but only for a bit. “What’s it to you?” you mumble. 

He scoffs. “Sorry for trying to be considerate.”

“That’s not—”

“Let’s just focus on this.”

His sudden coldness vexes you. You know you should let it go — don’t start arguments for no reason, and all that — and you know it’s childish, but you can’t help yourself. You have certain reflexes you’re not particularly proud of when it comes to one Park Jongseong. “Let’s just focus on this,” you repeat, mocking his grumbling tone of voice and shaking your head like a puppet.

He glares at you. “Can you not act like a toddler for once?”

“Can you not be a dick for once?” you bite back.

“Y/N, Jongseong, I’m sure you’re having a fascinating conversation on the use of chiaroscuro in the text?” your teacher asks, a look of warning on his face.

“Yes, sir,” you reply, embarrassed.

“Yes, so much chiaroscuro,” Jongseong mumbles, resting his cheek on his knuckles. When the teacher has turned away, he kicks your foot. “See, you’re getting us in trouble.”

“Do you even know what chiaroscuro is?” 

He hesitates. “That’s not the problem here. You are.”

“Well, maybe if you didn’t-”

“Y/N, Jay, final warning.”

“Sorry,” you both say at the same time. With one last glare at each other, you finally get to work.

So your plan to start getting along with Jongseong isn’t in full-force yet. On the drive back home that afternoon, you reassure yourself that these things take time. When the moment is right, the two of you will grow closer.

--

But increasingly, it feels as though the right moment will never come.

Two months have passed since your visit to the well, and things between you and Jongseong have not changed. Not really, at least.

You still bicker like cat and dog — it goes without saying that you’re the cute puppy and he’s the heartless cat — and he gets as much on your nerves as ever, especially now that you know that the potential to be nice to you, to love you, even, exists somewhere inside him. Somewhere deeply hidden perhaps, but somewhere nonetheless. Of course, after telling yourself that what must come will come of its own accord, you haven’t done much to change the dynamic between the two of you. But if you used to see your retaliations against him as necessary to your survival, you now find some sort of enjoyment in them—some might call it Stockholm Syndrome, you perceive it as a step in the right direction. You’ve followed one of Kazuha’s pieces of advice: you don’t roll your eyes at him anymore, simply because you don’t feel the need to. You argue with him with a smile on your face, his attempts at insulting or annoying you have started to make you laugh.

He doesn’t say anything but seems to gladly welcome this change. If you get a lower grade than him on a test, he doesn’t try to stick the knife in further, but genuinely offers to go over it with you later. If you give in after two hours of tearing your hair out over a German exercise and text him for help, he doesn’t make fun of you. If he says something particularly arrogant or makes a really bad joke, all you need to do is give him a look, and he’ll mumble an apology. 

Could it have been like this the entire time? you wonder, watching him across the schoolyard as he and Heeseung hunt for Pokémon. Just a couple months ago, you would’ve scrunched your nose at the sight, making fun of him for his childish interests. Now, you notice the way he laughs, audible all the way to where you sit with Kazuha and Sunoo, the way he jumps excitedly and points at things only he and his friend see, and all you feel is endearment.

“Look at you, look at that,” Sunoo says as he hits you on the forehead with his metal spoon, startling you. He tuts. “You’ve got love dripping from your eyes, sweetie.”

“Sunoo, that’s disgusting.”

“Love? I know.”

“No, your spoon. Your saliva’s all over that,” you say, and all he does is eat another mouthful of his yogurt while staring wide-eyed right at you. When you look back at Jongseong, he’s high-fiving Heeseung. You wonder which creature he’s caught now. In the library yesterday, he spent thirty minutes showing you every single one he had captured so far instead of revising for the upcoming Physics test.

“Yeah, we know you’d like someone else’s saliva more,” Kazuha chimes in, and the two of them snort.

“It’s not like that,” you say, biting into an apple slice.

“Oh yeah? What’s it like, then?” Kazuha asks.

“We’re… becoming friends,” you say, but you’re not sure who you’re trying to convince more.

“Y/N, I’ve had to watch the two of you giggling to yourselves in the library one too many times to believe you’re friends. I know your homework’s not that funny,” Sunoo argues.

“Friends can giggle with each other!” you exclaim, but your friends are inflexible.

“I would tell you to get yourself together if you giggled at me like that,” he says.

“I saw you twirl your hair the other day,” Kazuha adds.

“I never—When?!”

She shrugs. “The other day.”

You deflate, crushed under your friends’ accusations. “I wouldn’t twirl my hair…” you mumble. You decide to busy yourself with your apple slices, not even bothering to find out what Kazuha and Sunoo start snickering and elbowing each other about.

“Hey,” a familiar voice greets, making you look up. Jongseong smiles at you and steals an apple slice from your tupperware as he sits down next to you, Heeseung across from him.

“Hi, Jong,” you say, sitting up straighter. You offer a piece of fruit to Heeseung but he declines, saying he doesn’t like apples without peanut butter.

In front of you, your friends exchange a look, and you’re immediately terrified of what they’ll do next. Leaning in, they place their elbows on the table, and Kazuha starts them off. “Jay, you and Y/N know each other pretty well, right?”

Jongseong glances at you, eyes wide. “Uh, sure.”

“Have you ever noticed her, say, twirling her hair?” Sunoo asks, tilting his head innocently at the poor boy by your side.

You’ve never seen him look so confused. “Um, yeah, she does that when she’s concentrating on something, sometimes…”

They lean back. “Huh,” Kazuha says, studying Jongseong’s face.

“Interesting. Very interesting,” Sunoo says, slowly nodding.

You glare at your friends. “See, that’s different,” you tell them. “I was concentrating on something, not doing… whatever you guys had in mind.”

Jongseong looks at you. “What did they have in mind?”

You answer before either of them can dig your grave any deeper. “Nothing. It’s nothing. We were just having a stupid conversation.” You muster your most convincing smile, and the subject is finally dropped.

No one says anything for a few moments, until Heeseung decides to speak up: “You should’ve seen Jay earlier, Y/N. He caught this super rare version of Pikachu earlier, it was awesome.”

“Dude…” Jongseong murmurs.

“What?” Heeseung asks, his enthusiasm quickly dissolving into confusion. Jongseong just shakes his head. Thankfully for all of you, the bell rings then, and you head to class. The three of them walk in front of you while you and Jongseong fall back a step.

“Why were you guys sitting outside? It’s freezing today,” he asks you. Walking side-by-side like this, you can’t help but notice the inches he has over you, the broadness of his shoulders in comparison to yours.

“They turned the heat way too high in the cafeteria, so we came outside for some fresh air,” you explain. He’s right, the air is chilly today—it’s a few days into December, and the temperatures have been accordingly low.

“Aren’t you cold?”

Your heart skips a beat. One of the side effects of not being at each other’s throat anymore was that you got more and more often to be privy to this side of Jongseong—attentive, considerate, kind. What you once thought were his moral attempts at not being so mean to you all the time, you found out was actually his real nature. He wasn’t a prick who was sometimes nice, he was a nice person who turned into a prick with you. Whether the fault lay on him or you was another debate.

“No, I’m alright,” you say, but your body decides to betray you and makes you sneeze three times in a row.

“Bless you,” Jongseong says, laughing. “Here.” You try to stop him, pushing his hands away, but he takes his gloves off and forces them in your palms.

“I’m going to be inside for the next four hours, Jong, I’ll be fine. Keep them.”

“No, it’s okay. Just so you can warm up quicker.”

You eventually give in, putting the gloves over your hands, laughing at the extra fabric that hangs off the tip of your fingers. But when you look at Jongseong’s now-bare hands, something catches your attention. Stopping in the hallway, you grab one of them, examining the cuts on his knuckles. “You need to wear hand cream, Jong, your hands are too chapped.”

He lets you turn his hand over, smooth over his skin, do the same thing with his other hand. “Men don’t wear hand cream,” he says, a grin on his lips.

You burst out laughing. “I think that’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard you say.”

“Seriously, though, I don’t like the way it feels. Too sticky.”

“You just need to get a quick-absorption one.” Then, you make the terrible mistake of looking up from his hand and meeting his eyes—you gasp silently, his gaze and soft smile transporting you right back to that night, the images of 28-year-old and 18-year-old Jongseong mixing into each other, becoming indistinct from each other. Your gaze drifts down to his lips — chapped, too, when they’re usually plumper, rosier — and his hand, still in yours, balls into a fist. The second bell rings and you both take a step back, eyes meeting again for a brief moment before looking down at the floor. With uncharacteristically shy, embarrassed words of parting, you make your separate ways to your next classes.

“That was beautiful, Y/N,” Sunoo says, waiting for you by the door, and you walk past him without so much as a glance.

“I don’t wanna talk about it.”

--

sunoo jay and y/n almost kissed earlier

kazuha WHAAAAT

you KIM SUNOO.

kazuha WHEN?????

sunoo right before class after the lunch break y/n was sooo embarrassed afterwards lol

you we did NOT almost kiss you’re talking out of your ass

kazuha i can’t believe i missed this fml

you YOU DIDNT MISS ANYTHING NOTHING HAPPENED

sunoo be serious u guys we’re standing inches apart

you were* and no we weren’t

sunoo oh stfu it was autocorrect i saw it w my own eyes y/n… you WERE literally holding his hand and staring into those beautiful eyes of his

kazuha sunoo…?

sunoo what can’t a man acknowledge another man’s objective attractiveness if i was y/n i would’ve folded the moment i saw him

you literally one of the first times he talked to me was to make fun of my handwriting

sunoo yeah he’s on his tsundere shit i fw it

you …

sunoo anyways zuha you shouldve seen it when the bell rang they practically leaped away from each other and u didnt know what to do w yourselves afterwards likeeee it was so obvi what you both were thinking of

kazuha cuuuute

you i resent these accusations.

sunoo istg if u dont kiss him next time i will

kazuha ???

you SUNOO?

sunoo WHAT

--

Something happens a few days before the start of winter break.

Ms. Schumacher is absent, gone off to Germany to visit her family there—she has enough seniority in the school that they let her abandon her responsibilities as a teacher once in a while. A week is too short a period of time for them to bother finding a substitute. It’s usually your last class of the day, but you have to wait around for your dad to be done working, so while most of your classmates have gone home early, you sit with about six other people in the unsupervised study room, absent-mindedly jotting down tid-bits of dialogue for your new story idea, too preoccupied with Jongseong’s absence to really pay attention to anything else. It’s fifteen minutes after the hour, but he’s nowhere to be found, although you know for a fact that he takes those weird Molecular Gastronomy cooking classes your Chemistry teacher offers for extra credit every Thursday after school, so he should be here. And anyways, if he’d gone home, he would’ve texted you something like, Have fun sitting around for an hour, I’m gonna go do awesome stuff with Heeseung, even if awesome stuff meant playing Mario Kart or drinking Sprite and holding a two-person burping contest.

You’re so engrossed in your own thoughts that you pay no mind to the sudden ding of a phone in the room, followed by some gasps and heated whispers. The exchanged words go through one ear and out the other—There was a fight? In the locker rooms? It must be bad if they were sent to the nurse before the principal… Huh? Over who? So he took both of them on? Damn, I didn’t know Jay got like that. He seems so well-behaved.

Your head whips up at the mention of your friend’s name. “Jay? Did something happen to him?” you ask out loud, the whispers dying down immediately as everybody stares at you. 

Gaeul, who was in your class last year, is the only one who answers you. Holding up and waving her phone, she says, “They say he got into a fight.”

Jongseong? A fight? It sounds like a practical joke. He admitted to you he once started crying watching Heeseung playing Call of Duty, it was so violent. You shake your head. “He-he did? With who?”

Gaeul and the girl next to her exchange a concerned, almost guilty look. “Jake and Sunghoon.” The crease between your eyebrows deepened. You don’t need to ask anything else before she adds, “They’re at the nurse’s station. It sounds pretty bad…”

That’s enough for you to leap out of your chair and run to the nurse’s station. It seems the news has spread impossibly quickly among your year group—even Kazuha and Sunoo are already blowing your phone, asking you if you’ve heard, if you know how Jay is. You ignore them, reminding yourself to text them back later, until one message from Sunoo in particular catches your attention: It apparently started because Sunghoon said something about you, Y/N. They’re saying Jay got angry.

The nurse is busy on the phone when you get there, her back to the entrance, so you’re able to slip in unnoticed. You head to the adjoining room where the beds are, all three of them taken—you walk by Sunghoon first, his arms crossed over his chest and pointedly not looking at you, then by Jake, who calls out your name. You glare at him and pull on the white plastic curtain that separates his bed from Jongseong’s. They’re already going to hear you, you don’t need them seeing you on top of that. 

Jongseong sits up with a grunt when you appear at the end of his bed. The sight of him makes your stomach flip, and not in a good way, for once—his left eye is swollen and circled by a deep purple bruise, shiny with ointment, there’s a cut on his cheek, his lower lip is busted, his right hand is wrapped in bandages. “Oh my God,” you whisper as you help him up, voice breaking. He stares at his hands, jaw locking when you gently place one palm on his good hand, the other on the side of his face, moving it this way and that so you can take a better look at his injuries. He winces, and you let go, resting your hand on his shoulder instead. “What the hell got into you?” you whisper vehemently, unable to decide if you’re worried or angry or both as tears form in your eyes.

He tries to shrug, but even that seems to hurt. “Don’t shrug, Jongseong, tell me what happened.”

“I’m Jongseong again now?” he says, attempting a smile, but only one corner of his lips rises.

You sigh. Even in this state, he has to be a smart-ass. “You’re Jong when I need a textbook, Jongseong when you get into stupid fights,” you reply, and he smiles wider but immediately winces, hand coming up to the cut on his lip. You notice that his hand is still riddled with cracks, and whether they’re due to their dryness or to this fight doesn’t matter—”Wait here,” you say, and go rummage through some drawers for plasters. “She forgot some spots.” You feel Jongseong’s eyes on your face as you patch him up to the best of your abilities.

“I don’t want to tell you what happened. I’ll do the job of hating these idiots for the both of us, so don’t concern yourself with them,” he says, apparently not caring that the idiots in question can hear his every word.

He keeps his promise—you never hear another word from him about the cause of the fight. 

Later, you find out through other means, namely Sunoo’s questionably remarkable ability to unearth any and all gossip, that in the locker rooms after Phys Ed, someone had started Jake on the topic of Yunjin, who had been recently revealed as his girlfriend. They’d apparently kept it secret because it was just fooling around at first, and only later had gotten serious enough for them to parade around the school as the couple. 

It had been an unremarkable conversation until Jake said, “You guys know Y/N from our class? She saw us in the staff parking lot once, and I was sure we’d be busted then. But she didn’t tell anyone.” And just like that, the conversation turned to you, someone who was usually never a topic among these boys, jocks, soccer players, “the kind of people who peak in high school and still have a superiority complex at forty,” as Sunoo describes them. 

He has a harder time explaining what happened next, can’t quite look you in the eye as he recounts what was said. “So, this is what they say, apparently someone said that you used to be obsessed with Sunghoon, then with Jake, and Sunghoon said you… Well, he said you were pathetic, that asshole, and that you had been so easy to lead on, then Jake joined in, saying the same things, basically, how funny it was seeing you so obviously in love with him when he would never give you a chance…” He looks at you worriedly, but you tell him to go on. “And so that’s when Jay got up and just straight-up punched Jake in the face. And while Jake was trying to figure out what happened, Jay punched Sunghoon, and then they both got on him, pushing him, but when he wouldn’t stop throwing punches, they started fighting, too. I think they all got some good ones in before the other boys were able to break them apart and the P.E. teacher arrived…”

But that would be later. Now, sitting with Jongseong in the nurse’s station, tears falling onto the plasters you place on his hand, nothing matters but him. You don’t need the details—he’s hurt, he got hurt over you, you feel as though every cut on his body may well have been done by your own hand. You’ve never felt so guilty for something you didn’t do. Your voice trembles when you speak; you’re unable to look at him, at his busted eye. “I just don’t want you to get hurt for me.”

Without missing a beat, he says, “What else would I get hurt for?”

You can only meet his eyes for a split second. Even like this, he manages to look at you with the same softness that has haunted you since the night you met 28-year-old Jongseong, that has rendered all thoughts of anything other than him meaningless since the day your gaze drifted down to his lips just weeks ago. “Jong…” is all you can mutter as you look down at your hands holding each others’, your lips trembling.

He raises his bandaged hand, still not used to his dominant side being ineffective for now, then lowers it when he realizes. Clumsily, he pats your hair with his left hand. “Don’t cry, please…”

Jake’s head pops out from behind the curtain. “Y/N, I’m really sorry—”

“Not right now, man,” Jay quickly interrupts. Jake pathetically disappears behind the curtain again.

“Just promise me you won’t do this again.”

“Y/N…”

“Promise me,” you say, more demanding this time, sticking out your pinky finger. Jay, hesitant, looks between your outstretched finger and your face a few times, but eventually gives in.

The nurse, upon coming to check on the boys, catches you with Jongseong and chases you out immediately. You sulk back to study hall, where everyone’s head perks up the moment you walk in. “They’re okay,” you reassure vaguely, and unenthusiastically answer their many questions. It’s only a few minutes until the bell rings, and you’re free to go then.

--

jong so… guess who got a five-day suspension

you you idiot what did your parents say?

jong they’re not happy i have to do all the household chores for a month

you boo-hoo

jong not sure why i came here thinking i’d get some comfort…

you … are you feeling better?

jong a little bit the nurse gave us some really strong painkillers but i’m okay because there’s a pretty girl that’s going to drop off the homework for me after school every day :)

you oh did you ask chaewon to do that?

jong um no i was talking about you ..if that’s okay

you haha i know i just wanted you to say it straight up

jong ykw maybe i should just ask chaewon

you i’ll see you tomorrow jong!!

jong :) see you tomorrow pretty 

 --

The months that separate your return to school and graduation come and go in the blink of an eye. Jongseong can’t come to school the last day before the holidays or the first four days after, and he’s grounded in-between. Things change bit by bit with every day you visit him—To give him the homework, you tell his parents, although there isn’t much to do when the semester isn’t in full swing, and you could’ve easily sent him pictures. The first time, you spend more time scouring the pictures and trinkets in his room than actually talking to him, and awkwardly give him a half-hug when he tells you he won’t be able to hang out at all during the break before practically running out of his house, your heart beating a thousand miles a minute from the innocent contact. By the fourth time, you lie together on his bed and talk about your plans for college, your hands sitting centimeters apart on the navy sheets. You haven’t dared touch his hand since that day in the nurse’s station.

You’re window-shopping with Kazuha when you spot the hand cream you had seen yourself gifting Jongseong in your well-given vision. Buying it is one thing, actually giving it to him is another, an awkward, stuttery situation in which the wrapping done by the store employee suddenly seems over-the-top and out-of-place. But Jongseong seems to like it—it’s the last day of his suspension, his black eye is now a yellow-ish color, he can smile without risking splitting his lip in two. He applies it immediately, tells you he’ll make sure to wear it every day until the end of winter. You find yourself wishing there was something you could give him for every season so he wouldn’t go a day without thinking of you. When you leave, he bashfully thanks you for making sure he doesn’t fall behind and says he’s excited to see you at school the next day. You hardly know what to do with yourself, so you squeak out a “me too” and slip out the door.

His first day back is a Friday. It starts with Mathematics, a class in which you sit by each other. You remember the first week of classes when Kazuha and Sunoo had ran to sit with each other, expressly because they knew that if he saw you were sitting alone, he’d take the seat next to you, just to better torment you all year. You’d resented it then; it couldn’t make you happier now. Your body is humming with nervous energy, your foot tapping relentlessly against the tiled floor. When he appears in the doorframe, you wave at him as if he’d forgotten his seat in three weeks of absence. His elbow brushes against yours as he sits down.

Between the two of you, friendship blossoms over these months. To the detriment of everyone around you, you continue to bicker as you always have, but it’s now clearly done out of habit, out of affection, even, than out of actual dislike of each other. He and Heeseung slowly integrate your small group of three, and before you know it, it feels as though there have always been five of you. Together, you welcome spring.

In January, to thank you for helping him to pick out his mom’s birthday present, Jongseong treats you to some tteokbokki, which you said you’d been craving all week. He orders the spiciest one, then has to take a sip of water between every bite. You laugh at his teary eyes and red face while you devour the bright red rice cakes easily. 

In February, he makes a show of giving you and Kazuha and Heeseung and Sunoo some homemade chocolates, saying it’s a friend thing. You find out that evening that the others each have five in their box—there are twenty in yours. It’s one of the things that makes you second guess what sort of feelings he has for you. For years, you’ve been convinced he harbored strong feelings of disdain for you; now, he seems to enjoy your friendship. You’re scared to read too much into anything, because if Jongseong is well-liked throughout school, it’s for a reason: he’s nice. To everyone. Even to you, too, nowadays. But if nice is giving five chocolates, what is giving twenty?

A sudden realization hits you in March—Jongseong appears at your door, drenched from the rain, a bag of your favorite snacks in hand. “You weren’t at school today. I had to find out you were sick from Kazuha,” he says as if she was a random classmate of yours and not your best friend, as if he should be the first to know about these kinds of things. Your mom rushes him in, finds him so charming in the five minutes they converse that she decides he should stay over for dinner, and as you watch him laughing with her, you think, I haven’t thought of 28-year-old Jongseong in ages. I’ve only thought of you. And although you can trace the start of your feelings to that dream-like experience you had, you can now say with confidence that it’s not the only reason for them.

College application results come out in April, right on his birthday. The five of you celebrate together at an American-style diner, gorging yourselves on crispy bacon and chocolate chip pancakes. Kazuha is going back to Japan, almost a decade after moving to South Korea—”I’m gonna miss you guys, but I miss takoyaki and my grandma more right now.” Heeseung has been accepted into the Engineering department at the country’s top university. You, Sunoo and Jongseong are all heading to the same place: you for Screenwriting, which you’ve known since you were one of the winners of the scholarship contest last October, Sunoo for Communications, whatever that is, and Jongseong for European History and Literature with a minor in German, that freak. It’s a good university, and it’s not far from home. The way Jongseong tells you about his acceptance sticks with you: he doesn’t say, They accepted me, too, or, I’m going to the same university as you. He says, We’ll be together.

May is filled with afternoons at the park when you should all be studying for exams. Your mom keeps asking when she’s going to see “that wonderful boy” again. Your friendship with Jongseong has given him new ways of teasing you—after four years of near-kleptomaniac tendencies, he’s finally stopped stealing your erasers and has instead started to let his gaze linger on your face, to call you pretty when you least expect it, to tuck your hair behind your ear. You hate it most when he asks you whether there’s something from your romance novels or movies that you want him to recreate. “Is there a field big enough nearby that I can walk through at the break of dawn, Mister Darcy-style?” he’ll say, or “I’ve always wanted to try that upside-down kiss from Spider-Man. It’s a classic, really.” 

Summer comes early in June. You need to bring a two-liter water bottle and a hand fan to your exams, and you’ve never felt such relief as when it was all over. After endless pictures with your parents and siblings, just your parents, just your siblings, then Kazuha and Sunoo, together, then separately, then with Heeseung and Jongseong as well, Kazuha forces you and Jongseong together, watching with a smile as he shyly wraps an arm around your waist and you awkwardly throw up a peace sign. It’s your first picture of just the two of you.

In July, you and Jongseong unlock a new first: saying goodbye. He’s leaving to stay with his American family as he does every summer. You show up at his house the day before at four p.m. “to help him pack,” you say, but it’s Jongseong, and he finished packing two days ago. So instead, you sit on his desk chair, he on his bed, and you fight back tears. “You’re coming back, right?” you ask, like he’s leaving to go to war and not Seattle. Amusement and affection flicker in his eyes. “Of course I am. I wouldn’t throw four more years of being a pain in your ass away, would I?” he says, and you smile, because you know it’s going to be much more than four years.

But he doesn’t just leave you with a few nice words. Avoiding your gaze, he hands you an envelope. Inside is a single ticket, a two-month membership for your city’s arthouse cinema that you can only go to when they have student deals or when your parents have had enough of your begging. You can’t even begin to imagine how much this must’ve cost. “Jong…” you murmur, in awe at the thin slip of paper between your hands. “This is incredible. Thank you so much.”

Jongseong looks down at his feet, fighting a smile as he kicks the invisible rocks that obviously litter the floor of his bedroom. “I thought you’d get bored without me around, so, that way you can entertain yourself, I guess… And if you run into any film bros next year, you’ll have seen as many pretentious movies as them.”

You burst into laughter then, and, without thinking, wrap your arms around his neck, thanking him over and over again. It takes him a second, but he wraps his arms around your waist and says it’s no big deal.

As you walk down the path from your house, he calls out your name. “Don’t be a stranger,” he says.

You smile. “Never.”

So, he’s not here for summer. Kazuha is working in her parents’ ramen restaurant to make some money before leaving, even Heeseung leaves two weeks into July for Seoul to visit some relatives there and get accustomed to life in the big city. You only get to laze around with Sunoo, but even he eventually leaves for his grandparents’ house by the sea, making you promise you’ll come visit him at some point, otherwise he’ll “die of boredom.” 

It’s August now, and your brain and body alike buzz with restlessness. You go to the cinema almost every day, making the best of your subscription. If you’re not going around your house looking for spider webs with your vacuum cleaner, you’re riding random bus lines and discovering parts of your town you’ve never set foot in before. If you’re not making your way through your never-ending pile of unread books, you’re creating your own stories, finally taking the time to properly outline and draft the one-line ideas you’ve had sitting in your Notes app, preparing yourself for the start of your degree. Your mind is taken up with love stories. From Romeo & Juliet to Dirty Dancing to Book Lovers, you can’t get enough of the genre. You become particularly obsessed with stories involving time travel, rewatching After Time and Lovely Runner like they contain some precious knowledge. By the end of the month, you’ve turned your life into an eight-episode TV series—a desperate girl makes a wish on a star only to discover she is fated to marry the one boy she hates most. You know you’d watch that. You send Sunoo and Kazuha the pilot, and after calling you insane numerous times but also heaping on praises, Sunoo says this: lol your going through jay withdrawals.

It shakes you so much you’re not even compelled to message back you’re*.

But he’s not wrong. The more you let yourself admit it, the more you realize how true it is: you miss Jongseong. You text once in a while, you’ve even stayed up late talking on the phone a couple of times, but you miss him, his corporeal form, having his gaze on you, having the possibility but never the courage to touch him. Every day, there’s something you want to tell him about. The cats huddling around a young neighborhood kid as he pours milk into a bowl, the clearance sale at your local library, most books for one buck only, the actor from an 90s Hong Kong film you swear has the exact same smile as him. You don’t want to bother him, so you write letters instead. Some you send, some you don’t—the ones you keep hidden in your drawer usually hint too obviously at your feelings for him. Some of them don’t just hint and contain lines of your declarations: I miss you, everything I see reminds me of you, I want to check that your bruises have healed completely even though the last trace of them faded months ago. You keep these letters a secret, even from Sunoo and Kazuha, who would never let you live down such woebegone, down bad behavior.

You do it because it feels good, getting all of your feelings out on paper. You’re a romantic at heart, so you’re prone to over-exaggeration when it comes to things like these—but everything that you write remains based in truth. You’d started with a postcard of your hometown, jokingly writing, Don’t forget where you came from. How is it over there? and he’d actually replied with a postcard of his own, filling it from top to bottom. You easily went from these small postcards to multiple pages of stream-of-consciousness-like writing. You think it’s the most romantic thing you’ve ever done—although you’re not sure he feels the same way, considering he still writes to the German pen pal Ms. Schumacher had assigned him in your first year of high school. No one else’s correspondence had lasted more than four months because she’d immediately forgotten to make sure you kept in touch regularly.

I ran into Jake Sim at the city library, you write one day. You’ve replied to everything in his latest letter, so you’re now catching him up on your recent adventures. He was checking out some books about Linguistics, of all things—he bought me bubble tea afterwards and told me that the injury he got last April was actually a relief. Did you know his father was a big name in soccer here? Apparently, he never wanted to be a soccer player that badly, and he wants to do Linguistics and Social Anthropology, who would’ve guessed it. He’s like Troy Bolton if High School Musical was about Humanities and not singing. Anyways, you probably don’t want me to go on and on about him, so I won’t, but we did talk about that fight you guys had back in December. He apologized for it, to you and me both, although he didn’t go into much detail — Sunoo is still the only one who’s had the balls to tell me exactly what happened, and he wasn’t even there! — and I was reticent at first, but he seemed genuine. He said he didn’t even hang out with Sunghoon or Yunjin or any of those people anymore, that it was only out of convenience really, and that he hopes starting university will be like turning over a new leaf. Well, he could be full of shit, who knows. As I sat there listening to him I wondered what it was I used to see in him. He’s nice enough, but we only spoke about him for the entire hour. He asked me no questions that weren’t “and you?” so it was a bit exhausting. 

But it got me thinking about your fight again. Reflecting on it now, I can say that it was a turning point for me in my perception of you.

You look at your words, smiling to yourself—this is one of the times where you find yourself erring from the topic at hand, instead indulging in sappiness and nostalgia. You write about how your opinion of Jongseong has changed over these months, how it wasn’t seeing him as your husband in all those years that had really shaken things up, but rather that day in the nurse’s station, the frightening colors around his eye, his attitude like it was natural that he would get hurt like this for you. You write, Have I been wrong about you this whole time? I thought you harbored the same negative feelings towards me as I had you since the moment you’d laid eyes on me, but all of a sudden, here you were, bloody, bandaged hand holding mine. Even with your busted eye, you looked like an angel next to all that white in the nurse’s station. I’ll never forget your words that day. Would you really not get hurt for anything else, Jong?

“I’m going to the Post Office for a package soon, Y/N. Are you done with your letter?” your mom calls from the staircase landing.

“Give me five minutes!” you call back.

You forage through your drawer for a new sheet of paper and re-write your letter, making sure to leave any compromising parts out and fold both letters into neat squares—one that will cross the seas and reach Jongseong, one that will live out its days in the darkness of your crowded drawer. You’ve run out of envelopes, so you go look for one in your parents’ office. Your mom calls out your name again, impatient to leave — if she sends her package off before twelve p.m., it will get to the receiver tomorrow, and she’s hell-bent on getting perfect five-star Vinted reviews — so you hurriedly put your letter in the envelope, close it, stamp it, and write Jongseong’s name and address on the back. The other letter you absent-mindedly throw in your drawer with the dozens of other letters in which you’d crossed the line.

--

A few weeks later, like an apparition, Jongseong stands before you again.

He’s tanner from months under the Washington sun, from afternoons spent at his family’s lake house, on their boat. His hair is slightly shorter and suits him even better; you don’t recognize any of the clothes he wears. He grumbles as his mother goes back-and-forth between hugging him, staring at him worriedly and reminding him to call at least twice a week while his father unpacks the trunk. “I’ll only be a thirty-minute train ride away, Mom,” he says. 

He’s still Jong.

You moved in yesterday, and you’re now waiting for your new roommate, who, after five minutes of deliberating whether she should bring a jacket or not and finally decided against it, changed her mind the minute she stepped outside. 

It’s been two months since you last saw him. Shortly after sending your letter, you’d gone to stay with Sunoo’s grandparents for a week, just a day before he was set to come back from Seattle. Amid packing and other preparations, you haven’t had time to see each other. Is it okay if I respond to your letter in person? I think I’ll be too busy these two coming weeks, he texted you. You replied that it wasn’t a problem, you told him which dorm you’d been assigned and found out his was the one next door.

When he notices you staring, he does a double-take. You wave at him, and even from this distance, you see the blush that creeps up his neck and takes over his face as he shyly waves back. You’ve never seen him like this—he’s always been either arrogant or friendly, never… flustered. He makes a motion as if to say, I’ll text you, and heads inside the building with his parents and all of his luggage.  

Indeed, he texts you some hours later while you’re sharing a piece of strawberry and matcha cake with your roommate Liz, whom you find out is half-German—Jongseong and your dad would probably love her for that simple fact. Some of the first things she’d asked you were what your astrological signs were and whether you wanted her to pull tarot cards for you when she was all done setting up her side of the room. Between that and her dyed blonde hair, you’d felt comfortable telling her all about Jongseong, the well and your dream. Unlike your skeptical and sarcastic friends, she’d nodded along to your every word, a serious expression on her face. “A sign from the universe,” she’d called it, and she gasped in excitement when his name appeared on your screen.

He sends you a link to a freshers’ week event, some potted plant sale happening on the main campus square, and asks if you’re free to go with him tomorrow. I need something to liven up that depressing room, he writes.

So that’s how you find yourselves among green plants of all shapes and sizes, searching for one that’s both low-maintenance and appealing to the eye. You’re glad that you have something to actually do—if you were just sitting at a café and having a conversation, you’re not sure you’d be able to stand the awkwardness. You’d chalked up his behavior on the day of his move-in to nerves, or to surprise upon seeing you so unexpectedly. But apparently, it wasn’t a one-time thing. He keeps clearing his throat as if he were sick with some cold, won’t look into your eyes for more than split seconds at a time, and in complete opposition to his usual confident, deliberate speech, talks in a quick and disorderly manner. And he’s either really caught a cold, or his ears have just permanently turned red. You ask him if something’s wrong a couple times, but he violently shakes his head, says, “No, what could be wrong?” then looks at you as if you might tell him what’s wrong.

When you’re alone again, you wonder what on earth could have happened over the summer that could make him change his behavior with you so radically. Did something happen in Seattle? Maybe he met someone there and doesn’t know how to tell you. Maybe you went overboard with your letters, he doesn’t want to be friends anymore, he wants to let you down easy but doesn’t know how to tell you. Or maybe—maybe you got impossibly pretty during those two months, and absence does make the heart grow fonder, as they say, and every thought you have about him, he has about you, but he doesn’t know how to tell you.

In any case, he’s hiding something.

The theory that he might want to stop being friends soon falls flat—the invitations to other freshers’ events keep coming, be it free wine & pizza taster sessions from the Wine Society, karaoke nights with the Taylor Swift Society or a shark movie marathon with the Bad Film Society, and he never turns you down when you tell him there’s something you want to visit in this new city of yours, even when the thing you want to visit in question is a bakery you have to queue in front of at seven a.m. if you want to get a pain au chocolat. In your defense, they turn out to be the best ones you and Jongseong have ever tried—although, to be fair, neither of you has been to France.

Things progressively return to normal. He’s able to make eye contact for more than three seconds again, he listens carefully and laughs along when you tell him about your week by the sea with Sunoo, he fills you in on what Heeseung’s been up to. One thing remains different, however—when you throw quips at him, he usually would’ve delighted in coming up with a better, wittier response, but now, he’ll roll his eyes at best, look at you amusedly and stay silent at worst. “Won’t you even entertain me?” you ask him once, to which he replies that you’re doing a good job entertaining yourself as is. 

Instead, he becomes more earnest. As per usual you badger him with questions like Aren’t I so pretty right now? or Isn’t my outfit so cute today? to get a reaction out of him, and if during your high school days he’d either fake a puking sound or look you up and down and grumble I guess, he now smiles and simply says Yes, you are, Yes, it is. It seems impossible to keep track of his attitude: one day, he’s one thing, the next, he’s another person entirely. 

It annoys you. You take his changing demeanor to mean that now that he’s a college student, he won’t indulge in your childish squabbles anymore, as though he was above all of that now, when just three months ago he was stalking your parents’ Facebooks to find unfavorable photos of you from when you were thirteen and using them as reaction pictures in your friends’ group chat. You think of your graduation day, of the box he’d given you, all done up in wrapper paper and a bow—he had filled it with every eraser he’d stolen from you over the years, he’d even gone so far as to date every single one of them, from the second of October freshman year to the twenty-eighth of November of your senior year. You didn’t count them, but there had to be at least a hundred. At the time, you’d just thought it was funny—but what if the gesture had meant something deeper than you’d realized? What if he was marking the end of something with that box? No more playing around, we’re adults now. But classes have barely started, you don’t know your way to the off-campus library, you aren’t a different person to who you were just weeks or even months earlier. Why is he acting like he is? You look at him, and you see the boy whose fault it was you had to buy a new eraser every week—who knows how many books you could’ve bought with that money. But when he turns to look at you, too, and your eyes meet, you’re suddenly assailed with the memories of that night, the kind eyes, the soft smile. 

Does his future capacity to love me already exist in his heart?

Your heartbeat speeds up and you have to look away.

--

From your letters, it seems to be much hotter back home than in Seattle—you talk of sunburns, of afternoons spent inside with the fan on maximum speed, of ice melting instantly and watering down your Coke Zeros, whereas Jay can walk around the city pleasantly and needs to bring a jacket if he’ll be out until late after sundown. And yet, as he reads your latest letter, his skin prickles feverishly, from the top of his head to the tip of his toes. He’d excitedly torn the envelope open the second it arrived in the mail, heart thumping as he counted the pages, at least three more than usual — he was always happy that you wanted to talk to him at all, so the fact that you had this much to tell him sent him over the moon — but he would have never expected what was awaiting him inside.

With a smile on his face, he read your replies to the questions he’d asked you last time, your reactions to everything he told you about, the live Mariners game, the lake house, the rides on the boat. He imagined you as you sat at your desk in your room he’d only seen once, when you’d held a small party for your birthday and he, having arrived first, was honored with a tour of your house. He imagined your smile, the way you played with your hair when you focused on something, wondered whether you pondered every word before you wrote it down as he did or whether you poured your thoughts out onto the page without hesitation. His smile faltered when Jake Sim’s name appeared in your neat handwriting, but he was relieved to find out your description of him now was miles away from the one at the start of the school year. 

Then you start writing about him. Him, Park Jongseong, and your words startle him so much, it’s like he’d forgotten he was the recipient of this letter in the first place.

But it got me thinking about your fight again. Reflecting on it now, I can say that it was a turning point for me in my perception of you. 

He’s been lying comfortably in his bed, but he sits up the moment his eyes take in these words. If there is one topic the two of you have practically never broached, it’s this exactly: your relationship, the changes it’s gone through this past year. Except for a few mentions made in jest here and there, you’ve always conveniently ignored the fact that not so long ago, you were at each other’s throats. At least, you were at his throat, and Jay let you be, let you think the hatred went both ways, when in reality all he wanted was to keep you close one way or another. To him, anything was better than indifference.

But here you are, writing about how you feel about him, not in hints, not in jokes, but actually telling him black and white what goes through your head when you think of him—in other words, everything he’s been dying to know ever since he met you and especially ever since you started warming up to him a few months ago.

I have never told you about that night because I know it’ll just be more fodder for you to endlessly tease me, and I haven’t even mentioned it in these letters that I write and don’t send. Sometimes I debate the ethics of it—if I know something about our futures, isn’t it right that you know, too? But then again, I still hesitate whether what happened was real or not. As with anything, the more time passes, the more I forget about it. What kind of cheese you’d put on the pasta, the movie that played in the background, whether the stairs were carpeted or wooded—these details have evaded me by now. All I clearly remember is your face and how I felt, seeing it then, seeing it the next day at school, ten years younger, the same exact person in what felt like a different universe. As much as I tried to deny it, I know now that it was no coincidence—I was talking about it with Sunoo and he said that sometimes, we want something so badly, we conjure it up for ourselves. He’s not always a dimwit. And he’s right, the kind of love I felt from you in that dream — or not-dream — I’ve yearned for it ever since I first watched Pride & Prejudice, the 2005 film to be precise, when I was ten. But with you? That was what I couldn’t believe at first. I don’t think I need to explain why—you were there, I think you knew how I felt about you for over three years, it’s not like I tried to hide it.

Then you turned up and the sight of you was enough to bring back all the feelings from that dream. You must’ve wondered why my behavior with you switched so suddenly—well, a glimpse into marital bliss is sometimes enough for a girl to make some changes in her life. Yet I valiantly tried to convince myself that any flutter of my heart around you was due to this stupid dream, to a version of you my brain had conjured up because it was starved for affection, and you happened to be at the forefront of my mind, even if not for the right reasons. But it was no use. I had entertained the possibility that this future was really mine, and I couldn’t go back to seeing you as the boy who annoyed the living daylights out of me.

But Jong, if you weren’t you, I would’ve been confused for a week and then I would’ve gotten over it. I stayed confused for a while, and everything you did only served to confuse me further. I started to notice you more, to see you for who you were and not for the idea I had constructed of you in my head, I stopped taking note of only the things that reinforced this idea. And that changed everything.

Let’s get it out of the way: as much as I hate to admit it because it proves you right, I saw that you are indeed devastatingly handsome. It devastates me every time I have to look at that stupid, wonderful face of yours. And if aging is something you’re worried about, don’t be. I’ve seen you at 28, and let’s just say that your jaw somehow only gets more chiseled. I’ve realized that you don’t just participate in class to be a prick — except for when you contradict me in Literature, I know you only do that to piss me off, and yes, it works — but that you actually care about what we learn and that you don’t want the teacher to feel like they’re talking to a classroom full of students made out of bricks. I’ve also realized that you didn’t specifically pick German to be the one subject where you must beat me at all costs, you just actually really like German, even if I’m still undetermined as to why. And I can finally admit to myself—you are funny. Sometimes. There were so many times I had to stop myself from laughing at one of your idiotic puns because I could not bear to give you the satisfaction. That feeling when the worst person you know makes a funny joke, and all that. And as much as I’ve mocked you for it, I do actually like your laugh. I like that you’re only loud when you laugh, or sneeze, or get excited over something. You don’t scream, you don’t get angry, and I think that’s a lot for a boy fresh out of puberty. Or for any boy, really. 

But above all, you’re kind, Jong. I think it’s the best thing about you. I think it’s the best thing anyone can be. I see it in your patience with Heeseung when he starts one of his rants better reserved for Reddit than real life, I see it in the way you took Sunoo and Kazuha in stride, even though they’re a bit rough around the edges sometimes, I see it in the way you guide the freshmen at the start of every year, when all anyone does is complain about them, I see it in the gentleness with which you let down the girls who confess to you, even the more persistent ones. I used to think they were crazy, but I understand them more than ever now. I also used to think that all those kindnesses meant that the ones you occasionally showed me meant nothing more than that—occasional kindnesses. You were just a nice guy, occasionally so to me. But you sort of ratted yourself out when you gave me those twenty chocolates for Valentine’s.

Or, really, what made things clearer was that fight in December. I guess I was wrong—you do get angry. I remember a thought I had at the time: just when I think I know you, you do something to shake it all up. You punched two of the star soccer players of our school in the face because they said some mean, unimportant things about me. Thinking about it now, I still don’t understand it. Was it another one of your acts of kindness? 

And then I thought of those other times you helped me out. Do you remember them—the art project, the handwritten notes after my grandma passed away, you tearing Park Sunghoon a new one in the girls’ bathroom. I’m sure there are many more that I’ve dismissed simply because I did not want to see you in any other light than the one I’d decided to shine on you. 

Maybe I’m rewriting the past here, but I’ve been thinking about something lately. The theme today seems to be honesty, so I’ll lay myself bare and tell you something I haven’t told anyone yet, not even myself. The more I write, the more I become aware of its truth. I like you, Jong. I think I have for a long time, longer than either of us thinks. Maybe that’s why I kept buying erasers.

I don’t have the best memory — I suspect iron deficiency, it runs in my mom’s side of the family — but I do remember this. The first time I saw you. I haven’t noticed your face changing in real time, but I’m sure I’d laugh at how much of a baby you looked back then. Although I didn’t fare much better, I’m sure. Well, you’re the one that has all these embarrassing pictures of me, you freak, so I’m sure you could tell me. Moving on… 

I found you really cute. You were chatting to the person next to you, maybe it was Heeseung, I didn’t look properly—I only looked at you. Don’t laugh at me. It was the first day of high school, there was a nervous energy in the air, but you seemed happy to be there. You know I don’t have hordes of friends like you do, I don’t walk through life with people naturally gravitating towards me. I’m okay with it now, but it was something I struggled with back then. Kazuha, Sunoo and I have had each other since our elementary days, and I never needed more than that—but fifteen is the prime age for comparison, and as the weeks passed and we got used to being high schoolers, I listened to everyone sing your praises, I watched as you talked with all of our classmates, even our teachers, like you were old friends. But we sat next to each other in a couple of classes, and you wouldn't talk to me outside of partnered work. I, who wanted to be easily charmed by you like everyone else was, who thought maybe you’d help me come out of my shell. But it felt like sitting next to me was torture to you, like the boy whom I watched speak with ease to everyone else disappeared when I was around. And so — and I’m not proud of this — every smart remark in class, every joke that had the entire class roaring, every high five you gave out in the hallway, I started to despise them. And by association, I started to despise you. After that, it was easy to find fault in everything you did, my contempt was only enhanced by everyone’s admiration. But I’m not alone here. It went both ways, didn’t it? I don’t think you liked that I didn’t like you and openly showed it, so used to being everyone’s favorite person you were. I remember how you showily tried to be nice to me after that, maybe you just wanted another friend, but I didn’t let you. I don’t blame us for how we acted, only for taking so long to get our heads out of our asses.

(I have to say, I also have a thing for hating people. Remind me to tell you about Na Jaemin and Shin Ryujin one of these days.)

Anyways, I think it’s because I had liked you so much at first that I could then seemingly hate you so much. But I never hated you, Jong, not really. I’m sorry if I gave you that impression. Can I take it all back now? 

Now that we’re entering university soon, I can’t help but look back on high school. This is what I want to know, but I’m not sure I’ll ever have the courage to ask you, because if your answer is the one I suspect, I don’t know how I’ll handle all the regret in my heart.

Have I been wrong about you this whole time? I thought you harbored the same negative feelings towards me as I had you since the moment you’d laid eyes on me, but all of a sudden, here you were, bloody, bandaged hand holding mine. Even with your busted eye, you looked like an angel next to all that white in the nurse’s station. I’ll never forget your words that day. Would you really not get hurt for anything else, Jong?

Your letter abruptly ends here, no concluding remarks, no wishing him a fun time in Seattle and looking forward to his next letter, no sign-off. It was as if someone cut you off before you could say everything you wanted, but then why send him this seemingly unfinished letter? It is all the more bizarre since your letters are usually meticulous: you write on every other line, it looks like you take your time with every single letter, the only disturbance in your otherwise perfect handwriting is your going back-and-forth between cursive and script s’s. But this particular letter looks rushed, your lines are sloppy, some words need to be read a few times over to be understood. What kind of state had you been in, writing these words? Jay’s heart swells, thinking that you were as moved writing as he was reading. He even looks through your letter again, wishing to find a tear stain somewhere, but there are none. Maybe he’s been watching too many of these romantic period dramas you always go on about.

He has to pace his room when he’s done reading your letter, but he feels trapped inside these four walls, so he dashes outside, saying that he’s getting some air when his relatives ask him where he’s off to in such a rush, and walks around the block five times. When he’s back in his room, he rereads your letter, eyes taking in each and every word slowly and carefully, making sure he doesn’t misread anything.

You like him. You, Y/N, like him, Jongseong, it’s a fact, it’s real, you said so yourself, you went into quite some detail about it, he can’t believe it, but it’s real, it’s written right there on the page, if anyone dares tell him he’s fooling himself, he can prove them wrong, you’re the one who said it.

The smile doesn’t leave his lips for the rest of the day, he can barely eat, he’s already full of happiness. He reads your words over and over before falling asleep, committing them to memory, dreaming about them, about you.

You. How should he respond to this? Are you even expecting a response? You seem to know he’s not impartial to you, either, although that’s an understatement. 

In the following days, the thought that you hadn’t meant to send him this letter nags at him. The abrupt ending, the absence of your usual Love, Y/N. The fact that this had come out of left field—none of your previous letters had even a romantic undertone, no matter how he tried in his own to hint at his missing you, the most reference to seeing each other again you would give him was It’ll be better to show you this in real life. The act of sending letters itself didn’t feel very platonic, but you never went there, so he didn’t, either. He had secretly yearned to have you this close all these years, he would never forgive himself if he ended up chasing you away now with his over-eagerness.

You had landed on something very real in your letter: I don’t think you liked that I didn’t like you and openly showed it, so used to being everyone’s favorite person you were. I remember how you showily tried to be nice to me after that, maybe you just wanted another friend, but I didn’t let you. He cursed his fifteen-year-old self, that idiot who couldn’t even speak to a girl no matter how much he wanted to, just because she was so pretty, he was afraid of saying something stupid and messing it up before it even had a chance to start.

On days when you’d had particularly nasty or petty arguments — it could get pretty bad, at the start, before you both started maturing and realized how ridiculous you were, especially with your classmates telling you to keep it classy — he’d stay up all night, wondering why you hated him so much in the first place, what on Earth he could’ve done to warrant such vitriol. Now, finally, he knew, and he could only resent the fact that no one had invented time machines yet, so he could nip his useless ego in the bud; so he could tell younger Jay not to take it personally, that you had your reasons for disliking him, that even if you hadn’t, the world won’t end if someone doesn’t like him like everyone usually does. 

Because, he hates to admit, that was what had done it for Jay. He couldn’t stand that someone — not just someone, but one of the prettiest girls he’d ever seen, a girl he’d been hyping himself up to talk to every day, but never found the courage to — didn’t immediately fall for his charms. And not just that, but even showed just how much she disliked him. You looked him up-and-down with disdain, made disgusted faces at his jokes, rolled your eyes when he spoke up in class. It made him burn with anger, but he also weirdly enjoyed it—at least, you were paying attention to him. So, he amped it up. Talked louder, laughed louder, hovered around you. He even stole your erasers, wrote the date on which he’d taken them, kept them in a box on his desk that he looked at every time he studied at home. He aimed to beat you in every class you shared, even though neither of you cared that much about grades—the annoyed look on your face when he boasted about the two points he’d gotten over you was enough satisfaction.

All in all, he behaved like a child, and you reciprocated in like.

Until you didn’t.

It was a random Tuesday when something in your attitude towards him shifted. It wasn’t a complete 180, but he noticed everything about you, so even a slight change of your tone was obvious to him. You started using your nickname for him more often than his full name—he never told you, but of course he loved that you didn’t call him Jay like everyone else, that you had your own way of addressing him. It was a sign to him that the two of you had something special, even if it was on the opposite end of the spectrum of what he wanted with you.

He again spent sleepless nights wondering what had caused this change: was it something he had done, or something within you? It was a welcome change, that much was sure, but he was initially too confused to take it in stride. He’d long made peace with the fact that he’d never have you the way he really wanted, so he was fine with whatever this was—but now, you were changing, your interactions were tinged with something like shyness, the distance between you felt greater than ever. He tried to keep up his smart-ass appearances around you, but you only indulged in your old habits once in a while, as though you had grown tired of arguing with him, even of giving him the time of day.

So he resolved himself to adapting his behavior to yours. If you stared at him intently like his face was a puzzle you were trying to solve, he let you, rested his head on his palm and smiled as he stared back at you. Finally, he had an excuse to look at you without you threatening to punch him or saying a picture would last longer. He knew they did, he’d had to resort to scrolling through Sunoo’s and Kazuha’s Instagrams to find any photos of you. Yours was private and at the time, you would’ve probably cursed him out if he’d sent a follow request. If you seemed too annoyed or upset over something, he’d leave you alone, he’d do something nice to let you know you didn’t need to have your guards up at all times around him. If you seemed to silently call for a truce of hostilities, he easily complied.

Then, after a few weeks, your petty arguments resumed, but those too were different—if before they felt filled with real disdain and irritation, they now seemed to be a comfortable habit to fall back on, almost like a fun hobby. Those, too, Jay readily welcomed.

And so things changed in a direction Jay had never thought would one day be possible. You gave him no explanations, nor did he ask for any, and soon he stopped losing sleep over the why’s and the how’s and simply let himself enjoy the fact that you now had the semblance of a friendship, that he could compliment you and pass it off as amical teasing, that he could learn things about you like what you spent your weekends doing, what your relationship with your family was like, whether you were a dog or cat person, whether you wanted to visit his farm in Stardew Valley. 

Unsurprisingly, this only enhanced his already pathetically strong feelings for you. He worried over how to make sure this wasn’t some sort of 30-day friendship trial you had wanted to test out. He reveled in the fact that his top university of choice was the one you had already been accepted to. He now knew what it felt like to have you smile at him, smile because of him, and he never wanted again to live in a world where this was not a daily occurrence. 

He now sort of has an answer—your letter doesn’t make it very clear, it makes him think again that you really had not meant to send it, but you seem to have had a dream. A dream of him, 28-year-old him, to be precise, of your life together—he’s not sure. At this point in time, he doesn’t care much, either. Whether it was a dream or a real vision of the future that you had, all that matters is that it allowed you to see him in a new light, a light which he had hoped for years would one day appear to you, and it had changed things. And now, you liked him.

You said so yourself.

He’s at a loss for words. He can’t concentrate for long enough to put all his thoughts in order, he can’t make himself calm down and write his feelings down. He has to pack to go home, once he’s home, he’ll have to pack for university. But it’s only two weeks from now to the day you meet again, and it’ll be better to say what he wants to say in person, anyway.

Is it okay if I respond to your letter in person? I think I’ll be too busy these two coming weeks, he texts you.

And then those two weeks pass like two seconds and you’re there, a few meters away from him. All the speeches he’d prepared in his head, from grand declarations of love to laid-back admittances of Yeah, I like you too, you’re cool, I guess, they all vanish from his head. For fourteen days he’s been going through scenarios upon scenarios of your reunion, what you’d look like, what he’d say, how you’d react. But now that he can actually see you, now that he would just have to walk a few steps if he wanted to touch you, hug you, kiss you — hoping that was something you wanted to do — he freezes. He forgets how his body works, the part in his brain that’s meant to manage language ability fails him. HIs mom calls him over, urging him into his new dorm building, and all he can do is wave back at you like an idiot.

When finally he musters the courage to text you, what he hopes will be the day that starts your romantic relationship turns into the day Park Jongseong realizes how much of a loser he is. For the first hour, he can’t look at you, he can’t get through a sentence without stuttering out half of his words, he runs out of things to say in record time. All he can think of is how easy it’d be to grab one of your hands, hold it in his and walk around this stupid potted plant sale as if the two of you were two halves of a whole. He doesn’t even want a potted plant, his roommate already has five, he just wanted an excuse to see you. He steals glances at you when you’re looking elsewhere, and he notices everything about you tenfold now that he can, now that caring about you doesn’t need to be in vain any longer. He tells himself that he just needs to calm down a bit, even when you have the confirmation that the person you’re about to confess to already likes you, revealing your feelings to someone is always nerve-wracking, the two of you haven’t seen in each other in a while, he’ll talk to you once his heart gets out of his throat.

But you’re acting normal. Suspiciously so. You’re acting like you never told him you liked him, like nothing has changed between you. He rereads your letter the second he gets back to his dorm. He’s not crazy, it’s written right there, I like you, Jong. I think I have for a long time, longer than either of us thinks. He knows the words by heart now, but he checks them anyway. So why are you acting like you never said anything? Had you really not meant to send that letter? Did Jay actually intrude on your private thoughts by reading words that had never meant to be seen by another soul?

You continue to behave as you usually would around him, but if he couldn’t go back to vicious bickering when things changed the first time, he can’t go back to friendly bickering now that things — for him — have changed a second time. He doesn’t even want friendly to be in your shared vocabulary anymore. 

So he stops giving in. If you make fun of him, he just stands there with an unimpressed if amused look on his face. If you pedantically correct him on something, he just nods his head and accepts it. He can tell you’re bothered by it, but he needs to show you that he doesn’t want to go on being just friends with you—he wants to compliment you without having to pass it off as teasing, he wants to stare at you with hearts in his eyes without having to look away when you catch him, he wants to spend every waking second of every day with you, he wants to hold your hand, hold you. 

He could wait for things to change slowly again, but why wait when he could help things along?

--

It’s nine p.m. on a Saturday and you’re sneaking Jongseong into your dorm. Liz is away for the weekend, gone back home to celebrate her aunt’s birthday, so you have the room to yourselves. It took some convincing to get him to come — What if we get caught coming in, What if your T.A. sees us, What if I get reported to campus police — and so when your verbal reassurances failed to work, you resorted to blinking up at him through your lashes and that did the trick.

Jongseong was in many ways unlike any other man you’d ever met; in some other ways, he was the exact same.

Plastic bag of the tteokbokki you’d asked for in hand, he looks around the deserted hallways like someone might jump out of nowhere and beat him to a pulp at any given moment. At this time of the week, everyone’s out partying or holed up in their dorms, presumably either to rest or because of a lack of friends so early on in the semester. You grab his free hand and hurry him along to the elevator—once inside, it takes you a few seconds before you realize you’re still holding it, and you retract your hand quickly while he just smiles. 

You settle yourselves on the floor—comfort is not worth getting gochujang sauce on your white sheets. You sit criss-cross in front of each other, the food between the two of you, and catch up on your first week of class in-between bites of spicy, gooey rice cakes and fish cakes. You wonder, if one day you and Jongseong are no longer friends, how long you will keep associating tteokbokki with him.

When you tell him that you and Jake share a class, Introduction to Film Studies, he gives you a look. “What’s that face for?” you ask.

“Did you guys sit next to each other?”

You chuckle. “Of course. We only knew each other in that room, it would’ve been weird not to.”

He continues to stare at you. After a while, he muses, “You’re not…?”

You halt in your tracks, rice cake at the end of your plastic fork hanging in the air, halfway between the container and your mouth. “Whatever you’re thinking, the answer is no.” Still in love with him, interested in him again, you don’t know the exact details of Jongseong’s thought process, all you know is he has nothing to worry about—if it’s something he worries about.

When a smile slowly grows on his lips and he nods, saying, “Okay, good,” you let yourself think it might be.

Later, you’re ten minutes into a senseless blockbuster movie when he suddenly pauses it. It snaps you out of a trance—his hand was awfully close to yours, so is his shoulder, his thigh, his knee, everything, really, and you haven’t been able to concentrate on anything but the warmth radiating off his skin and the intensity with which you crave to feel it intentionally rather than accidentally. When he speaks, there’s something serious in his tone that makes you nervous. “Y/N,” he says as he turns to you, and now his face is awfully close, too. There’s still many centimeters separating you, but in this tiny, barely lit-up room, he feels closer than ever before. “Do you remember when I said I’d reply to your letter in real life?”

You tilt your head. “Yeah, that was ages ago.”

“Well, I thought I’d do it now.”

“Now?”

He takes a deep, shaky breath. “Now.”

And then those safe centimeters suddenly disappear, and Jongseong’s lips are on yours. It’s a brief, chaste kiss, so quick you wonder if it even happened when he leans back again.

“I like you, too,” he says, and your heart stops.

“W-what?” is all you can say back, eyes wide like he’s just admitted to killing someone rather than reciprocating your feelings.

His confident facade quickly crumbles. “God, this was so much cooler in my head, I-I’m sorry.” He pulls something out of his sweatpants pocket, pages folded over and over into a tiny square. As he unfolds them, you recognize your paper, your handwriting—but what do your letters have anything to do with him kissing you, of all things? “I don’t think you meant to send this. But I’m glad you did.”

He hands you the pages and your eyes skim over the words, not detecting anything out of the ordinary, until—But it got me thinking about your fight again. Reflecting on it now, I can say that it was a turning point for me in my perception of you. You remember this line, because you had made sure to strike it and everything that came afterward out when you rewrote the letter that you would actually send Jongseong. So how was he giving you this? 

“I-How do you have this?” you ask, voice trembling. You feel as though your heart overflows with all kinds of emotions, and so your eyes follow, tears staining your lower lashes. 

But Jongseong is not one to let you hide things from him. “Hey, no, it’s okay,” he says, warm hands coming to cup your face. “Look at me.” You have no choice but to oblige—his gaze is somehow both soft and stern, a mix of concern and determination. “Did you mean what you wrote in here?” You nod. “Then everything’s okay. You don’t know how happy I was reading this.”

The tension in your body slowly starts to fade. “Really?”

“Really. I cherish every single word in there.”

“Really?” you repeat, and he chuckles.

“Really.”

Your heartbeat speeds up as you gaze into his eyes, as you let yourself bask in the affection and endearment you find there. You can’t quite comprehend what’s happening. The letter, the kiss, his confession, your inadvertent confession, it’s all a mess in your head; so sudden, but such a long time coming at the same time. You never imagined that things would change so quickly—less than a year ago, you thought Jongseong was the most irritating person on this planet. After meeting his 28-year-old self, you thought it’d take ages for the two of you to be on such good terms. But now, just a week into your first semester of university, belly full of tteokbokki and Sprite, you like each other enough not only to be in the same room without hurling insults at each other but to actually be smiling at each other, willingly at that.

Your eyes drift down to his lips, just like in the hallway all those months ago, and the words slip out before you can stop them. They’re a mere whisper—”Kiss me again.”

Jongseong doesn’t need to be told twice. Still cupping your face, he bridges the gap between the two of you again, and this time, when your lips meet, they don’t come apart so quickly. It’s your first kiss, and it’s nothing short of magical, better than any romance novel could’ve prepared you for. His lips are warm and soft against yours, moving slowly, gingerly; as if he’s scared to take any wrong step, he lets you control the pace, follows every tilt of your head this way and that. It’s a relief that he seems to know as little about this as you do—his hands haven’t moved from your face, yours are on his knees, all you can do is focus on the movement of your lips, to think of anything else at the same time would be overwhelming. 

“I’ve liked you from the start,” he suddenly says, face still so close you can feel his breath on your lips as he speaks. 

“Hm?” you hum, body reeling from the kiss.

“I’ve liked you from the start,” he repeats, grinning—he looks relieved, like he’s been waiting to say these words for a long time. “I can’t believe this is happening after all these years. Or at all, really.”

“I think I did, too.”

“Yeah, you mentioned that in your letter.”

Your eyes widen and you bury your face in your hands as Jongseong laughs. “You’re never going to let me live that down, are you?” you mumble.

He smooths over your hair with one hand, brings your face back up with the other. “Don’t worry. I won’t ever make you regret this.”

Your brain and heart are too all over the place for you to come up with a coherent answer, so you lean in and reconnect your lips to his. It’s already becoming your favorite sensation, feeling him smile into the kiss, threading your fingers in his soft hair.

Time passes delicately like this, the two of you on your single bed, in the sheets that you bought three weeks ago. A lot of it is spent kissing and learning how to fall into each other’s rhythm, but you also spend hours talking, comparing situations and how you’d experienced them. You thought his occasional acts of kindness were done out of guilt, evidence that he did have some morals; he was trying to show he cared about you. He thought you’d despised him from the moment you saw him; you reiterate in more detail than your letter what really happened, you say you wish you knew then what you know now. 

“But I never hated you, Jong. I think I wanted to believe that I did, but I never actually did.”

“You glared at me everytime I walked past like I killed a member of your family.”

You groan, ashamed of yourself. “I did, didn’t I?”

“You did,” he says, chuckling, placing a kiss on your forehead. His arms are around you, your head rests atop his heart—you’ve never felt more comfortable in your life. “But it’s okay. We’re here now, and I don’t want us to have any regrets about high school. We had a good time, didn’t we?”

You tilt your head up to look at him. “I’m sure you did, stealing all my erasers.”

He lets out a hearty laugh. Clearly, he’s very proud of his feat. “Hey, I gave all of them back.”

“And what am I going to do with a hundred erasers, Jong?” you ask, laughing too, pecking his cheek aggressively—your way of punishing him for a grave deed.

“Keep them as a token of my love for you,” he says, and your breath falters at the mention of that word. “In fifty years, it’ll be a sign that I’ve liked you since the beginning, I just had a funny way of showing it.”

“Fifty years, huh?”

He grins. “Fifty, a hundred, whatever. You’re not getting rid of me.”

“I wasn’t planning to.”

You’re both smiling so wide, you can barely manage a kiss. He trails kisses from your lips to your ear. Holding you close, he whispers, “It’s always been you, Y/N. Always and only you.”

There may be thorns on the otherwise immaculate rose that is your life, but Park Jongseong was never one of them—all along, he was a bud waiting to bloom.

--

The more time passes, the more you wonder whether that night you had seen in your vision will ever come. There’s been evenings similar to it—crashing the minute you came home from a long day on set, telling yourself you’d take a fifteen-minute power nap only to wake up three hours later and coming downstairs to find your husband cooking dinner, cleaning the kitchen, taking care of your son or simply watching TV, but waiting for you, always waiting for you. He seems as happy now watching you come down the stairs as he was then finding your face among all the students flocking out of lecture halls. 

The details are blurry now, but many small things seem to be different from what you’d seen. He still tries to recreate your favorite meal, but it’s not pasta all'arrabbiata, it’s laksa, because your first date as an official couple was to a Malaysian restaurant, not an Italian one. He’s still the best father you know, but you have one son, not twin girls—although that offer to “give him a younger sibling to play with” is always on the table. Even the house you live in is different from the one in your dream, which has now become nothing more than a funny anecdote you share with people when they ask you the story of how you and Jongseong met.

You think of Sunoo’s words from all those years ago: Sometimes, we want something so badly, we conjure it up for ourselves. Had 18-year-old you been in such denial over her feelings for Jongseong that she’d had to convince herself a magical well had bestowed a crazy dream upon her to admit that, yes, there was something there, something other than childish hatred?

It doesn’t matter anymore. Months pass without you thinking about that well, anyway. 

Tonight, you come home late from work after having had to do last-minute changes to the script for your current project, a movie that starts shooting in a few days. Jongseong texted you that he was going to bed an hour or so again, so you’re greeted by a plate of japchae covered in film paper. The post-it note stuck to it reads, I’m afraid of the repercussions of too much curry consumption on our son, so no laksa tonight my love. Hope you like it. Come to bed quick. You were starving a second ago, but you decide food can wait—other things can’t.

You tiptoe up the stairs and into your son’s room, breathing in the scent of his hair and placing a kiss there. His hair is still worryingly sparse, but if he’s anything like his dad, it’ll come in a bit later than the other kids. You always thought babies with a full head of hair were freaky, anyway. He doesn’t budge a bit, sleeping like a log—his dad is another story, shuffling in bed the moment you step into your shared bedroom. He opens his arms wide, a silent invitation.

“You’re home,” he says as you attach yourself to his body, your leg hiked up over his, your face buried in the crook of his neck, your thumb caressing the start of stubble on his cheeks.

You smile. “I am.”

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[cloudcountry]

SUMMARY: to blanc, you are the change he needed, and your pressing secret won't change that.

WARNINGS: mentions of mortality, blood. Vampire stuff.

COMMENTS: ok ok so @vivislosingitagain here is my thought process YOU like biting people and sucking their blood so YOU are a vampire. and HEY GUESS WHAT vampires are IMMORTAL kind of. and im pretty sure blanc is really fucking old so i think mortality angst would work great with him BUT WHAT IF HIS PARTNER WAS AS OLD AS HE WAS AND BIT HIM. that's the post.

also im so sorry if blanc is out of character i have seen this man three times in the routes ive played + the prologue oops.

It’s a clear night. The stars are bright in the sky, just as they were hundreds and hundreds of years ago. Blanc doesn’t know if they’ll ever change, but he takes comfort in their consistency. They’re stationary, unmoving, unshifting, just like him. He’s always been in Cradle, long enough to see the shattering of bonds between the armies and the first Alice fall. He’s seen the skirmishes and the blood and the carnage.

And he’s seen you, the one who followed him into the rabbit hole and into Cradle.

He remembers thinking you were cute. He remembers Oliver scolding him for speaking his mind, and he remembers you tearing your eyes away from him, a shy smile on your lips. You’ve always been alluring, in a way he never anticipated, and it makes him wonder if someone from the Land of Reason can really be magical like the people of Cradle.

It’s no use though—he knows the passage of time will take you away. He knows love (what he feels for you, there’s no doubt about it) is a powerful force, but it cannot break the way the sun and moon rise and fall, it cannot stop the stars from dying light years away, it cannot stop your inevitable aging.

He knows this, and yet he can’t let go. He greets you in the morning with a soft pat on your head, leaning over your bed as you stretch and yawn. His gaze softens when you rub your eyes and look over at him, and you’re looking at him like he’s the only thing you ever want to see.

He’s so selfish—he wants so badly for you to only look at him.

For someone so keenly aware of how mortal you are, he knows he's being awfully flippant about it. It’s the folly of man, to be so foolish as to yearn, but there’s always the possibility that fate will take pity on his poor soul and listen to its cries for his love to stay.

And so, the next night, a night that should be no different from any other, he breaks his routine. He keeps you up late, chatting over tea as the full moon rises in the sky, asking you if you want to go home. He watches you as you go quiet, your previously bright smile fading into a thoughtful frown. You’re staring into your tea as if it can give you the answer, and Blanc hopes the tea will give you the same answer he would.

I wish you would stay. I wish you would stay with me. I wish you would think I’m worth it. I wish that if I had to be hurt then you would be the one to hurt me because I’ve never loved anyone like you and I doubt I ever will. I wish you would be the one to thrust this dagger into my heart so fate doesn’t have the chance.

“...I want to stay with you.” you say, and Blanc knows you’re hiding something from him but he can’t bring himself to ask when you already look so worried.

“Are you sure?” he asks, reaching across the table to place a hand on yours.

Your head jerks up and you meet his gaze with parted lips—almost like you want to tell him but are far too scared.

“You can tell me anything.” he stresses, squeezing your hand gently.

“I’m not...” you purse your lips, looking away again as you choose your words carefully, “I’m not having doubts about staying here, if that’s what you’re wondering.”

Blanc holds back his sigh of relief in favor of another inquisitive glance. Your brow furrows and he knows you feel his stare, your cute canines poking at your lower lip as you gnaw on it pensively.

“I have a secret I don’t think I’m ready to share yet.” you say softly, turning back to him, “I will someday. I just...need time.”

Blanc laughs, a sound that's full of relief and love and sounds like the wind chimes that hang in your no longer temporary bedroom’s window, the ones that have been there since you came and will be there when—if—you leave.

“Darling.” he breathes, staring straight into your eyes with so much love, “I have all the time in the world.”

The full moon sinks beneath the horizon and the sun comes up again. The teacups from the night before have been cleaned and placed back on their shelves, and the cake you two cut slices out of remains in the fridge. There are still traces of you within the house—your skincare is still in the bathroom, your toothbrush is next to his, and your chair still has a cushion of your favorite color. None of those things have been removed because you didn’t leave.

You’re still in your bedroom, sleeping soundly, but this time Blanc is there with you, his arms wrapped around you. His body is tangled with yours, your legs intertwining as the bed sheets knot themselves around your limbs. Your head is resting right over his heart, the part of him that’s pounding away for you. Gently, he tucks a strand of hair behind your ear and stares down at your sleeping face, the face that shows him all of your thoughts and emotions, the face that belongs to the person who loves him enough to stay.

He wakes you up with a kiss on your forehead, a kiss on the bridge of your nose, a kiss on your left eyelid and a kiss on your right, a kiss on your jaw—

He sighs when you start to stir, propping yourself up on your elbows. The bed sheets fall off your body like water cascading down the side of a cliff, and your bleary eyes have never looked more beautiful. He lays there, admiring you in the morning light as the wind chimes chime, the soft breeze from the cracked open window ruffling through your hair.

You shiver.

“Darling,” Blanc calls, placing a hand on your shoulder, “Good morning.”

You smile when you turn to look at him, and you allow yourself to fall back against the mattress next to him.

“Good morning.” you murmur, your nails tracing the curve of his cheekbone before tucking a strand of hair behind his ear, “You look so handsome.”

Ever the charmer, he’s rarely been charmed himself. And so he does the only thing he deems appropriate, and thanks you with a kiss on the back of your hand.

Weeks pass, and Blanc finds himself growing into this new routine. You're a sign of change, that he knows for sure. His own room remains vacant for the most part unless you decide to pull him into his room instead of your own when you’re ready for bed. It makes no difference to him where you go, only that he can follow you like the lovesick fool he is.

Except you’re not leading him to either of your bedrooms tonight.

You’re leading him outside, under the pale moonlight and into the chilly nighttime breeze. He looks up at the full moon and holds your hand a little tighter.

“Thank you for giving me time.” you say, the wind swelling as it passes between the two of you and further into the night, “I’m ready to tell you what I’ve been hiding from you now. It’s...not fair to keep it from you any longer.”

“I understand,” he smiles softly, cupping your cheek, “Go ahead.”

“I’m a vampire.” you say, and it takes his brain a few moments to catch up, “I’ve...found it hard to get blood in Cradle but since meeting with Kyle’s he’s managed to get me blood when I need it. I don’t like drinking from animals or people but it...has to be done for me to stay alive.”

Blanc’s brain is whirring as you spill your guts to him, your mouth moving faster and faster as you explain how despised vampires are in the Land of Reason, how people view them as monsters and how you’re certain you’re cursed.

Cursed. What a funny word to say to him.

“Is that why your canines are so sharp?” he blurts, leaning closer to your face.

You stop talking, bending backward just a bit at his sudden closeness.

“I—I’m sorry, what?” you ask, looking confused.

“Ah, well....I always thought they were cute.” he smiles kindly, brushing his thumb over your cheekbone.

“I...” you blink owlishly before shaking your head in disbelief, “Blanc, I just told you I’m a vampire.”

“Indeed you did.”

Your mouth falls open as if looking for the right words to say, and yet you come up with nothing.

“You can feed from me if you wish. I don’t want you to suffer any longer.” he offers like its the most natural thing in the world.

Still, you say nothing.

And then he murmurs your name, as soft as the flower petals brushing against your ankles.

“I don’t want to use you like that. I don’t want you to be a food source for me.” you grit your teeth, staring at the ground like you couldn’t be more ashamed, “I don’t want to be the monster the Land of Reason made me out to be.”

“You’re not. I give myself to you willingly, and I'll do it over and over again.” Blanc murmurs, hands slipping away from you.

It takes you a moment to realize he’s slowly undoing the buttons on his shirt, leaving his collarbone open to the nighttime breeze and your eyes.

“My love.” he opens his arms for you and his shirt slips off his shoulder, leaving his skin vulnerable—

“I give myself to you.”

And he pulls you into his chest, as he whispers words of love telling you that you can bite him, drink from him, take all that you need and that it will be okay because he’d give you everything if you asked for it, and that you changed his life for the better, you brought springtime’s flowers and winter’s shimmering ice and summer’s warm sunlight and autumn’s delicate, beautiful leaves to a life that was so repetitive and boring until you arrived—a life that belonged to the man you see before you but not anymore because its yours and it will always be yours.

Tears prick your eyes as you kiss his skin, worshiping each freckle and small scar you can reach. Your canines poke insistently at his skin and you ignore the urge for one, two, three, four, five seconds before your mouth opens and you bite down, hoping the small gasp that leaves his lips isn’t one of pain. You’re careful not to take too much but it tastes so good and who knew drinking from the one you loved could make you feel so happy and full.

Blanc looks up at the moon as you feed, happiness and adoration blurring his vision as he thinks about you, you who trusted him enough to bite him, to tell him who you were, you who stayed behind for him even though you could have left.

He stares up at the moon and sighs because he’s in love. He’s in love with you.

And after you’re done, after you pull away and lick the puncture marks to soothe them, after you press a dozen more kisses to his skin, Blanc still loves you. His blood is smeared around your mouth but he pulls you in anyway, kissing you with everything he has because you deserve nothing less than that.

And he loves you.

Over and over again, he loves you.

He doesn’t know how long he’ll be aging or how long you will have by his side, but he knows that if you will forever be his constant, he’ll come out okay in the end.

[jihyoruri]

❚ ❚ ❚ ❚ ❚ ❚ ❚ ❚ 𓍢 LOVEFOOL ahn yujin x idol!reader

🪽★ ͘ ⴰ in which yujin realizes that the girl that the girl that’s caught her attention is the same annoying younger sister of her ex member that told her she needs dance lessons

warnings: yn is apart of new jeans and is sakura’s younger sister, fluff, yn is described as a brat, swearing

all yujin can think right now is how stupid she is.

of course the yn that she’s fallen for is the little shit head that told her that she needed “dance lessons” a couple years back.

yujin was definitely in shock when her and wonyoung knocked on the door to the lesserafim dorms and instead of being met with one of the members at the door, yn opened it, the girl that she’s been talking to for the last couple months.

also sakura’s little sister.

“hey unnie, what are you doing here?” yn asked with a smile on her face, opening the door wider so wonyoung and yujin could come in.

“I should be asking you that,” yujin says standing in front of the girl awkwardly earning a confused look from yn as wonyoung walks deeper into the house, leaving them at the front.

“you mean chilling at my older sister’s place?” yn says tilting her head, yujin would’ve thought that was adorable but due to the circumstances that was the last thing on her mind and it was now her turn to look confused.

“you never told me kazuha was your older sister,” she replies dumbly which causes yn to let out a big laugh.

“my last name is miyawaki not nakamura you dummy.” yn says in a playful tone looking up at yujin and pushing her shoulder softly.

wait?

“oh…”

“yeah oh,” yn mocks before grabbing yujin’s hand and placing the older girls arm over her shoulder, “now let’s go, she’s actually been wondering who ive been talking to, I can’t wait to see the look on her face," yn says mischievously and again yujin would’ve found it adorable if it wasn’t for the circumstances.

"oh, also my members are here as well."

yn who yujin now remembers as sakura’s brat of a little sister is the same yn that’s practically her girlfriend, how did she not see the similarities? yn is still very much a brat the only difference is that yujin now finds it cute rather than repulsive.

and the last names, gosh was she really blinded by love to not realize that yn had the same exact last name as her former member?

yujin wonders if yn still sees her as a bad dance, yn is an amazing dancer one of the best yujin has ever seen, was yn just suppressing her thoughts now that she liked yujin?

yujin doesn't know why it bothered her but it did, if yn really did still think she was a bad dancer it would completely ruin her self confidence, who knew when you liked someone how much power their opinion could have over you.

"hey, you okay?" yujin looks down to see yn looking up at up her still lucked under her arm, "are you nervous? come on its just sakura who you should be worried about is minji-gosh I can already see the glares." yn rambles.

"I'm okay," yujin smiles at yn hesitantly, thoughts still clouding her mind as they reach the living room where everyone is.

the talking that filled the room stoped when they entered the room, sakura's eye widening when she takes notice of yujin's arm over yns shoulder.

"yujin, you're the girl?" is the first thing that comes out of sakura's mouth, yujin can feel the new jeans leaders gaze on her but that's the least of her worries right now.

"yeah..." she responds nervously, yujin really wished now wasn't the time that all of this was being unwrapped not with all the thoughts that are circulating her mind right now.

"why is it so quiet?" yn asks with sass in her voice like always causing everyone to start back up their conversations while sakura gets up from her seat on the couch and walks over to the couple.

"is this for real?" she whispers, "you guys genuinely like each other?" both girls nod, yn with a little bit of more attitude because is that even a question?

sakura turns to yujin, "you know she's quite the handful right? can you handle her?"

"she can handle me just fine thank you very much." yn butts in leaning into yujin's side as yujin nods.

sakura stares at them for a little longer before letting out a sigh, "as long as you guys are happy I guess,"

"we're gonna have to set some ground rules, but that's for another time, we're gonna play just dance come on."

dance? why did that sound like the worst to yujin right now.

yn squeals and removes herself from under yujin's arm and jumps onto sakura's back as the older girl walked away, "I'm gonna crush everyone."

yujin trails behind them, this should've been an enjoyable moment but not with all these insecurities circling her mind.

she walked into the room and gave everyone a greeting and smile as they set up the game before taking seat beside minji who leans over to her, "we're gonna have to set some ground rules."

yujin lets out a sigh "yeah, I figured."

yujin kept to herself as everyone had fun playing the game and just as yn said she destroyed everyone, it was at the point that everyone was trying to forbid her from playing for the next couple of rounds but it was all fun and games, yujin wished she was in the right state of mind to enjoy this moment with everyone else.

"hey," yujin is snapped out of thoughts by the voice she loves the most, she looks up to see yn sitting beside her while everyone is still discussing kicking yn out "wanna verse me?"

that did not sound enjoyable at all.

"no, it's okay," yujin says quietly.

"are you okay?" yn asks worried, and that's a tone that you'll barely hear from the younger girl, "your vibe is completely off right now."

"I'm fine."

yn shot yujin a look that screamed "get real" before standing up and grabbing yujin's hands and pulling her into the hallway nobody even noticing to deep into their deep discussion.

"okay, tell me what's going on." yn said crossing her arms over her chest, "and don't give me any bullshit"

yujin lets out a sigh and mumbles so quietly that yn couldn't hear her.

"what?"

"If I'm gonna be honest I completely didn't put together that you and sakura unnie are sisters so seeing you here today really brought it to light but then I remembered what you said to me a couple of years ago about how I needed dance lessons and it didn't bother me much back then you were just really annoying but then now with how much I like you and I wonder if you really think im a bad dancer yujin says rushingly while yn looks at her in shock.

"yujin," she whispers her face softening as she grabs both of the taller girls hands, "of course I think you're a good dancer."

yujin just stares at yn as she continues, "you really remembered what thirteen year old me said to you? thirteen year old me thought you were the cutest girl ever but decide to tease the hell out of you because she couldn't handle having a crush."

yujin feels a smile make its way to her face at that, "you had a crush on me for that long?" she teases quietly as yn rolls her eyes, "yes, and im sorry for making you think that you weren't a good dancer, you're amazing"

"yn apologizing, this is a once in a blue moon experience." yujin smiles pulling yn closer to her who just laughs and rolls her eyes once more, "yeah, yeah don't get used to it," she responds before softly placing her lips softly on yujin's who kisses her back right away chasing yns lips when she pulls away from the older girl laughing.

"lets go back before minji untie realizes were gone and loses her head." yn says interlocking her hand with yujin who nods understandingly.

"evern though she's younger than me she's really scaring." yujin says as yn drags her.

"lets not focus on her and lets focus on how im gonna crush you in just dance, that you'll want dance lessons."

that should've made yujin offended but all she could do is smile and look at the younger girl fondly.

she really was a lovefool.

[polyamorousmood]

Hey there :)

So I have no problem with my bf dating other people, and recently hes started having sth with someone else. Good for them! Legit, no problem with that by itself

But.. now I'm being left on read a lot, like majority of the time it feels like, no matter the topic or time. I just feel.. forgotten, I think, or replaced idk. But it feels pretty bad.

I dont want them to think I'm jealous or mad, I just wish he would still show me the same attention/care as before. Ive talked about how left on read makes me very insecure, due to fake friends and person past experiences before so I dont want to bring it up again.. but it hurts. Idk what to do?

Bad news, babe. You're gonna have to say something again. The good news though is that you can productively procrastinate it, because there's some stuff I want you to do first.

But before I get into that, I let having a cool opening distract me from very important other things that need said: That sucks, and I'm really sorry, but you can make it through this.

Now then. Time to productively procrastinate a difficult conversation. Look, I'm procrastinating it more by making it a read more! (It, um, it is A Lot. I took "blogging platform" literally on this one😅)

It sucks. Believe me, it bothers me too when I can't hear from my partner📵📴 because they're with my meta. It has been A Problem I've had to work through, so I think I'm actually pretty qualified to give advice on this.

Some of what I have to say is going to smart (old-timey word for sting) a bit, so I want to make it clear that I understand where you're coming from, so you can trust the part that stings is necessary. I imagine its something like this:

You relationship with your boyfriend is great! So great, you're happy for him to have someone else to love! That's. That's so rare and incredible, its a love beyond what most will know. And then he takes that love and wads it up and throws it in the back seat to make room for this new schmuck. The love is still there, it's just... in the back seat. And you never thought that would happen, because the relationship is so good! And you already said something, so you worry you're being a nag, which you don't want, because you ARE happy for them, you're so happy for them... except when you're not because you can't be happy when he can't be bothered to text you back. Its not really so much to ask, and you EXPLAINED why its important to you, so why doesn't he seem to care? You communicated, you did your part, and it was hard and scary! Surely harder than texting you back would be! And you don't want to feel like this, but. There's this anxiety that... shouldn't he want to text you back? Isn't that how he would act if he really did still care about you just as much?

Any of that resonate? I don't know you, so maybe some of it was way off base🎯, I don't know. But I hope enough of it was close enough to right that you know I get it when I say:

This isn't just your boyfriend fucking it up. This is, in part, probably you asking something unreasonable. To give you the exact same level of time an energy as when it was just you too is a big ask. To be able to supercede his time with the other person any time you want is a big ask. If you're only okay with your boyfriend having someone else if it doesn't cut into your time at all, how okay with it are you actually?

So before you talk to him about it, you gotta step back. Its not that you're wrong for feeling sidelined. But a poly relationship just isn't going to be the exact same as a monogamous one. It it were, I wouldn't have bothered making a blog, and I wouldn't have needed to because I wouldn't have a trail of loving, wonderful, burnt to ashes monogamous relationships behind me. Let's take a deep breath together. Pause here if you need.

Now, there are some questions here that do affect what I think would be fair. For example, if you're living with your boyfriend, and he's taking you for granted, always texting the other person when he's with you, you don't have any special time with him anymore, and then when he goes out its radio silence. That's a very different situation from you being in a long distance relationship so texting is your main form of communication/bonding and now he's got a new person that lives near him so he's with them constantly and now, what are you, chopped liver? for example. I'm going to give a list of things you might be doing that's unfair, and I want you to take a minute and evaluate as honestly as you can where you fall on that. This is a self-reflection, not an accusation, so please resist any temptations to get defensive (if you even feel them). I recommend taking out a pad of paper and committing to an answer for each. Some you may not be doing at all! Some okay maybe a little. And some now that you think about it, yeah actually, you're doing a lot. That's okay. You not handling it perfectly is okay, and doesn't mean we can't ask the boyfriend for accommodations still.

Are you valuing 1:1 time with your boyfriend as much as you're valuing (negatively) the time he spends 1:1 (not texting you) with his partner? IE, are you more bothered by him not texting you than you are appreciative when he takes time for you?

Are you texting him compulsively out of anxiety instead of because you have something more important to discuss?

Are you accidentally infringing on his other partner's time?

Are you trying to infringe on his other partner's time to reassure yourself that you're important to him?

Are you texting him to "test" him?

When you communicated that you didn't like being left on read, did you properly convey how big of a problem it is for you and what your expectations were?

When you communicated, did you allow space for negotiation and to work on the problem, or was it more like a list of demands?

Are you misplacing your feelings somehow? Is there something else that's bothering you that you don't feel comfortable bringing up?

Are you letting your anxieties run you? Is there something you could be doing to address your feelings?

Are you forgetting to weigh other allocations or shows of love he's making or you?

Is there anything else internally you might be overlooking in regards to this?

Whew! Heavy stuff. But you made it!🎉 Now, we'll dig into how his actions are making you feel. That last set was about what you could be doing better, and this one will help determine he could be doing better. But just like we weren't making accusations about you, we aren't making accusations about him either. We are assuming good faith on your boyfriend's part. This is still ultimately about your feelings and what reasonable accommodations could be made for them.

Do you feel the time allocation for you vs his other partner is fair? Why?

Does he seem to text them back more than you?

Does it seem like he's not taking your concerns seriously enough?

Does this issue look like a larger pattern? If so, what? How will that look long-term?

Has he made specific promises he hasn't kept to you in regards to this? If so, what were they and how hasn't he lived up to them?

Do you feel he's made adequate time for you to discuss concerns, or do you feel like he tries to rush through them?

Do you think he gave you a reasonably clear expectation of what him dating someone else would look like (or did he make it seem "nothing will change")?

Has he not responded to something critical?

Is there anything else he's done in regards to this that doesn't sit right with you?

You did it! 🎉Now we can officially start working on problem-solving. I imagine that was a lot more than you bargained for, for such a simple problem as "I want a text back," but its important to get everything laid out. This helps in a lot of ways. It helps guard against striking on a "solution" that isn't actually sustainable. It makes sure you're starting a discussion in good faith. And hopefully, it will help minimize having to return to the issue.

For the sake of formatting, we're going to address the questions for you first, then the questions about him, then how to have the hard conversation, then workarounds that you may not have considered that aren't really your or his problem. I actually think that third group has some of the better "quick fixes", if you can find one that works.

Starting with the questions about what you could be doing better, in order, skip any that don't apply:

Re: valuing 1:1 time -- Make active efforts to appreciate the time you do have more. Use this time as a guard against negative thoughts when he is unable to respond ("We spent all day together yesterday, a few hours today without hearing from him is fine")

Re: texting compulsively -- Be more vigilant about self-soothing. I find self-talk to be most effective for me. I cannot possibly cover everything here, but it sounds like it stirs up fears you're losing your partner. Since you cannot guarantee that will never happen, I find it most helpful to reassure myself I will be okay even if I do lose them. Another option is to make a reassurance bank, where you can store and see evidence of his affection without asking it from him. Your mileage may vary. If you really struggle with this, there's always therapy.

Re: accidental infringing -- Be more mindful of what you send. Save things that are non-urgent to discuss later, when you have his attention anyway.

Re: deliberate infringing -- Stop it. It will only strain things and make the outcomes you don't want more likely. See self-soothing. Find something else to distract you that you can put energy into.

Re: "testing" him -- See above. I know, its easier said than done. Do the hard work. That shit can ruin your life.

Re: didn't adequately express importance -- Well, its a good thing we're about to talk about it anyway! Really think through how you can explain how badly it makes you feel. We'll get into that more when we discuss How To Have the Conversation

Re: list of demands -- Well, its a good thing we're going to talk about it anyway! This time, see it as a negotiation. Ask him if that's feasible, or if its too much. But open to trying alternate solutions.

Re: misplaced feelings -- Take the advice on How To Have a Conversation and apply it to the thing that's actually the problem.

Re: managing anxieties -- Again, you'll have to find a way to self-soothe somewhat. That's not to say your partner shouldn't meet you halfway, but you do have to do your half.

Re: forgetting other expressions of love -- Literally make a list of all the things he's done/is doing for you. As many as you can think of. Add to it often. Pick a couple and do a deep dive on why that mattered so much to you and how you felt. Tell him, too. You gotta be grateful consciously, bro. This applies to all of life

Re: anything else -- Take that into account. Work on that, too, however you can. Be honest with him about your shortcomings when you address it.

A lot of these will require upkeep on your part (kind of mirrors🪞how texting you back consistently requires upkeep on his, huh?). Be prepared to discuss the changing you're going to make and have an actionable plan for them. Okay, his turn, same as before:

Re: fair time allocation -- does he need to make more time for you? Do he need to make protected time that is only for you? You said you feel forgotten, replaced, so maybe this is part of it.

Re: unequal texting -- first, consider why. If he lives with you, he's probably going to have to text the other person in front of you sometimes. If you still think its too much, again, protected time for you may be appropriate, he may need to do a better job keeping his New Relationship Energy (NRE) in check. Be prepared to discuss this, possibly including him defending himself!

Re: not taking concerns seriously -- Well, its a good thing we're discussing this again! Make sure you have an actionable, measurable metric he can do to show you progress here. (IE ❌"I need you to care more" ❌ but ✅"When you're unable to respond, I need you to say that you're busy so I know you thought of my needs" ✅)

Re: bigger patterns -- You will have to tell him you're concerned about those too. If it could become untenable for you, this will probably be a recurring discussion. Consider scheduling check-ins where you say one thing you think is going well and one thing you're worried about, for example.

Re: unkept promises -- here, you are super justified in being mad. Try not to be anyway. Try to be curious and interested in addressing the root problem. Ask him what got in his way, what middle ground he's confident he can manage. It is you and him vs the problem, even here, not you vs him.

Re: inadequate room to discuss -- Set expectations before the talk, and remind him of them if he forgets. (IE "I know this isn't nice to hear, but I need you to let me say my piece and talk through solutions, even if it takes awhile." and "I said I needed to talk through the solution. This sounds nice, but I'm concerned about X. How can we make sure that doesn't happen?") Consider reserving specific time to discuss it, consider reserving recurring time to discuss any problem, if you need it.

Re: didn't set expectations appropriately -- ask. Ask what this would ideally look like to him. If he's having trouble getting started, point out some differences you've already noticed, and ask if he thinks those are the new norm.

Re: didn't respond to something critical -- Establish a way he can see what is critical and what isn't. This might be texting something that can wait, but calling for something important, for example.

Re: anything else -- address that too. Give him a chance to explain himself. etc.

Okay, you've done everything up to this point alone. You're prepped. Now How Do You Have The Conversation?

For this type of stuff, I recommend the WIBS format. That is, "When [something happens], I feel [feelings] Because [explanation] So could you please [change]". But of course, it can't be that simple either. Critically you CANNOT say "you" before the "so could you please". The example I'm about to give is going to use the texting issue specifically, but if you've done the soul searching and found there's a bigger problem you want to address (which ngl, sounds like there might be something bigger based on what you sent), adjust accordingly! This is good general advice for any tough conversation. Anyway, here's what that might look like on the texting thing:

"When I am left on read, I feel anxious and betrayed, because I've had a lot of friendships completely fall apart, and that's always how it started. So could you please make a point to text me something when you read my message, even if its just 'lol' or you saying you want to discuss it later."

But wait a minute! That doesn't include any of the bullshit I just made you do. What the hell am I trying to pull? Okay okay, so we have to modify this a bit. Our new format is going to be something more like this: "When [something happens], I feel [feelings and impact], because [explanation]. I have tried [things you've tried], and I am still struggling because [reason why that hasn't helped, including what you could do better]. So I was hoping to look at some more solutions, like, would you be willing to try [change]." Which might in practice look something like

"When I am left on read, I feel so anxious and betrayed I start spiraling thinking the relationship is doomed, because I've had a lot of friendships completely fall apart, and that's always how it started. I have tried dropping some hints and self soothing, and I'm still struggling because this is a really bad anxiety that I didn't have to deal with before recently and even with the hints I'm not getting the response rate I would like. So I wanted to talk about it and see if you'd be willing to try making a point to text me something when you read my message, even if its just 'lol' or you saying you want to discuss it later."

And then! The discussion continues. Maybe he says "oh my god, yeah, I didn't realize it was bothering you that much, absolutely I can do that" and maybe he says "I'm with you all the time how is this still a problem?" or maybe its "actually, [other partner] gets really anxious when I text, which is why I don't respond unless its important. I figured I could talk to you about dinner plans any time" and whatever the case is, you keep talking until you've set on clear goalposts and have reassurance they feel okay to all parties. So in order, your responses might be something like "are you sure you can manage that? I was really worried by my hints not being picked up on that that was the reason", "I know its a problem. That's why I'm talking to you about it. If that's not a good solution to you, let's come up with something else, because the way things are is really hard on me," and "okay. I don't want to make [other partner] anxious either, but this isn't working for me, can we find something else to try?"

Allow him to explain, be prepared to explain more yourself, and be willing to try a variety of solutions. Acknowledge

Is this my longest post yet? Maybe! Wild. Let's top it off with something easier: The Hack Solutions🧑‍💻. Sometimes, anxiety isn't logical, and goofy workarounds can be super helpful! Here are some off the top of my head, but feel free to get creative, too! Not all of these may be feasible, not all of them may help. But a lot less work than some other solutions so worth mentioning!

You said being "left on read" is what bothers you. Can you just... turn off read receipts? Or switch to a messaging app that doesn't have them? Can he just not read your texts until he has the time to respond?

A lot of phones have a driving mode, that will send an automated reply to texts. Can he turn that on when he's with his other partner so you get a reply like "hey I'm busy rn, but I'll text back later!" and would that help?

If you just want to feel more involved, maybe it would help if he just like, took a picture of his pizza to send to you. Reminds you you're thought of, doesn't require conversation.

Something that I've done with friends is write like, a dozen short affirmations/reassurances, and have them keep them in a special spot. When they need to feel loved, they can take one out to read. This has worked PHENOMENALLY for them, and still protects your partner's time away while allowing you to get love direct from your partner WHENEVER you want.

Can he just kick it with you both concurrently?

Can you have a friendship with your meta where you text THEM like "tell [bf] to text me back real quick" and then your bf doesn't feel bad about texting in front of the other partner because they're telling him to do it?

Classically condition yourself. Like, every time he leaves you on read, eat a chocolate. And then sometimes instead of it being "boyfriend won't text me :(((" it'll be "oooo! candy time!"

ai yai yai! That's all I have, though! Come back if you need help working through some specifics. I'm very happy to help however I can. Its not your fault you're struggling with this. Most polyam relationships have to deal with this to some extent, but with a little effort, you can make it through. Best of luck to you, friend. 💙💖🖤

[supercriminalbean]

Sneaking around.

Derek Morgan x GN!Reader.

Summary: Derek and Reader start a relationship but keep it secret because their Dad is David Rossi.

Warnings: Kissing, swearing, drinking, (I think thats it, let me know if ive missed anything)

Words: 2.4k

Derek knew dating you would have its risks, but he didn’t really care. How could he because whenever he looked in your eyes he felt at home and that his world is perfect and

full of love. He met you one night at a family night hosted by David Rossi. Dave decided it was time to introduce his team to his kid, one he had kept hidden from most of the team, knowing it was safer to keep his family hidden away from the spotlight.

Morgan was given a stern warning from Rossi just minutes before you were introduced, of course Morgan promised to stay away from you, knowing the reputation he has. But the moment his eyes set on you, he regrets making that promise because he has never seen someone as gorgeous as you. The way your smile just brightens up the whole room, the way your laugh is the most addicting sound he has ever heard, he wishes he could hear it every single day. That night is filled with the team getting to know you, you don’t know how but you find yourself being drawn towards Derek Morgan. Your dad had warned you to stay away from that man, according to him he's a good man but Derek Morgan can be a bit of a player. You can’t help but laugh at your dad’s warning, you're not after a relationship, especially someone on your dads team, plus you're a little bit of a player yourself.

That night is full of talking and getting to know your Dads team, so you know who has back when he's in the field. Somehow that night ends with you being invited to a Doctor Who marathon with Penelope and Reid the following week and the next day you're going to go and help Derek Morgan pick out some window frames for his house he’s renovating. 

~~~

You met Derek nine months ago, and you two started dating six months ago. You both decided to keep it to yourselves for now, none of you wanting to tell your Dad about it. You both hang out and go on dates on the low, having to make sure you're not ringing him when he’s near your Dad at all. You enjoy being secretive with him, enjoying the private moments with him. It becomes hard at the dinners your Dad hosts, doing your best to keep your distance from him, not being allowed to hold his hand or lean into his side, it sucks. Especially tonight, tonight is your six month anniversary and somehow your Dad decided to do another pasta night and it would look suspicious if you both ditched tonight. So here you are, standing in the middle of the living room, talking and laughing with Aaron and Penelope. Glancing outside to where your other half is, he’s sitting down on the outside table with Jack and Henry, helping them with some sort of project, and your heart can’t help but melt at how good he is with kids as you finish your glass of wine.

“Ciao ragazzino, can you get some more wine from the cellar for me” Dave calls out, walking out of the kitchen, his eyes landing on you. Looking over at your dad you send him a quick smile, wiping your mind off your boyfriend.

“Sure thing Dad” Smiling you quickly make your way downstairs to the wine cellar. You take your time grabbing the bottles, enjoying the quiet.

“Need some help?” His loud voice makes you jump.

“Jesus hell Derek” Huffing feeling annoyed as you turn around to look at him. Spotting him leaning against the doorway, his arms crossed with the biggest cocky smile on his face.

“You need to be less jumpy cupcake” Derek chuckles as he walks over to you, his eyes sliding over your body before landing on types pretty eyes of yours. 

“Hard to do when you sneak up on me” You grumble softly as you let him pull you into his arms, resting your head in his chest.

“I missed you” He whispers softly as he kisses your forehead, resting his head onto yours. “I haven’t seen you all week and I wasn’t even able to hug when I finally saw you today”

“I know baby, but you know why I can’t tell my dad yet” Biting back a sigh as you could just imagine your Dads lecture if he found out. 

“I get it pumpkin, but I still don’t like it” He slowly pulls away, his arms resting around your waist.

“Maybe next week we can tell, maybe it's time” You smile lightly as you look up at him, meeting his kind and loving eyes.

“Good, because then I can hug you whenever I want” he chuckles before kissing you smoothly.

“What a flirt Derek” You can’t help but laugh when pulling away. 

“Come on, you better get back before they wonder what you're up to” Derek chuckles, passing you the bottles of wine before following you out. 

~~~

You make your way back to the living room, via the kitchen leaving a bottle of wine for Dave, bringing the rest back with you, topping up your own glass. When you enter the living room you're glad to see Derek is already there and talking away with Reid and Garcia. You stand by yourself for a while, you can’t help but stare at Derek, the way he is with his friends always warms your heart, the way he is just always himself makes your heart flutter. 

“I thought you may have gotten lost down there” Aaron smirks to himself as he comes to stand beside you unnoticed, your eyes too occupied with something else across the room.

“Oh I just couldn’t find the right wine he wanted” You lie quickly, without a glance at Aaron, knowing if you did he would easily read straight through you. Your uncle has alway been the best at reading your lies especially when it comes to your love life.

“Huh, I thought your Dad kept them in alphabetical order” Aaron smirks more when you finally look at him, your face heating up under his stare.

“He does, but I don’t like reading wine bottles”

“Oh right, well I think Dave wanted to come and check on you. Luckily I managed to distract him, isn't it?” Aaron's grin widens just slightly as your eyes narrow.

“Are you implying something here, Aaron” You have to hold back a smile as you stare him down.

‘Only that it's been over six months now that you have complained about anyone while babysitting Jack for me” He looks so cocky when you don’t respond right away.

“Well, cockneys doesn’t suit you Uncle Aaron” Groaning softly as you sip on your wine. 

“Oh come on, you can’t hide from me” Aaron laughs softly, his eyes lingering on you. He can’t help but appreciate the look in your eyes as they turn back to Morgan, the same look Morgan had on his face every single time he’s texting away on his phone.

“You two should just tell Dave already, If i have figured it out, it won’t take him long” 

“Yeah but he told us to stay away from each other when we first meet” You grumble before looking up at Aaron for advice.

“Yes, but this was before you two look at each other like no one else exists, just tell him, he’ll understand” Aaron smiles, but smirking over at Derek then back at you. “But maybe warn Mogan, that if he hurts you it's not just Dave he needs to worry about” Aaron sips on his wine before glances down at you, where you're rolling your eyes.

“Yeah yeah Aaron” Rolling your eyes before smiling. “He could take you both anyway”

~~~

As the night goes on, it's filled with laughter and drinks, once dinner has finished everyone is seated on the couch. You're not sure how much alcohol you have consumed tonight, you stopped counting after glass number four and Garcia brought out tequila. Aaron and JJ have left already, claiming they have to get back to their kids, leaving Dave on ‘Dad’ duty. The team starts playing truth or dare, excluding Dave who has headed off to bed already, making sure that everyone knows where to sleep for the night.

A takes a few rounds and some shots for the game to get interesting, Spencer was staying sober and laughing at his overly loud drunk friends. 

“Okay okay, (Y/n) your turn” Penelope exclaims, putting her glass down, grinning at you “Truth or dare” 

“Hit me hard Pens, dare” Laughing as you lean into the couch, all four of you are sitting on the floor, while Spencer watches from the couch.

“Ohh okay Ems, help me think” Penelope whines leaning into the women, who smirks evilly at you.

‘Oh no no, you love evil” Smirking back at her, never one to back down from a challenge.

“I dare you to kiss the hottest person in the room” Emily sniggers as you glare at her.

“If you just want me to kiss you Emily all you gotta do is ask” Your laugh turns into a groan, as her smirk widens.

“Oh we all know it's not me you were staring at all night” Emily teases back while Penelope giggles while throwing some ‘Ohhhhhs’ at you. You glance over at Derek who is smirking widely at you before wiggling his eyebrows making you laugh. Pulling yourself up on to your knees, you crawl carefully over towards him.

“Well hi” His smirk is adorable as he cups your face.

“You're annoyingly cute” Giggling softly as you press your lips against him firmly, almost losing yourself as he starts kissing back, his arm wrapping around you pulling you into his lap. Cheers erupt around the room, forcing you two to finally pull away, snuggling down in between his legs as you all look around the room laughing with them.

~~~

“So this is who you're dating then” Penelope grins at him.

“Wait you two are dating, like officially” Emily mouth falls open as she gawks at them.

“How the hell did you figure that out Babygirl?” Derek groans softly, wrapping his arms around you, resting his head on your shoulder. 

“Oh come on” Garcia scoffs before smirking. “It wasn’t hard, you’ve been smiling at that phone of yours to much lately and also you haven’t spoken about anyone else but (Y/n) since you meet them”

“Aww you like me” Laughing sweetly as you lean into him.

“No I love you, dummy” He rolls his eyes as he laughs pressing a kiss against your neck.

“Aww you love me”

“Okay that's cute, but sickening” Emily fakes gags before smiling.

“So does Dave know?” Reid asks.

“No, no one knows about us,” Morgan answered.

“Well, not no one, Aaron figured it out tonight” Groaning softly, as you tell Derek.

“Oh great, my boss knows” Morgan huffs out a laugh as he leans backwards.

“He also threatens you with bodily harm if you hurt me” A soft chuckle slips through your lips as your eyes start closing, the alcohol making you sleepy.

“Oh, an overprotective uncle and Dad, goodluck Morgan '' Emily laughs as his face drops.

“Funny Prentiss” He pokes his tongue out at her, before slowly standing up pulling you with him. “We are going to bed,” Morgan informs them, his arm wrapping around your waist.

“Penelope beat you to it” Spencer smirks, as he grabs a blanket. You three all turn around to spot an asleep Penelope, cuddled into Emily's side.

“Guess I’m sleeping here tonight then” Emily laughs, taking the blanket from Spencer, snuggling down for the night. 

~~~

Dave wakes up to a quiet house, walking out he spots Emily and Penelope cuddled up on the couch, a blanket spread over them and an empty bottle of tequila on the coffee table. Dave chuckles softly as he leaves them before, walking past the guest room where he figures Spencer and Morgan are before heading to your room. He opens the door slowly, hearing low voices coming through, he guesses your awake. He peaks in quietly and he wishes he never did.

“What the fuck” He exclaims, his eyes almosting falling out of his head with how wide they are. He wasn’t wrong, you are awake and currently laid on top of Morgan, pressing your lips against him. Both you and Derek’shead shoot towards the door with fear, your heart pounding away. 

“Ever heard of knocking” You gulp thickly as you stare at your Dad, rolling off of Derek quickly, thankful you both were still fully dressed. 

“Downstairs, five minutes” Dave glares at Derek before walking out, the door closing with a slam.

“Well that went well” Derek groans as he sits up, meeting your amused look.

“Hey at least we had clothes on” Laughing softly as you hug him, kissing him gently. “You ready?”

“Don’t have a choice, do I cupcake?” He smirks lightly, standing up.

~~~

You both make your way down stairs, hand in hand. Making your way to the patio where you can see your Dad is. You both take a seat opposite him, taking a deep breath.

“So how long has this been going on” Dave sighs, looking up at you both.

“Six months” Derek informs him, a small smile on his face.

“Six months” Dave huffs, holding back a smile of his own before glaring at Derek. “I told you to stay away from them”

“I know, and I tried but I can’t resist them Dave, they're different and this isn't just some fling for me I promise” Derek smiles just a little more as he speaks, his hand squeezing yours.

“Better not be”

“It's not, I love them” Derek smiles, glancing over at you, always loving the way your face lights up when he says it.

“And Dad, I love him too” You smile back at Derek, his growing even more.

“Okay okay I’ve heard enough” Dave smiles, shaking his head. “Well Derek you know if you hurt them, I know how to kill you and make sure no one ever finds your body” 

“Dad you don’t need to threaten him, Aaron already did that” Laughing quietly as you inform your Dad, his face dropping.

“Aaron knows? Excuse me, I need to make a phone call” Dave grumbles as he stands up walking past you two. “Oh yeah welcome to the family Derek” Dave Pats his shoulder before walking out.

[wilsons-three-legged-siamese]

another fic of mine woah 😩

fandom; house md

can be interpreted as non slah or slah between house/wilson

summery; wilson is dying, being taken care of a person. but wilson cant remember who they are.

word count; 1.3k

tw; major character death.

a/n: i dont have ao3 so it shall not be put up on there. if it is notify me, ill say if i have given permission as if someone asks i probably will say yes.

this was based on the song "rises the moon - liana flores"

rises the moon.

days seem sometimes as if they'll never end.

its august. the 20th if we're being exact. coming to the close of summer and the opening of autumn, usually being my favourite time of the year. cozy sweaters, warm socks and scarfs, the perfect weather. usually sunny with a nice breeze. well, i wish i could enjoy it. instead, im stuck in bed, my breathing laboured and my body shaking. though, this year, summer was my favourite.. june. i really enjoyed that, when i could walk without aid and just, enjoy life. ever since mid july, ive been deteriorating quicker than an abandoned building, which has been agonising. i want the pain to go away, please. it hurts..

but i dont want to die.

from the bedroom, i hear the singing voice again, a soothing melody. their voice smooth and deep. i sigh softly, it being a sort of comfort for me, knowing at least someone was there and i wasn't alone. their humming and muffled singing drowns out the continuous beeping of the heart monitor besides me. they had stolen the machine after faking being ill in a walk-in clinic, once the doctor had done to complain to the dean about them being an ass, they smuggled the monitor and brought it back. the good ol' days hm? that day was probably the most ive complained and laughed for a long, long time.

a mass than sat on the bed, the weight shifting slightly on the mattress. i ket out an involuntary groan, my back being slightly unsupported.

"hey, i made some broth for you.. its 1, and i think you should at least try and drink it for me," they murmured.

the bowl, of what i assume was broth, was set down on the small table besides me. soon enough, long, lanky arms were wrapped around my middle, gently pulling me up to sit up. wait.. what time did they say again.. 1 was it? only.. 1?

the sun digs its heels to taunt you.

the rim of the bowl was scarcely pressed to my lips, the bowl being slightly hot. i signal them to tip it a little so i can take a sip. and so i do. and holy shit..

thats fucking amazing.

the warm, soupy liquid runs down my throat, a sort of feeling i dont get that often, especially being warm. the way he flavours mix together is phenomenal, the spices and the subtle beef. its flavourful, but not enough to freak my taste buds out, which happens all too often now.

"is it okay?" they ask, their voice soft and gentle.

i hum with a slight nod.

but after sunlit days, one thing stays the same:

rises the moon.

days fade into a watercolour blur.

its been.. maybe a week? my sense of time is so off, it could be a week for a few days.. lets say its been a few days - to make me feel better. im now slipping in and out of consciousness, which is concerning in itself. i dont know how long im out for at a time. theyve been becoming more and more worried about me. i mean, there was always an elephant in the room, hell even when i was first diagnosed. but, the elephant has been growing larger and larger than before, making it hard to ignore. we have to adress it sometime.

but its hard to breathe.

then im awoken by a coughing fit.

it shakes my whole body, racking everything as i shut my eyes tight, desperately trying not to wake them up behind me. but, of course they woke up, they always do. i tried to savour the two, lanky but muscular arms around my abdomen, as they were warm and comforting, but soon, all i could feel was pain.

"are you okay?" they ask, their voice still a bit groggy from sleep.

i hum, my voice still hoarse even though i barely made a sound.

this just reminds me of them, i swear something to do with an infarction to the leg. but i cant quite remember.. or remember them.. their face is slightly recognisable, but not by a lot at all. my memorys been wracked up.. pisses me off, i wanna know whos caring for me. i wanna thank them, using their name, recogising their face.

memories swim up and haunt me.

"hmm.. mm!" i hum, trying to catch their attention.

they run over, quickly turning me on my side and holding the bucket to my mouth. i start to cry as i retch, vomiting harshly into the bucket, they rub my back gently, mumbling words of encouragement and reassurance softly to me. finally, i stop. glancing down at the small puddle of bile and saliva, i frown slightly.

look into the lake, shimmering like smoke.

i look into their eyes. my, coffee like brown into their, ocean like blue. scared and helpless meet concerned and determined. they run their skinny, pianist fingers through my frail hair. they always wanted to care for me, secretly.

rises the moon.

"close your weary eyes, i promise you that soon the autumn comes to darken faded summer skys." they pause for a moment. "breathe, breathe, breathe."

almost immediately after hearing that, i start to cry, just a full on breakdown. they quickly embrace me, wrapping their arms around my middle. i dig my face into theit shoulder, tears still rolling down my pastey cheeks. its nice.

oh to be hugged like this again.

days pull you down just like a sinking ship.

its been a day? maybe.. i dunno anymore. it might've been 2, 3, 4 a week, who knows - not me thats fot sure. it might be september now, i last remember it was august, that seems like yesterday. them, my carer, whatever, i dont know their name anymore. i dont know who they are, i cant see.. its all blurry and fuzzy, so is my memory. i cant remember the last time i ate..

floating is getting harder.

"im sorry.." they mumble, their voice snapping me out of my thoughts - though it was barely above a whisper.

their thin fingers run through my hair again, gently letting it fall between the gaps and repeating.

oh, i forgot to mention, i also cant speak.. or breathe for that matter. i think the tumor - or tumors more like - have begun to press against my trachea and esophagus, making his hard to both eat and breathe. wheezing has become a normal, daily routine.

considering my condition,

i have tonight,

and thats it.

because of my fate, i keep repeating a phrase i once said to a child as they went through chemo. they had no parents, i was the best thing they had..

but thread the water, child, and know that meanwhile: rises the moon.

days pull you up just like a daffodil.

its the next day, i think. its really hard to just think. the weezings gotten worse, i feel awful, like horrendous. its awful... maybe i am ready to die. i can just subtly feek them holding my fraile hand, stroking their thumb over my knuckles. only barely. im scared, terrified more like. i dont even know who they are, but im scared for them.. they'll miss me definitely. what will they do when im gone? i dont know..

uprooted from its garden.

once again, i feel consciousness slip from underneath me. which is normal, very. but this wasn't normal.. i could still hear.

"they'll tell you what you owe," they mumble. "but know even so, rises the moon."

i try to smile, a small twinge of my lips. but nothing happens. i try to tell them i love them, but again, nothing happens.

"you'll be visited by sleep. i promise that the autumn comes to steal away each dream you keep." they choke back a sob.

"breathe, breathe, breathe." houses voice sobs.

they're house.

but its too late to tell him i love him.

[simping4-2manyppl]

OKAY

so i ADORE your writing and i wanted to request something🤭

so

georg x reader

like that tom post but with GEORGGGGG ml🫶🏽

the "flowers" post

ykwim?????

I LOVE GEORG🤭🤭🤭🤭🤭🤭

thank you pookie love u🫶🏽

Georg Listing ✯

Hibiscus <3

AHH TYSM FOR THE REQUESTT, I LOVEEEE GEORG!! 🤭 ILYTT AND THANK YOU SO MUCH! I LOVE UR WRITING TOO! ITS AMAZING.

Warnings: fluff!! Georg being too cute 🤭

Georg x fem reader

“Are you sure?” You said, almost in shock. “Yes im sure” he said letting out a soft chuckle. “Then yes! Ill go!” You said basically jumping on him, giving georg one of the biggest hugs.

You met georg through your science class, and you both became inseparable since! He later introduced you to his other friends, Bill, tom, and gustav!

You found out he has a band and he plays with his friends. You started to develop a small crush on him after a while and you were super excited to see how this trip would go, since you would be able to spend even more time with him!

Almost everyone knew about your crush on georg but him, sometimes they would try to hint it at him but nothing worked as he would only say with a flushed face that you were nothing but friends.

Once you were there you put your things down on the sand and ran over to the water, walking in so the water only reaches your ankles.

You felt someone move next to you and you look to your left and smile seeing that it was just georg.

“Hi!” You said, with a bright smile on your face, “Hey ___, wanna go look around? I think i saw some really pretty hibiscus flowers over there.” He said, smiling back at you. “Ooo, yes!!” You said, following him.

It wasnt a far walk but you stayed pretty quiet, not knowing what to say to him.

He bent down and picked one of the flowers, allowing you to see all of the flowers that were all around.

He stood back up and pushed your hair aside, carefully placing one of them behind your ear, then smiling at you while you blushed.

“Thank you..” you said looking to the side to hide your flushed face. He chuckled and turned your face back, you made eye contact with him which left the both of you blushing.

He placed on hand on your cheek, carefully caressing it while the other was on your waist.

He leaned in and places his lips onto yours, leaving you in shock.

“FINALLY.” You heard, making you break the gentle kiss and back away.

Georg turned around and rolled his eyes, “We thought you guys were NEVER going to kiss.” Bill said, sighing in relief.

“About time you did, now you just need to ask her out georg!” You blushed and looked down as tom smirked.

“I was getting to that!” Georg said, a small tint of pink appearing on his cheeks.

“We will let yall be then!” They said walking away and laughing at the both of you.

“Were you really going to?” You said, fidgeting with your fingers nervously.

“I was.. sorry they ruined it ___.” He said frowning a bit. You smiled and put both of your hands on his cheeks, pulling him into a kiss.

When you pulled away, you both stared at each other blushing. “Will you be my girlfriend ___?” He said, biting his lip.

You nodded and kissed him again, “yes! I will!” You said squealing, giving him a peck on the lips and cheek.

“You have no idea on how long ive been waiting for you to ask me that georg.” You said giggling.

“And you have no idea on how long ive been waiting to ask you that.” He said, smiling.

You rested your forehead on his and smiled, pressing you lips onto his, this time, you wrapped your arms around his neck and deepened the kiss.

You wish you couldve stayed like that forever.

AHH SORRY IT WAS A BIT SHORT, I HOPED YOU LIKE THIS ONE 🫶🏼🫶🏼

[fanatic-r3d4ct3d]

I think you said before that in your lobotomy corp au Buck used to be human before becoming an entity (sorry if im remembering wrong). Would the incident that caused that perhaps happen to be related to a certain brainiac or was it entirely unrelated? Either way it'd be cool to know what happened!

YOU DID REMEMBER THAT RIGHT DW!!!. he did used to be a human!! He worked in the records department along with Brian actually! Now did it involve a certain brainiac! Mostly! more so a indirect reasoning but it still SURE DID INVOLVE HIM. Lobotomy Corp features specific abnormalities that aren't like others. being items. the items typically benefit the facility and can be used for a lot of things and most importantly cannot breach. Abnormality buck works in a bit of an odd way due to his creation. He's not a human anymore and he's not fully an abnormality. He is an item abnormality infused onto a human host. The item in question being a slot machine [very creative i know] that as employees would give different benefits or cause a bust and give debuffs. The more times used in the day the higher the rewards get but the higher the debuffs get. (Breaching abnormalities, causing ordeals(another in game mechanic) causing agents to loose all their sanity points and what not.) with that little blurb written. Brian and Buck both worked in the records department. Now at least in my own little Hc, Brian doesn't exactly like noise when working and typically gets really focused on what hes doing. Buck has his own ways of working that lets him get things done but not so quietly. the two argue a lot with brian being annoyed and with buck being pretty just chill about it and finding it more so funny then anything else. Eventually Brian suggests he go work with an abnormality O-09-777, an item referred to as Everything Slots. (abnormalities all have a number and a name, most of the ones ive showed so far I've made names for! i should make a master list at some point ) Buck takes him up on the offer and goes and works with the machine. Now working with the machine he hit a lucky streak. It kept paying him out well, Performance upgrades, More energy for the facility(What the company is trying to get from the abnormalities) different gear department wide boosts. HE REALLY didnt pay attention to how much he had been pulling that lever and before he knew it the machine sealed his fate with a bust. Rather then breaching other abnormalities or caused a facility wide meltdown. It took Buck as a human host making him part of the machine. AKA! giving him his iconic slots for eyes visor and slowly turning other parts of him robotic. He sometimes will leak oil. Now the facility didnt lock him up on sight seeing he remained........Most.... of his humanity...minus the sanity point downgrade and how quickly he seems to go insane. They let him resume his records department work with the only requirement of someone has to be watching him at all times. that someone being Brian due to the fact he was the one who suggested he go to the slot machine in the first place. Brian got a lot more rude towards Buck after the incident and mostly everyone else...though in reality he feels really guilty over the whole thing and he's angry at the fact that Buck is just...oddly ok with the fact he's partly an abnormality now. he really wishes he could go back and never have made the suggestion. and buck was then sense known as O-09-1-777. Everything slots. though he gets very annoyed when he's called such, preferring his name.

(take the oldd doodles of the lad. he has no really proper ref minus just me doodlin....if its not here then im still adding it via my phone i typed this >_<)

[sethdomain]

want my shipping takes that ill still probably get hanged for??? here we go. theyre basically all "everyone chill out" ...it seems like most people are just submitting ships theyd get cancelled for, not takes on shipping. ill do that after in case i completely misread what you were asking for

if ccbeeduo didnt want to get shipped they shouldnt have made their characters get married and have a son and fall in love. natural byproduct, really shouldve expected it. i still think ppl should have chilled fr but like, they both had plenty of examples of what fans were like, they shouldve taken that into account before making those character decisions.

cdapduo discourse was absolutely batshit insane and everyone who posted with a banner saying either "slime is quackity's son and if you ship them you're weird DNI" OR "they keep flirting, if you call slime quackity's son you're weird DNI" pissed me off. how about no one's weird because actually its a roleplay with lots of different perspectives and you can do whatever you want forever . obvs i understood people who were like "i believe this thing, dont fucking yell at me for it" but it sucks that people had to make banners for that fr.

in the same vein, the discourse with emeraldduo. though that one i dont/didnt see as much, i did still see those same banners. even as a family sbi fan, i never saw someone shipping emduo and thought "yeah let me go yell at them and tell them not to interact with me because i personally think theyre family-coded." the devotion is ambiguous but powerful.

Heat Waves was the funniest fic ive ever read because idgaf about either of those guys so it was just like 20 chapters of some guy crying and jacking off and then getting rejected.

i think rarepairs are based as fuck and mischaracterizing guys to fit your ship is fine do whatever you want forever!!!!!!!! people complained to hell and back about fanfics tagging characters and ships and them being ooc . WHO GIVE A FUCK THEY WROTE THAT SHIT FOR FREEEEEEEEE!!!!!! ALSO MANGOBALL'S MONSTER/CHEATER CHEATER WAS A MASTERPIECE

karlnapity was not perfect polyamory i see people glossing over the fact that when they first talked about polyamory quackity started attacking and biting when karl and sapnap kissed and thats fucking FUNNY i want to see more of THAT.

sorry for writing so much i have a lot of opinions

JESUS ANON, honestly idgaf bro i take any spicy opinion as long as its not going straight to 'i love pedophilia/incest' territory that my only rule man

For beeduo, idk if u mean the cc ship or the c ship cause honest to god i was a huge inniter back then and dont follow their stuff closelt that much, but im just gonna assume u mean the rpf cc shipping. Honestly, I don't really agree with ur take, its a bit victim blamey, both ranboo and tubbo were like young and in their naivety expect their fans to uphold their boundary to just not ship them in a rpf way and i think you should've respected their wishes man. You sometimes gotta be reminded that dsmp was just them guys having fun and if they want to rp as a husband then whatev man :p

I agree bruh, i think people were just sscared of a little doomed faggot in action

phil and techno doesn't even act like father/son in the dsmp canon anyway, they act like old bestie

imma be fr idgaf abt heatwaves but that sound awesome

sometime the back of my mind say that, but the evil demon that wants everything to be perfect take over anon.. its hard... I need to get mad at people...

no cucking is allowed in karlnapity... #lame

[strangefellows]

I’ve been shouting about it on Twitter for the past two days, so I’m going to put it here too:

CANTO IV PART 3 SPOILERS! Or, why the Yi Sang and Ayin parallels in this chapter got me extremely fucked up.

Like. Dear sweet absolute FUCK, I was getting the parallels already from the basics and the fact that both Fourth Match Flame Yi Sang (the outfit) and Spicebush Yi Sang (the eyes) make him look incredibly similar to Ayin, more than he already does with the exhaustion and similar dark hair. But then the dungeon came out and hit me like a warp train.

Like. Okay. There’s a lab. A group of people with like minds that came together to better the city and make people happy, even if it’s just in small ways, under the leadership of someone they all looked up to. Little by little, it begins to crack and crumble apart...and then it is betrayed, raided by City officials. Some people die. Some kill themselves. Some give up and let themselves be caught. Some flee. Some fight back tooth and nail til the very end. But in the end, two people are left alive...one of them completely, utterly broken; the one who had always had trouble expressing themselves and their feelings towards others, but who cared deeply for them.

That broken person ends up in a room, trapped there by their own misery, working on their project, their dream, given in part to them by the person they looked up to-- to the point they’re wasting away little by little, drowning in despair and depression, wishing for the people they loved and the place they felt they belonged. There is a person, the other survivor, who had only ever been there for their sake in the first place, that wants to keep them there forever. There is their other self, who at turns seems to want to help them and seems to want to take advantage of their pain.

Who am I talking about?

Then there is the script-- the scripts Yi Sang left for the others to read, to play out what happened.

Then there is the fact that the dungeon backgrounds are an exaggerated, overlarge tableau of the lab-office in Yi Sang’s memories, similar in no small part to the Keter Suppression’s office background -- and how that white room looks very similar to the white room of the final day in Lobcorp.

Then there is the finale of the fight with Dongrang (who spoke to Carmen by name and whose mechanic, though this is reaching, involves seeds) -- where he has one final conversation with that other self, who encourages him and comforts him and who guides him to the beautiful finale of self-realization: wings made of shimmering light. This reminded me so much of Day 50 in Lobcorp that I almost cried just thinking about it again today.

Then there is the last little bit, that final narration, the last letter from Yi Sang, where he says of the Sinners, paraphrased “I would like to consider them my friends, even if I don’t know how they feel about me”. Maybe a bit of a reach, again, but I feel as if it mirrors how Ayin feels about the Sephirah, though it might be conjecture here.

I’d even venture to point out how this whole canto has Yi Sang’s narration take forefront even over Dante’s in some places, similar to Ayin narrating his own flashbacks. 

There’s just so much there that it’s impossible not to notice after a point. I really appreciate all of it among the insane lore drops about the City and the wonderful character development of the other Sinners beyond Yi Sang, who the chapter stands on its own for without thinking about the parallels and who is now firmly one of my favorite characters in the game. 

(Not to mention the hints about Dante, which considering all of this just solidifies my theory that they’re Ayin, but that’s a whole other post.)

Nonetheless, whether or not my theory is true, this is so good, and what I feel like is just the start of them giving Ayin’s character more room to breathe and context for Lobcorp he never got before.

[four-bastard-bustle]

You know I've always wondered how your interpretation of Matt would've reacted to being punched in the face by Tord in the end part one. Like, he seems the kind of guy who would either go whimper and hide behind Edd like a puppy or would punch back.

Ok so like see this is where you unleashed the floodgates because ive thought abt this scene for ages because its such a peak example of ew(legacy) failing the serious/emotional moments. Making this piece of violence work in a sea of violence is no small undertaking, but I think what it really comes down to is the difference in context between the guys slapping each other around for shits n giggles with no real malice, and the outright fury expressed by Tord in that scene in the episode. If that had been emphasised more, it couldve been peak I think.

This is kind of a lot so its going under the cut

But like, my version of Matt specifically. I mentioned in a couple posts that he was abused pretty heavily as a kid and was occasionally even hit by his father. So having someone suddenly express clear fury over him for doing whatever he was doing and punch him brings back a massive flood of terrible memories. Usually, when one of the other guys hits him, Matt starts whining and complaining. He’s the type to talk and yell a lot when he gets mad. But the sudden fear he feels makes him completely clam up. This is further compounded by the fact that Tord (and by extension Red Leader) goes nonverbal when furious.

Matt lies there on the cold floor. In his mind he sees all the times his father has held him down and “lectured” him for “inappropriate behaviour”. Sometimes he’d even hold his son down by the neck and start squeezing. Strong hands grab his collar and he can feel the air being choked out of him. Matt is surprised that he’s being liften up instead of pushed down for once.

His mind reeling, he can’t tell if the face staring at him in a blind fury is his father’s or “Tord”’s. They’re blending together. They look so terrifyingly similar.

The monster raises its fist but something stops it. A hand clad in green is holding the monster back. There’s talking. Matt wishes he could hear any words. Everything is just ringing for him.

Edd for his part is very much overwhelmed with this situation. As much as he cares for his friends, he is TERRIBLE with conflict resolution. So far, he’s been lucky enough to never need it, but also so far any scraps the boys have gotten into were just petty arguments. This is very different.

Edd starts by just telling “Tord” to let Matt go, at which his grip tightens. He really doesn’t want to add to this by getting physical too, so he just repeats the command, but a little more gently. The fist Edd is holding back shakes a little, but finally “Tord” lets Matt go.

The sound of heavy breathing is filling the room, and no one is able to look one another in the eyes. But after a bit, Red Leader finally collects himself enough to express one clear command.

“Get out of my room.”

Matt doesn’t need to be told twice, and though he’s on shaky legs, he hurries out. Edd gives Tord one more glance before leaving as well. But not without first telling Tord that the two of them are going to talk about this later, when he’s calmed down.

After that, he brings an ice pack to Matt’s attic. The cold helps with the swelling and with Matt’s ongoing panic attack.

But really, Edd is feeling just about every negative emotion right now. He hates how he froze up in shock for a second when Matt got punched instead of immediately helping him up. He wonders why the hell “Tord” felt this protective over a stupid ass button. He hates seeing one of his friends lose himself in a fury this way. He hates seeing another one of his friends have a full on panic attack. He hates that this is kind of the best he can do right now. And he wonders, just what the hell is going on with “Tord” and his secret room.

I want the scene to be so deeply painfully awkward. I want there to be no way Red could laugh it off, or change the topic. I want the three of them to stew in negative emotions like its an awful soup.

Also, the ice cream line. Part of me gets so pissed off by it because Matt literally said he hated ice cream in H&F. But also, as a scene where like, Matt gets too scared to mention that so he just meekly agrees. That’s really good. And I think(?) that’s what the scene was actually intended to be? But they should’ve expressed this better, maybe have a bit in the store where Matt mumbles to himself “But I hate ice cream” as he puts it in the shopping cart. That would definitely be a part of it all in my version of it.

And most importantly no “who’s my brave little soldier” because fuck that line. Infantalize my man like that again and I’ll smite thee.

Uh I mentioned doing my own hc au version of th* *nd and not making it as melodramatic, so I don’t think this would happen in my version of the entire episode. But this is just my version of the Scene. Very different things

[grippingbeskar]

chapter twenty three - selfish

frank castle x fem! reader

warnings: canon typical violence, graphic description of injuries and general gross stuff, needles?, bobby bein a bit of. a creep again ugh.

a/n: there is so much happening in this chapter. please god make it make sense.

[series masterlist] [previous chapter]

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

“Wake up.” A hand slaps you across the face, and you squint as your eyes manage to open. “There you go.”

You were still here. It had to of been… hours now. That’s what it feels like. Really, it feels like you’d never left. Everything’s the same, and you feel just as small. Just as alone as you always did. Except for him, leaning over you, observing your every movement. You tried to open your mouth, but your jaw was so stiff it felt wired shut.

“I’ve got a lot more work to get done before you leave me again. You with me now?” He says, grimy hands dragging along the inside of your wrist. It’s only as you look down, feeling the urge to tear that hand from his arm, that you see the IV stuck in your vein. Blood. He was taking your blood. He turns his attention back to a small screen. “Such a beautiful signal you get here. See this? Your father would love to see these numbers.”

“Shut your… fucking…” Exhaustion burns through you, eating at every nerve and cell, screaming at you to drift off into that dark bliss. If you closed your eyes, you could see him. Maybe he’d show up on the water bed again. You don’t know why that memory, of all the ones you had, came to you, but you’d cling to it anyways.

“Shh. Save your energy. Can’t have you dying on me.” He pours something down your throat, and you cough and splutter for a few minutes before anything goes down. You hate that it helps. It’s water. You want to throw it up out of spite, but your body hauls it in before you get the chance.

He’s no longer wearing the gas mask, and the air tastes clean apart from the metallic tang of blood still settled in your mouth. Your feet were bare, and the floor underneath was ice cold. You tried to lift them up, but the metal cuffs around your ankles didn’t let you.

“Never worked for three years, yet you still try it every time. You think I would ever let you go now? Over something as silly as reinforced cuffs?” Bobby hums, pressing his hand into the needle under your skin as his touch grazes over it. You wince, yanking away as much as you can. “I’ve had a lot of time to practise. To perfect keeping someone like you in containment. Keep you hidden.”

“What are you…talking about?” You manage with the water now settling in your stomach. Keep you hidden. How could you ever be more isolated than you were here?

“You may have been my first— and a special one at that, but you were not the first.” He takes the needle out of your skin with faux sensitivity. Like he almost cares if it cuts you now. “It’s a changing world out there. Super Soldiers, Gods raining from the sky… money can buy most things, but it hasn’t been able to buy me enough strength. Until now.”

He stands, walking around and grabbing the back of your chair. He drags you to the left, where you can see down the hallway. The door to the stairs you climbed down was wide open now, and a man was standing at the end of the hall.

“You see, I was investing in the wrong things. Training, guns… you name it. Until your father showed me the error of my ways. Science is where the real strength is.” Bobby crouches behind you, his hands holding your shoulders too tightly. “Of course, it’s been harder to master since your father passed. I haven’t been able to make the change permanent as he did— but I believe Ive found a way to increase its potency. Did you study much science with your father?”

The memory of him makes you want to cry. You wish you just had more time with him— you were going to fade away here and all his memory would go with you. You never even got the chance to tell Sam about him—

“Answer me.” He shoves your head forward, pain shooting up the back of your neck. You grit out a ‘no’ and he sighs. “No matter. Your father perfected the formula for your cell chemicals to shift and heal over. Only, the replenishment of those chemicals in other bodies is a little harder to grasp. Making it specifically for your DNA, and as much as I would love to have a million versions of you to play with, I need it to work for everyone.”

He brings over a bag of your blood, and clicks his fingers. The man at the end of the hallway moves toward you, standing at the entrance of the cell.

“Now, if my theory is correct…” He hooks up the IV again, but instead of attaching a new bag to your arm, he leaves it attached to your blood bag, and then stabs the man in front of you right in the divot of his elbow with the needle. “Even though we want to heal bones and organs, the most important part is the platelets and plasma. Tell me, sunshine, where is it that you find those?”

“Blood.” You spit, feeling some of your own drip down your chin.

“Good. Very good.” You both watch as the blood starts to disappear from the bag, going straight into the man’s veins. “This isn’t so bad, is it? Almost easy, I would say. You just have to listen, and do as your told.”

You recognise him— one of the men who used to stand outside your cell on days you needed to be guarded. Never speaking to you. Kicking your food through the gap in the wall. He looks almost asleep, and you think he might be under the effect of that gas from before— eyes half lidded and his knees weak.

“So, giving someone the proteins from your enhanced blood, theoretically, of course, should aid in the enhanced healing. Mix that with the incredible red and white blood cell counts you show, and you can create a virtually unstoppable force. For however long the shot of blood stays in his system. I had some stored from our previous years, but I have a feeling it’s effects will be more… productive, with a fresh supply.” The bag is half empty when he rips the IV out. The man doesn’t flinch, but now his eyes are wide and his knuckles white with how hard he’s fisting them at his sides. It’s almost like he’s hyped up on adrenaline, pupils dilated and staring at you. He takes a step forward, and you think Bobby is going to let him beat you to death. Instead, he pulls out a gun and shoves it into the man’s direction.

“Take this.” He says, and he does it immediately. “You see, the fresher the protein, the faster the recovery time. The guys downstairs, they have your blood in their system, and boy— does it make them pack a punch. But, their system doesn’t regenerate as easily. Some of that blood is months old—years. They die easier. Today, we’re going to see if your dear old dad was onto something. Getting blood straight from the source. It’s why I need you around. Might even let you test one out yourself like old times… but enough talk; back to our test.”

Bobby stands, walking around from behind you and controls the man’s movements, positioning him however he pleases. The man is obedient, moving without resistance, his eyes stilling on yours.

“Shoot yourself in the head.” He commands, and then the man clicks the safety off the gun and pulls the trigger.

You don’t make a sound, but you feel the hot splash of his blood across your face and arms, and then the dead weight of his body as he falls forward into your lap. A tear falls down your cheek, not in sympathy, but just pure shock.

You do scream now, because the man who’s brains paint the wall behind you stands up, pushing himself off you with ease. He sways slightly, like he’s drunk, and then blinks a couple times before returning to normal. He’s not hazed anymore— and even though his blood was still dripping down your face, still hot… he turns his head to Bobby, and the bullet wound is completely healed. Gasping for air, your head spins to Bobby, who was grinning.

“What the fuck have you done?!”

“I made him perfect! Like you!” He takes the gun from the man’s hands, who was still staring at you. “It worked even faster than I thought. Fresh is better, as they say.”

He hooks you up to another IV before you’ve come back to yourself, not even feeling the prick of the needle as the clear tube near your head turns a dark red. He was taking more…

“You—“ He snaps to the swaying man, who breaks his gaze from you. “Load these syringes and take them down. I want as many of them filled in the next twenty minutes. Don’t worry if she passes out… she’s a resilient one.”

The man moves quickly, opening a briefcase filled with long silver tubes, all ending in sharp points. He empties the rest of the first bag into three of the needles, then waits for the next to be filled. Everything gets fuzzy as he takes the next bag down and attaches another, and your hands go numb. You stare at them, making sure they’re still there. Bobby grabs your jaw, pulling you to face him.

“It’s good to have you back. I have to admit I had missed your… presence. My offer still stands, you know. It doesn’t have to be this way. We can work together. Build our own—“ All you can conjure up is the energy to spit in his face. He growls, grabbing you harder. “Fine. Have it your way. Once I’ve taken care of your little toy downstairs, I’ll be back. And I won’t be so withholding this time.”

More blood leaves your body, and you watch him walk away. You were losing so much so fast, you know you were about to pass out again, and you should be worried about that, but all you can manage to hold on to is the fact that Frank was somewhere here, and you couldn’t get to him.

It has to have been hours. Maybe even days. You have no idea. You hate it. You always lost time down here.

Your heart was as icy as the ground under your toes, and about as cracked and stained as the patch you were sitting over. The man next to you continued to sort through vials and tubes, and you drifted back to that sweet darkness, Franks voice nearly calling you if you dove in to it hard enough.

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

“That all you got?! Fucking puss—“ He’s cut off by another groan. His own, but he hardly recognises it by how high pitched it is. Another fist flies at his face, and he can feel the bone crack. He tenses, preparing for the next hit.

He needs to stay awake. He needs to stay awake enough to get to you. He saw everything— that whole fucking display, and even if he didn’t get any sound or words, the minute that piece of shit laid a hand on you, Frank snapped out of his haze. Doesn’t matter how much of his blood and guts covered the floor, he would drag his shattered leg behind him if he had to. He’d get to you.

Antagonising these guys in here had been easier than he thought. At first they were in some kind of trance, but when the loud bang of Bobby’s shotgun went off, the bullet just missing him— taunting him, they snapped. Now, it’s been…he’s got no idea how long, but they have to get tired soon. Get a little slower, get distracted, and then Frank will make his move. Maybe he’ll just get numb. He knows he’s cracked ribs, every time he breathes in something sharp stabs his side. He has to keep going.

Breathing in, the men surround him— and even Frank turns his head when there’s a knock at the door.

The guy who walks in is covered in blood, and he’s holding a briefcase. It’s the same one he thinks he saw when he was watching you, but his eyes are so blown up that he could be seeing things.

“Boss wants these distributed.” He says, and the three men hover around him as he unlocks it. They’re whispering something, and seemingly forget about Frank for a second.

Their mistake.

He’s slowly but surely working himself free, knowing he’s going to have to dislocate his thumbs to get out. He’s fought with worse injuries, but with how much blood he’s lost, he needs something. An edge. Something that will just get him out of this room. He knows there’s guns outside, and the slick of his blood makes it easier to slide out. He just needs one damn thing to go his way today…

“Is that really it?” One of the men hold up a needle. It’s bright red, with the biggest point Franks ever seen on the end.

“What’d you expect?”

“Hulk had green blood. Something like that, I guess.” Another man says off handedly, never looking back at him, and fuck— they were asking for it now. Franks right hand tugs at the cuff, and he squeezes his eyes shut, biting down on his lip so hard it bleeds. Not that he’ll be able to tell what’s bleeding anymore. Bone pops as he tugs the rest of the way, in one sharp movement he’s got a free hand.

He doesn’t wait.

Whatever’s in that syringe is important. Important enough that the guy who shot himself in the head got back up and walked down four flights of stairs. It does… well, Frank doesn’t know what the fuck if does, but if it heals a bullet to the head, Franks betting on the fact it’ll be enough to get him out of this room.

He lunges, throwing his body toward the syringe dangling in the man’s hand. The briefcase splatters on the ground and a multitude of curses ring through the room. One breaks, another falls right next to Franks head. He turns, only to see it kicked away. He pops his left hand out of the cuff in the shuffle, hoping they don’t notice it’s free.

“I thought he’d be better. Look at him.” They peer down at him on the floor, still cuffed by his feet, and from their view, still one hand, too. It’s why they don’t realise him reaching behind, grabbing two sharp points and dragging them over.

“Guess he’s past his prime. Clean this up, and don’t finish him off just yet. Boss wants round two.” The men laugh, turning their backs for a final time.

Frank stabs himself in the back with two needles. He feels it instantly— like the time he got shot up with adrenaline. Everything is turned to ten, and he groans and thrashes on the floor. The men turn around to look at him just in time to see his two free hands, but by then it’s too late.

Frank’s broken the chain on his legs, one giant whack of it against the concrete sending the links off in shattered pieces. He rolls, not feeling any pain on his sides. He stands, easily. Way too easily. He should be hunched over, fighting for consciousness.

He’s never felt fucking better.

He lands a punch on the advancing man, the one who broke his ribs. He grabs him by the head, feeling his skull bone crack under his grip.

He doesn’t have time to think about it, because the next ones already coming. He throws himself at him, tackling him to the floor. He beats him— over and over, so hard his hands meet concrete after three blows. He went through him.

One man’s on his back, arm around his throat, and he easily rips him over his head. These guys were fucking nothing now. He felt like he’d been shocked by some kind of electricity, except this was the kind that felt fucking amazing. He belted the man in front of him, then slammed his head into the wall. Blood and brain covered the only clean part of the room, and one man was left.

The man who shot himself.

“Stop! Wait!” The man says, holding the briefcase up. “I can tell you what he’s doing. Where she is!” Frank takes a few breaths, not even feeling winded.

“You work for him?” The man nods. “Where?”

“S-security.” Frank towers over him, and he goes for the handle of the door, but Franks too fast. So fucking fast he doesn’t register that he’s got the guys hand tight in a fist until he hears him scream.

“You know she was down there? All that time, huh?” The man looks up, wide eyed. Frank cracks the bones in his hands.

“Fuck! Yes— yes, we knew but I swear—“ Frank doesn’t care what the rest of the sentence is, because he picks up the briefcase, and uses the end of it to cave his head in.

He keeps hold of the case as he kicks the door down, swiping the shot gun Bobby abandoned. Then he takes a chance, testing his durability, and jumps over the railing of the two story platform.

After the beating he received, he should be struggling to even walk— but he lands it easily. He doesn’t even have that kink in his neck from this morning. Spent so much time staring down at you sleeping next to him. Not even that. No blood coming from anywhere, and he could see for fucking miles in front of him. No swollen eyes.

He was healed. Completely. Strong, too. Stronger than he fucking should be. He doesn’t know how long he’s got, but he knows he’s not wasting another second of not having you safe. He takes the stairs up four at a time, never needing to catch his breath.

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

Frank’s arm was around you, holding you tighter than you could ever remember. You weren’t shivering anymore, the effects of the ice cold water long forgotten the minute he pulled you to him under the covers.

It was nearly morning, and you were still hazed with sleep. The embarrassment and pain can’t reach you here, not when you are so close to drifting off. Another few hours of sleep would do you good. Just letting your eyes flutter closed. You blame it on this nearly-asleep-half-conscious state that you turn over, seeking more of the warmth his skin offers. He tenses next to you, feeling you shift, before accepting the new position and letting your limbs tangle with his own. 

It’s about as safe as you have ever felt. Frank on all sides, something that should make you feel boxed in. He’d let you go with one word, but you can trust him not to. You don’t want him to. Frank’s arms tighten around you as you settle your head just below his, nose brushing against his collarbone.

“You okay?” His voice rumbled through your head, all the way down to your toes. You didn’t answer, wanting to linger in this state a little longer. Your breathing was even, and you all but melted into him with one last, long sigh. “What the hell are you doin’ to me, huh?”

His lips touched your forehead before one hand tangled in your hair. He doesn't brush past this time. This time, it’s purposeful and practically permanent. He scorches your skin, kissing you softly, right on the little scar above your eyebrow.

You feel him tug you closer, your leg nearly on top of him now. You can hear his heartbeat in your ear, racing when your hand slowly brushes up his side, stopping under your head. Then it slows, and he kisses you one last time before you’re asleep again…

You can hear something. Maybe. Theres a beeping sound coming from the monitor, but that’s not what it is. This place echos everything. The walls nearly savour the sounds, sending them back to you so loud, that if you close your eyes you could swear it was happening right next to you. This is different, though. 

It’s screaming. Someone screaming.

You force your head up, slowly blinking your eyes. There’s spots in your vision, but you can see people. People, flying around the tight space of the corridor. Flying… you swear they were moving through the air, limbs whacking around in un-natural directions. Something loud cracked, and then a loud, male groan. Almost a scream, but this wasn’t in fear, or pain. Someone was coming, and they weren’t stopping until they got through.

You only knew one person who would fight for you like that, but as much as you tried to fight against it, sleep dragged you down into the dark. This time, Frank was getting further away, and you weren’t so sure you could pull yourself back up.

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

It was pitch black, but all Frank could see was red. Dark, thick red, blood that can only be from deep, hidden parts of the body. Blood gets thicker the further in you go, and Frank was tearing right to the centre.

He found more men on the stairs, using the shotgun and the pulsing strength scorching through his body to take them out. He admitted it felt good— fucking easy, tearing through these guys. They had the higher ground but he had every advantage. He couldn’t help but feel like something was off about it, though. He has no idea what he gave himself, it just had to be enough to get to you.

When he finally makes it up to the door, he’s sprinting. More faces blur past his hands and bullets, but he can only focus on one. You, your head down, eyes closed. He throws someone with one arm as far as he can manage, and he doesn’t see the guy get back up. He’s still looking for Bobby, but all that was on the back burner now. Now, all he could focus on was you.

The bodies stop dropping, and he realises there’s no more coming. No more footsteps as he reaches the door to your cell, no more gun shots. Not even a breath that wasn’t his own.

You weren’t breathing.

He drops the case he’s still managed to hold, ignoring the slow beeping of the monitor. He rips at the handcuffs, but even with all this stuff in his body he can’t manage it.

“Come on. Hey! Come on, wake up…baby, fucking wake up.” He could hear the horse crack of his voice and he was pulling so fucking hard and it wasn’t enough. He’s shaking you by the shoulders, then he looks down, seeing the snapped locks of the briefcase.

There’s still four or five syringes in there. He doesn’t know what it does— he can hardly tell if he’s gonna live when this feeling dies down. He’s still staring at them, though. Reaching for one.

He could do it. It brought him back, healed whatever those assholes did… and your a hell of a lot stronger than he is. He needs it to work. He needs you to open your fucking eyes, but is it worth the risk? Was it worth it if it backfired? Was he that selfish, that he’d take the risk— the risk of you dying because of what he did, just so he wouldn’t have to live without you? He’d take you down with him if he did this— fuck knows what Bobby put in these things. It could be anything. But he couldn’t let you die in this room. Couldn’t let you go.

Frank Castle knows he’s selfish, but it’s like his body has already made up its mind. His hand is fisting on of the vials, hovering over your thigh. The beeping’s getting slower, and you twitch in his hold, the last signs of life fading from you. For a second, he thinks he shouldn’t do it. That he shouldn’t take you down with him any further than he’s already done. But he can’t see you die. He couldn’t.

“Please. Just— need this to work. Please.” He drops his head and plunges the needle into your thigh without another thought. Almost instantly, your eyes crack open and your heaving air back into your deprived lungs. Frank holds you upright, trying to make sure you don’t fall backwards, but he can’t see past the tears forming in his eyes.

He doesn’t remember the last time he cried like this— like a knife was tearing it’s way through his chest, nearing his throat and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do to stop it. He didn’t want to stop it because you were fucking here— covered in blood and dirt but breathing. He chose right. Did right by you, for fucking once. Looking around the room terrified, you say a word, and he feels like the luckiest guy in the world because the first thing you think to say is his name.

“Frank!” You scratch out, shoulders still heaving with the effort of taking in air. “Frank— we have… you have to get me… please I can’t be in here anymore—“

“Shh. Shh— you’re okay. I’m gonna get you out, just like I promised, yeah?” You stop spinning your head around and stop your thrashing when your eyes meet his. He feels your hand go to lift up and touch him but you can’t move. “Fucking hell. I’m so sorry, sweetheart.”

“You’re crying.” You say softly, and Frank shakes his head, laughing out of pure exhaustion.

“Yeah, I am.” Your head tilts, and fuck— he can’t help it. He shuffles closer, holding your head in his hands. You look wrong in his hold, like something precious and way too expensive, something he’d never earn the value of in his lifetime. You press into his touch, and he just can’t let you go.

“You came.” Wet tears stream down your face, and he wipes them away with his thumbs. “I thought you were— I thought you might not make it here.”

“I promised.” It’s all he has time for right now. He has a hostage he needs to fuck up. “Where’d he go.”

You flick your head down in the direction of where he came.

“He has the keys. You gotta— once I’m out I can help you.” You blink a few times, and it looks like your seeing his face for the first time. “You… how did you get out?”

“He’s got these guys— strong, like you, nearly beat the shit out of me. Injected myself with that.” He looks over at the briefcase. “Never felt better.”

“You aren’t hurt.” You say, and it should be a good thing, but Frank starts to worry because you look uneasy.

“Not anymore. You know what it is?”

“Yeah.” That fact that you don’t say it right away makes Frank think he doesn’t want to know.

“I gave it to you, too.” You shake your head, and his worries evaporate. A simple move from you, and he’s easy. Fuck— he was glad you were here.

“It’s fine. It won’t kill us. You need to go. Get the keys, get me out. Bring him with you.” Frank nods, taking another second to look at you. Just making sure— your eyes were wide, a little fearful but alive and bright. Open. Skin was warm. You were okay. “I don’t want to be here anymore. Please.”

Something crashes behind Frank, and he turns and leaves before saying another word. He was going to drag that cunt back here kicking and screaming. He had to be alive— but Frank has learned a thousand ways to make a man wish he wasn’t.

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

Six minutes.

You counted it.

It took Frank six minutes to track down the country’s biggest gang leader, the man who has evaded the FBI and CIA for years, the man who had built an entire, intricate network of tunnels and bunkers to avoid being caught. Without his men, that Frank also took down, it took him six minutes to beat him bloody and drag him back to you.

You used to be so afraid of him. He was the man who haunted your nightmares, a face you’d see every time you closed you eyes. Almost a bogeyman. Seeing him here, on his knees, eyes swollen shut while Frank rips the keys out of his back pocket… it’s surreal almost.

“You w—“ Frank kicks him in the stomach, whatever words he was going to say lost in the burst pain. While he falls to the ground, breathing slow, Frank unlocks the handcuffs and you stand way too fast. Your first steps are the three that gets you out of this fucking room.

Frank sees you bolt outside, back pressed against the opposite wall. Then he turns, punching Bobby in the face before grabbing him by the leg and dragging him out and down the hallway. He’s groaning in pain, trying to say something but Frank just keeps dragging him. You walk behind, a sick enjoyment bubbling through you at the sight of him so… weak.

“How are we getting him up the stairs like this?” You ask once you’ve stopped at the base of the giant staircase. It must of taken you an hour to come down here, and your head was still a little fuzzy from the blood loss. Your own blood doesn’t heal you as well— fucking figures.

Frank doesn’t say anything, just starts dragging him up the stairs like a sack of flour. His head bangs against the first step, and Bobby shouts and wails like a kid. Similar to how you would of screamed for him to stop when he cut you open—

“Frank.” You say, and he stops. You look down at the man, wondering what Frank did to him in those six minutes in the dark that made him look so deformed. His arm was broken, the strange angle it was at made it obvious. One of his eyes was less bruised than the other, and he used it to lookright at you.

Maybe he thought you’d tell Frank to stop. That you’d taken pity on him. That you’d feel sorry for the way he looks. He’s still staring at you when you see a small flash of his teeth, something that could be a smile if he wasn’t missing so many teeth. You let him hold the hope for just a second.

“Make sure he’s still alive when we get to the top.” Frank huffs, like it’s an imposition, and you walk ahead, letting the pained cries of the man behind you bounce off the echoed walls. He deserved to feel what it was like to have hope it would stop, only for it to never end.

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

When you finally reach the outside of the building, Bobby has passed out from the pain four times. You counted. It won’t be enough. You had twelve years of that shit. This was mild— you had a thousand days like this. It should be therapeutic to see him miserable and begging but all it does is make you angry.

Frank throws him in the back seat of the car, using rope and the seatbelts to tie him down so he can’t move. Then he ties something around his mouth, saying something to him you can’t hear. When you get back in the car, Franks hands are stained with blood.

“I’m hungry. You hungry?” He asks loudly after a moment of silence, his hands so tight on the steering wheel you can see his forearms start to shake. “Fuck. I could sprint a mile right now.”

“You feel okay? Good?” You weren’t a hundred percent sure about the effects your blood could have on him— or, the concentrated version of your blood.

“Fuckin’ fantastic. Don’t know what was in that stuff, but I haven’t run it out yet.” You can tell he feels uneasy about it, but the rush is almost overwhelming, even if he has burnt through some of it.

“It’ll be a while before it’s out of your blood system.”

“Yeah? How you know that?” His head moves a little too fast, and you wonder weather that’s how fast you move. If you look this… creepy, really. It’s fucking creepy.

“Because it’s my blood. It’ll pass through in a while, you just have to wait. He— Bobby said it wasn’t permanent.” At the mention of his name he stirs in the back and Frank reaches around, punching him in the gut while keeping his eyes on the road. “Maybe I should drive.”

“I’m good. Tell me about it— the blood shit. Help me focus.” Hoping to calm him down, you spill every little remnant of information you can remember. It’s technical, trying to explain how the plasma in your blood can be modified to heal bones and gunshot wounds, but he listens. “So why’d it work on you? If it’s your own?”

“It’s more concentrated. Based around the healing parts of my blood. He must of found a way to extract only the parts that make me strong. I lost a shit tonne of blood back there, so maybe the shot kicked my own healing back into gear.” You flick your eyes back to where Bobby is passed out again, his blood staining the seat. “I doubt I’d get it even if he explained it himself, but it’s a version of what they did to me. Only lasts a little while, but it makes you stronger. Faster. Heals you more easily. And apparently makes you jumpy as fuck.”

“I ain’t jumpy.” He grumbles, the sound sounding so much like Frank that you settle back a little, relaxing at it. “When you were in there… I uh— saw what that guy did in front of you. That kind of thing would be… if Madani found out about that, or any of those guys at the CIA. What your blood can do…”

“I know.” They’d want it. It was the edge they have been looking for. Like Bobby said, America had been fighting Gods and Super-humans for years, and they wanted something of their own. You, or your blood, would be it.

“Don’t say anything about it. Far as they know, we were in and out.” Frank looks in the review mirror, gaze hard as he checks Bobby’s positioning.

“He might say something. What if they ask him about it?”

“Can’t talk without a tongue.” You look at him, trying to figure out if he’s joking or not. He looks serious. Very, very serious. “What?”

“You— nothing. I just want to go home.” You breathe heavily, your eyes shutting for a second. Everything hurts, and your body isn’t healing as fast as Franks did with the lack of blood in your system. Now you know why you didn’t heal fast after you were shot. You must of lost too much in the water.

“You mean back to New York, yeah?” When he says it, the words confuse you. Of course you’d be going back to New York. You don’t have anywhere… well, you don’t have anywhere. You don’t have a place, now you think about it. The only house you ever lived in is owned by someone else, but that hasn’t been home for a while.

When you said you wanted to go home, what you really meant was you wanted out of this car. You wanted to go back to somewhere warm, and safe, and somewhere you didn’t have to think about any of this. The only place you’ve ever really been able to do that, have any of that is when you were with Frank.

“Sure.” Is all you managed.

“Sure? What’s that mean?” He turns the car a little too hard, and Bobby whacks against something in the back.

“It means that— well, I don’t exactly have a place there, do I? I mean, I know Matt said we could stay until—“

“We’re not doin’ that again.”

“I didn’t think it was all bad.” You say absently, but Franks eyes catch yours in the mirror and his hands grip the wheel even tighter. “But I don’t have a house.”

“Stay with me.” Even after everything you’d done with him, been through with him, he still managed to catch you by surprise.

“Really? You’d want me to live with you?”

“Why? You got a bunch of cats you need to move in or something? You snore?” You don’t want to smile, not with who’s behind you, but he’s impossible not to smile around. “Course I do.”

“Gotta dump the baggage first.” Frank grumbles something under his breath at your words, then turns the car again, too hard. Even you struggle to stay upright. He’s still fighting off the rush of energy he’s feeling running through his veins. “Maybe we should call someone. Go to a doctor, or call Curtis. You’re still jumpy.”

One of his hand’s dropped from the wheel, and after he checked the rear view mirror one more time, confirming Bobby was passed out, his hand landed on your thigh. He did this a lot while he drove, his hand nearly covering the entirety of your thigh. Fingers absently wandering, like he had all the time in the world to tease you, even if he didn’t mean it. This time, he definitely did. His thumb was drawing circles on your skin, his palm slowly dragging the rest of his fingers up.

“Just got to work it out of my system, yeah?” You swallowed, the simmer of heat in your stomach bursting into flames at the horse growl of his voice. He dipped his hand over further, the sensitive skin of your inner thigh twitching in anticipation. You weren’t sure if it was because he was half high on…you, or what he exactly was planning to do, but as his hand gripped you tighter making you jolt in your seat, you sat a little wider. Giving him access. He swore under his breath.

“Yeah. Maybe you should g-go on that run. Work out or something.” He smirked, and held his hand there while you held your breath. He was toying with you, fucking with you, for sure… was he really going to…here? The tip of his fingers were so close, and you were practically sweating now, heart thumping in your ears.

“I think I got a better idea.” He looked at you quickly, his eyes nearly completely black, pupils blown out. Your eyes squeezed shut, at his mercy completely.

Then, his hand slid down slowly, resting where it usually did when he drove. Much lower, and much further away from where you fucking need him right now. When you open your eyes again he’s still smirking, a smart ass look on his face like he knows how worked up he just got you, even when he’s the one with all the extra energy.

All of a sudden, like Frank often encouraged in you, you forgot about everything else except how long this car ride was. You said you wanted to get home, but the more you thought about it, it was less about a destination and more about him. Home.

[next chapter]

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

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[wolf-among-mechs]

Well, now I got a few questions for you in return. Merc to merc, Clanner to... well, maybe someone twice removed from the Clan family tree.

🟡💛💳🌼🎵

Something along those lines yeah. It's... Complicated. Have a seat. I got a lot of stuff to talk about.

🟡 Where do I currently live. Where I have lived. I grew up on Hephaestus station. Lived a six months on the planet Milton in Lyran space in a dingy little apartment. Then... Dropships and barracks ever since. Had an RV to have my own space for a while. But then our company managed to acquire an Overlord to serve as our base and by our Steiner noble friend and lancemate we made it a lot more habitable with proper living quarters. The most of a home I have had so far.

💛What do I currently pilot. (OOC: It gets a little time fucky wucky here since Asuka here is part of an RPG campaign that hasn't gotten to the Clan Invasion yet. But this blog is an AU where she obviously got that far. Bear with me.)

I hate that my answer is that I am currently inbetween rides currently. My old clan ride got messed up so they are refitting a new one. So let me tell you about one of my favourites. My Marauder II. Designated MAD-5Xc formerly b. Nicknamed "Direwolf" by the crowds at the time. This was somewhat before the Daishis made an entrance in the inner sphere you see. You won't find it on any technical readout. Most our company refit mechs to suit our doctrines. The b model was built by Blackwell as part of a sponsored entry on Solaris in order to build the 'brand' as they were in negotiations with opening up sales to other clients than the dragoons at the time. It was built for me in particular to pilot which is why it has Triple Strength Myomers, a supercharger and a Guardian ECM system. Armed with an ERPPC and small pulse laser in each arm. Backed up by two SRM 6 launchers on the shoulders which always annoyed me slightly. I have always been adept at fighting things up close... Despite the fact that I have tried very hard to work from range.

It was refitted to have two LRM launchers instead but fitted slightly differently along with an Artemis IV system. Because the SRMs never really did really offer much when I had the ability to just run force and snap somebody's legs off by bullrushing them. Maybe you have seen an old holovid of what they called my glorykill on Solaris. Where I barrel into a highlander, snap its legs. Hammer the torso with the barrels furiously before rearing up and bringing the right barrel into the cockpit and fire the PPC as my voice echoes out over the comms and arena "AND STAY DOWN!" I was... A little bit upset at that man at the time.

I loved that mech. I wish I still had it.

My new ride is going to be a Kodiak. Though... Heavily customized. It is being refitted as I mentioned. It brings along a lot of what I enjoyed about the Marauder by removing the Autocannon and missile launchers for PPCs. A new myomer system, an active probe and jump jets. It will be designated Crinos... The reason it is taking so long is that it has a different headshape. More... Wolfish.

💳 Who is/was your most and least favourite client?

Hmm.... Tough. I had to think about my most favourite client. Probably Rasalhagians. They did not like us much when we first started, having bad experiences with mercenaries to start with but it mellowed out fairly quickly after they figured out that we were not a rowdy bunch

As for least favourite. I going to be weird and say probably Federated suns. Their lords have betrayed us four out of six times but at least people above them made steps to repair the relationship. We had one Baron I think he was who decided to turn on us and me specifically because I beat the snot out of his favourite officer in a perfectly legal martial arts tournament. He cheated first though.

🌼What do I think of the clans.

I was born into Wolf's Dragoons. Both mother and father were of the clans. Mechtechs both of them. I was probably going to become one too but I showed great aptitude with mech piloting. And fighting just in general. Probably owing to the fact I have inherited elemental genes from my fathers side. When they invaded the inner sphere I ended up among them. Not by my own will. I ended up prisoner and they after a while figured out that technically I was related to clan Wolf. I had to try for a bit to become a full member. I fought tooth and nail for that and got a trial of position and even managed to earn a blood name. I do not carry it though. During their invasion I came to understand myself through elementals and the clan. The severe mismanagement of operation REVIVAL made opinion of the clans thusly:

Eugenicists with little thought or preparation made for the totality of war. Admittedly I am also very annoyed at having been called freebirth over and over and over and being overruled time and time again despite the fact that I had more experience with the war in the inner sphere they were actually trying to fight. I also find their commitment to honour lacking. Rescinding it when they deem an enemy to be less than human or simply a problem and in the way. That is not to say all warriors of the clans are such nor do I treat them thusly.

I simply believe that they are flawed much like the inner sphere. There are heroes and villains under every banner in the Galaxy. The Clans, the houses of the inner sphere and mercenaries.

🎵 What is a piece of music you enjoy, that you would play in combat on a loop?

I was really hoping somebody would ask me this. I really was. Allow me to send a few sound files your way.

In the cockpit:

It keeps my heart pumping in the midst of combat. It has a really nice melody to me.

In my head:

(OOC: Warning for a bit gore. It is Doom 2k16 after all)

This feels a lot how it feels inside my during a battle.

But. Also an honourable mention to kuritan holovids, they based a villain on me. Well me and my old Black Knight. It sounded a bit like this.

I think after all of that. I owe you at least a few drinks.

[hpdfag]

needle and bandage emoji to be specific . FORGOT TO INCLUDE THE BANDAGE

HI HI HELLO !!!!!!!!!!! WAVES this got long as fuck and i unmasked maybe a little too much so its hidden under the cut 4 now ... thank u for sending these in i always love a chance to ramble :3

🩹 - what would you do if your darling hurt themself??

auauahaghhhghhh i would feel SO TERRIBLE even if it wasnt my fault ... he deserves all of the grace in the world, i would do my best to make sure he knew i was there for him, that i really did love him, that he wasnt alone

i would worry about his safety very deeply, but i don't think i'd force him to stop. i'd tell him i was worried, and that i loved him, and that i wanted to do whatever i could, but ultimately it was up to him, you know?

ive had so many people react in just the worst most unhelpful ways when they figured out i had relapsed with self harm and i know i'd never wish that kind of insensitivity and callousness on my love, even if it was out of a place of love and care, i just want him to do what feels best for him

however if he carved my name in himself i think id. how do i put this in an appropriate manner. pass out. and if he wanted me to cut him up i would have a very hard time finding it in myself to say no ^_^ i may have some morals but they are a bit flimsy unfortunately

💉 - how far would you go to get your darlings love??

as far as i could push without him hating me or getting upset!! i think its a bit counter-intuitive to keep pushing and breaking down your darling until they give in. there's just no staying power to a relationship like that!

i'd mold myself into whatever he wanted, slowly but surely, so he wouldn't notice. if he said he prefered people with darker hair, a few weeks later, id get someone else to dye my hair and make them think it was their idea. if he wanted someone more assertive, who stood up for themselves more, slowly but surely id let myself grow, and try to find it in me to really speak my mind. if he wanted someone he could fix up, if he wanted a pet project he could be proud of, i'd let myself shatter, let myself fall into pieces again for him to put back together like kintsugi, better than i was before i fell apart because of him.

in general, im terrible at trying to take control. i fell first, but he was the one that asked me out, and then proposed. i try to be subtle, so there's no chance of me seeming overbearing. i'll become whatever he wants. anything at all.

i think also, part of this, is i trust him at this point to be able to control himself. he isnt some kind of idiot who only acts on base impulses, i trust that he loves me, and can have friends without becoming too buddy-buddy with them.

i couldn't kill anyone he cared about, it would make him too sad, and i'd be hesitant to throw a wedge between them, if only because we have such a small community back home. it would distort the balance. everyone relies on him, needs him, and i can't destroy that. i need to cultivate hope, not bring despair. our friends, they're scared of me, even if i'm relatively harmless. i think i could get people to back off pretty easily by just saying i was concerned, and they would know to do it in a way that didn't hurt hinata, because they know how serious i am about him. about his happiness. and they care about him too. so i would hope they know how to react to something like that. i would also hope it wont be necessary.

im planning on spending my life with him, not setting us both on fire. i need him to be happy. i need him to love me. i need to be able to love him to survive. ive toned myself down as much as i think i can in hopes of appeasing him. if i wasnt so scared of hurting him, i think i would kill for him. i think id cut us off from everyone if i didnt know it would kill them too. he's so important. i want everyone to be able to bear witness to his light, i just cant stand people who want to take it for themselves. they should know their place.

people who aren't from the island though? who just want to take him? they drive me insane. i cant stand them, the audacity they have, to think they're worthy to even be near him. to think he would love them the way he loves me. i value my own life, so i couldn't kill them. but i definitely want to sometimes. at the very least i'd cut them out of his life as swiftly as possible. FF workers, people from the mainland, people from this awful reality who think he'd ever call them his. id cut them out like a tumor. as quickly and as efficiently as possible, without any care for the fallout. the cancer would be gone.

[arisherifeu]

Broken People Part III

Author’s Note: Im asking myself how did this story ended up getting part III? That’s the the thing about impulsive writing. It just happens. ໒(⊙ᴗ⊙)७✎▤

WARNING ‼️- DRUG ABUSE

Part I Part II Part IV

Last night felt like fever dream for Lynette. House came, struck a fight, James got angry, she confessed she was using drugs to stabilise her chronic migraines that comes every time she moves and today, she was still not going to work. It was already 5 am and she attentively watches James sleeping on the couch where he offered to stay for the night.

Lynette went over at the couch but she sat on the floor, her back against the couch. Carefully trying not to wake James up. She brought her knees to her chests as she contemplates on what to do with herself. She knew what she needed to do. But she was scared. She loves being a doctor. She didn’t want to lose any credibility. A part of her was hoping that House wouldn’t say anything at all. Not to anybody. Because she heard stories about how ruthless House can be. She was scared and intimidated by how powerful House was at the hospital. Would she be spared from his ruthlessness? It wasn’t fair to her. Because House was just as guilty as he supposed to be. This hospital would be bankrupt if anyone exposed what House did to his patients despite saving their life. Lynette was thinking hard. She got too worried.

But a gentle pat on her back relinquished her from all the evil thoughts. She lifted her head to the side to see Wilson sat up, looking at her endearingly. “I hope you’re feeling a little bit better today.” He wished.

And to be honest it kinda did. Just a little bit better.

______________________________________

James decided to stay at home together so they can talk things out today. He was just so glad that he already settled down all his patients charts and the medicine to be prescribed to them today. So, he doesn’t have to worry about work at all. While Lynette got herself sorted out in the shower room, James helped himself to her kitchen trying to make something out with the things he found in the fridge. For someone who doesn’t eat much like Lynette, he was just really glad the fridge and the pantry were stocked with food. He decided to make a heavy breakfast for her to start off the day. So he managed to make eggs, toasts and sausages with cut up apples on the side.

Lynette walks in the kitchen smelling something so delicious. With towel on her head, cropped shirt that display her awfully skinny body with protruding bones in her baggy sized jogger pants that dropped lower than her waist. James unconsciously eyes her again. He couldn’t stop worrying. Hoping that she will never ever fell and break her bones.

“I made a heavy breakfast.” He smiles.

“It smells nice, James.” She smiles back.

They both sat together at the eating table. Face to face as they eat in silence. Lynette didn’t gobble up the food at once like she did before. She was slightly scared that she might throw up again so she ate slower as she can.

“I can’t thank you enough..” she started. She was still looking at her food. To be honest, she was still shy. She was timid as she was yesterday after listening to the whole ordeal about the fight yesterday with House.

“It’s fine. I am just sorry that he went through your personal record. But trust me, he means well. He just can’t put it into good words..He understands..you know hes on vicodin..” James began.

Lynette just kept eating in silent. James doesn’t push her with anything except to eat silently with her too because he knows its hard for her to admit to everything thats happening. He was also worried about the fact that the relationship started off on the wrong foot.

“I lost my dad at the hospital I used to work before Princeton..I jeopardised the whole operation thinking that I knew better than the doctors who had his chart. That was my dad and I couldn’t let anything happen to him. He was the only I had left. So I..” Lynette stopped, subtly choked on her food. Trying hard to swallow the food with the glass of water in her hands.

“You don’t have to tell me the story if you don’t want to. You don’t owe me anything.” James clarify. He held her left hand. Lynette looks deeply into his eyes, feeling comforted but she knew in the end he will found out about her maybe from someone else’s mouth so she decided to come clean with it. It’s the best way to get this relationship stabilised.

“You just need to understand, I am not the person you know today or these 6 months before. I was different. How I was back then was just the consequences of self negligence. I did it, with my dad in my mind hoping he would still be alive on that table when the doctors cut him. But I was wrong, it was never the heart, even when he has the condition before. It was his head. But even with all the blackmails I did to the doctors, to force them carve open my dad’s heart. It was already enough to send me into some sort of vortex. My license should have been revoked but I was saved. Then all I know I was already here. Then my migraine came and haunt me. It wouldn’t stop hurting. I feel pain every time I move anywhere. So I took the pills and they help.” She stopped there.

By then, James already stopped eating his food. James silently stares at her unknowingly that he has been caressing her left hand and never let go. Even when the story ended. Lynette’s heart has never been that fast. She couldn’t hear herself breathe because of how strong the heartbeat of her heart is. Her hand started shaking. James noticed and he just held it more tight. Not letting go. He sat silently. Grieving with her as she tries her best but her body’s started to shake, quite vigorously. James got so worried that he pulled Lynette from the kitchen and bring her straight to the bed where he covers her with the blanket. She was already on the withdrawal phase he suspected.

“When did you stop taking the pills?” He questioned. Lynette was already shaking profusely with sweat all over her forehead. “Last week..” she said but almost sounded like a whisper.

“You didn’t take any pills then? At all?” He questioned again sternly. But Lynette can only shook her head trying to deal with the pain in her head.

“You’re doing so well. You look better. You’re gonna get better in a couple more days.” He motivates. James was astonished at the woman’s durability. James passed her a cup of water to chug. Which helps to stabilise her electrolytes. James hugged her the best way he possibly could so he could stop the shaking. Which did help Lynette to become more calmer.

She was way worse before in the last week when she first stopped taking the pills. Her head pain worsens, nausea and vomiting everywhere. She doesn’t even have the energy to clean her own mess that she would leave it for a few days till maggots formed around it. She slept on her bed for a few days dealing with her pain, crying. But she had to go to work. She was so good at hiding her pain when nobody else watches. Even James didn’t realised that her demeanour changed. Lynette can only feel glad that the withdrawal doesn’t seemed as bad and that only her head hurts and she was glad that James doesn’t see her worst side.

Lynette suddenly shot up, James was taken aback. Lynette started running towards the toilet and vomit all the content that she had. James trailed behind and held her hair up, stroking her back while she vomits all that she can.

“We gotta go to the hospital, Lynette.” James started.

“No. I am not going anywhere near a hospital.” Lynette resisted.

“But we gotta do scans, we gotta do MRI. We can find if there’s anything we can do to subside your migraine.” He tries to convince. Lynette slowly closed the lid of the toilet, and flushed the contents. She sat with her back against the wall, looking at James weakly. She already has to deal with the pain but now she has to resist James knowing James can just force her to get the scans. But she was adamant, she can fix this on her own. James started to spoon her, and carry her with ease to the couch. He was worried at the lack of fat she has in her body considering her weight was like a feather.

James gave her more water by filling up a bottle and hand it to her to drink. She drank willingly. James also brought her unfinished food to the couch table, in hoping she can try to eat again. Lynette willingly takes another bite at the toast, slowly chewing. She was afraid to vomit again but she was hungry. She needed the energy. Thankfully, she managed to eat everything even though she took around an hour and a half to finished them all.

By then, she has some energy to walk around in the house. Just pacing around. James watches attentively to everything she was doing. She decided to do housework and started uncovering her bed sheets and pillow sheets but James sighed and went up to her.

“I will do it. If you let me?” He requested but more commanding. He held her forearms very gently.

“It’s fine, James. I need something to distract myself right now.” Lynette said looking at him, feeling kind of cranky.

“But what you need is rest..” he looked at her with his puppy dog eyes.

“Is that how you flirt with most women?” She scoffed, feeling blushed looking at his soft eyes.

“It still works.” James smiling shyly at her.

Lynette softened. She looked at James with the most smitten look on her face that she immediately blushed right after. She went over to her drawer to get fresh sheets to hide her blushes.

“Can I ask you a question?” James asked.

“Shoot.” Lynette responds after passing him right side of the bed sheet so James could fit his side of the edge.

“Do you have someone before this?” He questioned nonchalantly while Lynette stopped in her tracks, feeling weirded out by the question.

“Well I haven’t been thinking about it for quite some time now..had that monkey love when I was at school..but that was like 7 years ago. I couldn’t be bothered with this because of my dad.” She answered and she finally got the left side edge fitted on to the mattress, leaving the pillow sheets left.

“Is it still recent? About your dad?” James asked again.

“Well yeah..it’s technically last year. Tomorrow night should be his first death anniversary.” Lynette answered finally got the new bedsheet sorted in with James’s help. Lynette lay on the bed feeling a bit tired just from doing that small chore. James just sat beside her, arms stretched out holding his weight while his legs stretched across the bed.

“I’m not just some damaged goods right..?” Lynette questions.

“Why do you think so?” James asked worryingly. Lynette took a minute to answer because she was nervous, so she decided to lay on her other side so she doesn’t have to look at James.

“I don’t like the look in your eyes James. You’re looking at me as if Im damaged beyond reparable. You look nice. But your eyes are telling me I am just too different than any other person you saw. It’s the same look you give House too.. sometimes I see how you looked at him and I wondered if it was true…that I am just the girl version of him. Thinking that if you could fix me .. maybe there’s a way for you to fix him..” Lynette finished. James looked defeated. He loves Lynette for she was but she was needy. She needed someone on her side and James decided to stepped up to the role. He hated how House was right that he always comes to the rescue when this case happened.

James was frustrated but he couldn’t say anything. Instead he got up and walk out. Lynette got up and trailed behind him but as soon as she saw James reaching for his jacket and walk towards the door, Lynette ran after him. An adrenaline rush throughout her whole body. She rushed to hug him from behind. James was surprised because of the momentum his body felt when she hugged him.

“Even if it was true! I…I don’t want you to leave. I have no one else..” Lynette trembled, because she was desperate to stay connected to the feeling that she has right now with James. It was the one thing that could make her keep going. Something that she could look forward to. James was saddened, as if he didn’t feel the same epiphany before because he knew, he relied too much on House as well and wanted House to change and be someone like Lynette. House is his best friend. But with Lynette it’s so much different.

James turned his body and looked at Lynette with his left hand on her jaw, feeling her warmth, his thumb caressing it. He looked in her eyes with the same puppy dog eyes he always have. “Do you trust me enough when I said I love you?”