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thekidultlife · 4 years ago

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Through the Seasons | Seungcheol (COMPLETED)

Author’s Note:

Please read this before continuing on to the fic! 😊 If you’ve read the first part of this story which I posted in a rush during my birthday, please. scrap. all. your. thoughts. about. it. Having completed it now, I truly regretted rushing to post it just to meet a deadline; that won’t happen again lol. 😂 I plan to write more slowly and carefully from now on because I want to be able to look back and read my stories without too much regret over how I could have written them better. I hope that you enjoy this one, and please look forward to this series! My plan is to alternate writing “The Return Of Superman”, “The And” and “Through The Seasons” during the coming weeks/months.

Birthday Greetings: This fic is one that I wrote as a gift, not only to our amazing SVT leader and my ultimate bias who deserves THE ENTIRE WORLD, Seungcheol (🥺❤), but also to my good friend, @peekabooseoksoon! Belated Happy Birthday! 🙆‍♀️ I hope you get to love this fic!!! 😄

Tags: I’d like to mention @coupsiekkuma, @minkwans, @eclvpe, @haven-cove, @nrhfzh, @iwalktheline97, @woozisnoots, @shoshishua, @toxicsocial, @elcie-chxn, @yslmingyux, @gostickywombat, @uglyratlmao, and @starlightshua!

Plot: Two people form memories, navigate through hardships and—most of all—learn to love each other more through the seasons of their relationship.

Warnings: Marked 18+ for suggestive content

Word Count: 10,386

1 | summer, as the night wind whispered

Bright lights flooded the town square through the colorful lanterns that hung in lines and swayed idly. The air was filled with the smell of mingling perfumes, food and beer. The cobbled streets were packed with people, of different ages, walking through the stalls that sold native handicrafts and trinkets. Tables that were laid out in the center of the square kept getting occupied as the twilight dissipated into a dark sky full of stars. Music from guitars, bagpipes and dulcimers wafted around, competing with the blare of jukeboxes playing songs from eras long past, classics that everyone still loved to sing and dance to.

One month ago, no one would have thought that this town would be celebrating like this.

A violent storm had hit and destroyed almost everything in its path, and a sense of despair had engulfed the people living there. The winds and the heavy rain had been bad, but the landslides really made things worse. Even at present, as the town held its celebration, helicopters could be seen hovering above the mountains that surrounded the town proper, their searchlights flashing here and there, aiding rescuers who made their way around the dark, slippery terrain, looking for missing people or houses that had vanished underneath mounds of trees, dark rock and soil.

Despite the tragedy and the uncertainty that hung in the air, however, the townspeople had been resilient. Pooling their resources, and seeking help from neighboring towns and cities, they managed to recover most of their losses and found cause to celebrate as houses, businesses and landmarks began to be restored.

Sitting on one of the tables, watching the merriment all around them, were three men, sipping on their beers, wearing jackets that identified them as university students hailing from a city five hours away. They, along with a group of other volunteer workers from their uni, had come to help and were now celebrating the last day of volunteer work. Just across the street, by the small parking lot of the town’s only hotel, vehicles were lined up, readied for the departure in the early morning. These three men expected to be on the first bus going home tomorrow.

The first two sitting across each other kept commenting idly about how hectic the day had been, but the third guy, nursing his drink close to his lips, was scanning the flow of people, his huge, sparkling eyes flitting to and fro. He could not process what his friends were talking about. He was too busy watching who came and went as the festivities rolled on.

“Choi Seungcheol, have you found her yet?” Yoon Jeonghan asked, lazily grinning. His dark brown hair fell down his eyes and he raked them back with his fingers. He glanced at his friend before turning back to the buoyant scenery. A crowd seated on the table next to them roared with laughter.

“I haven’t,” Seungcheol replied lightly, taking another swig. “But I will.”

Seungcheol’s seemingly dogged determination made the guy sitting across Jeonghan chuckle. “This will be a very interesting night,” Hong Jisoo said softly, smirking at Jeonghan’s direction. “Cheol won’t let up finding this mystery woman.”

“I, for one, think that we’ve had an interesting day already,” Jeonghan answered dryly, leaning back on his metal chair, “and an uncomfortable one at that. I didn’t like the fact that we had to follow someone for a whole day, all because some guy couldn’t just walk up to her and ask her out.”

At that, Seungcheol turned to Jeonghan and glared at him playfully. “Shut up.”

“Cheol is acting funny,” Jeonghan teased. “Isn’t he, Jisoo-ya?” Jisoo laughed and clinked bottles with Jeonghan in agreement.

“I have my reasons,” Seungcheol said defensively, turning back to the crowd. “I couldn’t find the right timing.”

“Oooh,” Jeonghan cooed. “The right timing.”

“I said shut your trap, Jeonghan. I think you’re drunk.”

“I will be if you still don’t find her.”

“You could dance with some of our other friends out there while we wait.”

“You know I’m too tired for that.”

Jisoo laughed again. “You could not find the right timing? After all the days you’ve spent here?”

“Complete bull.” Jeonghan grinned.

Suddenly Seungcheol stood, setting his beer bottle down so hard on the wooden table that Jisoo and Jeonghan could not help but complain in unison about the abrupt movement. However, they quieted down when they saw Seungcheol’s expression.

“That’s her.” Seungcheol pointed somewhere in the throng of people, his eyes wide, his countenance suddenly alight and stone-cold sober. The night breeze blew on his close-cropped hair as he looked on.

His words were almost drowned out by the cacophony of voices and music all around them, but Jisoo and Jeonghan looked at each other knowingly, hearing his words perfectly.

`“Well?” Jisoo brought his drink to his lips, eyeing Seungcheol with a devious glint in his eyes.

A few moments passed, with Seungcheol simply standing there.

The right timing.

He broke off into a run.

He ran past tables and stalls and dancing couples, startling people along the way. His feet took him flying across the cobbled streets lined with lanterns, towards a spot by the exit of the square where stalls sold summer flowers. His heart pounded within his chest as he sprinted, his eyes never leaving what they had been watching for throughout the young night.

As he ran, he forgot how silly he had felt when, exactly five nights ago, he had hopped onto one of the buses leaving campus for the volunteer program. His only reason for joining had been his need for an adventure away from the city. He would have no other time for anything extracurricular in the months to come. The bar exam was looming over his mind, and before he poured himself solely to the task of preparing for it, he wanted to get away.

He remembered how you had stretched out a hand to greet him even before sitting down beside him.

Hi. You had smiled and he had felt like he was staring at the sun as you told him your name. Classical composition. You?

Non-music major, he had replied with a quick, albeit apologetic smile to return yours. I got on this bus by mistake.

Oh, that’s okay, you had said good-naturedly, winking at him, you don’t have to worry. We’re very good company.

And you were.

As he ran, he forgot how tired he was. He had followed you and the other volunteers around all day, up and down the mountains, giving out boxes of food and clothing to the families that had been affected by the calamity. The first four days hadn’t been as grueling as this last one. But it had been worth it.

He forgot, too, how sorry he felt for his friends, who didn’t know what they had signed up for when they followed him to this town to check up on him.

All he could remember was the flush on his cheeks when he had watched as your fingers strummed at a guitar, and how he could not help but hang on to the sweet lilt of your voice when you opened your mouth to sing.

"Deep breath and wipe those tears // Take heart and face those fears // We'll find a reason, // something to cling to; // We won't abandon // you. // There's hope in this season, // too."

All he could remember was the comfort that washed over the faces of the people who were listening, back at the orphanage in the mountains, where evacuees had taken up temporary residence.

He forgot about everything else and just ran, ran, and ran towards the only thing that mattered in his mind.

He had found you.

There you were—your hair rustling in the wind, wearing a billowing white dress that came down just beneath your knees and a knapsack that hung loosely on one shoulder, laughing with little children who were selling what looked like different sorts of flowers. You bent down to reach for a bouquet, and then lifted it to your nose, closing your eyes as you inhaled the scent.

Seungcheol drew to a stop as he neared you. His breaths slowed into pants, but his restless heart still fluttered faster than it would normally do.

Before he could lose his courage, he walked slowly to you.

He didn’t know what to say to you yet. After the bus ride, he only saw you every now and then, among the hundred volunteers that had joined. And all day long today, when he knew that he could not put off speaking to you anymore, he had been thinking about how he could approach you without scaring you off. There was one point this evening, after a little bit of beer, when he had felt like he could be brave enough to speak to you the moment he finds you.

But now, standing before you, he was tongue-tied, unable to say anything at all.

Sensing his presence, you turned, looking directly at him, still laughing, your hands holding a bouquet close to your face.

For precious brief seconds, the both of you just stood there, the night breeze beckoning as it made its sweeping touch upon both your clothes, trying to unchain you from where you both stood—whispering, it seemed, as it touched skin, Closer.

It was you who broke the ice.

“That was quite a run,” you commented humorously, your eyes filling with a gentle light. “Did I drop my wallet or something?”

Seungcheol laughed, blushing at the same time before scratching his head. He didn’t know that you had noticed him running. “Uh, no. Sorry. I must have startled you.”

“You told me during our bus ride that you came just to have some fun,” you said softly, your eyes taking in this handsome man before you and the jacket he wore. “But I saw how you worked hard, especially today. Thank you for coming with us.”

“And thank you for your songs,” Seungcheol replied, smiling. There was no flattery in his voice when he said this to you, only interest and admiration and another emotion that he himself could not clearly define at that moment.

Your eyes widened. “You listened?”

Seungcheol cocked his head to the side, hands in his pockets, still smiling. “All three songs, the whole afternoon.”

You grinned. “Ah. I didn’t know that I was in the presence of a fan. So…” one corner of your mouth turned up playfully, “…you ran all that way—” you motioned at the brilliant lights of the festival that was behind you both, “—not because I dropped my wallet somewhere around the bazaars and you picked it up by chance…but because—you loved my songs,” you grinned as you said this, “and you wanted my autograph. Was that it?”

He stifled a laugh, but it still bubbled out of his lips. “No. To be honest, I was going to ask you something else.” Seungcheol’s kind, hooded eyes smiled along with his lips. Courage surged inside him, just when he needed it. “Would you like to dance with me?”

Your slow smile answered his question before you even spoke.

“Yes.”

Closer, the wind whispered as you ran, laughing, with Seungcheol, back into the bright lights where the lanterns swayed, his hand not letting go of yours. And as Seungcheol pulled you close to him by the waist, your body arched up against him, and you threw your arms around his neck. You danced to the slow music, with Seungcheol’s eyes lighting up like the lanterns and his delighted laughter as melodious as the strings that strummed soulful tunes through the night.

Not far from where you danced, watching and making funny but adoring commentaries about how Seungcheol sucked at dancing, Jeonghan and Jisoo clinked bottles.

“It did become an interesting night.”

The town, in the morning, was greeted by blue skies and the young heat of summer. Business went back to normal, with the townsfolk reverting to their quiet, slow-paced lives in the fields and the mountains where their houses and livelihoods were nestled. The square held its usual number of regulars, some laying on the soft grass and others spreading colorful cloths around for picnics. Bicycles and occasional cars passed by.

There were no more buses that lined outside the tall, eighty-year-old hotel that was the pride of the town. No more guys wearing university jackets, no more stalls that lined the cobbled sidewalks.

Everything had gone back to how they were.

But traces of the festival night still popped up here and there in that sleepy old town.

High up the mountains, in the orphanage, children sang your songs and your words lingered on their lips. Some of them still had chocolates and candy from yesterday, leftovers from what their volunteer friends had given them as treats before heading back to the city. A plaque commemorating those who donated and came to help could be seen inside the town hall. And the gratitude people felt in their hearts as they watched their town being rebuilt made them remember their friends who had left in the early morning.

Some traces, too, weren’t just found in town. Some you brought home with you.

In that morning, you and Seungcheol were already five hours away, on a bus terminal, getting woken by the driver, who told you that you were now back in the city.

You had both missed the bus rides back to campus, but that was okay.

With your bags slung on your backs, you talked about Seungcheol’s upcoming bar exam, your major and getting breakfast somewhere. The impress of his touch on the small of your back as he gently guided you through the crowded streets reminded you of how you had felt when you danced with him all night. You blushed as he playfully protested about how his arms had gone numb when he woke up with you in his arms. Laughing with him as you both strolled along the hectic streets of the city, you found that you liked how Seungcheol’s voice sounded and how he would look you in the eyes intently whenever you would start to tell him something, no matter how interesting or uninteresting it would be. There was something intuitive and perceptive about him, something that you don’t normally see with guys that you had tried to get to know before. You liked that uniqueness in Seungcheol.

Sitting across him, eating your burger as you watched him type his number on your phone, you felt something new begin. And when he unconsciously reached out to take your hand while inside a cab that morning, you just knew, that you had both found in each other a memento from that summer night up in the mountains, in a town slowly recovering from a calamity, a town of cobbled streets and music and the wind that had teased and whispered, Closer.

2 | autumn, beneath the glowing streetlamps

Almost every sunset since the leaves started falling and the sky started to become painted in reddish-golden splendor, as people hurried along sidewalks or streets or in their bicycles and cars before rush hour set in, you would find yourself racing, racing and racing into Cheol’s waiting arms, warm and safe from the dropping temperatures and the cruel life of being an assistant producer for a crueler entertainment company.

There would be times when you would immediately look up from burying yourself in the warmth of Seungcheol’s embrace, smile sweetly up at his face and say in cute tones, “Hi, baby!”

There would be times when you would wrap your arms around his neck and stand on tiptoes to treat him with kisses as he laughed and whispered, “I missed you” in your ear.

And there would also be times when you would linger beneath his coat, shutting out all the bustling noises around you, eyes closed, and your words an almost unintelligible murmur on his chest. “Let’s stay like this for a while, please?”

You would then feel him kiss your hair, nuzzle your face, replying softly, “Bad day?” before hugging you tighter and tilting your head up so he could give you one of his infamous pep talks. He would then be kissing you with a laugh when you would start to complain that he sounded like a lecturer you had back in your uni days.

It had been three years since you danced with the wind during that summer night, and your sunsets during this third autumn season with Seungcheol by your side usually consisted of these sweet embraces and small but meaningful whispers of affection.

But today, the sunset was different.

You are still racing through the streets, running, running and running, your coat and hair flying in the wind. But Choi Seungcheol—always standing out anywhere he went with his height and broad shoulders, huge coats and quick smiles—was nowhere among the crowd. And you now halted to a stop, catching your breath, eyes frantically searching for taxis as the dark blue and violet shades of the nighttime sky started to replace the golden sheen of the sunset.

Once you could get on one, you immediately gave out the address, telling the driver as nicely as possible to step on it. Then you leaned back on the plush leather seat, sighing loudly, looking through the car window as you sped past the city’s grey skyscrapers and its lights and the rush of commute. You listened to the noise of cars honking, of motorcycles zipping past your cab, and chatter from commuters as you sometimes halted at crosswalks. You observed these people rushing to and fro, eager to be where they needed to be. You engaged in pleasant talk with the driver, complimenting his choice of music, even confiding in him that you had helped make the second song that played.

Soon, you came to a place where the pulsing, white and yellow lights of the city softened into golden hue as the skyscrapers were replaced by townhouses and apartments, homey restaurants, little shops and an occasional clinic here and there. Passersby were not rushing in this part of the city. Rather, families were walking hand in hand, dads sometimes carrying their kids on their backs, laughing as they entered diners and restaurants. Old women in flowery dresses shuffled up the steps of their apartment, with their husbands or cats following closely. Lovers and students with their friends laughed softly as they quietly strolled down the sidewalks, amazed at the beauty of the coming night and the sighing of trees as their leaves fell. You smiled at a woman you knew as the cab slowed. And when it stopped, you got out, blinking as your eyes adjusted beneath the glowing light of the streetlamps, looking around.

This was your neighborhood. This was your world when five o'clock came and you were released from the pressure of work. This was your safety net when you felt like drowning. This was your home turf.

And there he was, just as you knew he would be. He probably went straight home after court. He probably thought he could mask everything that had happened when he had rested enough. He probably didn’t want you to worry.

Yes, there he was. Walking slowly to his car, shoulders slumped, his phone in his hand, probably going to shoot you a message that he was on his way to pick you up, he just ran a little late today. His head was bent down as he scrolled through his phone. His other hand was holding his briefcase, his most prized possession as a criminal lawyer. He didn’t see you coming towards him yet. But as he looked up from his phone to open the car door, his eye caught sight of you and he stopped, his hand on the door handle.

Immediately, Seungcheol’s despondent expression changed. His face lit up into a smile that almost didn’t look tired, his shoulders straightened up and he cocked his head to the side like he always does when he sees you looking at him, his now ash-blond hair touching his forehead. “Baby!” he called out endearingly, his free arm wide open.

There, beneath the glowing streetlamps, you ran up to him and wrapped him in a tight embrace, your feet on tiptoes, one of your hands raking through his hair, the other caressing his back, whispering his name over and over in relief. He’s here with me. Everything’s going to be alright.

“What’s the matter?” he asked, worried about you even at this time when you knew that he needed you more than you needed him now. “Did something happen at work?”

“No,” you whispered in his ear, still smoothing his hair, holding him close. “And let’s not talk about my work tonight.” You leaned back so you could look into his face. Your hands ran through the soft, ash-blond locks on his forehead. Now that you looked at him closely, you saw that he looked pale and drawn, utterly exhausted with his day. “Oh, baby.” You touched his face and he held your hand close to him like that, closing his eyes as he let out a huge breath.

Standing on tiptoes as the streetlamps glowed brighter and brighter in the night, as the trees shed red, gold and brown leaves and as people passed you by, each off to their respective evenings, you gave Choi Seungcheol a tender kiss.

He sighed shakily as your lips touched his. He trembled underneath your touch; it was as if all his carefully put-up defenses might fall apart in that moment.

And they did, right when you whispered against his lips, as gently as you could, “It’s not your fault.”

Tears fell from his closed eyes like the trees lining the sidewalk, weeping away their precious foliage. You felt his body heave into choking, unmanly sobs as he buried his face down your shoulder, his hold on you so tight that you felt just how much pain he was trying to release. The briefcase lay forgotten at your feet as his arms pulled you as close as he could to him.

Seungcheol couldn’t say anything, but you knew about everything already; the city may be vast and diverse, but news travels fast. There was no need for him to explain. You knew enough, and that was all you needed.

“Shhh,” you whispered, tears falling from your face as well, your chest aching at the sight of your man—this man who liked to look okay in front of you all the time—bent, broken, and crying. “You’ll be alright.” Your arms tightened around Seungcheol, and you closed your eyes. “You’ll be alright.”

There was a comforting lull as you both stayed that way for a while, not minding who saw you, not minding the time. Tonight, he needed you, and you wanted him to know that he could hold you for as long as he wanted. For as long as he needed. When you had felt like he had calmed a bit, you asked him, “Bad day?” Even though you already knew the answer, he wouldn’t be able to talk about it freely if you didn’t ask.

You felt him smile sheepishly on your neck. “Yeah.” He sighed and buried his face onto your shoulder. “Bad day.”

“Oh, baby.” You hugged him tighter.

“I’m sorry. I know that I’m not usually like this—”

“—I like it better when you lean on me, too.” You patted his back comfortingly, over and over. “I know that you don’t want to talk about it yet, at least, not right now, but I’ll always be ready to listen, okay?”

“Okay.”

“No rush. But you can tell me everything when you feel ready.” You pulled away to stare into his puffy eyes. “I must say, though,” you commented with a bit of humor, “that red does not suit your eyes when it’s like that.” You smirked at him as his expression softened and his laughter came. You took out a handkerchief from your coat pocket and dabbed it underneath his eyes and his cheeks. “Doesn’t matter anyway,” you muttered lightly, knowing how much your nonsensical words would make him smile, “you still look good even when you cry.”

Seungcheol groaned. “Stop.” Then he kissed your forehead. “Thank you.” For making me feel better. You saw the words in his eyes, which began to sparkle again with a gentle light. He grinned at you, and a little bit of the sadness painted on his face seemed to dissipate.

You grinned back at him, and you held out a hand.

“Can we go home now?”

Seungcheol grasped your hand tightly and smiled. “Yes.”

The streetlamps glowed brighter as the dark ink of the night swallowed the brilliant colors of the dusk, and you both blended in with the people who were around you, walking towards whatever lay ahead for them in the coming night.

Seungcheol didn’t tell you about what happened that day in court. He didn’t tell you about what had made him cry like that when you found him. He didn’t offer any explanation.

And you let it stay that way. You watched him from your perch on the duvet in your living room. He sat on the couch, poring over binders that held one-inch-thick documents and every now and then scribbling something on a legal pad. You watched him whisper to himself as he typed incessantly on his laptop. Paraphernalia from whatever he was working on was scattered on the floor in an order that only he could understand. You watched him for a time as he kept on working. This was how he was whenever something from his work would haunt him: he would meticulously go over where he went wrong (or where he thought he went wrong), and he would passionately redo that area until he was satisfied. He would anxiously (and sometimes even a bit obsessively) review each argument, each line, over and over again.

Judging from his expression and from how he couldn't seem to stop doing this cycle of reading/writing/whispering, you knew that whatever piece of courtroom action he had brought home with him had truly gotten to him.

You watched and watched, and then you gave up watching him. You hated seeing him become so immersed into a case because you've seen him like this before, and you hadn't liked how it affected him physically and mentally.

You wondered about what you could do for him. Nothing came to mind.

Sighing, you rose up from your seat, a bottle of beer in your hand. You padded softly towards the other side of the room, where an unvarnished upright piano was.

You lifted the cover and you let your fingers run across the ivory keys. You sat down. As you stared down at the keys, a melody you’ve never sung before formed on your lips. You found the right key, and you began to play the melody that you hummed.

Slowly, scenery came to life in your mind, along with the words that painted its description beautifully.

“Autumn days of glory // autumn days of peace // red and golden splendor // in the sky and trees…”

You didn’t know where the words would lead, but you let your hands and your heart take flight. You let them come straight home where they needed to be. You let them express what you couldn't do in any other way.

“Fall is often like // a season of pure bliss // But fall is also when // change happens to things.”

You remembered the moment you shared with Seungcheol a few hours ago, outside. You let your hands play on as more lines went out of your lips, giving voice to the emotions you had felt and painted the picture in your mind with.

“Let me touch your face // let me dry those tears // let me help you brace // for the colder winds…”

You heard footsteps behind you, but the song still flowed out of your lips as your heart poured out what it wanted to say through the music's timeless language.

“Autumn days of glory // autumn days of peace // let me stand on tiptoes // let me give you a kiss…”

You felt his arms around you, and you felt the touch of his lips on your neck.

You found the last chord, and you leaned against him.

You stayed like that for a long time.

Your hand caressed one of his arms as you sang softly, “I will hold you close // I will dry your tears // I will help you brace // for the colder winds…”

You felt him breathe deeply, and you felt his arms tighten around you. And when he turned your face to him to give you his most tender kiss, you knew that he had chosen to leave his books and legal pads and that case that haunted him. You knew that he had chosen, no matter how hard it was, to put the bad day behind him.

As he carried you up from that hard, unvarnished piano bench where you sat and onto the soft satin comfort of your bedroom sheets, you just knew. You just knew that no matter how bad days in the future might get, as long as you had each other, there would always be peace at the end. That both of you would always choose peace at the end.

That night, as the last of the leaves on the trees fell, and as Seungcheol's bare skin cleaved to yours, he bared his thoughts to you. You both stared at the naked truth of his anxiety, his worries. Hesitantly, at first, he let you in on his deepest fears.

That night was the beginning of honesty at its purest between you two. That night, you treated each other like the Bible where you had seen Seungcheol swear the truth and nothing but the truth countless times. That night, you both found safety in each other as you unmasked the pretenses that you both still put up for the sake of looking brave.

That night, too, you both decided that there was no other way to overcome bad days, except to overcome it together.

When the streetlamps stopped burning brightly and another day came around, you both stepped out of the apartment, hand in hand, the warm glow on your faces obviously not coming from the sun, which had risen in a useless effort to bring warmth against the cold.

You both went your separate ways, disappearing amongst the thousands of people who rushed about as the sleepless city burst with renewed life.

Well, bad days, fire away, you thought to yourself as you tightened your scarf around your neck. After that night, the impending doom of a long day failed to break your spirit.

You had Seungcheol, and Seungcheol had you. Everything would be okay. You both just knew: everything would be okay.

Later that day, another golden dusk settled across the skyline. You raced down the busy sidewalks of the city again, looking out for a cab. The holiday season was almost upon you, and the air already had a festive spirit to it. As you glanced up and down the lanes of vehicles halting at the red light, your eye caught a figure to your left, among the crowds.

Waving his hand, his eyes alight, his smile as bright as it was during those first few days that leaves fell from trees, there was Seungcheol, wearing his huge coat, holding his briefcase and waiting, as he had always done, for you.

Smiling jubilantly, you ran to him, pushing against crowds of people, eager to become enveloped into his safe, warm embrace.

You were tired. It had been a very busy day: meetings, songwriting sessions, planning music video sets with other staff, and doing final checks on a concert stage took up most of your energy. But in Seungcheol’s arms, the fatigue you felt slowly washed away.

"Baby," you whispered, closing your eyes as you leaned against his chest. You felt his kisses on your hair and you smiled. "Correct me if I'm wrong, but does that smile mean that you helped save the world today?"

At your words, you felt Seungcheol drew in a sharp breath. You felt his teeth sink into your shoulder playfully as his body reverberated with giggles.

"Please stop making me blush in public, babe!"

The forecast had said that temperatures would be at its lowest yet, but as you kept making jokes while basking in the music of Seungcheol’s laughter, you never felt the cold during that last sunset of autumn.

3 | winter, by the hearth

“And everything in time and under heaven finally falls asleep // Wrapped in blankets white, all creation shivers underneath.”

Like magic, the words you sang out perfectly described the hushed, dreamy landscape that unfurled before Seungcheol's eyes. Snowflakes in their different designs fell softly on the ground and on your nose as you walked, hand in hand, wrapped in your warmest, heaviest winter clothing. You were walking towards the huge family house that belonged to your maternal grandparents, and you were both enchanted by the frozen beauty of the vast garden you were walking through. And as if the sight of imposing life-sized statues and the creaking, barren trees lining the footpath wasn't enough, the series of mountains to the left of the property also peeked out from the stone walls, revealing their snow-covered peaks and adding a magical feeling to the scenery.

It was the first time that you would bring Seungcheol to a dinner with all of your extended family, and Seungcheol knew from the way that you smiled at him a lot that you were excited.

Excited, and something else.

Despite the mixed expressions on your face that he could not quickly decipher to get a clear understanding of, Seungcheol returned your smiles. “How long has it been since you came here?” he asked, stepping over a mound of ice and snow that had formed along the pavement.

“Years." You looked up at him again, and you smiled wider. "It shows on my face that much, huh? How thrilled I am at having my whole family meet you?"

Seungcheol smirked. "I don't know how to get my family together like this. Do your grandparents hold gatherings like this often?"

"Not really. But they've been missing their children and us grandchildren, so…" you cleared your throat and paused. "Baby, do I look like Christmas lights are strung up on my face? Because my cousins tease me about my smile whenever I get excited.”

The brightness in your voice had dropped a notch, and Seungcheol examined your face again. “Well you do look excited, but I wouldn't worry about your face. You always look beautiful…"

You probably did not hear him, because you had let go of his hand to run ahead, towards the widespread arms of a very handsome old man who seemed to have the same light like yours in his eyes and the same humor on his smile like yours.

Seungcheol hurried towards you and your grandfather, and he bowed respectfully.

"So this is the lucky man," your grandfather commented humorously, shaking Seungcheol's hand heartily. "Come in, come in! Best to get out of the cold." Your grandfather shivered animatedly, and you laughed, leaning against him as you walked in.

You seemed fine. Seungcheol smiled and entered the double doors after you.

The house was spacious and welcoming, designed with warm wood tones and bursting to life with patches of greenery here and there. The wooden beams and pillars that supported doorways were intricately carved with floral swirls and patterns, and the furniture style accentuated the vibrant yet homey tones. The smell of food and wine and the sound of logs being thrown into a fireplace filled Seungcheol's senses. Holiday music played in the background, and soft laughter from one of the rooms to the far right of the hall made Seungcheol guess that some family members have already arrived before you did.

As he walked on, straightening his clothes, he ran smack-dab into a woman who looked a lot like you but was very much unlike you either. Seungcheol would never see you wearing a power suit in bold colors like this woman. The man behind her smiled at Seungcheol and offered a hand.

"Oooh, so this is my cousin Y/N's boyfriend!" The woman grinned. She held out a well-manicured hand. "I'm Sana, and this is my husband, Minhyuk. You’re Seungcheol, right?"

"Yes. Very nice to meet you," Seungcheol answered, his face lighting up when he saw you with a smile on your face, walking towards Sana. Sana is one of my favorite cousins, you had told him earlier. She's the loudest among all of us, but she's a really good person who took care of me a lot when I was younger.

Sana leaned close to Seungcheol, and he was once again struck by how her brown eyes looked a lot like yours. But hers, he observed, had a mischievous glint, while yours always had a gentle light in them.

"You'd better be prepared for this family dinner," Sana whispered conspiratorially, "and don't let your guard down. Watch your manners--"

"--oh, come on, Sana," you groaned, pulling Seungcheol away, laughter in your voice. "It won't be that bad!"

"Don't say I didn't warn you! And sit beside me during dinner!" Sana's red-lipped smile made Seungcheol suddenly wonder what you both were talking about. You were both inside the parlor now, where drinks were being served and the people inside were more formal: quieter and older members of the family were either seated or standing around, wine glasses in their hands, conversing as they studied the portraits that hung around the room. A young man sat by one of the massive floor-to-ceiling windows of the parlor, his fingers flying across the ivory keys of the grand piano. The fire crackled as a man added more logs. Your grandfather was nowhere in sight.

Seungcheol wondered why your smile did not reach your eyes once these people started to come and greet you with their hugs and kisses. He wanted to ask if you were okay because you had grown quieter. Occasionally glancing at you as he introduced himself to members of the family, he noticed that your whole countenance had changed.

The smiles and the laughter coming from you still rang true in his ears, but as your hands clasped before you as you engaged in conversation with an aunt of yours, you showed him a side of you that he had never seen before: very composed, very somber, very careful. The only relief that seemed to show on your face was when your parents finally came in, and Seungcheol was glad for the respite from your strained expressions and gestures. Your smile at them as they embraced you warmly was the only smile that reached your eyes throughout the whole introductory phase of the gathering.

"I'm so glad you're here, Seungcheol!" your mother said cheerfully, adding a warmth that Seungcheol hadn't felt in the room since you had both walked in. In fact, of all the people he had greeted today, nobody he'd met in this side of your family eased the tension he had been feeling since your voice changed on the way in. "My family has been waiting to see you for ages!"

Seungcheol kissed your mother's cheek and shook your father's hand, engaging in pleasant small talk with them. He had spent a lot of holidays and vacations with your parents, and they had been very enjoyable ones. In this fifth year of your relationship, though, you had quietly asked him if he wanted to go see your grandparents with you. He had known from the expression on your face that seeing your grandparents was an important family affair; and he knew now, too, why you had looked so anxious.

Everyone walked into the dining room once the clock in the parlor struck six o'clock. A long table heaped with food and beverages on glassware greeted all of you. Seating yourselves, Seungcheol held your hand underneath the table, squeezing it reassuringly. You squeezed his back.

Seungcheol's eyes caught Sana's on the far side of the room. She was sitting on the opposite end of the table with Minhyuk, and she cocked her head to the side, mouthing words that looked like, "Sit here, you two!", gesturing at a couple of seats beside them that soon got taken by another cousin and his parents. Sana made a face, and Seungcheol grinned. You were busy talking with another cousin, Samuel, who had also brought his partner with him. Seated at the far end of the table, near the empty seat of your grandfather, Seungcheol waited for dinner to begin.

Clinks of glasses and forks and knives slicing through meat and spoons ladling soup were the background music to the words that this huge family exchanged. Laughter rippled through the room, and slowly, the tension and formality that shaped conversations a while ago stopped.

"Is that Counselor Choi from the City Prosecutor’s Office?"

The matronly voice made everyone's heads turn, and all laughter died down.

Seungcheol saw your grandmother for the first time.

Dinner had long since started, but the way she gracefully sat down and the way her shoulders were set back made everyone excuse her for being late. Your grandfather silently took his place beside you, and you exchanged sweet smiles with him. Seungcheol watched as your grandfather leaned towards you, and he heard words like, “…talk to her…” come from his lips. Nervous energy engulfed the dinner table, and Seungcheol's ears must have been fooling him, because every clink and scrape of knives, and even the music, seemed to stop.

Your grandmother, beautiful despite her age, laid her eyes upon Seungcheol. Her eyes were neither kind nor cruel. The aloofness there could have thrown any stranger off, but the spark of interest that lit up her eyes compelled Seungcheol to return her gaze and to answer.

"Yes, ma'am." He could have called her something else, but this aura she exuded seemed to ask for something that formal. "Thank you for inviting me."

When she smiled, her expression was guarded as well. "My granddaughter is very fortunate to have met you. And you're welcome. Please, eat."

After greeting the other girlfriends, boyfriends, husbands and wives seated around, the rest of the conversation was directed at other members of the family. Seungcheol learned that this side of your family was involved in medical and tourism careers. You were the only one he knew that had a different path from the rest of them. This hadn’t been obvious when he spent time with your parents, but on this table, careers and what you are doing to succeed in that career seemed to be very important. Careers steered the conversation.

"Ahyoung is planning on setting up a pediatric practice, Mother,” one aunt said as she set down her spoon. “She wasn't able to come because she had to tie up some loose ends with the clinic renovation."

"Working through the holidays? Ahyoung must be wanting to surpass my record as a workaholic." Chuckles around the table could be heard at this amusing remark from Grandmother. "The president of the hospital in that town is a friend of mine who could help her establish her practice. Tell her to give me a call so I can help her get in touch with him. How about you, Jaemin? I saw you on TV a week ago. You announced the opening of a...what was that...a museum?"

"A shrine recreation, Grandmother. We're currently in the process of recreating an entire temple from the Silla era. My archaeology team hit a huge find down south when they found the remains of what we initially thought was a hidden metropolis in the mountains. Turns out that was this temple where priestesses tried to read the stars—”

“—if you need a priestess to make your shrine look more realistic, you can hire me." Sana broke in as she winked at Jaemin, who immediately looked flustered. Younger cousins of yours immediately began doing their best to hold back their laughter and Seungcheol felt you giggle quietly beside him, too, as you drank your glass of wine.

"Sana, instead of ridiculing your older brother, why don't you tell us about the latest findings of your research? And congratulations, darling. My former colleagues in Gynecology have been telling me that your research will be of a huge benefit to their practice.”

"Well, we are still working on developing this fertility treatment, as you know already, and we have the goal of obtaining a much higher success rate than in vitro fertilization. So, for example, if the success rate of a thirty-five-year-old woman is only at thirty-nine-point-five per cent, we would try to raise that bar by giving her a fifty per cent threshold of success. It’s still at a very experimental stage at this point, Grandmother, but the labs have been working on it incessantly...”

Seungcheol stopped listening at that point. He focused on his food and on not letting go of your hand. Their topics were interesting and he would occasionally get roped into the conversation, but Seungcheol couldn't help but despair about the fact that there wasn’t talk about anything else except work and their different professions and future plans for their businesses or companies. It was the holidays, for goodness’ sake. There weren't many other stories shared aside from work life. Everyone seemed to be comfortable with that kind of setting, but it cut through Seungcheol deeply. Especially when he noticed that the questions didn’t get to you.

The dinner passed like that.

Grandmother rose from her seat, her height, willowy frame and white dress making her look even more imposing. Silence once again reigned, and she spoke.

“Y/N, may I speak to you in private for a moment?” It wasn’t a question. She spun on her heel and left.

Seungcheol knew that she expected you to follow. And you did, whispering, “I’ll be back” before rushing out of the dining room. When his eyes roamed around the table, he saw that everyone was looking at him, and he put his fork down. He didn’t know what to think of what just happened. Your mother followed you out soon after.

"Don't worry," Samuel said reassuringly. "Grandmother may look like a very hard woman, but she's actually soft on the inside--"

"--and she has the softest spot for Y/N." Sana smiled. "She would never admit to playing favorites, but we all know in this table that she loves Y/N the most."

At a later time, while relishing dessert, your history with your grandmother began to unfold from the table, where only your closest cousins remained, and Seungcheol listened to them intently.

They told him the story about a grandmother who wanted nothing but the best of life for her family. A grandmother who had done her best to live a life that she knew would become a good example to everyone who followed her. Despite her stern appearance, she wasn’t the rich and evil grandmother who forced everyone to do things her way. Surprisingly, she was one who encouraged her family members to pursue what they loved to do.

“You see, even though most of us work in the medical field, we didn’t get these jobs because someone told us to, or because the woman we look up to in this family. We became doctors and businessmen because we wanted these jobs. Our paths turned out this way, and we’re enjoying ourselves.” Sana paused, letting her words sink first. “All our parents and our grandparents asked of us was that we pursue our dreams intending to succeed. And that was where she and Y/N took a bad turn.”

“Everyone in this family had turned out to be exactly who they wanted to be.” The unspoken words after that sentence held weight. All except one: you.

“Grandmother just couldn’t understand why Y/N did not choose to become the singer that she wanted to be. And what made her more furious was the fact that she doesn’t see how good she could be.”

Music from the piano drifted into the dining hall. Someone was singing carols, and Seungcheol was jolted from his reverie when he heard soft laughter coming from the parlor as well. It was then that he realized that most of the family had gone back to the parlor, where it was evident that they all loved to spend time together.

“Only one person plays beautifully like that,” Jaemin remarked. Seungcheol noted the ring of envy and admiration on his voice as you all listened to the strains of a piano. “You’re a very lucky man. My cousin isn’t just someone you meet out there.”

“Which is why she’s the favorite,” Hyorin, another cousin of yours, commented. “In a family of doctors and business magnates, she stands out.” Hyorin stood up, bringing her glass of wine with her. “I’m going there to listen.”

Sitting on the piano, fingers making music in a way that spoke to the soul, was you. It was one thing to just play music. It was another thing when that music communicates with its listeners, making them feel something. People were humming the carols that you played, but you didn’t pay heed to them. Seungcheol knew that once you were seated on that bench, you were in another world entirely. You smiled at your relatives as they all sang out songs and gave her requests. Music tied you all together and brought out the beauty of the human inside. Work was forgotten as you sang together. From the corner of his eye, as he joined the men in belting out “Smile Flower” by a classic boy group from more than fifty years ago, Seungcheol saw your grandmother smiling—genuinely—and nodding with your parents, who were also looking at you.

A change of key quieted the room, and everyone tried to figure out what the song you were playing. But nobody could tell what it was, only that it was in A minor. They waited for you to sing.

And when you did, a song they’ve never heard before, a song Seungcheol had never heard before from you, rose from your lips.

“Tossing out the lines that were never truly mine // Throwing to the fire what was never truly fine // I am in a place where no doubt and fears can get me // I am safe tonight with lover and family // by the firelight // by the firelight // I could be me.”

Later, when you and Seungcheol had gone home and you were both staring into the hearth which served as the only light in the living room and warmed you both from the cold of the night, Seungcheol mustered the courage to ask you what your grandmother had told you when she pulled you aside right after dinner.

You smiled and said simply, “She doesn’t want me to become an assistant producer anymore.” Your hand laced with Seungcheol’s underneath the pale blue quilt wrapped around you both. “She wants me to get my music out there to the world. She said she wanted me to stop hesitating about my future.”

“And what do you think about her advice?”

You turned to him, and your eyes were moist, your lips trembling with emotion as you smiled. “Baby,” you said gently, leaning on his shoulder, “it’s not that simple.” You sighed. “And I know I might sound like such a coward to you, but I have a reason for not pursuing a singing career. Besides, I think I’m already too old for that kind of life.”

“Yeah,” Seungcheol playfully acknowledged, “twenty-seven is too old for that kind of life.”

You laughed, but your eyes remained sad. “Consider that a sub-reason as to why I don’t want to be a singer. I know that I’m breaking my family’s heart by choosing not to become one because they want to see me actually doing something that I love. But you see, I’m not really in that bad a position. I’m doing something close to what I truly love. And for me, that is enough.”

Seungcheol held you closer with his one arm. “But what is the reason why you don’t want to be a singer? I’ve always wondered why, too. I didn’t ask you before about this because I didn’t want you—”

“—I don’t want a life where my most beautiful escape—my music—will most likely end up being my darkest prison.” You weren’t looking at him, but Seungcheol knew from your voice that you meant your words, and you wanted him to understand. “I’ve seen it happen. Every day, I work with talented people who were brave enough to let the world see their lives and listen to their music. I help them shine like the stars they are, but I always witness them burn too brightly and die out too fast in the end. And I don’t want that kind of life for myself. I want my music to be mine alone and to whoever I want to give it to. I don’t want my art to be pressured by people’s expectations and desires. I don’t want that kind of life.”

“Tossing out the lines that were never truly mine,” he sang. “Throwing to the fire what was never truly fine. I am in a place where no doubt and fears can get me. I am safe tonight with lover and family. By the firelight, I could be me.” Seungcheol looked at you. “Is that why you sang this to your family? So that they won’t worry about you being miserable because you haven’t fulfilled your ultimate dream?”

You looked at him humorously. “My ultimate dream is to be your wife and the mother of your children, dummy.”

“Oh.” Seungcheol blushed. “I forgot about that part.”

You let out a huge breath. “But you’re right. I just wanted them to know that I’m okay with my life. At the same time, though, I can’t stop wondering if I am missing out on something that I know I want to try deep in my heart.”

“So try doing it.”

It was when you hesitated when he said those words that Seungcheol knew.

He kissed your temple gently. “Baby, I think you should at least try.” Seungcheol stared at you as you pondered what he said in your mind. He knew that a million thoughts, pros and cons and other factors were probably racing around in your head at this point, and he didn’t want you to do that. “Come on. On the count of three, answer my question: do you want to sing your songs out there in the world or not? One.” You didn’t budge. “Two.” You gripped his hand tighter. “Thr—”

“—yes.” You wrapped your arms around his neck and you looked at him, staring deeply into his eyes. “But I’m afraid of the cost it would ask of me.”

“The greater the risk, the greater the joy,” Seungcheol commented casually as he laid you down on the couch, smiling as he kissed you. “Try it.”

“Don’t you think I’m too old? Or that I look too—”

“—This is not about what I want. This is about what you want. Your life. Your future. Your dreams.” He gazed at you again, and he felt the same flush that had crept on his face when he first heard you sing, up in the mountains, in an orphanage. So many things had happened since then. And he pictured you in his head, living your dream, casting the same spell that you had enchanted him with on thousands of people.

A performer, not a producer. That’s who my granddaughter is. Your grandmother’s last words before you both went home lingered on his head as he kissed you. Making music and performing that music is what she does best, and what she has always wanted. Help her get to her dreams. Don’t let her give in to her fears.

By the hearth, as he made love to you—his hands planted on your hips, his painfully delicious rhythm bringing tears to your eyes—he could not get over the truth that, with or without the spotlight on you, you were an amazing woman already. And he knew that he would continue seeing you grow into someone he will always be proud to love and to be with. But in his mind, he could not shake off the image he saw of you, of who you could be if you just became brave enough to.

“What does your heart say?” he asked you, his hand running up and down your bare skin, your limbs tangled together. The fire in the hearth had gone down into sizzling embers and the quilt barely covered you both, but your skin pressed against each other was warm with the afterglow of your lovemaking. “What do you truly want to do?”

You looked up at him with no hesitation, his heart stopped to beat for a moment that felt like forever: because there, in the sparks of light that burst to life in your eyes, he could see the woman you are, and the woman you could be, evolving into one.

“Baby, I want to try.”

4 | spring, and through the seasons after

The train of your dress fanned around you in its lacy magnificence, and the sun could not help itself but touch the beautiful, delicate material with its glorious beams. The soft grass underneath your feet sighed as you passed, and bursts of color from the petals strewn by your nieces gave a beautiful contrast to the peaceful green of the grass and the muted white tones of your dress. You hear people’s voices as you pass them by, their whispers of congratulations and the flashes of cameras. You looked to the horizon, on the sleeping waters of the early morning ocean, which reflected the rosy blush of the first dawn of spring.

You heard the piano start its music, and you hear the viola and the cello in their sweet duet. You smiled at your friends and your family as you passed them by. The crown of flowers in your hair rustled as the wind blew, and your veil flowed along with your hair as that touch of breeze passed.

One more step until you reach him.

When your eyes locked with the man that you will vow to love and to cherish and to be with forevermore, flashes of seasons past appeared in your mind: summers where drops of sun would scorch your skin, and where the smell of petrichor would linger after brief showers of rain; the crunch of leaves beneath your boots, and the colder winds that you would brace against during autumn; the calming hush when everything falls asleep and shivers under blankets of ice and snow; and the first days of spring, like this one, wherein what was frozen through would turn back to healthy shades of green, awakening with a new purpose.

As more memories came to your mind, a song formed in your heart and became written on your mind as you took in Seungcheol’s smiling eyes, brimming with tears as your hand touched his.

“Hold me close, darling // never let go // make this feeling last forever and a day // let’s stay.” These words, for that one summer night, in an old town, where you slow-danced to guitar and dulcimer strings as lanterns swayed with the wind. “Run your fingers through my hair // say you won’t care // if this feeling lasts forever and a day // let’s stay...”

“I love you so much // that I couldn’t keep it in anymore. // I need you so // like the air I breathe to live one more day, so stay…” These words, for that time when you remembered yourself frantically running across sidewalks as the golden glow of streetlights blended with the colors of an autumn dusk, and crashing into the safe, strong arms that will continue to hold you for as long as this life lasts and after.

“You keep setting my soul on fire // you make everything worthwhile…” These words, for that winter night when you felt the blazing sparks of the fire by the hearth of your house, where you decided to take the risk of burning brightly like the stars with your music. “You’re the sun that made me shine like this, // you’re the love that I just can’t resist, so please stay…” These words, for all the moments that you had doubted and he had believed in you as you made your dreams come true. These words, because from the privacy of the firelight by the hearth to the adulation of thousands as you stood beneath spotlights, he had been there.

“Love, let’s stay…Stay this way.”

Each memory and each turn of the seasons that passed through your mind evoked a variety of emotions within you. And you know in your heart that the reason why you could recall them so vividly and feel them so profoundly is that you did not create them alone.

Your eyes take in the man whose companionship had completed the scenes in your head. Through the seasons, he had been with you. He had laughed with you. He had cried with you. He had grown with you. And unlike the seasons which come and go, he stayed.

And he never left.

As you said your vows and exchanged rings and as you sealed the promises made with a kiss, you knew: through the seasons, he had truly, and sincerely, loved you.

- Super-Late Leanne. ⏰

#seventeen #svtcreations #caratwritersclub #seventeen scenarios #seventeen imagines #seventeen fluff #seventeen angst #svt fluff #svt angst #seventeen choi seungcheol #svt choi seungcheol #svt scoups #seventeen scoups #cheol #seventeen hong jisoo #seventeen yoon jeonghan #HAPPY BIRTHDAY BABY!!!

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peach-pops · 4 years ago

Text

song and movie: 999 Happy Haunts from Haunted Mansion || 1.4k masterlist

warning(s): character deaths, poisoning, mentions of alcohol

authors note: In honor of Halloween here is Nishinoya’s prompt! [If you’re on the discord this is not the spooky one i was talking about, saving it for a rainy day] Some characters or paintings I allude to are from the actual ride in either Disneyland/DisneyWorld and more info on them can be found here! Of course, one of the Haunted Mansions most recognizable rooms is the Stretching Room/Foyer and if you want to see what paintings I allude to click here!

word count: 2.3k

lyrics: If you would like to join our jamboree, there's a simple rule that's compulsory // Mortals pay a token fee, rest in peace, the haunting's free // So hurry back we would like your company

★━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━★

“ You know, we should get a place like this. Wouldn’t you say it’s cozy and romantic?” Nishinoya teased as he slipped his wet tie off of his neck and hung it up on the coat rack.

“ I would also say it’s creepy, secluded from the outside world, and full of cobwebs but whatever makes you happy my love,” You said as you removed Noya’s drenched coat from your head and hung it up beside him.

You had always teased your fiancé about getting a manor of this size if you two ever made it big but as you stood there in the middle of the foyer, all you wanted to do was leave and never look back. You and Noya just needed a place to stay to wait out the rain after your car had broken down so when you two stumbled upon this seemingly vacant manor, who were you two to pass up the chance at a warm fire?

Who were you two to pass up the chance at a warm fire- what an awfully silly thought that was now. Here you were, in a stranger’s home, unannounced, uninvited, and certainly not welcomed.

“ I have a bad feeling about this Yu, maybe we should leave,” You said, clearly distressed,” we practically broke in and now we’re just making ourselves comfortable in a stranger’s home.”

“ Relax, first of all, it’s not breaking in if the doors were unlocked and second, if it makes you feel any better, maybe we can try to find the owner and wake them up,” Noya said as if it was a matter of fact and while you knew his option was awful, you had no better suggestions.

As you looked around the foyer, you took notice that there wasn’t a single sign of running electricity yet besides the peeling wallpaper and the creaking floorboards, it was in good repair for a mansion of its era. You felt like you were in a real lifetime machine; everything from the candlesticks that were covered in light dust to the stale, dead air you were breathing in felt ancient.

“ Whoever lives here could use a house renovation,” Noya laughed to try and ease your worry but your mind couldn’t be bothered to entertain him when you felt like you were being watched.

You tried to keep your eyes off the walls of the room but it was as if they were luring you in, almost prodding you to turn and lookup. Across the upper extension of the foyer laid out framed, huge portraits that were faded in color and stared back at you with empty eyes.

The series of macabre portraits made you shift uneasily from side to side and Noya’s eyes were soon drawn to them too. One painting stood a smiling, elderly woman with a single rose in her hand while another showed a middle-aged bearded man holding a scroll.

No matter where you stood in the room, it was as if the eyes were following you carefully.

The last painting on the far left side of the foyer made you hold your breath as you carefully took in the portrait; a beautiful young woman, who couldn’t be that much older than yourself, held a pink parasol over her shoulder as she smiled plainly back at you.

As you stared at the portrait, you felt an uneasy feeling over your shoulder, and in the peripheral of your eyes, the striped, peeling wallpaper looked as though it was stretching and that the room was getting longer.

“ I must be going mad,” You mumbled to yourself as you waited for Noya to empty out the water left in his shoe.

In your gut, you knew that there was something unnerving within the walls of the mansion so once Nishinoya grabbed a candlestick and lit it, you two both made your way down the hall to try and find the owner of the manor as quickly as you could.

Noya held the candlestick up to the height of his shoulder and peered down the dark corridor as you listened closely for any sign of activity. You and Noya both shared the same furrowed expression when the sound of a low hum made its way through the walls of the manor and whatever was making the noise, you could feel the vibrations underneath your feet.

“ Music? Is that a pipe organ?” You asked after a moment of silence to confirm your guess,” so that means someone does live here.”

“ Or that someone is throwing a party, listen see?” You and Noya walked farther down and the closer you got to the end of the corridor, the louder the music got,”I think I hear people too!”

Your grip on his arm relaxed but your chest still felt tight at the feeling of being somewhere you knew you shouldn’t be. It was almost as if the dread was smothering you like a pillow over your mouth and nose; each time you thought you would have a chance at a full breath, something else would set you off to make you more anxious.

Whether it was the bolts of lightning that would illuminate through the grimey windows or the distant but present ‘creek’ heard just a few feet behind you, everything and anything about this manor did not sit right with you.

Noya approached the great mahogany door and by the sound of laughter and music, it was clear that there was some sort of rambunctious occasion happening on the other side of the wall. By the layout of the manor, it made sense that there would only be one grand entrance to the ballroom yet the mahogany door was covered in dust and undisturbed spiderwebs that looked as though they had been harboring there for years.

“Noya, don’t touch that. There’s probably another way in we just have to figure it out,” You said as he continued to try and push the heavy door forward with his foot,” Yu, enough. The spiders-”

“ Stand no chance again me!” Noya forced open the great mahogany door with one final push as several hundreds of spiders scattered up towards the ceiling. The door made an earsplitting cracking noise from the wood being stuck to the doorframe for so long but once the door opened all the way, the both of you froze right where you stood.

There, within the Grand Hall, revealed over a hundred spirits floating and waltzing along to a jovial melody from the towering organ pipe that was playing by itself. Each ghost was dressed elegantly from their head to their feet and there was no lush or lively color to their translucent ivory figures except a light blue hue encompassing the outline of each one.

You were absolutely terrified by the scene in front of you and for a moment, you truly believed you were going crazy. It wasn’t until you pried your eyes away from the ballroom and towards your fiancé that you knew the look of awe and fear on his face made everything more real.

A huge gust of wind flew past you as it instantly knocked the candlestick out of his hand, drawing the attention of some nearby ghosts.

“ Looks like we have a couple of party crashers huh?”

“ Well as they always say, the more the scarier!”

“ What’s wrong mortals? You look as though you’ve seen a ghost!”

You could feel the thumping of your heart against your chest and while you were sure you couldn’t take a breath, you could still sense the oxygen flowing in and out of your lungs. As Noya was paralyzed with shock, you quickly snapped out of your daze and tried to run out the room holding Noya’s hand but the mahogany door shut quickly, leaving you and Noya trapped inside.

“ Well, we certainly weren’t expecting more guests, especially guests of your kind,” You turned your head to face the ghost with the slow, MidAtlantic drawl and whose beard resembled white ivy tendrils,” but for you travelers, maybe we can make an exception.”

Noya opened his mouth to reply but he could tell in the way that you squeezed his hand that you wanted him to save his breath.

You gave a fleeting glance to Noya but turned your head back to the ghosts and did your best not to be distracted by their physically transparent state,” We’re very sorry, we didn’t know this manor was occupied. This looks like a charming party, however, we really should be going-”

“ Nonsense! You mortals are no match for this storm outside!” A chill went up your spine as one of the female ghosts with a wide feather hat yanked harshly on your arm and her touch felt as sharp as ice,” I see that lovely ring on your finger which must mean you two must be betrothed! I remember what it felt like to be young and in love, now all I am is dead and rich!”

Noya let out a genuine laugh at the ghosts quip,” Well, it could be worse, you could be dead and poor! Or alive and poor-”

“ Nishionya!” You scolded but the female ghost only tutted your tongue.

“ Oh dear that’s alright, please, you must stay and dance!”

“ Please, we really should be leaving.-”

“ Don’t you want to stay for the party?”

“ Oh no, thank you but, well, we shouldn’t impose-”

“ Impose? Well, it would be a delight to celebrate with you mortal lovebirds,” another ghost chipped in as the plump spirit pulled Noya in close to his side,”what do you say, hm? Convince your darling there’s no harm in a dance or two!”

From the second you laid eyes on Noya, you could see his whole body pumping with adrenaline as if he was on a drip. For Noya, how much damage could one dance do?

“ Y/N...one dance and we can leave,” Noya practically pouted as you now felt the immense pressure of having to either deny or accept his request,” please darling?”

You looked back and forth between the ghosts surrounding you, your fiance, and the other spirits waltzing on the dancefloor and while you knew deep down you should just grab him by the ear and bolt out of there, you reluctantly caved in,” You get one dance. One.”

Noya’s eyes lit up and he was buzzing up and down from excitement because how many people could say they got to dance in a haunted ballroom with ghosts?

“ There is one little thing you must do before you are allowed to partake in the jamboree. Us ghouls have a rule that's compulsory where mortals must pay a token fee,” The bearded ghost sang in a low rhyme as he handed you and Noya a cocktail glass filled with a silvery, gray liquid,” in this case since we have much to celebrate, the token fee is simply a toast... to new beginnings.”

You warily took the glass and when you bent you face down to smell the liquor, you wrinkled your nose immediately at the stench and your eyes began to water. Noya had the same reaction but instead, went to smell it again.

“ This smells horrid.”

“ It’s a classic creme de violette with gin and lemon juice. The correct name is called the Gray Ghost.”

“ It doesn’t change the way I think the drink smells,” You said as you gave another look at Noya,” one dance. You hear me?”

“ One dance, yes! Just one,” Noya couldn’t even hold in his anticipation as his smile grew bigger,” I love you.”

“ I love you too,” You took in a deep breath and clinked your class against your fiances,” To new beginnings.”

Noya couldn’t help but lean in to give you a soft kiss before the toast and as you kissed him back, you felt safer knowing that he was here with you, no matter how insane the night had become.

You both ignored the applause that came from the surrounding ghosts and Noya gave you a small smile before clinking his glass against yours,” To new beginnings.”

★━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━★

You and Noya’s infectious laughter could be heard from every corner of the ballroom yet the spirits paid no mind to the two loverbirds as Noya attempted to twirl and dip you for the third time in a row.

You shrieked at him and told him to stop and you exclaimed over and over again how he was going to drop you. Noya, with his newfound confidence he had gained by watching the other spirits waltz, insisted that third times the charm and he promised he wouldn’t let go of you this time.

By any witness there, Noya had picked up absolutely zero skills from the other spirits because he couldn’t take his eyes away from you for that long. One song turned into two more and this continued on all throughout the evening and not once did the couple ever pull away from each other to take a break.

Master Gracey watched the young couple from afar and smiled to himself as Madame Leota polished the cocktail glasses.

“ Do you think they’ll ask for another round?” Madame Leota teased as she bumped her hip against his,” They didn’t waste a single drop, they must’ve been thirsty. Oh, you must tell me how to make that cocktail, I’ve always been awful at making drinks.”

Master Gracey hummed and pulled out his notepad to recheck the ingredients and started to list them off to his desperate companion,” Three-fourths ounce of lemon juice, two ounces of gin, half an ounce of the cherry liquor-”

“Heering or Maraschino?”

“ Maraschino. It’s always Maraschino. Then a dash of blue curacao and half an ounce of creme de violette,” Master Gracey said as the young couple caught his eye again,” how much did I put in?”

He couldn’t help but let out a chuckle when the energetic male successfully did a half-decent dip to his lover. Their translucent, ivory figures jumped up and down for joy because finally, they managed to get the move right. As the couple leaned in for another kiss, Master Gracey snapped his fingers once when he remembered the last ingredient.

“ Oh, that’s right! It was half a teaspoon of arsenic.”

taglist: @boosyboo9206, @goopyartiste, @sugas-sweetheart, @kirislut, @estridries, @hannahalanib1, @art0saurus, @shoutamajiki, @yee-harr, @animatedarchives, @greywarenns, @bnha-bakusquad

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snakedevour · 4 years ago

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my thoughts on chapter 81 ahead, fellas. it feels like it’s been a while since i analyzed a chapter drop but in my defense they only release once a month and 80.5 didn’t give me a lot of meat to bite into.

nyanyway -- here’s kkg 81. this chapter brings the focus back onto yumeko a little bit, showing us again how she plays, how she thinks, and how she challenges the people around her. basically, for me, this chapter was the whole buffet after several chapters of scraps.

SPOILERS BELOW.

i made a post maybe a week or so ago at this point mentioning that i wanted to talk about how yumeko’s friendliness is “impersonal” despite being genuine and how that feeds into her ( for lack of better words ). and i’m still going to do that and it’ll be in a separate post from this one but this chapter gave me some ammunition in regards to that thought.

the thing that makes yumeko difficult to navigate in terms of interacting with her is that she challenges the conventional definition of “kind” and in a way kind of forces you to delineate between that and “friendly”.

yumeko is a cocktail with two major components:

1. she is friendly 2. she is powerful

and when you have a friendly powerful person it’s easy to fall into the trap tsubomi has here, in which you feel that because you side with someone friendly and powerful you’re inherently under their protection.

and in a lot of storytellings that’d typically be true... but yumeko is awfully atypical. recall tsubomi’s commentary from chapter 63:

so long as we frame “friendly” as something that inherently goes hand-in-hand with “good” i think we set ourselves up to misunderstand yumeko’s personality. yumeko is friendly but she is not altruistic. yumeko does not “save” people; every time that it seems that she has it’s because they “won�� it from her -- yumeko has never been benevolent for benevolence’s sake.

by a lot of standard definitions, i’d argue that she’s not even a good person.

it’s really nice to be reminded of that weird layer of nuance. we’re also reminded of something that might have gotten overshadowed by her comparative calmness lately and the housepet drama from the last few chapters --

more than just wantonly putting herself at risk, yumeko is obsessed with simultaneously imposing high antes on other people.

let’s briefly throw all the way back to chapter 16 just to get that in her own words:

i kind of want to say that yumeko has sadomasochistic tendencies but that’s probably for another post another day.

anyway, this takes us back to today and chapter 81, where tsubomi goes on to notice the folly in her own thinking:

paired with her thoughts from chapter 63 this says a lot.

“would yumeko bother helping me if I’m not taking any risk?”

i’m pretty sure the answer is no.

this really just sort of further cements my original opinion that yumeko definitely operates on some sort of metric of “earning” what one has. if you’re interested in my thought piece on that subject it’s right over here.

i really like where tsubomi’s train of thought is going here. up until now we’ve seen yumeko’s cutthroat mentality mostly as applied to herself and an opposing player. we’ve seen her drive the stakes high with yuriko, with sayaka, with miyo and miri and so on.

this is what i mean when i say yumeko’s friendliness has an element of uncanny valley to it. you can argue that we’ve seen yumeko drag people into gambling alongside her ( like itsuki ), but we haven’t really seen it in this kind of light where it’s leveraged against her willingness to help people.

so +1 to chapter 81 for re-highlighting this fact about yumeko.

moving along, tsubomi is having these thoughts in the first place because terano came by and pointed out to her that she’s an “extra”, and per the logistics of the game yumeko only really needs suzui’s cooperation to win. then we cut to this short set-up scene where yumeko tells the gang ( and us ) the plan for this turn:

this gets tsubomi thinking. because yumeko is donating to suzui, she’ll have 0 points which means if tsubomi challenges her, she’ll win and thereby fulfill the requirements of her life plan to “knock either yumeko or terano out of the election”. tsubomi we’ve seen in past games though is still kind of coming into her own individuality, and is very much used to just taking orders. on top of that, she still feels indebted to yumeko for pushing her to play against kiwatari during the debt swap indian poker.

another thing i commented about in the past was the “human” qualities and motivations of the characters. tsubomi is a real highlight of this chapter because she reminds us of that quality too, because terano’s remarks spark what i think is a very organic conflict in her thoughts:

“i don’t want to be a housepet” vs “i don’t want to betray the girl i’m indebted to”

“i want to live as a person” vs “i want to keep a good conscience”

it’s the portrayal of internal struggles like these that make me angy at the sexualization in this series because these really show that it just isn’t needed. kawamoto absolutely knows what he’s writing and it’s not like he’s writing it poorly so its like...what gives.

not to make this about yumeko again but she does seem to get pretty meta here. i’m pretty certain that she knows what tsubomi is thinking here and i’ll also go as far as to suggest that she might have even set up the play this way to test tsubomi’s mettle. i’ll get into that here in a moment though :)

i say yumeko has an idea of what’s going through tsubomi’s mind here just because her question is very telling -- “have you made your decision?” -- yumeko definitely knows that some sort of choice has been imposed onto tsubomi, and tsubomi’s mentioning of her lack of guidance this turn also implies that yumeko is leaving her to fend for herself. which i think is something yumeko will always do. we’ve established that she’s not altruistic in the slightest...i don’t think yumeko is at all interested in people who lack the will to help themselves, regardless of how pitiable their circumstances.

i know suzui is supposed to be the audience-proxy but idk my guys... i think tsubomi is shaping up to be the better conduit through which we see yumeko’s real colors.

also, more of yumeko giving us some insight into her values and how she thinks... but @ naomura why did you draw her doing this. yumeko you look SILLY but ily anyway

“only a choice at the end of agony can move your heart” -- yumeko’s starting to give me vibes of someone who’s apathetic unless the ante is driven wildly high hence why she does it but i need at least one more backstory drop before i speak more on that one. just saying it’d line up with a few things tho

moving on, it follows that tsubomi ultimately decides to challenge yumeko because that’s the logical thing to do if she wants to look out for herself. plus some commentary from terano about how it’s all according to keikaku.

anyway, i really enjoyed this next sequence because it throws back to yumeko even more. it reminds us that while yumeko loves taking on huge risks, that doesn’t mean she plays to lose. it’s been a while since we’ve seen yumeko engage in a setup like this so it was great to see that kawamoto still remember what kind of gambler she is:

i actually really love terano but i do enjoy seeing yumeko consistently trip her up. it really upholds yumeko’s role as a dark horse.

anyway, remember how i said yumeko probably set this play up to see what tsubomi would do? this is where we can circle back to that because we see, in fact, that yumeko did not donate her points to suzui like she said she would.

yumeko is such a convoluted character that you can get caught up on one aspect of her character to the point of forgetting another. in recent chapters we’ve seen her in a supporting role: supporting mary, seemingly helping tsubomi... but thanks chapter 81 for reminding us that yumeko is a gambler before she’s anything else and can and will set up other players. this also kind of raises a mild albeit interesting moral quandary: i think it’s pretty safe to say that this was manipulative on yumeko’s part, but it could also be argued that this is a gamble and she read far enough ahead and just acted accordingly. i think that ambiguity is the point.

and that’s the jist chapter 81, and tbh i really enjoyed it. it felt like i was back in ye olden days of yore where kkg was yumeko’s misadventures. for a while there it felt like they were like “ok we’ve established she’s a really good gambler we must shine the spotlight elsewhere now” -- which is fair, don’t get me wrong. knowing the rest of the -bamis is really important to the plot. it’s just nice to see yumeko back in action proper again 🥺

#the kkg deep dive #kakegurui spoilers #are there typos in this? probably #i'll scan it over again later but my brain cells are fried for now #but 81 was Really Good #the whole buffet #long post /

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ancientwastedlores · 4 years ago

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The Support System (Ch:2)

SUMMARY: The Avengers have managed to collect all the infinity stones across the universe, and are currently keeping them in far corners of the world, only for research and to see if they can improve the planet and its people. Reader is a researcher with Tony Stark and Bruce Banner, as well as a field agent. Loki is currently serving time for his actions in New York City in 2012.

A/N: Thank you for the love on the first chapter! You can find the same on AO3, if you prefer that. Let me know if you like this and I’ll keep posting more :) Also, should I start a tag list for this? I’m still navigating this platform, and I see many fic writers having a tag list for their fics. Anyway, enjoy!

Chapter: 2/?

Warnings: N/A

Audience: general.

_______________________________________________________________________

Tony likes to hand out the agendas of the day to the Avengers personally. He jogs around the tower with a stack of papers, wearing his tracksuit and headphones, a habit Pepper encouraged, since he never actually leaves his lab to do anything physical.

He gently opens the door and places the sheet on a table placed right next to the door. That table is specifically for the agendas. You once threw your keys on it and Tony passive aggressively made a point of picking up your keys and placing them on the floor to place his sheet.

You’re still in bed with Loki, who is facing away from you and snoring lightly. Tony opens the door to place the sheet and notices two heads instead of one in your bed. He moves closer to see Loki, widens his eyes, and promptly runs out.

‘What?’ Nat asks, running past Tony, then stopping. ‘Loki!’ ‘In her room!?’ ‘Yes!’ ‘I…’ Nat is trying to peer in through the crack Tony left open. ‘Are you sure!?’ ‘Do YOU want to look?’ ‘No!’ Nat nearly shouts.

Tony shuts the door. ‘I’ll talk to her about it later’.

‘Good, I’m not going to’ Nat says, then places her headphones back and continues running.

Around 8 AM, after Loki has left your room, you change into your field uniform and walk to the kitchen. The rest of the Avengers, including Loki, are in there, and the cook is making bacon and eggs.

‘Hi Samantha’ you greet the cook. She smiles back at you. You pour yourself a cup of coffee and Tony grabs your arm, making you nearly spill the coffee.

‘Hey man!’ you yell. ‘Please tell me you aren’t sleeping with Loki’ Tony hisses. ‘What… no! I’m not, let go of my arm!’ Tony lets go. ‘I saw him in your bed’. ‘Yeah, we just had a heart to heart about our past and fell asleep, it’s no big deal’. He narrows his eyes at you. ‘You confided in Loki about your past?’ ‘Well, him more than me’. ‘Uhuh’.

You raise an eyebrow at Tony. ‘It’s fine’ you assure him. He doesn’t believe you, which is clear in his face, but walks back to the dining table.

You grab a plate for yourself and get some fruit, eggs and bread. You take your seat at the table and join in on the conversation everyone’s having.

‘Right’ you announce, walking into the lab with Bruce and Tony. ‘TODAY is the day we speak to Harry’. ‘Harry?’ Tony asks. ‘Yeah. The Reality Gem’. ‘You named the Reality Gem “Harry”?’ Bruce asks. ‘Yes. You know, the redheaded prince of England. And the Reality gem is Red’ you grin, proud of your name. They roll their eyes but laugh, and go to their respective workstations.

Doctor Strange had found a way to speak to the Time Stone, and provided everything he could for you to be able to do the same with the Reality stone. He had done everything save for actually coming down the lab, which he couldn’t because he had to be at the Sanctum Sanctorum. But you had gone through every single paper he sent, every theory you talked over, and every idea you shared. After a while, it was clear that the code to cracking all the stones wasn’t the same, and so you’d have to start from scratch for every stone.

Frustrating as it was, you did love a challenge.

‘Maybe we should just build a body around it like we did for Vision and let it literally speak to us’ you say, frustrated, a few hours later.

‘We did consider that. We even have the technology for it, but we can’t have six people walking around with stones in their heads’ Tony says.

‘Oh, is THAT the problem?’ you chuckle. ‘Not the insane amount of power and resources it would take, not to mention how the costs outweigh the benefits’.

‘She’s right, it took Thor to open the cradle last time’. Bruce says. ‘And if we give the stones a body, it could do anything’.

‘At least the stones restrict movement’ you say.

‘I don’t think the lack of a body would stop the stones’ Tony says. ‘Besides. Strange got his to talk while it still sits in that necklace, so I’m sure we can work it out. Did you read through the papers he sent?’

‘I did’ you say. ‘Twice over, made some notes if you’d like to see’ you project the contents of your laptop onto a hologram before Tony. ‘We’ve tried it the few ways Strange suggested, but what he actually did is very particular to the Time Stone’.

‘Series of time loops and manipulations in the mirror dimension’ Tony reads. ‘We can’t do that, of course, we don’t even know how to use it’.

‘Can’t we take the reality stone into the mirror dimension?’ Bruce asks.

‘What then?’ you ask. ‘It was purely an accident that Stephen even managed to speak to the stone. He managed to reverse and study his actions somehow to write a paper’.

‘So we’re stuck in the lab, then’ Tony sighs, and turns to walk to his table.

‘Unless you just want to take it to the mirror dimension and just mess around with it’ you say, half-joking.

Tony stops in his tracks. He promptly turns back to face you. You see the look on his face and push the hologram aside. ‘Tony, you know I love a mystery, but I wouldn’t advice getting stuck in the mirror dimension with an Infinity Stone unless you REALLY know what you’re doing’.

‘Strange did it’ he scoffs. ‘Strange knows what he’s doing’ you say. ‘Are you saying Strange is smarter than I am!?’ Tony demands.

Oh dear.

‘I’m saying he knows more about this’ you walk back to your computer and pull up another paper he sent you and project it to a hologram. ‘Read that’ you highlight a line using your fingers. ‘The mirror dimension is linked to the dark dimension, playing around with an Infinity Stone without understanding how to use it could not only trap you in the mirror dimension, it could draw you into the dark dimension’ you swipe the hologram away. ‘And I hate to bring this up, but after New York, this should be the last thing you throw yourself into’.

Tony sighs. ‘You’re right, kid’.

You close the holograms and walk back to your desk. Tony’s still standing in the same spot though. You sit down and pull yourself close to the desk.

‘You’re smart’ Tony declares.

You smile at him.

‘So I can’t understand why the hell you’d spend the night with Loki’. ‘You did what?’ Bruce shouted. You glare at Tony. ‘THANKS’. ‘YOU SLEPT WITH LOKI!?’ Bruce’s voice is unnaturally high pitched. ‘I did no such thing, we were talking and fell asleep!’ you defend yourself. ‘Can we get back to the stones’. ‘Just…’ Tony leans over your table. ‘Promise me you won’t let this be a thing, he’s dangerous’. ‘Hey, I can take care of myself. And he’s more like you than you think’. ‘I take offense to that’ Tony says, without actually sounding or looking offended. ‘You don’t like being compared to a God?’ you ask teasingly.

Tony smirks. ‘You got me. I’m going back to work’ he finally turns away to sit at his desk. The three of you continue working.

At last. The training room. You walk into the roomy glass cage that has an arsenal of knives, swords, spears, guns, and other alien weaponry lining the wall. You feel at home.

‘What we feeling like today?’ Natasha’s voice comes up behind you. ‘I’m feeling the katanas’ you say, your hands running over the colourful handles of the katanas.

Nat takes a pair for herself, and you take yours. ‘Hand to hand first’ Nat says. As is usual. You place the katanas in the harness strapped to your back and take your fighting stance.

Nat goes to punch you and you block it. Her other hand comes to chop at your neck, which you also manage to block by holding her wrist, then flipping her over so she lands on her back.

‘At least give me a challenge’ you tease. ‘Just getting your ego up so I can bring it crashing down’ she smiles, as she gets up. You know she’s not lying. ‘You’re terribly mean’ you say. You take your fighting stance once again.

Two hours later, after your session with Natasha ends, you place the Katanas back on the wall. ‘Can I take these on the extraction mission?’

‘You can take anything you want. Just don’t take too much, we don’t want to be weighed down’. ‘Right’ you look at the katanas. They really are gorgeous. ‘Where did we get these?’ ‘They used to be Lady Sif’s. She left them with S. H. I. E. L. D, and S. H. I. E. L. D gave it to Tony’.

You touch the handles again, which has some Norse story etched on it in gold and red tones. ‘They’re beautiful’.

‘They are’ Natasha agrees, unhooking her harness and placing it on the wall as well. ‘Do you know the story?’

You nod. You’ve grown up reading stories of Greek and Norse myths. ‘This scene is Odin stealing poetry from the Giants and flying back to Asgard with it’ you point at something in the handle. ‘That’s earth. As Odin was flying over Earth, some of the poetry spilled here, which is how we have the art form’.

You stare at the handle a while longer.

‘Do you have a thing going on with Loki?’ Natasha asks. ‘What! No! How many people has Tony told?’ ‘Just me. I happened to pass by when he left your agenda’. ‘Bruce knows too’. ‘Bruce!? Why?’ ‘Cuz Tony can’t shut up’ you say. ‘Does it bother you?’ ‘Him not shutting up or people knowing about it?’ ‘The second one’. ‘I don’t really care’ you shrug, knowing that it was inevitable, ‘But I know how silly rumours can affect people, so I wish people would stop spinning it like that for Loki’s sake’. ‘Right’ she nods, understanding. ‘I’ll make sure no one else knows’. ‘Thanks Nat’ you smile at her. ‘I have to shower and go back to the lab. Bye!’

‘Bye!’

‘We’ve made progress!’ Tony yells at you as you walk back in.

‘That’s excellent!’ you know Tony is absolutely dying to tell you what he uncovered, but you aren’t going to give him the satisfaction of telling you immediately for outing your little sleepover to Bruce. ‘But you should eat first’.

‘Yeah yeah, listen to this, so Bruce said…’ ‘No, I literally meant eat first, talk later’.

Tony looks like you’ve just slapped him. ‘It’ll take a second’.

‘I won’t hear it until you’ve had something to eat’ you unwrap the falafels and shawarmas you got from the food truck downstairs.

He glares at you, grabs a falafel, takes the smallest bite and sets it back down again. ‘Now…’

‘Actually, I could eat too’ Bruce walks over to grab himself a shawarma, and proceeds to open the wrapper very, very slowly.

You grin at Tony. Understanding that there really is no way you will listen, he sits down to eat a proper meal.

After throwing away the wrappers, he comes and sits down next to you. ‘Bruce said it would be so funny if we got Vision to talk to it like it’s his cousin, and I got an idea’.

‘Okay?’ ‘They’re family!’ ‘Ohana’ you say, still chewing and looking at him with dead seriousness.

Tony glares at you again, the occasional eating noises from Bruce making you internally lose it.

‘As I was saying, we don’t have to use the same Time Stone method, but we don’t have to completely abandon it either’. ‘But they do vastly different things from each other, we even tried all the…’ ‘Yes, but you haven’t tried combinations’ he runs to your laptop. ‘I was going through your notes; look at what you’ve written here’.

You read it: "So basically it’s like those old rotary phones. Strange ran the dial to 6, then 4, then 9, then 1, until it dialled a number and made a call."

‘I was really sleepy when I wrote that’ you say. ‘We can’t crack the stone, we have to learn to first use it, then connect with it’. ‘We’ve been over this, Tony, none of us know how…’ ‘No, I won’t do it’.

You were fully ready to shoot Tony down, but damn, he decides to be reasonable!?

‘I was thinking we can just put Vision in the mirror dimension and ask him to use it in a combination of ways. See what clicks. I mean if anyone would know, it would be Vision, right? Maybe if there’s a way to speak to him while he is IN the mirror dimension, we can remotely control it’

‘I’ll have to ask Strange first’. ‘DO THAT’ Tony screams and Bruce jumps. ‘LET ME EAT MAN!’ he yells back.

You chuckle. ‘So… I'll email Strange then, shall I?’ ‘Yes. And kid?’

You roll your eyes but smile at the endearment. ‘Yes?’

‘You did good. I couldn’t have done it without you’.

You take the laptop from Tony’s hands and sit down to write the email to Strange.

_______________________________________________________________________

#loki #loki x reader #loki x you #marvel fan fiction #avengers fandom #loki fanfic #loki fandom #tom hiddleston #marvel avengers #loki fluff

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ctl-yuejie · 5 years ago

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Tagging Game: Top 5 BL dramas/series and 5 Honorable Mentions you would recommend

tagged by @weilongfu, thanks love - I always have fun reading your recaps and recommendations and I also love these tag games!

Top 5 Series (in no particular order)

Boundary Crossing / Crossing The Line / 越界 (Taiwan, 2018)

Short Indie series, but the two main leads have perfect chemistry and deliver a stellar performance in a light-hearted high school romance. A plus is the school delinquent x model student trope and dealing with repercussions of sport injuries and recovery. This series hit very close to home so this is one of my all time favourites.

Long Time No See / 롱타임노씨 (South Korea, 2017) (and other works from strongberry, but they fall more into the short movie category)

Another indie project delivering the perfect mix of action & romance. Haven’t seen such an ambitious mlm series in terms of plot and strongberry as a production company on a whole just delights me: they always have a happy end for queer couples.

The Untamed / 陈情令 (China, 2019)

Delightfully plot heavy with complex characters and themes and a wonderful romance that still has me obsessed with the main couple, despite the censorship.

In The Flesh (UK, 2013 - 2014)

This not quite mainstream not quite indie production manages to intertwine the setting of post-zombie apocalypse britain with thoughtful discussions of substance abuse, homophobia, prejudice and suicide. Again, the main characters are amazing and the actors delivered excellent performances (be aware of possibly triggering content)

What Did You Eat Yesterday / きのう何食べた？ (Japan, 2019)

The most delightfully wholesome mlm show I know of. Never shying away from difficult topics but always putting the beautiful relationship of the main couple and their wonderful cooking in the forefront. The only series starring a couple beyond their 20s in a same sex relationship.

5 Honorable Mentions

Queer as Folk (USA, 2000 - 2005): my first mlm series, still relevant and a milestone in queer representation on screen.

Skam (Norway, 2015 - 2017) + international remakes: while I have only seen snippets it is great to know that teenagers in so many countries have this series with queer characters readily available.

Diary of Tootsies ( Thailand, 2016 - 2017) / Wake Up Chanee (Thailand, 2018): Putting them together because these are series with an ensemble cast and not focusing exclusively on mlm content. Nevertheless funny and delightful with a huge variety of mlm love stories and especially diverse representation of gay/bi/queer men.

HIStory3: Trapped (Taiwan, 2019): Another indie project with an action and romance plot intertwined. Very entertaining with actors that give their best and some delightful silliness.

Sense8 (USA, 2015 - 2018): Another series with an ensemble cast that needs special acknowledgement for its ridiculous production quality, diverse cast & crew and fantastic story concept.

tagging: @scheusal @sarah-yyy @sluttynewwiee @tok0soul @stebeee @piningbisexuals @earthpodd @howdydowdy @bengiyo @pumpkinpaix -> if you feel like doing this <3

#ctlyuejie writes #tag game #lovely mutuals are lovely #i am going to indulge in the pain that it in the flesh now #long post

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animatedminds · 4 years ago

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Scoob! Review

Apologies: I watched the movie two weeks ago, but forgot to write this because I was so busy doing the Dragonball FighterZ thing. But, with that out of the way...

An interesting ride. As a longtime Scooby Doo fan, it was pretty much a given that I would watch this installment by the Warner Animation Group as soon as possible, and I had a pretty good time - albeit with some issue. It’s a fun Scooby adventure, mostly focusing on Scooby and Shaggy, as they go on a new kind of adventure. It’s full of fun references, super charmingly animated action scenes, and lots of humor that actually nails the characters’ goofball antics without diminishing them as the butt of the joke - which is something the previous theatrical series was hit or miss about - which which is also hampered by the fact that it doesn’t really give itself enough time or space to really make any of those things shine.

Spoilers, but only a couple.

The first thing we ever heard about this movie years ago was that it was conceived as a dramatic retool of Scooby Doo into a out-and-out spy series, in order to set up a Hanna Barbera cinematic universe a la the MCU (which, given that they already had a shared universe they could adapt in Future Quest, hit a little hard), giving the impression that Scooby was going to be a pastiche of James Bond. It’s very obvious from the finished product that this concept was since heavily changed, but you still see it in the film. The gang is still the same-old gang - a bunch of kooky teen mystery solvers - but plotwise it’s very much “what if instead of solving a mystery, the gang just fought a supervillain?” Which, let’s be clear, is not unheard of for the franchise: see Scooby Doo and the Cyber Chase for another story that’s mostly just “fight a cool bad guy, with a tacked on mystery,” or the other Shaggy and Scooby-centric stuff like Ghoul School or Reluctant Werewolf for other movies that just plain eschew their usual setting entirely - this is a lot like those. It’s centered around the two characters’ relationship, like pretty much every theatrical Scooby release it seems, as this new challenge almost breaks their union, and the group as usual does very well in that kind of action. Faced with an army of dimwitted robots that can go from silly to terrifying multiple times in the same scene, Scoob and Shag’s typical mix of silly bumbling with surprisingly - and destructively - clever antics make for some great scenes, my favorite being a madcap chase through an amusement park that ends with them getting away on a ferris wheel that’s been knocked of its hinges.

This is very much a movie that wants to be a Hanna Barbera crossover, but is trying hard to restrain itself. As a kid Shaggy was a fan of the Impossibles (who, iirc, were once intended to get a movie as part of this universe) with models and posters that the camera never completely focuses on, you see Laff-a-Lympics on an arcade machine, references to classic Scooby writers and actors as location names (I laughed at Messick Mountain, and the Takamoto Bowl outright went over my head at first), even little things like Scooby bowling like Fred Flintstone or the blink and you’ll miss it appearance of Yankee Doodle Pigeon - and yes, Captain Caveman shows up, fully voiced by Tracy Morgan and kicking butt for a very short scene, with one of his show’s supporting characters (Dee Dee Skyes) as a prominent in this movie’s plot. There’s even musical references in addition to visible ones: at one point, the movie even orchestrates one of the classic bits of Scooby Doo background music. I was hoping for a reference to the classic Scooby Doo / Blue Falcon theme, but alas that was one nod we didn’t get.

However, this approach does work especially well with Blue Falcon - who was originally built up through Scooby Doo, sharing a timeslot, advertisement and technically a theme song, and in time has more or less become to Scooby Doo what Donkey Kong is to Mario: technically a supporting character, but able to do his own stuff every once in a while. There have been several Blue Falcon Scooby Doo crossovers in the last few years (though in terms of sheer number of references this movie’s got nothing on Mask of the Blue Falcon), and they’ve all been very fun as each show, movie or comic reinterpreted the character to fit their specific world - and this movie’s novice Blue Falcon who is kind of an egoistical loser, but turns out to have a lot to learn even from Scooby and Shaggy’s brand of cowardly bravery, grows on you even if he has kind of a rough initial landing.

Unfortunately, this is also a movie that very much wants that rigid hour and a half timeslot, and has absolutely no interest in a going a second longer - and that’s where it’s problems come in. I’ve said before that animated films have become more and more written with expediency in mind: plot points are rushed, denouements are minimized, side or even main characters might not get much utilization, and sometimes things come of as just kind of happening to the protagonists without much set-up. Even the best or the best animation companies fall into these traps at times, and this movie is a good example of what it looks like if you fall into that too much. Take the Scooby gang - Velma, Daphne, and Fred. They’re not really fleshed out that much in this movie, even if they were tweaked a bit with their new VAs - but that’s not necessarily a problem in itself, given the heavy focus on Scooby and Shaggy. What’s more noticeable is where this intersects the plot: for example - one of the better examples of what I’m talking about - the scene that kicks off the whole story. Fred, Velma and Daphne want to expand Mystery Inc, and call Simon Cowell to invest in them. Cowell decides Scooby and Shaggy are incompetent because reasons, and the two storm off. This is later framed as the gang abandoning the duo, that’s not really what happens. Once Cowell hits the scene, beyond one or two lines the rest of the gang essentially ceases to exist, and barely reacts to anything: there’s no moments with them where they seem to buy into what Cowell is saying, there’s nothing beforehand that implies that they’re dissatisfied with Scooby and Shaggy, there’s isn’t even really a status quo for what their dynamic is like. We cut straight from them meeting as kids to them having a supposed fight as adults - this is something that wouldn’t have taken a lot of time, but would have strengthened pretty much everything, from Scooby and Shaggy’s reaction to the trio’s guilt later, but is skipped over entirely. The others get very little beyond being summed up as “the muscle” (Fred), “the face” (Daphne) and “the brains” (Velma), and it feels less like expediency and more like we missed a scene somewhere.

Granted, this particular thing also runs a unique problem that the Scooby gang face. As characters who just turned fifty and who are well entrenched in pop culture, adaptations often assume you know who they already - and this movie definitely assumes you can do its work for it and establish a baseline for the Scooby gang on your own... and on that front, I suppose it does better than the previous film series, which based a lot of its humor on fandom in-jokes they poorly assumed everyone agreed with. But... there’s a degree to which every film needs to establish a baseline for that it itself to trying to do, and I think skipping this hurt the film more than it should have. And it’s hardly the only point where the need for speed cuts out the flow of the film. Scooby and Shaggy get abducted by Blue Falcon, whose assistant then promptly exposits on everything the audience doesn’t know yet about the plot so that they can just skip straight to more action - basically setting up a question and then answering it immediately without set-up. This essentially robs Dick Dastardy - definitely the best thing about the movie - of a strong introduction, in favor of, again, expediency, and it’s kind of baffling given that there’s later scenes where the rest follows the mystery and so repeats that exposition anyway. I mentioned that Blue Falcon himself got a rough initial landing, and that’s because his intro scene is just a lot of new element popping in with exposition, interspersed with pop culture references - and that exposition just stops the whole thing cold for a while. We hit again the “expects you to know” angle with Falcon himself, who is a legacy character of the original Falcon - who we never see, which raises the question of why they bothered to make him a legacy and not just a novice hero in the first place. I’ve always been a strong believer that you can introduce elements without needless explanation unless who introduce concepts that suggest explanation: Scoob and Shag being a fan of the original Blue Falcon, Dynomutt constantly reminiscing about him, and there being a full Falcon organization around which the movie pivots, along with lots of reference, suggest the need for at least a little more than we got - even if it’s just a thirty clip of the way Blue Falcon worked before Brian (the new Falcon) came along - but the movie just wants to rush past it. The entire quest on which the plot is centered it halfway through when we first encounter it, and doesn’t get any explanation at all until halfway through the movie. And then there’s little things like Captain Caveman cameo, which just leave you wanting more.

This happens again and again, with plot points, characters, all sorts - things introduced halfway and then brushed past as though they’re not. People don’t expect much from animated movies, and stuff like this is one of the reasons why - this movie feels sometimes like it was written for tv, which is ironic given how it ended up being released. But the movies that were themselves DTV or released to TV, like Shaggy’s Showdown or Legend of the Phantasaur, the aforementioned Mask of the Blue Falcon or - my perosnal favorite - Moon Monster Madness, even tend to not have these problems themselves, because they’re more measured and precise about what they want to introduce and why. It’s great to be childish, as long you do childish well.

But now that the criticism portion of the review is done, I will say that this doesn’t hamper the movie’s desire to be fun and easy to follow, it just makes it not as much so as it clearly could have been. If you wanted more Falcon, or more Scooby and Shaggy, more Mystery Inc shenangians, more Dastardly, more adventure, more of a certain gag or humor, more of really any of the movie’s best points, you weren’t getting them that much because the movie was trying to do all of them all at once. But one the movie starts getting traction, about halfway through, that starts to fade as everything coalesces. All the characters meet, we finally know what the heck is going on, and it’s just a straight shot to the end with lots of what this movie does best: cool visuals, silly characters doing silly things, and brave characters doing brave things. Much as I wish there was more to the Captain Caveman segment, it’s one of the most visually hilarious parts of the movie, with the stark contrast of these hi-tech, modern character colliding with these explicitly more cartoony prehistoric designs and antics, and its just wonderful. Everything about Dick Dastardly’s story is great - though I was wishing for a Penelope Pitstop reference - and he even gets a heartwarming conclusion to the whole thing.

I don’t know where the series is going after this - whether they do indeed intend to make more Hanna Barbera movies in this vein. The credits teased Johnny Quest, Frankenstein Jr, Grape Ape (who according to concept art was supposed to be in this one), Atom Ant, and even a bit of Wacky Races, and it’s clear they have the love for classic Hanna Barbera to make it happen. I just hope that if they do, they go with a series who can expand this in a more concise way, with a little better character introduction. I’ve still got my fingers crossed for Future Quest.

The film is still very recommended by me. I loved it, I watched it twice, and it a heck of a lot of fun even with its hang-ups. If you haven’t seen it, there are worse ways for a parent, a kid, or just a big ol’ child at heart to spend an afternoon.

#scooby doo #scoob #movie review #animation review #shaggy #daphne blake #velma dinkley #fred jones #hanna barbera #warner animation group #blue falcon #dynomutt #dick dastardly #animated film #review #animated minds

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buzzdixonwriter · 4 years ago

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Ellison’s Law

Even for the early 1960s, Burke’s Law was a silly gimmick show.

The gimmick? Millionaire Amos Burke, despite inheriting fabulous wealth, always wanted to be a detective so he joined the LAPD and worked his way up to captain of the homicide bureau.

Basically Batman without the trauma or costume.

And like Batman of a few years later, an exercise in camp.

The show was rigidly formulaic, but for practical reasons. It relied heavily on stunt casting celebrities as suspects or witnesses and as such it had to be flexible enough to handle rewrites and re-castings in the middle of production.

The typical episode began with someone found murdered or shown getting killed in some unusual manner, cut to Amos Burke flirting with a lady only to be called away by his police duties. Cue the opening title as Burke and his driver hurry out of his relatively modest Beverly Hills mansion to his Rolls-Royce (actually producer Aaron Spelling’s car which he rented back to the production) as a sultry female voice incants: “It’s Burke’s Law” then after the first commercial break Burke arrives at the scene of the crime and finds clues pointing him to four or five suspects.

Said suspects are the celebrity guest stars, recruited either to give them some manic scenery chewing time or -- more rarely -- an intense dramatic scene.

After three more commercial breaks, Burke intones one of his “laws” (“Burke’s law: Never ask a question where you don’t already know the answer.”), pulls a rabbit out of his hat / solution out of his butt, and fingers that episode’s duly appointed murderer.

The problem with the series as a whole is that it could never quite decide on what tone it wanted to take and stick with it consistently. The British series The Avengers found the perfect balance of tongue-in-cheek / derring-do but Burke’s Law bounced all over the spectrum, frequently in the same episode.

So why bring up this mediocre TV show at all?

Two words: Harlan Ellison

. . .

I’ve posted many times before on Harlan’s career and the impact of his writing and friendship on me.

He was in the mid 1960s at his zenith as a TV writer, and while his writing career as a whole encompasses so much more than that, his brief run as one of the meteors streaking across the Hollywood sky only lasted 4 years.

Oh, he kept writing for TV after that, but the old zing was gone. He supplied stories for other series, created and fought hard to keep The Starlost on track but eventually had to walk away from that heartbreak, adapted several of his own short stories to a Twilight Zone revival, as well as numerous development deals that went nowhere (including two great ideas for The Name Of The Game, another Gene Barry series, that would have fit perfectly into that show’s oeuvre).

If you find his second book of TV criticism, The Other Glass Teat, check out his first draft for “The Whimper Of Whipped Dogs” episode of The Young Lawyers (not to be confused with his short story of the same title).

It’s one of the most powerful / gut wrenching things you’ll ever read…

…but by the time the studio and the network got through with it, the final product was virtually unrecognizable…and unwatchable.

Such was Harlan’s fate after 1967 in Clown Town (as he referred to it).

But from 1963 to 1967, he was golden.

. . .

Harlan’s rocky personal history went through many highs and lows before coming to Hollywood in 1962.

Harlan’s first breakthrough as a writer was with his series of stories and essays on juvenile crime in New York in the early and mid-1950s..

Drafted in 1957. following his discharge, he settled in Chicago with his second wife and her son, editing Rogue magazine, a Playboy imitator.

Feeling his personal life becoming untenable, he called in favors from a friend, drove out to California with his soon-to-be ex-wife and stepson (aware the marriage was over, she also wanted to relocate away from Chicago), made his first sale to TV (his short story “No Fourth Commandment” to the TV show Route 66), then briefly found a sweet spot with Burke’s Law, writing four teleplays for their first season.

Burke’s Law is a good crucible for examination because of its silly, gimmicky nature and rigid format requirements.

These scripts represent a pivotal point in Harlan’s writing career, but more importantly, they mark the only sustained run he enjoyed on a non-anthology show, and as such make a good benchmark in comparing his growth as a writer and how his unique perspective played out in in relation to the constraints of episodic television.

While a couple of Harlan’s better science fiction / fantasy stories were written before 1963, the meteoric rise of his career in those genres began with his classic short story “’Repent, Harlequin!’ Said The Ticktockman” in 1965, followed by a host of other groundbreaking short stories and novellas, and his original anthologies Dangerous Visions and Again, Dangerous Visions in which he recruited other science fiction and fantasy writers -- many of them already well established pros -- to follow the path he blazed in the genre.

His experience on Burke’s Law occurs squarely between what he once was to what he was becoming, and as such is worthy of attention.

SPOILER: There are no great hidden gems here.

There’s a lot of amusing writing, and a few flashes of the emotional intensity Harlan could provide, but by and large this is journeyman level stuff: Better than most, but not the best.

. . .

”Who Killed Alex Debbs?” was his first script for the series, and he pitched it to producer Aaron Spelling at a cattle call after a screening of the show’s pilot episode.

Harlan jump started the pitch process by improvising an idea off the cuff at the end of the screening, and Spelling took him to his office to hear how Harlan planned to resolve it, then hired him on the spot.

It’s unclear if Harlan was actually a staff writer on the series or simply hung out at the studio a lot, but he used his skills as a quick study to start working his way up the food chain.

His first script fulfills all the requirements of a Burke’s Law episode and shows off two of Harlan’s main strengths: An ability to hone in on intense emotion and a keen eye for the culture around him (in this case, very specifically Hollywood of the early 1960s).

On the downside, logic gaps render this story more implausible than most -- and as noted, Burke’s Law as a series wasn’t famous for its plausibility.

A flaw of almost all Burke’s Law episodes is that the victim is typically found dead under mysterious / bizarre circumstances, and the impression we get of them is constructed entirely through the words of suspects and witnesses.

It’s not an unworkable approach, but not the best suited for episodic television.

In this instance. victim Alex Drebbs is a Hugh Hefner-like men’s magazine publisher and monarch of a mini-empire of key clubs ala the Playboy Clubs of the era. Harlan captures that milieu well but here’s where the logic gaps hit hard: There’s no way a Hefner-like figure would be alone long enough for someone to kill him without being noticed, there’s no way his disappearance wouldn’t be immediately noticed by employees needing his attention, and it sure as hell wouldn’t have happened in a deserted club on the afternoon of its big opening.

On the plus side, there are some great character scenes including Arlene Dahl as a bitter ex-investor in Debbs empire now reduced to licking saving stamps to keep her decay mansion in repair, Burgess Meredith as a men’s magazine cartoonist who is nothing but a bundle of neurotic twitches and tics, and finally Sammy Davis Jr as Cordwainer Bird, the humor editor for Debbs’ magazine.

This was at the Robin Williams stage of Davis career, when all you had to do was point a camera in his direction and let him go. Harlan supplied the corny gags but Davis launched them over the top with his antics, and while he brings the proceedings to a complete disruptive halt, his brief scene is the most entertaining in the entire series. (Harlan later used Cordwainer Bird as his WGA pseudonym when he wanted to indicate displeasure at what had been done to his scripts.)

By his own account, Harlan had less luck with Diana Dors -- “the British Marilyn Monroe” -- and treated her condescendingly during the shoot. (By comparison, William Goldman in his memoir Adventures In The Screen Trade shows a much more sanguine / roll-with-the-punches attitude, and that might explain part of the reason his screenwriting trajectory was far different than Harlan’s.)

All in all, an uneven example of both the series and Harlan’s abilities.

. . .

”Who Killed Purity Mather?” was Harlan’s second script for the series and one of the few that played with the rigid format of the series insofar as the victim is seen alive for a few moments before being killed in a rather sadistic and spectacular manner (splashed with acid then trapped in a burning house, and the high angle shot used to show her demise must have been incredibly risky -- and thus costly -- to film).

It also drops a very subtle clue that I’ll reveal in the footnote.*

This is Harlan going so far over the top he emerges on the other side. Plotwise it features more logic gaps than his first script, but the whole thing is so silly it’s pointless to complain about it.

Purity Mather is a professional witch (!) who speeds up the investigation into her own demise by mailing Amos Burke a recording saying she’ll be killed along with a list of five possible suspects (that she doesn’t mention them by name in the recording reflects the show’s desire for standalone scenes, enabling them to recast and rewrite plotlines more easily; the scene where Burke reads the names to his team was doubtlessly shot after the guest cast was locked in).

Burke & co. start shaking down suspects, including Telly Savalas as Fakir George O'Shea, a Muslim holy man / cosmetics chemist (!!); Charlie Ruggles as I. A. Bugg, an eccentric elderly millionaire who likes to chase -- but not catch -- prostitutes around his apartment while dressed in lederhosen(!!!); Wally Cox as Count Carlo Szipesti, vampire for hire (!!!!); and Gloria Swanson as Venus Hekate Walsh a fright wig bedecked self-proclaimed goddess of free love (!!!!!).

The episode might as well have had a laugh track. It’s amusing with several daft touches only Harlan could provide, but the daftness comes from his take on Hollywood culture of the time.

I’d go so far as to say elements of Cox and Swanson’s characters were based on real life people living in and around Hollywood at the time, in particular some science fiction fans Harlan had come in contact with.

It’s a romp but a disappointing one. The logic gaps are too big in this one (case in point, if you’re the captain of the homicide bureau and you come home to see a masked figure climbing out of your second story window in broad daylight, you don’t simply shrug and let them run off) and the ending is one of those annoying ah-yes-now-that-you-caught-me-I-will-admit-everything-even-stuff-you-don’t-know cappers that Joe Ruby and Ken Spears would have rejected for Scooby Doo.

In short, a script whose parts are better than the whole.

. . .

”Who Killed Andy Zygmunt?" is another slight story that pays off with an insight into Hollywood pop culture of the era. The victim is “a pop artist” (no, he’s not; he an assemblage sculptor) impaled on his own artwork.

He’s also revealed to be an extortionist who acquires embarrassing evidence that he affixes to his assemblages then blackmails his victims into buying the art to keep their secrets safe.

Once again Burke is conveniently handed a list of suspects, in this case the people who bought the last five pieces of art from the exhibit.

This is one of the few times the series had more than one suspect in the same scene as there’s a big gathering in Burke’s office midway through the story (it also includes Michael Fox, a semi-regular on the series playing the coroner, so it represents a pretty sizeable filming day for the show). The suspects include Macdonald Carey as Burl Mason, the star of a popular TV detective show (Harlan gives his scenes what we would now call a meta-fiction touch by playing off Barry’s fictional TV detective dealing with a fictional fictional TV detective); Jack Weston as Silly McCree, a kid’s show host who destroys his career with an on air anti-child rant; Ann Blyth as Deirdre DeMara, a rival “pop artist” who creates her art by spraying women with paint and having them roll around on giant canvases (a gimmick later used in the bizarre 1966 Ann-Margaret comedy The Swinger); Aldo Ray as Mister Harold, former pro-wrestler turned poodle groomer; and Tab Hunter in a surprisingly well done scene as a sky diving playboy.

Hunter’s scene in particular shows Harlan getting his hyperbole under control, much more laconic and evocative than other characters he wrote for the series. As mentioned above, Burke’s Law occurs just on the cusp of Harlan’s huge success in print; he’s beginning to harness the lessons learned to maximum effect. (He would have some setbacks, too, in his screenwriting career, and to be honest part of that can be attributed to his failure to consistently apply the lessons learned, part of it can be attributed to his reputation preceding him, and part of it can be attributed to just bad luck.)

The motives this time are fairly edgy for a 1963 TV series, and combined with the slices of Los Angeles life Harlan provides give a fair example of the cultural zeitgeist of the era.

. . .

”Who Killed ½ Of Glory Lee?” can be explained as Benjamin Glory, half owner of Glory Lee Fashions, with Gisele MacKenzie as the other half, Keekee Lee.

After breaking the budget with his spectacular demise of Purity Mather, Harlan staged this murder as an inexpensive off camera elevator plunge.

This time the plot is a wee bit more plausible, with control of a profitable business being the apparent motive for the murder.

But Harlan loaded up this episode with a more powerful emotional punch than most of his others, and while the dénouement may feel a bit farfetched, it certainly rings true emotionally.

He certainly gave Nina Foch and Anne Helm plenty to work with regarding their characters’ complicated mother / daughter relationship, yet at the same time found room for a playful scene in which Buster Keaton pantomimes his answers to Burke’s questions.

Yet at the same time one senses an impatience behind the keyboard. The opening scene has a squad of female elevator operators (yes, once upon a time there needed to be somebody in the elevator to push the buttons for you) discussing pop culture references of a generation before -- Harlan’s generation.

And while the key emotional conflicts are played out well, several of the other scenes feel rather perfunctory…yet at the same time this is probably the most cohesive whole of any Burke’s Law script, whether written by Harlan or not.

It’s as if after a brief but profitable run on a network series, Harlan realized he’d absorbed as much of the practical end of the business as he could and his next moves should be into broader, edgier territory.

* SPOILER: Purity Mather is the murderer; she connives a career nudist (!!!!!!) to participate in a magic ceremony then disfigures and kills her, leaving evidence that she hopes will convince the police the body is hers. The subtle clue Harlan drops is the victim, wearing a long black negligee, complaining about how she doesn’t like the feel of the clothes. A nice touch, but undercut by Purity then going to the nudist camp her victim operates and waiting in the buff by the front gate for the police to show up and question the career nudist -- whom Purity has mentioned as a suspect in her faked murder. While it works insofar as Purity doesn’t try to pass herself off to anyone else at the camp as the career nudist, it doesn’t scan that she would know when the police would come to investigate or if they could be easily convinced at the gate and not come in to question other patrons.

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courage-a-word-of-justice · 4 years ago

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HGPC 17 - 21 | Koi to Producer 2 - 6 | Appare 5 - 8 | Fugou Keiji 4 - 6

...only just realised I was missing some tags. They should be there now or soon.

HGPC 17

Why do I get the feeling the Sawaizumi family will be held hostage one day…? (Maybe I’m just being negative?)

The episode title mentions Chiyu by name, so I wonder why the translation didn’t…

Customer service! You can’t get away from it, even in COVID times…! (Impressive!)

Hmm…you can actually read part of the booking for the Smiths in the book if you know the kanji.

I thought the Smiths would speak in English, but they actually speak in fluent Japanese if the word “susume” was any indication.

Ah, Sukoyaka sweet buns! (from the other episode about the festival)

HGPC 18

Don’t burn down your house with scented candles, kids!

Also remember to use your knees when lifting heavy boxes! (<- says a charity store volunteer, who does this stuff on the regular)

These days the mascots usually have a human form. I wonder if this is implying that particular direction…? (I woke up today and was craving a certain oneshot I’d read during my scanlation days…if it is, it would fill that niche nicely.)

I wonder if the kids will recognise this Ashita no Joe parody…?

HGPC 19

“…since you were young?”

Oh! Element of Wind again!

Koi to Producer 2

This almost feels like Victor is assigning a school project to Protag-chan…it’s a bit sad, really.

It’s nice they let Protag-chan have a personality.

It’s fine if you can’t read the katakana, but Gavin’s name is Haku in Japanese, so it throws out the immersion somewhat…also, I know I shouldn’t be complaining – I’m the target audience here – but do these guys look kinda similar or what…? (partially kidding)

High school sweethearts, huh? “Childhood friends” is my favourite angle of a romantic relationship, but it gets so overused by harems it comes around to being boring…!

I-Is this Stand My Heroes…?! (LOL…?)

Can we not with 1st person cam…?

As cute and dorky as this stuff gets…how does Gavin never get found?! Does nobody ever look up in this city?!? (I thought Evolvers were meant to be a secret…?)

GPS tracker? That’s no better than large corporations using your location data…Isn’t that creepy…?

Hold on, when did she get his phone number? You would assume it was before this entire chase after the boy happened, but still…?

LOL, the English on the board.

This anime is gonna cause me some frustration, but it gives the good stuff in roughly equal measure. It seems to omit the fact you interact via phone with your bois for intimacy (in the game).

Koi to Producer 3

LOL, that’s so clearly Gavin…

By googling, you find out Uptown and Queens are in New York.

Ohmygosh! Did the creators know I love the trope where only people with superpowers can move in certain circumstances?!

Uh…his name is Kira in Japanese? Did someone read the katakana wrong?

Pictured: Depressed bishonen eating bad pudding. (…That joke sounds better in my head. I forgot what meme I was meant to be parodying there, but I had a meme in mind.)

Lemme guess…this man (I dunno if it’s one of the previous bishies with an identical face or a new one) is looking for MC-chan. *sigh* Update: Yep, just Victor again. To be honest, I don’t like anyone who calls harsh words “their sign of love” – love should be honest and upfront. That’s how it becomes heartmelting.

Koi to Producer 4

Okay, in order, it seems to be hexadecimals, Javascript (you can tell from the “const”), some kind of profiles which are apparently for human lab rats (which seem to have some kind of nonsense filler text), a DNA model and DNA bases (ACGT).

The text on the screen says something along the lines of this being an official broadcast of this man’s arrest and this man was a genetic researcher. Obviously, if I wanted to put more attention into what it meant, I would, but I won’t sweat the details this time (because it doesn’t seem to impact the plot).

The guy’s name is Minor because minor key (geddit?)…that’s my guess.

I started playing the game due to this anime, if you didn’t know, and I unlocked an expert in ch. 2. I thought he was Minor, but turns out his name is Spine (an older man).

The diary, true to form, contains details about either one case or several cases, two involving children. The bottom of the 1st page says “if it’s fake, I’ll laugh”.

Hey, I once told Crunchyroll I wanted an anime about hacking (so is this a dream come true? I reveal all in the next sentence!). Hackers don’t congregate like this…they’d be too conspicuous, even with the secret hideout!

The code in the top left appears to be…C? I think? (Note they declare “unsigned int”.)

Kiro sometimes reminds me of Masayoshi (SamFlam)…it puts a derpy smile on my face.

*blah blah blah I’m Key* - Wuh…? F*** you, Kiro!!! (There is such a thing as piling too much cool stuff on to a character, y’know – I’m guilty of it in my own writing.)

3684 isn’t a very safe password (says someone who once aspired to be in cybersecurity).

What bugs me is that Simon is a perfectly fine name…it’s just a bit boring. Kiro/Kira I get (a bit), but Lucien/Simon…? *shrugs*

Ohh! Based MAPPA! Thank you for making this adaption look great!

Koi to Producer 5

Oh, I got an SR in the game recently and it has a line like, “Only a fool stays up all night to do others’ work. Victor talks like that a lot…

The sign so obviously says “Renka”, meaning “love flower”. “Loveland” really is a step down from that…

Where’s Gavin’s guest badge…?

“Happiness Noodle Store”…?

“…the end of our first year…”

If this weren’t a Chinese work by origin (or Japanese work by translation), I’m sure Protag-chan would have gone after Gavin, despite being told the contrary.

Kanya = Minor. I’ll take a note of that.

One of the books behind Minor says “Gale Start”…hmm…

That GPS tracker is still unintentionally creepy, IMHO.

Koi to Producer 6

…oh. (dejected) Probably a beach episode or something.

What the actual heck was going on with Lucien…? It’s like he was having a tiny stroke there…

Lucien’s power is listed as “???” in the game. I thought he was an aura-reader when he said “show me your colour”, but that shield thing he did means he might just have various psychic powers…? *shrugs* We’ll find out eventually.

Running in heels is hard…

LOL, that’s so clearly recreating a CG from one of the cards.

This is the 2nd time this has gone pseudo-isekai. As much as I like to joke about it…I fully expect someone to be sent to another world at this point.

I couldn’t possibly see Victor on any kind of game show, come to think of it.

Appare 5

This guy’s middle name is “Rich”! That’s silly!

A boombox from the 19th century…makes sense, somehow.

I only just (?) realised Al has a tiny tie on his usual outfit.

Back to the beginning already…just start!

Appare 6

…I just realised Appare mouths “I got it!” in the OP.

Al Lion (sic…?)

Isn’t Sofia in that train…? Update: She might have been, she might not. Hard to tell when they don’t confirm.

This series seriously could’ve done with a dub…Even with weird hokey Hetalia accents, it would be good stuff.

These bunches of people at designated points…reminds me of the book I was reading while in Japan. The Long Walk by Stephen King (part of a compilation). It still gives me shivers down my spine when I remember it.

This “leave in the middle of the night” thing reminds me of the Amazing Race.

“Valley of Despair” is made-up, but Death Valley exists. It’s one of the hottest places on earth, hence the name.

LOL, Kosame scores himself one (1) prarie dog and two (2) Hototos.

I thought Appare was being inconsiderate at first…but he’s being considerate, in his own way.

Oh! I didn’t realise, but Saito Soma is Al.

Appare 7

“It’s not one plus one, but one times one!” – LOL.

Hybrid engine? In the 1900s? Hmm…

LOL, I think Al just did a hadouken.

This stuff’s like an animated Galaxy Brain meme! It’s amazing!

I managed to successfully predict – without watching ahead – Appare would catch himself with his traps.

Kosame with his hair down…is rare. Not exactly attractive because we have to care about the racers rather than lust after them (and the artstyle actually prevents me from doing so, because it’s deliberately quite cartoony), but it’s rare.

Appare is surprisingly childish…that’s what makes him more than a Sheldon Cooper, I think.

The spelling of the place is actually “Ely”, if Google-sensei is any indication. C’mon, subbers! You’re American (most likely)! Can’t you put in the legwork (or the Google-fu) to discover what place in Nevada this is?!

Subbers make characters say “shit” a lot in this show, hmm? (contemplative)

Now this evil guy here *points to screen*…that’s hair I like.

Appare 8

I just love this OP…don’t you?

I like how the steam/gas boat/car has Chinese numerals on its dial.

Kosame means “small rain”, so “heavy rain” is obviously to contrast that.

The Hototo joke never gets old.

I thought I just saw someone leave the saloon…

Nice hair + terrible face = bad equation.

I can almost imagine the wee-oo-wee-oo-ooooooo…wah-wah-wahhh…(You know the one sound snippet, right? The one theme from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly - or whatever movie it is – that maybe involves a tumbleweed rolling across the screen, and then a huge shootout? If you don’t know it, play a sample on this Wikipedia page!) playing in the background.

It’s convenient the prarie dog didn’t appear when Hototo (old) had his revenge spree.

I noticed there’s a bit of a mark under Kosame’s left eye…it suggests that he’s been crying (or maybe it shows tiredness from the race…?), but it’s not that noticeable.

So that’s the real Gil…and tose were his henchmen that threatened to hang everyone bar Kosame. Got it.

(notes to self) So, for charting a course with Appare Ranman!, it’s Los Angeles -> Death Valley -> Ely -> Denver -> ??? -> New York. Got it.

Fugou Keiji 4

“Daisuke-sama” isn’t “Lord Daisuke”, it would be “Sir Daisuke”, I think…but “lord” has a proper translation in Japanese.

The truck has a Shinagawa licence plate. Anime really does like Shinagawa, huh? (Based on ID: INVADED and this.)

I think it’ll be interesting to see Kambe handle this without HEUSC.

The board for Sanchome (which is equivalent to a suburb…or a county, I guess?) has posters saying stuff like “take your dog poop home” and “let’s protect the environment!” (technically, it says “let’s protect the region/area!”, but that doesn’t translate right. There’s even a flea market. Still, those posters don’t have any big hints…not that I know of so far.

I kind of forgot that dude was the gardener for Kambe’s house…er, mansion.

I noticed a poster in the kouban says haru (spring) on it. That’s probably the same one that Haru’s name is signified by, assuming that’s not in combo with another character or few.

Oh great…the sister is an overbearing one.

Ahh…he doesn’t like natto. So that’s the problem. Daisuke is childish (like Appare)…Note I don’t like natto either, but I wouldn’t run away from home (or similar) because I was fed natto.

I noticed Kambe uses shinseki (which doesn’t refer to close family). “Relative” is a correct translation of that word, I just wanted to check that word was the right one for the context.

There’s a green tea bottle by the sink…I don’t think I’d mistake that shade of green for anything else.

LOL, I didn’t think we’d actually get to see Kambe with his hair “down”, so to speak. It’s…an interesting look, for sure.

Oh my gosh! It cost him (Haru) $15!!! (LOL, cheapskate…says the cheapskate…*suddenly droops and stops laughing*) Update: Sorry about the sudden downer there. I was having what the kids these days call a “woke moment”…at least, I think that’s how they use that term.

…I’d watch that crime drama. It’s funny.

Just realised Kato has an older model of phone than Kambe does.

This episode was kinda like a Tokyo Sonata kind of thing, huh? The sensational in the middle of the not-so-sensational…”sensational” for this show, anyway.

Those kids look like the ones from Erased.

*lightbulb goes off in brain* What if the dog went to Kambe’s…?

Can Suzue actually hear HEUSC while Kambe is using it…? $2.46 though…that is cheap, in comparison to the ham.

This was the cheapest episode so far (about $550)…probably because it was an insight into Kato’s life, more than Kambe’s.

Fugou Keiji 5

The flag seems to be based on Cameroon’s (which is in Africa, not America) and the “Arita Kinen” seems to refer to Arima Kinen, meaning this episode is set around Christmas-ish. Credit goes to Kambe Zaibatsu on this show.

I-It’s a Humvee!

Polyadoll (sic)…?

The Poliador guy speaks perfect Japanese…(?)

The star! It’s a key thingy!

I thought Kamei was the 1st Division dude with the reddish hair. Turns out it was the blonde…? Update: Redhead is Hoshino.

Ummmmmm…he was reading porn…? Uhhhhhhhhhhhhh…okayyyyyyyyyyyyy…

…oh, the costs for Kambe’s tuxedo are on there. So’s the cost for repairing the bike Suzue rode.

Fugou Keiji 6

I never knew there were so many money proverbs to be used as episode titles…

What is Kambe doing with his hands…? He’s not even using the computer.

Imura seems to use a Windows 10 with Cortana on the taskbar.

HGPC 20

What’s with all the Naruto running this episode…?

HGPC 21

(no notes, sorry!)

#simulcast commentary #healin' good precure #fugou keiji: balance unlimited #millionaire detective #Koi to Producer: EVOL x LOVE #mr love queen's choice #Appare Ranman!#Chesarka watches AR #Chesarka watches HGPC #Chesarka watches Koi to Producer #Chesarka watches Fugou Keiji

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httpjeon · 6 years ago

Text

❝take the throne (Ⅰ)❞ myg

― summary: you leave your safe home with the mysterious yoongi to escape the kingdom

yoongi/reader | vampire!au | angst, fluff | 3k ↬ content warnings: mentions of humans being killed, human genocide, sort of dystopian society elements

a/n: hey guys! im really proud of the world building i was able to do in this fic! i really hope you enjoy it! even though it has no smut, i hope you like it regardless!

→ blog masterlist → series masterlist (coming soon) →pt2

Sharp claws reached for you as you ran, the bitter cold air whipping at your face making it burn. Twigs and leaves snapped beneath your feet, your breath coming out in foggy clouds as you panted. You could hear it panting behind you as well, mixing with snarls and hisses.

You were scared.

You ran out of stamina, it didn't.

And you were getting tired, slowing down from exhaustion and the cold.

It was below freezing, you were only shielded by a flimsy, tattered night dress and a cloak you had slid on when you left your cabin to investigate the noises from outside.

You weren't prepared to be faced with gleaming red eyes and sharp fangs poised to rip your throat out.

When you took off, you had no idea what you were doing or where you were going.

Your bare foot caught an unassuming tree stump, sending your hurtling into your cold, hard ground. The beast immediately took advantage of your vulnerability and pounced on you.

You could see the hunger in his eyes as he grinned, lowering his mouth to your neck in preparation to bite.

"It's time," It whispered before crunching down on the flimsy flesh of your neck.

Your eyes snapped open and you shot up in bed, hands immediately going to your neck, pulling away to make sure there was no sign of blood. Heaving a sigh, you flopped back into bed.

It had been dreams like that one after another ever since the newcomer came to your village.

He was a quiet young man, around your own age. He was pale, hiding most of his face and body from those around him. When questioned, he had revealed he lived in hiding very close to a city, but had managed to sneak further into the country.

It was dangerous for humans to be near cities, ever since the King declared that all humans be executed as he attempted to turn the Kingdom of Atrea into a vampiric stronghold. Cities were overrun, ruled by the vampires whereas humans who had escaped, were pushed into the country to hide.

You wondered exactly how the mysterious stranger had managed to live for so long near a city. But looking at how pale he was, due to lack of sunlight, you could guess he had been hiding somewhere deep -- inside a cave, perhaps.

It was still dark outside, only the moonlight illuminating your room casting shadows on the walls around you.

Knock knock knock.

You shot up in bed once again, eyes wide in surprise. It resounded again, three knocks on your front door.

You stood up from your bed, grabbing your lantern off your bedside table, turning the switch so it lit up. The wooden floor was cold beneath your bare feet as you stepped out of your bedroom.

Three more knocks again.

"I'm coming!" You called, hurrying over to the door, pulling open the latch that kept your door locked.

Opening it, you were shocked by the familiar pale face staring back at you.

"Yoongi?" You whispered, hurriedly ushering him inside, even though he seemed unaffected by the snow falling. "What're you doing here?"

"I came to talk to you," He responded coolly, taking his hood off and taking a seat on a nearby chair. You took a seat with him, still getting over the fact he was literally in your house.

"What about?" You asked, placing your lantern on the table so it illuminated the both of you in its dim yellow cast.

"I need to leave," He breathed, leaning back in the chair so it creaked loudly.

"Leave? You just got here. There's nowhere for you to go," You shook your head, brows furrowed as you met his blank gaze. "There isn't another village for miles, it'll take days to find another place. It's the middle of winter, you can't leave!"

"No, I mean I need to leave this island," His words shocked you into pure silence.

"That's impossible," You choked out.

You were baffled. The borders were heavily guarded to make sure no one could enter or leave the Kingdom. Anyone who attempted to do either were executed on the spot. The King kept the island a reclusive Kingdom.

"No it isn't," Yoongi sighed, resting his elbows on the table. "There's a little village not far from here--"

"No there isn't Yoongi, I've lived here my entire life. There's no other village nearby!"

"Village is...a broad word for it. It's just a couple of people living in seclusion," Yoongi explained. "And I'm going to go the moment I get a chance,"

"Take me with you then," Your words seemed to startle him as his eyes flew open wider.

"What?"

"You heard me,"

"But...this is your home?"

"And being human here is a death sentence. If you can escape then I can too. So take me with you," You urged, leaning forward closer to him. "Please,"

After a moment of silence, Yoongi breathed out and "okay".

"Be ready to leave at any time," He ordered just before he vanished back through your front door.

You were left sitting by your lantern light alone, as if he had never been there to begin with.

His arrival came just a week later, it was the warmest night of the season and you were awoken by three knocks on your door.

"Time to go," He said, holding his own lantern but you noticed he didn't have a bag of belongings with him. "Are you sure you want to do this?"

"As sure as I'll ever be," You breathed, throwing your rucksack on your back. You had packed it with some food items and various things of value just in case.

You felt sentimental leaving your childhood home behind and your belongings but, you also knew this was a once in a lifetime opportunity.

You didn't have any family left and most others who lived in the village kept to themselves, avoiding doing much to gain attention from anyone. They were weary, as were most humans during those times. Anything could change at the drop of a hat; the King could send an army across the countryside to find the humans left in hiding to slaughter them.

As the sun began to peek over the horizon, you let out a weary sigh. Yoongi wasn't very comforting company. He was silent most of the time, walking several steps ahead of you.

"Are you alright?" He asked, looking over his shoulder.

"I'm just wondering what the plan is here," You admitted, jogging a little bit to walk by his side.

He didn't seem effected by the walking at all, he wasn't even breathing heavily.

"A friend of mine is nearby, we'll go see him and see where we go from there," He explained simply, leaving no room for you to argue. "So do you have a plan?"

"I don't really know," You admitted. "I just want to get out of here. I've heard the other Kingdoms are free. Maybe when we get to one of those, I'll have an idea of what to do,"

"When? Are you that optimistic?" He asked, flashing you a small smile.

"I like to try," You muttered. "No sense in scaring myself out of this with what-ifs, you know?"

"That's fair," Yoongi nodded, stepping widely over a puddle of melting snow. "Right now we're safe. Searches don't get conducted this far out anymore. But the more we move around, the more we're in the open -- there's a bigger chance someone will catch sight of us. So we'll need to be more on guard the further we go,"

"Are there still settlements near cities?"

"Only a very few," Yoongi said. "They're in very poor conditions. Villages that're out here are much better off -- a lot of humans who are trapped near the cities don't even have houses. They're still a lot of nomadic humans as well, too scared to remain in one place and feel they're better off constantly on the move,"

"But I lived in one place my whole life and I've never once met a vampire,"

"That's true. But not everyone shares the view that that's the best way to live,"

"And constantly on the run is?"

"Some people don't have a choice," You hummed at his words, taking them in. Before you could respond, he grabbed your wrist -- cold shocked up your arm at the touch. "There,"

You followed his gaze, furrowing your brows when you didn't see anything. There was nothing but a horizon of trees -- the beginning of a forest.

"Where?" Yoongi chuckled, tugging your wrist lightly to get you walking again.

You obediently followed, letting him lead you to the treeline. Once you were past the first few trees, you finally noticed the small cottage that was situated, settled against the trees so that it blended. Beside that one, there were two much smaller cabins but Yoongi disregarded those, instead going straight into the larger ones.

"Seokjin," Yoongi greeted easily to the man sitting in a chair with a book in his hands.

"It's about time you go here, Yoongi," The man sighed, putting his book down and waving the two of you in. "And who is this?"

"_____, she helped me out when I first moved to her village,"

You grew flustered at his words. It wasn't truly help, you were just being neighborly. Everyone in the village was weary of the newcomer, barely speaking to him but you had stopped by where he had been staying in a small tent to give him blankets and some food.

"How kind," Seokjin nodded. "Well _____, my name is Kim Seokjin and I'm an old friend of Yoongi's,"

"I-It's nice to meet you," You stuttered, feeling frozen over the power his stare held.

"So where is Hoseok?" Yoongi asked, finally taking a seat.

"He's currently located in Canne, he has been there for the past several months. I've made him aware of your...movements and he's fully prepared to help. However," His eyes turned to you. "I'm not so sure how he'll feel about your...addition,"

Canne? A city?

"Hoseok will help no matter what, you know that," Yoongi declared, making Seokjin snicker.

"You're right, how silly of me," He stood up suddenly, giving you a good look at how tall and broad he was.

He sauntered over to a bookshelf nestled in the corner, pulling out a small book and flipping through several pages before pulling out a loose piece of folded paper. When he sat back down, he handed it over to Yoongi, who eagerly opened it. As you looked over his shoulder, you were surprised to see a handmade map.

"Jungkook made it before he left," Seokjin explained. "It's a map of Loflia including the various settlements both vamp and human that surround Canne. He highlighted the trail you are to take that will get you there safest and without much trouble. I can't guarantee that you won't run into trouble as you'll be entering the city territory but, it's the best we were able to come up with,"

"How is Jungkook? Jimin?" Yoongi asked, eyes never leaving the map.

"Last I heard they're both well and living safely in Ashor,"

"Ashor? Wait, you know people who have escaped Atrea?" You gasped, looking to Yoongi, who sighed.

"Yoongi, does she not--"

"Seokjin, Hoseok, Jimin, Jungkook and I were childhood friends," Yoongi cut Jin off, giving him a sharp glare, making the bigger man raise a brow curiously.

"A few years ago, we all decided to try leaving. We hatched a plan but Jungkook and Jimin were the only two brave enough to execute it," Seokjin picked up a picture frame beside him, handing it to you. "Yoongi, me, Jungkook, Jimin, and Hoseok respectively,"

You gazed at the picture, noting both Yoongi and Seokjin looked the same. The other three -- they were just as beautiful as the two you knew.

Jungkook had big, round doe-like eyes and a big bunny-like smile. Jimin had his arm thrown around Jungkook and was smiling fondly at the camera. Finally, Hoseok was leaning against a tree, a small smirk on his lips with his arms cross over his chest.

"So Jungkook and Jimin escaped? And now Yoongi is trying to escape?" You gaped, eyes wide as you stared at the two friends.

"It was done successfully twice, and it's my turn next," Yoongi explained. "We're all going to meet together in Ashor," You noticed how fondly Yoongi gazed down at the photo of his friends, touching their faces.

"It's been about a year since Jungkook left and about 8 months since Jimin," Seokjin sighed, placing the picture frame back where it was. "After Yoongi leaves, it'll be Hoseok's turn, and then mine,"

"But you're the addiction now," Yoongi smiled, placing his hand on your shoulder and squeezing.

"It's the first time we're doing two at once," Seokjin admitted.

"So wait, how are we meant to get into a city?" You asked. "It's overrun by vampires and the second they smell humans, it's over for us," Seokjin sighed at your question.

"You can't hide it from her, Yoongi,"

"Jin," Yoongi snapped.

"Hide what? What is it?" You squeaked, looking desperately between the two of them.

"What we are,"

You froze.

"Wh-What...what does that mean?"

"We're vampires," Yoongi grumbled.

As soon as the words escaped his lips, you shot up from your seat and backed away.

"What?!" You felt your entire body begin to tremble. "You-You're one them?! Ho-How?"

"That's a dumb question," Seokjin mumbled but clammed up at a single look from Yoongi.

He stood up, stalking over to you until you were backed into the corner. You were sure, now that you knew he was a vampire, that he could hear your heart racing.

"I'm not going to hurt you, _____," Yoongi breathed, gripping your upper arms to halt you from running.

"But you're a vampire!" You shrieked, attempting to shove him away. "Y-You've slaughtered and executed thousands--millions of humans! With no second thought about it whatsoever! How do you expect me to trust you?! How do I know you're not just going to lure me to the city to have me killed and then all your vampire friends will move in and slaughter the rest of the humans in hiding! You know where my village is!"

"I will not do anything of that nature," Yoongi explained, keeping his voice calm as can be.

"And I'm just supposed to trust you?!" You cried.

"Yes," His simple answer had you freezing, looking at him in utter confusion. "I have done nothing to hurt you or give you a reason to think I would,"

"But you're--"

"I know what I am," Yoongi sighed. "But I have absolutely no intentions of hurting you or any other human senselessly. I have no desire to,"

"How do I know you're telling the truth?" You whimpered.

"Because I haven't hurt you yet, have I?"

He was right. All his touches so far had been nothing but gentle -- touching you as if you were made of glass. He was minding his strength with you, no doubt. He hadn't even shown any sign of hunger towards your blood.

"Wh-What if you need to feed?" You sniffled, feeling tears prick your eyes.

"I don't need to,"

"What?" You shook your head. "But vampires need to feed to live. If I'm the only human then..."

"No that's wrong," Seokjin suddenly spoke up. You had forgotten he was even there. "The humans tales have been altered through fear as the time passed. Vampires don't need to drink human blood by any means. We don't have to drink blood period. We can survive on just regular human food. Fruits, vegetables, animal meats; they'll all sustain us just as they would a human,"

"Then why do vampires...kill us?" Your eyes moved back to Yoongi, who was stiff at your question.

"Self-indulgence," Yoongi mumbled.

"What?"

"Human blood is...delicious to us. It's like the best wine, the finest chocolates, it's...indescribable. It's almost like a drug. You taste it and you suddenly want more and more and more," Yoongi hissed.

"H-Have you...tasted human blood?" You squeaked.

"Yes," Yoongi admitted, making you flinch. "It wasn't particularly by choice,"

"What do you mean?"

"Sometimes," Seokjin spoke up again. "When you're in a situation where human blood is offered, you have to take it. There's only a small potion of vampires who have no desire to hurt humans, who only with to help and sympathize with them,"

"They'll kill a vampire who even tries to help a human, ______. You have to understand, we as vampires have to hide the fact we don't want to hurt you or we'll die too. So yes, I drank it but that was once. I didn't let it control me and I never will do it again. After I get off this godforsaken island I will do everything in my power to fix everything the King has done,"

His declaration left you stunned. He looked at you with such fierce passion that you couldn't find it in you to even think of doubting him. Without a second thought, you threw your arms around him in a hug. He relaxed immediately, wrapping his arms around your waist and returning your hug.

"I believe you, Yoongi," You breathed. "But,"

You pulled away and finally moved out of the corner to sit back down. Yoongi and Seokjin followed your lead and sat where they were before.

"But what?" Yoongi pressed.

"How am I going to go into a city? You can get away with it, you're a vampire but they'll know I'm human 50 yards away,"

"_____," Yoongi reached over, taking your warm hand into his ever-so-cold one. "No matter what, I will do everything in my power to protect you from those monsters.They won't lay a hand on you without going through me,"

"But--"

"Don't worry, ______," Seokjin smiled, placing his hand on top of Yoongi's over yours.

"They'll have to listen to me," Yoongi declared, the look in his eyes showing how serious he was in his declaration.

What does that mean...?

#bts smut #yoongi smut #bts scenarios #yoongi scenarios #bts imagines #yoongi imagines #bts preferences #yoongi preferences #bts reactions #yoongi reactions #bts fanfics #yoongi fanfics

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girlmeetsliv3 · 6 years ago

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Boundaries

Warning: The following story contains mentions of suicide, depression, anxiety, manipulation, abuse, and vivid descriptions of abusive acts. The behavior and mindset of the characters in this series will be incredibly yandere and toxic. This is a work of fiction and doesn’t represent the character of bangtan sonyeondan. Enjoy ~~~

He had always been a little strange. From the first moment, you met Kim Taehyung that is what was the word you would use to describe him - but strange was good. You were strange as well: the foreigner who looked weird, talked too much, and far too loud. So you decided to approach the little boy who was just sitting in the corner during break time simply staring off into nothing in particular. Six years old you were more brazen and confident, so she strutted towards the shy boy who seemed a little intimidated once he noticed you. “Hi, I’m [y/n]. Wanna be friends?” Is what you mustered out in your broken Korean, but you held your hand out hoping he would take it. Taehyung didn’t really understand what you had said all too well, so he simply stared at you for the longest time until your stretched out arm began to tremble. Immediately his eyes widened with recognition and he grasped your hand tightly interlocking your fingers. For such tiny hands, it was a grip of steel, something you would have commented on if not for the boxy smile adorning his face, it was so wide it made his eyes nearly disappear and clearly displayed all his crooked teeth. From that moment on the two of you were inseparable.

Wherever you went he was there too, he never liked being away from you for too long. All the teacher’s found it cute, up until he tried to walk into the girl’s bathroom with you, then he was taken aside and told one must have boundaries. It was something the little boy pretended to understand but disregarded the moment you stepped out of the bathroom. He didn’t see the point in having boundaries, for they stemmed from distrust and Taehyung trusted you entirely. It created a mutual bond between the two of you; a bond which only weakened when you were forced to deal with the consequences of his peculiar tastes.

You had once gone out during recess to play with Taehyung, after searching around the entire playground area you spotted him crouched in a small clearing in between a large tree, bushes, and the school fence. You had failed to notice him before due to the untamed greenery that surrounded him and the fact that he could only be seen from a very specific angle. You crept towards him silently with the desire to scare him, simply to entertain yourself - it was you that ended up scared. Taehyung was crouched with a squirrel in between his feet, the squirrel was trembling fighting for its life as Taehyung continued to pull at its limbs tearing them cruelly free from the sockets and plucking hair from its fur until his spine finally gave out and it died. He was so entranced in his activity he didn’t notice the presence behind him until he heard a sniffle.

Tears were strolling down your face and you asked why he was doing such a mean thing to the squirrel. Taehyung looked like a deer caught in headlights and began to openly sob, begging for your forgiveness and to not tell anyone. Taehyung never cried and it shocked you, to say the least; he rambled on and on about how the mean squirrel had tried to bite him and it was payback. He sobbed and clung to you like a life jacket, tripping over his words in an attempt to make sure you didn’t abandon him. You promised you never wold. When the teacher had found the two of you, she simply assumed that it was the first experience the two young children had with death, to justify your reactions. It wouldn’t be your last.

The second time was a lot more gruesome though this time you had been witness to what caused the sudden switch in his personality. Taehyung always had difficulty making friends, you had been his only one for about six years until he finally made another one, Park Jimin. Taehyung and you had finished school and wanted ice cream, hands interlocked you walked the shady streets of your small town until harsh sounds caught your attention. There were several thugs standing over a small boy who was in a fetal position trying to lessen the damage being caused by the punches, kicks, and derogatory words being thrown his way. He hadn’t done anything to solicit this reaction from the men, but he knew he didn’t need too, they were simply looking for a target and he, unfortunately, was an easy one. Jimin sobbed and openly begged for someone to save him, despite him knowing it only made him look more pathetic. Perhaps, it was the familiarity of disparity or simply an opportunity to perform some of his darker desires, Taehyung let go of your hand and dashed towards the thugs - leaving you to run after him screaming.

It had been a surreal experience watching someone's nose go up into their brain, hearing the sound of bones smashing against concrete, seeing blood come from someone’s eyes after they had been violently scratched out in blind anger. You hadn’t been able to do anything but stare in horror trapped in your position. The boy who had been beaten senselessly now stood and staggered towards Taehyung, hugging him and thanking him, all Taehyung was doing was gazing at your face, attempting to calm himself down from his high. Once he felt his feet touch the Earth again he embraced Jimin but held a hand out to you beckoning you closer, you took it and the three of you stayed like that for a while. Until you had run away from the police.

It was these events that caused an epiphany in you that in order for the friendship to last it needed boundaries. Taehyung hadn’t understood at first and had accused you of wanting to simply abandon him. Go back on your promise. It had taken several weeks to convince him that was not the case that you simply needed space and him as well. So that word became your safe word, one that kept him on a leash and allowed you to keep your sanity. When you wanted to hang out with your girlfriends and talk about silly crushes and the pains of womanhood - boundary. When your body began to develop and the weekly sleepovers had to stop because they would no longer be seen as an innocent event - boundary. It was a word that often divided you, one that had come up more and more in your delicate friendship.

Taehyung also had created boundaries which were like bold yellow tape which said: keep out. His hangouts with his much older friends where they discussed hookups and were able to let go of the male bravado they had to carry on their shoulders constantly - boundary. Calling him in the middle of the night when you were bored because last time you did, you had heard his panting voice and female moans on the other side of the line - boundary. Though you would eventually realize that there weren’t enough boundaries in between Taehyung and you, the event that triggered the downfall of your friendship was one that made all the others things you had witnessed due to his urges seem like child’s play.

Just having turned eighteen and about to abandon your traumatic childhood life in favor of the opportunities that lie in the city, you wanted to end on a high note. There was a graduation party at some rich kids house and though you hadn’t spoken to Taehyung in over a week, you knew he would be there. It was about as entertaining as you had imagined, but it was still a pleasant switch from your usual routine of Netflix and junk food. Now on your third beer, you had the desire to pee so you walked upstairs in search for a bathroom that wasn’t being used for quickies or other illicit acts. The only one you could find was the one inside the master bedroom, all you needed was to empty out your bladder and you would return with the partygoers until the cops came and crashed the party. You were about to exit the bathroom when you heard a whiny moan and a familiar name uttered from a feminine voice, “Taehyung~”. Had it been anyone else you would have honestly walked out with your head down and simply pretended nothing was happening - but now that you knew it was Taehyung having sex in the adjacent room you simply made sure the bathroom door was locked and planned to wait it out.

Easier said than done for when you began to hear what sounded like choking noises trespassing through the wooden door you freaked. You rationalized it was a kink, some people liked getting choked during sex and there was no point in bursting through the door only to embarrass yourself when both parties were safe and sound. Until the sound got significantly louder and then stopped. A nauseating feeling crept into your entire being and you couldn’t breathe properly even if you wanted too. It wasn’t until you heard the bedroom door slam, an assurance that the perpetrator was gone that you dared step out. You recognized the girl on the tousled bed immediately the two of you shared a class - and the same first name. The two of you had bonded over the annoyance of being constantly confused by the withering professor and now she might be dead. You approached the bed cautiously with tear-brimmed eyes but were relieved when you found her breathing and in what looked to be a state of temporary unconsciousness - not a permanent one.

You refused to believe this was an accident and took it as it was a warning. You dashed out of the bedroom and the party sprinting home. You were planning to leave tomorrow morning in an effort to avoid the inevitable and get as far away from your best friend as possible. You had mentioned to him moving away, but you hadn’t said where or when and you thanked the heavens for your foresight. Everything went smoothly that night and the following morning, up until the moment you opened the door to leave and were greeted with an overpowering figure and a boxy smile. You knew the only way to save yourself was to attempt to convince Taehyung one more boundary was needed, he didn’t react too well.

“You have way too many boundaries!”

“I don’t have to spend every waking moment with you!”

“I don’t have to wait around until you suddenly remember my existence!”

“I’m so tired of you!”

“The feeling is mutual!”

They were all lies. Fueled by fear, paranoia, and desperation in your case and teenage angst, longing, and other pent up emotions in his. It was the final nail in the coffin and allowed the weight to lift off your shoulders and a dark feeling to consume his heart. So you parted ways with you marching towards your car and to a new life, whilst a quiet Taehyung stood frozen staring off into space trying to comprehend where everything went wrong. For days on end, he racked his brain trying to decipher everything until he landed on one word: boundaries. If boundaries had torn you apart from each other getting rid of them all would bring you back together.

It had been years since you had seen Taehyung. You had moved far into the city and we're having a relatively successful life: a proper education, a good job, a nice apartment you had busted your ass off for. However, you were lonely, the ambitious and workaholic lifestyle of the city had everyone living inside their own bubble and the societal boundaries you were forced to maneuver through had you feeling like a gymnast. You longed for an escape in whatever form it came, you longed to get away from the cynical cold eyes that followed your every move and behavior - that seemed to pierce through you and see all your imperfections. It was tiring. In those long nights, where you barely slept you found yourself longing for the boxy smile and strange boy despite every fiber of your body warning you it was wrong.

Tonight was one of those nights. You had an entire week off, you never took an off day however your boss had threatened you to utilize your sick days or he assured that you would never again have an off day as long as you worked for the company. It was a dream job and many would die for it, but the environment and the people in it made you want to slit your throat or theirs. It reminded you of the toxic friendship you had escaped and how on its shallow surface it appeared so beautiful, innocent, and sweet when underneath it was rotten, corrupt, and twisted. All these thoughts kept you up until three forty-seven am and in an attempt to calm yourself down you made your way to the kitchen to drink some tea and take your sleeping pills.

You weren’t a fan of them due to how effectively they functioned, knocking you out in mere minutes after taking them. The doctor had prescribed after your insomnia ,stemming from your paranoia, had you go three days without any sleep. You promised yourself you would only take them when absolutely necessary so the bottle was practically new. After the tea cooled a bit, you chugged it down and swallowed the thick narcotic shuffling through the kitchen to your bedroom door until the bell rang. The medication had already kicked in and you were unable to rationalize, so you made your way to the front door and opened it. Staring up at the tall man with hazy eyes, you tried to place him but weren’t able to - until he smiled.

You slammed the door as fast as you could, but he gripped it in the last second and pushed all of his body weight against it easily overpowering your drugged body. Another desperate attempt was made to reach the bedroom door, but your body was succumbing to the side effects causing you to trip over your feet and stumble allowing him to trap you in his arms. As you fought to maintain consciousness his hold over you tightened and he brought his lips to your ears allowing them to caress you when he spoke.

“Hi, I’m Kim Taehyung. Wanna be friends?”

He smirked wickedly as you finally fell deep into the darkness.

Part Two

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hencethebravery · 5 years ago

Text

TITLE: A Super Solid History of the “Good Old Fashioned Lover Boy(s),” c. The Beginning (or There About) to Now-ish

SUMMARY: Human beings are absolute fools when it comes to love. It’s largely the reason why God, in all Her infinite wisdom, so cleverly decided that the beings in Her employ (and thereafter) would have nought to do with such petty, earthly matters. Not they had seen a memo or anything, but it merely seems obvious, does it not? (Ao3)

NOTES: Hello, hello! Here be my very first Good Omens fic. Please note that I have only just started the novel and so this is mostly a product of my having watched the series several times over.

. . .

+ Perhaps one of the cruelest tricks that God has ever played (and the list was indeed long) was in allowing angels to believe they were incapable of love. There is some amount of debate as to whether or not this was entirely by accident. She was a busy woman after all━perhaps that was why it, the question of whether or not angels were truly capable of love, had slipped through one of her metaphysical cracks (of which, admittedly, there were many). Those who managed to refrain from falling had quite an easier time believing this particular theory to be very much the case. A largely unspoken, slightly offended, “She would never,” followed by an affirmation of the belief in the long held assumption that they were above such things anyway, so really, what did it even matter, and can we please return to the task at hand?

Those who did happen to fall on the other hand, went in rather the opposite direction. In a somewhat convoluted fashion (they were technically still angels after all), demons argued that, no, celestial beings had never been capable of love, and, yes, this was done with abundant amounts of purpose. Not to mention the longstanding rumor that perhaps they were always capable, which served the purpose of both dividing and controlling the heavenly population by means of dispensing vague, unverified information. And to the more skeptical among them they might say, “Well, she’s God isn’t she? It’s not as if she lacks the ability.”

In point of fact, they were both wrong.

From the very moment they had begun their stint upon the Earth, Aziraphale had often pondered the nature of love. They had heard the rumors, of course, not that they held much affinity for such behavior. No good has ever come from a rumor, they thought, particularly when their mind was especially prone to recalling those terrible centuries of heavenly warfare. No taste for it━the whispering between nebulas; the speculating of who would be staying and who would be going. Aziraphale had often suspected that it was part of the reason why Crowley had ended up doing… what he did. That perhaps the assumption they would fall did more to provoke the descent than anything else. It was a shame, but it had been so long ago, and there didn’t seem to be much to do about it now, at any rate.

Regardless, the question of love as it pertained to earthly beings, that made rather a bit more sense. Not to the humans themselves of course, but to Aziraphale, and even to Crowley, the emotion was in fact easily explained and somewhat predictable when applied in almost every conceivable situation. Usually.

“There is no possible way that girl is worth so few goats.”

Aziraphale had never felt truly comfortable with early human rituals as they pertained to establishing their various relationships. The use of the dowry, for example, particularly when a father might value a herd of sheep over the life of his child (and at this point in time, rather too young, in their estimation), stirred something… untoward in their gut.

“She’s a bit young, don’t you think?”

Even then, Crowley had possessed the somewhat uncanny ability to speak the words that Aziraphale often thought but feared to say aloud, and while a part of them was grateful to hear them spoken, the other part was curious as to how their supposed enemy could be so well-attuned to their thoughts. Could be the point, I suppose, they thought, looking quickly away before Crowley could notice, to catch us unawares with their deceptive bouts of intimacy.

“Well there, Aziraphale, how ‘bout it? Can I count on you?”

“Oh, um, my apologies,” they stammered, unfamiliar fleshy fingers tangling together, “count on me for what?”

“Your discretion,” Crowley reiterated with an air of unrepentant espionage curling around the crown of their head, “she is worth far more goats than... that.”

Aziraphale envied the demon’s seemingly instinctive use of their own hands; tossed about in the air, waved vaguely in the direction of the unfortunate scene which played out before them. How did one use one’s own hands as a means of further emphasizing their point? Marvelous. They would have to spend more time working on that.

“ Aziraphale ,” Crowley repeated, one eyebrow raised smartly above their golden eye, “I know you can’t be a fan of this either.”

“Well, no,” they admitted, “but I am merely here to observe, and I did promise myself that last time would be the last time.”

Crowley hummed with a mildly infuriating tone of knowing skepticism (which Aziraphale didn’t much appreciate), “Alright, well, if you’re here to observe and all, I guess there’s nothing you’d be able to do about this.”

Aziraphale was, as it turned out, not quite quick enough in noting that, as a matter of fact, yes, they would be well within their rights to interfere when a demon was involved, but by that point Crowley had vanished from their side, and a slithering serpent had already begun making its way towards the feet of the large old bearded gentleman who had offered far too few goats for so young and bright a person.

. . .

It was right around the time human beings started getting rather more polite with their food that Aziraphale managed to develop a fair higher degree of grace with his own hands. Rather difficult to eat a steaming bowl of noodles without the use of… “chop-sticks.” Gracious, Gabriel would be horrified by the very idea. Not just by the “sullying of the vessel,” but the notion that one might do so with sticks? Unthinkable. Regardless, it all came fairly easy after that (the hands); throwing a pair of dice, holding a quill or a pair of knitting needles. After a time he discovered that he very much enjoyed the tactility━the variety of sensations felt on the surface of the skin he had been ordered to have.

He had also, around this time, begun to go about being referred to as “he.” Moreso to blend in than anything else. It was hard to pin down when exactly, but at some point humanity became far more reliant upon noting the difference. It made a certain kind of sense, he supposed, if they were going to insist upon such hierarchical-like systems to survive.

“They are Her creations after all,” Crowley reasoned, casually (almost certainly, casually) observing Aziraphale’s hands as they cupped his bowl of broth.

Aziraphale made a somewhat half-hearted attempt to cool his soup, lest the demon sitting across from him note his discomfort. In as polite a fashion as possible, so as not to rock any proverbial boats, he made the potentially ill-advised decision to be predictable and “play dumb.”

“And,” with a mild stutter, “and what is it you mean by that?”

“Oh, don’t be dense, Angel, you know exactly what I mean by that.”

He hated when their conversations took these kinds of turns. When their differences became undeniable and he was forced to reconcile with the truth of their circumstances: That all evidence to the contrary, the demon sitting across from him was supposed to be his mortal enemy━and for what? Some… pesky disagreement? An oversimplification to be sure, it must be conceded, but all the same, for… what, exactly? What had it all been for?

Having accepted the frequent refrain of Aziraphale’s silence in moments such as these, Crowley had returned to his own drink; a sharp yet sweet rice wine that Aziraphale had recommended. All the better for his own sanity, for his own return to his hot bowl of flavorful broth (with some kind of... fish base, in which large pieces of seaweed, accompanied by smaller cubes of to-fu floating alongside; absolutely fascinating, by the way), and unsettling, unwelcome questions that did little good for him to ponder over. But ponder he inevitably would, and he felt it prudent to admit that he had himself often wondered what might have happened if he had been more… present during the whole debacle (the war, as it were), or even if he had known Crowley at the time━would the outcome have been the same?

It doesn’t seem a particularly worthy avenue of thought to continue shambling down, especially if one were to consider the fact that it was all decided upon long, long ago; but as he sneaks a glance upwards, to the sight of a demon sat across from him at a table, taking careful sips of a rice wine he has no reason to drink (other than to acquiesce to Aziraphale’s own enthusiastic request) he does have to wonder, How bad can they really be?

It’s on this particular evening that Aziraphale and Crowley happen to “brush hands” for the very first time. Azirphale had, on occasion, been made aware of the concept, but had yet to fully partake in such an episode. Human beings seemed to make quite a to-do of the whole affair. He had borne witness to such things with his own eyes, and was rather struck by the intensity of something that seemed so bafflingly simple. But then again, that seemed to be the nature of love. At least as it pertained to human beings. Angels were immune to such things, clearly.

They had both reached for the bottle at the same time, is all. Nothing to fuss over. It was bound to happen sometime━trapped as they were in these rather cumbersome… things; adjusting to the speed and the space of it all. Moving with both certainty and uncertainty, holding things too tightly or not tightly enough. Silly, unreliable things. You had to wonder what She’d been thinking (not that Aziraphale would ever say so, of course).

The poets will speak of a spark, but Aziraphale didn’t much know about all of that. He could acknowledge a warmth, perhaps even a… tingle? In retrospect he might even recall a raising of the soft hairs along his arms. But really, there’s not much to say about it. Other than the fact that from the perspective of an outsider there was perhaps an unnatural pause. A stiffness that mortal beings struggled to find. Most living, physical beings required breath you see━they are frequently at the whims of their world; it is, quite nearly, impossible not to be in motion for any extended period of time. That was just the way She wanted it. The unrepentant motion. The force. The push forwards. Don’t stop, never stop. Until, you know, She says so.

These two beings, however, they weren’t human beings. They were created by God, of course, but they were relatively new to this “body,” business, and as such they still seemed to be encountering the unfortunate and inconvenient side effects. Touch being just one of many. Angels didn’t really touch in the same way humans did. Their natural forms failed to really give them the ability. They did in fact… collide with each other from time to time, but it was limitless. There was no barrier. If anything, it was a bit unpleasant━the lack of boundaries. Something about “seamless teamwork,” is what Aziraphale could recall from his discussions with Gabriel, or Michael. It was difficult to tell the difference sometimes. Regardless (or perhaps irregardless), human touch would appear to be quite a bit different. Because there was a pretty significant boundary, and for whatever reason that Aziraphale had yet to identify, it felt somehow more intimate than the traditional, angelic “brushing of hands,” as it were.

Crowley, in a rare moment of clumsiness, must have felt similarly because in his shock had pulled his hand back so swiftly that he managed to knock the half-empty bottle to the table with a soft snick, with a gentle, rhythmic dripping of the remaining wine to follow.

“Oh, dear,” Aziraphale muttered, moving quickly to right the bottle and dab at the developing stain. Crowley had stood rather abruptly after that, and not in the smooth, serpent-like manner that Aziraphale had become accustomed to, and with hardly a “so long,” turned and fled the scene. They would never mention that particular moment again, but Aziraphale, to his great, great consternation, did struggle to put it entirely out of his mind.

. . .

Oh, centuries pass. Not entirely unlike an unfathomably long sigh, the world continues as the world often does. As do the angels and the demons playing their parts in some… hip yet indescribably vague off-broadway production (with no discernible plot) written by and for an audience of precisely one. Maybe. Probably. Over the course of The Great Exhale (™), Aziraphale observes. He learns. Which should be obvious, as that was something of the job assigned to him in the first place, but he really takes a genuine interest in the task. So much so that he keenly starts to observe other observers, humans who frequently come to be called “authors.” Authors are truly outstanding observers in their own right; even going so far as to record their observations in impressively long works of art━in letters and in image, the authors and artists in question lend a helpful amount of weightiness to a position he had come to doubt on occasion.

“They see things in ways we can’t, you see,” Aziraphale had tried explaining to Gabriel during one unexpected (and painfully awkward) meeting. As he had come to expect, Gabriel listened with a look of mild confusion (and pity), but it didn’t bother Aziraphale all that much. He had his books. “You can tell the others there’s no reason to worry,” he continued quickly, hoping their conversation had reached its conclusion, “I have all we need right here.”

“No surprises, Aziraphale,” Gabriel warned in goodbye, slipping out the door, “and remember, they can’t see nearly as well as we can.”

“Well, we know that’s not true.”

The surprising (yet unmistakable) tenor of Crowley’s voice echoed from the darkness of Aziraphale’s office, which had been empty the last he checked. The angel in question could do little to prevent the slight hitch in his breathing, concerned with not only the unexpected appearance of a demon, but so quickly after the departure of an angel that would certainly see said demon immediately and irrevocably smited.

“That’s cheeky,” Aziraphale mumbled as Crowley sauntered out of the back room, his hair in its usual impeccable coif.

Shortly after Aziraphale acquired the bookshop, and not without some degree of honest ignorance as to why, Crowley did what he unfortunately happened to do best, and asked Aziraphale precisely what was the point of it all? And as had become usual practice, Aziraphale had a maddeningly difficult time coming up with an answer.

“You know, I’m not quite sure,” he finally admitted, “as soon as I do I shall let you know.”

“With bated breath, Angel,” Crowley had responded in distraction, his own nose lost in one of Aziraphale’s many books that he had seemingly no definitive explanation for.

. . .

The thing about Aziraphale’s exchange with the archangel Gabriel, that is the somewhat truncated version of an answer to Crowley’s “why,” was much longer and perhaps more blasphemous than Gabriel wanted to hear. But it was, possibly, exactly the kind of thing a demon (or rather, this demon) would want to hear.

Though Gabriel’s visit made for something of a stressful few hours, it was a particularly lovely day nonetheless. The leaves had begun changing their colors, but it was still pleasantly warm when standing in the sun, and should he feel just a touch too warm, a perfectly timed (some might say, miraculously timed) gust of wind would breeze on through the open window. Despite the fresh autumnal air, the smell of the books often lingered; the unmistakable scent of old paper and ink blending seamlessly with the decaying leaves which wound through the air and along the pavement.

“Do you happen to recall,” Aziraphale began, pouring Crowley an exquisitely steeped cup of Earl Grey, “when I first acquired this shop?”

In so much as Crowley could be predictable, he did, quite predictably, feign forgetfulness (not that angels or demons could forget very much by the very fact of their design). “Not certain,” he pondered theatrically, his sharp chin resting in the palm of his hand. “About what century was this, d’you think?”

Making the conscientious decision to refuse to participate in Crowley’s strange theatrics, Aziraphale continued, adjusting his vest as if it had suddenly shrunk while he was wearing it (which was certainly possible, he supposed). “Well, you had asked of me an admittedly fair question as to why I had purchased the shop at all, and I had told you I wasn’t quite certain as to why, and━”

“Yes, yes,” he interrupted, taking a sip of his tea, “let’s hear it then.”

“Well,” he began, somewhat taken aback by Crowley’s abrupt demand for an answer he had recently pretended to have forgotten, “I━I do believe it might have something to do with… love. Of all things.”

Crowley’s nose did indeed wrinkle, as if a bad sort of smell had passed beneath it from having even heard the word, but he did have a thoughtful look. If Aziraphale had to describe it, he might find himself comparing it to a rather more subdued version of the look that had passed over Crawley’s face subsequent to the infrequently mentioned Flaming Sword Incident (™). An expression of pleased surprise which, in retrospect, betrayed a yearning optimism that most demons should not, under any circumstances, possess.

See, as it happened, Aziraphale had been doing a lot of thinking as of late. Not a great habit, a stern-looking Gabriel would often scold in his head, It’s all been figured out anyway, no need to go reinventing the wheel. As it happened, Gabriel was quite unimpressed with the invention of the wheel. No great feat, in his estimation. Not that he found humans to be impressive in most cases. Aziraphale couldn’t blame him, he supposed. Gabriel hadn’t been tasked with the job Aziraphale had━maybe if he had been, he would’ve arrived at similar conclusions (likely not so, but it was hard for Aziraphale to deny giving others the benefit of the doubt).

If you were in fact playing one of the two roles assigned to you (that of Angel or Demon), you might be privy to something of a hotly debated topic. Love. What was it? Who was capable of it? Was it a uniquely human trait? Was it freely available to all beings? And of course, as was the question in most things, how in the world was God involved in all this?

“Oh, Angel, not this old… chestnut,” Crowley nearly spat. Despite the darkened frames over his eyes, Aziraphale practically felt his rolling of them.

“Now, hold on,” he continued, hoping to cut Crowley off at some self-righteous pass he knew wasn’t far behind, “just… wait.”

Obviously, it was rather difficult for anyone to speculate with any degree of certainty the true machinations of God’s mind. Whether God had designed everything (angels included) with the capability to feel and/or express love in its entirety or not, Aziraphale had begun to wonder whether or not it very much mattered (the debate, that is). You had to start with the Assumption (™).

“Which is…?”

A self-fulfilling prophecy. An angel such as Aziraphale, assuming that it didn’t much matter (whether or not God had given angels the capacity for love), which was the general opinion of the heavenly chorus━or Crowley and other demons similarly assuming it was all a vile manipulation borne of boredom and the Almighty’s irrepressible urge to have a hand (metaphorically speaking) in just about everything. All this and still the usual refrain from both sides: Humans and love, they know not what they do. As if the heavenly (or not so heavenly) were, at the very least, immune.

“It’s the isolation you see,” Aziraphale managed to somewhat tangientally conclude, “the being… trapped, as it were. In their bodies.”

It was in that moment that Aziraphale worried whether or not he had gotten a tad too close to the Spilled Wine Incident (™) which had occurred several centuries earlier ( long unspoken of). Wondered if perhaps Crowlely had, in his own time, reached a similar conclusion, and was in fact thinking the same exact thing. That of angelic… mingling and the somewhat invasive ability to see into the heart of someone’s soul, versus the perfectly human ability to hardly know a person at all except perhaps through a brief brushing of hands. The arrangement of words on a page. The splashes of color on a canvas. That perhaps God, in all her… strange, bureaucratic dereliction of parental duty had in fact given human beings one single instance of superiority.

“Love.”

In a limit imposed by God, human beings could only love one another given truly uncomfortable degrees of uncertainty, and what angel or demon had ever taken such a risk?

In case you (the reader) were wondering, interrupted God with a very gentle boom (otherwise one’s head was quite likely to explode), it’s them. The two of them. Idiots.

“So, the bookshop,” Crowley spoke, filling the void of Aziraphale’s silence, “you wanted to know more about this… Risky Business?”

There was almost certainly the undercurrent of a joke in there that Aziraphale would require an explanation for at some other juncture, but for now he merely nodded. “I believe so,” smiling into his cup, “for how valuable are our observations if we’ve only ever made them through our own omniscience?”

Long, long story, very much shortened to a far more reasonable and linear degree: Since The Beginning, angels and demons had largely felt confident in their belief that they knew far more than the average human (Agnes Nutter aside, of course); and Aziraphale, in the midst of an occasional crisis as to who knew what and how well, had, with the acquisition of his quaint little bookshop been unconsciously soothed by a truth several centuries in the making. That angels, like humans, did not in fact know everything. That they were not necessarily immune to what it was they had supposed, and that, quite blessedly, there was just… so very much to know. Even after all this time. Pages and pages and pages of things to know.

“It’s a fair point,” Crowley answered with a brief smile of his own, “never much cared for all the…” A signature wave of his free hand, bereft of his teacup, “...business anyway.” Referring of course to the traditional forms of angelic and/or demonic communication, which funnily enough, neither gentleman had experienced for quite some time.

And it was, during this particular turn in the narrative (quite nearing its conclusion, I promise you), that an angel and a demon would brush hands for a historical second time. Historic for the existence of hands, the fact of their briefly touching again, and of course the reality of their circumstances (which Aziraphale had become rather tired of noting). They both reached for the teapot at the same moment you see, which, if one were a betting man (or woman), they might imagine a divine hand or two, or several, or however many hands God might prefer to have, in the mix.

What made this particular time so different from the first was not only the fact of their very recent conversation, but the privilege of having several hundred years to have a good, rational think on the matter. So rational, in fact, that the urge to spring violently apart and knock something over seemed to be entirely absent.

“You know, I’ve often found it rather funny,” Aziraphale began quietly, painfully aware of where their fingers touched, “that despite my theory, you have often been quite good at mirroring my own thoughts.”

“Ironic,” Crowley agreed, “though you are rather easy to read I’m afraid.”

The beautiful thing about a brush is the secondary movements that might come after━particularly when the brush might provoke a pause. Most anything can occur in the midst of a pause. One might move a finger, for example, which in turn might elicit a not unpleasant shiver down one’s spine. There’s also the accompanying sound, which, for all his talk of humans being superior, it was a shame that their hearing was so dreadfully ordinary. It would be rather difficult for a human being to hear breath in the same way Aziraphale or Crowley might, sitting apart as they were. The intake and the exhale, all occurring within a brief, blissful pause which, along with their shared breath and the clinking of china, was accompanied by the continued autumnal breeze, and the scattering of dried foliage.

“I think,” Crowley continued, his hand moving, ever so slowly, to fully grasp Aziraphale’s own, “that we should consider testing your theory again.”

“Q-quite,” Aziraphale managed to answer, wonderfully overwhelmed by all the knowing (and marvelous not-knowing) occurring within the tangle of their hands. “I do enjoy a thorough undertaking of the scientific method.”

. . .

They were both wrong (the gossiping, angelic and demonic masses) because, in an infuriatingly on point God move, they were both partially right, weren’t they? Yes, of course, angels were always capable of love, but God was rather busy wasn’t She? She’s a deity just like any other━lots to do. Being in charge while also doing Her best to refrain from micromanaging, which She’d been told employees didn’t actually like, so can you really blame her for being a bit aloof sometimes? An honest mistake, really. Nothing quite so sinister as the demons might like to believe, nor so benevolent as the angels would like to think. And besides, She’d given them humanity, and She did love a good game of risk.

#good omens #good omens fic #ineffable husbands #@hencethewriter #y'all it has been #about 5 months #working on this garbage #also i wish tumblr #would fix it's fucking formatting #but we know that'll never happen so

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