#its just so skeevy!!

[oflgtfol]

the idea of a catholic based mental health clinic just gives me the heebie jeebies. like one of the very first things that made me start losing faith in the church due to its institutionalized cruelty, is the catholic view of mental health, by which i mean the whole idea that committing suicide is one of the worst sins you can commit and will automatically land you in hell is just so utterly heinous and unsympathetic.

i was 11 years old and my only mental health problem at the time was my childhood anxiety, which surprise surprise, the catholic church definitely took advantage of in a way that i know fucked me over even worse than my peers going through the same religious education classes. so even though i didnt really consider myself mentally ill at the time, i was definitely subconsciously sympathetic due to my own struggles, and also just, i mean it’s fucking common sense and basic human compassion, when someone takes their own life then that’s the ultimate sign of suffering, i was 11 and even then before i truly developed my own moral backbone it just seemed so fucking cruel to victim blame people who are literally fucking mentally ill and going through such shit that they’d rather die by their own hand than continue living. it’s one thing to say oh its a sin :( dont do it :( and it’s another thing to say YOU WILL AUTOMATICALLY GO TO HELL AND SUFFER FOR ALL OF ETERNITY IF YOU DO IT. like as if someone who is already suffering in life enough to kill themself, now deserves to continue suffering even worse, even longer for all of eternity, in the flames of hell? what exactly does that solve? it’s just so fucking cruel for no fucking reason.

and the thing that really made this my breaking point with losing faith in the church and the religion as a whole, is that i tried to poke holes in the logic of this rule, find if there was any leniency at all in it, due to aforementioned cruelty. i asked my teacher, what if someone killed themself as a sacrifice to save other lives? what if killing themself saved literally All Of Humanity? (my inspiration here was robin williams’ character in the movie independence day. lol.) and my teacher said. i actually dont know, let me get back to you on that when i ask the church higher ups. which the fact she was UNCERTAIN and needed to ASK already filled me with doubt. and then she did get back to me the next week and she said. yeah actually you would still go to hell for that. because you killed yourself. and it was just the most, utter absolute outrage and injustice that filled my 11 year old body. you hate people who commit suicide so much that even if you do it for some higher noble cause, literally saving the entire fucking human race, you still go to hell.

and i must stress this, because this is what the church stressed to me: hell is Hell. you will be burning. in excruciating pain, because burning alive is one of the worst pains imaginable. and you will be burning alive for all of eternity. not one hour. not one day. not one year. not five years. not fifty years. not a century. but forever. forever and ever with no end in sight and you will suffer for your sin, your sin of committing suicide, because God gave you the ultimate Gift Of Life and you had the audacity to throw that away. dont you know God loves you? He gave you life and this is what you do with His gift? you make Him sad when you sin like this. so you have to suffer for it. for all of eternity.

it is just. so fucking heinous and so fucking ableist and actively hostile to mentally ill people, and because this applies even to people who kill themselves as a sacrifice, frankly just hostile to human life in general. i mean you want someone to let the entire human race die? because the only way to save the entire human race is to kill yourself? how is that at all sympathetic to humanity as a whole? its just indicative of the ironclad control the church has, the godfear it relies on to keep people in line, the way it wields the idea of hell to scare people down to their very bones. and i mean godfear is a problem in all denominations of christianity but i think this aspect of it is uniquely catholic, or maybe thats just because i was raised catholic and dont know other denominations’ take on the whole suicide thing.

and again i must stress this uniquely targets mentally ill people! because humanity-saving-suicides do not happen often but mentally ill people committing suicide is! so when catholics have such a heinous, unsympathetic, absolutely hostile view of mentally ill people, i just do not enjoy the idea of a CATHOLIC MENTAL HEALTH CLINIC. i do not trust that they are approaching their services in a truly compassionate way. it just sounds like yet another front where they can do a charity case and say oh look at us, we’re such good christians, helping our fellow human beings, by preventing them from doing SIN!!!! which is just NOT the way to approach healthcare!! you should want to help people because they are sick and suffering and deserve to feel better and recover! NOT because you view them as potential sinners and you’re trying to like, rehabilitate these sinners! its like, a missionary mindset, not an actual healthcare mindset, of viewing these people not as patients in need but as sinners. and maybe im projecting like maybe there are catholic mental health clinics that are able to separate religion and healthcare, but the idea is still just so fundamentally skeevy to me that i wouldnt trust any catholic based clinic

[s0fter-sin]

last thing i’ll say; people aren’t owed free content but creatives aren’t owed financial compensation either

[aspenshadow]

raging loop if the protagonist didnt hit on the 15 year old

[stinkrascal]

so my gameplay sim who i posted about here has a daughter named selma who aged up to a teen and now her and luna villareal are in love. this isnt canon to my normal legacy but now im thinking maybe it should be

[snekdood]

people will be so terminally jealous of you that they’d rather you reexperience your trauma but somehow in a worse way than just let you live your regular happy life as it has been

[skinnymeanfaggot]

hm

[unidentifiedfuckingthing]

im huge on the value of vibrant & intuitive interface so i never wouldve thought id feel this way but a good text-only software store is so much better than an average gui software store its unbelievable. people are genuinely put off from using linux stuff because it involves the terminal but the terminal can mean a lot of things! its like saying you know itll be a bad interface if its Hosted On The Web, its just like, the most atomic platform for a thing and it can be good or bad.

i think it works in your favor to have icon-first lists only if Everything youre looking for has a unique and immediately distinguishable icon. like if you're searching the apps youve already downloaded on your own phone. but if the whole POINT of your interface is looking at a lot of different options for one thing, with very similar icons and official names, and your store is so set up for Clean Modern Minimalism that you get the first 5 words of the prose description of an app and you have to click into every single one and try and remember details to figure out whats different, it's annoying and tedious!

when a software store mandates that you have a single line description about your thing thats useful enough to distinguish it from other similar things even without a picture, and you can see them all at the same time, its so much easier to just Find your Thing, so that you can Use it

[2024skin]

Finally put on my Rowling defender hat in front of my nb today

[dontworryfolkswetookallherteeth]

There are two rules when it comes to music:

There is no such thing as a bad genre. I cam point to songs from any genre I personally enjoy, even if I wouldn't gravitate there usually.

As soon as the word seed enters the lyrics the song ought to be scrubbed from existence.

[squisheebugdoodles]

I don't use mobile often and I have adblocks on my laptop and desktop so I don't see ads/sponsored posts on here usually ever, which is great, but I gotta say I'm REALLY not a fan of going to my blog on mobile to find a post and seeing sponsored/ad posts shoved in there amongst my posts as if I've put them there

[coffeeastronaut]

i know that it’s just bc it’s a ~family~ show and non-violence is the name of the game on doctor who but its SO stupid that ten gets mad at tentoo for killing all the daleks in the s4 finale like girl the daleks are the ‘genocide is out only purpose’ race. can you get it together. its okay if he genocides them. okay. idiot.

[sanctus-ingenium]

we need to talk about Inprnt.com

Following a really good post with more screenshots and evidence by @dynasoar5 i'm going to talk about my own experiences with @inprnt and why I am about to put my shop on indefinite hiatus from Monday the 14th of August.

First of all I'll say that since starting my print shop last year it has been a significant help to me financially - I was able to not worry about affording car insurance or motor tax (together commonly over a thousand euro) when I bought my first car, for example. I am immeasurably grateful to anyone who chose to buy one and I treasure all the pictures I've been sent of my prints hanging up on people's walls. Right now they are displayed in a real (if small) art exhibition in my home town.

(top right print is not from inprnt though)

They're great prints. Never had any complaints about them. But here's what's going on behind the scenes.

Earlier this year, around March or April, Inprnt sales started increasing in regularity. I'd made as much as $600 a week during previous sales when I made proper promo posts here, but with this increase in regularity, I felt that I couldn't make promo posts every single week. And then one day, I'm not sure when tbh, the sale just never ended. It just didn't stop having that "Ending soon! 15% off your order" banner at the top of the site. Right now it says "Final Hours: $5 Worldwide shipping and save up to 35% off your order!" and not even for a second do I believe in this final hours bullshit. It's been 'final hours' for weeks now. Months, even.

Why is this a problem? Well, how tf am I meant to make a promo post for a sale that is always "ending soon!!" and then never ends. One week it'll say "this weekend only!!" and then when the weekend is over, the sale banner just changes its wording and the sale doesn't end. I can't promo this, it makes me look like a liar and a skeevy salesman by association! It makes the site look like it's 1 week from crashing and burning, and the site owners are just scrabbling to suck as much money from artists as possible before they drown.

And they are sucking money from us. To peel back the curtain, Inprnt money can only be transferred to my paypal account 30 days after the sale is made, just in case the order is cancelled and refunded. This means I used to make one withdrawal every couple of months, when there was enough build-up of money to make it worthwhile. It also forbids withdrawing any sum under $50 btw. I would make a withdrawal request and then, after a 10 business day wait, it would reach my Paypal account.

Not anymore! The past few withdrawals have taken over a month to complete. They are straight up keeping my earnings from me for longer the agreed period. This was my last fulfilled withdrawal:

Note the date.

Almost two months.

And here is the latest withdrawal request that still has not been fulfilled.

It's coming up on 1 month and if the pattern continues, it could literally be November or December by the time I fully clear all sales.

So what's going to happen to my print shop? Because my art is currently being exhibited with a QR code linking to the shop, I can't close the shop this week. Instead I will close it on Monday the 14th of August, next week. That means that on the 14th of September, I can withdraw all of the remaining money without having any left over. My account balance will go to 0 and stay there. Although I'll de-list my prints I will leave my account there, because at the end of the day I don't want to leave Inprnt. It still offers the best artist margins and as I'm now unemployed after graduating, the additional support is such a load off my mind. So this is a chance to wait and see - if they improve their services, I'll happily re-open.

It's a big deal to me because selling prints is sort of my ideal life as an artist. I never had the attention span or self-discipline for commission work and I found that it left me creatively stagnant. I always want to try new things, new concepts and ideas, and being able to think "yeah, people will like this as a print" while I experiment is honestly very reassuring. And I know that in going on hiatus, it'll break a lot of "buy a print" links in my circulating posts. Oh well lmao. If you want to buy a print right now - go ahead, it might be your last opportunity. Another way to support me would be to check out my ko-fi for once-off donations or some nice sketchbooks/comics/book samples you can buy, or subscribing to my Patreon.

As of right now, Inprnt owes me $381 (the unfulfilled request submitted above for $186.60 and my current standing balance of $194.80 which takes 30 days from each transaction to clear).

[ty-bayonet-betteridge]

your transfem friend recommended a clinic to get your bottom surgery done at. she says its cheap, not gatekeepery, and the results are good, even if the doctors a little skeevy. youre at the address she gave you and are wondering how exactly your murder will go down. the door is on a third floor landing accessible only from a fire escape out of a back alley in the worst part of town youve ever seen. you knock three times and the door is answered by a ratty-looking woman with a severe slouch smoking something that doesnt smell like nicotine and doesnt smell like marijuana. her wavy blonde hair is unkempt. shes wearing an oversized grey hoodie that hasnt been washed in some time. you can identify blood on the left sleeve and vomit across much of her side, as well as other, more mysterious stains. you cant tell if shes wearing anything underneath the hoodie. the inside of the apartment - because it is, very clearly, her apartment - has a smell that you cant place but, if pressed, would probably call sweat, though you know that description is lacking something.

dr davis, you ask. she smiles wide, and her teeth are shockingly good for the state the rest of her is in. just call me riley, she says. never did get a degree.

she ushers you inside and sits you down on a sofa almost as stained as her hoodie. can i get you a drink she asks. a drink, you repeat, dazed. she says yeah. she says she has diet coke, beer, vodka, and coffee. says she used to keep tea around for a friend of a friend but she hasnt come by in a few years and the leaves are probably losing flavor by now. you say just waters fine. she shrugs and says your funeral. she comes back from the kitchen and sweeps some stuff off the coffee table. you see a stray scalpel, a roll of gauze bandages, a soda cup from taco bell, and various crumpled papers amongst the rubbish that she knocks aside before setting down your glass of water. she has a beer in her own hand and pops the cap off with her teeth, though the motion isnt quite how youre used to seeing people do it. she takes a big gulp before she keeps talking.

so what do you want your pussy to look like, she asks. you splutter a bit. she says you are the one who needed their bits redone right. you flush and say yeah thats me. she nods and says right so what do you want. you struggle to give a good answer and she starts asking questions. depth? width? color? clit size? you give your answers falteringly. she starts asking about labia. oh, you dont want dentata, do you, she says. that costs extra. you say you dont know what that means. she says dont worry about it. hey do you wanna get pregnant? you splutter again. not now she clarifies. well i can get you pregnant now too if you want that. doesnt even have to be human i think i have some horse sperm around here if you want. i just meant like ever in the future. you say you dont know. she says okay shell leave it out for now but come back if you ever want her to put the womb in. youre too stunned to reply.

she says oh do you want to keep your dick, i can do that. you say you thought they needed the tissue from the penis in order to make the vaginal lining. she laughs and takes another gulp from her beer. she says so is that a no. you say you guess you hadnt thought about it. she says she can reschedule if you need to think, no rush. you say no i guess i dont want it anymore. she nods and says come back if you change your mind.

she says ok, i think i can start operating now if youre ready. you say okay and she tells you to lie on your back and strip naked. you follow her instructions. youre still not sure if youre going to die today or not. she pulls on a big pair of rubber gloves. not latex medical gloves, they're yellow dishwashing gloves. she grabs a small jar of what looks like petroleum jelly off a shelf nearby. you cant help but notice that theres also lube, condoms, saran wrap, and a bottle of honey on the same shelf. you dont ask. she starts vigorously rubbing the jelly into your skin from the belly button down. everywhere it touches you instantly go numb. she keeps talking while she works. a lot of it is her telling stories about "her amy." you cant tell if amy is a sister, wife, or pet. she might be all three.

she reaches up to grab an empty syringe off the top shelf. when she stretches you notice shes naked under the hoodie. you look away bashfully. she doesnt seem to notice.

she fills the syringe with liquid from a bucket in the closet. the liquid is neon green. she injects it into your inner upper thigh. you are now certain you're going to die today, but you cannot make a break for it with your legs numbed, so you wait.

she says okay this is the part where a lot of people get squeamish so look away if you think you might get sick. she pulls out a set of knives. some of them look like dentistry tools, some of them are medical scalpels, and some of them are kitchen knives. you look away. she starts humming to herself while she works. the tune is pop goes the weasel.

hey, she calls out to you from between your legs, how many nerves do you want in your clit? you say uh i dont know, whats a normal amount. she says about ten thousand give or take two thousand in either direction. you say ten thousand sounds fine. she doesnt respond, just goes back to humming. its a different tune. shes humming old macdonald now.

she gets up a couple times to grab new drinks. you say should you be drinking during an operation? she says dont worry i know what im doing. besides i never took the hippocratic oath. she laughs at that, the sound somewhere between a giggle and a cackle. you don't think its that funny. she resumes her work.

this time shes humming the alphabet song. you ask how old are you anyway? she says somewhere between 12 and 47. then she laughs again. you decide to stop asking questions.

four beers, two diet cokes, three unidentifiable cigarettes, and five hours later, she stands up and announces shes done. she wipes her brow without taking the glove off, smearing unidentifiable bodily fluids across her forehead. she jabs another syringe into your other thigh and the feeling returns to your lower body. you're a little sore but other than that you feel great. she wheels over a full length mirror and tells you to take a look. its perfect. youre everything youve ever dreamed you would be. you cant describe how euphoric it feels to see a vagina, your vagina, between your legs. you thank her tearfully. she smiles awkwardly. of course, shes saying.

how much do i owe you you ask. she shrugs. iunno, a hundred bucks? im not in it for the money. you pay her the hundred bucks and leave quickly. you barely remember to get dressed again before heading out. you have never seen Riley again.

[susansontag]

my guide to lesbian anime both canonic and subtextual

(won’t include every lesbian anime ever, this is a personal list)

the canonic-gay section:

revolutionary girl utena

nothing before or since has ever done it like this. trigger warnings for everything imaginable. loads of homosexuals in this one. gender commentary, fairytale allusions, a lot of kids who are having a hard time growing up and moving beyond their pasts. sword lesbians.

flip flappers

the problematic favourite, in that there’s at least one uncomfortable sexualised shot each episode (roughly speaking; some have none and one has even more, unfortunately), so be warned. but at its heart flipflap is about repressed cocona going on adventures with outgoing and expressive papika, and their exploration of various fantastical lands/inner worlds of people they meet. hugely inventive and pretty, and a core thread is cocona discovering she’s gay.

aoi hana (‘sweet blue flowers’)

the comfort lesbian show, with not a romantic relationship at its heart, but a friendship between two childhood friends who meet again, both of whom are gay (though only one realises this during the show’s run, as it’s based on a manga). one of them dates an upperclassman at her school, and there’s various gay and bi side characters. it’s just very wholesome, lovingly animated, sweet and sometimes painful stuff.

bloom into you

I controversially do not care that much for bloom into you, but as the best, high-production, non-skeevy yuri show in years - that is based on a manga by a woman - it’s worth mentioning. late-bloomer girl dreams of romance, though has never felt it, and finds affinity with a girl who similarly is disinclined to date. that is, until said girl says she fancies her. genuinely moving exploration of developing gay identity at times, only downside is my personal disinterest in the black haired girl. some weird ‘heightened’ moments that feel inauthentic and titillating do arise, but it’s very few - to the point where some would disagree with me on my reading of it, I’d imagine.

sailor moon

the bits which the lesbians are in, etc. it’s a classic. I haven’t watched all of it myself because I don’t care much nor do I have nostalgia for sailor moon, but it’s one of the most notable examples of a butch/masc lesbian in anime, so that’s nice.

o maidens in your savage season

nerdy teenage girls who are part of a literature club make it their quest to discover sex and dating, in various ways (unfortunately, not all of them dealt with well… teacher/student foolery that is fortunately abandoned before it gets worse but is nonetheless handled with mixed results, imo). mostly though it’s hilarious, sweet, silly, and there’s a gay girl in it, but I won’t spoil which one. adults predating on children is also handled much, much better in another of the show’s storylines, and I do appreciate it for trying to tackle that difficult subject matter.

oniisama e (‘dear brother’)

an oldie, based off a shoujo manga by one of the greatest (riyoko ikeda). there’s a central relationship to root for (better articulated in the manga), but it’s mostly just what if we were messy depressed lesbians at an all-girls school and we were also melodramatic and mean as hell.

revue starlight

what if we were at an all-girls dramatic arts school and engaged in utena-like duels to become the top performer? main implicitly gay couple with canonic side gay couples. it’s quite cute. also worth watching if you like takarazuka in any way (prestigious all-female japanese theatre troupe), because the main conceit of the school is very much based on that idea.

the gay-themes section:

sound! euphonium (season one)

in which director naoko yamada’s awesome legacy of writing lesbians and then saying “who’s to say though, ha ha” continued (she did it already with a side character in tamako market). this one is known as the gaybait to end all gaybait, but hear me out: the first, and best, season, is not only a fantastic self-contained story with many great characters and plot points, but it’s main character is undoubtedly lesbian-coded and even has a love interest you can argue about. frankly I think she’s gay-coded throughout the whole show (even when she dates a guy for two minutes), but this feels very “I wanted to focus on this compelling relationship between two female characters but the adaptation’s success meant we had to revert back to the source material in later seasons”. what we got from this is perhaps my favourite lesbian anime of all-time, following utena.

a place further than the universe

this show is about four girls who join an expedition to antarctica, and what if I told you they’re all great, believable dorky teenage characters, and they exist in a well-written and thematically satisfying show… and there’s nice lesbian implication between one of our adult female protagonists and her old (deceased; not a spoiler) friend who was the main teen girl’s mother. there’s some sad here, obviously.

puella magi madoka magica

the well-known, much beloved deconstruction of the magical girl genre is also pretty gay, as it happens (so gay in fact it started a trend of gay-coded pink+black magical girls). it’s not a particular favourite of mine, but it’s visually one of the most notable anime productions ever, so it’s well worth seeing just for that.

NANA

the 2000s manga+show about the two twenty-year-olds who meet on a train and discover they’re both called nana is also pretty gay! to the point where there are heated fandom debates about nana komatsu’s (pink one) possibly being a lesbian. they both have many relationships with guys, but it’s their bond that forms the heart of the show, and the bisexuality (or, who knows, homosexuality) of the leads is pretty undeniable. to the point where you’ll get blasted on the nana subreddit if you try and suggest otherwise.

the wild-card section:

keep your hands off eizouken!

this is a show about three oddball girls who start a club to create anime, but have to pose as the film club instead for various reasons. it’s not even subtextually gay, I just personally think that all three of the leads are gay and the whole thing feels like a very female-centred creative endeavour. hugely fun watch, and very high production values. you wouldn’t regret seeing it.

skip & loafer

these two you see here are side characters. this show is actually about mitsumi, the greatest female protagonist of this kind of shoujo-esque slice of life show, who moves from the countryside to tokyo for high school. here she meets many a misfit, including the pretty blonde and the nerd girl who have undeniable chemistry and form one of the most popular pairings in the show. it’s just a good time.

chihayafuru

I’d get in trouble for this, because the primary romance factor in the show is a famed heterosexual love triangle with chihaya at its centre and her two male childhood friends at the side. but go with me on this. chihaya is oblivious to romance and feminine socialisation, she is obsessed with a card game and with her equally dorky dark-haired rival… she’s anime’s greatest autistic lesbian lead. and you get more than what you pay for, because the two boys I mentioned? a lot of gay stuff going on there too.

the big-screen-cinematic section:

the adolescence of utena

revolutionary girl returns in the sequel of a lifetime, slightly older (sixteen, say) and gayer than ever, to escape this place with the love of her life. cue the impromptu dance sequence (with stars and rose petals)!

liz and the blue bird

the naoko yamada directed gay cinematic universe continues with a gorgeous film starring two of the side characters from sound! euphonium’s second season (not necessary to watch beforehand). that means it has plausible deniability whilst being so crazily gay it’s almost some kind of joke. this is a highly detailed, laser-focused character study of two girls in their high school band club and their ever more strained relationship. yamada never misses.

the summer

this is korean! it’s about two girls who meet at school and start dating in secret, what happens as they grow up and move to seoul, and how their relationship changes and strains when met with the conservatism of contemporary korean society. it was sweet and like aoi hana above for japanese girls, felt pretty frank to the experiences I’d imagine young korean lesbians might have.

puella magi madoka magica: rebellion

if you’re a fan of the show, you probably don’t talk about this movie. sure, it’s a visual feat, sure, it’s insanely entertaining, but it’s also frustrating and upsetting and potentially undermines the neatness of the original as a perfectly-crafted story. BUT. kyouko/sayaka becomes all but canon in it, and everything else aside, that’s all that really matters. but you should definitely watch the show beforehand.

[casuallyimagining]

Two Hours || myg

otter hybrid yoongi x female reader

Summary: Your neighbor invites you to a work picnic that he's nervous to attend. You promise to only stay for two hours. Word Count: 2,870 Genre: slice of life, fake dating, friends to ???, fluff Warnings: none

Notes: Thank you to @park-jimin-isnt-real for the moodboard above, and to @rec-me-bts for the moodboard below that I used in the teaser. I had so much trouble deciding which one to use where. Also many many thanks to @oddinary4bts and @madbutgloriouspond for beta-ing this for me and for their endless sympathies while I basically had an existential crisis in their dms. Thank you for not telling me I am annoying 💙

The elevator dings and you step onto your floor. Your arm stings from carrying the grocery bags from the garage–they aren’t particularly full, but it’s just heavy enough and just long enough to get your out of shape muscles angry at you. The closer you get to your apartment, the more you notice a banging noise. And when you finally round the corner, you see its source.

Your across-the-hall neighbor, Yoongi, stands outside of his own apartment rattling his door angrily.

“Stuck again?” you ask, fishing out your keys with your free hand.

Yoongi grunts, the small ears on the top of his head pressing into his hair in frustration. Silently, he takes the bags out of your hand while you open your door. 

“You should call the landlord again,” you tell him. He follows you inside as if it’s natural. Which, really, it is. This is the fourth time this month his door has jammed, effectively locking him out of his home until a locksmith showed up.

“I’d fix it myself if he’d let me.” He sets the bags on your counter and starts to hand you items. Strawberries, a bottle of coffee creamer, cucumbers and celery. He picks up a box of frozen fish sticks and flips it around to read. “You know this stuff is garbage, right?”

You ignore his commentary on your groceries. “You know Krolmeir’s never going to let you fix it. He’d have to lower your rent.”

He hums, and you can hear the underlying ‘jackass’ in the tone. 

“Do you want me to call him?” you asked. Krolmeir–your landlord–likes you way more than he seems to like Yoongi. You’re almost positive you can guess why. But you aren’t afraid to use his skeeviness to your advantage.

“I called him just before you showed up.”

“And he said…?”

“I’ll be there as soon as I can.” Yoongi imitates Krolmeir’s voice–a high-pitched nasally whine more than anything. He rolls his eyes. “So he’ll be here sometime between five minutes from now and next Tuesday.”

You hum sympathetically. “Hang out here until he comes? I’ll make dinner.”

“Are you making fish sticks?”

“Thought about it.” His face scrunches up in disgust, a massive frown parts his lips, revealing his longer than human canine teeth. You laugh and roll your eyes. “I was actually just going to order something. Want to get sushi?”

His eyes light up, but when he speaks, his tone doesn’t match how excited he looks. “Whatever you want to do. I’m the one crashing your evening.”

You wave him off. He should know by now that he’s not imposing. You’ve been neighbors for a few years now. You’d started off just going grocery shopping together–it’s easier to carry groceries when there are two of you–and quickly progressed to taking refuge in each other’s apartments when something went wrong in your own. First, it had been your air conditioning crapping out that had driven you to Yoongi’s apartment to avoid the late-summer heat. Then, his oven stopped working, and he’d hidden in your living room while the landlord and the handyman made the repairs. Back and forth until a friendship had formed.

The sushi arrives and you settle in together on your couch. You prop your door open so that you can hear if the landlord arrives. He takes two bites of his sashimi before Yoongi hums urgently, causing you to pause the show you’d turned on for background noise.

“I’ve been meaning to ask,” he says, and you can tell he’s suddenly nervous. “So we’re having a potluck picnic thing at work, and someone decided it would be a great idea to make it mandatory.”

“Gross.”

“Yeah. But I get a plus one, so I was wondering if maybe you’d go with me? Make it a little more tolerable?”

“You want me to go to your dumb company picnic with you?”

“Well, when you say it like that…” Nervously, he pokes at a grain of rice that had fallen off one of his nigiri.

“Sounds like it’s going to be not a lot of fun.”

“Yeah.”

You shrug. “I’m in.”

Yoongi is a ball of nerves as you shift into park. You’re definitely not the first ones here–there’s like ten other cars in the gravel lot, and you can see a large-ish group of people milling about the pavilion just up the hill. He alternates between patting his thigh and picking at the skin around his thumbnail. His ears press into his hair so far you can’t even see them. You know he doesn’t care for his coworkers, but you didn’t know it was this bad. Maybe it’s the crowd, or the fact that so many of his coworkers will be here. You aren’t sure, but you don’t like how affected he is.

You reach over and gently cover his hands with your own. He freezes. “Let’s make a game plan,” you say softly. He hums. “We’ll stay for how long? Two hours? An hour and a half?”

“Two I think. Since it’s mandatory.”

You nod. “Stay for two hours. We’ll talk to people, but if it starts to be too much, let me know.” 

For a moment, he’s quiet. But then, he nods. “Let’s do this.”

You carry the dessert Yoongi made–partially because you’re a little worried he might drop it from nerves–and he sticks by your side. He’s got one hand in his pocket, but he’s so close that the other brushes against you every few steps.

The closer you get, the more the people in the pavilion notice you. You watch as one by one, then a few at a time, they watch you approach. And suddenly, you understand why Yoongi’s uncomfortable. Eventually, someone comes scuttling toward you.

“Hi Yoongi!” she calls, waving enthusiastically as she approaches.

“Oh. Hey Liz.” He presses closer. “We uh… we brought tiramisu.”

The woman–Liz–takes the container out of your hands. You make a small noise of protest, but she’s already gone, back up the hill to the pavilion and everyone else.

“Yoongi and his girlfriend brought dessert,” you hear her announce.

“Oh, tiramisu? Nice!” someone else–you can’t see who–says.

“No way. I thought he was going to bring something fishy.” Someone else, you can see them and you make a note that you hate them, laughs. A few others chuckle, too, and you also hate them.

They’re still laughing when you get to the pavilion. You’re introduced to each of them by finding out what they brought, and honestly, you don’t remember most of their names. It’s David that made the comment about the fish, so you’re sure to memorize his name so you can hate him fully. David’s dating Yoongi’s manager, Marcus, who apparently brought chicken that is very good. There’s Alison, who brought naan, and Rabia who brought chutney to go with it. And Donghyun brought some sort of seven layer dip.

For the most part, none of them talk to you. It quickly becomes clear that these people aren’t friends. Certainly, they aren’t friends with Yoongi, but they aren’t friends at all. They talk to each other, but it’s clear that this is just another mandatory work thing for them, and they don’t want to be here. You’re honestly a little glad that they leave you alone. None of them seem particularly nice. Or interesting.

So you grab food. And you sit together at a table far away from where the rest of the group is lingering.

“One hour, 45 minutes to go,” Yoongi mumbles, and you snort in laughter, almost choking on the naan you’d just taken a bite of.

“Maybe it won’t be so-”

“Mind if I sit?” You’re interrupted by a bright voice, and when you look, Liz is standing beside Yoongi, holding a plate of food.

You look to Yoongi and he makes a face that says he really doesn’t want her to sit with you. But he says nothing, simply gestures to the other side of the table. Which, of course, she takes as an invitation to sit right beside him. He practically squeaks in distress and scoots slightly over so that there’s a bit of space between them.

“I have to be honest,” Liz begins, oblivious. “No one really expected you to bring anyone. We kind of all just assumed you were single, you know?” He hums, but otherwise doesn’t acknowledge what she’s saying. Briefly, you consider correcting her–you aren’t dating–but she continues before you can even consider a polite way to address the situation. “How long have you known each other? How’d you meet?”

“Years.” He doesn’t even look at her to answer her, his focus on pushing his food around on his plate. His current victim is the seven layer dip he’s stabbing with a tortilla chip.

“We’re neighbors,” you add, hoping that maybe if you answer her questions, she’ll shut up and leave you alone.

Liz nods enthusiastically. “That’s so cute! You guys are cute.”

“I’m going to grab a drink,” Yoongi announces suddenly, standing up. “Do you want anything?”

“Surprise me.”

He nods and leaves you alone with Liz. “I’m serious,” she laughs. “When we were all told we could bring a plus-one, I don’t think anyone expected Yoongi to bring someone. He’s usually so quiet around everyone at work.”

You’ve lost patience with her quickly. You aren’t quite sure what it is, but every time she opens her mouth to speak, it grates on your nerves. “Sometimes, he only talks when he thinks it’s worth his time.” You shrug and make eye contact with her. 

Her smile falters very briefly, but then she recovers and it’s like nothing changed. “He talks to me, though,” she continues, as if you’d said nothing. “Mostly about new album releases and stuff.” You work at a music store, you think. But you let her keep talking. “He knows so much about music. He played the piano for me once.”

You hum and say nothing, craning your neck so you can look around her to see where Yoongi’s gotten to. He’s at the end of the pavilion, distracted by Marcus, his manager.

“He’s really good,” Liz gushes. “Like, really good. He used to want to be a music teacher–did you know that? He told me-”

You tune her out. Of course, you know that he plays the piano. You’ve seen the brown upright that sits in his living room, never dusty because he plays it too much. You often hear the soft melodies that travel through the walls at night when he can’t sleep. He’d even told you about wanting to be a music teacher–a long-dead dream that he’d abandoned in his early 20s. You wish he hadn’t, he had the patience of a saint and he was one of the smartest people you knew. But you also understand how needlessly cruel the world can be sometimes.

Finally, Yoongi returns, balancing a plate and two bottles of beer. He sits one of the bottles in front of you and, with a flourish, places the plate between you. “Someone made hotteok,” he says gleefully, nudging a pancake in your direction. “They aren’t hot, but Marcus said they were really good.”

He picks one up, gives it a satisfied pat. A wide, gummy smile spreads across his lips and his eyes crinkle in delight. He pats the pancake again a few more times, before nudging the plate toward you. It’s got one more hotteok on it, and a scoop of the tiramisu trifle Yoongi’d made. 

Liz makes a noise of annoyance, and the look on her face says that she’s not happy she’s being ignored. But she plasters on a smile when Yoongi looks over at her.

“Oh. Liz,” he says softly, one hand still gently patting his hotteok. “I didn’t realize you were still here.”

Her face falls. “I was just leaving.”

She leaves her plate behind.

He watches after her, eyes wide as she goes to join the group currently surrounding a bluetooth speaker. It’s blasting some sort of 90s pop song–you assume they’ve got a playlist going on someone’s phone. 

“That was weird,” Yoongi says finally. “She’s normally really nice.”

You hum and lie. “Maybe she’s having a bad day.”

And as tactless as you think Liz is, you want to believe that’s true. You’ve heard plenty of stories of her, how she’s the only coworker that Yoongi actually likes, how she’s nice to him, how she actually seems to be interested in what he has to say. You don’t trust her, but you hope for Yoongi’s sake that she’s just off her game today. 

Maybe if he clarified that you weren’t dating, it would help.

He doesn’t make any effort to do that, though, not even when Rabia brings around a QR code for you to scan to add songs to the playlist they’ve got going.

“Thought maybe you and your girlfriend would want to add some songs,” she says, offering a small smile. She waits patiently while Yoongi scans the code on her phone, and then she disappears again, back to the group over by the speaker.

“She seems nice,” you say, watching as he types into his phone and picks a couple songs.

Yoongi shrugs. “I’ve met her like twice? She works nights.”

After a second, he hands you his phone, open to some music website you’ve never heard of. You carefully consider what you might want to add. The site doesn’t let you see what else is in the playlist, so you aren’t sure what songs Yoongi picked, let alone what the others have queued up. But you pick two of your favorites that you think would be fun and hand him his phone back.

Apparently, the playlist is on shuffle, because a few songs later, you recognize the opening beats of one of the songs you chose. Immediately, Yoongi perks up, his little ears on alert as he listens. It takes all of about three seconds for him to break into a grin. 

He’d introduced you to this band back when you first started grocery shopping together. You were driving, he was playing music on his phone. They were his favorite, a small hip-hop group made up of three dog hybrids. It wasn’t common for hybrids to make it in really any industry, so the fact that these guys did and their music was good? You couldn’t deny they had quickly become some of your favorite artists, too.

He sways a little with the music, his eyes closed. He looks content. You smile watching him, rest your chin on his hands. You’re happy you came, you determine.

Two hours fly faster than you thought they would. And when you point out that you’ve hit your promised limit and ask if Yoongi’s ready to go, he immediately nods. So you stand, say your goodbyes. His coworkers make a big deal of you leaving so soon. Liz tries to hug Yoongi before you leave, but he dodges her by grabbing another hotteok–though whether it was a purposeful deflection or just a happy accident, you aren’t sure.

He barely speaks until you’re in the car and halfway back to your apartment building. He shifts around in his seat, digging around in his pocket. He pulls out a rock–his favorite rock, you note–and rolls it around in his hand.

“Thanks,” he says quietly. “For coming with me. I uh… I’m sorry I didn’t tell them we weren’t dating.”

You frown, and when you slow to a stop at the next redlight, you turn to look at him. “You don’t have to apologize for that. If it made the situation even a little easier, it’s totally fine.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, I mean, when am I going to see these people again?” The light turns green and you hit the gas. “Let them think whatever they want. You wanna come back in eight months and tell them we’re married? Go for it.”

“I-I don’t…”

“Seriously, don’t worry about it.”

He nods. “I appreciate it.”

The car falls silent, the only sounds coming from the radio–Yoongi’s phone connected to the aux cord. He continues to toy with the rock, rubbing it between his fingers and tapping it against the armrest on the door. It takes only minutes to pull into the garage under your building, and even less to find a spot.

While you’re waiting for the elevator to return to the garage, he says your name so softly, you almost don’t hear it over the whirring of the cables and machinery.

“Here,” he says, reaching out and grabbing your hand. Carefully, he presses his rock into your palm.

You look at him, confused. “Yoongi, I…” He loves this rock. He’d never said exactly where he found it, but it’s a little round and very smooth, and you’ve seen him pat his pockets down on numerous occasions to make sure he has it with him.

“Take it. Please. I… As a thank you.” He doesn’t look at you, his face flushed a shade of light pink.

You nod and close your fingers around the rock. You’ll have to find somewhere nice to put it. And maybe, someday, you can find him a new one to replace it.

I'd love to know what you thought! I had been considering making this longer, but I thought leaving it open might be a little more fun. if you're interested, I may do a part two later? idk let me know if you're feeling a part two. thank you again to yav and jay for the moodboards. they're both so pretty.

[snekdood]

anyways if nick fartez and any of his skeevy fans are spying on me online I needja to know this: no one will ever love you or like you or fuck you and its all your fault bc your a nazi. the only way you'll ever get anything is if you rape someone and you and I both know that doesnt mean shit except how desperate you are to stick your dick in someone and how much you're willing to violate people who actively dislike you and would never be around you if it was their choice. it didn't hafta be this way but you decided being a ugly skeevy nazi was more important than anything, which is sad. honestly jump off a cliff, save yourself the time.