#just as a notice I did schedule these for the morning in my timezone because I'm about ready to pass out lol | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

soundofseventeen · 4 years

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Worldwide (Joshua Hong)

Hello! This is one that was requested by our lovely haley!! Mild throwback to our rusher days!! Have a lovely day everyone!! 💛💚

You sat on your couch, knees pulled up to your chest, staring at the package. You shouldn’t have this. You knew you should just put it back and then forget about it until Joshua got back again. But, your eyes kept staring at it, expecting it to burst into flames or open itself or do something.

Things with Joshua lately had been… rough. You knew you loved him, and you knew he loved you, but it had been a rough patch for you two. You both knew this relationship wouldn’t be easy. When was dating an idol an easy thing to do? You got to watch him flirt with fans and say sweet things to them, but you always reminded yourself that at the end of the day, he was looking at you. He came back to you.

But you also knew that he was tired, trying to juggle a growing career and a getting serious relationship. You knew the guilt he felt at not always being able to be there for you, no matter how much you reassured him that you understood he couldn’t always physically be there.

While you understood, you still couldn’t help the hurt that you felt. You always saw your friends out with their partners, giggling and swinging their hands, smiles on both of their faces. You couldn’t really do that either, even when Joshua was around. He kept the skinship to an extreme minimum when you two were out, not wanting to expose anything about you two.

You really loved Joshua, and he really loved you, but you knew you were both tired. You had this rock in the pit of your stomach, wrapped in fear that the end may be soon.

He had just gotten back from tour, one that had been really long for both of you. You two had a weird air, Joshua giving you a tight hug before leaving and promising to be back soon. Once he got home, he basically dropped off his stuff, and then immediately had to go back to Pledis for some work emergency. He gave you a quick kiss, saying he needed to talk to you when he got back.

You made it through most of the tour okay, but Joshua saying he needed to talk to you now? Terrified you. Considering he barely contacted you during the tour? You kept telling yourself he was busy, he had a lot to focus on while on tour. But now you were wondering if that was intentional? Did Joshua not need you? Was this tour a test to see if your relationship was something worth fighting for? Did he determine that he had to make your worst fear come true?

So you distracted yourself until he came home. You cleaned your kitchen. You vacuumed. You read a couple webtoons online. You then decided to start unpacking his stuff, something you debated for a while. Because if he was going to break up with you, he would want to take his stuff with him, right? But why would he bring his stuff here if he was planning that?

You had just started unpacking when you found the package. It was a simple brown package, with twine holding it together. As you picked it up, you saw your initials on the tag, causing you to furrow your eyebrows at it.

And now you were in your living room. Staring at the package. Wondering what it was.

If Joshua wanted to give it to you, he probably wanted to be here to give it to you. But man, your curiosity was killing you. Was it a good thing? Or was it a goodbye thing?

You jumped as your phone rang, seeing Joshua was calling you.

“Hey.” You answered, hearing Joshua sigh.

“Listen, I’m so sorry. I might be a little later than I planned…”

“Really?” You asked, pouting.

“I’m so sorry. Please go to sleep, we can talk in the morning, okay? Just get some good rest.”

“Joshua…”

“Hey, I am coming home tonight. I promise.” He said, you letting out a sigh. “I love you.”

“I love you too.” You muttered, Joshua sighing himself again.

“Get some rest.” You both hung up the phone, your eyes going back to the package. You shook your head, reasoning that you would have to wait until the morning to find out. You got up, changed into pajamas and got ready for bed. You sat in bed for about 10 minutes, before you got back up, walking towards the living room. You sat on the couch, pulling the package onto your lap. You took a deep breath, opening the side of the package and pulling the contents out.

It was… letters. A bunch of letters. A small stack of letters. Each one with your name on it. There was nothing else on any of the envelopes, just your name.

You made a quick decision, making yourself some tea and grabbing a blanket, settling into the couch, picking up the top letter, slowly opening the envelope.

Dear Y/N,

Hey uh. How’s it going? How was your day? I’m not really sure why I’m doing this. I could just call you right now, but I thought I would try this? I don’t know, this is probably silly. But I guess it’s romantic, huh? Anyway, we just took off this morning. I always hate the look on your face when we have to leave for tour, but today it seemed so much worse. I guess that’s part of the reason I’m doing this. I really hope you have so much fun until we get back. So much fun that you have more stories to tell than I do.

God, this was a dumb idea. xJoshua

Hey Y/N,

It’s been a few days since we left now, and I just found the first letter in my bag. I still feel silly doing this, but oh well. Maybe you’ll think it’s cute or something. I’ve been thinking about you a lot the last few days. We found this dog while going to get coffee yesterday morning and I took a picture with him to show you later. I almost sent it to you, but then I remembered the time difference and didn’t want to chance waking you up. I did get the picture of you at our favorite restaurant. It made me smile from ear to ear that you ordered my favorite dish there instead of yours although your friend ratted you out and told me you also ordered your favorite to take home haha. At least you’re eating well while I’m gone! We have our first concert tonight, don’t worry, I’ll take your necklace on stage with me. It is my lucky charm, after all.

This is still dumb. xJoshua. I’m not writing another one.

Y/N my own true love who I love more than Jeonghan Hello Y/N,

So Jeonghan found my other letters. He is now making me write more of these because HE thought it was adorable. Also, excuse the crossed out part. I only have so much paper and I refuse to let Jeonghan win like this. We’re in another new town this morning, some of the guys want to go to a carnival later. I’m still debating on going or not. We don’t have the concert until tomorrow night, but traveling is tiring and I kind of want to sit by the pool for a while (yes, I’m at a pool, are you jealous? ;) ) I know if you were here, you would tell me to go with them. Just to get your voice out of my head for a bit I might go. Remember when we went to that fair? You were so cute trying to win me that stuffed tiger. I kept telling you that I was supposed to win you something since I took you on the date, but you just stuck your tongue out at me and told me to shut up. I’m pretty sure that was the day I knew I loved you.

Ugh, I can’t show you these ever. xJoshua

PS. I went to the fair. I won you a tiger. Suck it. <3 (It’s pink)

Dear Y/N,

I’m sorry I called so late last night. I guess my timezone math was still a little off. I just needed to hear the sound of your voice for a bit. At least I got to kind of tuck you in, right? Even if it was on the phone. I’m starting to get into a habit of doing this. I still feel silly, but it’s getting easier, I think? Hosh hasn’t come back from DK and Jeonghan’s room yet, so I’m just in our room by myself right now. The moon is huge tonight. You would probably spend an hour trying to get a picture of it. I just tried, it’s not great but it’s a decent picture? No it’s bad never mind I even cracked the window open in your honor. It’s so weird. Remember how I always complained about you wanting to have the window open at night? I never understood how you slept with the cold air and the traffic noise, but it’s actually helping now. It’s not great since you’re not here to cuddle with, but it makes me think of you. Hosh usually shuts the window at some point in the night though. I promise when I come back, I’ll let you keep the window open every night if you want.

Of course, I’m never actually showing you this, so we shall see. xJoshua

Hey Y/N,

You are not going to believe this! You remember that old hand lotion you used to have? The one that smelled like honey? The one that when you ran out and we went to the store to get more and they told you it was seasonal and you cried? I FOUND IT. We were in a shop and I smelled it, so I asked the girl working about it and she showed it to me. It was a different little tube than the one you had, but I swear it’s the exact same scent. I can already picture how excited you’ll be when I give it to you. I’m half tempted to just mail that to you, but I also want to keep it with me until I get back. Then I can see your face when you smell it. I miss you a lot. More than you think.

Only a couple more weeks. Then I’ll be home. xJoshua

Y/N,

A carat asked about you today. I was not prepared at all for that. I mean, yeah, they know about you and everything, but I was not prepared to be asked about you. They didn’t ask anything bad, just that they wanted to know how you were and if I missed you while on tour. Kind of a weird question to ask at a fanmeet but whatever I guess? I told them you were doing well and that I was looking forward to being able to see you in 2 weeks. I at least hope you’re doing well. I’m sorry we keep missing each other this week. Between my schedule and yours… We just can’t line up at all, huh? God, this almost feels worse now that I’m almost home, you know? Like, we’re so, so close but still so far away. I can’t believe I didn’t notice how distanced we’ve been. I don’t know how. You were always there for me when I needed you and now that I can’t come see you after a long day… I don’t know. You know I’m yours, right? No matter where I go or who I meet even the fans you constantly point out as pretty, which I don’t know why you keep doing that to yourself because I still stop breathing when I see you or what happens, you’re my one and only. If anything this tour just made me realize that whether it’s Paris or London or Tokyo all places I want to take you, by the way, I’m going to think about you worldwide.

I can’t wait to see you. I can’t wait to catch you and never let go. xJoshua

P.S. That carat earlier also told me about this candy store and I may have bought you different flavors of that one candy bar you like. I hope they taste good.

Y/N!

I’m home now well, at Pledis but I felt like these needed a conclusion. Not sure why, because I’m still not sure you’re ever going to get them. But it felt weird to just… end? So I gotta write this I guess. I managed to get the next few days off because some guys are going home for family and such, and I intend to annoy the living hell out of you. I gotta make up for lost time, right? Hopefully we can pick up right where we left off. I plan to get those spicy noodles you love on the way home. That will be a good start to our days together. I can’t wait to remind you just how much I love you. I’ll even listen to you read those gross cheesy books you like to read I don’t know if you know this but you make the cutest face when you find something cute you read and it makes my heart just U W U We’re getting called into a meeting now, but I’ll be home in a few hours. I love you.

Maybe these letters weren’t a terrible idea. You still might not get them. xJoshua

Joshua smiled to himself, picking up the envelopes with folded paper inside. He glanced at you, sound asleep on the couch, the last letter barely hanging from your hand. He looked over your face, examining softly. You looked tired. He wished you had just gone to bed, but he also knew that he probably gave you reason to be afraid of him wanting to have a discussion with you.

He carefully took the letter out of your hand, chuckling a bit as you kept a hold on it. He got it eventually, shaking his head and he put it back in its envelope and tossing it on the table with the others. Joshua then stood up, stretching his arms over his head a bit before reaching down to pick you up. He was going to let you keep sleeping, but he might as well move you to your bed so you wouldn’t hurt in the morning.

As he was part way down the hall, he heard you start to mumble. He stopped walking, looking at you with your eyes still closed.

“..Shua?” You mumbled, Joshua chuckling again.

“I’m here.” He whispered, not sure if you had actually woken up or if you were talking in your sleep.

“Is it morning?” You mumbled, Joshua smiling at you.

“Not quite, but almost.” He said, finally getting to your room. He carefully opened the door, leaving it open as he walked in.

“What are you doing here?” You asked, eyes starting to blink open a bit.

“I’m done with work for the day.” He said, pulling back the covers and laying you down, pulling the covers back and tucking you in. He sighed, thinking about how he had waited to do that for so long.

“Mhm.” You said, your eyes falling again. Joshua just smirked, brushing some of the hair from your face before getting up to get ready for bed himself. Once he was ready, he walked to the other side of the bed, crawling in himself and letting himself relax. He felt you poke his arm, causing him to turn his head. You were looking at him, eyebrows slightly together.

“How was the tour?” You asked, Joshua just smiling at you.

“It was great, but we can talk about it in the morning, okay?” He said, turning to face you. “Get some sleep.”

“What time do you go in tomorrow?” You mumbled.

“Didn’t you read the last letter?” He asked, you shrugging.

“I fell asleep at the start of it.” You said, snuggling a bit into your pillow.

“I have off the next couple days.” He grinned as your eyes widened, head picking up a bit. “Yeah, you’re stuck with me now.” He laughed, you letting your head rest again.

“Oh my.” You said, a slight smile on your face. You snuggled into Joshua a bit, which he happily accepted. “So, did you miss me?” Joshua placed a kiss on your head, holding onto you.

“You know I thought about you worldwide.”

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nyeh-sureiguess · 4 years

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Y’all it’s 7 am in my timezone but I needed to make this post cause I legit just woke up from a dream about the True Rivals ship and I’m losing my mind

(Disclaimer off the bat: it wasn’t anything inappropriate, not to worry)

The premise was simple enough: Leon and Raihan were scheduled to have an exhibition match one early morning. Leon came, doing his usual shtick of hyping everyone up in the audience by making some “stage talk” with his rival (throwing out some light disses, prideful remarks, how he plans to keep his title as champion no matter how much the other would try— those sorts of things that don’t actually mean anything of substance outside of the stadium since his relationship with the other had always been a good natured rivalry).

Raihan, on the other hand, was feeling off.

He wasn’t feeling particularly bad in any way, no; he was feeling really happy and content with where he was. Maybe a little too much to the point that he had forgotten to keep up his public face of being the wild and fierce dragon-tamer everyone else in Galar knew.

He didn’t respond to any of Leon’s antics, didn’t try to make any faces that would usually show off his passion for battling and wanting to be the best in the region— all he did instead was just stand there, right in front of Leon as they were in the middle of the field. He stood there, silent, with his hands shoved into the pockets of his jacket and a soft smile on his face as he watched his rival go about. Even the commentator of the match themselves made a comment on how “passive” Raihan was being, speculating that it was nothing more than a strategy to throw the champion off his game so that he wouldn’t possibly be able to guess his game plan later on in battle.

In reality, he’s caught in the bliss of realizing how far he’d come with Leon as one of his closest friends. He’s reminiscing back to simpler times, back to when Leon wasn’t even champion yet and someone he just happened to encounter on the same route early on in his journey. He never would’ve believed that, years later, that same boy who could barely navigate a one-way road would become the decade-long reigning champion of the Galar region.

And more so, he wouldn’t have ever believed that he would still be considered as his greatest rival of all time.

Back in the present, Leon soon notices how the other had been silent all this time, doing nothing but staring at him with a gentleness in his features that he usually only got to see when they were out of the public’s eye and playing undercover for the sake of being able to hang out as friends without being paraded by fans. The early morning sunlight was bouncing off the other’s face, making his relaxed and admiring expression all the more prominent and framing that humbled smile of his perfectly.

And it was driving Leon insane.

He found himself unable to do anything else but fluster up after seeing how genuine the other was being as compared to his usual showboating, a deep shade of red quickly filling up his features before he stopped doing his stage talk entirely and stammered to one of the referees for the match to start already.

This is what finally gets Raihan off out of his trance on the other, and all he does is response is let out a hearty chuckle before smoothing out the cloth on his headgear and pulling himself back into his stage appearance of an obnoxiously wide smirk and hunched over pose.

He doesn’t feel an ounce of regret from letting himself go for a moment there though, because seeing the other’s blushing state and near-speechless reaction made it all so worth it.

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periminkle · 4 years

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Orphic | 04

After moving into your own place, it seems life is finally going your way; the path to independence leading you to a quaint suburban town where even the grass seems to grow a little greener. Although a shocking encounter leads you to believe that perhaps appearances can be quite deceiving.

pairing: hybrid!jk x reader (first person)

genre: hybrid au, angst, fluff

word count: 7.6k

rating: PG-15

warnings: swearing, descriptions of blood and cleaning wounds, mentions of cannibalism (o.o)

author’s note: mMMm setting deadlines is effective but exhausting, so the pacing of this might be a bit weird? also im def not late bc it’s still sunday in some timezones so ;))

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I stared intently at the grungy nick in the otherwise spotless wall, mind racing a mile a minute.

The better half of the last hour had been spent pacing back and forth, gaze unmoving from the unconscious man in fear of missing the twitch of a finger or the flutter of an eyelash. His complete stillness persuaded me to check on his pulse frequently, glad to feel the faint, yet steady, beat beneath layers of smooth skin.

When I received a second call from my cranky saviour to inform me that he was nearly here, I forcefully sat myself down and practiced that infamous square breathing that every zen yogi swore by. By the persistent bouncing of my knee, it was evident that the yogis had failed me.

Rain was pounding down in thick sheets onto the pavement outside and at this point I was convinced the world had it out for me, using every trick in the book to further complicate this surely doomed rescue mission. Nonetheless, I optimistically hoped that the incoming storm would soon subside.

My unfortunate lips dealt with the brunt of my merciless canines, rendering the skin raw by the time a distinctive series of raps against the sturdy door caught my attention. It was the very same pattern in which I’d regularly knock on the door to the cleaning storage, craving the company of someone other than the three musketeers I’d gotten to know better than my own blood.

Although I ordinarily would be enthusiastically welcomed and greeted with nothing less than a wide, heart-shaped grin, the circumstances now were undoubtedly exceptional. Thus, the crinkle between his brows and the disgruntled glare fixed on my sheepish smile were to be expected.

Needless to say, Hoseok was not impressed.

“What the hell?” the typically friendly janitor barked out, huffing out his frustration at having his slumber disturbed. “You do know that it’s almost two in the morning right? How did you even get in here? Why couldn’t this wait for tomorrow?”

His hair stuck up in a multitude of different directions, evidently having rolled out of bed, slipped on a jacket and came to my rescue. The wrinkled, blue horse character on his pajama set eased some of my nerves at the familiarity of its nose, in the shape of Hoseok’s smile that was, understandably, nowhere to be found with the current circumstances.

I gripped the distressed male by his lithe shoulders, imploring him to slow down. “I’m not coming in tomorrow. Listen, this is gonna sound absurd but—”

His eyes drifted past my smaller form and I firmly shook at his torso to prevent him from spotting the other man. “Hey! Eyes down here.” A hint of curiosity bled through his agitated exterior when he focused on my stern exterior once more. “You can’t freak out, okay?”

Hoseok shrugged his approval, murmuring, “Yeah, I get it, directly disobeying the head researchers is pretty satisfying and all, but did you really have to drag me into this? Especially when you know I start early on Saturdays?”

At the reminder of his strict schedule, I withered marginally as I originally hadn’t intended to involve him at all. A shameful appreciation began to eat away at my conscience, grateful for his presence in spite of my outrageous request. I wouldn’t know what to do if Hoseok hadn’t come through and in my eyes, he remained an angel who was too good to be true.

“I’m sorry, I promise this is really important.” I brought my arms back to my sides, glancing down at my feet in order to organize my swirling thoughts. “I wouldn’t call you if it wasn’t an emergency.”

What I didn’t notice while lost in my reverie was Hoseok’s rebellious stare, wandering over the injured man’s form. “What the fuck?” He gently shoved me aside, stumbling deeper into the laboratory. When he was planted by the stranger’s table, he repeated, “What the actual fuck?”

My head tipped back in exasperation, disappointed that not even my last minute backup strategy was going according to plan. “Hobi, please.”

I could practically envision the gears whirring in his head, a natural reaction considering the mutant in front of him. When he finally craned his neck back to me, he mumbled with wide eyes, “Say sike right now.”

“Stop talking for two seconds.” I groaned, marching up to position myself between the janitor and the table in an attempt to calm him down. Immediately upon noticing his trembling digits, I reached out to clasp them within my own quivering hands. “Listen, this experiment they’re conducting? From what I know, it’s all some screwed up excuse to inject animalistic characteristics of their choosing into humans. And their track records point to a lot of predator species.”

“Predators? Wha—why would they even want to create a predator-human hybrid?” Hoseok took a tiny step back and out of the fear that he would flee, I fiercely clamped down onto our conjoined limbs.

“I don’t know yet,” I faltered. “But, honestly, I couldn’t care less because of how unethical they are in their approach to this project.” At his puzzled expression I somberly gestured to the unmoving lump in the corner, willing myself to postpone any tears for a safer location.

Hoseok must have connected the dots at the midnight black shade of fur peeking out underneath the fabric matching the colour of the hybrid’s ears and tail, as his stare hardened and his breathing began to even out from the rapid pace it was at before. “I’ll need more details later on, but let’s get him out of here first.”

At his command, I retracted from Hoseok's hold, scoping out the rather barren area for something other than the masses of files and papers strewn about. “You think we can carry him together?”

Simply comparing the difference in size between the stranger and Hoseok, there was no doubt the copious, hulking mass of muscle outweighed my friend’s slimmer figure. Our combined strength would have to somehow prove formidable against his bulky body.

Hoseok’s grimace spoke volumes about his faith in that idea, although there wasn’t much of a choice considering the alarming time crunch and our limited accessibility to other parts of the laboratory. Due to my blind confidence in the ostensibly foolproof scheme I constructed, the only cameras shifted were directly located in the path from the front entrance to the changing room to the upstairs lab.

Oh, how I was regretting that naivety now.

Using an abandoned stretch of fabric that had been stuffed into one of the drawers I rummaged through earlier, I covered his immobile body with the thin cover to provide some decency and act as a layer of defence against the torrents outside.

While Hoseok stood directly behind his head, leaning forward to loop his arms underneath the hybrid’s triceps and around his chest, I grabbed each of his ankles, cradling them to my abdomen. Even with our best efforts to avoid any of his wounds, there was no way to avert the countless scratches and bruises that littered every inch of visible skin. We counted on the sanguine belief that he wasn’t conscious enough to feel any of it, reluctant to use any tranquilizers when we weren't aware of how much juice they’d already injected him with.

“On the count of three?” Hoseok asked.

With a nod, I tightened my hold and widened my stance. “One, two,” after taking a generous inhale, I heaved, “three!”

The two of us managed to maneuver the stranger down the length of the dingy hall before we were forced to gently place him onto the ground, desperate to grant our aching muscles the break they demanded. Currently, construction was being done on the elevator, which meant that the flight of stairs was the next obstacle to be tackled.

I lost the brief, but fierce, battle of rock-paper-scissors and endured the frightening prospect of marching down the stairs backwards—in the dark. All because Hoseok was unwilling to sacrifice the slightest bit of his comfort for the both of us to step sideways.

It was safe to say the stairs themselves took ten minutes to clear.

On the first floor, we were able to cross over to the main entrance in a breeze thanks to the spacious nature of the lobby. After scurrying to Hoseok’s car and laying the hybrid in the back seat, I returned to the lab to dutifully lock up the front door and jogged back to the vehicle.

Hoseok sent me a befuddled brow lift from the front seat when instead of the passenger’s side, I hesitantly stood a stride away from the driver’s door. “He’s fine, hurry up already so we can get out of here.” He motioned to the space beside him with the flick of his chin, his bed head dancing along with the movement. “It wouldn’t look too great if anyone caught us right now, especially with the man-cat knocked out cold in the back. Plus, the lab just radiates spooky vibes at night, look at my goosebumps!”

“Okay, okay, give me a second,” I grunted, opening the door to the back seat as I bowed inside to avoid a painful meeting with the roof of the vehicle. While gripping the back of the stranger’s skull with one hand and his upper back with the other, I lifted his torso and slipped inside. Tenderly, I placed his head on my lap.

“What are you doing?” Hoseok stared at me through the mirror, evidently unnerved by my proximity to the man. “He could literally wake up at any minute and there goes your throat!”

“Or he could get juggled around from your shitty driving and open his injuries again,” I countered, “which I think is a lot more likely, no?”

He scoffed, taking full offence to my jest. “Never mind. I hope he throws you out the damn window for calling my driving anything less than spectacular.”

The rush of excess blood coursing through my veins as a result of my overactive heart pounded in my head, nearly loud enough to block out the boisterous revving of the engine echoing throughout the empty lot. Tires squeaked against the pavement, jolting the hunk of metal into action as we sped away.

“Where were you thinking of leaving him?” he asked, taking a breath before mumbling, “that is, if you thought about this at all.”

“Hobi!” My jaw dropped dramatically at his not so subtle jab, shaking my head as I commented, “You’ve been hanging around Yoongi too much lately. I mean, all this sass couldn’t have come from nowhere.”

He slowed down behind the only other car in sight, flicking on his signal to turn. “Don’t change the subject.”

“I’m not, I was just commenting on your drastic change in behaviour,” I rebutted, crossing my arms across my chest at his determination to aggravate me tonight. “For your information, I actually planned this out for weeks; who do you think got the key card to the upstairs lab, the keys to the building itself, moved all the cameras—

Despite the leather seat between us, I knew he was sporting a sly smirk, for his conceit was bleeding through his supercilious tone. “And who begged me for help halfway through this ingenious plan?”

My jaw clenched shut, astounded at his cheeky retorts. At first, I was unsure of how the relationship between the jovial custodian and the chilly facade that Yoongi donned among strangers would progress, but judging by the sheer number of occasions in which I’d walked into a room with the two chatting away—gummy smiles all around, it seemed to be advancing better than expected.

“Whatever, you came anyway.” I sank back into my seat, careful not to disturb the comatose man peacefully resting on my thighs. Hopefully he was narcotized enough to remain oblivious to the various disturbances around him and would only rouse when the sun made an appearance.

Hoseok blithely sneered, pressing harder on the pedal as he spun the steering wheel to the right. “Yeah, well it’s kind of hard not to when you claim that Hyunho’s going to sue your ass for thousands of dollars.”

“And was I wrong?” I recalled our earlier conversation, where I hadn’t yet mustered up the courage, much less the patience, to confess to the details of my crimes. In a panicked state, I simply presented the consequences which would follow Hoseok’s absence—Hyunho’s wrath.

“No, now you’re just gonna get your ass handed to you by Namjoon and Yoongi,” he countered. “But I guess you’ll save some money while you’re at it.”

Merely the thought of their reactions to my late night escapade made me want to shrivel up in a ball. “Who said I’m going to tell them?”

“You’re not telling them?” The car slowed as he gradually came to a graceful stop behind a red light, turning his torso to face me with the help of his hand on the central console. “You know better than to release the man-cat, he’ll just get caught again.”

Rolling my eyes like a petulant child being scolded, I muttered, “I’m not releasing him.”

“But you can’t deal with him on your own either!” he snapped, the lack of sleep shortening his tolerance. After a pause to regain his senses, Hoseok rapidly shook his head and twisted back to focus on the empty roads ahead.

"Listen," I gritted out between my teeth, my own temper flaring. “I think you’re forgetting that I was well aware of the fact that I would be housing some kind of animal for a while, just didn’t know he would be this big.”

“Or this dangerous? This costly?” His firm grip on the wheel tightened, knuckles turning white as his emotions boiled over. "You’re not prepared to deal with him, I'll just take him back to my place."

A puff of air escaped my throat at his ridiculous solution, stating, "You live with your sister. There's no way she won't find out."

"Like you're any better off," he quipped, staring me down through the rearview mirror. "You live alone. If he were to do anything to you, we’d be none the wiser about it."

"Well, we can't risk anyone discovering his existence. There's no other way.” By watching the stranger’s chest rise and fall with each elongated breath, I was able to simultaneously avoid Hoseok’s prying eyes and collect my own thoughts.

While impatiently waiting for his arrival back at the lab, my mind had trudged through copious possibilities, overwhelmed with the pressure to choose the right one. Eventually, I came to the disconcerting conclusion that, be that as it may, the most secure option remained to bring him back to my place.

I reassured, "Don’t worry, I cleared out my bedroom so that there’s nothing in there that could potentially be used as a weapon. We'll secure him down, lock the door, and I'll camp out in the living room."

"Y/N, we don't have any clue what this guy is capable of,” Hoseok stressed, worry colouring his voice as he sharply gesticulated with his free hand. “Hell, look at him! He has cat ears, Y/N, and do not get me started on his tail.”

I stole a glance at the accused appendage in bewilderment, unsure of why that aspect was at the forefront of Hoseok’s concerns regarding the mutant boy. “What’s wrong with his tail?”

“My point is,” he accentuates, “we have no idea what we’re dealing with here. What if he has some kind of monstrous super strength and his diet consists of human flesh? He could probably rip right through any restraints and bam! That'll be the end of you."

I held my tongue at ridiculing his absurd speculations when some sort of man-cat hybrid was currently strewn across the back seat of Hoseok’s run-down Corolla; a dim display exposing the current, ungodly hour of the early morning.

“Do you have any better ideas?" Although my question was met with radio silence, we steadily continued on the potholed path headed away from my house. I spoke up again, "Where are you taking us?"

"We're going to Namjoon's place, and we're gonna think of a better alternative all together."

"Hoseok," I seethed, fists clenching next to my thigh. "He'll make us take him back. We're already too far in to go back now."

The car jerked violently due to the bumpy road and being suddenly reminded of the wounded boy, I shot out to grab at his thin waist in order to nail him to the seat. Despite my best efforts, crimson liquid soaked through the thin blanket and I cursed under my breath.

"I can't leave you there alone with him!"

"Please, we'll be careful." A beat passed as I greedily inhaled the fresh air flowing in through my open window, gathering ideas to negotiate. "I'll stay awake the whole time and I'll text you every hour."

Regardless of my pleas, the car kept at its incessant pace to Namjoon's apartment. Sweat began to accumulate at my temples at the unsure fate of what censure awaited me. To distract my nerves, I gripped the fabric that covered the man’s body, tugging it over his shoulders to rest just below his chin while pressing a bunch into his side in an attempt to stop the bleeding.

Past the low hum of the vehicle, a gentle utterance met my ears. I lifted my head to inquire whether the sound was merely a figment of my fatigued imagination when Hoseok repeated, "Every half hour."

My eyes widened, darting to examine his stoic expression from the rearview mirror. "Yes! Yes, yes of course. I can even do every ten minutes if that’s what you want." I shrugged my shoulders, pointing out, "I'll be up all night anyway."

"No, I'm good. Unlike some of us, I don't deserve to be punished for my crimes and would like to salvage the little sleep I can get," he declared as he performed a U-turn at a wide intersection.

My grin expanded exponentially at the change in direction. "Suit yourself."

I allowed my thoughts to clear, tracing a clear droplet on the window as it raced to engulf another, merging into one, larger globule that ran down the smooth expanse until it was out of sight. Unknowingly, I mindlessly carded my fingers through the stranger’s dampened strands; more so for my own comfort than for anyone else.

Before I knew it, we’d arrived at my quaint cottage and with the addition of another individual residing under its roof, the place seemed tinier than ever. Hoseok and I shuttled him over to my bedroom as gracefully as we possibly could, aiming to avoid whacking into any obstacles along the way.

Other than his lengthy legs knocking into two door frames, we were clear.

The second his back met the rigid mattress, we collectively released a weighty exhalation from the excessive exertion that strained both our physical and mental states. Although the chances of the stranger waking up now were low, seeing as he was out like a light throughout the whole journey, I hurried to collect the sturdy ropes that I purchased in advance.

“Ooh, you’re into some kinky shit, huh Y/N?” Hoseok quipped, taking the material from my hands.

My eyes rolled back at his stupid antics, glaring at the pleased crinkles forming next to his drooping eyes. “Ha ha, very funny. Now help me tie him up, so I can kick you out of my house.”

“And what’re you gonna do to him when I leave?”

Snatching the rope that he stole from me, I shoved Hoseok to the side by pressing against his firm bicep—which definitely carried more than his fair share of the hybrid on the way here—and grumbled, “Guess If you want something done right, you gotta do it yourself.”

Hoseok burst into a short fit of contagious laughter, invoking a couple quiet giggles that I was unsuccessful in fighting down. As he raised the stranger’s arms to the bed frame, I looped the braided, nylon material snug around each of his wrists. Along the way I checked to ensure that the restraints weren’t too tight before moving onto his ankles to repeat the process. Luckily enough, his height stretched the entire length of my minuscule bed with his feet dangling off the ledge.

“Tell me you brought more tranquilizers in case?” Hoseok asked immediately upon securing the last knot. Throughout a tedious explanation on how foolishly lax I was behaving with the hybrid, he went back to inspect my handiwork, tugging the ends of the cords closer together into a grip that nearly cut off the hybrid’s blood flow.

Over his nagging, I sneaked a victorious grin as I displayed the syringes I’d nabbed from the lab. He spent a few more minutes fiddling with various safety measures consisting of the pepper spray he stealthily retrieved from my purse, the bedroom door’s lock and an air horn that he remarkably pulled out of his coat’s pocket. Although it was questionable if the blaring sound would awaken even my closest neighbours due to the sheer distance between our houses, I didn’t dare attempt after imagining old Sangmin marching over here on his rickety cane to bark my ears off.

Refusing to bother expending effort on pondering over the rationale behind Hoseok’s little magic trick, I blithely shooed him out before any more ridiculous objects could be plucked out of his jacket.

The last straw was his finger approaching the sensitive button on said air horn. Unwilling to face the consequences of his brash actions, I slammed the front door closed behind Hoseok, the space suddenly void of his rowdy antics. I wearily blinked the drowsiness out of my eyes, the stillness and tranquility of the early hours slowed my heart rate from the fast paced, action packed night.

My sock-clad feed padded their way back to the bedroom, snatching my phone out of my black hoodie to fiddle around with an app that I discovered upon moving out. In order to relay my continued existence to my family, I scheduled texts to be sent every week, which would prove useful at this time as well. Knowing my own forgetful nature, one update to Hoseok would slip my mind, and either four, furious men would burst through every available entrance or I would have the whole police force upon my front steps in minutes.

To prevent such a disastrous event from taking place, I tampered around with the settings and added the fretting male to the list.

I halted in my tracks when faced with the mundane sight of the four walls where I spent most of my sleeping hours, not a hair out of place other than the addition of the injured hybrid on my dirtied bed. The crimson stains jolted me into action, retrieving my brand new first-aid kit and finding it hilariously ironic that the dressings were going to be used on the very same criminal that broke in to steal such supplies.

In order to fight off any cold that could have possibly slithered its way past the weak barrier draped over his body, I peeled the flimsy, sodden cover off and replaced it with a puffy comforter. Traversing through the storm that continued to rage outside definitely put a strain on his already weakened state, and his pale countenance wasn't very reassuring.

I slid the blanket down to access the sullied wound at his rib cage and grabbed a couple pads of gauze to firmly press onto the area. Thankfully, some blood had already begun to coagulate around the edges, so I didn’t have to wait too long for the trickling stream to cease. With a clean towel, I wiped the surrounding skin to get a better look at what I was dealing with, grimacing at the bruises forming galaxies across the jagged edges of ripped skin.

He was in worse shape than either Hoseok or I could have predicted. At this realization, the fleeting worry that he might succumb to the severity of his wounds grew, festering a nasty doubt in my mind.

Deciding whether to clean the laceration commenced another strife within the whirlwind of emotions inside my head, but I poured a few drops of antiseptic onto a cotton ball anyway, fearful of infection. As I tried my best to carefully dab the soaked material across his wounds, I peered up at his face to search for signs of consciousness.

My eyes involuntarily softened at the small cuts littered across his neck, travelling past his jaw and over the slopes of his hollowed cheeks to his forehead, which was partially hidden under his dark locks. When the cotton was thoroughly besmirched with a blend of bright crimson and a muddy brown, I drenched another and advanced up to other regions after the more serious lesions were taken care of.

A closer look at his sinewy torso allowed me to examine the scars scattered all around, mostly clustered around his upper arms. Absentmindedly, I wondered whether their appearances were linked to the cruel methods of the laboratory. How had he gotten within their clutches in the first place? For how long was he suffering under the justification of being an experiment?

What were they trying to accomplish with him?

My mind raced with all the different possibilities of what could have brought the hybrid into this situation in the first place, and before I knew it, I was pushing back the disheveled strands on his forehead to clean the last of his cuts. There were definitely more on his dorsal side, but I wasn’t willing to undo his restraints and flip his hefty weight over on my own. I would either wait until he woke up or ask Hoseok to stop by again after his shift.

In my current position, I was close enough to feel his warm breath fanning across my skin, observe the tiny brown mole under his lip and how utterly breathtaking this man was underneath the cuts that marred his skin. He was undoubtedly attractive at first glance, although I wasn’t able to appreciate his masculine features while under the stress of saving him.

Once every laceration in my reach had been disinfected to the best of my limited abilities, I swiftly bandaged his side again and stuck Spider-man themed band aids onto the smaller cuts in memory of the Hello Kitty ones that decorated his body earlier. I settled back on the chair, admiring my handiwork and fighting back the looming threat of dormancy that approached with every elongated blink. My head leaned back as I crossed my arms, thinking that a little snooze never hurt anyone.

I was blind to the cocoa orbs drinking in the darkness.

The bright light streaming in through the numerous cracks between my blinds prodded my eyelids apart, pupils struggling to adjust past the groggy haze of an unexpected slumber. Rather than revelling in the bountiful energy supplied by a restorative nap, an obnoxious cramp in my neck made its presence known alongside the bleak, obstinate tingle of dormancy that lingered within every tightened tendon, pulsating throughout my entire body.

Although the pain gradually ebbed away after I rolled my head around in wide semicircles, I knew from experience that the ache of sleeping in an uncomfortable position would linger.

Gold streaks were painted on the hardwood floor as a result of the sun’s harsh rays, a stark contrast to the dusk of a few hours ago. As I began to fuzzily recollect the memories from yesterday, I spotted the growing number of discrepancies between the room I’d seen before I closed my eyes and now, from the open door to the ruffled sheets, devoid of any sign of life.

Fortunately, I seemed to be in the same position, seated on the tough chair that I snoozed off in a few hours ago. However, I found it odd that it was particularly difficult to do much else than squirm around, and that was when I realized the problem lied in the nylon material tied around my wrists and ankles, binding me to the furniture.

A cold dread washed over me, much like a freezing bucket of ice being poured over my head. The hybrid escaped.

Well, at least he didn’t exact his fallacious revenge on my sleeping form.

“Awake?”

I squeaked at the whiplash that followed the movement of my head twisting a second too quickly, intent on identifying the furtive speaker. My eyes widened exponentially at locating the muscular hybrid, black ears twitching at my cry and tail swishing in curiosity. Being clad in only boxers, I shifted my gaze away out of instinct, a fiery blush overtaking my features despite having ogled the man’s ripped physique before.

It felt completely different when he was unconscious and my only intent was to treat his multitudinous wounds though.

He slowly blinked, clearly finding my astonishment puzzling with the bewilderment laced in his orbs. Waving a large palm in front of my face to get my attention on him, he calmly said, “No hurt.”

The tight rope that currently hindered my motion was definitely the same one that had been previously occupied with restraining the hybrid to the bed. Yet the very same male stood in front of me, free as a bird. “H-how did you get out?”

Instead of answering verbally, he extended his defined arms out to the side, imitating the position he was tied up in, then robustly swinging both limbs towards one another. So he broke through those thick, durable ropes with sheer strength and willpower. Comforting.

The tranquilizers laid scattered across the floor, much too far to even consider reaching them.

“Where’s your blanket?” I questioned, suppressing the tremor in my voice as I found it outrageous that my throat was still intact at this point. There was no guarantee that he wasn’t harbouring any motives to rid the world of my presence, but the fact that he wasn’t actively making any moves to rip my heart out was a good sign.

The mop of dark chestnut swayed along in the same direction that he tilted his head over to; a habit revealing an emotion that I couldn’t place on the stranger. “Warm. No like.”

His broken English revived a flurry of trepidation. I recalled the night of the break-in, the terror and hysteria that I’d buried away under the incorrect pretense that a burglar never hits the same house twice.

I didn’t know if that sentiment applied to kidnapping the criminal and using your place as his hideout, as well.

As I noisily gulped, I felt his stare dart to my esophagus and in a wild panic, my wide eyes met the doe-like curve of his own. The hybrid edged closer to my trembling form before treading past me, out of sight. I closed my eyes in preparation.

This is it. Goodbye world, it was pretty shit while it lasted.

I heard the rustling of fabric behind me and silently applauded the man for thinking of a quick and easy suffocation to reduce the amount of clean up afterwards.

His bare feet slapped against the floor, trekking over to my front again. When a couple seconds passed and none of my airways were blocked nor was there any piercing pain to be felt, I cautiously cracked an eye open to see the stranger standing there, the puffy blanket from before wrapped around his broad shoulders.

“Good now?” he inquired with a bunny-like smile.

My jaw dropped slightly as I nodded, attempting to formulate a sentence but coming up empty. The stark contrast between the brawn enveloping his body and his innocent features threw me in for a loop. This must have been part of his grand scheme to ruthlessly murder me—lulling me into a false sense of security before executing me on the spot.

Outwardly, the hybrid appeared to possess more human features than his animal counterpart, leading me to wonder which instincts ruled over the other. Was he more level-headed and rational or was he unable to suppress his bestial instincts? Did he get sudden, violent mood swings or go on occasional, bloodthirsty rampages?

The lack of knowledge I had regarding the man, who had somehow gained the upper hand through his brute strength, was worrying. A tinge of regret for not skimming through a few files on said hybrid before Hoseok’s arrival made me softly curse under my breath.

As I shifted in place, I was reminded of my own predicament. “So, uh, any chance you’ll let me go?”

With his broad grin still on full display, he made his refusal clear by shaking his head back and forth. It was worth a try. “Not fair. I tied, now you tied.”

His childish logic caught me off guard and a bark of laughter shook my stiff shoulders, marginally relaxing at the prospect that he might postpone the bloodshed for a later time. The mystery laid in how he could distinguish my harmless intentions from the head researchers’ diabolical ones. Maybe it was the lab coat?

I made a mental note to never wear my own lab coat in front of him.

A grumble snapped me out of my reverie. I observed the stranger’s startled features as he glanced down at his abdomen, then, unabashedly, back up to my face. Recalling his screams of horror back at the lab, the barbaric treatment he received there was indisputable and based on his raging stomach, I guessed that it had been a while since he’d eaten anything of substance.

Of all times, Hoseok’s ridiculous words of the hybrid’s diet consisting of human grade meat played back through my brain and jitters erupted over my limbs, wanting to please the man before he was picking his teeth with my freshly cleaned bones.

“Hungry?” I prodded, pushing other priorities to the side in favour of feeding the rumbling beast.

His dark orbs immediately lit up with pure, unadulterated glee. The hybrid gracefully tied the ends of the fabric around his neck like a cape and rounded closer to me with mirth written across every crease on his countenance.

Unsure if his giddiness was attributed to the assumption that I was offering up the meat lining my organs, I squirmed in protest, attempting to cause a ruckus in order to spur his excitement towards another source of protein in the fridge.

Not having much choice in the matter with my limited range of motion, I watched in worry as he scurried out of sight again. “Hey, let’s not get ahead of ourselves here and—”

Despite being prepared for his unpredictable nature, a yelp flew past my lips when I was effortlessly lifted into the air, chair and all. His forearms caged my thighs as he gripped the bottom of the seat, hot pants of air blowing onto the back of my neck from his position.

His elation was practically tangible as he flew past the open doorway and sped off through the foyer. He must have ventured deeper into the house while I was blissfully unaware, since his strides towards the kitchen were filled with nothing but confidence in every step.

Hastily, I spat out, “I’m not that delicious, trust me! My budget’s been pretty strict this month, so I’ve just been eating junk, and I don’t imagine that’ll taste very go—”

The force holding me upright loosened when we reached the fridge, permitting my feet to find the floor. “Dee-lee-shiz?” He tried to imitate, turning to point straight at me.

“No! No, no, not delicious.” I corrected, violently shaking my head.

His outstretched arm retracted to his side, staring like a hawk at my chin tipping towards the metal cooling box behind him, and I repeated, “Delicious.”

As he flung the door to the refrigerator open, nearly ripping it right off its hinges, he yelled, “Dee-lee-shiz!”

Utter fascination at the chilled temperature and the rather meager array of food etched onto his features, sending relief through my veins. I encouraged him to ravage the tenuous stock of food while simultaneously rejoicing at successfully having deterred him from eating me alive.

Packs of eggs, blueberries, condiments, and essentially anything within his reach was hauled out, forming a growing heap on the countertop. When a zucchini found its way into his grasp, he took one puzzled look before chomping down on one end. I wasn’t too sure how raw zucchini would taste when eaten as though it were a cucumber, but he seemed pleased enough to take another bite that resounded throughout the space with a loud crunch.

I reclined back into the stiff chair, content on observing the ravenous hybrid empty my fridge and taking an occasional nibble on snacks that piqued his interest. Although, his grab at the bundle of raw chicken was when I decided to voice my concerns. “Ah, that has to be cooked!” At another tilt of his head, I explained, “You could get sick if you don’t cook it.”

By his furrowed brows, I deduced the concept flew over his head, but he threw the package onto my lap anyway and peered down expectantly. “Cook.”

“You tied me up, remember? I need some mobility to cook.” I tugged at my subdued arms to demonstrate my current inaptitude.

He hummed in thought, enveloping his lower lip between his lengthy canines as he weighed the pros and cons of being able to consume the meat by setting me loose. Finally, after clearly expressing how torn he was between his hunger and his teasing, it seemed that he’d come to a conclusion when he latched onto my left forearm.

Just as I was about to jib that I was no longer on the menu, a searing pain ripped across my wrist. I hissed through my teeth with my fists clenched as I teared my tender arm out of his grip, protectively cradling the limb to my chest.

He flinched away from the sound, taking a step away from my defensive form. At the sight of my disgruntled frown, he withered into himself, chin to his chest while I examined my sore wrist, whimpering at the edges of the flaming red, torn skin. I was a second away from viciously reprimanding him for the bruise that was more than likely to form by tomorrow, but one look into his guilty, fearful eyes made me pause.

With his strength, there wasn’t a doubt in my mind that he possessed the ability to do much worse, which didn’t seem to be his intent from all the fretting—ears tucked into the crown of his head and tail hanging low. As he seemed to be repenting without a chiding needed on my end, I redirected to a softer approach. “It’s fine, just be more gentle next time, okay?”

“Mm,” he complied weakly, his prior enthusiasm having substantially deflated. Before I could dismiss the topic and entice him with more food, he knelt down to my ankles, gripping the rope with both hands this time as he effortlessly tore the material apart, careful not to graze my legs in the process.

A shiver crawled down my spine at the display of power, mentally noting that there was probably enough strength in his fingers to flick my stunned form across the room; yet the man proved his duality by proceeding to grab one loose end of his makeshift cape and gently tie it around my unscathed wrist. “No run.”

Surprisingly enough, I hadn’t made it a break for it as soon as I was liberated. Although I sustained minimal injuries, he expressed his remorse and made no moves to consume my flesh, which was another good sign. As more time passed, he was revealing to be more and more of a passionate bunny stuck in a wrestler’s body.

After all, I hadn’t gone through all the trouble of kidnapping him just to sprint at the slightest sign of trouble. I confirmed, “No run.”

Some of his original ardour reappeared at my acknowledgement, along with a faint giggle that evoked a tiny smile on my own face. I figured that with his minimal experience revolving around homemade dishes, simply slapping on some salt and pepper to flavour the meat with a side of boiled vegetables would suffice. Thus, I took the package from my lap and got to work.

Cooking with another, rather useless, individual essentially attached at the hip was difficult, to say the least. In the beginning, the man fired question after question, curious about every ingredient and spice going into the dish, but after realizing that he lacked the correct vocabulary to obtain the information he sought, he became a silent observer.

Basically, he followed me around like a lapdog while munching on another zucchini to occupy his restless hands.

After pulling him around left and right, occasionally giving a soft tug on the blanket when he would unintentionally zone out, I finally threw all the components into a single pan, deciding to serve a simple stir-fry. With only the expanse of the puffy fabric between us, I was constantly elbowing the hybrid while mixing the ingredients together, which I considered a redeeming form of payback for his carelessness with my arm.

While the mouth-watering scent of lunch wafted around, he extended the wrist connected to mine, sidestepping over to the island to fish for a bag of baby carrots before coming to stand next to me by the stove. Spotting my stare, he flashed another blinding grin and I couldn’t help but imagine long, bunny ears extending off the top of his head, his slender tail replaced with a fluffier ball of fur at the back. That seemed to better suit his ardent personality.

The chicken gradually changed colour as the exterior of the vegetables softened, and I brought the meal along with the chair by the fridge over to my tiny two-person table, prompting him to take a seat in front of the steaming plate. I expected him to ravenously dig in and devour every crumb, yet he refused to move a muscle, staring out the glass doors to the backyard and into the forest instead.

“I hurt.” He stumbled over his words, somberly bringing his gaze to my cocked brow. “No mean to hurt.”

Thinking back to the scuffle that seemed eons away at this point, I flashed a reassuring smile his way, explaining, “I get it, you were injured. Um, I was kind of mad at first because you broke my door and everything,” I offhandedly gestured towards the broken contraption, “but I forgive you.”

“No.” He clenched his jaw, analyzing the surface of the table as if the words he was searching for were etched on the surface. “Now. Sorry now, too.” To drive his point home, he delicately grabbed the arm not wrapped in the blanket, streaks of red decorating my wrist like a tight bracelet.

I hummed my understanding. “Ah, I told you it’s fine already,” I reassured, patting his hand.

Content at my acceptance of his makeshift apology, he began to dig into the chicken. His nose twitched at the unfamiliar taste, but he made no complaints. Anything was better than nothing, in the end.

I let him enjoy his food for a bit before asking, “Did you have a name? Something like J3?”

His eyes went back to scanning the outdoors, the sound of his chomping coming to an abrupt halt when he spotted a sad lump on the porch.

“Bud?” he inquired, the light glimmering in his irises.

The nickname stumped me, as I had difficulty imagining Hyunho or Minzy affectionately calling their experiment ‘bud’. “What are you talking about? Is that your name?”

His finger poked out to the cylindrical pile of tuna outside, then back to himself, “Bud.”

Befuddled now more than ever, I tried to laugh it off and nodded my head towards the plate again, silently advising him to continue eating.

Unfortunately, he didn’t seem too keen on evading the topic, whimpering in frustration at either my lack of understanding or his incapability of properly communicating due to the language barrier. His unending appetite was going to be put on hold for this. As he stood up, the chair behind him screeched, and he clutched on to the blanket, pulling me towards the back door.

Refusing to allow history to repeat itself, I rushed ahead to slide the hairband off and pushed the door open, allowing him to slip through. I figured that when the man drifted off to sleep tonight, I could replace the rapidly decaying tuna in hopes that my kitty would visit again.

While I was lost in thought, he undid the knot connecting the two of us and sprinted into the forest.

His back disappeared within the thickets fencing the towering maple trees and I froze in place, my jaw going slack in an ugly mixture of bafflement and betrayal, believing that he had simply taken advantage of my hospitality then ran off. Although, all attempts at making sense of the hybrid’s actions were cut short when familiar noises of horrifying, crackling sounds met my ears, causing the hairs on the back of my neck to stand on end.

When the underbrush twitched, leaves fluttering from the movement of an animal hidden within their cover, a sinking feeling entered my chest. And that was the moment I met the vibrant, emerald eyes that had dug their own space within my heart.

#jungkook fanfic #jungkook scenarios #jungkook imagine #jungkook x reader #jungkook au #jungkook hybrid au #bts fanfic #bts scenarios #bts imagine #this chap gave me an aneurysm and a half

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unsaidholland · 4 years

Text

lonely heart | t. holland

the first installment of my calm series!!! i really hope y’all like it and are excited about this series(?) as i am!!

warnings: really sad.

the first time you saw colour was when tom’s hand had brushed against yours while you both reached for the same bottle of beer. harrison had hosted a party that had gotten out of hand, and because you were a friend of someone who was invited, you ended up at the party. as soon as you felt the light brush of his touch, everything had changed. your nails were painted what you learned was lilac, but only because the name of the polish was ‘luscious lilac.’ you looked down to see the colour of your skin. it was beautiful. the way it looked in the dim lighting of the room, the way it looked contrasted against the black skirt and distressed band-tee, it was truly something you never expected, but something you adored.

then you looked at tom. you noticed how his fluffy curls were what you’d come to learn was a medium brown, similar to the colour of milk chocolate. his slightly tanned white skin seemed to glow with excitement, the excitement of finally seeing what his parents and some of his friends saw. neither of you knew what to expect when you thought about seeing colours for the first time, but somehow it was everything you wanted.

you looked at each other, studying each other’s faces and clothes, studying the colours of everything around you. he grabbed your hands, seeing that your nails were painted. he admired the way it looked against your skin tone, and it was then when tom decided that lilac was his favourite colour.

“it’s lilac,” you said, seeing the confusion on his face as he struggled to figure out what colours he was seeing. “the name on the nail polish bottle was ‘luscious lilac.’ i didn’t know what it meant at the time, but seeing it now changes everything.” he stood there for a moment, looking at your lilac nails. despite how loud the room was, you swore you heard him whisper, ‘lilac,’ under his breath.

“i’m tom,” he said, smiling at you. you smiled back at him. “do you wanna go sit on the roof and get to know each other? i have a feeling it isn’t gonna calm down anytime soon.” you nodded. he took your hand, leading you up the stairs to his room, where he opened a window that the both of you climbed out of to sit on the roof. he brought a blanket out with him, placing it down for the two of you to sit under. you’d come to learn that the blanket was blue, a navy blue on one side, and a baby blue on the other.

the two of you stayed up all night getting to know each other. as the sun rose, the two of you sat together, the blue blanket draped around the both of you, his arm around your waist, and your head resting on his shoulder. you both watched as the colours of the midnight sky became warmer, and soon enough, the sun had risen, ridding the sky of the twilight.

you spent that week together, learning more about each other, and slowly falling in love with each other. you always thought soulmates were stupid, always wondering how two random people were going to fall in love just because the universe told them to, but you had realized how perfect everything felt very quickly. you thanked the universe for pairing you with tom.

•••

it was three weeks after the two of you met when tom said he had to leave for work. he was going on press, meaning he would be gone for a few months, constantly flying from city to city, or from country to country. he wanted to take you, but you told him it would be okay. ‘i’ll survive,’ you said, and he made you promise that you would be okay.

eventually, you and tom got used to his frequent travelling. his work ethic was something you had admired. even though the two of you had only been together for a year and a half, his inconsistent filming schedules had become second nature to you. you always kept the time of the city he was in on your phone so you could call him when he wasn’t filming or busy. he always made sure to say ‘goodnight’ and ‘good morning’ when it applied to you, and you did the same for him. some timezones were easier than others, but it was never easy.

being able to see how hard he was working was always a benefit. that, and being able to say that the mcu spiderman was your soulmate, but nothing would stop you from feeling so lonely. being apart from him for months and months on end while the two of you were living separate lives was hard, both of you were well aware, but the universe paired you together. the universe had destined for you two to be together, and neither of you were planning on going against the universe.

tom was in the us filming for a new movie that he had a lead role in. whether there was a one hour time difference or a twelve hour time difference, nothing could stop him from missing you endlessly. it was as if the colours seemed more vibrant when you were around, and when the two of you were apart, then the world seemed a little more dull to him. he went about his days wondering how you were doing. by the time he was on his lunch break, you were having dinner. by the time he woke up, you had finished lunch. the seven hour time difference would be the thing that broke him, but it wouldn’t break the two of you up.

both of you had gotten used to being alone in bed at nights, waking up alone in the mornings. tom’s side of the bed had always been untouched while he was gone. where you would have been if you were with tom in bed was also untouched. when you would fly out to see him, things would feel right again. maybe that was just what came with being around your soulmate after being away from each other for months, but whatever it was just made you long for your next break from work. tom wanted nothing but for you to just fly out more often. if it was up to him, he’d want you to be with him all the time, but your work schedule was just too busy at times for you to stay with him all the time.

sometimes the both of you wished that you had gotten a soulmate who’s lifestyle aligned with your own. sometimes both of you wanted to defy the universe and find someone else, but you both knew that nothing would be the same. you were destined to be together, how could you go against the universe’s plan?

tom woke up abruptly. it was the middle of the night for him, but he knew you would be awake. he hadn’t slept properly in days. he had been filming for a week straight with very few breaks. from six am to eleven pm, he would be on set. sometimes he wouldn’t be filming, but he would be rehearsing his lines, working out, or what have you. at night he was so exhausted, wanting nothing more than to lay down in his bed and pass out, but he was never fully able to. he missed home, he missed you, he missed his family. harry being there with him always helped, but it never satisfied his need for you.

he knew you were feeling just as lonely as he was. he knew that both your hearts were hurting from the distance. you were more than a thousand miles away, and he had so many commitments, but he was ready to drop everything and hop on a plane just for you.

tom would never be able to find anyone like you, and it wasn’t because he knew he didn’t have two soulmates, but it was as if you were made just for him. knowing that you were his soulmate was an easy explanation, but he’s heard of stories where the two soulmates hated each other and never had a happy ending. he’s heard of stories where only one person was able to see colour while the other one didn’t. he’s heard of stories where they didn’t work out, and that was enough to justify his love for you. ‘that’s what it was,’ he thought as he laid in bed that night, the covers pulled up under his arms, blankets against his bare torso, ‘i’m so in love with y/n.’ it seemed like a stupid realization to him. you two had been together for almost two years, of course he would be in love with you, but he didn’t know he could fall that hard.

•••

you hadn’t gone to work that day. something about the way the seasons changed and the weather got colder made you feel more lonely. you wanted nothing more than to just be with tom, a blanket around the two of you keeping you warm, and some tv show playing on the tv that neither of you were paying attention to. you wanted nothing more than to do nothing with him, than to just physically be with him.

that day was spent mostly in bed. you watched a bunch of youtube videos, but most of them was just to fill the empty sound of the apartment. calling in to work sick was nothing new to you, but calling in to work sick because your heart hurt from being so alone was something relatively new. you were so sad, so alone.

loneliness was nothing new to either of you, but that didn’t mean that it didn’t hurt. there was something about the way he would stay away for so long that made you feel like you were losing whatever kept you alive. you felt as if the longer he was gone, the less energy you had. maybe you just missed him too much, or maybe the universe just wanted the both of you to hurt.

you thought about the day you said goodbye at the airport. it was always him walking away first, but that time, you had left first. you thought about how he watched you leave before he could even go through security. that was two months ago. now the flames seemed to pick up. your relationship was clearly on fire, but you two were soulmates who were madly in love, why would you leave each other?

the longer and harder you thought, you only wished that you could start another life with him. maybe run away from all your responsibilities to a new country under an alias. you’d live the simple life, a house in a small village. maybe you would open a shop with tom, sell food or small knick knacks. your hearts would finally stop feeling lonely, but you knew that he would miss acting.

maybe there was no other reason to stay. maybe you both would always be left with a lonely heart.

anything and everything taglist: @hollanderfangirl @hxrryhxlland @ohmy-moonlightx @musicalkeys @notsosmexy @writertoo18 @icyhollands

tom holland taglist: @hollandsrecs @chris_evanslover

#tom holland #tom holland x reader #tom holland angst #tom holland x you #tom holland x y/n #tom holland x soulmate!reader

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bangtan-dreamland · 5 years

Text

calls made at 4 A.M. (and I miss you so)

Pairing: knj x reader

Word Count: 1572

Warnings: none uwu

Genre: fluff, established relationship!au

─── ･｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

Fingers brush against the rim of a cup, the metal cool against your palm, the milk inside having gone cold in the time you've let it be without finishing the drink. You find you cannot care enough at the moment to do anything about it though, attention scattered and yet at the same time focused.

What is he doing, you wonder? The difference in between the time zones of where you are currently and where he is is not much- only an hour. It is currently 3 A.M., and you know with that logic that Namjoon must be asleep by now, if not busy with practice or creating songs. It isn't exactly the right time to text him, moreso call him. He would be too tired to hold a conversation. But you miss him.

Being an idol means long hours of work, of practicing songs and dances and interviews and shows and being an idol means doing all of that without letting people know how tired you are. Without breaking character, the one that people expect, the one that fans expect from you as you play the person they hold the image of in their head. While you have never experienced that personally, it is easy to imagine. And with the boys currently being on tour, you know that they are currently busy, very busy- perhaps the only time they are even busier than currently is during comeback season.

You really shouldn't be badgering him for attention right now, you rationalize to yourself.

But if you don't, then when will you? The tour does not end until a few months later, and it isn't as if you can just fly to wherever they are, your work not allowing you more than a single day of rest. The amount of time spend on the journey and back seems too big compared to the amount of time you might get with him- which, while at first, may seem inconsequential, becomes a rather glaring fact as the possibility of them being too busy to even spend time with you if you do fly over becomes visible.

You miss him now. You will always miss someone you love, especially being separated from them for so long, you think to yourself.

You take a deep breath, grab your phone and decide to call him.

You push yourself forward, deliberately doing it as fast as you can because if you delay even a little, you know you will second-guess your action, which- really, is the right thing to do. You could be a little more understanding, a little more cooperative with his schedule.

But you miss him.

Your heart beats triple time, the way it always does when Kim Namjoon is involved. The ringing of the phone, ever so loud in the quiet of your house, repeats once, then twice, and you wince- your fingers moving to cancel the call, but then-

"Babe?"

Namjoon's voice murmurs to you,, voice noticeably hoarse even through the phone. You still, surprise and elation flooding your veins at the realization that Namjoon picked up, he's talking to you right now and you've missed him so so much but you'll settle for his voice-

Which sounds as if it'd been put through a grinder. You wince.

Namjoon calls you by your name now, and you bite your lip, unsure what to say, before you take a deep breath- and just go for it.

"Hello, Joonie," you murmur. "Sorry for the sudden call."

Namjoon's resounding chuckle sends warm shivers down your spine, filling you with the utter longing to have him envelop you with his hug. How could you think for a moment that a call would sate your hunger for him? All it seems to have done so far is to fan the flame even further.

"It's alright, I was just trying to finish this track in my room," he replies, before you hear the shuffle of papers and him clearing his throat nervously. "Truthfully though, I was actually just thinking about you."

"Oh," you say, feeling yourself smile. "You were? I guess I just had good timing- I suddenly felt like calling."

"I'm glad you did. I've missed your voice. I missed you." You can't keep the grin off your face at his confession if you tried, so you don't. "That said, you usually don't call at this hour..."

You let out a small laugh. Namjoon is as observant as always.

"I couldn't sleep," you confess, smile turning frustrated. "My thoughts were too loud all evening, so I couldn't sleep when I usually did. I've tried everything- watching tv, exercise, drinking milk... even now, I'm here in the kitchen and just laying on the counter. I try to empty my head but all I can think about is you."

"Is that so, babe?"

"Yep," you tell him, popping the last consonant, a giggle slipping out even in your tired state. "It's a problem, really. I have work tomorrow, but all my heart and mind wants is to listen to you talk."

You can feel the smile in his voice when he replies. "So I'm the cause of your problem, huh?"

"Pretty much," you affirm, tone mock-serious. "Is it my fault someone as amazing as you exist, what more that you're my boyfriend? No one can blame me for craving your attention all the time."

A momentary hush descends over the two of you, sending a jolt of electricity down your spine as you wonder if you've gone over the top.

But when Namjoon speaks again, you stifle back the laughter- at the flustered tone he sports. "Well... you have it now."

"I do, do I?" Halfway through the short sentence, you let out a yawn- tiredness that had seeped into your bones making a reappearance. Still your mind remains alert, focused on the love of your life.

"You should get some sleep," he finally says again, his own exhaustion apparent in his voice.

"I don't want to hang up yet," you mumble, disappointed. In what, you don't know. His schedule, for making him overworked? You, for giving in into temptation and calling despite knowing it's not enough? The timezones, maybe, for keeping you both further away even when you're both already so busy. "I haven't even talked to you for more than a few minutes," you say, aware of how dangerously close to sulking you are. Your body remains slumped against the kitchen counter, marble cool against your skin.

There's a pause, before Namjoon's voice fills the quiet room again. "Then don't," he suggests. "But get yourself ready for bed, alright? I don't want you to wake up tomorrow in the kitchen with a sore back and a stiff neck."

You huff, but do as you're told. Leaving the cup forgotten on the counter, you slowly make your way to the bedroom, Namjoon all the while telling you about the past few days they've spent- the jokes and the funny moments repeated, that although you've already seen them on the internet hits hard again as he retells it personally to you. You smile at the way he speaks, and when you enter your room you internally debate the pros and cons of changing into pajamas before you enter the room and decide- yeah, no. That would take too much energy and you do not feel like using that much just for changing clothes.

You slid into your bed, the soft, thick covers feeling heavenly against your skin- the warmth from your comforter absolutely divine, but even so it cannot bid you asleep, your mind still occupied on your boyfriend.

"I'm in the bed now," you tell him, voice a soft murmur now.

"Still unable to sleep?"

"Yes," you readily admit. For a moment there is silence, and then-

"Do you want me to read you a story?"

You can't help letting out a laugh at that- Namjoon's voice is serious, and perhaps that is what makes the whole thing seem more hilarious in your head. Namjoon calls out your name, and you decide not to comment on how close it is to being whiny.

"It was a valid suggestion."

"I know, I know," you say, feeling yourself smile once more at the pout you can practically hear from his voice. "But, isn't it around two in the morning over there? Don't you have work in a few hours?"

"We won't be doing anything until after lunch today. Besides," Namjoon's reply is quick. "It's okay. I couldn't sleep anyway, and... I don't want to hang up yet as well."

"Okay," you concede. "But a bedtime story though?"

"My mind's too fuzzy to concentrate and recall on anything more than the past few hours," he professed. You chuckle.

"'Mmkay, I'm listening then," you tell him, before adding, "and you better get to bed yourself before starting, alright? I don't want you to fall asleep on your desk as much as-" you yawn, "- as much as you don't want me falling asleep on the counter.

He follows your advice, the rustling of his bedsheets loud in the silence of the room, contrasting against the hum of the air conditioner. That night (or perhaps early morning would be better?) you drift off to sleep to the melody that is Namjoon's voice, warm and low and when you dream, you dream of adventures and a princess with glasses and the biggest library you have ever seen.

#bangtanscenery #kim namjoon x reader #namjoon x reader #bts x reader #mine #my writing

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skyfallensoldier · 4 years

Text

Mobile Navigation || Rules & Mun ↓

DISCLAIMER: I just want to note here at the beginning that while I am considering this RP blog to be historically based, i.e. remaining true to the time period and overall details of John Laurens' biographical information and whatnot, I do not consider myself a historically accurate blog, not entirely. Historical fiction is a well known genre of literature and many, MANY creative liberties are taken within that genre. Think of this blog like you would if you saw an Anastasia Romanov blog. She's dead, we know she didn't survive, and she's been dead a long-ass time; so has Laurens. People still have included her in many works of fiction, even after her body was identified and it was proven she did not survive her family's massacre. I saw a romance book a couple of months ago where she survived that was recently published. Historical fiction, while a controversial thing at times, is a legitimate form of literature.

You don't have to tell me if you think John isn't acting exactly like the real man himself would have, I know that. I'm not going to call John my 'perfect sunshine boy cinnamon roll' or dismiss the privilege he was raised on due to his father, I'm aware he was a real person who had his own personality, virtues and prejudices. I won't deny that while he was certainly a progressive thinking man for the time he grew up in he definitely still had racist thoughts and actions that were indicative of his upbringing. But I'm not on here to debate modern, real life politics, or get into arguments about whether he was a good abolitionist or not. At the end of the day, this is still a hobby for me, and I'm writing for fun.

Basically, don't take it too seriously. I'm a 21st century bisexual woman writing from the POV of an 18th century (likely gay) male soldier, the way I write him is obviously not going to be a perfect representation of who he was. I know he wasn't an amazing, perfect person, but I've still chosen to write a fictionalized version of him for my own entertainment. Please try to respect that; thank you.

Mun Stuff

Name: Luna Gender: Female (She/Her or They/Them) D.o.B: July 23rd, 1996 Age: 24 Nationality: Canadian Sexuality: Bisexual Timezone: Eastern Time (US & Canada) Activity: Daily BIOGRAPHY (SORT OF)

Hello, there! You can call me Luna! I've been interested in writing ever since I first got the internet when I was 14 and discovered FanFiction.Net and now I'm an aspiring author and Roleplay enthusiast. If you include acting/talking out DnD like games with friends then I've been 'roleplaying' since the fifth grade, but I like to think there's always room for improvement. If you ever want to chat I'd love to make a new friend or plot out a roleplay, so don't be afraid to shoot me an ask or send me a private message. Just because my muse can be a jackass doesn't mean I am! I’m a huge advocate for mental health, and if you ever need someone to talk to, please don’t ever hesitate to reach out! Some of my hobbies including literature and writing (of course), digging into mythology from various cultures, practicing solitary eclectic paganism/new age spirituality, drinking tea, and collecting crystals/minerals.

Please note that for the sake of disclosure, I am considered ‘Neurodivergent’, in that I suffer from ADHD, diagnosed at about age six, and have Anxiety and Depression which are directly tied to it. This doesn’t often effect my life on here, but I sometimes have an unpredictable sleep schedule (stay up all night, sleep in late into the morning, etc). I’m usually quick to reply to threads for the most part! I work every Tuesday and Thursday from 5pm to 7pm in addition to odd jobs here and there, during which time I won’t have access to the Internet. The rest of the week I’m on and off all day basically, so you can feel free to contact me any time.

RP Style

⭐️ Please use basic spelling/grammar/punctuation when you RP with me. I'm not a drill sergeant about these kinds of things, I know that typos happen, and if you have a vision problem or such we can absolutely find a way to work around that, I also have no problem roleplaying with people whose first language is not English, so that's totally fine and I’m happy to accomodate in whatever way I can, but it does make it a little difficult to play with you if I don't know what you're trying to say. For this reason I prefer if you not use any text shorthand (lol, idk, brb, jk, etc) unless our muses are messaging each other. Using it in the tags is fine.

⭐️ I roleplay Laurens in a past-tense 3rd Person Point of View (think story-telling format), and generally I don't use icons or text formatting unless I notice my partner does, then I will try to match their style (for example if you use icons and small-text, I will try to do the same, though because formatting isn't possible on mobile, any mobile replies might take longer to be posted than if I were on my laptop). If you have any issues with how I'm writing or need me to adjust my style for any reason don't be afraid to ask.

Contact

⭐️ If you spam me with messages over and over again about something I haven't replied to, chances are I'll drop the thread. I don't mind being reminded because I know Tumblr's notifications are notoriously unreliable sometimes, and humans can forget/lose things, but if you keep poking at me after I've acknowledged you the first and second time, I won't be pleased. Things can get busy on here, or in real life, or sometimes you're just lacking muse for that particular thread, y'know? It doesn't mean I hate you and don't want to RP, I'm almost always up for plotting, but muse tends to fluctuate.

⭐️ My ‘Discord’ is available to mutuals upon request. I don't mind roleplaying on there if Tumblr is being glitchy or you're just not feeling up to formatted/heavily plotted threads, sometimes Discord is fun in that you can do immediate replies without needing the effort of putting icons and formatting into it. I also have a Kik but I never use it. I don't RP in Tumblr's IMs, that's purely for OOC interaction.

⭐️ I also occasionally stream movies/TV shows in group chats or play “in character” Cards Against Humanity game nights, Among Us, etc. If you’re interested, lemme know, I’m always looking for more people to hang out with!

Important

I have no actual triggers that I'm aware of, although snakes do creep me out (mostly shots of them coiled up or images of their pupils), but there are some things I will not roleplay personally for comfort reasons:

⭐️ Cannibalism. You can mention it, for example I won't freak out if someone tells my muse that somebody else ate a person (he might, assuming its not a Supernatural type verse), but I won't RP him engaging in cannibalism, not even in AUs (blood-drinking vampires are fine). I'm just not sure I could stomach writing about eating people. I managed to watch Hannibal, barely, but writing about it? Nah. I can handle lots of horror, gore and disturbing content but not this. Sorry.

⭐ Incest/Pedophilia. I do not SEXUALLY ship with characters under the age of 18. John is not attracted to children, and would never consider sleeping with someone much younger than him.

⭐ I will not write anything sexual with muns who are under 18 years old, even if your muse is an adult. I'll still ROLEPLAY with you if you are under 18 but probably no younger than 16 just because things tend to get explicit on my blogs and I don't want to be accused of corrupting the youth with my foul language and weird opinions, lol. Seriously though, this blog covers a lot of dark subjects and while I’m all for minors exploring that safely through writing rather than in real life, some people aren’t comfortable with interacting with under age people for legal or personal reasons, please respect that.

⭐ Necrophilia. Just... no. Vampire threads don't count, as they're undead and not 'dead dead'.

⭐ Rape. I won't write it with you. I'm okay with mentions of rape, with rape/sexual assault survivor/recovery plots, and even with one character intervening to rescue another from an attempted sexual assault (if an attempted assault does occur, it will be thoroughly tagged and under a cut). I'm fully open to discussing rape recovery/trauma plots as those are things that happen in real life, and it can be interesting to explore how a character reacts to trauma. But anything else is a no-go, sorry!

⭐ Please be aware that I write Laurens as a gay man. However! Because of the time period, violent homophobia and social stigma, he has slept with women before and may be seen flirting with or referencing relationships with women in the past. He is still gay, and still uninterested in being with women long term, he's simply closeted to all but a few individuals. So, unless your muse is Martha Manning (who Laurens DOES love in a manner, and he always will), shipping with female characters on here most likely isn't going to happen unless it's heavily plotted/developed and part of an overall plot, and you understand that it will not be a conventional sexual relationship. I'm sorry if that disappoints you but I've read Laurens as a gay male for so long I have trouble seeing him any other way.

⭐ I will not roleplay slavery plots. This is not up for debate. Roleplaying a highly fictionalized version of a long dead real person who existed during a troubling time is one thing, but I draw the line at that. For this reason, while I'll happily play with non-white muses, muses using non white faceclaims, and crossovers with characters of all sorts, I'll have to decline playing with any muse claiming to actually be writing slavery. There’s a difference between, say, roleplaying a character like Daenerys, a fictional character who was technically a slave-bride sold by her brother, and writing actual slavery from a very real, horrible time period. Slave ownership will of course be mentioned on this blog, that's unavoidable, but just like the mention of rape may happen on this blog from time to time, it will be in reference to a past event or speaking about the subject in general, not roleplaying a scene of it. Please respect this rule, I was hesitant to make this blog at first, because I know it makes some people uncomfortable, but I won't glorify such a horrible real thing that happened to so many people.

Exclusives/Mains

Just a head's up, unless I develop a bunch of chemistry with a particular portrayal of a muse I'm not likely to agree to being exclusives with anyone, unless perhaps it's a very niche or divergent character that has formed a good relationship of some sort with John and I'd have trouble interacting with other versions of that muse. For major characters I just feel it would be unfair to say no to someone who I click with in every other way, solely because I have already befriended someone else writing that character.

I will, however, discuss becoming mains with someone whom I've either developed or plotted out detailed storylines/interactions with regarding our specific portrayals of our characters. This means that I tend to reply to them quickly when I'm online, or may make little gifts (moodboards, aesthetic things, mini ficlets, whatever) for them unprompted, have a verse dedicated just to them, etc. Even if it seems like we haven't done much on Tumblr, there may be a lot of off-site development on Discord or whatnot that led to us plotting out intricate stories for our muses.

Current Mains:

Alexander Hamilton - @quillborn

⭐️ Send private messages.

⭐️ Send my character asks/starters/memes.

⭐️ Tag me in things.

⭐️ Ask to plot or ship.

⭐️ Ask for angst, fluff, etc.

⭐️ Submit things to me & my muse.

⭐️ Do crack and other ridiculous things with me!

⭐️ Like my RP threads.

⭐️ Like my personal posts.

⭐️ Comment on my personal/OOC posts (if you want to).

⭐️ Comment on my crack threads.

⭐️ Instant Message (IM) me if you'd like to talk, whether we're friends already or not!

DON'T

⭐️ Send hateful messages to me about other people and especially my mutuals; doesn't count if it's about the muse and not the person playing them, however. Also, if I’ve got beef with someone for whatever reason, don’t harass them/send hate to them on my behalf, please. I don’t condone anonymous abuse, attacking others, or harassment. I’m a big girl and I can take care of myself, I promise.

⭐️ Introduce yourself with ‘wanna ship?’ For one, I prefer if we’ve at least started a roleplay together, or have spoken OOC. Auto shipping doesn’t always work out and I hate promising people something only to realize there’s zero chemistry, because then I feel like I’m letting them down.

⭐️ Come into my inbox with just ‘wanna rp?’ and that’s it. Please at least have some idea of what you want to roleplay, it’s not very fun when someone approaches you to RP but then doesn’t offer up any suggestions at all. Remember, you are always free to send me memes, whether we’re mutuals or not, and hit me up for whatever plot you think might interest me! I want to hear about it!

⭐️ Spam me with "reminder" messages if I've already acknowledged you the first few times.

⭐️ Reblog my RP threads if you're not a participant in them.

⭐️ Send me anonymous OOC hate. Hate for Laurens is fine, it's just another form of roleplay.

⭐️ Kill off my character or severely injure/maim my character without permission or having plotted something involving that with me first.

⭐️ Follow me if you're a porn blog. I don't mind blogs that post NSFW content, or smut a lot, etc. I mean blogs that aren't for RP and are literally just a normal looking blog until you click on it and the header and first twenty posts are hardcore nudity and porn. I hate those things.

⭐️ Shame my ships.

⭐️ Complain about my tagging. I put my smut under a 'read more' without exception and tag them as "NSFW //" with two dashes. Things that are not necessarily graphic but still have sexual undertones go under "Suggestive //". I use these tags to avoid attracting attention from porn blogs and porn bots that track certain key words, as such I do not tag my content with "Smut" or trigger words such as "dick, oral, anal, nudity, etc", please block my NSFW and Suggestive tags if you're uncomfortable. Triggery subjects (mentions of rape, animal abuse, torture, mental illness) will be tagged under the name of said trigger with a space and two dashes, example: "Self Harm //", “Suicidal Ideation //” or "PTSD //".

⭐️ Godmod my character. If you’re not sure what is/isn’t okay, come talk to me! I don’t bite! If you’re looking for an example of god mod behavior, here: “X lunged at Laurens, taking him by surprise, and hit him square in the nose, causing blood to spurt.” It might not seem like a big deal but it means that you decided how your character’s actions affected my muse, and not only that, didn’t give him a chance to dodge or anything. Not cool.

⭐️ Ship with me without permission (sending in shippy asks is A-Ok if you're interested in exploring a ship between our muses, I'm talking about things like claiming that our muses are in a relationship without discussing it with me, referencing dates or sexual acts that never happened, etc. I ship mainly with chemistry otherwise things get boring fast.

⭐️ Assume/act like our characters know each other/are closely connected (friends/family/lovers) if we've never discussed it unless it is established in canon/history. This especially goes for original characters. I'm open to Laurens forming deep relationships with OCs obviously, but those have to be developed in character, not just assumed from the first interaction.

⭐️ Attempt to roleplay with me if you are not a roleplay blog/or if you're just trying to RP as "yourself." I don't do Character X Reader imagines stuff. I don't RP with 'fan' accounts, only RP blogs. You can still send asks so long as you're not trying to initiate an RP scenario. For example, asking Laurens what his hobbies are, asking for a blessing etc? That's fine. Spamming me with different actions "you" are talking to Laurens is weird. Stop that. I will also not RP with blogs that claim to roleplay as real life people, such as Markiplier, that's super creepy. This does NOT apply to "historical fiction" roleplay (obviously since that's what this blog is), which is considered its own genre of literature. I'm talking about the above where people will 'roleplay' as real life, currently alive people like YouTube celebrities and ship them with their friends, even if they've made it clear that they're uncomfortable with it.

⭐️ Get angry at me for doing something you don't like if you don't even have a rules page for me to go by. It's not fair; you can't expect your partners to just read your mind and magically know how you feel. If something bothers you let me know, I’ll make a note about it so I avoid it during our interactions!

⭐️ Use me as a meme resource blog without ever interacting with me. I don't require "reblog karma" for you to follow me, partners are more than welcome to reblog from me, but if we never interact and I just occasionally see you reblog fifteen posts from my meme tag and then disappear again I'm not gonna be happy. Go to the source or to an archived blog no longer getting notifications, please!

⭐️ Reblog my Meta/Headcanons. If they're from a different blog it's fine but the ones I've personally written are for MY portrayal of Laurens. I work hard on most of my stuff and I'd prefer if you didn't reblog it, not because you aren't allowed to have the same headcanon ideas as me, but because then it ends up getting liked or reblogged by lots of other people, spamming my notifications, etc.

OCs & Multimuses

I love OCs and multi-muse blogs (I have my own multimuse sideblog over at @historyremembers, which has other 18th century characters including the Hamilton children and some OCs), so feel free to interact! That being said, please have an about page of some sort on your blog. I can't follow back blogs that have absolutely no information available regarding their character(s). I don't RP with OC children of Laurens. This is nothing personal, but I'm fairly certain he was gay in real life and prefer to play him that way, and he only had one child - who he never even got to meet - in real life, so it just wouldn't make sense to me for him to have other kids running around unless he'd adopted some. If you're a multimuse, I may not follow you back if I'm only familiar with two of your muses if you have a blog of fifteen characters, simply because I'd prefer to keep my dash clean and only have characters/fandoms I'm familiar with on it. I'll still RP with you if you have a character I'm interested in! I just might not follow back if the majority of your characters I do not know, I apologize for this.

If you’ve made it to the end of this, congrats! I know it couldn’t be easy (my ADHD brain was frustrated trying to just write all this up) but it’s necessary so there’s not misunderstandings on what I am/am not willing to RP. I won’t ask for a password since I trust most people to have the courtesy to at least skim the rules of those they want to RP with.

Have a nice day!

#Everybody Listen Up! {PSA}#Out Of The Field {OOC}#Long Post //

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mutantsrisingrpg · 5 years

Photo

Congratulations ABBY! You’ve been accepted as IAPETUS.

Choosing between two amazing apps is always a hard thing to do. With Jack, it’s very easy to forget that he still has emotion left within him and to see it crack through in your app made me so happy, Abby! “Alma showed him kindness; he’s still trying to understand how to pay it back with interest.” This line, and more specifically the mention of kindness, pulled me into your app and sold me on him right away. That sliver of kindness can either make or break Jack in this world and I can’t wait to find out. We’re so excited to see both you and him back on the dash!

Welcome to Mutants Rising! Please read the checklist and submit your account within 24 hours.

Out of Character Information:

NAME/ALIAS: Abby

PRONOUNS: she/her

AGE: 22

TIMEZONE & ACTIVITY LEVEL: PST, 6-7/10 – I’m a full time grad student with a pretty heavy course and research load, so generally I’m busy during the day but my schedule is kind of flexible? Generally speaking I’ll be online every day but either in the early mornings or evenings.

In Character Information:

DESIRED ROLE: Jack Mizuno / Iapetus

GENDER/PRONOUNS: cis male & he/him

DETAILS & ANALYSIS:

Jack Mizuno does not exist. He is a ghost, a dead end paper trail strung together by fraying ties that knot themselves so easily in circles. Jack Mizuno exists in sharp fragments littered against the pavement, indistinguishable from shattered glass; small, sharp, glittering like teeth. He wasn’t always like this – a dark, brooding thing shaking in his skin with a death-rattle that sounds so close to fingers on keys. He wasn’t ever quite human, but none of them were, fundamental flaws cut and cured in the womb and left to fester thereafter.

He lived in years, once. Whole handfuls of them, one right after another, like a fucking feast you never got full of. And then shit got bad – not just for him, but mostly for him within the confines of his adolescent tunnel vision. Years shrunk and shriveled, and sunk and shriveled some more. Sometimes he gets days, most of the time he lives in hours. If he’s lucky he gets a whole week of feeling like a person and not a tool, something to scratch out the cockroaches with when they get stuck in the cables.

He is empty and full. Stretched thin until he’s cracked and bloated, like a goose waiting to lose its liver for a main course. What did he expect? Jack has secrets, knows secrets, has seen and buried the terrible things mutants will do to and for each other in the name of survival. Most of them don’t belong to him. There has to be somewhere for it all to go.

Before Alma held him up by his hair and gave him a choice that wasn’t a choice at all, Jack had to make his own purpose. That was difficult, mostly because he didn’t feel he had one. He had a mutation that felt less like a mutation and more like a target blinking in binary. He had a computer. It doesn’t take a lot of brain power to piece together the next logical step. Jack never made a charity about what he could do for other mutants. It doesn’t make him a tin man in the corner banging on his keyboard for oil.

People like to call Jack a robot, it’s fine. They can say whatever they want, it has no bearing on whether Jack has a heart. He has quite a lot of it – heart. Even if half the time he’s shaking so violently he can’t feel it beating in his chest. The heart he holds on to so tightly, you see, is a balm on the coals raked over his skin every time he digs into another putrid crevice of the internet. It doesn’t surprise him, anymore, the human capacity for cruelty. Kindness, though, that’s what gets him every time. Alma showed him kindness; he’s still trying to understand how to pay it back with interest.

Self-preservation is paramount. Jack has been a bottom feeder for as long as he can remember – taking the ugly, awful work law enforcement doesn’t care for and private eyes find distasteful. It bred in him a fine-tuned intuition, sharp as a knife’s edge. He knows when to take the money, when to ask no questions, and when to disappear. Disappearing is an art like any other, and Jack is exceptionally good at it. A fool’s errand is inviting Jack into your life and thinking you can keep a secret from him after. He’s not curious, he’s careful. Thorough. He leaves nothing and then less to chance.

The knife’s edge is double sided – Jack has a flighty, nervous nature to him that he stamps down with caffeine and cigarettes. It doesn’t go away, and dampens at the expense of his better judgment, but doing so sweeps down the hair at the back of his neck and stills his fingers when there’s work to be done. Jack is a shark; stop swimming for too long and he’ll sink straight to the ground.

BIO:

Everyone expects it to still be snowing in March. Chicago, they say, with an endeared little smile and the flat ah to tell you without telling you they’re a native, winter from October to April. In 1989, March rained. Buckets of it for more days that most folks bothered counting. March was a gust at the end of winter just warm enough to make it miserable. Jack was born smack in the middle, when the city was drowning.

Jack’s mother was a nervous woman and his father was a ghost. He wondered, later, if that anxious constitution was something inherited from the womb; if his mother’s uneasy heart set in his a parallel double-step from conception. Perhaps it was imparted later, swallowed up by Jack’s open pores exposed early to the lined up bills on the kitchen counter, angry locks that stuck in the cold, and trembling hands over thread-bare collars.

His father was the kind of ghost that lingered heavy, an almost-hand that threatened above his shoulder and the doorway. More than once Jack wondered what he inherited from his father, what strange neuroticisms – or, indeed, mutations – he left in place of a hand print. It’s the only secret Jack has refused to recover.

School passes unremarkably. Jack is neither the bully nor the victim; insignificant enough to slip under the radar and glaze by. Not a top student. Not struggling. Lost in the waves that ebb through the blown-out halls, into the rusted chairs, out onto the buses that only run on hope and cold air. It’s all very – fine. It’s fine. His mother comes home with a hand in his hair and a question about his day she doesn’t wait to hear the answer to. His school work is swept aside to make room on the table to count what they’ve lost and earned for the day. When he’s old enough, Jack will drop his books to do the same.

They don’t quite get that far.

See, Jack doesn’t have a flash-bang mutation. There’s no schoolyard scuffle that goes from rowdy to lethal like the flip of a coin and gets the whole neighborhood straight on the news. His is a slow crescendo, and goes like this: His mother is spending laters nights at work, which means a locked door at home and the silent command to find something to do with his time. He’s about fourteen – not old enough to work somewhere safe but too old to be knocking on neighbors doors alone and hungry.

He settles for the library next to school. It’s warm, well-lit, and they have a computer. Jack only gets to go on those an hour a day at school. He noodles around when he’s bored of his homework, stumbles on things he shouldn’t but doesn’t know any better to avoid – or, rather, doesn’t know aren’t normal. He’s smart and stupid enough to keep this to himself, age up into high school with this secret tucked under his tongue; wait until the conversation has already turned to mutants before he dares to bring it up on his own. He doesn’t tell his mother, just yet, wants to know for sure that what he can do is something he can also control. Jack isn’t afforded that chance, either.

Eviction notices were a big red staple of Jack’s childhood – taped to the door or slipped quietly underneath it. It’s only when he’s fourteen with a head on fire that their landlord finally follows through. Jack comes home to the door wrenched open and their meager belongings scattered or gone. He finds his mother in a house down the street – an aunt’s maybe, or a distant cousin’s – with her face in her hands and shoulders shaking. It goes like that for some time, drifting just the two of them, until Jack comes back to their newest makeshift home and finds her gone.

What comes next is – dark. Jack comes to a week after his twenty-second birthday in an apartment reminiscent of his childhood, wearing clothes he doesn’t really recognize but smell like him. There might be someone in his bed. He might be squatting. He shut off for a while, he isn’t sure. The laptop left open on the floor is definitely his – it has his fingerprints all over it. Digital, mostly, but there’s the odd smudge that gives way to physical ownership. This is what he has now, neck deep in the chasm of loneliness: a keyboard and a client list a mile long.

It goes like this for some while. Jack stays in his probably-not-legally-rented apartment, waiting for the people who know how to find him, well – find him. Most of them pay well. He takes what feels safe and keeps himself warm, but freelancing for strangers with an envelope of cash is a near-vertical learning curve. Jack has an edge, but he’s also stupid in the early days. He still searches for his mother, when he can. He moves apartments twice and nearly gets taken into two more times beyond that.

The years of smooth sailing and steady income that flow in afterwards makes him arrogant, and reckless. It’s something between a favor and a job that gets him caught – a favor, because, damn him, he cares about the client more than he should, but still technically a job when there’s a paycheck at the end of it. Sentiment makes him desperate, experience makes him careless, and the resource he’d heard Blackburn might have had access to was never even there in the first place.

The first time he met Alma, the only thing Jack smelled was blood – his, probably. His mouth certainly felt full of it. He never had much use for religion in his short, cold life, even if his mother was devout for all of hers. Staring at Alma, one hand in his hair and offering him a choice that wasn’t really a choice at all, he might have almost understood. With a strong hand and an outstretched arm, he remembers the verses and psalms, as he stares at her. They might even feel true.

Jack is not a watchdog, but he’s something close, maybe. Alma offered him a purpose he already had in front of him but didn’t know how to take. There is no doubt Jack’s loyalty to the Blackburn Syndicate runs deep and unwavering. He believes in the cause, acts for the cause, maybe even lives for it. But he is still a solitary creature, and the rising tensions pull tight at his skin.

EXPANDED CONNECTIONS: Please expand on at least one of the connections set out in the bio. There can be as little or as much as you want to be written here. We would love to see how you interpreted the connections we set out!

LENOX. Jack has spent time adrift – living through a haze that blurred the lines in his mind. He has no desire to return to that state, ever. He grounds himself in reality, more so than ever. His life depends on truth and the relentless pursuit of it. Lenox is a direct threat to his own stability, and worse, they seem to find pleasure from seeing him squirm under their little games. He hates it, he hates them, and he hates more how he doesn’t really hate it at all. Jack has built his life into a routine, and the illusions annoy him. They set his teeth on edge and give him the shakes for days after, but there’s a reason he hasn’t asked Alma for one of her fists into Lenox’s pretty little face.

ILIE. Jack doesn’t make a habit of sitting on any of his secrets. He tried it, once. He almost bled out on the pavement. The second time he was nearly locked up in a testing facility. So, no, he doesn’t hold on to the transgressions of others any more than he needs to. Chances are there’s some way to spin it in his favor – or, the Syndicate’s, now. It’s – different with Ilie. Jack is meant to be playing nice with the King’s Collective, so says the hand on his leash, but he just can’t help this small amusement. It’s a vice that will get him killed, or worse, he knows. The second he slips Ilie will go running, but it’s so nice to be the one in control for a time. Even if it’s not really enough, only the illusion of it.

RAHIM. Jack isn’t sure quite what to make of Rahim, and that’s a dangerous thing. Jack likes to have the answers – is rather used to it – and doesn’t know what to do with himself when he is left wanting for them. Enter, Rahim. A man Jack is meant to be getting along with, tries to get along with, but can’t quite seem to figure out. They dance around each other, careful, and Jack is unwilling to take the first step forward or back. He’s a watcher, so he watches. He knows it unsettles Rahim, and maybe that makes it all the more worth it. It’s more fun to earn the answers, anyway.

EXTRA:

Headcanons

Jack Mizuno is an alias, easy enough to assume. He told Alma his real name privately after he agreed to his terms, but no one else knows it as far as he’s aware.

He’s left handed; insignificant, but it’s a pet-peeve of his when people point it out like it’s something secret or exciting. There are lots of secret or exciting things about him, this isn’t one of them.

Jack doesn’t define his sexuality in strict terms or labels. He’s more of a convenience person who recognizes he has needs, but doesn’t much care who satisfies them. If he had to choose he might prefer men, but it’s only by a slim margin.

ANYTHING ELSE:

Nope ! ilu

#accepted #accepted: iapetus

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my-keyboard-did-it-not-me · 5 years

Text

The Storm That's Brewing

Summary: morning in Spain, breakfast

Warnings: food/eating

(first, previous and next chapter links at end)

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Chapter 9- A Morning Of Chocolate, Charging And Charming

Waking up was always hell, Virgil thought. Waking up to the smell of burning chocolate, and the sound of faint cussing from another room, though? Virgil wasn't sure how he felt about that.

Of course he was mad about waking up, and if it were up to him he'd nestle back under the covers and sleep for another week, but he was already on his feet before the thought crossed his mind.

Out of habit he checked his phone before anything else: one message from Patton, reading 'Okay! See you tonight!' followed by a heart, cat, and tea emoji. He replied a simple 'ok' emoji and shut off his phone. Then he did what his instincts told him and followed the chocolate.

Stepping out into the hallway, Virgil pondered over why he wasn't completely freaking out right now. For once, he had plenty of reason to: he'd just discovered that his roommate could teleport, meaning that he and Patton weren't the only superpowered ones out there and there could be countless others, that his life was probably going to get a lot more complicated very quickly, and also that he was in Spain. He was sure a breakdown was inevitable. Yet, walking barefoot towards a stranger's kitchen, in a stranger's house, in borrowed clothes, he felt completely fine. Probably because of shock. Or denial. Either way, he preferred it to stressing.

As he neared the kitchen, the cursing stopped, and he noticed quiet music playing from Roman's phone on the table. Behind, Roman stood, frantically jumping between the tasks of mixing bowls, setting the table and presumably not burning the place down.

Roman hadn't noticed Virgil sit down at the table, until he went to place a cup next to him and jumped out of his skin.

"Heckedy heck! Five abs and a peck! Warn a guy before you sneak up on them."

Virgil laughed. He'd never seen Roman so disgruntled before- dressed in sweats and an oversized Disney tee, hair unbrushed and face bare, discounting the line of flour he had across his cheek. Virgil rarely caught Roman in the mornings before either of them left for work, or for social purposes in Roman's case. He liked plain Roman- he seemed less like an annoying preening peacock, and more like an annoying, cute robin. Not like Virgil had any issues with Roman looking dressed up though, both were very pleasant sights.

"Well that's... An image. But yeah, good morning to you too Princey." He said, aiming for sarcastic, but just sounding tired (which he was). He glanced behind Roman, where he could see smoke. "Uh, something's burning."

Roman quickly turned the oven off, scowling into the previously smouldering bowl. He placed it, as well as another onto the table.

Virgil peered into one of the bowls and saw a mass of clumpy, charred chocolate. He bit his lip. "This looks... Good?"

Roman sighed and flopped into the seat opposite Virgil. "I know, I know. It's burnt. It's inedible. It's unsalvageable." He draped an arm across his head. "You've found my weakness- it's chocolate."

Virgil laughed under his breath. "What were you even trying to do? Burn the house down?"

Roman titled the other bowl for Virgil to see; inside were a load of piped, yellow-y shapes.

"Churros?"

Roman nodded solemnly.

"Why is this one shaped like a deformed dinosaur?"

"I was trying to make some Mickey mouse shaped."

Virgil tried to hide his smile. Of course he was. "Alright well the chocolate is salvagable. Did you make the sugar dip thingy?"

Roman perked up. "I was just about to but..." He poked the chocolate lump with a spoon. "Really?"

Virgil stood, "Is there a kettle?"

"Why, of course!"

Roman outstretched his hand and, with a slight pop, a kettle appeared.

"Dude. How do you do that?"

"I don't know, I just-" He looked suspiciously up at Virgil, "I usually can't do it with people watching."

Virgil raised an eyebrow.

"Here." Roman handed Virgil the kettle.

Virgil placed it underneath the tap and filled it. A silence fell over the cabin. Virgil realised that he and Roman hadn't actually ever spent that much time together since their first day in the apartment. He reckoned, now that some new secrets had come to light, that was going to change. Was that a bad thing?

Once the kettle was almost boiling on the stove, and Roman had (manually) found a spare bowl and several types of sugars, Roman tried to initiate a conversation. Unfortunately, it wasn't one that Virgil wanted to have so early in the- morning? Afternoon? What timezone should he even go by?

"So uh... Do you just do lightning or are you like Storm?" Roman tried.

Virgil glared at him.

Roman summoned a white flag into his hand. "Alright, alright, Lightning McQueer, we'll talk about it later."

Virgil narrowed his eyes. Did he hear Roman correctly? He huffed out a small laugh despite his best efforts not to.

Roman beamed. "Virgil smiling within an hour of waking up? What magic is this? "It's straight out of a fairytale."

Virgil shook his head. "Yeah right, as who, the villain? The evil witch?"

Roman gasped. "Of course not! You are clearly the princess. The damsel in distress." He lifted Virgil's hand and tried to spin him.

"I have a kettle full of boiling water in my hand, you dolt!"

Virgil gently pushed Roman away, careful not to

Roman chuckled. "You certainly have the distressed part of damsel in distress going on."

"Dream on Princey." Virgil poured some water into the closest mug. He looked around for a second, then at Roman, "Spoon?"

"Me?"

"Do you have a tea spoon?" Virgil asked impatiently.

Roman smirked and handed Virgil a spoon he'd gotten from seamingly nowhere. Was he creating them or bringing it from another place? If so, where? Virgil would've asked if he hadn't already waved away Roman's question about his lighting/Storm powers.

Virgil muttered a "thank you" and poured a spoonful of boiling water in the charred chocolate and began mixing.

Roman quietly mixed some sugar and then began to reheat whatever oil he'd been using to cook the churros.

It didn't take too long for Virgil to revive the chocolate.

"How did you save it?" Roman asked incredulously. He placed a plate of freshly cooked churros, and a bowl of mixed sugars, in the centre of the table. He tried to pick up one of the churros but dropped it, blowing one his fingers to try cool them down.

Virgil grabbed Roman's dropped churro. He dipped it in the sugar and stirred it idly in the chocolate.

"If you somehow hadn't noticed, Patton likes to bake cookies, like, all the time."

"Uh-huh."

"Well he doesn't like to read recipes and we both get distracted pretty easily- plus, neither of us have any sense of time- so we've burnt a lot of chocolate. And we did this one time at the apartment and Logan came out of his room for once and got all Lecture Mode and told us that when you burn it you basically remove loads of moisture or whatever so you just re-moisturize it." Virgil took a bit of the churro then reconsidered his words. "That sounds weird. But... Yeah."

"I guess the know-it-all does know some useful facts after all. Let the record show, I always had full faith in him."

"You just called him a know-it-all."

"Unimportant." Roman said, dismissing the statement with a wave of his hand. He reached for a churro but they were still steaming hot. It was possible he'd overheated the oil a bit.

To Roman's surprise, Virgil grabbed and ate another churro without issue.

"How are you not burning yourself? These churros are hotter than Hades' hair."

"They're not that hot." Virgil shrugged.

"Virgil, they're steaming hot." He poked one. "Like me but in a less fun way."

Virgil suppressed a laugh. "Drama queen."

"Emo nightmare." Roman retorted.

Virgil began to think of a witty reply but found that 'emo nightmare' was really more of a compliment. He instead replied, "Thank you."

Roman summoned a fork and stabbed a churro. He did his best to fully cover it in sugar and chocolate without dropping it and, somehow, did so successfully. It was a truly heathenly way to eat a churro, he knew, but he was hungry.

After several churros (which never seemed to cool down, by the way), Virgil finally worked up the courage to ask, "So... When are we going back to America?"

Roman wiped some chocolate off of his chin. "What's the rush? Do you have work? A date? Some emo band concert tickets?"

"Ha-ha." Virgil deadpanned. "But no. No plans. Just... You know... America?" Smooth.

"Alright, My-Chemically-Imbalanced-Romance, as you wish. How about I escort you home after we both get ready?"

"Both get ready? God, we're never leaving." Virgil sniped.

"Ha-ha. I don't take that long to get ready-"

"You're the reason Logan made morning bathroom schedules."

"-But I have no plans today so I have no need for makeup. Just a quick shower. I'll use the en suite in the main bedroom if you want to use the main; I know you prefer to shower at night but since you were a little busy last night..."

'A little busy' was an understatement, Virgil thought, but he agreed.

Despite Roman's promise to be quick, Virgil was ready a whole half an hour before Roman, who sauntered in at 5:30pm (Spanish time, which Virgil didn't know how to convert to his normal time), a whole hour after breakfast.

"Dude."

"Alright, it took a smidge longer than I'd previously anticipated- outfits and all- but I'm here now. You ready to go?"

Virgil ended his conversation with Patton, who'd been texting him from work, and slipped his phone is his hoodie pocket. He stood up. Roman walked over and took him by his hands. "What are you doing?"

"We need to be touching, apparently."

Virgil recoiled. "Apparently?"

Roman laughed nervously. "I've never teleported with someone else with me."

Virgil sighed and offered Roman his hands, "Great."

Roman accepted. He held Virgil's hands tightly, which sent sparks up and down his spine (possibly literally, it was hard to tellwith him) and closed his eyes for a second, then let go. He proposed, "Why don't we for a walk first? There truly are some splendid views around here."

"Roman."

"It must be almost sunset, very picturesque-"

"Roman."

Roman collapsed onto the couch. "It didn't work."

"What do you mean 'It didn't work'?"

"I tried to take us back to the apartment, back to my room, your room, behind the apartment, backstage at the Mind Palace... Nada."

"Why?"

"I can't do it when people are watching," Virgil raised his eyebrows. "Or cameras. I guess somebody's home."

"You don't say."

"No need to fret, though, we can try again a bit later. Somewhere's got to be empty eventually."

Virgil flopped down onto the couch next to him.

"Actually," Roman turned to Virgil, "I have another solution. May take a while though. Need to send a few texts. Want to go for a walk?"

Virgil bit his lip. He hated having no control. "Okay."

"Curses, my phone's dead. Please spare me a second."

"Give it here." Virgil said, already regretting it.

Roman handed over his phone with very little hesitation. Virgil's phone was his lifeline; he doubted he could hand it over as easily as Roman had.

Virgil placed the phone between both of his palms, like a sandwich. He glanced towards Roman then back at the phone. Energy coursed through his hands, like constant static shock, although a lot less painful. He watched as the minute switched over to 17:29, and as the battery percentage steadily increased. He stopped at 20%, which took a minute, as it was 17:30 when he was done, although Virgil hadn't noticed the time passing, too focused on his task.

He could've charges the phone up fully, or a little faster but if he'd learnt anything from the seven phone batteries he'd killed within a week, it was best to take it slowly. The last thing he wanted was to ruin Roman's nice phone.

"There." Virgil handed the phone back to Roman.

Roman desperately wanted to pepper Virgil with questions about his (awesome) powers, but he'd been raised a polite gentleman and opted to only thank Virgil, no questions asked. He knew both of them were equally curious of the other's abilities, but perhaps it wasn't the right time. He'd let Virgil ask the first question.

Roman sent a series of texts and received a response almost instantly. It was technically part of her job.

Plans were made- which Virgil knew not of, for no reason other than that he didn't ask, and this wasn't something Roman paticularly wanted to be known- for an hour's time. That left plenty of time for a nice walk, and hopefully an enlightening chat, Roman thought.

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Taglist: *insert audio of the zoe 101 oOh*

Chapter 1:

Chapter 8:

Chapter 10: in progress

#the Storm That's Brewing #tstb #tstb chapter 9 #i finished it like 10 mins ago so i cant spam your dadhboard for a while dw #virgil sanders #roman sanders #sanders sides

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alley-cat-sunflower · 5 years

Text

Status update!

Hello! Alley here, finally!

You may have noticed I’ve vanished from the face of the earth lately. In case my terse and sporadic update posts aren’t enough to tell you why I’ve been so inaccessible, I think it’s about time I give you something to explain what I’ve been doing, and maybe even a promise to come back online sooner rather than later. (But it’s gonna get a little long, so I’m throwing this under a cut. I apologize to those of you who can’t see it.)

As most of you know, I’m in my last semester of college. More importantly, I’m so far along in said last semester that I literally just have to take one final a week from today—the day before graduation, actually—and then I’m home fucking free after five years of torment!!!

Anyway, the whole semester has been super busy, what with holding down an internship and three classes all required for graduation (and that pressure has been real). One of those classes was “Math and the Human Imagination”, which unsurprisingly involved analyzing imaginary numbers. I’m ashamed to admit that despite my favorite professor’s best efforts, the course did absolutely nothing to help my understanding of mathematics. Another of those classes was “Bollywood and Globalization”, which is the one in which I still have a final. I have hopes that I’ll do well, if only because I’ve enjoyed the course enough to pay attention.

The last class was my “Senior Synthesis”, which purports itself the crowning experience of a Liberal Studies major, in which you can basically do whatever the fuck you want as long as you can present it to the class in the form of a speech/slideshow, a poster, and an essay. Because there are roughly three things I care about, I chose one of them and had an unironically marvelous time drawing a bazillion connections between BTS’s Bangtan Universe and Hermann Hesse’s Demian. I was scheduled to present in the first possible week, in mid-April, and spent 24 total hours out of the weekend before pulling together my presentation (because I’m broken and think that’s fun—I’d have spent just as much time on it even if I hadn’t had to for the project). As part of it, I made a six-minute video you can watch here if you like, which showcases some of the specific connections I examined.

Speaking of BTS in conjunction with April, though, that brings me to their new album. And can I just say, holy shit. I still wasn’t over “Intro: Persona” by the time the whole thing dropped, so every time I listen to the album, I’m shook all over again to this day. Thanks to timezone shenanigans, my mother the ARMY had me wake her at 1:45am on April 12 so we could be awake for the festivities. We saw the “Boy with Luv” MV the moment it came out… and then proceeded to watch it with and without subs about five times. While that was going on, I bought Map of the Soul: Persona on iTunes the second it was available and burned a CD. After that, my mom suggested going out to a deserted parking lot and blasting it in the car so we could enjoy it at a decent volume, since we didn’t want to wake the neighbors. So we did, and let me tell you, hearing “Dionysus” for the first time at full volume in the dead of night can’t be beat. That whole adventure is a memory I’ll cherish forever.

There have been a lot of those lately, especially in conjunction with BTS, and this brings me to how absolutely insane this past week has been. I’d like to lead into last weekend by stating in no uncertain terms that I owe @lightningswrath my very life for managing to land us tickets to not one, but both BTS concerts at the Rose Bowl this past weekend. They were both indescribably beautiful, though the second one in particular was perfect—not least because I actually remembered to eat that day, so I was no longer trying to process overwhelming emotions on an empty stomach. However, the experience wasn’t as surreal as I expected; I did feel elevated, but also oddly grounded. Despite their awe-inspiring stage presence and sense of showmanship, the members are also so genuine as people that I couldn’t help but accept their presence in front of me.

(Incidentally, if you’re an ARMY and haven’t looked up Namjoon’s speech on 190505, please do; the man is a true sage and I feel incredibly honored to have heard such profound words in person. The only reason I didn’t record it myself was because I was so absorbed in the moment.)

Alas, every silver lining has its cloud. This past weekend has given me an unforgettable set of experiences in the best way, but I am most definitely suffering the consequences of not being able to do any schoolwork. We couldn’t leave until after my class a week ago, and we had to come back early enough on Monday that I could make it to my last math class and explain two chapters of a book I didn’t understand. On Tuesday, I had to attend the last day of my internship and then design and construct a poster, which I finished on Wednesday morning before completing a three-page evaluation of my math class—which was supposed to have been due on Monday, but I completely spaced it out—and then presenting my poster.

But That’s Not All. Yesterday, I wrote and turned in another three-page evaluation, this time of my internship, before immediately heading home to work on my synthesis essay, which was supposed to be 15 pages. Thankfully, I actually enjoy writing about all the crazy-detailed connections between BTS and Demian, but I still only finished it in the nick of time today (at a whopping 24 pages, not counting the works cited, because I can’t be brief when I’m busy being passionate) before heading to class. I had just gotten home from that when I started writing this post, and I’ll have to leave in another couple hours to go out dancing with some friends. After that, as mentioned, I only have one final left, and then I’ll have a degree in Liberal Studies with an English minor.

Which begs the question several people have already asked me: what next?

Thankfully, my internship has provided me with a ready answer, because they decided to ask me to come in as a paid part-timer over the summer! So I can at least tell people I’m going to be continuing my foray into the field of editing and publishing. But aside from career-related stuff, I also have a lot of things I’d like to do now that I won’t have academia weighing me down anymore. Enough that I can honestly make an entire list of… uh, goals? wishes? for the rest of the year:

Finish some of my ongoing fanfiction

Work on some of my original fiction

Find more time to write and post in general

Dance more often (and learn some BTS choreography)

Get into more K-pop (VAV, Monsta X, SHInee, etc.)

Help my mother sell stuff on eBay and pay back the $500 I owe her

Buy more BTS albums/merch and FFXV’s Episode Ardyn

Play and/or replay more video games, esp. otome

Plan my move up north with @chibitorra

Move all my stuff out of my dad’s house

Sort through everything I own and get rid of half of it

Pick up my Japanese studies again

Maybe start learning Korean???

Watch more Bollywood films