#let’s think about this but in a very abstract way

[ak319]

Yan G!P athlete x fem!reader

── Reece Milford

Headcanon/Intro

AN: She's here finally-ヽ（≧□≦）ノfor those of you who don't know her, she's a side character from this series.

Warnings/MDNI: none, not much in this one tho, little age gap, (reader is 20 and OC is 23-24), suggestive themes.

Where do I even begin? Reece Milford, daughter of Edward Milford, a respected real estate mogul, and Catherine Milford, a poised philanthropist who runs a foundation supporting arts and culture. Then there’s Oliver, her older brother, a sharp and ambitious lawyer. Reece is the middle child, flanked by Lily, her sweet and free-spirited younger sister. The Milford family is as sophisticated as they come each member’s life is meticulously curated, their names whispered in the circles that matter.

But Reece? She’s different. Her story doesn’t follow the same predictable trajectory. It’s on the cricket field where she truly stands out. What started at high school with local matches soon spiraled into her securing a spot on the country’s national team. The media adores her, sophisticated, charming, a heartthrob on the pitch.

In high school, it was no secret that Reece had girls vying for her attention left and right. She didn’t even have to try, her height, athletic build, and effortless charm made her magnetic. But to Reece, they were just passing faces. Sure, she’d engage in lighthearted flirting now and then, but that was the extent of it. She wasn’t interested in dating, and playing around simply wasn’t her thing. Not like... a certain someone in her circle, but that was a story for another time (lmao- we all know who that is-)

Reece had always been the type to joke a little about girls, her teasing never crossing the line of respect. But if locker room talk ever got out of hand? That’s when her temper flared. She had no patience for that kind of nonsense, and more than a few people learned the hard way not to push their luck. She wasn’t just protecting some abstract principle, either, it hit close to home. With a little sister of her own, she refused to let anyone think it was okay to disrespect women.

Despite her grounded nature, rumors swirled around her. Whispers of Reece being a "playgirl" spread through jealous lips or from the sting of rejected love letters. None of it was true, of course, but she never wasted time defending herself. She knew who she was, and that was enough. Let people believe what they wanted, she had more important things to focus on.

But....despite this Reece held very specific views about women and love, and any notions of "dating" seemed trivial in the face of her goals.

As for family life, Reece barely spent quality time with her parents, especially her mother. While her dad was often caught up in his business dealings, her mom, Catherine, had thrown herself into her foundation. Prior to that, Catherine had been a full-time housewife, focused on raising the children. Reece had often been the one to suffer from the absence, not having the constant presence of her mother like Oliver did, and now, Lily didn’t have to face the same issues either. With her mom now running a larger foundation and becoming more involved with social media and community work, Catherine had less on her plate. She got to spend more time with Lily. But Reece, as the middle child, felt somewhat forgotten as she didn't experience that with Catherine as a kid and now was often at odds with her parents, especially her mother.

As time went on, Reece's views began to shift. She became firm in her belief that women should focus on the home, that their place was to care for children, nurture the family, and run the household. To her, the idea of being a "housewife" wasn’t a limitation, it was a duty, a role that held strength in its own right. Reece swore to herself that no matter what, she would never allow her wife to treat their children the way she had felt, neglected, forgotten, caught in the emotional distance of a career-driven mother.

Though the trio never discussed this but it was clear that her brother Oliver didn’t share her views, nor did her father, but that only made her resolve harder. She knew what she believed, and she was determined to make it a reality.

But the question lingers: what’s happening off the field? What happens behind the polished exterior of this icon of strength and good sportswomanship.

The truth? It’s you. Yes, you entered the picture.

Who are you, exactly?

You were just a mutual friend of Lily’s. Yes, when you and Lily grew close, you often found yourself invited to sleepovers at the Milford estate, something Lily loved, especially since their mansion was so vast, offering plenty of room for laughter and whispered secrets. It wasn’t uncommon for you to join, and given how the family was a bit overprotective of Lily, she rarely stayed at anyone else’s house.

She couldn’t explain why, but when she caught that brief glimpse of you, how shy and nervous you seemed in her presence, it made her chuckle, and something fluttered in her chest.

When you and her first saw each other in the hallway for the first time, you had just started college. Reece was 23, still grinding away in small leagues, always pushing herself, always working tirelessly with the hope of making it onto the national team. She had no interest in distractions, not in the form of dates or anything else. Her focus was singular, her ambitions far too important.

After that, she almost forgot about you. But then one night, when Lily thought everyone was settled in their rooms, preparing for bed, she saw the perfect opportunity to sneak out at 10 p.m. She assumed Reece was out with her friends, leaving the coast clear. But imagine her shock when, as you were backing your car out of the driveway, Reece suddenly pulled up and spotted Lily sitting in the passenger seat.

“What the hell is wrong with you?!” Reece snapped, her voice cutting through the night air. “Why were you sneaking out, huh?”

"J-just to grab a bite, Reece. Nothing else-" Lily stammered, her voice trembling under the intensity of Reece’s gaze.

Reece’s eyes flickered to you, and her expression hardened. She stepped closer, her tone sharp and commanding. “And you!” she barked, making your body flinch involuntarily. “What example are you setting here? She has a curfew for a reason.”

“But we’re 20, not 15,” You spoke up and she was almost shocked at your unexpected retort but her anger overpowered her.

Reece’s gaze didn’t waver. “Listen to me here,” she said, her voice low but laced with authority. She took a few steps closer, towering over both of you, her eyes never leaving yours. “First of all, this is our family, and you have no say in what we do. It’s never safe out there, and considering your background, it’s clear your parents never bothered to teach you even the basics-”

“How dare you!” You snapped, a surge of anger flooding your chest. “God! Lily, you never told me your sister was such a jerk!” Her words really stung, aimed directly at your middle-class background.

“Well, now you know.” You could feel the hurt rising in your chest, but you didn’t fight it. Instead, you turned on your heel and walked back to the car, your emotions bubbling over.

"Wait no! (Y/N)! I AM SORRY- REECE WHAT THE FUCK?!-" Lily's protests and apologies were blocked as you slammed your door and sped off.

It was a mistake. A mistake to be friends with someone like Lily, someone from a world so different from yours. Your heart ached as you drove, the weight of the words hanging heavily in the air. You cried all the way home, the tears blurring your vision, but deep down, you knew it wasn’t Lily’s fault. She had always been kind, humble, everything you admired. But Reece? She was a jackass.

Lily’s calls and messages flooded your phone, but you couldn’t bring yourself to answer. The hurt was too fresh, too raw.

Back at the Milford house, things weren’t any better. Lily, devastated by your silence, found herself hating her sister even more.

“You ruined our fucking friendship!” Lily shouted, her voice thick with frustration and hurt.

“I ruined it?!” Reece shot back, incredulous. Her voice grew louder, her anger flaring. “You’re blaming me for this?”

"You shouldn’t have been so rude to her!” Lily’s words hit hard, her emotions raw and unfiltered.

"Yeah , Reece, you shouldn't have said that to her."

"Dad, please- don't side with Lily on this one. I was just pissed and I said it! And next time she will think twice before-"

"You don’t get to dictate everything, including who I’m friends with! You can’t just go around hurting people like this!"

Before Reece could respond, Lily threw her hands up in exasperation. “I never asked for this! I never wanted you to act like this!”

With a sharp exhale, Lily stormed past her sister, her anger making the house feel smaller. She marched down the hallway, her footsteps heavy as she slammed the door to her room behind her.

Reece stood there, stunned, a mixture of regret and disbelief flickering across her face. But Lily didn’t give her the chance to apologize, she was already alone in her room, seething.

“You need to apologize to your sister, Reece. We didn’t raise you to be rude, especially to a girl. You need to apologize to both of them.” Her mother’s voice rang out, sharp and disapproving.

Yeah, right, Mom. 'Raise,' my ass.

With a bitter scoff, Reece stormed off, slamming her bedroom door behind her. She flopped onto her bed, pulling a ball from the corner of the room. Without a second thought, she tossed it up and down, her eyes unfocused, lost in thought. It was a habit she had whenever she was deep in contemplation or feeling the weight of stress, letting the ball float in the air, caught only by her tired hands.

Her mind shifted from wondering how to apologize to her little sister, to a sudden, unexpected realization, how the hell was she supposed to apologize to you?

What the fuck?

She had never apologized to anyone, ever. And you...

A part of her knew that she wasn’t just pissed at you for sneaking out with Lily, but because you had no regard for your own safety either. That’s what really made her angry. You were driving here alone, just... She took it the worst way. She focused her frustration on you.

And yet, there was something else, something that amused her. How you’d gone from the shy, skittish girl, who ran off to hide in Lily’s room the moment she saw her in the hallway, to this... straight-talking, confident version of yourself.

Cute...

"You think a takeout is gonna make things right?" Lily said, scrolling through reels on her phone.

"I’ve ordered gifts for you too."

"Don’t need ‘em."

Reece set the food down on the bedside table and sat on her bed, a hint of determination settling in.

"Give me her number."

"What?"

"I need to apologize to her. (Y/N). Give me her number. Now."

Lily hesitated, sensing the mix of gentleness and firmness in Reece’s tone. With a sigh, she sent the number to Reece’s phone.

"But... I don’t think she’ll forgive that easily. And for fuck’s sake, don’t say anything stupid. She finally went normal with me, and I don’t want you messing that up again-"

"I won’t, jeez. Eat up now."

With that, Reece walked out, unable to hide the smirk that tugged at her lips as she saved your number.

────

You were, as usual, putting the clothes in their proper places, mentally planning to get started on your assignment as soon as you got to your apartment after your shift at the boutique. Okay, next, check the bags...

"Hey."

You flinched and turned around to see Reece. You didn’t say anything, just stared at her.

"Um... I wanted to sincerely apologize... for, well, since you didn’t respond to my message-"

"So you came to my workplace?"

"I had to, okay? I just didn’t want to be the reason you have any sour feelings toward my family... or even Lily."

"I don’t," you replied, trying to sound neutral, but your heart was still racing. "I mean, they’re all very nice."

They.....Not me, huh? Don't you have a way with words...

She chuckled, clicking her tongue as she restrained herself from checking you out. Fuck, get a hold of yourself.

"I understand. I’m a jackass, a jerk, a douche. Valid. I deserve that. But please, don’t make your pretty face devoid of that smile because of me."

Okay, that took you off guard.

"Um-"

"I'll be right back, okay?" With that, she stalked off somewhere in the shop. You rolled your eyes, already knowing exactly what type of person she was: rich family, big ego--oh a customer!

Minutes later, while you were helping a woman, she popped back in, several bags in her hands, bags from not only the brand you worked for, but others around the street as well.

"Here. For you."

"What?! I’m not taking this-"

"Yes, you are. You definitely are. A token of my apology."

Every item cost more than your monthly rent. Though you were kind of touched, you reminded yourself that, at the end of the day, she had once again proved, even in her apology, that she was better than you. Yes, that’s what you felt. If she had just walked away after apologizing, that would have been enough.

"No, I am definitely not."

That took her off guard. Didn’t girls love expensive stuff?

"The apology was enough, alright? I get it, you’re rich and stuff. But you don’t need to prove your sincerity. I get it. You’re protective of Lily; she’s told me that. No need for these. Please."

Hm...

"I-I get it." Did you just fucking stutter in front of a girl, Reece? You loser.

"Um, thank you for accepting it." Her voice softened, but inside, a new thought took root.

Fuck these gifts anyway. You’re going to get that fucking ring on your damn finger, no matter what. She’ll make that happen. No way you're going to reject that.

That night her eyes had lit up when she saw that you had seen her message at least.

────

What you didn't expect was a notification pinging on your phone the next day.

"Hey, wanted to ask, can I at least take you out? A little compensation for that late grab bite you missed with Lily."

You raised an eyebrow at the text. The pickup line was casual, playful even, but something in it made your stomach twist. Was she trying to make this seem like no big deal? You sighed, knowing there was a lot more to it.

Should you ask Lily about this? She might know what was really going on....

You quickly typed a response, trying to play it off lightly.

"Hi, thanks, but it’s fine really. I’m good."

You sent it before you could second-guess yourself. But as soon as you hit send, a sense of dread crept in. Was that too dismissive? Was it rude? You didn’t want to come off that way, but this whole situation felt... off.

Reece, however, wasn’t the type to take “no” for an answer. She knew that Lily was a factor in all of this. But Reece wasn't the kind of person who let things like that stop her. No, she was determined to make sure you knew how serious she was.

"Reece, c'mon. (Y/N) just told me that-"

"Yeah, so?" Reece cut her off, a sharp edge to her voice. "Can't see your sister settling down, huh?"

The insult was quick and biting, catching Lily off guard. She flinched, a mix of confusion and anger flashing across her face.

"Settling down-?! And you? Look as much as I want to believe you saying that you don't engage in casual flings, I still find it unbelievable." Lily sputtered, eyes wide in disbelief.

Reece’s eyes darkened. "Listen here, I really, really like her, Lily. Not that you’d understand what that feels like. And don't tell me you believe everything they spewed about me. I thought you knew it."

Lily's face flushed, hands balling into fists. "No you don’t! You don’t even know what love is, it’s probably just lust, the same way you feel for every other girl-"

"Lily!" Edward spoke up, his voice firm but patient. "Can you relax? There's nothing wrong with going on a date. You should be a tad bit supportive, love. And stop doubting Reece's intentions."

"But Dad!" Lily's voice cracked with frustration. "What if she hurts (Y/N)? Didn't she had a problem with her background in the first place?"

"Enough!. I will go on a date and you can't stop me!"

Neither can you.

Oliver sighed sharing a look with his mother, leaning back in his chair, his fingers rubbing his temples. "Weekend with family always has some drama going on," he muttered, half-amused, half-exasperated.

Lily felt bad...she did. Guilty for being dubious about Reece's intentions straight from the start. You are a good, kind and fun person, not to mention her very close friend. And so she decided to make things right...by texting you.

"Reece really really likes you, and trust me, she's serious about this. I've never seen or heard bout her being this interested in someone, LIKE EVER. It's always the opposite. So do give her a chance. If you want to of course . Tbh shippin' u both already. 😛

That very Sunday's quiet evening, a knock on your apartment door caught you off guard. You weren’t expecting anyone, especially not Reece. You opened the door cautiously, your heart sinking at the sight of her standing there, casual yet somehow imposing.

"Hey," she greeted with that trademark confidence that made your chest tighten, her smile a little too knowing. "Lily told me your address."

You froze for a second, trying to process the words, before realizing the implications. "Lily... told you?" you asked, though it came out more as a question to herself than to Reece. Of course, Lily had probably shared everything already.

"Yeah," Reece said, unbothered, her gaze steady. "I thought we could grab something light and simple. Just...it won't be long."

You stood there, conflicted. She had this way of making you feel as if saying no would be an impossibility. "Reece, I..." you started, but her eyes softened, and she took a small step forward, clearly unphased by your hesitation.

"Come on, just a little something. I won’t make it weird," she added, the final words almost playful, though there was something in the way she said it that made you question if you’d be able to say no.

You bit your lip, glancing back into your apartment. But what choice did you have? Saying no felt like inviting a new round of awkwardness, and she seemed determined. Besides, there was a part of you, no matter how much you tried to ignore it, that was curious about why Reece kept pushing. Also the fact you didn't have any experience dating. And then...Lily's message made your heart flutter too.

"Okay," you finally relented, your voice a little quieter than you intended. "But just a quick bite. That’s it."

A victorious smile spread across her face, her posture shifting from relaxed to almost predatory, but in a playful way. "Great," she said, turning on her heel. "Let’s go."

And that's how it began. You, dating Reece Milford.

────

Dating her was nothing short of a dream, really. She was caring, understanding, and, if you were honest, a total golden retriever in human form. Watching matches together, her dragging you to her practices while making you wear her shirts with her name.

She was protective, sometimes to the point of being a bit too much, but you didn’t mind. In fact, it was endearing in its own way. And if someone from high school or an old fling tried their luck again with a call or a text? Oh, they didn’t stand a chance. Without hesitation, she’d block them or, better yet, hand you her phone and insist you respond or answer the call with a simple, "She’s taken."

She recorded one of those moments once, and to this day, it’s still her favorite video. Even when you’re a bit shy and clearly embarrassed in it, she treasures it like gold, replaying it whenever she needs a smile.

She knows her family name intimidates you and she’s painfully aware that her own words might’ve made you feel insecure at times. That’s why now, every moment she spends with you is dedicated to ensuring you understand that her last name means absolutely nothing when it comes to you.

She goes out of her way to make it clear that her family adores you, too. In fact, she’s quick to remind you of how her mom can’t stop asking about your hobbies or how her dad brings up your name during family dinners like you’re already one of them.

And then there’s your own parents. Your dad, especially, was practically beaming when he found out you were dating a daughter of such a prestigious family in the city. She teases you about it sometimes, calling you her “mom's favorite,” but deep down, she loves how everyone can see what she already knew: you’re perfect for her, and no family name, no status, could ever change that.

You glance at your reflection in the car window for what feels like the hundredth time. The dress you’re wearing, a simple but elegant number Reece insisted looked "absolutely stunning" on you, suddenly feels all wrong. Too plain? Too tight? Too loose? Too… not enough?

Reece parks the car in front of the grand gates of her family’s estate, but instead of stepping out, you sit frozen, clutching your bag like it’s a lifeline.

“Hey,” Reece’s voice is soft, her hand finding yours. “You good?”

You bite your lip, debating whether to admit the truth. But she knows you too well, and the furrow of her brow tells you she’s already figured out something’s off.

“I just…” You let out a shaky sigh, your gaze dropping to your lap. “I don’t know if I’m… if I look… right for this. For them.”

Reece is quiet for a moment, and when you finally glance at her, you see her jaw tighten, her hazel eyes narrowing like she’s preparing to fight someone.

“Are you serious right now?” she asks, her voice a mix of disbelief and affection. “You’re worried about how you look?”

You nod hesitantly, avoiding her gaze. "I just… your family’s um so perfect y'know. I just..."

Reece leans back in her seat, running a hand through her hair as if trying to figure out how to respond. Her heart breaks at your sullen expression. Then, without warning, she reaches over, cupping your face gently but firmly, forcing you to look at her.

“First of all,” she says, her voice low and steady, “you’re the most beautiful person I’ve ever seen, and always will be, and nothing anyone says or thinks is going to change that. Got it?”

You nod, though her words only make your throat tighten more.

“Second,” she continues, her thumb brushing your cheek, “my family is going to love you because I love you. And if they don’t, that’s their problem, not yours. You’re not the one who has to prove anything. You’re everything, okay?”

You manage a shaky smile, but she’s not done yet.

“And third…” She grins now, her usual playful smirk returning as she presses a quick kiss to your forehead. “If anyone even thinks about making you feel out of place tonight, they’re getting an earful from me. Got it?”

You laugh softly despite yourself, and she beams at the sound, leaning back with an exaggerated sigh of relief.

“There’s my girl,” she says, squeezing your hand as she steps out of the car and moves to your side to help you out. “Now come on. Let’s show them how lucky I am, yeah?”

Reece is not only your girlfriend but your own personal trainer too.

Her apartment’s (she made you move in after a month) personal gym has become your second home, or, at least, that’s what she likes to say while dragging you out of bed for "just twenty minutes of movement."

"C'mon baby, you can skip ten more. You are literally the strongest person I've met." Says your girlfriend currently bench pressing twice your weight.

She’s the kind of person who genuinely believes in balance but refuses to compromise on some essentials. Like fruits. Every. Single. Day. She’ll hand-feed you slices of apple or shove a peeled orange into your hands with a pointed look until you take a bite.

Her healthy meals aren’t just food; they’re little love notes wrapped in nutrition. Protein shakes? Homemade. Greek yogurt with berries? Perfectly portioned. Occasionally, though, she’ll surprise you with your favorite snacks because, as she says, "You’ve earned it for putting up with my bossy ass."

On the days when you feel too lazy to move, Reece doesn’t push. Instead, she adapts. She insists you keep her company in the gym because "your laugh is better than any playlist." You end up sitting on the mat with a bowl of fruit she force-feeds you because of course, “You will finish that, or so help me”, while she works out.

And if you’re feeling extra lazy, you’ll drape yourself over her back while she’s doing push-ups, giggling as she huffs and teases you about being "the cutest weight she’s ever lifted."

What makes it all worthwhile is how much she genuinely enjoys your presence. Whether you’re crushing a workout together or just lounging on the floor, her gaze always holds the same message: she wouldn’t want to be doing this or anything without you.

Reece absolutely adores the height difference between the two of you, maybe a little too much, if you’re being honest. It’s her favourite excuse to treat you like her personal doll.

When she’s in a playful mood (which is often), she’ll suddenly scoop you up, spinning you around effortlessly until you’re laughing and swatting at her arms. “Put me down, Reece!” you’ll protest, but she just smirks and says, “Not until I hear that laugh again!”

And those moments when you two disagree? She’s terrible at taking you seriously. You’re standing there, ranting about whatever it is, but all she can focus on are your eyes, especially the way they narrow when you’re annoyed.

"Are you even listening to me?!" you demand, glaring up at her.

She should be, but instead, she’s trying not to grin like an idiot. “Hmm? Oh, sorry, your angry face is just too cute."

That, of course, makes you even more pissed, which only makes her love it more. "Can you for God's sake listen and take the shit I am saying seriously?!"

Eventually, she stops your words in the most Reece way possible: by sweeping you off your feet (literally) and carrying you to the bedroom.

“REECE PUT ME DOWN! WHAT THE HELL?!”

"Yeah, yeah," she says, laying you down gently before hovering over you with a mischievous grin.

She starts peppering kisses all over your face, your cheeks, your forehead, lips, your nose, until you’re squirming and trying to push her away through your laughter.

"Stop it! You idiot!"

“There’s that smile,” she says triumphantly, finally stopping but not before stealing one last kiss on your lips. “Mad at me now?”

You sigh dramatically but can’t help the grin tugging at your lips. "I just hate you sometimes!"

Speaking of you and the bed... Reece is an absolute softie when it comes to you. No matter how tough or confident she might seem to the rest of the world, with you, she's nothing but gentle, which sometimes is really hard for her to do when all she wants to do is wreck and eat you all up. During those intimate moments, she treats you like you're made of glass, careful, attentive, utterly devoted. And afterward, when she's finally worn herself out, she holds you close, her arms wrapped around you as if to shield you from everything else.

Hearing her teammates call her "Cap" during practice or games might boost her ego, sure. But it doesn’t even come close to the power trip she feels when she hears it from your lips, soft, breathless, or even better as a whimper, and just for her.

“Say it again,” she murmurs, her voice raspy and low, her gaze heavy-lidded as she brushes a stray strand of hair from your flushed face.

And when you do, she smirks like she’s just won a championship. To her, nothing else in the world compares to that moment, to you.

But not everything...is that easy right? Not this dreamy. And you realized this after you got the ring on your finger after 2 absolutely beautiful months together.

── AN: Dw, there will be a second headcanon or different scenarios showing Reece's toxic side as well.

[ghostdiva]

Jax Character Analysis

this was something I was going to turn into a video essay. I unfortunately found out the hard way that I don't have the mental capacity to turn the analysis I made into a video essay. it's just a small essay.

that said, click the read more if you want to read some walls of text.

So, as some of you might guess, I’m a huge fan of the amazing digital circus. I’ve always loved when shows break down their characters, and show how they tick, what their experiences are, and how they coped with it. Especially when these characters are antagonistic in nature. There’s nothing like thinking “man, this character is an asshole”,vaguely wondering why, then getting their lore dropped and thinking “oh…. Well yeah that’d do it”, while coping with the emotional knives the plot just stabbed you with.

And fortunately for me, this show is all about the characters. I remember seeing posts from Gooseworx, the creator of digital circus herself, stating that this show was not only about the characters, but finding meaning in a stagnant life. Which I think is an amazing and deep concept to think about.

Now, there are posts made by other people picking apart every member of the digital circus. However I feel a lot of people get Jax misunderstood, often writing him off as a one-note, one dimentional asshole. Some people even think he’s an NPC, like they can’t fathom the idea that a person would be capable of cruelty, despite the world we live in today. And with how hellish, crazy, and wild the digital world is shown to be able to be, I’m frankly not surprised that a character would be capable of cruelty.

However, I hardly think Jax is 1 dimensional. I think there’s a lot to see and explore with his character. I will also point out now, that I am not condoning, supporting, or defending Jax’s actions in the show, I’m simply trying to understand the why’s.

That said, the first thing I want to address are the emotions Jax portrays throughout the show. I’m also gonna throw in some tells I’ve noticed, along with a sprinkle of shape theory. So let’s get into it.

Like any good storyteller, I’m gonna start at the very beginning. We, as the viewer, see a lot of Jax in the pilot, aka episode 1. The first thing I wanna point out is his facial expressions. Specifically, his tell that I’m going to refer to as “mischief mode”. Whenever Jax wants to cause mischief, his face will portray the tell of “mischief mode”, which is portrayed by his eyes and mouth sharpening into crescent shapes. In "mischief mode”, Jax sports a Cheshire grin, and his eyes squint a bit, creating crescents for every facial feature. He does this when he’s teasing the circus members, or about to cause mischief, which usually involves one of the circus members. Even when Jax isn’t smiling, if the corners of his mouth look sharp or pointed, he’s likely still looking to cause mischief.

But what about when Jax isn’t trying to cause mischief? Well, in practically every other scene we see Jax in, that doesn’t involve mischief, he looks bored. Jax wears expressions that range around boredom, apathy, curiosity, annoyance, and anger. Many times, when I’ve watched Jax’s character, I’ve found myself wondering if chronic boredom was ever a reason for him to do what he does. Especially since he almost seems to chase anything that is new or exciting. He does have limits though, as he’s shown in the pilot immediately booking it when he sees the abstracted Kaufmo.

Speaking of, I do want to talk about his actions in the pilot a bit. As well as his overall attitude toward adventures. With the gather the gloinks adventure, Jax approaches it with a level of apathy. The gloinks are so uninteresting for him, that he barely cares when the gloinks basically kidnap Zooble. Although, you could argue that everyone held a bit of apathy toward Zooble’s kidnapping by gloink, except for Gangle. Afterall, literally everyone just stood there and watched it happen, and Gangle was the only one even remotely looking distressed about Zoobles predicament. If anything, Jax is the only one who calls attention to Zoobles kidnapping by saying “oh no, they killed Zooble. Anyway you guys wanna get something to eat?”

In the pilot he seems to hold a sort of “no matter what happens, they’ll be fine” mindset, which is likely due to the nature of the digital world. Afterall, it seems that the only real way to “die” in the digital world is by abstracting. We as the viewer, see the characters of the digital circus go through things that’d kill a person in the real world. Such as falling from high heights, getting run over, getting eaten, and being slammed into the walls and floor. At worst this can jumble their characters code, making them glitch. However, outside of that, it would seem that physical harm has no real lasting consequences. And Jax, who is already accustomed to the digital world, knows this. Hell, with how often the circus crew gets thrown around on adventures, it wouldn’t surprise me if he ended up finding humor in the misfortune others face and experience. In fact, I’d argue that he does find humor in it, because he does go out of his way to cause that misfortune sometimes.

Getting back on topic, Jax’s approach to the Pilot’s adventure is one of apathy, and he didn’t care about it so much that he elected himself to check on Kaufmo with Ragatha and Pomni instead of participating. The only reason Jax ends up participating in the Gloink adventure at all, is because Kaufmo abstracted. The fact he flees within moments of finding out Kaufmo abstracted, implies that abstracted members are one of the few great dangers within the digital circus. It’s only emphasized more with Ragatha getting glitched after being thrown around by the abstracted Kaufmo. The next time we see Jax in the pilot, he’s running. He checks behind himself as if to make sure he isn’t being chased, before addressing Gangle and Kinger.

How Jax goes about this interaction is interesting to me, and I think it’s what made people think he wasn’t all that bad when all we had was the pilot. When Gangle asks Jax about Kaufmo, he lies about it, saying “oh he’s doing great”. Jax says that with a lot of sarcasm though, dragging out the “great” and making exaggerating gestures. I think Jax lies here because he knows that if he drops the truth here, he’s just going to be questioned. Gangle and Kinger would likely be distressed at the news, making them less likely to move. And Kaufmo is still roaming around the tent. When Jax hears Kaufmo’s growls, he quickly forces himself into mischief mode, using the bowling ball to get both Kinger and Gangle down the “Zooble hole”. Jax then quickly joins them, not only successfully removing all of them from the tent area, but also hiding them from Kaufmo’s abstraction.

A lot of people tend to write off Jax as an asshole, yet his actions seem to show him caring at least a little bit about the people around him. Afterall, if he didn’t care about them, he wouldn’t have forced Kinger and Gangle down the “Zooble hole” with him. He would’ve just left them there, where they’d likely run into Kaufmo and end up like Ragatha, who was left glitched and distorted in the hallway of the living quarters.

Now, you might be thinking “yeah he’s an asshole, not a monster. But what about episode 2? He basically terrorized Pomni and Gangle the whole time”. To which I’d say “funny you bring up episode 2”.

In episode 2, you’re right, we do get a lot of Jax being an ass. However, I’d like to point out what the adventure was called. “Candy Carrier Chaos”. I’m gonna emphasize a very important word here. “Candy Carrier Chaos”. Now, I’m going to preface this by saying, I’m pretty sure Jax is a literal thinker. He doesn’t sugar coat anything he says, in fact, he’s sometimes brutally honest. In episode 3, when Caine told them they had to collect paranormal activity, Jax took it as having to Capture all the ghosts. So when he’s given the adventure called “Candy Carrier Chaos”, where he has to track down a bunch of bandits and take back what they stole; Jax is stoked. The title, and general premise of the adventure implies that it’ll be a high action, high stakes adventure, with fighting, death, and well, chaos. So he goes into this adventure with that expectation, which is why he looks so apathetic until princess Loolilalu brings out the modded syrup tanker. From that point “mischief mode” is on until they go over the cliff and land in the fudge below.

Now I know you’re thinking “OP, Jax literally throws Pomni out of the truck”. You're right, however I think Pomni was only targeted here because Ragatha literally offered her by saying “I’m sure there’s something you could do to help out” in reference to the adventure. Jax, who’s more on the idea of pulling a vehicle heist, and realizing he’ll need an extra set of hands to help him if he wants to do it, just takes the offer. Now, you gotta remember Jax’s mindset regarding member safety. Which is that “they can’t really die or get hurt in a way that matters (that is to say, physically disabled or restricted due to injury), so no matter what happens, they’ll be fine.”

Now, this isn’t a healthy mindset in the slightest, but there is a bit of logic there. Pomni is still new and doesn’t know this yet, so she’s understandably hurt and confused by Jax’s actions. Which is why she doesn’t see Jax as someone who would be there for her, and we see this with Jax’s hand missing in this scene.

But this isn’t about Pomni, this is about Jax.

Now, once the truck goes over the cliff, everyone is on the outside of the truck. With the fudge monster, it looks like Jax is like, scraping the bottom of the barrel for what chaos he can cause. The most he could do was yoink Ragatha’s key to the Kingdom with the promise to let the fudge monster into the kingdom if he helps them capture the gummy gators. It’s a promise he makes good on, and it ends up being the last laugh he gets for causing chaos in this episode.

Now, with episode 3, we unfortunately don’t get a lot of Jax. from what we do get, we see him follow the premise of the adventure, vacuuming up ghostly under the idea that “collecting paranormal activity” meant “capturing the ghosts”. Ragatha scolds him for it, and when they have to choose between the 2 doors, Jax uses Gangle’s mask to see if the scary door was rigged or something. It was, as the door turned into a giant mouth, consuming Gangle’s mask, never to be seen again. This kicks off the plot, where Kinger and Pomni get separated from the group. I’d like to point out that this is the second time in a row that Jax’s actions has caused Pomni to get separated from the rest of the group. However Jax had no way of knowing that Kinger and Pomni would end up getting forced down the scary door. Once again though, his apathy toward them is made clear when all he has to say after this is “oh that’s the scary door”.

The next time we see Jax, he’s tied up and struggling against the rope. And if I had to guess, he probably just wanted to get free to capture the other ghost that Ragatha and Gangle had a tea party with. As soon as they all left Martha Mildenhall’s room, Jax stopped struggling. While he was tied up though, Jax’s expression ranged from enraged, to annoyed.

I’d also like to point out another little detail I noticed. And it’s that Jax gets visibly annoyed whenever someone has an emotional moment. He gets annoyed when Kaufmo’s funeral is brought up, he gets annoyed when Pomni explains why she wants to bring Gumigoo back with her. He gets annoyed when Pomni thanks Ragatha for being concerned about her. It’s almost like he gets annoyed at emotional vulnerability. And boy do I wonder why this purple twink has such a strong reaction to emotional vulnerability. I mean, there’s only a few times that Jax is seen being emotionally vulnerable himself, and each of these instances are at most, a second or 2 long. 

This brings me to the 4th episode, which is the most recent episode as of posting this. This is also probably the most interesting episode for Jax’s character so far, as he seems to take it down a notch when it comes to the mischief he usually makes.

The episode begins with Jax, Gangle, and Ragatha chilling in the common area. Jax wielding a baseball bat, and Ragatha trying to teach Gangle how to throw a baseball. While Ragatha verbally walks Gangle through the motions of throwing the ball, Jax says “you’re wasting your time Raggy”, in a teasing manner. Keep in mind, this is the first time we’re seeing the characters engage in actual play with one another. And Jax does seem to just want to play in the moment. Hell, I’d say he’s being very patient, waiting for Ragatha to teach Gangle to throw so he can hit the ball. He’s also displaying emotions outside his usual range. During this bit he has a neutral, focused, or curious expression, which I’d say is indicative of him just wanting to play a game. The only “Mischief Mode” tell present here is his smile, but his eyes aren’t squinted in the crescent shape that indicates it. So it’s very likely that he’s just having fun here.

When Gangle finally throws the ball, Jax swings the bat, hits the ball with his eyes closed, and the ball hits Gangle in the face. Ragatha immediately scolds Jax, assuming he did it on purpose. Jax immediately defends himself saying “I actually didn’t mean to do that”, but Ragatha doesn’t seem to care that it was an accident, and only sees that Jax hurt a circus member again. So the 2 start fighting, with Ragatha stating her anger at Jax for always hurting the other members, and Jax arguing that this time was an accident, and that if it were on purpose he would’ve been proud of it. Which implies that Jax wasn’t proud of the fact that he hurt Gangle here. He probably was just trying to play a game.

Outside of that, episode 4 has a lot of Jax scenes that show similar and different sides to him. We see him still get up to some mischief when he throws Ragatha in the deep fryer, but after that we see a more chill version of Jax. His expressions also visually seem more strained or forced in some scenes, which might allude to what Gooseworx meant when she said Jax would get worse as the episodes went on. When Gooseworx said that originally, people thought that the pranks and mischief Jax would cause would get more and more extreme, to the point where he crosses a serious line. However, I think that Jax’s “Mischief Mode” is a mask in it of itself, which was meant to cover up his feelings and emotions. And we as the viewer will see that mask slip more and more, as Jax’s mental state steadily declines. You see, Kaufmo was an example of what happens when you don’t have a support group in the digital world, and no one likes Jax. So why would any of the circus members try to be there for him? He’s not once shown to have any care for them in their eyes. To them, all he’s done is tease them, bully them, and sometimes even intentionally put them in harm's way. Even in moments where it wasn’t intentional on his part. I’ll admit, this does make me nervous for his character moving forward, but while Gooseworx said he’d get worse, she didn’t say he won’t get better. I really do want to see Jax get some positive character development, or even just get some more concrete reasons behind Jax’s behaviour.

[kacievvbbbb]

The Donovan Desmond Theory

In light of the latest chapter.

Donovan Desmond is giving serious Reginal Hargreeves vibes.

But like if I had suspicions that he was a bad dude or at least is involved in some bad things then that’s been cleared up a little bit in the most recent chapters.

I don’t know if I fully believe Desmond is an alien like Melinda thinks I think maybe he has a non human quality to him (like say something like Anya’s powers) combined with his general lack of human understanding it seems I think him being an alien is Melinda’s explanation for what is happening (or you now chances are he could be one but so far the story has remained fairly grounded and so im inclined to believe it will stay that way)

But what I think is most liek let is that he is the one behind the scientific experiments that Anya, bond and probably a whole lot of other dogs and children were subjected to that gave them powers.

Also

Look at the scars on his head. This is just a little lower than where Anya’s comes (which i think are kind of connected to her powers or atleast covering up something connected to her powers) sit. And honestly they just look like brain experimentation scars.

So initially I thought maybe he was the founder of the experimenting giving powers organization looking for a way to perfect or gain powers but now I think that maybe he was one of the first kids to be experimented on. Maybe he was the only one/ one of the only ones/ the most successful experiment, to survive the process and so they make him the poster child of the project and he grows up within it and they are essentially the shadow organization pulling the strings and orchestrating his life. That would explain why he seems to lack so much proper human socialization skills and why he appears odd enough that Melinda thinks he’s an alien.

Or maybe the original organization fell apart in the lead up to the first war and now he’s rebuilding it to try and continue the work or fix what’s wrong with him but I’m inclined to believe he just believes in the work.

All this to say that I think Desmond can read minds like Anya. I think the boys and his family might be part of some side experiment he’s running to see if these powers can be passed down through dna and so he got himself (or the organization set him up with) a family. I think thats the reason he spent a lot of time up close and personal seemingly monitoring Demetrius and his progress. Trying to see if he would develop any special abilities. But he doesn’t and that why Donovan seems to lose interest in his family.

But I think during this time Desmond teaches Demetrius (without explicitly explaining why or what they are doing) how to be impervious to having his mind read I’m guessing incase Demetrius did show promise and would be brought into the fold, and that’s why Anya can’t read him but he seems to have internalized this as simply just not having a stream of consciousness. The only time we hear his thoughts is when he’s thinking about things in the abstract and that’s probably the key to it. He focuses soley on what he is doing right then in every moment and so thereby doesn’t mule anything over enough to have an internal conversation with himself he was probably taught not to “waste time pondering”anything and just to act when it is appropriate to do so, disguised as a very strange business lesson. As he was probably being very intensely instructed on this. But Demetrius shows no signs of any developing powers so Desmond kind of just pushes him to the way side which must have been jarring to suddenly be so unimportant to your father after so many years of such intense observation

Which is why I think Demetrius harbors anger towards his father and doesn’t understand him because what were the lessons for and why did they abruptly stop and why doesn’t anything he do seem to bring them back? But he never really investigates this deeply because the act of not pondering was instilled within him deeply.

So yeah. I think Donovan Desmond can read minds I would also kind of say him saying “this was a worth while evening” after sitting in silence with his family makes me feel like he just read their minds (those of which he could read) and got what he needed to. Which also makes me believe he is still running some kind of passive experiment on them and that’s why he doesn’t want Melinda to interact with Damian so much maybe he’s going the opposite route and seeing if neglect will allow the boys to awaken their possibly latent abilities. I don’t know man I’m just tapping 🤷🏿‍♀️ Donovan Desmond just has the look of someone that’s been experimented on whole Demetrius has the look of someone who withstood all kinds of psychological torture from a young age. Take all this with a grain of salt

[utilitycaster]

If I can make a small inference about Laura as Imogen, is that she's not indecisive. She had some major swings - opening with her (at the time) highest spell against Otohan before initiative and Psychic Lanc-ing Zathuda are two examples (and she was actually heavily judged by the internet police both times).

I think she is able to be decisive when the story speaks to her directly - another sign that the Predathos plot does not. Imogen's personal arc, IMO, finished when she saved her mother from being absorbed. The Predathos fight feels like an epilogue, and not an exciting one at that.

The problem, I think, is that the overarching plot is too abstract and uncertain to warrant a gut reaction. It's always a "I guess this is it".

I disagree on all points:

Two cases of attacking a pretty obvious enemy does not undo pretty considerable indecision with regards to the campaign-long choice of unleashing Predathos; the complaints about indecision are largely based in RP. I do not give a solitary fuck what the "internet police" say. Their opinion has no bearing on mine and is entirely irrelevant to this discussion.

There are multiple problems I have with Imogen and Liliana that I've outlined previously, namely, it really feels like she saves Liliana, who has almost never helped her and whose alliance with her is predicated on a lie (and who even outright failed in her own attempt to prevent Imogen from getting involved, and who, as a character, suffers from kind of the same problem of "I think Ludinus is a bad person but I am going to carry out his cause, which is ultimately exactly what he wanted and the action that led him to do all the things that lead to our assessment of him as a bad person") out of some vague romanticized sense of "but she's my mother". It feels like a path of least resistance, and as I've said before it feels like someone handed Laura a script an hour before and said "okay you're a woman begging for the life of your estranged mother." Imogen's dedication to Liliana is genuinely one of the weakest throughlines in a campaign that does not lack for weaknesses. You're welcome to feel differently but this doesn't feel remotely satisfying or even convincing as a character beat at all to me let alone the culmination of a character arc. The endpoint has always been facing Ludinus and deciding whether to become a vessel, and doing the latter with absolutely no conviction and barely any intent is pretty dull.

The overarching plot is extremely simple: "Ludinus Da'leth, due to trauma incurred during the Calamity that led him to hate the gods, wants to release a god-eating creature that needs a Ruidusborn as a vessel, and is taking the actions to do so, among which involve straining the very fabric of magic and killing a massive number of people. Much of the world is trying to stop him." Now, the choices involved (ie, should Bells Hells ally with much of the world to stop him, or should they join this cause) are, I think, something Matt wanted to feel complicated. However, I and I think a lot of other people here have found that the case for eating the gods has never been presented as anything but a combination of petty vengeance for personal slights that in some cases are outright imagined; or a vast overreaction that fails to address root causes (ie, colonialism and the death of the titans will not be remotely fixed by this) and introduces a host of new problems. I do think there is something to be said for cast members missing some things that were pretty repeatedly directly stated (the shard being bad for Ashton; Predathos being a cosmic entity from outer space that required a Ruidusborn vessel) and that perhaps the messaging from DM to players was lacking in a way that wasn't clear from an outside view but the core plot is perhaps the simplest one across all campaigns, poorly paced though it may be.

[erisenyo]

Anon do I ever remember. A follow up to Part 1, here. I recommend viewing the St. Sebastian Sculpture here for the full Vibe lol

NSFW ahead - Zutara, bloodbending, D/s vibes, consensual but not sane or safe, I think we can see where this is going, handwaving anatomy and why Katara would know the latin names for things

The next time it happens, it’s not Katara who puts him on his knees.

She’s already hot with annoyance as she tromps through the forest, irritated to even be chasing after Zuko in the first place when he was just supposed to be foraging, irritated that no one else seems particularly concerned with his whereabouts, irritated that she couldn’t even lose herself in the familiar motions of laundry, the rhythms of pressure and rushing water and pulsing agitation abruptly no longer soothing to sink herself into when all she can seem to think about is—

“Fuck!” A man—broad but lean, clothes rough except for a very fine vest, mismatched swords at his waist, definitely a bandit then—shouts as he and Katara burst into a clearing at the same time.

“Another one?” another man grunts as he steps out of the tree line, eyes assessing as he unloops a coil of rope from his shoulder.

“We don’t have time for this,” a third bandit scowls, a familiar sack in her hand. “Let’s make quick work of this one, too.”

“I’ll show you quick,” Katara growls, staring at the bag she would know backward and forward with how many times she’s mended it, her waterbending surging out as her anger suddenly finds a target.

She rips water from the nearby stream, from the inexplicably soaked clothing all bandits are wearing. She barely touches what’s contained in her waterskin, and it’s only after all three of them are unconscious, her bag back in hand, that Katara considers that ‘another one’ means she wasn’t the first.

Katara hesitates, eyeing the rope still tangled in a lasso in the second bandit’s grip. Her adrenaline is still roiling through her, her bending pulsing water-ice-water-ice as she tries to regain her composure. This bag unquestionably went out with Zuko. She could go back to get the others, Toph’s seismic sense would be helpful.

But she’s been watching Sokka narrate his tracking for years. And Zuko probably just followed the shoreline. She doesn’t need Toph. Besides, what if the bandits wake up and go back for Zuko? What if he’s unconscious, or hurt? Or tied up somewhere, awake and waiting and—

When Katara finds him, he isn’t unconscious. She hears his tight, harsh grunt before she sees him. 

But he is undeniably roughed up, already-worn clothing ripped and even more wet than the bandits were, like maybe he got jumped in the stream, which maybe he did if he couldn’t bend his way out of the fight. Maybe he even was unconscious at some point, to end up tied up like that. She doesn’t know how else they would have gotten him on his knees with the broad tree flush against his back like that, the trunk between his shins and rope looped around his waist and the strain of his shoulders and arch of his back saying his hands are tied behind the tree, too.

He probably can’t bend without burning himself, she contemplates as she watches, feeling oddly, clinically abstracted. But he’s clearly trying to change that fact with the way he’s squirming, coming up off his knees as he strains forward, cords of muscle and tendon stark—triceps brachii, her mind helpfully supplies, brachioradialis, extensor carpi radialis longus, and the rotator cuff must be screaming—his body suspended against the rope with effort and face twisted into a furious scowl that spasms as he collapses heavily to his knees again.

“You’re hurt?” Katara doesn’t think as she steps out of the tree line, Zuko’s head jerking up in alarm.

“Katara! There are bandi—”

“I took care of them,” she interrupts, her chi feeling oddly shivery with readiness as she reaches for the flow of the stream, just in case.

Zuko stares, chest heaving. “All of them?” he finally asks, the words hoarser than usual as his gaze hunts between her and the trees.

She dangles the bag in demonstration, like it was easy. “Three? I took care of it.”

Another beat of staring. Then Zuko exhales, sharp and unsteady, and slowly leans back again. Not settling, though, she notes in that distant way. Not with the way his body stays tight and coiled, his chest still fast as if with urgency.

Katara can hear her heartbeat in her ears, pounding with adrenaline, the tugging awareness of her own blood.

“You’re hurt?” she asks again, glancing over him for injury. It’s easy enough to look for. His tunic has been ripped through to the collar on one side, falling half off his chest and barely hanging on the other. His pants are in equally rough shape, like someone grabbed fistfuls of them to try to contain him, or maybe to drag him to this tree.

That would have been humiliating for someone to put him on his knees that way, she considers as something not-at-all-abstractly lurches inside her, in her bending.

“Katar—”

“What happened,” she interrupts, coming to a stop standing over him. He likes to be there, she remembers like it’s something she needs to recall. He likes to be put there.

“It’s not—”

“Tell me.”

Zuko cuts his eyes away, panting harshly, swallowing hard. Then he licks his lips—stress response, that voice like Yugoda’s whispers, which can presage fear, fight, or arou—and glances up at her from beneath his lashes, lips pressed together and the air suddenly thick with awareness, thick enough that she can barely breathe it, that she almost feels like she could bend it as a single shiver runs through him before he tightly controls it.

“You’re covered in water, Zuko,” she says low, like it’s an observation, and Zuko makes a tight, thin noise in the back of his throat and tells her.

She imagines it, how it must have unfolded. The three bandits seeing Zuko vulnerable and exposed that way, knee-deep in the river and poking at the reeds. The coordinated rush to take him down. The struggle and strain for mastery, the water suffocating and impeding them all so that it took three of them to pin him down and contain him, apparently.

Her bending slides syrupy and thick through her veins, her chi, with the memory of having done that to him, too. He’d folded at the first press. Gone limp. Gave in to whatever she wanted to do to him. “You fought it.”

Zuko swallows hard and tilts his chin. Defiance, or brazening through the obvious blush of embarrassment. “Yeah.” He likes that, too, and Katara can’t even pretend at having to remember that. Not when the knowledge has had her off-kilter and sharp-tongued with him ever since she realized.

She can see the pulse in the hollow of his neck, like this. And the way his lips part, his eyes dark. He knows that she knows, and neither of them can pretend otherwise, even if she hasn’t wanted to admit it, acknowledge it, look at it in anything other than the thick, sticky dark of night.

Katara wants to wrap her bending into the stream, wants to make it a raging rush to match the feeling inside her, wants to feel the pressure of it rising to match— “You’re injured?” she asks thickly.

Zuko’s eyes immediately cut away. “It’s fine.”

“Where.” He can’t hunch forward over himself or pull his knees up, this time, even if she let him.

“It’s nothing.”

“Where.” Not with the rope around him.

“It doesn’t matt—”

“You think I can’t find out myself?” she snaps, her bending rolling out to cling to the water still in his clothes, pressing, making him feel the pressure of the water on him, all around him.

She breathes hard as he gasps and sags, squeezing until the droplets are on the verge of snapping to ice and her waterbending to something sharp and jagged and tight, squeezing until a familiar whine chokes out of him. Then sucks in air and forces her chi to ebb, waiting with a throbbing kind of adrenaline-anticipation—the adrenaline of the stress response, which can presage—for Zuko to pry his eyes back open.

“Do you think you can?” he rasps, body tight again, and Katara doesn’t need the memory of his tone from to hear the invitation in it now.

She curls her hands into fists, looking at the way his tunic is barely clinging to his shoulder. And looking at the taut way he’s holding himself, watching her sidelong, the shiver of his stomach entirely visible.

Then she grips the water in his tunic again and jerks it to her, sharp. Zuko lets out a ragged noise as the last seams rip from the force, Katara watching the now-dry fabric slithering down to catch on the rope. She reflexively forms the water into a small ball, slowly pressing her bending into that instead, distantly aware as her chi flexes and throbs that she can only build the pressure for so long before it needs release.

“Your back?” she asks, trying to focus on the rhythm of her waterbending and not the sharp-edged pulse calling to her.

Zuko’s shoulders flex like he’s twisting his hands against their bindings, his bare stomach pressing against the rope with the force of his breaths, over and over. “You can’t find out yourself?”

Katara feels heady from the beat of her own pulse. Then she exhales hard and swirls the globe of water into a ribbon over his arms, feeling the smooth slide of water over skin skin skin rope there and slicing it up frozen and serrated through the ropes binding his wrists.

She throws the still pressure-tight water aside as Zuko falls forward with a surprised cry, his weight catching on the rope still around his waist—and the bare line of his back exposed to show bark-scuffed skin and a few bruises, but nothing more than what they’ve all had from training.

Katara flexes thighs, her stomach, feels how strongly she’s braced as she looks down at him half-bent over before her. “I can find out whatever I want.”

Zuko breathes heavily a moment, sagged forward, his scapula shifting as he tests the movement of his shoulders. “Yeah?” he finally says, leaning back against the tree again, still kneeling up as if he has to. It’s not much of a response. But he’s bared to the waist now, no real injuries to be seen, and Katara feels like she’s looking down over the edge of a cliff as he licks his lips again, watching her back, feels like she’s jumping and momentarily weightless above the water as she lets her bending surge out for those droplets of water again and yanks.

The sound of cloth and seams tearing is loud, but not as loud as Zuko. A raw noise chokes in his throat ass his pants flutter down to leave him in just the rope around his waist and a wet, transparent fundoshi that does nothing to hide the shape of him—ateriolar dilation and increased blood flow to the erectile tissue—or the puncture wounds sluggishly bleeding down his thigh.

“Rocks?” Katara says unevenly as the sharp claws of her bloodbending twist through her chi. There was an earthbender in that bunch, nothing compared to sparring with Toph. The punctures are on the front of his thigh like he got hit with projectiles, a few inches below where his—his penis is tangled in the wet fabric, halfway erect and twisted to the side.

It looks uncomfortable.

“Yeah,” Zuko says thickly.

She doesn’t think he cares.

“I’m going to need to flush out any debris, before healing.” She barely recognizes her own voice, or the heavy throb of her bending as she forcefully pushes back the hungry tug of bloodbending.

“Yeah,” Zuko says unsteadily, swallowing hard, his bare body betraying the flush working down his chest, the flex of his hips—abductor muscles contracting, she forces herself to note, and—and—and the twitch of his penis. “For healing.”

Katara doesn’t say it back again, isn’t sure she could. She just takes a moment to try to control her own wild pulse, crouching down and separating the strands of water and healing and blood that have never been so tangled before. 

Then she flushes the first wound with water.  A careful, controlled stream rather than a fast, hard rush. Feeling the pressure as the water slips into him, just a bit, the wounds aren’t that deep really.

Seeing his reflexive jerk against the intrusion and pain, and she can fix her gaze on the first puncture, can assess it and let her bending stream out again, just to be thorough. But it’s impossible not to also see the shove of his hips into it, with the wounds so close to his groin. Impossible not to also note the pull of wet fabric, the further displacement, the cloth tugged even more off-center. Sliding half-off the scrotum, the twisted fabric still pressing the hardening shaft downward but if he squirms enough then maybe it will drag entirely—

“Be still,” Katara warns as she pulls her water abruptly back, breathing far harder than the bending warrants.

Zuko makes a high, tight noise and slumps back, eyes closed, gasping and nodding even as his hips continue to work against the air.

Spinal reflex in response to stimuli, she thinks even as she orders, “Still.”

She doesn’t wait for an invitation this time, knows she already has one as she lashes out with bloodbending this time, seizing veins and arteries and pressing him motionless. Zuko moans, head kicking back, and she can feel the way his hips try to buck and then again when he realizes he can’t. Another of those moans slips out, loud like he’s taking advantage of having his mouth free, or maybe is trying to goad her, but she’s too focused on following the rush of his blood, celiac trunk to internal and external iliac, tibial to femoral, feeling where the blood is slipping out of him but also where it’s flushing the surface of his skin, filling his penis, pathways dilating and pulse throbbing and she can feel the beat in her own veins, too.

Katara jerks her bloodbending back into her own skin and calls up the torrent of her waterbending. She breathes hard from the effort of fighting the hungry tug, gasping at the dizzying feel of that clawing edge along her water, like its trying to sink into that, too. Tui and La, to use both at the same time—to feel him from the inside out as his body does that—her chi throbs, fingertips tingling like maybe if she just tried…

Katara shoves that away. “Like that,” she snaps, apprehension shivering through her. Would she ever be able to get the bloodbending out, if it breached into her water that way? She scowls when Zuko just gasps at her, eyes hazy and mouth slack like he has no idea what she’s saying. “Still.”

“Yeah. Yeah, okay,” Zuko rasps after a moment, sucking in air and then bracing himself, basically naked so see the tightening of chest—of pectoralis major and rectus abdominus and—the inguinal ligament taut and flexed--

She flushes the second wound hard and fast and Zuko barely lasts a second before a high noise chokes out of him, his teeth sinking into his lips and his hips rising up and it’s not from the pain, not at all.

Katra pulls the water back. “I can hold you still, or I can clean out the last one.” Her chi lurches with the temptation to try both even though she’s never—even though she can’t, the pathways of chi are so—and if they go tangled, if she couldn’t separate them—

Zuko looks back at her flushed and embarrassed and so openly aroused that it doesn’t feel real. She’s never felt more aware of her own skin and blood than the moment when he nods unsteadily and reaches up above himself to grab onto the tree. To anchor himself, obviously, the motion canting his hips forward as if offering his injured thigh, his dark-flushed glans, the fundoshi fabric slid down to the place where his engorged shaft meets—

“Is that it?” Katara asks when she’s done. Zuko just pants up at her, ragged, flushed. Erection is a reflex response to visual, olfactory, physical, or imaginative stimuli, she wildly remembers Yugoda lecturing. She wonders which this qualifies as, her bloodbending throbbing in answer. “Should I check for more?”

“If you want to be sure,” Zuko says raggedly, re-gripping to the tree, and Katara presses her tongue to the dry roof of her mouth and fills him with her bending.

Bloodbending bursts through her chi, bursts through him, and she clenches her own body against it as Zuko moans and arches like he never even dreamed of fighting it. She sets a hand against the ground to steady herself, staring hypnotized at the way he moves between the restraints and the tree, the way he bucks, the way he shudders even as she freezes parts of him with her bending one by one.

Lips, which she knows he likes, can feel in the leap of his blood. Shoulders back to the tree, so he can’t cover himself, a whimper choking past his frozen tongue. Arching his back until it’s the rope fighting her. Pressing his arms into place, so the rest of him can squirm and betray every bit of his reaction, the tiny jerks of his muscles like he can’t stop himself from trying to feel her grip in his veins.

She leaves his hips for last so that he can feel it, really feel it, when she forces them to freeze just as the reflexive to buck rolls them him. And she can feel that ripple through him, testing muscle and rushing blood and surging pulse, the fruitless strain against her hold that matches the gasping, moaning sounds he makes.

She same wild pulse is in her bending, too, a throbbing rhythm that lurches through her chi, tugs her forward until she’s feeling it in every part of him trying to find more, pushing into every capillary and venule until he’s crying out, muffled, from the sensitivity, and the way he’s looking at her down the spread-out expanse of his body—

Katara shoves to her feet, forces Zuko’s head to tilt to follow her, forces his eyes to stay open, and locks every muscle except the ones he needs to thrust his hips. She releases him when she needs to gasp in her own air, watches him sag between his outstretched arms, locks him again, again, rhythmic, Zuko groaning as he realizes. There’s no way for him to hide like this, knees wide, gripping the tree and still tied so that even if she did release him, he’d be exposed, that scrap of barely-there cloth doing nothing. It barely coverst he curve of his testicle—he cries out as her bloodbending rushes down to feel it drawn up tight—the line of his erection fully free as he rocks against the air, desperate, and the fact that she can do that just by standing, just by making him look up at her—

She steps forward until her boots are just inches from his knees, feeling heady with the way he cranes even more up at her without even needing to be forces, his eyes blown wide. And then the rush as his gaze skips down over her breasts, her stomach, her hands, lower, his mouth parting and his tongue sliding out to lick his lips, and if she leaned him forward like she can feel him straining to do then he’d be pressing his face to—

Katara shoves her healing into him with a gasp. She slices through the last rope with a blade of ice, gouging wood and whirling around ass Zuko cries, suddenly unbalanced without the restraining tension. The suddenly-free trust of his hips is burning into her mind’s eye, blazing over the back of her eyelids as she squeezes them shut and forces the flood of her bending into the clean flow of the stream, letting the current pull it away and trying not to hear the thump of his fists hitting the earth, or the strained grunt he lets out, then another.

“We should head back,” Katara finally says, chest aching with the force of keep her breathing even. “Warn the others. About the bandits.”

A heavy, panting silence, then, “Yeah. Yeah,” he says, ragged and breathless and wanting in a way that she doesn’t want to feel in her blood. She knows without needing to check that he’s still on his knees behind her.

“There’s needle and thread in the bag.” She can’t make herself say why he’d need them. “Don’t take too long.” She strides away before she can let herself think too much about it, or wonder if firebenders can feel the heat in someone’s veins, before notice that she didn’t hear him rise to his feet until she told him too. 

[shallowseeker]

Yeah, I mean if I were Sam, I'd honestly feel more comfortable bringing up something symbolic like this because it allows it to live in this strange world of safer(?) abstractions.

I mean, there he is, pointing out something he passively "did" as a mere infant (being born, being targeted by Azazel) as a way to bizarrely equalize himself and Jack. It feels like a very forced way to parallel them.

A closer parallel could've been when soulless Sam almost sacrificed Bobby, or when Godstiel called them nostalgia and almost moved to kill them, or when Demon Dean was seconds from bashing Sam's head in with a hammer, or when Mary almost blew Sam and Dean's brains out while under the MoL influence, etc etc.

These "almosts" are soooo much closer in nature to what actually happened than Sam pivoting to the circumstances of his birth! "I killed mom" has the same abstract feeling of self-worthlessness that "not being pure" does. It's inherent. Inevitable. Uncontrollable. Just a fact of life. Passive.

Aside/// Sam's internalized hatred of "ever being born" doesn't happen in a vacuum, for sure. This is something that numerous characters also blamed Sam for, like the clever "aside" to the audience in the "Nutcracker" game during Changing Channels:

GAMESHOW ANNOUNCER: Would your Mother and Father still be alive... if your brother was never born?

(The answer is, of course, at least in Gabe's world: yes.)

But it's still interesting to me how it unintentionally allows Sam to sidestep... a lot of real decisions, like what you mentioned, the Emma thing.

It also allows him to sidestep his not-decisions, like doing nothing after Kevin got kidnapped. Even later, when Sam focused on "letting Dean down so hard he had to turn to other brothers," he doesn't explicitly mention his abandonment OF other people, like for example Kevin. Crowley does this exact same thing imho when he rants about Kevin's (lack of) safety being mostly attributable to The Winchesters (TM) positioning himself as the wise, savvy one who "warned Kevin" of the danger (no matter that Crowley tortured Kev and killed Kev's relatively harmless fellow students. Not to mention tortured his friggin' mom). If memory serves, Cas calls Crowley out on this, lol.

Anyway, later when Lucifer mentions "the Amelia and the dog thing," Kevin does not feature there either, at least not obviously? By contrast, with respect to Dean's feeling of guilt and also the later assignment of blame for Kevin's death by Sam, Crowley and Metatron: Kevin gets mentioned a good bit! Usually directly TO Dean. Surprise, surprise.)

I personally think it'd be much more emotionally trying for Sam to bring up actual things he's done over the years (something-something human sacrifice, almost killing Bobby, Emma, that one Lester dude he preyed on, Oskar, etc.)

It reminds me a bit of his words in Tombstone to Jack:

Sam takes a deep breath, trying to follow up all that heavy honesty with his own wisdom. This time, he tries mimicking Cas’s earlier words, which seemed to work in the car. (Notably, he misses them mark because he’s not specific like Cas was. Cas underlines that he’s killed people he loves, but Sam keeps it vaguer: “Things we regret.”) And with Sam, Jack shuts down again. He’s sharp about it this time. Jack’s body language has Sam reeling back, hands up.

transcript: SAM: Jack, look, this life, what we do, it's… it’s not easy. And we’ve all done things we regret. JACK (very sharp): Just don’t. 

So yeah, while a feeling of inherent self-worthlessness is absolutely crushing in its own right, I think it's fascinating to consider that in some ways, it allows for an abstract "original sin," that allows Sam to look away from his actual mistakes.

(And again, I suppose we're all a little bit like this as humans. It's hard to admit when we fail, so I have sympathy!)

Society if instead of saying he killed Mary too by “being born,” Sam brought up something much more comparable. Killing…Emma. If was just a moment, a split second decision.

[orallech]

pondering that old man

[faaun]

the way that diff languages sound r so fascinating they're all different and all so vivid

[agustdtown1]

SHUT UP ‘N LISTEN | JJK

PAIRING: street racer!brother’s bestfriend!jeon jungkook x fem!reader

SUMMARY: Trust was broken, and wrong decisions were made. You were now left alone facing the consequences of your own actions, realizing it was never a good idea to fuck around with your brother’s friend. But maybe that was another lesson you were meant to learn.

WC: 17.3k

WARNINGS: brother’s best friend trope, angst, like a loooooot, unnecessarily dramatic dialogues that I think were a bit too much but that worked out for the plot at the end. Fluff because I didn’t want to end it on a sad note again. Way too much feelings and emotions. Smut +18, unprotected sex, fingering, oral sex (both receiving), a lot of begging, slight dom!jk, choking, making out, smacking, praising, pet names (doll, good girl, princess, baby, sweetheart, etc.), jk calls reader his good little slut, big dick!jk, mentions of belly bulge (very brief), doggy, missionary, jk begging a little bit towards the end. Let me know if I’m missing anything.

A/N: it’s finally here, the part 2 of shut up and drive, it took me some time to finally get it done, but I’m happy with the results. Also it was initially intended to be max 5k but I got a bit carried away and ended up being this super lengthy one shot so I apologize in advance. Anyway, enjoy your reading!

part 1 | masterlist

Most people experience a variety of emotions throughout their lives; happiness, sadness, anger. You can find happiness in the simple things in life, like buying your favorite food, your favorite drink, or when you go out with your friends. Sadness usually comes along when something bad happens, like losing a loved one or missing an important moment. Anger is presented in the form of violence most of the time, but it can also be delivered through words; hurting just as much as any punch would. Nonetheless, there’s also another emotion that has a huge impact on people, one that can conquer your body in the most unexpected moments.

Fear.

Usually defined as an unpleasant feeling that installs itself in the deepest part of our hearts and souls; fear is that one emotion capable of paralyzing people when faced with dangerous situations. Regardless of it being an abstract concept, like any other feeling, anyone at any point in their life has experienced that same emotion.

It is fear that you feel when you notice a stranger following you at night; it is fear that you feel when encountered with a wild animal. It is fear that goes through your body when someone tells you they have bad news.

And it was that same emotion that you felt when your brother verbalized the one thing you were trying to avoid.

“How long have you been fucking my best friend behind my back?”

It felt like your heart dropped to your stomach the moment that question flew out of Taehyung’s mouth. Nothing would have ever prepared you for it; for the inevitable confrontation you oh so much wanted to avoid.

But life can be funny sometimes, and it would put you through situations that would cause you an unbearable amount of anxiety and fear.

“You’re not gonna say anything?” His voice was the perfect example of exhaustion and disappointment; two emotions you didn’t want your brother to experience.

It took you exactly ninety-eight seconds to regain your ability to speak, only to scramble to find a poor excuse that would get you out of the mess you got yourself into.

“I don’t… um, I don’t really know what—”

“You don’t know what I’m talking about?” Taehyung cut you off. “Is that what you were going to say?”

The words were caught in your throat, making it impossible to give him the answer he was expecting. But then again, would you be able to respond wisely if given the chance to speak properly?

“I’m sorry.”

The answer to that question would be no; you were not capable of forming a valid argument that would make your brother dislike you any less in that precise moment.

“You know, I thought you would finally be honest.” Your brother sighed, shaking his head in disappointment, “I guess I was wrong.”

No man will ever be worthy of messing things up with Taehyung; a mental statement that you prayed would be proven right, but ultimately it seemed like you were the rightful culprit of a crime you didn’t realize you committed.

“Tae, listen…” You began saying, but your brother was not ready to hear whatever you had to say.

“You wanna know what’s funny?” He asked rhetorically. “I’m not even mad that you guys are together or whatever.” Taehyung chuckled, humorlessly. “But you lied to me, and that’s not something I can take lightly.”

You knew that, and yet you decided to go behind his back to mess around with one of his closest friends. In hindsight, the outcome of your web of lies was fully deserved, however, it was hard to accept the possibility of the rupture of you and your brother’s bond.

Hoseok and Jimin, on the other hand, could only stand there and watch everything fall little by little. It saddened them, knowing that the messy situation the three of you were involved in would not be easy to deal with, and most likely would end up badly. Trust was broken, and wrong decisions were made. None of them pondered over enough to realize the weight of the actual problem. But alas, that’s the lesson you were meant to learn.

“Guess loverboy can drive you home tonight, right?” Taehyung’s bitter tone was like a knife digging in your soul. “I’ll talk to you guys later.” He turned towards the two other boys, before retrieving his car keys from his jeans’ pocket.

With nothing left to say, Taehyung started his way back to his car.

“Tae, wait! Don’t be like that.” None the wiser, you tried to reach out and stop him, but someone else got a hold on you before you could.

“Let him be, I think it’s better for everyone if he cools down before you talk to him.” Always the voice of reason, Hoseok intervened at the right time.

It was hard to watch Taehyung walk away, knowing that he would probably let his anger and frustration out the wrong way. It was true that your brother would usually need some time to calm down and come around, just like Hoseok said, however, you also knew that Taehyung could be a bit impulsive and reckless sometimes. His well-being has been put to the test an uncountable amount of times, and more often than not anger would cloud his vision and the only thing he would see is red, which would cause a much bigger problem than him just being upset.

Truth be told, there was not much to do. It was either making the situation a whole lot worse by pushing your brother to his breaking point, or waiting until his anger and frustration had subsided. The latter seemed to be a better option, and so it was decided that you would let it go for the time being.

It couldn’t be that bad, right?

“Y/n…” a familiar voice rang through your ears, making you snap out of your thoughts. “Can we—?”

“Take me home.” You interrupted Jungkook harshly.

Maybe it was the way he was acting so cautiously; or perhaps it was the fact that he didn’t even attempt to explain what was really happening to Taehyung, but the idea of being near Jeon Jungkook for a second longer irritated you beyond belief.

“What?” He seemed to be taken aback, “I mean, yes, I’ll take you home, but first I wanted—”

“I don’t wanna hear it, just take me home.”

The hurt look in his eyes almost made you apologize, but the moment of weakness was short-lived; the frustration and worry you were feeling at that moment were enough to blind you, preventing you from seeing how your cold attitude was affecting him.

“Hoseok…” You started saying, “You coming with us?”

The brown haired man shook his head, sporting a soft grin on his face to break a little bit of the tension surrounding you.

“Don’t worry about me, Jimin’s gonna give me a ride home.”

Looking to his right you found the blond guy nodding his head, confirming that he would take care of Hoseok.

“Alright then.”

You started your way towards Jeon’s car, not really waiting for him; the sooner you got out of there the better. That place was starting to become a horrific nightmare the more you stayed there anyway, and it wasn’t really worth it to wait a second longer.

Jungkook was right behind you, like a silent follower, not uttering a single word due to the fear of being ignored. And somehow he was right about protecting his heart from your cold demeanor, for it was your silence he would get if he had started a conversation in the most inconvenient of times.

But how can you blame him? Had you been in his shoes, conquered by fear of losing the person who makes you feel more alive, along with your best friend, at the same time, you would be scared of saying and doing the wrong thing too. The only difference is that Jungkook wanted to fix things up for the first time. He wanted to redeem himself and be the bigger person for once; changing his usual I-don’t-give-a-fuck attitude and not ignoring his responsibilities. Because as much as he didn’t want to admit it, he was just as guilty as you were, and it was time for him to be held accountable for his own actions and decisions.

Nonetheless, there was still that emotion that would prevent him from initiating a conversation that was already set to happen. Fear was, for lack of better words, fucking him up, just like it did you moments ago.

You could feel his burning stare at every red light you were encountered with, yet you refused to look his way, not giving him the satisfaction of staring at his doe eyes that would lure you into giving him the chance to explain himself. That, however, didn’t prevent him from finally gathering the courage to speak.

“I still wanna talk to you about tonight.” Eight words uttered with fear; a sentence verbalized with the utmost caution, only to fall on deaf ears. “I know you’re not in the mood to have a conversation right now, and you’re most likely mad at me, but I just want you to know that I’m sorry it happened this way.” A sigh escaped his lips, leaving him with a heavy weight on his chest, not fully finding the right words to say. “Things went wrong, that much I know, but neither of us had a way of knowing all of this would go down tonight.”

A humorless chuckle abandoned your mouth, cutting Jungkook’s speech off.

“An apology is not enough to fix all of this, Jungkook.” You started saying. “Taehyung must hate me right now. And for what? Me fooling around with his friend when I should’ve kept my distance.”

Anger, sadness and regret can be demonstrated with a variety of physical acts, but all those emotions can be also delivered through words, hurting as much, hurting even more. Like a knife digging in the soft material of a pillow, your response cut deep in Jungkook’s heart.

An interesting reaction, taking into account that the boy has never, not even once, shown an ounce of weakness around you. It is true that he was softer than most guys when he was with the people he trusted and loved, but there was a slight switch in his attitude when it came down to you. Was it infatuation? Was it stupidity? Jungkook wasn’t sure, but he knew well enough that the things you were saying stung more than they should.

“You say that as if you regretted everything that happened between us.” He dared to speak once again, after pondering what his response should be.

“Maybe I do.”

Why does it hurt so much the words that were flying out of your mouth? Why was the situation affecting him in ways that it shouldn’t?

“Maybe I regret everything, maybe I wish nothing ever happened between us.” You didn’t actually mean it, but people tend to say things that hurt others when they’re angry. “It doesn’t matter if I do, though, you knew this shit wasn’t even worth fighting for.”

Jungkook stopped the car abruptly, ignoring the honking of the van behind you.

“Not worth fighting for?” He repeated, clearly offended. “Are you hearing yourself? You’re acting as if all of this was just my fault”

“I know it wasn’t all on you, I played my part too, but why does it matter so much to you all of a sudden?” You inquired with a venomous tone. “You were the one who said this wasn’t anything serious to begin with. You told me not to get my hopes up because we were just friends who happen to fuck all the time.”

That conversation was engraved on your brain, memorized to the very end. It hurt to repeat the words Jeon said to you, it hurt to remember every single detail of that night, but it was time to accept that neither of you were meant for the other.

He wasn’t yours to take, he wasn’t yours to keep.

And yet you wished that at the end things could be different.

“So it was all meaningless to you?” Jungkook demanded an answer of you.

His heart was beating fast, his hands were starting to sweat and there was a frown falling upon his eyebrows, making him look sort of adorable. For you at least, Jungkook has always been like a big puppy in search of attention, seeking for people’s affection and love when he couldn’t even love himself enough to commit to someone. He was an interesting guy, that much you could admit, but it wasn’t enough to go through the hassle of giving it a try to an already nonexistent relationship.

“You just wanna end things like this?” Jungkook’s mind was going crazy, he couldn’t comprehend how you could act so nonchalant and heartless about it. “I just… I can’t just let you—”

“There’s nothing to end.” You cut him off. “You can’t end something that never started.”

Like cold snow falling upon his face in a swift motion; like a hundred knives digging in his soul and ripping his heart out; like the most saddening ballad cutting deep in someone’s mind to bring back the memories of a past lover.

It all hurt the same, it all happened as fast. It all was just equally awakening.

“Is that what you want?”

Jungkook’s dead voice wounded you just a little, but it wasn’t enough to stop your answer.

“Yes, that’s what I want.” You confirmed.

Without wasting any other second, Jeon started the car again, letting out a heavy sigh while maintaining a hard grip on the wheel.

And for better or for worse, not a single word was uttered the rest of the ride to your house; representing the finish line of a race that never even started.

Seven days, four hours, twenty minutes and thirty-two seconds. That’s how long it has been since the last time you heard the voice of your brother, or even knew anything about him, for that matter. Seven days since you last saw him; seven days since one of your biggest fears came true; seven days since Taehyung looked at you right in the face with an expression full of discomfort and disappointment, one that he has never shown until now. Seven days since Jungkook tried to talk you out of ending things with him.

Seven days have passed and not much has changed, besides the fact that you have felt lonelier than before. The monotonous routine of attending lectures, studying, going to work and then coming back home alone was damaging your mental health and your stability was starting to decay. Sadly, you didn’t have anyone else to blame but yourself. It was a hard pill to swallow, but in the end it was all the consequences of your impulsive actions.

Had you thought about everything more thoroughly, the outcome would have been way different. No one would have felt betrayed, because you wouldn’t have had the need to hide anything from anyone to begin with. No one would have gone home feeling broken or with a heavy weight on their shoulders.

A lot of things would have been different, but rather than dwelling on the matters that have already happened, you decided to keep your mind at bay.

Work and school kept you occupied, but it didn’t relieve the pain that was poisoning your weak heart whenever you received a message or a call from someone who wasn’t Taehyung. His two friends kept you updated about how he was doing, but it wasn’t enough for you; you needed to hear it from the guy himself. Which seemed to be a task rather difficult due to the current situation.

Jungkook tried to reach out to you a few times after that night, but on the fourth day of calling and texting you nonstop, he finally let go of the idea of fixing things up, with one final text where he poured his full heart, just for you. If Jeon had been any more honest at some other point in his life, he didn’t acknowledge it. For him that long text was his truest self, his bare feelings abandoning his body with the hope of reaching you on time. Nonetheless, you two were living in different realities, it seems. You didn’t even dare to read the message, opting to block him and ignore how unhealthy and wrong it was to act that way.

It was unfair of you to treat him so poorly, but your pride stopped you from seeing the bigger picture. You were at fault, in the same way that Jungkook was; both of you took the decision to intertwine your bodies that one night, and both of you decided to maintain the secret encounters. It was a crime committed by two bodies, but that sadly left three broken hearts behind. Two at fault and one caught in the crossfire.

You’ve caught yourself wishing you would’ve done things differently; no secrets, no betrayal. No guilt, no fear. However, it was that same predicament that led you to meeting Jungkook, and as much as you didn’t want to admit it, you were grateful for that. Behind his fuckboy persona there was a kindhearted guy that not everyone knew, but that you wish could be yours; Jeon was, for lack of better words, the type of guy that any girl would love to have as a partner, but alas you wouldn’t be the one to experience it.

And that cold and saddening truth was what prevented you from ignoring your pride and reaching out to him.

“Y/n…” a distant voice called your name. “Y/n!”

Looking up from your long-forgotten class review, you stared at one of your closest friends, Eunbi. She was a 5’6, black-haired girl, with the personality of a fifty-year-old woman trapped in the body of a twenty-three-year-old girl. In better words, she was your best friend. You met her during orientation and you two hit it off right away; have been inseparable ever since.

“I’ve been calling you for a solid minute.” She chuckled lightly. “You okay there?”

You sighed, taking off your glasses to rub your eyes. An annoyed groan wanted to leave your mouth, but you were quick to suppress it before making any unwanted noise while being at the library.

“Yeah, I’m fine, just tired I guess.”

Eunbi looked like she knew you weren’t completely honest, however, she didn’t push any longer for an answer and you were grateful for that. You weren’t in the mood to explain the whole disaster you were into with your brother and his best friend.

“Wanna stop here and go grab some coffee? I’m kinda tired too.”

You wanted to decline and keep studying, but truth be told, if you kept up the act of trying to busy your mind with anything to keep it away from the topic you didn’t want to speak about, it would damage you more than it already has. So the distraction was greatly appreciated and a decision was rapidly made.

“Yeah, I could use some caffeine.”

Both of you abandoned your comfortable seats at the library, gathering your belongings to start your way out to the nearest coffee shop. The breeze caressed your skin with its refreshing wind; there has been a sudden change in the weather that has put the barely tolerable heat on pause. The gray clouds were adorning the sky, which in result made you curse under your breath for not having an umbrella with you.

“Seems like it’s going to rain.” Eunbi lamented, for she didn’t bring anything to protect herself from the water either. “We better hurry to get there before it starts.”

Your gaze moved slowly down from the gloomy sky, observing your surroundings with a deep sigh trapped in your throat. The saddening weather didn’t help you to cheer up, but maybe the tall guy waiting for you a few feet away would.

It took you a few seconds to realize that it was your brother who was waving at you while leaning on the hood of his car. Taehyung seemed relaxed and nonchalant, clearly not aware of the immense joy that he had brought upon you by just being there, due to finally seeing him after so long.

“Tae?” A small whisper fell from your lips. “Eunbi, can we raincheck? I um… My brother’s here.” You looked over your friend on the side, while smiling apologetically at her.

“Of course, don’t worry about me. We can have that coffee another day.” A soft smile was all you received after that, while your friend made her way home.

Uncertainty was quickly taking its place in your chest, making it a bit difficult for you to be calm and collected. There was a weird feeling making your fingers tingle, while your skin got coated with goosebumps; one that you rapidly disclosed as fear.

You feared the reason your brother was at your university. You feared the inevitable conversation you most likely will have with him, but above all, you feared the outcome of said conversation, scared it might break you more than the whole situation already has.

Your heart was pounding rapidly against your chest while you were, albeit reluctantly, walking towards Taehyung. His soft grin didn’t mirror your awkward grimace, already creating a tense atmosphere between you two.

“What… What are you doing here?” Your question came out rather strongly, in comparison to how nervous you were. “Aren’t you supposed to be working?”

Taehyung nodded, looking down at his feet for a brief second.

“Am I not allowed to come see my little sister?”

No, when you haven’t contacted her in a whole week, you’re not.

“I guess so.” You finally answered, opting to take the easy route and avoid arguing at all costs.

“Get in, I don’t want you getting sick because of the weather.”

A simple sentence that held a lot of meaning behind. Not only was it the fact that Taehyung finally had the courage to present himself in front of you, but he also continued to care for you, even when the prospect of the bond shared between the two being more than broken by now was a possibility he strongly believed in.

Regardless of the initial surprise that painted your face and that invaded your heart, you followed his words and entered the car, tossing your things into the backseat. The ride to your house was filled with an awkward silence, neither of you daring to talk due to not knowing what to say to make things better. Your brother would often sigh and look at you, only to give you a tight-lipped smile and continue driving.

It was safe to say that things were far from being like they used to be, at least for now. It had never been a problem to start and maintain a conversation with the older guy sitting next to you, but it seems like now it was a complete torture for the both of you to be in and share the same space.

A pang of guilt struck your chest for the awkward situation you were found in. A little voice at the back of your head telling you that it was all your fault, and that you should do something quickly to fix it up.

The truth was that you, once again, didn’t know how. It was uncharted territory, not even once in your life had you been in a predicament such as the one you were currently living. It was safe to say that you didn’t know what to do.

Despite being clueless and frustrated, you finally found the courage to form a coherent sentence to break the uncomfortable silence. And it was with a shaky hand fisting your skirt and trembling lips that you finally spoke.

“So… It’s not like I’m complaining or anything, but why exactly did you come to pick me up?” You inquired, staring right at him “You’ve never done that before.”

Truth be told, Taehyung didn’t think this through, he didn’t even imagine he would get this far; the only thing he knew for sure was that he didn’t like the current situation. It was already hard to digest the news of you and his best friend being somewhat together —at least from his perspective that’s what it was—, to add the burden of not being on good terms with you to the pile of concerns that Taehyung had.

On top of that, he felt guilty. Guilty for being so hard on you, guilty for not letting you explain yourself, guilty for not caring enough about you and Jungkook’s feelings before shutting both of you out. But then again, it was a normal reaction, one that was expected from him.

It was due to that that Taehyung decided it was finally time to talk with you and sort everything out, the only thing he didn’t foresee was how awkward and hard it would be to communicate with you after a week.

“Well…” He drifted off, stopping at a red light. “We need to talk… But I think it’s better if we do that once we’re at your place.”

It was decided, and silence had, once again, conquered the space inside Taehyung’s expensive car. You didn’t bother to try to break it this time, opting to save all your energy for the, most probably, draining conversation that you and your brother would have in a matter of minutes.

The moment you saw your building becoming nearer and nearer you let out a sigh of relief. Being trapped in such a small space with such high and thick tension engulfing both of you was making you feel upset. You were thankful for the fresh air gracing your face once you stepped out of Taehyung’s car, however, your joy was short-lived due to the cold droplets of water falling rapidly from the sky.

“Hurry up inside.”

Both of you made your way quickly towards the entrance, not sparing a second glance to your landlord at the door, but rather walking straight into the elevator.

Once you were in the warm insides of your apartment, you finally let your shoulders slump, while a tired groan abandoned your lips. Taehyung followed suit, taking his shoes off at the door and walking towards your living room.

“Make yourself at home, I’ll go change.” You shared before going into your room.

Comfortable clothes, that’s what you were seeking for. If a disaster was bound to go down, at least you would be wearing your soft pair of pajama shorts and that one shirt you stole from Jimin when you were over at his and your brother’s apartment.

It was a matter of a few minutes before you encountered Taehyung once again. His eyes were locked on his phone screen, looking rather entertained by whatever he was watching.

“I’m back.” You informed him, while taking a seat next to him. “Do you… perhaps wanna talk now?”

Hesitance and curiosity were invading your mind and soul at the moment, making you feel uneasy. You shouldn’t be so aggravated or feel so anxious, it was your brother sitting beside you, not a stranger. But then again, you weren’t prepared for the conversation, and instead of taking things easy, you were overthinking every single thing about it.

“I don’t really know how to start this.” Taehyung avoided looking at you, which in result caused you to feel hurt. “I wanna say a lot of things but I don’t think I have enough words to express them.” He chuckled lightly, fidgeting with his fingers while looking right into his lap. “I’m gonna start with the obvious. I was mad, that night at the race, I got really upset. I don’t know what pushed you to make the decision of hiding such a thing from me, but it really hurt Y/n.”

You knew that already. You knew that you fucked up and that it affected Taehyung more than he would like to admit, but it was the path you chose, the only thing left to do was walk through it and accept all the consequences.

“There was no need, you know?” It was then that he looked at you. “Like I told you that night, I wasn’t upset about you two being together and I never would. What you do with your love life or who you decide to be with is none of my business. I can’t stop you from liking someone, even if that someone is my best friend.” Taehyung let out a sigh, searching for the right words to say. “I got mad because you lied to me. I don’t like when you do that or hide things from me, it makes me feel as if you don’t trust me. And I really don’t want to think that’s the case.”

“It’s not!” You were quick to say, already fearing he would get the wrong idea. “I swear I trust you, you are the only person I actually confide the majority of my life to.” You sighed, feeling a heavy weight on your chest. “I’m sorry I made you feel that way.”

“I think it’s partially my fault. Maybe I haven’t been doing a good job at being a trustworthy brother.”

You wanted to say no, to make him stop thinking that way about himself, but he didn’t give you the time.

“What I want to say is… I might have been mad at you, at Jungkook and at the whole situation, but I’m also sorry for how I reacted.” Taehyung finally let out the words that were bugging him ever since that night. “I’m sorry I shut you out completely for this long, and I’m sorry for not talking things through sooner. I can’t control the decisions you make, and most importantly I shouldn’t be upset about the guys you get involved with. I just…” Taehyung drifted off. “I was just worried about you getting hurt that I didn’t notice the big mistake I made. I didn’t take into account your feelings and how my words would hurt you and for that I’m so fucking sorry.”

Seven days, five hours and fifteen minutes. That’s how long it took to finally hear your brother’s voice again. That’s how long it took to finally sort things out. That’s how long it took Taehyung to say those awaited words.

Seven days passed, and not even once you stopped thinking about what would happen if you were to have the opportunity to explain everything.

Until now.

“Taehyung,” You whispered, “you don’t need to apologize, I should be the one apologizing. It was so fucked up of me going behind your back and messing around with Jungkook.” You sighed. “I didn’t think things through and it almost cost me your trust and love, and for that you have no idea how sorry I am.”

Taehyung smiled softly at you, reaching out to squeeze your hand.

“Don’t be so hard on yourself.” He said.

“I’m not, I’m just being honest.” You lightly argued. “Still, I’m sorry for lying to you, for hiding things from you, for… For messing around with your best friend. You didn’t deserve any of it.” A tight-lipped grin was sent his way. “I promise I won’t do anything like that again, I value our bond more than any quick fuck.”

Taehyung hissed, retrieving his hand from yours.

“When you say it like that it sounds weird.”

You chuckled, poking his side in a playful manner.

“Hey, I’m trying to be serious here, don’t ruin the moment.” You complained.

“I’m sorry, but it’s weird listening to my little sister saying she had a quick… well, that.” He grimaced, shaking his head to prevent himself from getting any unwanted mental image of it.

“It’s not like you don’t do it.” You scoffed, feeling suddenly defensive. “But that’s not the point of this conversation. What I really wanna know is… Are we good? Do you forgive me?”

Taehyung smiled at you sweetly, “Only if you forgive me too.”

It was a no brainer. You would do anything to go back to normality, to have your brother in the same way you have always had him. To not be scared of saying or doing the wrong thing; to finally be free of lies and secrets.

“I do.” You responded cheerfully.

You found yourself wrapping your arms around his torso, while resting your head on his shoulder. One of Taehyung’s hands came up to caress your hair, sweetly, while the other was softly patting your back. You were finally where you needed— wanted to be, and somehow it still felt weird.

There was a feeling of something missing, like a part of you was still holding onto an invisible string, tying you to someone whom you weren’t ready to face just yet. It didn’t take much to figure out why you were feeling that way, but it only served to leave you with more doubts and confusion.

Why was your heart calling his name? Why was your soul hurting for him? Why was your mind thinking of him?

All those questions were left unanswered, although you already knew the reason. The line between accepting the hard truth and ignoring your feelings was so thin that you didn’t even notice when you crossed it, but you definitely felt it. Like salt rubbed on a fresh wound, your heart ached just as much when the thought of Jungkook finally letting go of you was presented in your mind. That’s mostly why your heart, mind and soul were so desperately seeking his presence.

Maybe that’s even why you would tear up at night while staring at your phone. Waiting for a text, for a call, for anything that would let you know that even in some twisted reality, Jeon Jungkook felt the same for you.

“Youf shouf call hif.”

Eunbi was stuffing her face with a fresh baked bagel, not really minding how little you could understand about what she was saying, due to her full mouth.

“Could you please swallow your food before speaking? I can’t understand you.” A grimace took place on your face, while watching your friend enjoy her food.

You weren’t against Eunbi being so openly in love with whatever she was eating, but there was a limit for your patience when it came to eating etiquette.

“I said…” She finally swallowed the bite she took. “You should call him.”

A confused look was sent her way, while you took a sip of your iced coffee.

“Whom?” You asked, looking at her quizzically. “Be more specific, I just told you about what’s been going on in my life and I mentioned a lot of people.”

It took some convincing but Eunbi finally got all the gossip out of you. It was weird at first, to confess to someone else rather than to the people involved in the problem about everything that happened, let alone about your painfully obvious feelings. Because, although you weren’t ready to openly admit it yet, Eunbi didn’t need to know much to understand what was really happening in that complicated heart of yours.

“Your brother’s friend.” She answered after taking a sip of her drink. “That guy, Joncook.”

“Jungkook.” You corrected her with an annoyed sigh. Whether she has been purposely pronouncing his name wrong or she seriously couldn’t remember it, you didn’t know. “I already told you his name is Jungkook.”

“Potato, potahto.” Eunbi shrugged, cleaning her mouth after finishing her food. “Point stands. Call him.”

“Why would I? Didn’t you listen to anything I just said?” You asked thoroughly confused, “Clearly he’s not into me, otherwise he wouldn’t have said that it was a no strings attached type of thing.”

Eunbi wanted to hit you in the head to knock some sense into you. It was obvious, not only to her but to anyone who came across you two during those months of secret encounters. Jungkook, the rebellious and cold hearted man that anyone deemed as the raunchiest fuckboy, but that surprisingly most people would be willing to fuck. That’s who Jungkook was, but for Eunbi, for his friends and even for your own brother, Jeon was just a guy afraid to show his real feelings for you.

Almost too sickeningly cute, with his doe eyes and dumb smile, ready to go to the ends of the Earth to make you laugh or at least get a grin out of you. It was so painfully obvious to anyone but you how badly in love he was. It wasn’t infatuation, although at first it was a huge possibility; it wasn’t a simple crush despiste starting as one. It went beyond that, beyond the weak barriers of taking a liking of his best friend’s sister. It was more than just saying that he thought you were attractive, although he clearly thought that.

Jeon Jungkook had it bad for you. But how could you be able to see that?

The only face he would ever show you was one full of indifference, overconfidence and nonchalance; adorned with a smug smile and a pair of darkened eyes that warned you with a simple look that pure chaos was about to ensue. However, he did treat you differently than most girls. Jungkook would never get out of his bed at one in the morning just because your friends ditched you at a bar at the very last minute and you were too scared to call an Uber or a taxi.

He’s never remembered the coffee order of the girls he’s hooked up with, but oddly enough he remembers the exact amount of sugar you like in yours; Jungkook wouldn’t even remember their names. But yours? Yours was embroidered on the very front of his brain, not willing to erase it, not willing to forget it. Your order would be the first thing that comes to his mind every time he’s at a coffee shop, and more often than not he’s made the mistake of ordering yours instead of his, only to realize what he did a second too late. Your name was always at the tip of his tongue, risking his opportunity to fuck a random girl he met at a party. All because he almost said your name.

All those things were unmistakable, not easy to be looked over or ignored.

But once again, how could you be able to notice that the man was head over heels for you? When you wouldn’t even let your heart accept its own feelings.

“Do I really need to say it?” Eunbi deadpanned, staring at you with an annoyed look. “My god, Y/n, you’re not usually this dumb!”

“Excuse you?” You look offended, and rightfully so, but you were also ignoring the fact that your friend was just trying to make you see the obvious. “You’re being mean right now.”

“And you’re not being reasonable.” She sighed in exhaustion. “At least think about it, alright? If what you told me it’s anything to go by, that boy has it bad for you.”

Thinking is all you did, thinking is all you knew; it seemed to be like an easy task, but in hindsight it was way more difficult. It took you two more days to actually come to the conclusion that Eunbi may be right, and for those two days your mind didn’t have a peaceful moment to even worry about your upcoming exams. Your brain was completely fried at that point, full with possibilities and theories of what the outcome of finally confronting Jungkook might be.

The first possible outcome was the least feared out of the thousands.

If you were to reach Jungkook through a text, he would not reply. Now, that wasn’t really that bad, and in a more down to earth mindset, it would be completely deserved. Your not so reasonable side of your brain reassured you that he would and most likely will reply to any text you send him. Why wouldn’t he, after all?

The second possible outcome was one that you didn’t want to acknowledge.

If you were to call him, Jungkook would hang up after telling you to fuck off for not reaching out sooner. Seemed fitting and a very Jungkook-thing to do, but still you wished for that scenario to be false.

The last one was the worst among the assumptions swimming through your head. If you were to finally confess your feelings… he would reject you.

Rejection as a whole seemed like a terrifying experience. People would often avoid getting to that point, whether it would be them facing rejection or being the culprit of someone else’s broken heart. You had been on both sides, had gone through both experiences; it wasn’t anything you would like to live again. Hence to why you were trying so hard to suppress your feelings.

Poor and weak heart of yours, it didn’t choose who you love, but it certainly chose who you hurt. And as it turns out, it wasn’t only your brother who got caught in the crossfire.

Ever since you were a kid, flowers made you feel at ease. Their smell, their texture, even their bright colors. Anything about flowers was as relaxing as a day at the beach, at least for you.

You grew to be that one girl completely enamored with nature, and your fascination for flowers was only enhanced once you realized that people would use them as a token of love and appreciation for others. It was romantic, it was pure, it was honest. Gifting flowers to those who you loved and appreciated, to those who you held close to your heart, was such a kind and lovely gesture.

It was the purest act of love you could come across.

The meaning behind every kind of flower was such a wonderful thing to discover. Daisies were often a symbol of happiness and purity; whereas hydrangeas symbolize comfort in times of sorrow, especially at funerals. Orchids often represented beauty and strength, as well as the flowers birds of paradise. Roses, often associated with deep passion and love, had variations in meaning due to their colors; they could represent innocence and purity if they were white, or friendship and warmth if they were yellow.

However, among all those types of flowers, the ones you were holding in your hands at the moment were the hardest ones to carry with you. For no other reason than their meaning.

Striped carnations were often known for representing regret and remorse. They were used to apologize for past actions or mistakes.

It seemed fitting, so you bought the bouquet when you passed by a flower shop on your way to Jungkook’s house.

It took you way too long, but it was after one decisive night in that lonesome room of yours, fighting back the tears while finally reading those soft and beautiful words Jungkook used to pour his heart out, to confess his unmistakable love for you, that you finally made the decision. It was now or never, whatever the outcome of this might be, you’d face it and endure it.

So it was with shaky hands and wobbly legs that you carried yourself to Jeon’s apartment, holding the flowers tightly, afraid that they might disappear if you loosen the grip.

Several seconds passed with you standing outside his door, fearing that if you knocked reality might finally hit you in the face with the bitter truth: Jungkook didn’t want you anymore.

“Are you gonna stand there all day, or you’ll finally let me get in my house?”

That husky and seductive voice. It was hard to miss and hard to mistake it for anyone else’s. That particular voice tone has been playing in your head ever since the night everything went down. It was obvious who it belonged to, and the undeniable fact only made your nerves reach a whole new level.

“See, I wouldn’t usually complain about a pretty girl standing outside my door, but I really need to get these bags inside.” Jungkook didn’t seem bothered by your presence, and even if he did you would never notice.

Maybe you made the right choice to come and finally talk, or maybe you didn’t.

Truth was that as it has been stated many times before, you were very oblivious, so it would be no surprise if you read the room wrong. But then again, he called you pretty, right? Wouldn’t that count for something?

“I— Yes! Fuck, sorry, I didn’t know you weren’t home.”

First apology of the night; many more to come.

“Would you mind helping me get my keys?” The dark-haired man in front of you turned around, just the right amount to insinuate that you grab the keys from his back pocket. “The left one.”

Hesitantly, you reached out and dug into his pocket to retrieve the keys and give them to him. There was a light and soft touch when your fingers brushed that sent a slight shiver through your body.

It has been so long since the last time you were this close to Jungkook that you were already forgetting his touch, his smell and the way he could mesmerize you with a single look.

“Come on in.” Jeon led the way inside his house. “Get comfortable while I put this away.”

Jungkook was quick to make his way to the kitchen, getting the groceries out of the bags and setting everything in their respective place. It was hard for you to loosen up and get comfortable in a space that became foreign to you. Had it been any other time, you wouldn’t have thought twice before sitting on the couch, or even following him to the kitchen to tell Jungkook about your day while he loaded his fridge with meat and veggies. But now it was different. Now you felt an increasing tension between you two, which made you stand stiff in the middle of his living room, rethinking your decision of finally confronting him.

It was not that you were a coward —maybe you were— but more so the fact that you didn’t know how to have a proper and serious conversation with the guy in question. The talk you had with your brother was orchestrated by Taehyung himself, you only chimed in to apologize profusely, which shouldn’t have been enough but seemed to be more than sufficient for your brother. However, this time the ball was in your court, you were meant to do the talking while Jungkook was expected to listen attentively or at least pretend he was.

Maybe you should’ve thought this through before putting your plan into action, but it was too late to back down now, and in all honesty, you weren’t sure if you were capable to postpone this conversation any longer.

“I gotta admit, when Taehyung told me you were planning on paying me a visit I didn't believe him.” Jungkook’s voice rang through your ears once again, he walked back from the kitchen, becoming aware of your quizzical look. “Oh, he didn’t tell you we were back on friendly terms, I see.” He chuckled, beckoning you to sit on the couch with him.

Not only did your brother omit the fact that he was back to being friends with Jungkook, but also he couldn’t keep his mouth shut about your plans of finally talking to Jeon, which made you upset by default. You thought that by now secrets and hiding things would have been out of the picture between you and Taehyung, but it looked like it was only you who decided to go down the path of honesty.

“You two… Is everything okay between you and my brother?” It was only fair to ask, although you already knew the answer.

Jungkook nodded, looking away from you.

“He called me a few days ago to talk, and well…” He drifted off. “I would say that everything’s back to normal.”

“That’s good.” You nodded.

It truly was. It might not seemed like it, but you were equally concerned about their bond being broken as you were about yours with your brother. It would deeply pain you to know that they couldn’t continue to be the best of friends after the incident. It sent you a sense of relief that they were on good terms again, at least you didn’t have to worry about ruining their friendship anymore.

“Are those for me?” His sudden question made you blink repeatedly. “The flowers, I mean.”

Looking down at your lap you realized that you were still tightly holding the bouquet of striped carnations.

“Oh… yes, they’re for you.” Your hands moved slowly to softly place the bouquet on Jungkook’s palm.

“Why thank you.” He seemed surprised. “Usually I’m the one gifting flowers, not the other way around, so this is a first. Although, I don’t know if I should feel flattered or concerned that you’re giving me…” Jungkook stopped for a moment to look at the flowers more attentively. “Striped carnations.”

Of course he knew the meaning of the flowers. When has Jungkook not made you feel like a total idiot due to his undeniable intelligence?

“Yeah, well…” You drifted off, not really knowing what to say.

The dark-haired guy let out a soft sigh, while the ghost of a smile took place on his lips.

“Why are you here, Y/n?” Jungkook asked, silently urging you to answer honestly. “We both know you’re not here just to deliver these.”

You took a deep breath, avoiding his eyes for a second. In theory, it shouldn’t be this hard to answer his question or to start the speech that you have been memorizing all these days, but it was easier said than done. It was as if all the words in the English language had vanished from your brain, and you were left with dumb sounds that wouldn’t help your case.

“Maybe I should change my question.” Jungkook placed the flowers on this coffee table, before speaking again. “Are you sure you want to go through this today? It’s obvious you came here to talk about us, but how I see it, you might not be ready for it yet.”

You shook your head, squirming in your place to find a more comfortable position.

“I wanna do this, I really do.” You assured him. “I just don’t know how to start.”

The tattooed man nodded, carefully sliding a bit closer to you.

“Maybe you can start by telling me why you gave me those flowers.”

Jungkook, bless his heart, always knew how to get the best out of you. It was easy for him to get people to talk about things they didn’t even know they needed to let out. It almost made you think he had some sort of magic going on that would compel others to be open about their feelings.

“They… They symbolize regret.” You finally answered. “They’re usually given when you want to apologize to someone.”

It was certainly easier to explain the meaning than to actually do it, but it must count for something, right?

“Mhmm.” He hummed, waiting for you to continue with your explanation. “Why give them to me then?”

“Because I want to apologize to you.” There, you finally said it, there was no going back. “I’m sorry, Jungkook.” Taking a deep breath you continued. “I’m sorry about what happened that night, I’m sorry for the way I treated you afterwards; I’m sorry for putting all the blame on you when I was just as guilty. I’m so fucking sorry for the things I did and said.”

You felt like you could finally breathe, like a weight was slowly lifting off your shoulders.

“You didn’t deserve any of that.” Tears were starting to cloud your vision. “I didn’t mean it when I said I wished I didn’t meet you. It was so stupid of me to say it, getting to know you has been one of the most complicated yet amazing things that have happened to me. And I’m truly sorry that I wasn’t able to show it.”

Jeon reached out to wipe away the tears that were starting to run down your cheeks.

“Please don’t cry.” He begged, almost too quietly.

It pained him how aggravated and distressed you were, right in front of him. Jungkook knew it was only right for you to apologize but it wasn’t fair that you were suffering so much when he was at fault too.

“I’m sorry too.” He finally apologized. “I did things wrong, I shouldn’t have agreed to hide all of this from Taehyung. I knew we weren’t doing the right thing, but I let it slide because it meant I could have you longer.”

Jeon regretted how things went down, but it would be a lie if he said he didn’t enjoy his time with you. Jungkook knew that the moment the truth was out, it would only complicate everything for the both of you; not to mention that he was scared that Taehyung would prohibit him from being near you. Jungkook was so weak for you that he couldn’t stand the possibility of losing you so easily. And so it was decided that it would be kept as a secret for as long as you two deemed necessary. However, he didn’t really think that the outcome would be so painful.

“I just… I couldn’t bear not being with you. I couldn’t let you go.” Jungkook confessed. “I’m sorry. A lot of things would’ve been different if I did.”

“No.” You shook your head. “Even if you tried, I wouldn’t have let it happen.” You brushed the tears away, trying to keep your composure. “Could you please forgive me? I don’t… I don’t want you to hate me”

You were silently praying that the answer to your question would be yes. It scared you that he reserved the right to reject you and move on with his life. After all, it wouldn’t surprise you if he did, it would be rightfully deserved.

However, Jungkook once again proved to you that he was way different from what you picture him to be.

“I already forgave you, sweet cheeks.”

His smile, oh how much you missed his smile. It was the rainbow you needed to see after a storm. Like a warm blanket during a snowy day. Like the comfort you seeked when everything outside was falling apart.

It was so him, and it almost brought you back to tears when you finally saw it. Shining so bright and pretty on his face.

“And I’m afraid that there’s nothing you could do to make me hate you.” His hand reached out to cup your cheek, making you lean into his touch. “Would you be willing to forgive me too? I know I hurt you with the things I’ve done, but–”

“Yes. I forgive you, Kook.” You smiled at him softly.

“That means we’re good, right?”

If only it was that easy.

There was one thing that was still bothering you and it was the unmistakable feelings for the boy in front of you. Confessing has always been hard, but when it comes to confessing your feelings to Jeon Jungkook, it was ten times worse.

“Actually, there’s something I still need to talk about.” You approached the matter carefully.

“What is it?” Jungkook felt uneasy, he didn’t know what else you had to say, but it was making him nervous. As if he knew something bad would happen. “Are you still upset?”

“No! No, no, it’s not that.” You assured him. “I… it might be a dumb question but… That text, the one you sent me the last time you tried to reach out to me.”

Why was it so hard to say it?

“Did you mean it, all of it?”

A sigh abandoned Jungkook’s lips, and the hand that was once holding your face, slowly retrieved to fall on his lap.

That was it, he was gonna reject you. That was the thought running through your head. His lack of response set a crack in your heart, making you feel vulnerable, making you feel dumb. It was obvious what his answer was going to be, why did you even have to ask?

“You read it?” Jungkook finally spoke. “I thought you simply decided to ignore it.”

You sighed, feeling ashamed of your actions.

“I did at first. I mean, I only got to read it as of recent because I… might have blocked you.” You cringed after finally confessing what you did. “I know it was childish, trust me, but I was mad at the time and I thought it was for the better.”

Jungkook simply nodded, showing you a reassuring smile.

“So yes, I read it, and I would be lying if I said it didn’t surprise me.” You looked like in his eyes. “That’s why I’m asking… Did you really mean it?”

The words adorning your screen late at night while you were reading the long paragraph he sent you were engraved in your brain. It was all memorized at this point. You spent night after night reading every single word while tears were spurting out of your eyes, lamenting that you didn’t open his message sooner.

I would never forgive me for the pain I’ve caused you.

I’m sorry for being a coward and not saying this to your face.

You already knew how sorry he was, not only because he apologized only a few seconds ago, but Jungkook also poured his heart and soul into that message, letting you know how deeply sorry he felt for what he put you through.

This is me being honest, this is me being true to myself.

The confession was the hardest part to read, but it was equally shocking and relieving to know that…

I wish I could say this to you, face to face.

He indeed…

But I can’t hide it any longer.

Felt the same…

I love you, Y/n.

For you.

“I did. I meant it, with my whole heart.” Jungkook smiled at you, sweetly, delicately, lovingly. He wanted to express his love for you in any way he could, in every gesture, every word, every smile. “I don’t know if I might regret this later or not, but what I know is that I don’t want to act as if I weren’t so madly in love with you.”

His answer drew a gasp out of you. It was one thing reading his confession and getting to know his real feelings for you, but listening to him say it out loud was a new, different experience.

Jungkook looked at you as if you held the world in the palm of your hands, as if you were the remedy for his pain; as if you were the only person worth fighting for. And maybe you were. He’s never felt any sort of feeling that could come close to the emotions he has experienced and continues to experience with you. His heart has never beaten so hard to the point of feeling as if it were to escape from his chest. It only felt like that when he was around you.

You were the reason for Jungkook's many sleepless nights, when Jeon could only think of every little detail about you that he loved so much. Your laugh, your smile, the way a frown would be adorning your face when you try to concentrate, or how adorable you look while playing with any pet you come across.

It was so hard for him to get you out of his mind; so difficult to erase the feeling of your skin burning against his, of your lips traveling all around his body to leave marks that he prayed would last a lifetime, because maybe that way, at least a part of you would stay within himself.

“I know you might not feel the same.” His husky voice echoed through the walls of his living room after a moment of silence. “And I didn’t say all those things in hopes you would reciprocate my feelings. I just couldn’t keep hiding it anymore.”

His words were running through your mind, as a distant noise. You wanted to say a lot of things, to scream from the top of your lungs that you loved him just as much, or maybe even more than he did you. But your brain and mouth weren’t connected, as it seems, because instead of putting an end to both of your sufferings, you opted to ask him:

“How long have you felt this way?”

Jungkook sighed, reminiscing about all the moments where he felt like falling in love with you. There weren’t that many, in all honesty, but every single one of them felt like the loveliest of dreams.

“I’m not entirely sure.” He confessed. “Maybe it was when I first met you and you were so nervous around me that you even tripped over your feet and fell onto me.” A smile was slowly appearing on his face, “Or perhaps it was when I picked you up from your friends house that one night. You were absolutely hammered and babbling about one of your friends doing a backflip while drinking a shot.”

“I was a complete mess that time.”

It was embarrassing to remember that night. You drank and ate so much that you ended up emptying your stomach the moment you walked in your house. The majority of it was a blur, but despite your clouded memory you could still remember the silly things you were saying to Jungkook.

It also happened to be the first time you almost confessed your feelings for him.

“You say that, but back then I thought that you were the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen, with that green dress and your rosy cheeks.” Jungkook reached out to caress your face with his thumb. “The way you smiled at me that night… it was so hard for me not to kiss you until I lost breath.”

His words felt like a warm hug to your heart. Love is always a nightmare when you fall alone, and for so long you felt like it was only you who felt the chemistry between the two.

“Truth is, that I don’t know when or how I fell for you, it just naturally happened.” He smiled at you, cupping your cheek once again. “And I think it’s your fault I fell this hard.” Before you could protest, he continued. “How could I not develop feelings when you’re such a lovable person, Y/n. So caring, kind and beautiful through and through. Anyone would be lucky to have you in their life and call you theirs.”

“Do it then.” A clear and determined glint was adorning your eyes. “Have me and call me yours.”

Your bold request surprised both of you. Jungkook wasn’t expecting you to say such a thing, let alone that you would indirectly confess that you wanted him in the same way he did you.

“What’d you say?”

“If you’re willing to have me, I want to be yours.” The anticipation was killing you, making all your senses be on the lookout for any sign of discomfort on Jungkook’s face. “I like you, Kook, and I mean it with my whole heart.”

Jeon couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He had already accepted the fact that you didn’t reciprocate his feelings. A one sided, unrequited love was all he got, but perhaps life finally decided to give me a breather and let him have the ounce of happiness that the boy desperately craved all along.

“You mean… you feel the same?” He asked carefully, waiting for your answer impatiently. “You lo—, no, you like me too?”

With a soft nod and a bright smile, you answered: “I do. I do like you, and I do love you, Jungkook.”

The words felt foreign coming from your mouth, as if you never imagined yourself proclaiming your love for the boy on countless nights. Reality, however, was way better than any hypothetical scenario where Jungkook would run to you to say it was mutual.

You could see the exact moment when your words finally made sense in his head, when he finally realized that this was not a dream and that you, in fact, felt the same for him.

“You better not be joking.” Jeon teased, still being a bit apprehensive that you might laugh at his face as part of some twisted prank to break his heart. “This is… not how I imagined this would go.”

“Me neither, but I can promise you that I’m being as serious and honest as I can be.”

“I believe you.”

And he really did; deep down Jungkook knew that even if life would want to turn on him and watch him suffer, you would never play a part in that. Your words felt sincere, despite the hesitation in your voice and your fidgeting fingers.

Jungkook was sure that he could lay his heart in your hands, and let you take it away to make it yours, and he would never have to worry of you hurting it.

“Now, does that mean we’re good, right?” He asked once again, with a bright grin on his face.

“Yes, we’re good now.” You giggled, sliding closer to him.

“So, can I kiss you now?”

You stopped in your tracks, with your wide-eyed gaze and tingling fingers, ready to feel his skin on yours.

It has been a long time since the last kiss you two shared, you would be lying if you said you weren’t needy for his kisses or his touch, and so, without a second thought you leaned in, stopping just a few inches from his face.

“Do it.”

Jungkook didn’t need more than that. Your words were enough to make him lose his composure and crash his lips against yours.

A warm sensation spread all around your body, filling you with ecstasy and the serotonin you much needed, also luring you to take more and more of him. Your hands started a slow trip up his torso to finally wrap around his neck and pull him closer than before.

Jungkook was holding you with such delicacy, as if he were scared that you would break. It felt like a lifetime since the last time he had you like this and the boy was afraid he would do something that could ruin the moment. Days and days Jeon spent replaying in his head those moments full of passion and need that you two loved to share; the times where he would have you in his arms, silently claiming you as his, while his lips traveled across your skin to paint your flesh with hues of red and purple. Back then, Jungkook could only hope that said marks would fade slowly, letting him enjoy the way your body had proof that the only man able to take all your inhibitions and make you reach the sky was no other than himself.

Now, feeling you like this, touching you like this, without the fear of someone seeing you and starting rumors, without the worry of hiding from your brother, and with the clear understanding that both of you feel the same for the other, Jungkook could finally enjoy the moment to the fullest. His warm hands engulfing you in his tender touch distracted you from his desperate lips running up and down your neck, and from his teeth sinking into your flesh.

A moan escaped from your mouth, parting your lips while a rush of heat conquered every inch of your skin. It was becoming difficult to keep the moment nice and romantic, without turning it into a hot mess of kisses and inappropriate touching.

“I love you, Y/n.” Jungkook whispered into your ear, before pulling slightly away to look right into your eyes. “I really do.”

His soft gaze ignited a bubbling feeling at the pit of your stomach, making you want to stay like this forever, just staring at each other with tender smiles. But a part of you knew it wouldn’t be enough, you wanted more, craved more, so it was no surprise when you pushed Jungkook to rest on the back of the couch while you moved to straddle him.

“Show me.” You asked. “Show me how much you love me.”

A sly smirk took place on Jungkook’s face, while his hands acted automatically to be placed on your hips and hold you down on his lap.

“I’m not sure you can handle it.” He teased. “That you can handle me.”

The tattooed man was looking for a challenge, to start a play of who can handle more before they get so desperate that clothes start to fly out all around the house.

“Try me, then.” You argued back. “I promise you, you’ll be surprised to find out how much of you I can handle.”

A scoff passed his lips while his hands tightened the grip on your hips.

“You sure you want this night to go like this? Don’t you prefer we take this slower?” Even if there was a light mocking tone attached to his voice, concern and worry were also adorning it.

Jungkook was still scared that tonight might be just a dream and that once he closes his eyes you would slip through his fingers to never be found again. He didn’t want to make or say the wrong thing, and it worried him that falling into old habits would do the damage he was trying to avoid.

“Do you want to take things slower?”

It was a possibility you never considered, but coming to think of it, maybe it was better to take it easy before rushing to do things you might not be ready to do just yet.

It was a fresh start after all, but maybe that didn’t implied fucking on the same night you two finally confessed your feelings for the other.

“I want you, but I don’t want to ruin this chance we have now.” His answer warmed your heart, making you smile at him. “I don’t want to make old mistakes and make you think I’m only using you for your body.”

“I know you’re not, at least now I do.” You assured him. “I want you, Jungkook, and I want this with you, but if you’re not ready that’s completely fine, we don’t have to do anything.”

He shook his head, wrapping both of his arms around your waist to hold you close to him.

“I just wanted to make sure you were okay with this.” A kiss was softly placed on your lips, before Jungkook suddenly stood up with you in his arms, carrying you to his bedroom. “But if we’re gonna do this, let’s do it somewhere comfortable.”

“The couch was comfortable enough.” You giggled, holding onto him to make sure you didn't fall.

“Maybe, but my girl deserves better than that.”

The last time you were in his room was when Jungkook decided it was a good idea to stay in, instead of going out with your friends. He managed to convince you to stay with him, as he promised you a night full of food, drinks and his head buried in between your thighs.

Back then you didn’t care to observe the little details that made Jungkook’s room so him.

His walls were painted with a somber hue of blue, adorned with pictures of him and the rest of his friend group or his family. Your brother appeared in most of the photos, as Jungkook cherished every single moment they have spent together. There was even a picture of him and his dog, Bam, which was currently at his parents house, framed on the nightstand. The rest of the room was as any guy’s room would be; clothes scattered across the floor, that you would often steal from him whenever you were at his place; messy desk with cans of beer and energy drinks, as well as his computer and a pair of headphones; two vapes were also left on the desk, next to a pair of rings and a watch.

The bed was adorned with a single pillow and white sheets. He didn’t need much as he lived alone, but anytime you were over Jungkook would try to accommodate his house to make you feel comfortable.

“Sorry for the lack of pillows.” He apologized when he put you down on the soft mattress. “I didn’t know you were coming over, or I would’ve gotten the one you like so much.”

“It’s not like we’re gonna use it right now, so we’re good.” You chuckled tugging his shirt to bring him down to you. “Now, please do something, I’ve been waiting for way too long to have you like this again.”

“So impatient.” He smirked, running his hands up and down your sides. “Let me take my time with you, like you said, it’s been too long.”

Jungkook started a trail of kisses down your neck, while his hands pushed up the fabric of your shirt to knead your hot skin.

“We need to take this off.” He didn’t waste a moment to take your shirt off, admiring your upper body with hungry eyes. “Fuck, I missed seeing you like this, baby.”

Jeon didn’t give you time to reply before his mouth attacked your lips once again. There was desperation and neediness coursing through both of your bodies and it was palpable how bad you wanted one another, which in result made the two of you act clumsy while getting undressed.

Jungkook struggled to take off your bra and pants but he finally did, leaving you only in your underwear. His hands ran up to fondle your tits, feeling them and tugging at your nipples while his lips were rapidly traveling down to the place where you needed him the most.

“So fucking perfect, you have no idea how much I wanted to have you like this.” He confessed, placing wet kisses all around your inner thighs.

“Jungkook…” You called for him in a breathy voice, while squirming in your place.

The sensations he was sending right to your core were making it impossible for you to stay put.

“Please…” You begged.

“Please, what?” He asked. “What do you want, beautiful?”

It was hard for you to talk, especially with his mouth so dangerously close to your soaked cunt, but you managed.

“Please touch me.” You moaned out, hands traveling down to pull his hair and get him closer to your core.

“Is this not enough?” Jungkook inquired, playfully. He didn’t relent, getting out of your grasp to do as he pleased. “Do you need more, baby?”

A nod was all he got, but that wouldn’t cut it, not for Jungkook.

“Use your words.” A harsh smack was delivered to one of your thighs, making it jiggle. “Come on, be good and tell me what you want.”

Groaning you rested your weight on your shoulders to look down at him with desperate eyes.

“Please touch me here.” Your hand moved rapidly to caress your center through your wet underwear. “I need you so bad.”

“That’s all you had to say, sweetheart.” Jungkook didn’t waste a second longer on teasing you, instead he made sure to take off your dripping panties, putting them to the side and forcing your legs to stay wide open. “Look at that, so pretty and wet for me, huh?” He ran his fingers through your folds, smearing your juices all over. “This is just for me, right baby?”

You nodded vehemently, chasing after his touch.

“Yes, only you can get me like this.”

The tattooed guy dipped down, placing a dangerous kiss right under your navel, so close yet so far away from where you needed him the most. A fire was ignited in between your legs, and Jungkook was the perfect remedy for that. His lips traveled down slowly, coming face to face with your dripping cunt. He took his sweet time licking up and down your folds, his wet tongue felt wonderful against your burning flesh, making you elicit the sweetest of sounds just for him.

“Fuck, that feels so good.” Moan after moan, your composure and sanity were slowly disappearing, leaving you with an ardent need to grind against his tongue. “Faster, please…”

Your boy couldn’t deny any of your wishes, and so his pace quickened in a matter of seconds, running his tongue up and down as fast as he could, only momentarily stopping at your clit to suck on it before continuing with his ministrations. Jungkook was avidly eating you out, enjoying the taste of your juices on his hot tongue and the feeling of your entrance clenching on it whenever he let it slip in. It was like heaven on earth, like a much needed meal he waited for so long. And just like a starved man, Jeon did his best to devour you until there was nothing else from you that he could take.

“Don’t stop, I’m so fucking close!” You could feel his fingers opening your folds to make their way inside your cunt, pumping in and out at a slow pace. “Oh my god!”

Your hands were still pulling at his hair, desperately trying to get a good hold on him to bring him closer and closer to you.

“You taste so freaking good, baby.” Jungkook pulled away to inhale some air before diving in again and smothering his face with your soaking folds. “Fuck, best pussy I’ve ever had.”

His nasty words were making your eyes flutter shut, with a stream of curses falling off your lips. It was ridiculous how good he could make you feel with his mouth and his fingers, you always wondered how he knew exactly what to do to make you see the stars. Jungkook was so good at reading your body, even better than you ever could; his touch was delicious, charged with the right amount of passion to throw you over the edge.

“You getting close, doll? Wanna come on my tongue, hm?”

“Yes, please! I’m so close.” You begged, breathlessly. “I just— fuck, need it… need to cum, please.”

A chuckle vibrated against your cunt, making you shiver. His fingers slipped out of your hole, leaving you empty and needy.

“Go on, pretty, cum for me.”

It was almost automatic; the moment those words left Jungkook’s mouth, the waves of your pending orgasm finally crashed over your body, making your legs shake and leaving your skin coated in goosebumps. Eyes fully shut and mouth widely open, not caring about the obscene sounds coming out of it like a chant. Jeon’s name was repeated over and over like a broken record, just like a fervent believer would pray away their sins, so vehemently, so desperately. His name was attached to your brain, making it the only coherent word leaving your lips.

“There you go, that’s my good girl.” He caressed your sides softly. “You look so beautiful when you cum.”

His praise made your head feel fuzzy and the fire between your legs was fueled once again, ready for another round.

Slowly you opened your eyes, blinking away the tiredness and trying to focus on the boy in front of you. His face became clearer and clearer, providing you with one of his breath-taking smiles.

“You good there?” Jungkook asked, sweetly, while a tender kiss was placed on your lips. “D’you wanna take a moment?”

You shook your head, still recovering your ability to speak properly.

“I wanna…” A whisper ran through his ears, prompting him to lean closer. “Want to…”

“What do you want, my love?”

My love.

Jungkook has never called you that before, and if you were to be true, it felt fucking amazing to hear him say it.

“You, I want you.” It was your final answer, looking right up at him with a fierce glare.

Your hands reached out to palm him through his boxers, feeling his hard erection twitch under your touch. The dark-haired boy hissed at the sensation of your fingers wrapping around his cock, while giving it a light squeeze.

“You don’t— shit, you don’t have to.” Jeon reassured you. “Let me… take care of you.”

“But I want to.” You argued back, slipping your hand inside his underwear. He felt heavy and warm, and so painfully hard that it made you feel bad that he had to stay confined in the small space of his boxers while he ate you out. “Let me taste you, baby.”

You were craving his cock ever since you stepped into his room; the mental image of his dick pumping in and out of your mouth left you salivating, almost whimpering at the thought.

“Please, I wanna make you feel good too.”

Jungkook closed his eyes for a brief moment, pondering if he should let you have your way or if it was better to turn you around and fuck you into oblivion. He reasoned, at the end, that he could do both. Jeon would let you have your fun for a moment, and afterwards he would completely destroy you with his cock.

“How can I say no to such a pretty baby?” He grinned at you, getting in a more comfortable position while taking his underwear off. “It’s all yours, sweetheart.”

Scrambling quickly to rest on your hands and knees, you took his cock into one of your palms, slowly stroking him and smearing the drop of saliva you spat onto his dick, to make it easier for you to move your hand.

It was such an amazing sensation, your small hand struggling to wrap around his thick cock, fighting your own urge to pump him dry until he was whimpering and begging. Maybe another time you’ll be able to see that side of him, but tonight you were determined to make him cum in your mouth, and so deciding you wouldn’t waste a second longer, you took his red head in between your lips, rocking your head slowly to take more and more of his length. Little by little you were able to fit almost all of him inside your throat, choking a little bit when his tip reached a bit too far.

“Fuck, that feels amazing, baby. Keep going.” He moaned, looking down at you and the way his dick disappeared inside your mouth with ease. “Just like that, don’t you dare stop.”

Your pace increased, ripping moans and groans out of the boy. Your heart swelled with pride for making him sound and act like that; it took you way too long to be in such a position once again that you were fearing you didn’t have the same effect on him anymore.

“Faster, doll, I know you can go faster.” His hand weaved through your hair to get a hold on your head and guide your movements. “That’s right, fuck, your mouth was made only for my cock.”

It truly was, his dick fit almost perfectly and without further complications. The way you were so eager to take him in, without flinching or gagging was truly amazing for the man in front of you. Jungkook was mesmerized by your ability to suck him off until he didn’t have much to give.

“Shit, stay still for a moment.” He ordered, placing both hands at each side of your head. You did as told, waiting for his next move. “There you go, I want to fuck this pretty mouth of yours.”

His hips swayed beautifully, thrusting in and out of your throat. His cock was reaching places like never before and brought tears to your eyes due to the effort of keeping your jaw relaxed and opened for him.

“That’s it, such a good little slut, letting me use you, huh?” He teased, smirking right at you. “You like it when I use you like this, don’t ya?”

It was as clear as day that you did, no need for an answer, yet you tried to nod, which only caused to boost his ego due to how much you struggled to move.

“Mhm, I know you do, baby.” His pace increased and so did his moans; it was difficult for the tall guy to be quiet, especially with the delicious feeling of your mouth on his cock.

All of a sudden he pulled away, letting you recover your breath and positioning you to lay back down again.

“As much as I’d love to keep fucking your mouth, I’d rather stuff this pretty pussy with my cum.” Jungkook leaned down to suck on your neck, making sure to leave a mark on a very obvious spot, where everyone would be able to see it.

Feeling like you belonged to someone, like you were a nice piece of jewelry owned by a man like Jungkook, it should have caused you a very different feeling from the one you were experiencing. Your eyes shouldn’t be searching for him, impatiently, to see that look of determination in his orbs that would tell you that you belonged to him and him alone. Your hands shouldn’t reach out to touch his back, sinking your nails into his flesh just like his teeth did in your skin; a weak attempt to reciprocate the feeling, to make it clear who was the only girl who would make the great Jeon Jungkook so desperate and needy. But they did, and you enjoyed it; you loved the hiss coming from his mouth and the shiver coursing his body. You adored the way his eyes softened for a brief second, while looking right into yours and straight into your heart.

It was like a stroke to your ego, knowing it was you who he craved, who he needed. It was you, and it would continue to be you for a long time.

Jungkook finally pulled away from your neck, standing tall in front of you and guiding himself to slide up and down your folds, coating his cock with your juices. His tip was nudging at your clit every time he went up, making you gasp and shudder.

It was a torture, feeling him so close yet so far from your entrance, the worst part was that he enjoyed getting you like this; Jungkook loved toying with you. And it was so unfair how much the boy could make you crave his touch, but not give it to you.

“Just put it in, for fucks sake.” A frustrated groan abandoned your lips.

You couldn’t handle the teasing anymore. However, you didn’t think about the consequences of your words and how bad it would end for you for demanding such a thing.

Jungkook stopped all of his movements, slowly drifting his gaze up, to look right into your eyes. His gaze darkened, making you recoil in your place, while your legs started to close in anticipation of his next move.

Jeon moved to get close to your ear and whisper, “I’m gonna let it slide just because I’m as eager as you to fuck you dumb, but be careful with what you say, princess.” Slowly, he pulled away, to then harshly open your legs and slap your clit with his cock. “Turn around.” He ordered.

It took you a few seconds to register his words in your brain, but finally you did as told, albeit reluctantly, because you wanted to see and feel him from up close while he fucked you into oblivion.

“Don’t turn your face.” He caught you trying to look over your shoulder, guiding your head to look right into the pillow.

“But I wanna see you.” You whined, not fighting him anymore.

“Shoulda thought about it, before acting like a brat.” A slap was delivered to your ass cheek, making you flinch and whimper. “And be grateful I’m being nice enough to fuck you, despiste your nasty attitude.”

Jungkook positioned himself with your entrance, anticipating the tight grip of your warm walls.

“I’m sorry.” You apologized quietly, in an attempt to make him relent and change positions.

“Too late for that, baby.” He chuckled while thrusting all the way into your tight cunt, not giving you time to argue any longer. “Fuck, this is heaven.” His head lolled back, placing both of his hands at each side of your hips to guide your movements.

“Oh my fucking god!” You exclaimed, feeling his veiny cock reach every crook of your insides.

Moans and whimpers were falling from your lips uncontrollably, due to how good Jungkook’s dick felt. He hasn’t moved yet since he thrusted in, but the sensation alone of being filled to the brim with his length was enough to make you see stars.

“Mo-Move.” You stuttered, trying to bounce back and create the much needed friction. “Please, move!”

Jungkook could only smirk, enjoying how vulnerable you were at the moment, completely at his mercy. He controlled your body and pleasure perfectly, knowing the spots and touches that would get you shuddering in pure bliss.

“Now you remember your manners, doll?” He grunted, slowly retrieving from inside your pussy, all the way out until your walls could only wrap around the tip. “How convenient.”

You wanted to argue and clap back, but it was impossible to form a coherent thought while being tortured like that. Jungkook didn’t care that he was also stopping himself from feeling the ridiculously amazing sensation of fucking into you, as long as he could teach you a lesson and make you regret your words and actions.

“Please, please, please.” You cried out, trying to move, but giving up after the tall man stopped you with a harsh smack. “Jungkook…”

The way you said his name made the guy feel some type of way, but still not enough to give you exactly what you wanted.

“You gotta ask me nicely, princess, and I might give it to you.”

He wanted you to ask nicely and ask nicely is what you did; gathering enough strength to softly utter the words, you tried to clear your throat to finally speak.

“Please, Kook, can you fuck me so good until I forget my name?” Such a sweet tone for such a lewd request. “I need you to fill me up with your cock, please.”

The tattooed guy leaned down, wrapping one of his strong arms around your neck while dipping down to whisper in your ear.

“Mmm, you sound so fucking pretty when you beg for me like that.” His gentle lips kissed up and down your jaw. “You did good, baby. I think you finally deserve it.”

Without previous warning, Jungkook thrusted all the way in again, filling you up to the brim, however, this time he didn’t torture you with a slow pace or any sort of teasing. Jeon didn’t waste a second longer and commenced to rapidly pound into you, until you could only whine and whimper.

His arm wrapped around your neck was slightly obstaculazing your breathing, but you wouldn’t have it any other way. It felt immensely good to be fucked nice and hard while every single inch of Jungkook’s body was engulfing you.

“Fuck, you feel amazing, baby.” He moaned. “Clenching on my cock, so good.”

His free hand traveled down in between your legs to rub your clit, making you so sensitive and causing even more moans to fall from your lips.

“Sh-shit, oh god!” You exclaimed with a trembling voice. “So big… so deep.”

A chuckle rumbled from Jungkook’s chest. He has always loved how dirty you would get for him, speaking nonsense about his size and how good he fucks you. It was truly an ego boost.

“Yeah? You like how deep I go, baby?” He panted, due to all the effort he was putting into destroying you with his cock. “You love when I fuck you like this, don’t you?”

You could only nod, it was hard to form a coherent sentence at the moment.

“Look at you,” he laughed. “You can’t even talk.”

You couldn’t protest, couldn’t even move. The only thing you could do was relax and allow your body to enjoy the way Jungkook was so avidly thrusting into you. Your arms and legs were starting to give up, feeling too tired to keep your body up; you just wanted to lay down.

Jungkook could feel your exhaustion, and so he quickly unwrapped his arm from your neck, to then turn you around and get you in a comfortable position, all of this while still fucking you senseless.

“There you go, better?” He asked, genuinely concerned about your wellbeing.

“Mhm.” You hummed, closing your eyes while your hands fisted the sheets. “Don’t stop…”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.”

Jungkook felt like dying with the way your walks were clenching on him. Your pussy felt heavenly, so warm and so tight only for his cock. He knew he had already ruined you for any other man you could possibly meet in your life —not like he’s gonna let that happen, anyway—, and he loved that fact. The dark-haired boy enjoyed how you would only crave him, need him, beg just for him. This side of you, no one knew, he was sure that not even your past boyfriends got to see you like this. So free, so dirty, so beautiful and tempting. It was only him, and Jungkook could only wish it continued to be like that for a long time.

Amidst Jungkook’s wandering thoughts, he didn’t realize you had opened your eyes once again, looking right into his own, with such a fierce stare. Your hands started a slow trip from his thighs up to his chest, caressing his honeyed skin which was glistening with sweat; shining just right under the moonlight. Your nails softly scratched his flesh, making the boy tremble under your touch and lean into your hands to feel more of you. It was getting to that point where he no longer held power or willingness to be dominant. Jeon was starting to lose himself in you, in the way your cunt was wrapped around his cock, in the way his length would poke your stomach because of how deep he was; in the way your mouth was softly calling for him, accompanied by obscene noises that he only loved hearing if the came from you.

“You look so fucking pretty, Y/n.” The lack of a pet name sent a warm hug to your heart. You knew he was being serious; no teasing, no mocking. Jungkook was speaking from his heart, completely enamored with the view of you; panting underneath him while your body welcomed his embrace so perfectly. “I could never get tired of looking at you, my pretty baby.”

There were not enough words in the English language that could help you express how grateful you were for having a man like Jungkook in your life. But perhaps there was no need, since you knew that showing it was always more effective than saying it.

Your hands wrapped around his neck, pulling him down to mesh his lips with yours. His swollen lips moved slowly and gently, a stark contrast to the way he was fucking you. His cock was wildly ramming into you, while his lips were softly caressing yours. His tongue quickly made its way inside your mouth, starting a fight with your own to assert dominance, nonetheless, it was futile, that fight was already won by him and you could only back down and enjoy his touch.

“I’m so close.” You moaned, wrapping both of your legs around his waist to make him go even deeper. “I need to— fuck, I need to cum.”

Jungkook shook his head, heavily breathing while gathering his thoughts to talk properly. The feeling of it all was making him feel dizzy.

“Just… Just wait a bit longer.” He ordered you.

You groaned, fluttering your eyes shut while trying your best to hold it until he told you to let go. It became a torture once again. You knew you wouldn’t be able to wait for too long, especially with the change in pace and how deep his cock was reaching. His tip was nudging at that sweet spot of yours, making your whole body stutter and whine so perfectly that it made Jungkook grunt into your neck.

“I’m almost there.” He announced, manically pounding into you. “Just a bit more, princess.”

“I don’t… I don’t think I can wait… anymore.” You cried out, fisting his hair while your hips were desperately moving on their own volition, searching for some sweet release. “I’m gonna cum.”

It was not a warning anymore, it was a fact. Your orgasm was rapidly approaching, making your body tremble with the waves of your awaited release. Rather than holding yourself back, you finally let go, enjoying the sensations and pleasure your orgasm brought with itself.

Jungkook hissed at the way your pussy clenched on his dick, making it almost impossible for him to keep moving.

“Oh, fuck.” He cursed, looking down at where your bodies were joined, feeling a bit lightheaded from how good it felt. Your cum was coating his cock, making it shine so perfectly. “That’s my good girl, make a mess on my dick, come on.”

His encouraging words only made it even difficult for you to come down from your high, but the boy couldn’t care any less. Jungkook rejoiced in the feeling of pride for making you feel that way, to make you so vulnerable and weak that the intensity of your release would make you go dumb and turn you into a babbling mess. Not a single thought was behind those beautiful eyes of yours at that precise moment, and Jeon loved how lost you looked, reaching out in need of his comforting touch to ground yourself after such intense orgasm.

Your hands found his, intertwining your fingers to form a hard grip.

Jungkook kept fucking into you, desperately searching for his own release, not stopping for even a second to catch his breath. He needed to cum and needed it now.

“Can I cum inside you?” Jeon was so quick to ask when he felt his orgasm building up in the pit of his stomach. “Please… I wanna fill you up.”

It was such a different side of him. The whiny and needy side of him you loved so much. His begging got you weak in the knees and made your stomach flutter with adoration.

You nodded, gently caressing his face while kissing his lips once again.

“Look at me, please.” Jungkook begged so sweetly. “Keep your eyes on me, I need to see you.”

“Let go for me, baby.” You smiled up at him, staring right into his eyes, while noises full of passion echoed through the room.

His whiny moans rang in your ears, making you feel fuzzy inside.

“Fuck, so good.” He moaned, resting his forehead on yours, his eyes never looking away. “I love you, Y/n. I love you so fucking much.”

“I love you too, Kook.” You said, breathlessly, feeling his warm cum filling your already sore pussy. “Just like that, so good.”

Jungkook kept rocking into you until his legs couldn’t hold him up and he ended up crashing into you. His strong arms slowly wrapped themselves around your frame, keeping you close and safe. He hid his face in the crook of your neck, with his hot breath hitting against your skin. A stream of incoherent curses were coming out his mouth, making you giggle. Neither of you dared to speak for at least five minutes, silently deciding to enjoy each other while recovering from each of your intense orgasms.

It truly felt like heaven on earth, whether it was because of how long you two have been apart, or because of Jungkook’s amazing skills; whatever it was you felt amazing and finally complete. The missing piece of the puzzle was finally here, making your life ten times better and brighter.

Jungkook was the first one to break the silence, with his babbling and groaning.

“What was that?” You asked him to repeat himself.

“I said…” He sighed, pulling away from your neck. “I’m fucking spent.”

“Me too.” You giggled. “But it was worth it.”

“Damn right it was.”

Jungkook finally pulled out, watching his cum slowly flow out from your cunt. Two of his fingers gathered the liquid coming out of you and pushed it back inside, making you gasp in surprise.

“We can’t afford to waste any drop now, can we?” He smirked at you while his fingers danced slowly inside you. “You always feel so warm, baby, no wonder why I love your pussy so much.”

After a few seconds, Jungkook retrieved his fingers from inside of you and wrapped his pink lips around them, liking every drop of both of your cums.

“So sweet.”

A part of you wanted to push him to lay down and ride him until your legs couldn’t keep you still, but you were so tired and exhausted that even the idea of putting any effort into making Jungkook lay down made you groan.

“Come here, baby.” Jeon wrapped an arm around your waist and pulled you into his side, making your head rest on his firm chest. “Let’s rest for a bit before I fuck you again.”

You hit him softly in his stomach, causing both of you to giggle.

“Just how much stamina you think I have?” You asked.

“Not so much, to be honest.” He joked. “But it’s bold of you to assume I would make you work for it a second time. I’m not that mean, baby.”

“Yeah, that’s what you want me to think.”

You looked up at him, only to realize Jungkook was already staring at you. His doe eyes were looking right into your own, making their easy way into your heart. Jungkook had a way to always make you feel special whenever he looked at you. He did it back when you two were nothing more than a quick fuck, and he did it now when your souls were finally intertwined.

“I meant it.” He started saying. “I really love you, Y/n.”

“I know, Kook.” You assured him. “And I love you too, just as much.”

A soft kiss was delivered to your forehead. “I just wanted to make it clear. I spent too much time hiding my real feelings that I’m scared you’ll get the wrong idea and feel like I’m not being honest enough.”

Your hand flew right up to rest on his cheek, caressing his cheekbone tenderly.

“I understand the sentiment, but there’s no need to hide from each other anymore. I can feel your love now, Jungkook, and it’s one of the most amazing sensations I’ve ever had.”

Your words helped the boy to feel at ease. Jungkook was on high alert for any discomfort he might cause you unwillingly; he feared you would simply leave his side if he such as said that your hands were starting to get cold. That kind of feeling was something you didn’t want the boy to experience and you were more than happy to reassure him over and over again that what he felt was not only reciprocated but it was also enough for the both of you.

“Let’s sleep a little bit, I’m too tired to even talk.” You snuggled into his side, hiding your face in the crook of his face while your arms wrapped around his torso.

Jungkook smiled fondly, looking down at your already sleepy figure.

“Rest well, princess.”

Taglist 🏷️

@aphrwodite, @r1r111, @cholychi, @artificialsuicid, @tatamicc

[prokopetz]

In recent posts I've complained that a lot of tabletop RPGs which toss around the term "fiction first" don't actually understand what it means, and I've been asked to expand on that complaint. So:

In my experience, there are two ways that game texts which want to position themselves as "fiction first" trip themselves up, one obvious and one subtle.

The first and more obvious pitfall is treating "fiction first" as an abstract ideology. They're using "fiction first" as a synonym for "story over rules" in a way that calls back to the role-playing-versus-roll-playing discourse of the early 2000s. The trouble is, now as then, nobody can usefully explain what "story over rules" actually entails. At best, they land on a definition of "fiction first" that talks about the GM's right to ignore the rules to better serve the story, which is no kind of definition at all – it's just putting a funny hat on the Rule Zero fallacy and trying to pass it off as some sort of totalising ideology of play.

A more useful way of defining "fiction first" play is to think of it not in terms of whether you engage with the rules at all, but in terms of when they're invoked: specifically, as a question of order of operations.

Suppose, for example, that you're playing Dungeons & Dragons, and you pick up the dice and say "I attack the dragon". Some critics would claim that no actual narrative has been established – that this is simply a bare invocation of game mechanics – but in fact we can infer a great deal: your character is going to approach the dragon, navigating any inclement terrain which lies between them, and attempt to kill the dragon using the weapon they're holding in their hand. The rules are so tightly bound to a particular set of narrative circumstances that simply invoking those rules lets us work backwards to determine what the context and stakes must be for that invocation of the rules to be sensical; this, broadly speaking, is what "rules first" looks like.

Conversely, let's say that your game of Dungeons & Dragons has confronted you with a pit blocking your path, and you want to make an Athletics check to cross it. At this point the GM is probably going to stop you and say, hold up, tell us what that looks like. Are you trying to jump across it? Are you trying to climb down one wall of the pit and up the other? Are you trying to tie a rope to the halfling and toss them to the other side? In other words, before you can pick up the dice, you need to have a little sidebar with the GM to hash out what the narrative context is, and to negotiate what can be achieved and what's at stake if you mess it up; this, broadly, is what "fiction first" looks like.

At this point I know some people are thinking "wait, hold on – both of those examples were from Dungeons & Dragons; are you saying that Dungeons & Dragons is both a rules-first game and a fiction-first game?" And yeah, I am. That's the second, more subtle place where game texts that talk about "fiction first" go astray: they talk about it as though being "fiction first" or "rules first" is something which is inherent to game systems as a whole.

This is not in fact true: being "fiction first" or "rules first" is something which describes particular invocations of the rules. In practice, only very simple games spend all of their time in one mode or the other; most will switch back and forth at need. Generally, most "traditional" RPGs (i.e., the direct descendants of Dungeons & Dragons and its various imitators) tend to operate in rules-first mode in combat and fiction-first mode out of it, though this is a simplification – when and how such mode-switching occurs can be quite complex.

Like any other design pattern, "fiction first" mechanics are a tool that's well suited for some jobs, and ill suited for others. Sometimes your rules are fine-grained enough that having an explicit negotiation and stakes-setting phase would just be adding extra steps. Sometimes you're using the outputs of the rules a narrative prompt, and having to pin the context down ahead of time would defeat the purpose. Fortunately, you don't have to commit yourself to one approach or the other; as long as your text is clear about how you're assuming a given set of rules toys will be used, you can switch modes as need dictates. However, you're not going to be capable of that kind of transparency if you're thinking in terms of "this a Fiction First™ game".

(Incidentally, this is why it can be hard to talk about "fiction first" with OSR fans if you're being dogmatic about fiction-first framing being an immutable feature of particular games. Since traditional RPGs tend to observe the above-described rules-first-in-combat, fiction-first-out-of-combat division, and OSR games tend to treat actually getting into a fight as a strategic failure state, a lot of OSR games spend most of their time in fiction-first mode. If you go up to an OSR fan and insist that D&D-style games can never be fiction-first, then attempt to define "fiction first" for them and proceed to describe how they usually play, they'll quite justifiably conclude that you have your head up your ass!)

[puckstories]

Forever ⋆.ೃ࿔*:･ Quinn Hughes

Pairing; Quinn Hughes x Fem!Reader

Warning(s); Reader is mentioned having curly hair/wearing glasses. Fluff. Kinda cringe but it’s a proposal so I’d consider that acceptable (: Established relationship. Not edited.

Summary; Quinn proposes

Word Count; 2k

Author’s note; Didn’t realize this is my second fic that takes place on the living room sofa, but it’s written so I’ll just dump it here. Would love to hear your thoughts if you have any + reblogs are appreciated. -Honey

Quinn had been captivated by you from the very first time you said his name. There was something about the way it fell from your lips—soft and velvety, with a subtle rasp that sent a shiver down his spine. It wasn’t just the sound of your voice; it was the way you spoke to him, with a warmth that wrapped around his heart like a favorite song. Every time you said his name, it made his chest tighten, his pulse quicken. And you said it often.

You didn’t rely on the usual pet names his past girlfriends had favored—sweet nothings like "baby" or "babe." No, you chose his name, always. When you called for him, it was, “Quinn, can you grab this?” or “Quinn, come here.” When you told him you loved him, you didn’t let the words hang abstract in the air. You made them personal: “I love you, Quinn.” Each syllable was deliberate, an anchor tying you to him.

It wasn’t long before he realized he couldn’t get enough of it. Just six months into your relationship, his mind began wandering toward something far bigger. He found himself daydreaming about the future—your shared future. He pictured you standing across from him, framed by flowers and sunlight, saying his name again, but this time in wedding vows that would bind you together forever. The thought of hearing you say, “I do,” in front of your friends and family was enough to leave him breathless.

You hadn’t just made him feel loved—you’d made him feel seen, known, and completely yours.

“Quinn.” Your voice cuts through his wandering thoughts, pulling him sharply back into the present. It’s not loud, but it carries—a perfect mix of warmth and clarity that only you could manage. He blinks, momentarily disoriented, before his gaze finds you.

There you are, a vision that steals his breath all over again. He can hardly believe his luck—that he gets to see you like this, so at ease, so unencumbered, and utterly captivating. You’re seated at the kitchen table, papers scattered around you in a casual chaos as you focus on grading. The soft, golden hue from the overhead light bathes you in a warm glow, making you look almost otherworldly.

His lips twist into a small smile, like he hasn’t already seen your outfit today—though, of course, he has. Worn sweatpants, and his old UMICH shirt, the one you stole and now practically live in while at home. Your curly hair is piled into a loose bun, and your glasses sit low on your nose.

It had been two months since he’d first thought about proposing—two months of tucking that desire away, hiding it behind everyday moments and careful smiles. He’d never been in this deep with a woman before. The idea of marriage had always felt like something distant, meant for other people. But now? Now it sat in the back of his mind like a quiet ache, present in every thought, in every small moment with you. Eight months together. Was that long enough? Was it too soon? He wasn’t sure. The last thing he wanted was to scare you off, to move faster than you were ready for, and somehow ruin this thing between you. It terrified him, the possibility of misstepping, of losing you. But it also terrified him to wait, to let too much time pass and risk you thinking he didn’t see forever with you.

These thoughts came and went, like tides he couldn’t stop. But it was moments like this—simple, domestic, and probably boring to anyone else—that hit him hardest.

"Earth to Quinn." Your voice rings out again, light and teasing, amusement flickering between your brows.

Quinn blinks, startled back to the moment, and clears his throat as though shaking off the thoughts had stolen him away once more. His gaze refocuses on you, a small, sheepish smile playing at the corner of his mouth. "Yeah, baby. What is it?"

"You okay?" You ask, tilting your head. "I can hear your brain working all the way over here."

"Just zoned out." He says, with a dismissing shake of his head. He leans back against the armrest, running a hand through his hair to push it out of his face. "Yeah, just zoned out," he confirms, his voice low and a little distracted. "Sorry. Just... thinking about a few things."

You study him for a moment, noticing the way his teeth graze his bottom lip, and the way his hand lingers in his hair, like it’s searching for something to hold onto. You nod. "Wanna talk about it?"

His expression softens, the quiet earnestness of the question reaching into the place where that familiar ache still lingers. Almost instinctively, his hand stretches toward you—palm open, a silent invitation. He hesitates for just a breath, his fingers curling slightly as though unsure if he should follow through, before he nods. "C'mere a sec?"

You slide your glasses off and set them on the table, the quiet clink barely audible in the stillness of the room. Pushing back your chair, you cross the small space to Quinn. He’s waiting, his arms already lifting to pull you close the second you’re within reach. He tugs you down into his lap with an ease that feels like second nature, his thighs shifting apart instinctively to make room for you.

The moment you settle against him, his arms wrap tightly around your waist, and he buries his face against the curve of your neck. You feel the faint warmth of his breath on your skin as he exhales a deep sigh. The soft, sweet scent of you—the one he’s come to think of as home—floods his senses, easing some of the tension in his chest.

He pulls away, and leans his head back against the couch. For a moment, he just looks at you, his gaze lingering as though trying to memorize every detail, even though he knows he already has. The soft slope of your nose. The curve of your mouth. That small, almost invisible freckle just beneath your bottom lip—the one he always kisses when the warmth in his chest gets the better of him. His throat tightens, and he swallows hard, a nervous flutter building in his chest.

“What is it, Quinn?”

He takes a deep breath, his fingers brushing over your hips in gentle, absent strokes, the movement more reflex than thought. The rhythm steadies him, but only just. His mind churns, the weight of what he wants to say pressing hard against his chest. This is it, he thinks. He can’t hold it in any longer—the waiting, the second-guessing, the holding back. It’s all become unbearable. Whatever happens next, he has to let this out.

“Just thinking about us,” he begins, his voice quiet but steady. “Our relationship. How much I care about you. How lucky I feel to have you like this.” He pauses for a moment, like testing the ground beneath him before taking another step forward. “It’s been on my mind a lot lately.”

Your lips curve into a soft smile, the kind that makes him feel like gravity tilts toward you. "Yeah?" you say, your voice gentle, encouraging.

“Yeah,” he replies, barely above a murmur. His throat feels tight, his pulse hammering beneath his ribs, but he keeps his gaze locked on you. There’s something grounding about the way you look at him—like you’re holding the door open for him, not rushing him, just waiting. It gives him enough courage to keep going. “It’s just…” He exhales, his breath light and shallow. “You mean so much to me. More than I think I’ve been able to say out loud. And I keep thinking about what it would be like to make this permanent. To have this—us—be something that lasts forever.”

Your breathing hitches, the words catching you off guard, your chest tightening as his meaning begins to settle over you. Your eyes widen slightly, searching his face, and you can see it there—devotion, hope, and just the faintest hint of nerves. Your heart skips, and it feels like the entire room is holding its breath alongside you.

Quinn’s hands shift from your waist, moving up with slow, deliberate care. His fingers trace the curve of your cheek, brushing softly along your skin, his thumbs lingering just below your cheekbones. “Marry me?” he asks, the words soft, almost reverent, yet steady and sure in a way that sends a shiver down your spine. It’s not a question tossed lightly into the air; it’s a truth he’s been holding onto, waiting for the right moment to share.

Your lips part, but for a second, no sound comes out. “M-Marry you?” The words tumble out unevenly, caught between shock and something else—something overwhelming and impossibly warm blooming in your chest.

“I want forever with you, baby,” he says, pausing for a moment before speaking again. "I know this is a shitty proposal, we're both at home in our pajamas, and I don't even have a ring yet, I just...I don't want to wait anymore. I love you, and I want to spend the rest of my life loving and taking care of you."

You swallow hard, your heart racing. Tears prick the corners of your eyes, and a tremulous smile starts to curve your lips. “You… you want me forever?” The words are quiet, as though testing them out, wrapping your mind around the enormity of what he’s offering.

His lips twitch into a soft, almost shy smile, his forehead resting against yours now. “Forever and then some,” he murmurs. “If you’ll have me.”

A sudden, uncontrollable squeal escapes your lips, the kind you might have been embarrassed about in any other moment. But here, it feels perfect—pure, unfiltered joy. Before you can stop yourself, you’re leaning in, your lips crashing against his in a burst of energy and love. The kiss is messy, hurried, but it’s full of all the things you can’t quite put into words.

Quinn smiles against your lips, his arms wrapping tightly around you as he leans back against the sofa, taking you with him. The movement is unhurried this time, deliberate, as though he’s savoring every second. His hands settle firmly at your back, holding you close, like he never wants to let go. The kiss deepens briefly, his lips moving softly against yours, before the two of you finally break apart, breathless but smiling.

Your forehead comes to rest against his, your eyes fluttering closed for just a moment. His breath mingles with yours, warm and steady, and his thumbs brush tenderly along your sides as though grounding himself in the moment. You press your hands to his chest, feeling the rhythmic pounding of his heart, and it feels like it matches the erratic beat of your own.

“Yes,” you whisper, the word spilling out of you before you even realize it. Then it comes again, louder, stronger. “Yes, yes, Quinn. Yes!” The words are wrapped in laughter, your voice trembling with happiness.

Quinn exhales a shaky breath, relief and joy flooding his expression. His hands slide to your waist, his grip firm and steady, as his eyes meet yours. They’re shining now, soft but full of something deeper, something that makes your chest feel impossibly full. “Yeah?” he murmurs, his voice low and quiet, as though still needing confirmation, still needing to hear the word from you one more time.

“Yeah,” you say, grinning so wide your cheeks ache. “Forever, Quinn. I want forever with you, too.”

His lips curve into a broad, radiant smile—the kind that makes him look younger, freer, like every weight he’s been carrying has fallen away. He lets out a quiet laugh, the sound rumbling through his chest. “You don’t know how much I needed to hear that,” he says softly, his thumb brushing along your cheek now. “You’ve just made me the happiest man alive, you know that?”

Tears prick your eyes, your laughter softening into something quieter, more emotional. You reach for his face, your fingers brushing against the rough stubble on his jaw. “I think we just made each other the happiest people alive.”

[vivwritescrappythings]

roadburn

simon “ghost” riley x gn!reader

@cielosafeplace wrote an idea on here about what Simon would do if you crashed on his motorcycle and that was enough to get me out of my writing slump. Truly doing the lord’s work.

cw: motorcycle accident, blood, mild gore, protective Simon, POV switch, gn! reader, no use of y/n, not very good.

word count: 1.8k

masterlist

—

Everything was ringing.

You didn’t really understand what was going on—one moment you were riding behind Simon on his motorcycle, and now you were sitting up on the traffic median. It was blurry around you, movement and cars and people looking like blocks of color in an abstract painting.

The breeze tousled your hair, crisp and clean in your nose. Your hair? You didn’t remember taking off your helmet. Shaking fingers made their way up to your head, passing through where the helmet would be to simply comb through hair. You pulled your fingers away, the swimming image of your hand in front of you showing the tips of your gloved fingers shining crimson. You didn’t quite notice that your gloves were shredded to bits, part of your palms visible and raw beneath.

It was enough to send a shock through you, your breath coming out so harshly that you actually let out a sound. It was swallowed by the rest of the noise going on around you, shouting and honking and cars driving by. The commotion surrounding you was far too loud, the quality of it like you were swimming underwater.

You stood on shaky legs, grabbing onto a street sign to pull yourself to standing as you fought vertigo. Everything was moving so slowly. You felt like you had to get to your feet, get off the traffic median.

Your vision was clearing. You could see a few people running around and chattering, their frantic gestures seeming all too slow to make sense. Your helmet was in the road, the buckle flapping open from where you must have ripped it off, there was a flat spot from where your head dragged across the rough pavement.

Simon’s motorcycle was on the curb, on its side and banged up in a few areas—he’d be cross to have to fix it.

Simon.

Where was he?

It wasn’t like Simon to not be glued to your side. Sometimes you joked that he was more guard dog than boyfriend, snarling and snapping his jaws at anyone that got too close for comfort. The fact that he wasn’t next to you right now made your blood run cold.

You rubbed your eyes on the back of your hand, blinking.

You heard him before you saw him. You’d never heard Simon scream like that, your name—your real name, not calling you “pet” like he normally did—ringing through the air like a thunderclap.

—

He couldn’t believe it. That fucking sod ran a red light, completely blew through it, and hit the bike hard enough to make him lose control.

He heard you scream, the sound of it muffled by the helmet covering your head. Simon’s heart was in his throat, hardly recognizing the pain as the bike dragged him across the road, his thigh trapped beneath the vehicle as his pants got shredded down to the skin. His jacket was destroyed, the leather hot where it scraped across the asphalt.

The driver was getting out of his truck, shouting his useless apologies as other good samaritans stopped to see what was going on.

It didn’t matter, none of it mattered as Simon shoved his bike off his leg like it was a toy and heard it crumple as he stood. The blood soaking into his pants was nothing—child’s play compared to the torture he’d experienced at work. Getting hung on a meat hook really makes any other form of pain look like a paper cut.

It was like he had tunnel vision, the panic of not being able to immediately spot you making him think the worst. You were a little thing compared to him, far too fragile for his comfort.

The people who had gotten out of their cars surrounded him in a swarm of too-loud voices and concerned gazes, trying to get him to sit down and wait for the ambulance. The driver got in his face, apologizing and claiming he didn’t see the two of you on the motorcycle. If Simon wasn’t busy worrying about you, he probably would’ve battered the idiot on the spot.

He simply brushed him aside, shouting your name in a bid of desperation. Despite all the near-death situations he’d lived through, the terror he felt at the pit of his stomach was more intense than anything he had ever experienced before.

The image of your mangled body on the asphalt filled his mind, imagination running wild. What if you’d been run over? Broke your damn neck?

His world was already falling apart as he took a few staggering steps.

Then he spotted you, all the way on the median and clutching a sign as you leaned against the metal pole. Your helmet was sitting on the ground nearby, cracked and part of the shell entirely scraped off. You must have taken it off in your shock.

Blood was running down your face, matting in your hair and following the contours of your features. Simon was running before he could think, mowing down any person that stupidly stood between the two of you. There was a sting of pain shooting up his leg with each step, but he hardly noticed.

You looked so dazed, your normally sharp gaze floating as you heard him shout your name. Fear and relief surged through Simon at once—you were bleeding, but you were standing and around and undeniably alive.

He wasn’t thinking enough to remember to be careful about crossing the last open lane of traffic, almost getting plowed through by a truck. A shout was barked at the driver as a big hand smacked the hood, Simon continuing his beeline to you. It was instinct at this point, like blinders had been fitted over his eyes to only see you.

His helmet skittered across the road where he threw it off, needing to see your face without the tint of the visor. Everything got exponentially louder without his helmet.

The tension was clear in your stance, shock making your spine ramrod straight and your hands clench at your sides. He approached carefully, tilting his head a little so he was closer to your height and his gloved hands outstretched. The spark of recognition in your gaze comforted him further, starting to placate the gnawing anxiety in his stomach.

Neither of you said anything as Simon gathered you up in his arms and held you close to his chest, a big hand cupping the back of your head. Your hands twisted in his shirt beneath the jacket, pulling him toward you as a shudder ran through you. He pressed his nose to the crown of your head and inhaled deeply.

He could care less about the chaos going on behind him, the sirens of an ambulance in the distance as insignificant to him as chirping birds.

Fingertips gently pressed into the side of your jaw, tilting your head up to look at him. The blood was smeared across part of your face, but it looked like the bleeding was starting to slow. Your eyes were wide and a touch vacant as you looked up at him.

“You with me, pet?” Simon asked, his head crowding in close to yours as he tried to block out the rest of the world. He held his breath while waiting for your answer.

You nodded—albeit shakily as you looked him over. “Si, your leg.” Your voice was soft and wavering as you spoke. He watched your brows furrow with concern, lips parting.

“S’okay, don’t worry about me,” he said immediately, nudging your chin to look back up at his face. He didn’t even bother to look down at his leg. It didn’t hurt, the adrenaline fueling him enough to not feel it quite yet.

His thumbs smoothed over your face, his careful gaze focusing on the cut hidden in your hair as he took every detail of you in. Your jeans were ripped along your knees and up your thigh, your shirt a bit askew, your gloves torn. You had some road burn, some scrapes, hit your head pretty damn good, but you were standing and talking to him.

He could cry. Simon choked as he pulled you back into his chest, not wanting you to see how wet his dark eyes became. Fuck. There was a moment there that he thought he’d gotten you killed. The best thing in his sorry excuse for a life, dead in the road because he couldn’t protect you.

But you were here, you were in his arms and you were breathing. The panic receded, he took deep breaths as he looked up at the gloomy sky to try and get his head back on his shoulders.

The siren of the ambulance made his splitting headache worse, police cars following and the lights flashing in his eyes. It was only when they were parked near his destroyed motorcycle that he moved, keeping you clutched in the cage of his arms as he limped back across the street toward them.

The driver that hit you had the audacity to approach again, citing apologies and claims that he didn’t even see the motorcycle. Simon shoved him away, snarling like an animal. “Get the fuck away from us,” he hissed, voice low. “Got half the mind to kill you where you stand.”

You grabbed Simon’s wrist, grip soft. “Stop, Si,” you murmured, dragging him with you to the ambulance. There were already some people talking to the police that showed up, telling them what happened.

Simon made them tend to you first, worried you were concussed or had internal injuries. He fussed over you, staying close to you as the EMT shined a flashlight in your eyes and asked you soft-spoken questions. Price was already on his way to come grab the two of you, the fossil of a flip phone in his pocket still working unlike your smashed device.

He didn’t even know that there was a part of the meat of his calf that got burned and torn up from the bike landing on top of him until one of the medics started to force him onto a stretcher. He’d need stitches, something he could do himself if the ridiculous EMTs weren’t trying to corral him like a wild horse.

He would’ve fought it if you didn’t make him lay down, only soothed by the fact that Price showed up. You weren’t injured badly, thankfully, just some roadburn and a cut on your head that bled worse than it needed to.

Simon finally relaxed onto the stretcher after you kissed his scarred cheek, promising him that you were okay and you’d see him at the hospital. The adrenaline rushed out of him as soon as he was loaded up into the back, his dark eyes fluttering shut as he let out a soft groan.

He couldn’t believe he’d have to rebuild that fucking bike now.

[pearl-nouveau]

A Woman's Purpose - Cregan Stark x Reader [chapter one]

summary: Your mother, Queen Rhaenyra Targaryen, has always prepared you to marry and you have always resisted, terrified that you will only ever be seen as a wife. But your heart is torn when love catches you by surprise.

contains: mentions of self-harm, aged-up characters (Jace is ~19 idk)

a/n: wow i have not posted on this blog in YEARS but i lurk in tumblr reader insert oneshots like it's my part-time job, and i wrote this on AO3 so i decided to post here and hopefully get some love. i really love posting my writing even if it is not perfect, it's just a passion. let me know if i should post the second chapter and my asks are always open! xx - pearl🦪

Beauty is power, my mother used to tell me, stroking my silver hair as if it were made of golden thread. She loved my hair. Use your beauty to set yourself free. I had no idea if she meant for her words to bring some kind of comfort to me - they did not. 

Sometimes, I hated her for bringing me into the world altogether. While Jace and Luke envied my resemblance to our mother, I detested sharing her light hair and lilac eyes. It seemed to me a symbol of my imprisonment - it became clear to me, hearing all this talk of my beauty and nothing else, that I was never to be loved or seen for anything else.

In my youth, the abstract concept of my fertility and status made me a formidable form of currency within the royal family. Jacaerys, older by one year, made his way as heir by training in combat and dragonriding and studying the history of Westeros and Old Valeria - I, however, was confined to studying the family trees of the realm's powerful houses, to perform the perfect Velaryon princess and eventually be bred like a cow.

I hated my life. 

Many attempts were made to rebel against my predetermined future. At ten and two I sliced all the hair from my head, leaving a shaggy, uneven mess of shimmering half-bald patches that took years to grow back. I had never seen my mother so angry until at ten and four I began slicing patterns into my arms and legs to scar the perfect pale skin everyone complimented me on. Soon she required a chaperone with me at all times, which only made me more furious, and I began picking fights with my cuntish uncles and coming back from dragon rides inexplicably soaking or covered in soot. I waited for my mother to attempt to put together the puzzle I had laid out in front of her; to figure me out and decide that her daughter - the strong-willed, intelligent, adventurous one - matters more than the empty shell of a married woman that I will surely become. 

At the very least, my mother allowed me the power to turn away whomever I wished. It seemed she hoped I would find someone who struck my fancy. But as time passed and my antics worsened, her grip on me tightened, and I began to fear the wost: an impending betrothal. 

She frequently asked me to rack my brain and think of any previous men she had introduced me to who I may want to explore further. But I was stubborn. I maintained that no one had caught my eye, and I insisted that I would never marry. Whenever I said such things, my mother would frown at me in a way that hurt my heart. She was my greatest antagonist, but I loved her, and I knew that it saddened her to put me through such pain. 

Even if there was one man who never left an impression on me, whose memory kept me awake in the darkness of night, I would never tell my mother. It was too humiliating after so many years of fighting marriage to be seduced by love.

Every so often I allowed myself to think about him before I went to sleep, to be swept up in the beautiful dream of someone's arms around me. I could imagine him saying to me, I choose you. That was what I always dreamt of hearing. I choose you, as you are. Just you. 

Jacaerys tried to sympathize with me but he would never truly understand. He did allow me to partake in his own pastimes to grant me a change of scenery from the walls of King's Landing. 

"It infuriates me that she herself is allowed to break barriers as heir to the Iron Throne and I must remain shackled to tradition," I complained to Jace as we sparred in a remote corner of the keep. "She gets to be immortalized as the first of her name while subjecting me to a loveless marriage."

"She was in an arranged marriage with our father." Jace pointed out, sending a particularly hard offensive move my way. I easily thwarted it. 

"Well..." I trailed off. There was nothing to say, not in words, about our parents, or our parentage. It was an unspoken issue, even between Jacaerys and I who were nearly as close as twins. We supposed it would always be shrouded in mystery. We were prepared to always wonder. It seemed unthinkable to ask our mother any questions, nor our father, nor... 

Strong boys, they said. 

Perhaps Jace and I wouldn't speak of it because our difference in hair color had always been a sore subject. I was broken out of my thoughts by another offensive move, this one catching me by surprise. I stumbled back but recovered, moving around the side of my brother as he laughed at me in the way only an older brother would. 

"I'll get you back for that," I snapped at him, but grinned. He smiled back, shrugging cockily. Bring it on, his eyes told me. 

We sparred a bit more until our breaths were heavy in our throats and our swings became more jests than challenges. Eventually, he tossed his sword on the ground and fell upon a sack of grain. I sat next to him and for a moment we were not prince nor princess. We were just two siblings. I sighed, knowing it wouldn't last for long. 

Jace seemed to decide to bank on the moment as well because he looked to me and spoke. "Was there really never anyone who caught your eye? Not in all those years of meeting suitors?" He thought for a moment. "There were some good ones."

"Some good ones?" I scoffed. "Who, pray tell?" 

After a few moments of consideration, he began to chuckle and I rolled my eyes. The chuckle became a cackle and at this joke, I did not laugh along. We both knew that most of the options I had been presented with were vapid, shortsighted, insecure children, as were most men.

I was about to hit him to shut him up when he stopped suddenly and his face brightened with realization. 

"I know a good one," Jace said, "Cregan Stark."

A flush crossed my face at the name.

Usually, I only allowed that name to cross my mind in the darkness of night, but Jace had disrupted that routine. "What about him?" I tried to ask innocently. This time my brother was the one to roll his eyes at me. 

"Don't play the fool, sister," he teased, "when he came to visit those years ago everyone could see that you both took a liking to each other. Even you couldn't fight him." He nudged me playfully with his elbow. "He fights like a Northerner, and he wanted to fight for you."

"Oh, hush."

"Why did you ever turn him away anyways?"

His question silenced me. It was a painful memory. Cregan had come to treat with my grandsire and pledge his support as Warden of the North, and in those two moons he stayed at King's Landing we came to know each other well. Perhaps the reason why I had opened myself to getting to know him was because he had not come for the intention of courting me. In fact, I found him wonderfully ignorant about the social politics of the royal family, and he did not know of my existence upon his arrival. 

The day we met, I was in the Godswood with a book and a porcelain cup of candied almonds. A midnight blue veil covered my thigh-length silver hair. I hated my hair, and I hated that my mother would not let me cut it. I refused to have it braided and let it fall unbrushed and wild down my back.

He had come into the courtyard without noticing me tangled in the roots of the tree. He came closer to examine the trunk thoughtfully, allowing me a glimpse of his face through the branches. I had heard of his arrival and listened from behind closed doors at their meeting, intrigued by his deep voice and foreign accent. I listened intently as he spoke a prayer in a hushed tone. All of a sudden, his gaze shifted to meet mine between the leaves as if he had known I was there the whole time. 

"Apologies, my lady," he bowed his head slightly. "I did not know the Godswood was occupied."

"There is room enough for two," I said shyly. I was not accustomed to being pleasant towards men. I was known for being a beautiful devil, a menace with a sour tongue. It made me self-conscious to think that I was changing my behavior for a man. But I was merely matching his politeness; and he had no reason to falsify his kindness, since he had no idea who I was. 

Luckily for me, I had no reason to overthink my words because he went silent for a long while, lost in a wordless prayer. After a quarter of an hour had passed, he came closer to me, and gestured to the root beside me. 

"Do you mind if I sit?" He had asked.

I shook my head and he moved his thick cloak to drop down beside me. 

"Pardon my intrusion, my lady, I find myself feeling lonely when I come to the South. The Godswood calms me."

"I understand, Lord Stark."

His eyebrow quirked. "You know who I am?"

"I'm afraid I do." I smiled. I loved having the upper hand. I decided I wouldn't tell him who I was. 

"What is your role here in the castle, my lady?" 

"To please lords like you." I jested. Cregan leaned back slightly, taken aback. I quickly realized the suggestive wording of my joke. "Not like that," I quickly corrected, "I was just... I mean-"

"I know who you are, princess." He chuckled at me. I was glad to be rescued from the embarrassment of my failed joke. I gazed at him questioningly. He leaned forward and gently removed the veil from my head. "Unfortunately your appearance does not allow you anonymity." 

I blushed. "What have you heard about me?" 

"Nothing, I admit, until your grandsire told me about you today. He told me of your age, not many years my junior, and I supposed-"

"- That I might make a fine breeder for you?" I snapped. There went the illusion of politeness. This was where they usually ran, when I became a beast instead of a beauty. A piece of work not worth the effort. 

Instead, Cregan merely chuckled. "Actually, I sought a companion. A friend. Being here is lonely for me, and I thought you might show me what life in King's Landing is like. If I am to swear fealty to your family, I seek to know your customs. Your mother has told me that you are the most well-acquainted with the keep of her children." 

You smiled. Had your mother truly said that? It was true, since you spent so much time darting around the palace avoiding her orders. 

"Would you mind giving me a tour?" He asked. His tone was so gentle, so uncomplicated. It was like no man had ever spoken to me before. With respect, as if he were speaking to a friend. It was refreshing.

For the next few weeks, Cregan and I formed a friendship based on mutual respect. He informed me of Northern politics and asked for my opinions on complicated political matters through a Southern perspective. I introduced him to my dragon, Vermithor. Afternoons were spent in the Godswood picnicking for the purpose of introducing him to local cuisine, and evenings were spent in the library discussing literature. The relationship felt as easy as breathing to me, and I could tell he felt the same. After close to two moons, it had begun to frighten me how much I longed for his presence when we separated at the end of the day. 

There had always been a tangible tension between us that toed the line between friendship and romance. Lingering gazes, intentional touches, and meaningful words kept me up at night. He opened up to me about the unique grief of losing his wife in childbirth and having to leave his infant son at home so soon afterward. I showed him the scars littered across my body, and explained to him how I hated my beauty.

He had taken my head in his hands and looked through my soul with those gray eyes. 

"Your beauty... It is just a fraction of you. What is truly incredible is your kind heart, your wit, your intelligence, your soul..."

I had been unable in that moment to keep myself from kissing him, so I let my mind empty and I surged forward to connect our lips. He responded with fervor, bringing me close, the pads of his thumbs barely grazing the peach fuzz on my cheek. I could not even bring myself to feel ashamed about grabbing his tunic underneath his cloak, my fingers unknowing but desperate. He had taken my hands and pulled back, only to kiss my nose, then brow, then the corners of each eyes, and then my knuckles. 

Suddenly I came too. I saw in front of me the path that had been laid for me - a wife, be it to a good man or a bad one. I was still determined not to let that happen. 

As I often did, I had fled. I had avoided him until he went back to Winterfell. Two moons later, a raven came from him. I didn't dare open it, too afraid to face my actions. Even if I felt that I knew what the contents were, Cregan was not like other men I knew - thus I had always wondered what the letter said. I wondered if it was true that he truly cared for me and saw who I was inside. The thought made me realize that even I myself did not know what path may be laid in front of me. My feelings confused me, and I decided to shut the Lord of Winterfell out of my mind forever.

Except on some dark nights. 

And except for now, when Jacaerys prods my arm and awaits the answer to his question. I realized I must have been silent for a long time as his voice began to register in my head. 

"Lost in thought?" 

"Ha-ha," I shoved him back. "Sort of." 

Jace's face became serious. "I was only jesting, but perhaps I shouldn't have brought it up. I know you truly did care for him."

"How could you tell?" I asked, genuine curiosity lacing my tone. It was past the point where it was worth feeling awkward about the truth of my feelings. I was only human, after all. 

"He was kind to everybody, but especially to you." Jace pursed his lips in thought. "Although at the same time, he does not treat you like you're soft. It was like he loved hearing you speak. Like your word was God."

I smiled. 

Jace nudged me. "And... he looked at you like you hung the damn sun in the sky."

My heart skipped a beat hearing that. I knew it was true, but I was used to people looking at me in awe. As if I were a ball of light floating in front of them, ethereal, untouchable. Cregan was not afraid to see through me, to touch me. He made me feel held.

Emotion overcame me in that moment. I quickly scrambled up from the bag of grain Jace and I were lounging on, grasping my sword and tossing my hair over my shoulder. 

"Well, it's too late now," I quickly said, "He's in Winterfell and it does not matter if he cares for me or not, I do not want the life of a housewife."

Jace stood. "Who says that getting married means you'll become a housewife? You'll be a lady, you could do whatever you please." 

"It isn't just the marriage, it's the principle of it!" I cried, moving away from him towards the main training yard. "As soon as I take those vows, it means my purpose is only to bear children." As we entered the larger courtyard and grew closer to other people, he grasped my arm and spoke to me in a lowered voice. 

"I know you think I do not understand, but I am soon to be betrothed as well, likely to someone I will never love."

"Well, at the end of the line, you have a throne." I spit at him, spinning on my heel and leaving him staring helplessly after me. 

[goodolreliablejake]

I think part of the reason that Evrart Claire is able to outmanuever everyone else is that he sees the world in strict, materialist terms. I previously argued that beneath his sleezy and corrupt exterior, Evrart is a true believer in Communism, so now I'd like to add on to that a bit about his methods. Basically, Evrart has very clearly defined, material goals and a plan to achieve them that prioritizes results over process, and this is in stark contrast to Harry's highly conceptual and abstract understanding of politics.

Let me make my point by first making a detour; why does Evrart employ Rene as his night watchman? It's charity, right? Rene isn't really that useful, but he wants to feel useful, and he needs a source of income to survive, and he needs it in a way that protects his pride. But isn't Rene Evrart's ideological enemy? He is, according to Harry's political schema, the avatar of fascism, and a vocal hater of communism.

Well, no, because to Evrart, class isn't a matter of what you believe in your heart, it's a matter of your material conditions. Rene is a poor and vulnerable man, a working class fellow abandoned by the people who once exploited him, even as he romanticizes that past exploitation. And in that way, he is (in Evrart's eyes at least) no different whatsoever from Dros the Deserter.

I think this materialism is also what allows Evrart to lie so easily. He'll gladly call Harry a comrade, because words are wind. Words don't change the fact that Harry is a cop and the violent agent of the state.

Under this framework, I think there are really only two political positions that people can meaningfully take; they are what Harry would call Communism or Moralism. As a citizen of Martinaise, you can either accept the status quo of those in power, or you can work towards independence from your corporate overlords. Fascism is a delusion: drinking yourself to death while griping about women and immigrants, never changing your political reality. Ultraliberalism is ALSO a delusion: fantasizing about net worth and becoming the boot, meanwhile your overlords will never allow you to escape the economic status you were assigned at birth.

Now, it might sound like I'm being overly complimentary to Claire, but this framework is also what enables his worst crimes. Evrart defrauds the union, skirting its democratic process to install himself (and his brother) as permanent dictator/mafioso. His focus on results turns him into something of a perverse reversal of his own ideals. He exploits the people of the fishing village, conning and stealing their land because he believes it will be worth it in the end. He profits off a drug trade that leeches off of the hopelessness of the very working class people he claims to be working to better the lives of.

Yet at the end of the day... Harry's "political vision quests" are stories he tells himself in his head. They change the UI that the player sees but nothing about how it works. His conception of Communism is most defined by its impossibility and failure. Meanwhile, Evrart ACTUALLY seizes the means of production.

[bananafire11]

NEW AU TIIIME ~

I think the theories of Jax are an interesting idea for an au... so here's my take! And @cherriisodapop 's cuz she is really helping me along with this

Some info ive scrambled up about him below cut !!

○ Jax is an NPC from a discontinued map dubbed "Chaos Land". He grew up there with his mom and dad, whom of which are a rubber bunny and plushy badger.

○ He's known he was an NPC since a young age. While exploring he found himself glitched beneath the map, finding the models of everyone he knows. Being a child however, he dismisses it, and grows up assuming it's normal. He hardly thought back on it anyway, much too busy with life above.

○ On an adventure where Kaufmo runs into Jax and they're glitched below the map, Kaufmo makes a comment about Jax's general disinterest in the models. Jax explains they don't matter, to which Kaufmo ends up explaining they do. This causes Jax to spiral, because now he knows the truth of the matter. He is not human, but Kaufmo and the others who came on the adventure are.

○ as an almost parallel of Pomni and Gummigoo's scene, Kaufmo suggests he come along to the circus with him. They make a plan to fake Jax's arrival as a human so Caine isn't aware that he is an NPC.

○ Kaufmo and Jax work together to fuck with coding and create a room for Jax at the very end of the hallway of dorms. It captures a very small segment of his home realm. Anyone human who nears it gets this overwhelming feeling of wrongness. He never lets anyone in.

○ he has some features left over from his home, one of which being the ability to pull small things out of thin air. Out of fear of suspicion, he pretends to pull these small objects from his overalls pocket. Another being how he does things in a very,, "wrong" way. Example being in the drawing how he's eating the banana (shame on him for that btw).... kaufmo teaches him ways to be more human, but old habits die hard.

○ he thrives on causing chaos in the circus, pranking and bullying others to get their reactions. He's curious, wanting to know how humans react to things that he finds funny or normal. Human nature and their reactions to just about anything intrigue his curiosity, though he's skilled at hiding this through snide comments and teasing.

○ after Kaufmo's abstraction, he finds himself frustrated. He believes he cannot truely experience what it is to mourn his only friend in the circus, and so he's more prone to unstable moods and outburts.

○ events are very much canon-compliant for both pilot and episode two! after that is still a WIP!

Thanks for reading >:]]

[faaun]

oh my god ! haha . anyway a bit buzzed perhaps. anyway here's what happened on the date