#lisse writes

[pennedbylisse]

PROACTIVE ⋮› ʀɪᴀʀᴀ

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𝘐 𝘈𝘔 𝘕𝘖𝘛 𝘞𝘏𝘖 𝘐 𝘞𝘈𝘚

❝𝘏𝘖𝘞 𝘋𝘖 𝘠𝘖𝘜 𝘋𝘌𝘚𝘛𝘙𝘖𝘠 𝘈 𝘔𝘖𝘕𝘚𝘛𝘌𝘙 𝘞𝘐𝘛𝘏𝘖𝘜𝘛 𝘉𝘌𝘊𝘖𝘔𝘐𝘕𝘎 𝘖𝘕𝘌?❞

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Months of emotional restraint and cunning strategy had culminated to this gratifying moment.

Kiara had him where she'd imagined him all these cursed, sleepless nights. A glinting knife pressed to the soft flesh of his neck, because killing the bastard with an automated gun would offer too much grace.

No.

She wanted him to suffer. To slowly bleed out before her. To plead for her to rescue him, at which point she'd show no mercy. The way he'd shown no mercy to his son - the golden boy of the Outer Banks, the love of her life, JJ Maybanks.

Kiara is practically frothing at the mouth with curses and threats when a pair of firm hands grasps her sides and tug, dragging her to an adjoining room.

The door dividing the two spaces clicks shut behind her. She spins sharply, knife still in her hand.

Rafe flinches, ducking just in time.

"Kie," his eyes are that round, wild blue they typically are. He moistens his lips and stammers, holding both hands out in front of him like a barrier, or a bridge, she cannot tell. "Kie, listen to me."

She marches forward, eyes fixed on the door he'd closed. The door protecting her hostage from her justified wrath.

"Kie, please," he barricades her path, her fist drumming with his chest. At first, he's surprised to find himself wincing upon contact, haivng underestimated the turtle-loving-hippie-pogue-kook-princess of Outer Banks.

Then, again, there is a lot he can't wrap his mind around when it comes to Kiara.

Pogue. Kook. All labels fall short. She's at once someone familiar and an entire stranger in front of him. An enigma he has never succeeded in placing into a box. In defining, or coming to know. It's not for a lack of desire.

Her upper lip quivers up at him. Something menacing burns in her gaze.

Fury.

Rafe finds his surprise melting into something like recognition. Anger is the second stage of grief. Anger is also ridiculously good at masking other, more tender, more fragile emotions one doesn't particularly enjoy facing. Like immeasurable sorrow at the exhaust of all alternatives.

"Get out of my way," she inclines her face, gaze sharp and unrelenting. If she were a few feet taller, she'd easily confine him to a corner.

"You do not want to do this, Kiara," he warns and cups her shoulders.

For that split moment, she's that little girl again - Sarah's annoying, clingy friend. She'd brought an injured baby turtle in her tiny, quaking hands. She'd had tears staining streaks down her cheeks. In that moment, he'd not known what to do to salvage the situation; he'd not known what to do to make her stop crying.

He'd yelled for Sarah, hoping she'd hear him through her bedroom window and come comfort her distressed friend.

"Sarah!" He'd inched his way backwards with every step that young Kie had taken towards him, seeking comfort, seeking help, seeking something in his eyes. Something he didn't think he was capable of providing.

"R-rafe," young Kiara's voice had croaked. "What do I do? I don't want it to hurt?" The bloodied turtle in her hands craned its wounded neck painfully slow.

"Here," he'd transferred the creature into his hold.

"What are you going to do?" She'd asked, eyes wide with worry, standing on her toes to follow the sight of the creature in Rafe's larger hands.

"I'm gonna take care of it," he'd assured.

"Rafe, please," she'd cried, because his stern look had seemed ominous. "Don't hurt it."

"It's already hurt, Kie. I'm gonna take the pain away. Go find Sarah."

In the privacy of the storage shed, he'd freed the creature from misery with one quick and decisive blow. He'd not mentioned it to anyone, not what he'd done, not where he'd buried it.

No one had to find out. Not that he'd done the dirty sin to preserve her innocence. Not that he loved her like that, in secrecy, hidden in plain sight.

Somewhere between then and now, that little girl asking desperately for help, clinging to his shirt like an anchor, had gotten lost.

Rafe finds himself in the current of a wave of guilt, thrashing helplessly. I should've protected her. Like I should've protected Sarah. Like I should've protected Dad.

"Kie," his voice comes out an unstable quiver of a breath. "You'll regret this." He'd know, having once been in her shoes, having seen the end of the story unfurl. And having been in her shoes is also why he understands she's not listening; she's thirsty for bloodshed as a means of ending the torture of helpless grief.

"I am not you, Rafe," she nearly spits. "I won't go on an unhinged killing spree at the first taste of blood. There's a single name on my black list and it's justified." She glances at the door, as if through it, at her target sat and bound to the chair. "A life for a very important life." Her eyes water at that, but she does not avert her look from his.

"You don't get to tell me what to do. Get. Out. Of. My way." She shoves his hands from her shoulders and marches past him, hell bent on revenge. The spilled blood of Groff bringing justice to JJ's unexpected death.

"It won't bring him back," he calls, just as her hand ghosts the knob of the door.

She freezes and the air between them grows so dense it's almost palpable. That's when she turns and bolts towards him. "Don't you think I know that. Don't you think I've exhausted all the possibilities in which I bring him back."

The veins on either side of her neck bulge.

"He did not deserve to die, much less like that..." She's crying now, the anger still noticed in the pitch of her voice, but receding from the sharp lines of her expression as it melts.

Kiara is crumbling before his eyes. Dissolving.

Rafe only knows how to destroy. He doesn't know a single thing about repair outside of haphazardly strewing tape and glue over the items he'd accidentally bump at home. Sometimes it'd work. Most times just temporarily.

What's worst is that hearts don't really get glued back together.

Here's Kiara's heart shattered into a million pieces.

"There's no bargain left," her voice is barely a whisper, resigned. Eyes glassy. Expression flattened by a weight of emotion. "The only thing left to do is avenge his death. In a world without justice, vengeance is the only solution."

That's when he grabs the weapon from her hold.

She stumbles back in surpruse, cowers at the edge and Rafe finds it hard to mask the twinge of hurt that pierces him at that. At the realization that she fears him.

She didn't always fear him.

Then again, the old Kiara would never have plotted death.

Time takes away the things you love most.

"I'm not going to hurt you, Kie." His tone is somber, solemn. It's an oath he does not take lightly.

"You-" she guffaws, the light tone of it not quite reaching her eyes. "You almost killed Sarah, your sister. Twice," she barks.

"That was an accident." Rafe rubs his temples, unknotting something tight and pressured there. "I'd been aiming for John B."

"Oh! Cause that's soo redeeming, right?" She scoffs, incredulous, her breath blowing the braid framing her face. "What about the time time you intentionally drowned your Sarah, huh? Was that an accident too?"

A few months ago, former Rafe would have aimed the weapon at her head or her neck and yelled, various times, "Shut up!" to avoid facing the uncomfortable truth - that he'd fucked up.

That Rafe, however, is as dead and underground as JJ Maybanks. Buried in some uncharted Moroccan territory to never be found.

He sinks his head, instead, and admits, "Yes. I did."

A little stupefied by his acceptance, she nods.

"Listen, Kie," he starts up again. "I don't expect you to trust me or take anything I say with any weight. I'll say it anyways - you do not want this man's blood on your hands. You do not want the image of his lifeless face haunting your days and nights. You do not want to know the extremes your anger is capable of taking you to. You do not want to lose trust - the trust your friends have in you, or the trust you have in yourself, in your identity."

Kie's posture softens against the wall. She watches him with a mixture of concern and confusion, and a trace of hesitation, waiting for the other shoe to drop as it often does in the matters of Rafe Cameron.

"Like the murderer everyone knows I am, I'll take care of it," he says, marching towards the door and swinging it open. "I'll take care of that scum Groff and I will make it hurt."

This will be the last splash of blood on my hands, he promises himself. After this he'll move to Charlotte or Raleigh, start anew. Be someone new, someone unrecognizable. Someone remotely salvageable.

[tubborucho]

repost bcs so funny

@mintiliciouss

[ghuleh-draws]

spicy terzo please and thank you mwah mwah

mwah mwah ♡

(a scene from infernal)

[stray-kaz]

A Book and A Nap : a Roronoa Zoro x f!reader blurb

Summary: You and Zoro have some peace in the middle of the maelstrom.

A/N: Thank you, @writingmysanity for lending me your idea! :)

The ship's wine cellar was a cool reprieve from the heat of the world abovedeck, and it was where you and Zoro retreated to when the hoopla became too much. The hammock swung gently with you both resting in it, Zoro's head and shoulders in your lap as you half sat, half lay behind him, book in hand.

His crown pressed against your stomach and as you read out loud to him, you slowly combed your fingers through his hair, occasionally scratching gently at his scalp. He sleepily grunted every time you did that.

A soft golden glow spilled through the window and poured over you like honey, soaking you in light and warmth. Your eyelids grew heavy as you read and you fought to keep them up, doing your best to concentrate on the words.

Your hand stilled in Zoro's hair and you glanced down to see his chest rising and falling evenly and his eyes closed, dark lashes like streaks against his skin. You could barely even hear him breathing. You stopped your reading and started to close the book, when his tired voice interrupted you.

"Why'd you stop?" he mumbled, pressing his head a little harder into your stomach; he didn't bother with opening his eyes.

You stroked his hair again, lightly.

"I thought you fell asleep" you said, stroking the tip of one finger down past the bridge of his nose.

He smiled faintly and shook his head.

"Nah, flower. Keep going."

You leaned back a bit further and did as you were bidden, though you were yawning before you reached the end of the third page. When you paused then, there was no response, no interruption to ask you to continue.

You smiled as your eyes slid shut and the book closed against your chest.

You fell asleep like that, one hand in Zoro's hair and the other on his shoulder, always connected to him.

Tagging: @elizabeth-karenina

[liss-art]

A tiny backstory of the art - I opened tmblr 2 day ago and saw a text that blew my brain IMMEDIATELY.

I hardly waited till the end of my work XD

@uchihacollector and @thetoaddaddy thank you for inspiration! For those who dislikes WORDS here's a bald picture XDD

[pennedbylisse]

feminine dread

an alternate face to the renowned feminine rage

aka sad girl core or feminine torment

ROMANTICISM MEETS EXISTENTIALISM

key attributes: crying in your room, late nights spent thinking, staring vacantly at the ceiling; never feeling like enough - not pretty enough, not female enough, not smart enough, not human enough, not kind enough, not tough enough. hot-girl summer sad-girl always. loner. standing at the margins. no one sees me, gets me.

i feel nothing and the weight of everything pressing over me all at once.

i'm a void, a crater, something carved out and left incomplete, something that's lacking.

a lifelong quest for something to fill this void but nothing suffices, it all just pours right through me.

my sense of identity is fragmented such that i've never held my entire reflection - some shard's always amiss. the painful absence impales me and leaves me gasping for breath, crawling and choking. the tension of a ghost limb, but the limb is something deep within me that i can't name or palpate. instead, it rattles like a can with a single coin, the echoes mocking the vacancy. i worry the outside world can hear it as i brush shoulder with strangers.

will i ever come to know the feeling of normalcy or was I only ever mean to exist like this? to feel like an anomaly? a glitch?

[pennedbylisse]

NEVERLAND IN AUGUST

I often tell myself I will no longer partake in writing tae fics bc they always turn out excessively angsty and melodramatic, and yet, I find myself here, time and time again.

short version: kth and poor decisions. salty air. beach shore. never meant to be. exchanges that slipped away into moments in time. a secret well kept, and then fallen into oblivion. seashells. skinny dipping. august, except it's not. you, except you are not mine. us, except there is no such thing. you were never mine to keep, or to lose. 

tae's got a neverland complex. doesn't wanna grow up, bc it means leaving behind his freedom, but worst of all, you. or something like that.

proceed, if you are interested in the long version.

wc: 3.7 k

tracklist: 'August' by Taylor Swift

tense and POV: 2nd person and past

You are so easy to fall back into, as though we are molded to fit one another, a lock to its key, and it shouldn't be this easy to self-destruct.

Taehyung slipped away into the night when the crowd had settled and turned its eyes blind; when the topics of conversation had shuffled from his career and marital prospects to rather pettier, popular culture developments.

He averted curious gazes amidst the crowded streets as he meandered aimlessly. Like a compass with a damaged needle, he spun indefinitely, pressed tight between bodies. No sense of direction.

With a flighty gaze, he scoured the surrounding, illuminated buildings for an anchor, a sort of lighthouse, some sort of sign to pierce his attention, slap him hard across the cheek as the ground would if he would only stop falling. If the ground were to catch him and hold him, rather than cave beneath his feet.

Gloomy, dim eyes searched past the silhouettes of the skyscrapers, past the nomadic clouds, which veiled the moon's luminous halo, attempting to make out faint stars freckling the sky.

Not just any stars.

Polaris - a stable point, axis, around which the rest of the world's body falls and rises.

The star he'd chased with his siblings through the playgrounds long ago.

The clouds were too vast and dense, as were the crowds pressing in around him. Suddenly, he felt painfully sympathetic of Polaris's condition; the world seemed to start spinning around him, too; the ground at his feet warping with each unsteady step.

He didn't want to be central, polar. He wanted to be a fuzzy margin, ambiguous, never quite a start, never quite an end. The horizon.

He wanted to be too many things in life, and nothing at all, at once. It was dizzying, to say the least, to be tugged in every direction. To have so many quarreling voices beckoning your attention.

Sometimes he wished he could split himself into a million little versions. Split the burden between them.

He just wanted it to stop. The spinning. The encompassing chatter. The omnipresent stares. All of it.

He dipped into a gas station with a neon sign for a header and pulled the cheapest bottle of red wine from its rack. Rolled it over the counter towards the register clerk along with his upturned ID, only his thumbpad mostly covered his picture and name.

It was a quick swivel, quick enough for the clerk to nod in recognition he was of age; not long enough for them to register the reputation behind the name, the face;

not long enough for a light to flicker in their distant gaze and their mouths to fall slack in awe.

With a lazy grip on the bottle's neck, he swayed and weaved through the saturated streets, often slamming shoulders, until he sank into a dim alley, save for an overhead flickering neon sign, similar to that of the gas station, only just one flicker short of giving out.

He padded his way out to a quieter, sleeping street, and found himself a vacant bench to collapse onto.

It was finally dark, and quiet, and the margins of the world had seemed to settle about him.

There, he conjured up an affair with the shadows until he grew to question whether he'd become one. Whether the star-freckled clouds had encompassed and carried him away, to some distant Neverland. A place that could offer him an eternity to figure out the calls and wants of his heart.

His parents had omitted a truth from him. They'd omitted many through his development, opting for sugar-coating existence, but of all the ones, this one was unforgivable. 

They had never mentioned how it is like the air in your lungs dissipates with each passing year. A blind habit forms: you start holding your breath just to get through a couple of gruesome hours, a shift, the day.

You wait for the afternoon to catch it again, but then the afternoons start growing burdensome in a way uniquely their own. It grows, the weight on your chest, drowns you and kills you slowly. 

In his brief recollection tonight, he supposes they'd been unconvincing in their pretensions. They'd never blatantly admitted this truth but had often insinuated it.  

He should have looked closer, not forsaken the fine details.

He would have noticed the drawn bags lining their eyes, the burst capillaries on the ivory margins.

He would have felt the exasperated sigh leaving their lips while bracing their weight against the counter, just trying to stand another day. 

He could feel that helpless sigh, now. Infact, it had grown to become his. 

A sigh which seeped into the quiet night. 

Quiet, safe for the whir of cars on the highway, a couple of miles back; safe for the chirp of crickets nestled amidst bushes, shrubs.

Quiet, safe for the sudden exclaim of a nearby branch, snapped under unannounced weight. 

Taehyung stiffened and used the bottle that had been resting on his thigh as leverage, in case he'd need to spring upward and dash -though, it would likely be less of a dash, more of a stumble and awkward trot away given his inebriation.

"Boo!" 

He didn't startle, much too inhibited to have reacted within the acceptable timeframe.

Or simply, too unbothered.

Instead, he turned his head with a lazy, drunken gaze and there you were -- his Neverland on Earth, stardust lining your eyes, a shard of magic and dream and impossible possibilities amidst a limiting world.

The stars surely envied you. 

You kicked the air, standing, waiting awkwardly, as if for an invitation from him to sit. You weren't sure if he'd appreciate you intruding on his hideout, even if it was a vacant restaurant patio, with rusted chairs and overgrown ivy.

"They are losing their minds looking for you, you know?" 

"They are?" A smug smile tugged on the corner of his glistening lips. "Let them." He proceeded to lick the gloss away, tasting the bitterness of residual liquor with subtle tones of sweet vanilla and tart cherry. "Are you gonna tattle on me?"

He swung down the leg he'd had outstretched on the bench, opening a space for you. Welcomed your presence. 

Your original reluctance dissipated, formerly pinched shoulders relaxing. 

"I already did," you flaunted, lied, made your way across the patio, crunching over shattered stone. 

As you lowered yourself onto the seat, he gestured the opaque bottle at you, whirling the contents around. 

"If I'm going down..." he started, holding back a hiccup behind puckered lips. For an instant, his face twisted, as if bile had crept up the column of his throat.

He swallowed hard, and quarreled with the nausea wringing his stomach. "I might as well not remember any of it."

You'd feel nauseated, too, leading his life.

Sure, it was glimmery and luxurious, alluring and comfortable by every physical means, with everything imaginable so carefully crafted and tailored. The perfect life.

It was all pretend, shallow. A gilded cage is only ever still a cage, a prison, confinement.

It wasn't him - not the him that you knew. He was a free bird, meant to take flight.

The him that you knew would be up for spontaneous drives to the shore. He'd get lost out of an insistence to avoid using navigation systems. He'd blast every genre of music through the speakers, and somehow recall every lyric, even the ones that were in a foreign tongue. 

The him you knew, would leave his shoes at every corner, flinging them off with irritability, complaining about how sore they made him, managing to turn it into a debacle on how suffocating it is to be trapped.

He'd walk on coarse gravel, all through the city. Come home with the filthiest soles, nothing short of charcoal. He'd defy every norm with the lightest of smiles, come spewing to you about the sights he saw on his adventures, the people he'd met, how he'd played soccer with a couple of kids from the neighborhood, how their mother had served him some jiggae and how it reminded him so much of home.

Then he'd guffaw, shake his head and tell you that it was weird how he could recognize the familiarity of home when he'd never really met it. 

But you were, of course, biased in your belief that the only version of him that existed was the one he showed you. You didn't really - or simply didn't want to - accept that this version could be the manifestation of a persona, a theatrical mask meant to distract something deeper, more fragile, genuine, and lost.

Your accepting company allowed him to be a different version of himself, but it wasn't entirely the truest one.

"Get up." You slapped his thigh and turned the bottle he'd handed over, letting its maroon content pour onto the cement, stain it beyond repair. "I want you to remember tonight." 

He groaned, collapsing his head onto his hands and ruffling his hair into a nest. "I had been enjoying that!" 

"That..." You shifted your gaze to the ground and then back up at him, brows pinched in question. You couldn't possibly be referring to the same thing. "No one could possibly enjoy that. Abominable." You shuddered.

"It was cheap," he justified. 

"You act as if you have no money."

"I don't! It's their money." He thrust both arms into the open air, gesturing to his puppet masters, to the strings sewn into his elbows and wrists.

At all times, he was being watched fall apart at the seams, and was scrutinized. The same life which had been breathed into his infantile lungs, never felt his. Instead, it reminded him of a plotted strategy on a chess board game drawn out for added torture. It wasn't a single, one-time commitment; it was a lifetime of sustaining choices that would remove him further from himself.

"Enough self-pity for one night. Come on." You rose, knees creaking a little. "Let's go." 

"Where to?" He beckoned, still planted on the bench. 

"Somewhere. Anywhere. Nowhere." The offer hung in the air, open to endless possibilities. Potential twinkled in your starry eyes; a million wishes and dreams birthed in a second. 

You smiled, and stardust gathered on your tear line, rained down and dusted his sullen limbs until he was floating, made weightless, trailing after you.

"Neverland."

"What?"

"Let's go to Neverland."

You snickered and it was as if bells chimed, rang, jingled.

"What are you - Have you gone mad?"  Taehyung hissed, dancing his weary gaze across his immediate surroundings. He'd rapidly grown weary, careful of an audience bearing witness to the spectacle you were putting on, in your lacy underwear. Locks of hair danced around your figure in response to a cool oceanic breeze gathering to greet you.

"I am pretty sure this is illegal. Illegal, T."

T, as in Tinker Bell, his personal version of a rose-tinged fairy, with a volatile temper, particularly when things don't follow your script.

Incredulously, Taehyung continued to mumble beneath his breath. The cyclical breath of the sea drowned his protests.

Your bra collapsed onto a mound of sand, forcing his lips mute. Like a fish hauled out of the water, his lips smacked open, shut, then open again, failing to close around the ghost of words he'd thought to say but suddenly drew blank on.

Cheeks burning flushed in that so fae way, you dipped your chin behind the curtain of your hair. 

You shut your eyes for what you were about to do. Mustered the courage to follow through, to not feel vulnerable under his gaze. 

Taehyung's unwavering gaze followed your hands down, before trailing up so fast he saw stars spinning around his field of vision. He felt he'd been thrown into Van Gogh's Starry Night.

Slowly, apprehensively, he let his eyes cascade over your silhouette, which grew smaller in the distance as you raced to the sea, desperate to hide in its embrace. 

Growing envious of it, Taehyung ripped his top off his torso, and stumbled the length of the shore, quarreling with his trousers. 

In his boxers, he stopped close enough for the edge of the tide to graze the tip of his toes. Retracted at the sudden bite of cold. "You are mad, woman." It's no longer a question.

"Look who's talking?" You twirled around, the water caressing your sides, sculpting you with as much love and delicate intent as a historic artist did his marble block. "Isn't this illegal?" 

And something in you fizzled, like the air bubbles frothing against your lips on the crystalline surface. It filled you with confusing pleasure to leave a mark on him. To corrupt him.

You hoped your touch on him - your influence - was permanent enough to outlive all that would proceed. Permanent and deep like etchings on tree barks, or indentations on freshly cemented sidewalks.

The panic in his gaze had long dissipated. It blended into a palette of emotions. All unnamable, indistinguishable, but utterly mesmerizing, nonetheless, much like the colorful horizon behind you. 

Delight. Amusement. Fascination. A twinge of flippant anger. 

You drive me mad, woman.

Orange sherbet. Strawberry pink. Lavender lilacs. 

Mad enough to rouge his own cheeks.

You'd like to stare long enough to acquaint yourself with each and every one of them. To name them all, and find where one starts, and the other ones trails off. 

But the thought of staring, steadily into his gaze makes you restless, short of breath. As if there isn't enough air in the entire atmosphere to satiate your lungs.

You can't name the way he looks at you; it's foreign, but not frightening in its oddity. Still, you can recognize its danger, in that it's not a known way to look at friends.

You reclined your head onto the surface of the water, much as you would against your pillow after a long day. "Oh, it's heavenly, Tae." With your arms outstretched like the limbs of starfishes on the ocean floor, you floated. The salty medium carried the voice of the sea directly into your ears. The sound of your breathing and the beating of your heart amplified.

A bizarre reminder that you were indeed alive.

Splashing and thrashing echoed across the sea, and you instinctively curled in on yourself to find Taehyung visibly grimacing at the cold state of the water.

"Why did I ever think following you was a good idea?"

You beamed, droplets of the salty sea clinging to your lashes, where they refracted the setting sun, and it's like stardust in broad daylight all over again.

"You have to do it all at once. Don't think. Just do," you encouraged, watching as the delicate, thinly defined muscles of his torso flexed and twitched over the surface of the water. 

His gaze was devoid, save for deeply creased brows caught in contemplation. A war with the limits of sensation. He held his arms linked over his chest to preserve heat, or perhaps hide his vulnerability.

Water pooled in the cup of your hand, which you splashed in his direction, aimed right at his handsome frown.

Victory ignited like an ember amidst your eyes. 

He grew to shudder a few arms' length from you. Broad and strong shoulders quivered helplessly.  

"You!" Then, those burnt-honey eyes pierced yours. Glaring. Fixed. 

The cupid-bow lining his upper lip momentously twitched as he repeated himself "You-" His words stumbled over unstable, shallow breaths.

You withdrew into the water's embrace and watched attentively, as the waterline climbed up his finely detailed torso. Outstretched arms grew nearer. Burnt-honey eyes widened in a vengeful craze. Ivory teeth became bared underneath strawberry-red lips. 

A frightened giggle of yours bubbled the water's surface rimming your chin. 

Finally, with an inhale of courage, Taehyung lunged forward, took the blow of the cold front on, and wrapped you in his arms. His weight sunk you beneath the surface. You were a pair of tangled anchors.

Not having stored a breath in your lungs, you squirmed and kicked in his old. His groans were muted by the harrowing echoes of the abyss beneath the sea. 

Strong arms tightened around you and hauled you out. You broke the surface with a desperate gasp, choking for breath between giggles. 

Laughter echoed in his chest, and reverberated through you. It reminded you of the waves and siren songs you grew up believing resided within conch shells as a pig-tailed kid. 

Since having shed your milk teeth and tolerated the gnaw of growing pains that accompanied such loss, you'd given up on childish fables of that kind.

On trips to the shore, there weren't hidden siren songs in the colorful conch shells you held up to your ear. There was only your younger sister cackling beside you, calling you a fool - but only after having tried it for herself first. 

But much as you had convinced yourself siren songs didn't exist inside the shells, you'd also convinced yourself you'd never hear that laugh again. Somber. Baritone. A tad boyish, in the way it would crack unpredictably. So wholly yours. It was a tune you'd looped in your memory from the very first instance you'd heard it.

In that split-second, with his hands fanned over your hip bones, and half-moon eyes tenderly fixed on yours, the fables did not seem so farfetched. New possibilities were solidifying at the tip of your fingers. Your fingers grazed the apples of his cheek. 

The possibilities were whispers in the crest of your ear. 

You'd only needed to get far enough from the bustling commotion of the city to hear them, to realize they'd always been there. 

An abstract somethingness would always exist between you two, just barely palpable.

The champagne had a mildly scorched aroma undermining its light fizz. You grimaced as it burned its way down your throat.

On any given night, you would much prefer a cup of tea to pair with the sacred act of slipping into bed; green, chamomile, on occasion, even aromatic Tulsi. 

But tonight, you weren't trying to sleep, to ease a mild case of insomnia. Sleep would rob you of time both of you knew you didn't have.

After a couple of swigs from the dark bottle, your skin began to buzz. A denseness subtly amounted over you, as though honey were dripped over your body, every move lubricated, viscous.

Your legs were warm, draped over his in a languid, but intimate manner - almost grounding in nature, as if you were his anchor. You tethered him to the present pleasures, kept his mind off the anxious tomorrows. 

His lips were sweet on yours and at times a hint bitter, like something you shouldn't have taken pleasure in tasting. A poison, that grows tolerable the more you ingest, but not any less deadly.

The tolerance being an illusion, an influence of the poison over you, foreshadowing its impending triumph, as you relinquish your willpower. 

That's it. You were dwindling under its influence. Your mind grew heavy, like your limbs, with intoxication. 

It was no longer bitter.

Rather, it became cloying, and you were innately and undeniably insatiable. 

Taehyung hoisted your hips to reposition them over his, desiring your proximity. Possibly as equally intoxicated. The question hung over your heads in the shape of a watchful moon.

Who was the poison? 

The hold on you was rough, but harmless. It was the gentlest rough-grip you have ever been subjected to. You allowed it. 

"I shouldn't do this." Your shallow breath ghosted his swollen lips in torment. 

He nuzzled the distance in desperation, and you obliged, tasting him apprehensively.

Just one peck. 

Then, another. 

And, what if, perhaps you held his lips in place with adoration and reverence. Held them in a warm hug, as if to shield them from the cool breeze blowing in from the sea. 

Would that have been such a crime?

The set of trespassers that tore through your blouse certainly were (criminal). They robbed you of any and every modicum of self-restraint.

You were no longer holding his lips. You had long since graduated to a sculptor, molding them to your will with each measured graze. Simultaneously, you started to circle your hips over his, back and forth, round around. 

"We should stop." Taehyung breathed raggedly into your neck. "Tell me to stop," and it came across as half-plea, half-demand.

You defied him, pulled him close, your breasts flushed against his sturdy chest.

You were definitely the poison.

You were a corrupt, filthy little thing. Loved it when he called you out on it. 

Tonight, he held you like you were something, someone sacred, like you were ceramic at risk of shattering in his hands.

You wrestled his gentle touch, wanting him to defile as he'd done enough times before for it to not be mistaken with error, overwhelming tempation.

You were temptation embodied, but he never once feigned sanctity.

Equally so, if not more, you deeply desired to defile him, to permeate every inch of him until the crime became undeniable. 

Fast, is how it unfolded.

But is there any better way to go?

Live fast, die young, right? Shine so bright you burn out. A phenomenal supernova. Watchers gathered to experience a historic event. 

There certainly wasn't an absolute right or wrong way to go.  But, if there had been, Taehyung was certain that way was fast. To burn like the dozens of stars in the sky, framing the quaint balcony. One moment there, the next gone. 

He knew that his departure approached just as quickly as dawn brightened the horizon. He knew you weren't oblivious to this fact.

Something in him winced at the thought of putting you through it again.

"Tell me to stop."

"Don't stop."

"Tell me to go," he almost begged, groaning as you kissed down the column of his neck. 

"Stay."

He wished he could. 

A ringtone blared across the room, funneling out through the creak between the balcony door and the frame. It said what neither could bring themselves to utter.

Taehyung marched out of the room, half-dressed, delirious but with a direction in mind.

And just like that, the bitter taste returned to overpower your senses.

The whispers in your ears, grew deceiving.

Deceitful little lies. Impossible possibilities.

The possibilities that had grazed your fingertips crumbled into mounds of sand. 

Sand, after all, is only ever withered shells.

[pennedbylisse]

INK 'N' PETALS | THE RAVEN

Solana's reserved a musty room at a local motel and waits as she was originally instructed. The room is pungent of cigarettes. Both the bed sheets and the carpet are plagued by irregularly-shaped stains she dares not attempt to identify. Even so, it's not the room's critical state of hygiene that has her pacing back and forth, nibbling her fingernails.

Mentally, she's reciting some sort of prayer - not that she's ever been instructed as to how to do a proper one. It's more pleading than prayer, than reverence, she'd say. Begging for everything to go as planned, to go smoothly; no hurdles, no set-backs, no losses. All at no cost, of course, like a favor from the heavens. They are known for their grace, are they not?

A little too easily, and quickly, her prayers are answered with a sequence of taps on the door.

Her pacing stops. She draws in a breath and waits out for another tap, to verify she'd not imagined it.

Peering through the peep-hole on the room door, a raven head of curls comes into view, bent to gaze at the ground. The knocker has a pale arm propped against the solid door.

Solana unhooks the chain from the door, twists the lock and the knob, swinging it open to meet Yoongi.

Her gaze rakes his complexion - no wounds - then skitters down to the duffel bag in his clutch, stuffed beyond its limit.

Hurriedly, Yoongi transfers its weight into her hold.

She staggers because of its weight, employ the efforts of her other hand at hoisting it up.

Yoongi's dark eyes steadily bore into hers, as if it's the last good look he'll get of her. As though he's snapping a mental picture in the hopes of preserving what will easily be lost in a matter of minutes.

In a swift motion, he brushes his warm lips with her forehead, and gently squeezes her cheek with his hand.

She barely mutters a hurried greeting, or inquiry as to what's in the duffel bag, when he beats her to it.

"No time for questions, Ana." His cheeks are flushed the way a runner's are after jogging a number of miles, nostrils flaring. Every other second, he glances over his shoulder, chest heaving. "You just have to trust me."

"Blindly," she affirms with a nod.

Stammering for a breath, he proceeds, "Alright, there's a train that leaves at 7 AM. Minstowe East station. Ticket is in the bag. You hop on. You avoid contact with strangers. You keep running." He pauses, gaze dancing between hers, allows the instructions sink in.

"Whatever you do," he continues, "you don't look back. Hear me?" He licks the sweat collecting at the bow of his upper lip.

Solana nods.

Anxiously, he shits his weight off the doorframe, onto his sore legs that threaten to buckle beneath him, then leans back onto the frame. He presses his forehead against hers one last time. "Ana, this is it. A chance at a new life. Promise me you won't look back."

Solana stalls, slow to acclimate, unable to conjure even half as much determine courage as him.

She rolls her bottom lip inward into a fine line.

Around Yoongi, for the years she'd known him, she'd never been strong. Rather, she'd always crumble, bear herself vulnerable, because at some point early in their journey she'd learned he was worthy of her trust. He'd never done, or would ever do, anything to hurt her.

Tears collect on her lash-line.

"What about you? What will happen to you, Yoongs?"

"Don't worry. There's at least seven lives left in here." He gently claps her cheek. "Promise?" Lifts his weight off the frame, decidedly this time, like ripping a band-aid and committing to tolerating the discomfort; or pulling a decayed tooth by slamming a door with a string attached to its handle.

Apprehensively, she responds "I promise," knowing that's the only thing he's waiting for to disappear. Part of her wants to object, just so he'd stay.

Yoongi's frame dwindles in size as he jogs across the vacant parking lot, into the mist of dawn.

Before he's completely out of sight, she calls one last time "Hey, Yoongs?"

He slows but doesn't turn. Can't bear to look back at her. Doesn't want the last view of her to be that of tears.

"Thank you..."

Conversation dwindles into a tranquil cadence; the kind that rises out from the comfort of each others' quiet presence; the kind that wraps about two figures as they partake in their individual projects while in each others' constant company - one writing away on their laptop, the other reading the last 50 pages of a book.

“I missed you, Yoongs,” she hums and nuzzles her nose into his neck for added comfort. Even with being able to hold him flush against her, and feeling his chest rise with a rhythmic breath, Solana finds it hard to believe. Through the dim night, she blinks at the sight of him, the silhouette of his relaxed face, as though it is a mirage that could vanish with a gush of wind. “I thought I’d never see you again. Had mentally prepared myself to live that version of reality.”

The latter presses his lips into her temple, extinguishing any doubt about his presence. "Can't get rid of me that easily, Sol."

She smiles at the certainty in that statement. As reliable as a law. Yoongi would always be there. Always. Like a moon to its planet, or a planet to its sun, unified in orbit, though at times imperceivable.

“I did something bad,” her voice trembles unsteady, thinking back to their parting, the things she'd wanted to confess to him back then but felt robbed by the urgency of the conditions they'd found themselves in. Her grip tightens around the fabric of his tee shirt, clings to it like a lifeline on the side of a hill.

Solana knows that nothing she could confess would drive Yoongi to abandoning her. Her hold on him is desperate, though. A fearful child clinging to its comfort plush to wait out the deceiving night.

“I know,” he hums, “we all do at some point.” He wraps a sturdy hand around her head laying her cheek over his chest, presses his cheek over her crown and holds her safe. “It’s what you do from there on that matters.”

“Was running the right thing?”

“Sometimes it is,” he responds. “You are safe, that’s all what matters. You did the right thing fleeing. Sometimes fear can surprise you. It can be powerful like that. Protective.”

Her soft voice comes out as a mumble over his creased shirt, “I don’t want to live the rest of my life on the run. So scared - I’m so fucking scared of what will happen when it catches up to me-”

“-it won’t,” his tone is firm, voice stable, unlike hers. She clings to it like the gospel truth. Lets it wash her clean of her sins. Steps into a new life with firm believe in those two words. “You won’t have to keep running. You don’t have to.”

“What do you mean?” She tenses, grip over his shirt loosening. Starts to withdraw, considering the dreadful possibility flying through her mind that this could be a trap; that the one who knew all of her intimacies could betray her.

Solana he rises to her elbows, untethered hair billowing over his chest like thick stage curtains.

“It’s over,” he adds. “War is won.”

He cups her chin, the whispers soft, “Stop. Running.” Draws his thumb along the sharp lines of her jaw. Risks getting sliced open. She's worth the shed of a tear or drop of blood, he thinks. No one else he'd take a bullet for.

It's frightening, the overwhelming sense of protection that has flourished through the years. He doesn't fight it though.

There is a blotchy raven tattoo on the dorsal side of his pasty hand. Solana often would call it "the melted raven who flew too close to the sun" given its appearance.

“It’s what I came to tell you.”

"How about you? Will you stop running, too?"

"Honey, I’m a track star."

Solana erupts into a guffaw, head thrashing.

Laughter contagious like the flu, Yoongi finds himself caught in a fit of chuckles, cheeks burning sore, abdomen flexing without relent. It has been so long since he has felt that sort of happy - the kind you preemptively feel sorry about losing. The kind you feel you don’t deserve. The kind that makes you suspicious that life is only dangling it in front of you to snap it out of your grasp as soon as you start getting your hopes up. The kind that feels too good to be true, your hands quaking as you hold it, fearful you might drop it.

Her slap to his chest begs a genuine response.

They sit in silence, wherein he is pensive, nibbling on his lower lip while gazing up through the condensed glass ceiling. The moonglow halos him angelically.

She could watch him forever, the way you'd watch a relative peacefully sleep, so adoringly caught up you neglect the passage of time. The way its unspeakably comforting to watch the ones you love rest in safety.

He takes an inhale, conclusive, mind settled on the words he has chosen. Then holds it in apprehension. In fear that echoes that pre-emptive sadness that shades everything a shade of blue in its wake. Happiness is so close, it grazes his fingertips, and yet he knows on some deep, primal level that a graze is all he’ll ever be allotted. Fears it so much that it is practically a fact.

Still, he takes the leap. A graze being worth it enough. He musters the courage to voice, “I don’t know. Do you think this sob town, with its organic juice shops and yoga centers, is ready to accept me?"

To which she responds by linking her arms around his torso and bringing both their bodies collapsing over the sheets sprawled over the floor. “I’ll convert you into my flower boy. We will have to do something about that persistent brooding face of yours, though.” Her hand travels up to cup his cheek in the dark. "Can’t have you scaring away potential customers.”

Yoongi responds, "So far your only customer is Lico, and I’d say she likes me - or my lap, at least."

They fall asleep in each others' arms.

Yoongi's taken up an affinity towards clementines ever since Ana brought home a net of them with the intent of propagating.

The bearing of fruit would take two-to-three years, at minimum, if the propagate were to survive through to fruition, so Ana had explained. Yoongi isn't really the patient-type. He's been living in survival mode much too long, living in the tomorrow instead of the now. Hasn't known anything else, because when you are born into a burning home, you expect to see the rest of the world up in flames, or something like that.

It's a warm Saturday morning. Yoongi and Ana weave through a market strip, the former, clutching two nets of clementines in his left grip.

An effervescing chuckle responds to the sight of him - his stoic figure, clad in shades of black, neck craned amidst the pop-up stalls, turning over items on the display tables, carefully reading the ingredients on the back of items. Ana recognizes she's successfully converted him into a farmer's market boy. A flower boy, with his rose-like thorns. Her flower boy, as she'd originally promised.

Despite holding the item in proximity, he squints his eyes into half-moons, always plagued by poor vision. He has a recipe in mind he wants to cook tonight.

Ana's light touch grazes the surface of different farming books stacked over a display table.

She's got one split to the table of contents, skimming the ink with pensively pinched brows when a hand encircles her cheek, clasps her mouth with suction.

Her heart rate quickens, pounding against her sternum.

And despite standing there paralyzed by fear, her hands start sweating, ready to take any measure that would ensure survival. A swing behind her head, perhaps? A quick swivel and a knee to the groin? A bite to the delicate flesh pressed to her lips?

When her eyes flutter down to gauge just how much space and freedom she has to proceed with the third option, blotchy black ink in the lose figure of a raven taking flight comes into view.

Instantly, her tense shoulders relax, and she sinks back against Yoongi's torso. Feeling inexplicable relieved.

Peaking over her shoulder at his furrowed countenance, she attempts to voice her questions with incoherent mumbles. Her flighty eyes round and gauging the ripple of thoughts on his gradient of micro-expressions.

His hand relaxes and slides from your mouth to rest on your shoulder. He lifts his other hand to press a pale finger to his lips.

Ana quips a brow but obliges, nonetheless. The fear in Yoongi's ebony eyes is jarringly palpable. She dares not underestimate it.

Again, her heart rate quickens, ears and cheeks flushing hot this time. Even with the erratic rhythm of her heart circulating, a dizzy spell befalls her.

Yoongi's strong hold anchors her weight but, in the process of cradling her unsteady body, the net of clementines tears against the jagged edge of the table.

A flurry of orange unfolds, spilling abundantly over the ground, all thumping and loud and indefinitely rolling in tangential directions. Beckoning attention. Impossible to ignore.

"Fuck," Yoongi breathes against her temple, dotted in summer sweat.

He links his calloused hand with hers and takes flight, in a nature entirely practiced and his own.

Ana doesn't stall to ask what, or who, exactly they are running from. She'd started suspecting as soon as she met the familiar hue of fear on his face, the focused squint of his eyes, the flare of his nostrils in response to adrenaline.

They are prey on the run from the same predator that has chased them to the edges of the forest.

If either of them get caught this time, chances are there won't be any hope reuniting from thereon. The effects would be grave and permanent. That's all she needs to know to match her strides with Yoongi's.

So much for a safe haven.

₊˚♬ Slow Dancing in a Burning Room - John Mayer

Mist hovers the street and in the faint orange of early morning it's as if the heavens have collapsed. A rendition of a fragmented sky collecting at her feet.

In an attempt to preserve heat and subdue a shiver, Solana hugs the hoodie Jeongguk had lent her, after having stripped her of her own appropriately-sized garments and scattered them across his bedroom floor the night prior.

She leaps off the elevated side-walk, onto the faded pavement markings of a pedestrian crossing.

Hopping onto the opposing side-walk, she cranes her head, squints her eyes to peer through the fogged windows of her store.

No lights are on. Stagnant shadows are cast over the front desk and the few flower arrangements she'd managed to set out last night before Jeongguk greedily claimed her attention.

A crisp whistle tears through the silent streets, its echo rising over her head.

She hops to face the street, back turned to her dormant shop.

The tattoo parlor across also sleeps, its neon sign shut off. She lifts her gaze to the windows of the floor above the parlor. A figure leans over the windosill, smiling, toothy, dimpled at the corners, eyes twinkling like those morning stars that refuse to be put out by the radiance of the sun.

Blushing, Solana's nervous gaze rakes his slept-in look - tussled curls, wrinkle tee. Even here, a street away, she can still feel the warmth of his skin on hers.

He motions with his hands for her to step into her store. Doesn't allow himself to hop in for a shower until he's sure she's inside, safe.

Despite her arrival, indicated by the jingle of a bell above the swinging door, the store continues to sleep undisturbed. No one comes running to greet her. She quickly assumes Yoongi's still asleep; that he'd stayed up far later than he'd realized working on his prose only to miss his rise alarm - if he'd even remembered to set one.

His absence, however, is far less questionable than that of a familiar furry tail wrapping around ankles.

Solana coos "Lico?" a number of times, starting at a whisper, rising to a song-like tune.

"Hun?" She bends to seek the tri-colored creature in the spaces beneath furniture. Opens and closes door worried she might have locked him somewhere yesterday without noticing.

Her pulse starts to quicken, thumbing muffled in her ears, such that she doesn't hear the storefront door open.

Having scoured the upstairs kitchen and found no trace of the kitty, her feet clap down the stairs.

"I can't find Lico, Yoongs." She braces her unsteady weight by clasping the railing of the stairs and looks towards the entrance. Fixes her gaze at the back of Yoongi's raven head, wishing for him to turn with Lico in his hold.

With hunched shoulders and a square build, Yoongi works on the number of locks of the door, turning them with a symphony of clicks. Any other day, she would have instantly read him as a red flag, as someone who is hiding something, but today, she can only frantically cry for the stray kitty she'd developed an affinity for.

Yoongi doesn't have to turn to imagine the way horror has stretched her face, widened her eyes, drooped her lips into a frown. He's seen fear in her too many times in their shared life to not have the scarring image seared into memory.

Something in his chest squeezes tightly. A sharp pain piercing him, leaving him staggering for a steady breath. He'd promised to never see that look again; to never have her subjected to fearsome conditions again.

More and more, it seems like every effort at keeping her safe is met with exceeding danger. He can't keep up. The promises falling hollow.

In a voice barely above a whisper, he informs her Lico was involved in a hit-and-run right outside the shop. Tells her he just returned from the animal hospital. "There's not much they could do..."

"What?" Solana's steps thud heavy in approach, behind him. Her quaking hand anchors itself to the sleeve of his shirt. He continues to face the door. Hasn't moved a step since he arrived. Can't bear to look at her.

"You were supposed to be watching him," her voice quivers, on the precipe of shattering. She needs him to tell her it's a cruel joke. She needs him to turn around and have the kitty sleeping soundly in his hold how it so often does.

"I was," he admits. Clears his throat, a heavy lump materializing there, making words hard to form. "I was watching him-"

"-then, what happened?" She angrily tugs at his sleeve, forcing him to turn and face her. Her destroyed gaze demands an explanation, some sort of justification, though none could suffice. Not even from the lips of Yoongi, who she blindly trusts with her life.

An angry red clouds his right eye, so angry that his eyelid is swollen shut. Crusted blood stripes his brow above the assault.

Instictively, Solana stumbles back, mouth handing slack and vacant of words. She rakes her look across him, scans the rest of his body for signs of injury. An abrasion on his lower lip.

Knuckles of his hands a similar shade as his eye, only the flesh is worn and eroded down.

Slowly, she draws near, lifting a hand to gently cup his cheek. "Wh-who did this to you?" Some part of her already knows the answer to that, still, she wants to hear it from his lips. The same lips that would assure her everything would be alright at the end of the day. The lips that always knew the right response.

"I shouldn't have ever come, Ana." Yoongi shatters into a fragile boy she'd never met. Tears stream down his cheeks, mingling with blood, sweat, dirt. In the ten years of calling Yoongi a friend - family - she'd never once seen him shed a single tear, and she'd seen him do horrible things just as many times as she'd seen horrible things being done to him.

"They know."

She pulls him into the tightest embrace her trembling hands can secure, cradles his head over her chest despite his stature.

Her voice barely above a whisper against his temple, "They know?"

Ana's cried so much this night that her cheeks now feel tight and crusted with her tears, frozen into a painful frown. Her hands are clasped over Yoongi's chest, tight, as if he might disappear otherwise. His heart drums lightly but consistently beneath her palm.

"I'm sorry, Sol," his voice cracks, though it's been hours since he arrived and delivered the news. Hours of trying to sit in the grief over the hardwood floor and numb himself to it long enough to regain composure. "I'm sorry for what happened to Lico..." Tears wet the inner sides of her forearms, his cheeks nustled against them. "I'm sorry I guided them here and now it's all ruined."

Ana nuzzles her nose into the crown of his raven head. Inhales his scent. Mumbles into his hair, "You're not ok, Yoongs." It shatters her voice the way it shatters her heart that she failed to protect either of them.

"Please," she begs, "come with me. Let's leave, just us two, like always. We'll change our names, our appearances. We'll keep on the run until we find another safe place to land. You're not safe. I can't lose you, too."

"Ana, I'm so tired...so tired of running..."

They sit in silence. Streaks of warm sunlight pour in through the drawn blinds of the store; Ana had shut them shortly after his arrival, just as she'd twisted the sign to display "Closed." Later today, she'd send out apologies instead of her regular newsletter; offer compensation for the inconvenience in the form of discounts and BOGO offers.

The curtains aren't long enough to touch the ground, so a slight sliver above the ground offers them vantage through the glass of the front door. Shoes march across the side-walk, some march up to the store door and halt before turning away with muffled conversation.

Though it's broad daylight, they haven't been able to turn away from the door. Danger obeys no laws, and would surely neglect the "Closed" sign to collect its debt.

If it had arrived to assault Yoongi last night, what's to say it wouldn't show up whenever, unannounced. It knows their location now. There's no hiding.

"I hate that history's repeating itself," Yoongi remarks in a drained tone, just barely above a whisper, "but you have to leave, Solana. I tried so hard against it. I really did."

"Why won't you come with me?" Her hands grip the collar of his shirt. "It's not a matter of 'can't' because you can. You simply won't. Why?"

"I'll stay and lure them off your trail. It's best this way." "What if they hurt you?"

He doesn't respond. He can't imagine anything hurting more than now.

"You know that Jeon kid," he says, neglecting the subject is only a number of years younger, not an entire decade. He persists to call him that from his youthful appearance. Kid looks like he's never grieved a day in his life. "I think it's time you come clean with him. You've started a life here, ana. Started to cultivate some sense of happiness. You deserve that. Don't give it up."

Ana shakes her head and though Yoongi's not facing her, he can feel her body shake with objection. With fear.

"He doesn't know what I did," her tone's solid, no longer quaking now. Slices firmly through the silence. "Doesn't know me, not the real me, the ugly me I try so hard to shove down, to bury."

Yoongi folds forward, warmth departing from your chest. Swivels in his seat to face her.

She averts his knowing gaze, eyes growing glossy in the faint light.

"I'm scared he won't want me when he finds out." Her lips tremble. "Scared whatever that's growing between us is so fragile that it could end in an instant, with a single confession." Shutting her eyes to tame her emotions, a string of glass-like tears descends her cheek.

Yoongi cups Solana's cheek and wipes the stray tear with his thumb. "It's impossible to not want you."

⊹❤️‍🔥₊ what are your thoughts on solana x yoongi dynamic? you likey? (i am kind of obsessed with them, tbh)

⊹❤️‍🔥₊ i swear this is supposed to be a fic where jeongguk's endgame (yoongi has other plans, apparently)

⊹❤️‍🔥₊ this post will be expanding indefinitely as I concoct scenes involving solana x yoongi so make sure to check back frequently and save the post for future reference :)

⊹❤️‍🔥₊ this is also cross-posted up on my ao3 profile. to access, click here

[pennedbylisse]

OPERATION CUPID | ep. 2

ep. 1 | ep. 3 |

wc: 4.4k

tracklist: 'halley's comet' by billie eilish

tense and POV: present and 3rd person

OPERATION CUPID Classified Excerpts

Jimin holds his phone at head-level and poses for what appears to be a selfie amidst an empty diner.

He attempts for it to be discreet, something dismissible by Namjoon marching to and fro.

The tall and broad man is far too preoccupied with restocking to notice the camera lens purposefully aimed at his frame, over Jimin's shoulder. It's not unlike him to become so hyper-fixated on a task that he blurs the surroundings. His eye sight is healthy, but prone to tunnel-vision.

It's a slow day at Halley's - has been such for a number of weeks now. What normally would be Wednesdays, which passed on as slow as molasses with the arrival of two, five, ten (if lucky) clients, had now ulcerated into slow weekends.

To a company, there's nothing as frightening as a slow Friday evening.

False comforts could be summed up with the phrase "Snow Season is the Slow Season” which they would recite to one another in the stillness. An acknowledgement of the fleetingness of seasons. A promise for a better tomorrow, of hope for prosperity somewhere in the vast horizon.

And, like the old remedy of honey for a sore throat, it would do the trick. It would soothe their unease long enough for the skies to darken, which during the winter isn't long at all.

Only the hours of daylight have started to extend with each day that's strikethrough on the calendar hung up on the wall, the chill in the weather easing with grace. There hasn’t been snowfall in weeks. 

Economic discrepancies have started to become pervasive - like cracks on a ceiling letting in rain. Drips amassing to puddles on the tile floor.

They can be ignored and evaded until you misstep and slip, landing on your tailbone, forced to face the truth of the matter. To hold its weight in its entirety and try not to cave in under the gravity.

It’s not for a lack of trying. Namjoon is as analytical as he is determined, and there’s no one more appropriate to run the diner, but even with his creative solutions, progress is scarce. 

Even if he were to lay out and repurpose a hundred kitchen containers to catch the flood, the persistent dripping would continue to echo the unspoken worries. Enough to drive anybody mad with the promise of overflow, of nearing a point of no return, a snapping point.

Problems keep materializing out of thin air, new cracks being torn across the ceiling, water dripping less sporadically, more consistently. Namjoon's having a hard time keeping the tally, though he doesn't let it show past the long hours he subjects his body to.

He justifies the severe degree of self-sacrifice and self-discipline with the generalization that such is the life of a small business owner. His grandparents, when at their prime, had made it seem almost easy.

It's been rough attempting to fill in their shoes over the past couple of years. Namjoon can't get over the feeling that he's drowning all the time.

He wonders if it'll always feel like this. If there will ever come a point where he could recline with a long-held exhale of relief, long enough to take in the progress made before diving back to tune-up the fine details.

Norah, who is significantly more discreet than Jimin, disguises her phone with her half-opened hardcover book. Though, it should be said, that in preoccupying herself with the perfect cover-up, she’s neglected the fact that her phone is not muted.

She cringes at the click of a captured image, slides down her phone along the textured surface of page 122, to collect on her lap. Shrinks into herself and apologetically bows her head in Jimin’s direction. Today, she could be the sole reason the operation blows.

Making a quick adjustment in correction, she places pressure on the metal button along the frame of her phone. The device's vibration is muffled on her lap.

But it's too late to salvage the situation.

Namjoon's head is turned her way. His analytical gaze narrows on her figure.

She turns a page, making note she'll have to go back to actually read its contents much later, when her ears aren't burning, her mind not racing.

Momentarily peering up over the frame of the book, she realizes Namjoon's gaze has laxed and lifted to look over her figure. It then rounds across the diner, sliding swiftly over vacant tables and unclaimed stools.

He stalls over Jimin, who's drawing circles over the spotless surface of a table with a tattered rag. Admittedly, the rag's in poorer condition than the table.

Namjoon's eyes narrow for a second before he averts his attention back to the task at hand - attempting to open a shipment box without slicing his fingers with the carton-cutter blade.

Nearing closing time, upon completing inventory, Norah's loading a cardboard box into a crowded storage closet. A skinny, crammed little thing with enough shelves to be repurposed for climbing like a ladder.

Her hands slowly retract around the edges of the box. She gently and measuredly presses her weight against the better half that still protrudes off the shelf, thrusts her hips once, twice, until it it shoves into place with a sigh.

Once secured, she claps her hands to rid them of gathered dust and backsteps out of the closet, all the while, maintaining her gaze fixated on its silhouette, cautious and apprehensive.

Barely blinking, her brows furrow with worry as she imagines her efforts collapsing forward onto the tiles, the contents of the box exploding. Pictures how that single disturbance could potentially bring down the rest of the crowded shelves toppling over her.

She makes herself small under the imagined outcome, rounds her shoulders into a make-shift shield, just in case.

Though her backsteps are light and delicate, she clumsily collides with something solid.

The sudden contact causes her to flinch and further shrink in on herself. Her eyes, now, though squinted half-shut from the surprise, remain cast on the wobbly shelf. The snagged and rusted nails holding it together.

Repeatedly, mantra-like, she whispers, pleads "Stay, stay, stay..."

Suspecting she'd made an error in her stepping, but without turning to confirm, she glides her booted foot towards the right and gradually shifts her weight over it, continues to retreat, but again collides with an opposing force. It's no longer startling, more of a source of great frustration.

Her suspicion grows at the coincidence of striking the force once more, and that's when her mental focus on the shelf wanes long enough for her to grow aware of the characteristically animate warmth flanking her.

A warm breath makes itself known on her nape, the way morning mist hovers glass blades during dawn. Only less graceful. It sputters.

Hurriedly, she swivels to find Jimin dissolving into a snicker, cheeks flushed rosy, the way she would envision a mischievous cherub. Love incarnate.

In this intimate proximity, her focus starts to blur. She no longer holds the image of the toppling shelves center focus, rather it obscures and falls out of frame. Replacing it are his lips, plump, round, bottom-favoring, which her gaze sporadically flutters back and forth from.

With a face commanded with startle, brows rounded and raised, eyes widened, she retreats back into the closet she'd originally been trying to escape from.

Contrarily, Jimin encroaches. He's fluid and swift, as he always is. The way he makes any interaction into choreography, contemporary lyricism. While she's solid and stiff like stone, he can't bear to be more opposite.

It seems a bit contradictory, but water holds a natural power over stone. With enough exposure, it starts to erode, to cave, to part.

Norah's frightened he's too similar to water. Too fluid. That she's eroding under his influence. It sends alarms blaring loudly within her. Abort. Flee. Escape.

Jimin lightly places a graze on her torso, in a way that's meant to reassure, and comfort, and somehow gauge a response all at once.

His gaze dances between her wide eyes, further gauging as he shuts the door behind him, albeit with a lack of gentleness compared to the way he holds her.

Norah flinches as though the slam physically hurts her when its brunt echo rattles the shelves immediately behind her and distresses dormant dust above.

It falls over her like snow.

Briefly, Jimin becomes captivated by the sight. The flurry specks dancing in the cone of light of the single bulb hanging overhead. Cascading and collecting on the top of her head.

Her round watchful eyes cast upwards at him.

The absolute privacy offered by the space. The knowledge that he'd only need to take one stride forward to be flushed against her.

It's brief, the moment, abruptly interrupted by the croak of her voice "What are you doing here?"

He clears his throat, moment gone, and digs something out of the pocket of his black apron.

An envelope.

"I did something bad."

"What? How bad?"

"It depends," he shrugs slowly, not very convincing of his innocence in the matter. Really resembles a turtle secluding into its hard shell. He wouldn't feel the need to hide if he didn't doubt his character in the moment. If he didn't suspect a scolding. "From some perspectives, it's bad, from others it's good. So I guess it depends on how you look at it."

"And, just what perspectives are those?"

"Bad-" The envelope tucked between his arm and torso, he mimics the plates of a weight-scale, cupping air in both hands on either side. He tips their height as he speaks. "- for the Namjoon that's self-sufficient and oblivious to our plan. Good - for the Namjoon who secretly wants - needs - help but can't bring himself to ask."

She holds out her hands expectantly. Attempts to assess the damage.

He places the envelope in her hold. Its face sports elegant cursive. A flower-pattern stamp on its upper corner. Exudes an aroma of lilies and something sweet like pastries. Its hem has been cleanly sliced through.

Hurriedly, as if their minutes of privacy are counted, she unfolds a letter through the cleanly sliced margin atop the envelope. Her eyes race across the page. "This is bad, Jimin."

"It's bad?" He braces a hand on his hip, feeling the sudden-onset of queasiness with the knife of guilt twisting further into his gut. "So bad-bad? As in bad from all perspectives?"

She nods, but continues to skim the writing.

"Ah, shit." He rakes his other hand through his hair, tossing it out of his sight and coming it back. "I only stepped into his office for the keys to lock the back door. I caught sight of it. My hands were on it before I could will myself against it. I couldn't put it back down, tormented with curiosity."

"Well, you should've." Concluded, she folds the letter back on its creases, stuffs it back into the snug envelope.

"That's when I heard him approach, so I panicked. When he opened the door, I stuffed it into my pocket - pure instinct - so that he wouldn't see me holding it and suspect something."

He means to pace, but the space is limited. Instead, he braces both arms against a shelf. Needs to feel reminded of something sturdy, stable, lest he hurl.

"I meant to return it, I really did. The longer I held it, I just couldn't help but think how useful it could be to know what's inside. A means to ensure both ends of communication coincide. To make sure the staged Namjoon social media discussions aren't mentioned in the letters. To...to...-" He's stammering for justifications but falling short. "Knowing what sort of things they talk about could make our play of him more like the real thing, right?"

Norah shuts her eyes and hangs her head, arms limp by her sides. "You have to dispose of it. He can never find out." She hates to rob Namjoon of the contents he likely never got to read. Hates to make this a ripped page of their love-story.

"But, why?" He turns to face her. "I could just shove it beneath the stack he keeps atop his desk."

"Namjoon rarely sponsors the impractical." Her eyes flutter open. She traces the sliced margin for punctuation. "He uses his nimble fingers to slice through his envelopes. He's haphazard, like that. Thinks it more genuine, more lived. Thinks it impractical to invest in a piece of metal whose sole purpose is to slice paper, only to misplace it when he knows he could just pop a kitchen drawer open and find the same thing, or use his fingers."

"He might not notice," he's dubious to her argument. "He's got enough things on his mind to not notice."

"Do you really want to take the chance?"

He resumes his squared position against the shelf. Feels a dense lump materialize in his throat. Tries to swallow it back, expecting the nausea to wane.

Norah voices his conscience, "We are playing with hearts here. Are you sure you want to continue?"

She can voice her loud opinion all she wants in a bid to sway him towards a desirable response, but she doesn't. She vows to be his willing accomplice.

The thing is that Jimin is more similar to Namjoon than either care to recognize. They are both over-workers with too much piled over their plates to notice the grapes that roll off the edges, bouncing on the floor by their dashing feet.

Jimin wants to find Namjoon someone to lean on.

Norah wants to be that for Jimin. It's not a spoken thing. Frankly, it might not even be that obvious to Norah herself. She just finds herself tangled up with him in the self-made chaos. Finds it good reason enough for it to be for him.

"I mean good, Nor. I really do."

"I know you do. It's just a dangerous game we’re playing. I want you to be conscious of that."

"I am."

As a consequence of being a college drop-out, who stayed complacent in his small hometown, and knocked up the first girl he ever developed feelings for, Jimin juggles two jobs on the regular, a means to an end, to adjoin paychecks with the demands of life.

He'd juggle three if sleep weren't collecting interest, indebting him at an exponential rate.

The kind of fatigue that has no decency in waiting until your face collides with the cool pillow at night. The kind that commands and gets what its due whenever, wherever, however.

Mondays through Thursdays he works at Halley's, then rushes home to spend quality time with his daughter, run groceries, comply with the daily upkeep of home and its chores.

On the weekends, when he gets off Halley's - around 5 PM - he boards the public shuttle to bartend at a local bar. That bar shift runs until midnight, sometimes later, depending on the need for coverage, and the willingness to sacrifice a couple hours of sleep for a healthy tip.

Tonight, he's heavy with fatigue, sleep debt compounded in his brain, slowing the traffic of thoughts, comprehension. Still, he doesn't let it show past the obvious taxes on his physique - sunken dark circles beneath the eyes, small capillaries angered against their whites.

He sighs, "Hey," mirroring Norah's greeting from across the apartment. Locks the door behind him with a symphony of clicks and strolls her way in a practiced sequence.

In a way that resembles a paper being folded by the grooves and creases into origami, the edges of his mouth fold into a kind, but tired smile. The kind of paper that's been folded enough times to near tearing at the next crease.

Norah's hands are steady and delicate, as is her tone. "Tired?"

"I'm ok." He always says that, though, and always drifts into deep sleep right next to her on the couch, laptop still laid on his lap.

"Should we call it a day? We can always raincheck."

"It's nothing a shower can't fix." He shakes his head, hair stirring over dim eyes. A sudden yawn commands his mouth.

Unfolding her legs and draping them over the edge of couch, she starts up. "I'll start whipping something up to keep us awake."

As she clicks the switch of the kitchen lights, and bathes in the sudden flash of illuminance, she hears the thud of Jimin's knees against the wood floor accompanied with a long-drawn sigh, "My baby Byeol."

He flushes the bridge of his nose against the plump cheek of the baby. Inhales the untarnished scent of youth, of purity, of her hypoallergenic bodywash.

He realizes he'd been wrong earlier.

A shower wouldn't fix anything, but this, this little creature could dismiss all the ache in his joints, lax all the tension held in his muscles.

"You finish that set of monarch earrings?" Jimin tosses a towel over his head, grips at the frayed ends on his nape, on his forehead, extracting excess moisture. The excited drops splatter onto the collar of his sweatshirt.

Norah lays Byeol into her crib. Combs the silky, floss-like hair at the top of her head. Grabs a baby monitor radio from the adjacent nightstand.

"Most of it-" she bites a yawn." Only need to take pictures and edit them for upload."

A sudden pop emanates from his knees as soon as Jimin crouches by the coffee table of his living room. The wooden face of it is superimposed by clutter - Byeol’s enrichment toys, baby bottles, two different sets of binkies, unopened mail, uncategorized purchase receipts and jewelry beads. 

Norah joins him, resting her weight on knees that will quickly grow sore. Starts picking at the clutter, shrinking it item by item, starting with her jewelry-making kit. 

The click of the colored bead collapsing into its plastic compartment resounds through the quiet space. It grows dense, shies away from echoing, the more beads are added. 

Jimin tears an envelope and is reminded of the day’s earlier events. Of prying open the private exchanges of Namjoon and his pen-pal girl. Parallels, only he’s not as ginger with his water bill as he was with his friend’s heart. Instead of slicing it thinly with a blade, he digs one finger into the cleft on the edge and rips haphazardly, mentally guessing how high it’ll be this month. 

He’s got his brows creased into a pinch that resembles the one at the collar of his laundered shirt. He’d always ensure to prioritize keeping up with laundry, the same could not be said about folding and sorting the laundry. Too much like Sisyphus's burden. Instead, he’d let the laundry pile on the drying racks. 

They’d be stale and stiff by the time he got around to claiming them. But at least they no longer reeked. 

Lips into a robust pout, his eyes skim the content of the letter. Quickly, urgently, not bothering to hone in on the formal headers. They land on the end of the page resolutely. He holds the amount in his vision for a second, two, shuts his eyes with the raise of his brows, and folds down the letter like an accordion. Insert it back into its envelope. 

His figure is cast in the indiscreet yellow light from the ceiling fixation. It pours over him like honey. Its shadows casted onto the sunken spaces of his under eyes.There’s a flurry of freckles over the bridge of his nose. Partly from age, partly from the sun, and partly genetic in origin. 

Though tired, his hands are steady while collecting and assorting beads. Helping her with the burden.

They huddle up on the couch once things are assorted into semi-coherent piles on the coffee table.

Norah made iced lattes to power through. From prior experience, she knows the high will only last until about 3:30 AM, which isn't too far off. So if they want to make any progress on this Namjoon operation, they have to hone in focus. Short bursts of significant productivity.

It's hard to, though, when sleep seems so much more enticing. When Jimin's warmly pressed into her side. When all she wants is to rest her head on his shoulder and let her eyelids droop.

Moisture clings to the pads of Jimin's stubby fingers from having held his drink. He mindlessly wipes them onto his shirt. Resumes impatiently pressing keys on the old laptop, attempting to start it up from the depths of inactivity.

Its every inch is covered with stickers and logos accumulated through the years. Within ten minutes, it starts to burn Jimin's lap.

He positions a cushion beneath it to remedy the problem, just as the loading circle disappears and the screen finally illuminates with the home screen.

Opening a search engine, he navigates to Instagram. Namjoon's new social profile. He'd hurl if he came to know, having been against the capitalist agenda shoved down throats by brands and trends there.

Ironically, he's a part of that capitalist economy. Makes a living off convincing people to purchase his (food) service. But he'd argue he's in the business of selling an experience, of cultivating memories, not in the greedy selling of an overpriced product.

Maybe the diner would be better off if he would only bend down, comply with the trends of the modern day, learn the language of the 21st century.

"But that's exactly what I want to gift people," he'd say, caught in the passion of his mission, eyes glassed over and distant. "Nostalgia. Pre-internet innocence. The antiquity of a used book in your hands, the texture of the stained parchment. The raw sound of a record on a turntable. The crackle of the jukebox as soon as the coin descends into its slot. Something they can only experience and live, not fabricate on their phones."

As the puppet masters, Jimin and Norah's jobs are to funnel the connection between Namjoon and his mystery girl. Act like catalysts for something that's been building at a a snail's pace over the course of months through letters. Though romantic, indirect and impractical, so Jimin views it.

He'd attempt to establish a connection with mystery girl via direct messages. Arrange for a date where her only job is to show up. Namjoon would be there, oblivious. He hasn't quite figured out the specifics of it like how exactly he'd manage to declaw Namjoon from his busy schedule long enough to take time for himself, for being idle, for exploring the town. Or how he'd keep him from turning around after catching on to the situation.

"We'll cross that bridge once we get there."

"What do we do tonight, then?" Norah sips her drink. Places it back on the ring of moisture on the coffee table. It's starting to take effect. A heat unfurling and holding in her chest, quickening her pulse. Thoughts materializing in her mind faster than she can keep track of the streams of reason.

"We start uploading the pictures we've taken of him. Make his profile believable. But not all at once because then it would seem too much like a spam account."

"This may sound entirely evil and conniving, but what if we upload a quote from the book they mentioned in the letter you tore-"

He gawks.

"You know what you did," she scolds him with a stern look that makes him shift his attention back onto the screen.

"For someone who holds herself on a high moral horse, you sure seem experienced. Hidden mastermind in there, huh?"

"Respecting your friend's privacy is not high morality. It's basic knowledge." She flicks his forehead with her middle finger.

"Alright!" he throws his head back against the couch. It rebounds lightly against the cushion. He'll never live that down. "I fucked up. I shouldn't have even stepped into the office. I should have left the back door open for anyone to sneak in."

Baby Byeol's fast asleep on the monitor propped up on the table across from the couch. Chest rising and falling in a steady but swift pace. Tiny little set of lungs working hard through the night.

The coffee is now more parts water than caffeine or milk. The contents diluted by melted ice. They'd meant to finish it, just as they'd meant to upload at least two posts, but their eyelids had grown leaden with slumber.

Norah had spiraled down a rabbit hole on the internet trying to find the perfect book quote to caption the first post.

Jimin's wrist had grown sore flexed over the keyboard. His lap had become sensitive to the heat of the cushion and the ancient machine. He'd repositioned it onto the seat beside him and their necks started to hurt instead.

Now it's possibly the darkest hour of night. The pitch-black stillness caught between dusk and dawn. Not a single sound of the activity of civilization making itself known, not even a stray car whirring outside the front windows.

Only the soft breath of Jimin on Norah's cheek.

Dimming the brightness on her phone, she confirms the time she'd suspected. Attempts to stir out of his hold without interrupting his sleep. She has to her benefit the fact that he's a deep sleeper, and that sleep's collecting its debt.

Just as she thinks she's about to get away, slip out the front door with the swiftness of a night-cloaked thief, there comes a gentle tug at her wrist.

"Stay," Jimin's voice croaks, all groggy and thick with rest. "It's too dark. Too late. Sleep here."

"That will be the third night this week. I need to visit home. Shower."

He stirs, propping his weight onto his elbow to make sure he doesn't let his eyes drift shut before he convinces her to stay. Sure, this conversation might seem hazy like a dream, ambiguous as to whether its real, but he won't take the risk of her leaving so late. "There's a bathroom here. Steal clothes from my closet. Just stay. Home will be there tomorrow."

Something in her stirs. Something about this exchange makes her think otherwise.

Home's here.

Home's him.

"Fine." She drops her bag from her shoulder.

Jimin smiles, eyes closed.

Slides off the couch. Sleep-drunk, he stumbles down the corridor leading to his bedroom. Norah follows.

He takes the opportunity to lean down and check on Byeol. An angel cast in the moonglow streaking in through the windows.

𓍢ִ໋🌷͙֒ i'm not entirely convinced with the last third of this chapter. might come back later and change alot of it but for now it is this or nothing.

𓍢ִ໋🌷͙֒ if you're a oth girly, and if you care to know, i realize jimin and norah's actions are reminiscent of brooke setting peyton up on lustfactor in S2 and i think it's hilarious that oth is bleeding into my subconscious from how much i rewatch it

𓍢ִ໋🌷͙֒ shoutout to that clever army that once pointed out how jimin was made out of love and not a quick nut. sista, you were speaking facts!

𓍢ִ໋🌷͙֒ the ode to jimin continues >>

[pennedbylisse]

BETWEEN COMFORT & CHAOS | 002

wc: 4k

tense & pov: present, third person

tracklist:

001 | 003 | 004 | AO3

Following such an unpleasant event as puking one’s guts all over another’s shoes would prompt a sane person, at the very least, to ramble numerous, sincere apologies. Some might even feel guilty enough to offer monetary compensation for the inconvenience, to replace the shoes or pay for laundering.

Sanity had been left somewhere over the pile of sheets amidst Rin’s chaotic bedroom. 

Rather, she stands painfully still, too mortified to speak, or even blink. 

The queasiness persists - exacerbates the longer she forces herself to stand amidst the horrifying scene, helplessly witnessing the unimaginable unfold before her tired eyes. Her stomach churns, rejecting the decaffeinated, poor-excuse-of-a-coffee from earlier, unaided by the persistent and dizzying halo about him. 

Experimenting with a nervous and flighty gaze, she finds the discomforting symptoms to be alleviated by looking elsewhere, by rejecting him as the center of her attention. She watches what should still be in her stomach seep into the cracks on the pavement. As she does so, the double perspective of her vision collapses into unison and her legs no longer quiver. 

Sanity drained from her, the next-best thing she concocts, improvises in that split of a second, involves prying her body from its petrified stance and running. 

It is entirely not unlike her to run, to extract herself from an unpleasant and perplexing situation. She'd always been skewed towards flight rather than fight.

She’ll argue she’s doing him a favor by saving the rest of his clothing garments from her nervous incontinence. She'll hurry back to her life to pretend as though today never occurred, as though two distinct paths did not transect by some ordained force beyond her comprehension.

Then, he, too, could resume his life, unbothered, unchanged.

Life could resume its course, as it has always been intended to.

In her sanity-lacking mind, she’ll come to structure her cowardice like a favor, and suppress the knowledge that her fleeing is done out of self-preservation. Just like all those times before.

Nothing's changed.

As she runs, worn soles slapping over concrete, she can hear the ominous breath of a snowball hurling down her path. It ghosts her heels, its chilled breath biting her ankles. 

Desperate to be blurred between bodies and chatter, she swings open a door beneath a sign that reads Joe’s Cup, and with unnatural urgency and dramatic flare tumbles in.

Customers are baited out of their casual exchanges by her disheveled sight, their toothy grins thinning, and eyes roundly boring at her, through her, as if anticipating the pursuer to barge in after.

When he doesn't, their brows furrow.

They exchange quizzical glances amongst themselves, slurring comments beneath held breaths.

Rin's ears and neck burn flushed and a bead of sweat swells on her temple.

She shoves a path through a healthy herd of customers lined before the cashier desk.

A symphony of distasteful complaints follows suit.

Black-aproned baristas turn from their practiced choreographies, canisters in hands, their eyes chasing Rin's form as she clumsily parts a way to the guest restroom.

The weight of their collective gaze cloaks her figure like some thick winter coat. She sinks further between the bodies, cranes her posture lower to the ground, wanting to be swallowed into oblivion.

With blatant disregard towards the huddle of customers patiently awaiting their turn, Rin slips past the half-open door and locks it behind her.

They bang on the door, their patience fizzled out, and holler an assortment of vile curses, each one punctuated by a rumbling fist colliding against the metal of the door.

Rin’s heart rams in her chest to a similar alarming rhythm.

She slides her back against the rumbling door, collapses on the ground like a shattered vase. Toys with the pieces in her hold as her mind races loudly. All futile attempts to piece them back together.

Broken things cannot be restored. They must evolve if they are to survive. Adapt to their incapacities.

She hasn't yet learned to stand without her crutches.

Rin folds the work excuse in her hands, shoves it in her back pocket after sending an image of it to her superior. She'd been accepted as a walk-in at an urgent care clinic, and managed to milk her migraine for its benefit.

She walks home, thinking the mindless toggling of her feet, scuffing one in front of the other, over and over, will do her racing mind a measure of good. Over bumpy cobble on the sidewalks, over the smooth cement of pavements, over the zebra pattern of pedestrian crossings. It gives her something to focus on, something to slow her mind. The shuffle of her shoes over gravel fills the quiet spaces, doesn't allow for intrusive thoughts, intrusive fears.

The sound shifts to something expansive, reverberant, as she draws to a halt over a yellow strip of tactile tiles just before a pedestrian crossing.

At an uneasy standstill, she squints at the red human silhouette illuminated across the street. Thinks that frowning at it will make it succumb, flicker green.

It doesn't.

The spaces she'd been trying to occupy in her mind empty, replaced with a gnawing vacancy that ushers forth all those thoughts she'd been avoiding.

The fresh and recent image of him unblurs amidst the eye of her mind. Comes into center focus.

She shakes her head, in denial. It can't be.

Shakes it also in disbelief. How can it be?

It all seems like some big, unfair mistake. It's not that she'd been fantasizing of her soulmate meet-cute everyday of her life. She didn't really have expectations surrounding that event, that revelation.

It wasn't expectation what she had, no. Rather, she held an air of justification, as if life owed her basic decency of fairness. It was a naive belief, she now realizes. Thinks of all the times life had shown its unfairness to her parents, friends, peers, strangers on news reports. Of course, all those times seemed something distant, removed from her; she'd been wrapped in the youthful sense of invincibility.

The human animation flickers green. She doesn't notice until a body blurs past her, leaping onto the zebra pattern, cardboard coffee tray clutched in their grasp.

Momentum stalled by the weight of a dense, racing mind, Rin's slow to follow suit. The cement of the pavement feels as though it has liquified around her shoes, slowly consumes her like that of quick-sand.

She doesn't want to go home and be reminded of all the tasks that have piled up over the course of days. She doesn't have the mental agility to juggle it all today. Only wants to sit and stare off into space, allow herself to process and absorb, to contemplate what should follow. What happens next?

Instead of following through to the next crossing a few buildings down, she sharply turns right into an alley. A Chinese restaurant at its corner; the aroma of greasy fried rice and tangy chicken infiltrates her nostrils. Recalls forth memories as vividly as a single song encapsulates a transformative moment in life. Glimpsing at the corner table next to the glass panes, she pictures herself, minus a few years, chuckling in the company of her parents, rolling her eyes at something Jennie had said. Her dad had been on his second plate of Kung Pao Chicken. Her mother had held her hands clasped before her, concealing the tender smile that would stretch her cheeks as she took in her family.

Like some abrupt craving, she longs for the safe feeling of then. Longs for her mother's embrace, for her reassuring words that would always promise things would turn out alright, even when the odds made it questionable.

Rin's fist taps a rhythm against a navy blue door.

She glides back a stride over the creaking porch, peers out of the white frame of the balcony, towards the driveway. It's empty.

An irregularly-shaped stain on the concrete makes itself known with its bold contrast against the pasty white cement; a whisper of the car that's usually parked there.

The garage door is shut.

When the navy door swings open before her, she startles a little, inhales sharply, as if she'd not been expecting a response. It hadn't occurred to her that someone could have stayed behind; that the missing car on the driveway indicated absence, perhaps only of one party, not the entire family.

"Hey," she greets softly, hands dug into the pockets of her coat because she otherwise doesn't know what to do with them. The way she doesn't know what to do with herself.

Try as she might to hold herself together, Rin's about to collapse into a disheveled mound of shards on her mother's doorstep. She'd managed to piece a few together while at the coffeeshop, and shoved the rest of the unsorted pieces into the pockets of her coat. Now, it's starting to seem like even those pieces she'd adhered are laxing.

The women in the door-frame beams, lines crinkling at the corners of almond-shaped eyes.

She eagerly pats her hands dry on the kitchen rag draped over her shoulder. Once satisfied, in a swift motion, she tugs Rin into a firm embrace.

A flowery essence saturates Rin's nose as she nuzzles into her mother's hold. The one she'd been hoping for; the one that can cure all sorts of maladies, scare off all sorts of night demons. "Mother." It's a word emanating relief in its mere utterance.

Though Rin's tense shoulders ease, fists unfurl to clasp around her mother's rounding back, and eyes momentarily flutter, she quickly resumes the flighty and scouting dance of her gaze over her mother's shoulder.

Her mother exclaims into her ear in a half-cackle, half-sigh "My darling daughter."

Rin continues scouting for signs of company within the house, even as her mother withdraws with a disarming smile. Scouts for the characteristic detached query of her father from the living room "Who's there, Donna?"

It never comes.

"Come in, come in, child! You'll freeze." Her clasp is warm on Rin's chilled hand.

"We've missed you...missed you horribly, child. Oh, that father of yours. He's so terribly blunt and unsensing with his words. Just between us two-" she draws near in hushed whispers "-he's expressed his regret for how things ended last time. He'd never come out and say it, but I can tell. Can read him well."

Thirty years of marriage will do that, Rin expects.

Though she doesn't question her mother's literacy and fluency regarding matters of her father, she takes her sentiment dubiously. Pierces the lacy white veil of a benevolent lie. Understands her mother's kind-hearted motive in uniting her family once again.

Rin might not be as fluent regarding her father, but she knows him well enough to be a prideful, righteous man. Knows him enough to be certain he'd never apologize in vain, in platitudes. He'd only ever apologize if sufficiently convicted, and convinced of his error; those occasions have been few and sparse.

Recalling forth the argument of that night, it is pretty clear to Rin that he'd felt justified in his perspective. It was adamant, the way he'd shoved his way of life down her throat like some pill. His way - the only way.

Rin’s keen for any suggestion of her father’s presence. Not in the way two old friends scower a crowd for the familiar sight of one another. Not in the long-missed way. Rather, with guilt.

She doesn't feel ready to admit that she'd been wrong, even though she's sane enough to recognize that she had been.

Admitting it would require her to express a plan for correction - which she doesn't yet have. She'd like to remain lost and searching for a little longer. Doesn't want to have it all figured out yet, the answers lined up and pristine.

Rin’s head throbs. The louder her sister squeals, the tighter the pressure within her skull grows.

She pinches the bridge of her nose and averts her gaze from the luminescence of the open-plane kitchen as she slumps into one of the tall stools lining the island. 

A sudden wince wrinkles her brow; the band about her head tightening.

Every time she shuts her eyes, she relives the earlier events; the mental imagery reeling within the eye of her mind like a scratched CD that keeps stuttering under its needle.

She'd open them abruptly only to find her sister leaning onto the counter from across. Inquisitive and expectant eyes boring into her.

In her vague – vague – "debrief" (more eye-rolling than retelling), she omits the puke-on-shoes part of the, for obvious reasons. Her skin still crawls with shame at the sheer recollection of it.

Jennie’s unsatisfied with Rin’s reporting abilities. Says that if she worked as a news reporter or journalist, she’d be the smallest-spoken one. "The dullest one," she corrects. She’d be fired for lack of views. 

"That would be great!" Rin feigns excitement. "Considering I hate being the center of attention."

Jennie's voracious curiosity ignores her elder sister's remark. “I need details. It’s hard to picture the exact moment when you don’t narrow down all the immeasurable possibilities by being more specific, Rinny.”

Jennie crosses her arms over her chest, leans over the counter, inquisitive eyes prying the desired answers from her sister’s uncooperative lips. “Did he sweep you off your feet after you tripped? And then WHAM-” she slams both her palms on the counter for added emotive effect “-you fell madly in love?” 

Rin’s face sours the more she shakes her head. "Not exactly..."

Jennie proceeds undisturbed, goes into a reverie of her very own formation, gaze lifting from Rin’s to disperse out the windows. 

The sugar child, Jennie, since birth had been pampered to the point of coddling. Everything she'd ever been taught and told, even reprimands and remarks meant to correct behavior, had all been sugar-coated - an attempt on the behalf of parents desperate to avoid making the same mistakes they'd made with their first-born.

As the fragile princess of the family, it is only natural succession for Jennie to inherit the belief system of the Bronson parents.

Rin, on the other hand, cultivated a seed of distrust towards the notion of soulmates, of fate, from an early age. While her classmates would rave about them endlessly, playing games meant to predict each others', Rin buried her nose in the musty spine of a book each week.

Not a determinist by nature, Rin never has been a follower - or a mere tolerant of the suggestion that two souls are betrothed to fulfill and complete one another. The notion suggests that the two aren’t complete on their own to begin with. Rin abhors the thought of herself as fated to depend on a single other person for the rest of her life; or to consider the possibility that if she never finds that other half, she’s doomed to experience life half-best. Hates to think the universe has buried answers to her identity within some arbitrary other being of which she’s not even sure she’ll tolerate or feel attraction towards. 

To Rin, fate is turbulent and fluid, like water which takes the shape of its container, it bends to one's individual will. She holds that life is what one makes of it, and by deduction, so is love. It is a choice, not some compelling force.

Ignoring Jennie’s pleas for further details, Rin rambles her stream of consciousness beneath her breath: “I just don’t get it. I can’t understand why. Why now? If he’s been my… my–” 

Whereas Rin stammers, mouth parched, for the appropriate words, her sister confidently voices “Your soulmate!”

She’s beaming twice as bright, to make up for Rin’s disappointingly low mood regarding the matter. 

In Jennie’s world, this is likely the most exciting turn of events since scented highlighters, calligraphy pens and transparent desk organizers. 

Face soured with an impending cringe, Rin reluctantly confirms her sister’s statement: “Yeah…that.” She doesn’t even know the weight of the word, its meaning beyond the label. The cringe never quite reaches its climax; she remains in a state of tense preparation for it. Waiting for the thunder to rumble, after having spotted lightning. 

“If he’s been that all along, how come I've only just found out now? Why didn’t I start seeing a halo back in high school? Can these things be missed? I mean...can the fates make mistakes?” 

By the kitchen sink, back turned towards Rin and Jennie, Donna shuts the faucet. She pats the excess moisture onto the rag draped over her shoulder. Clearing her throat, she turns to face them, leans her hips against the counter such that it digs into her flesh.

"My darling, no one truly knows. The way no one ever truly holds the answers to life." She looks deeply into Rin's worried gaze, holds its weight. "Some believe you are only ever made aware of a soulmate once both parties are ready."

"Ready?"

"Hm," Donna nods. "To this day, Scientists disagree on the formal definition of 'ready.' Studies have been inconclusive - it means something different to everyone. It's specific to the individual."

Donna rakes her steady gaze over Rin, who visibly appears to be rejecting the pill being force-fed down her throat. There’s been a lot of that, lately. Growing pains.

Rin had been hoping her mother's words would soothe her, the slightest, if not straight into acceptance then, at least, into neutral contemplation. Instead, they're making her heart tremble a little erratically in her chest. The slightest flutter, as if instead of a beating muscular organ she houses a butterfly, flapping its wings clumsily against her ribcage.

They way it's going, she wouldn't be surprised to be told that it's skipping beats.

“Unless your life goal is to continue the research of said scientists and stipulate a worthy response, why should you bother asking such questions?” 

Amidst the intense staring contest being held between Rin and their mother’s well-meaning gaze, Jennie quips in, “Does that mean that there’s a possibility I have met my soulmate already and just don’t know it yet?” 

“I wonder who it could be.” She starts listing names, pinning them to her extended fingers as mental placeholders. 

Rin diverts her fixed gaze away from her mother. The woman is relentless. There’s no way Rin could counter, not now, at least, not while her mind is clouded by so many other questions.

It hasn't sunk in. Honestly, Rin's dubious if it ever will and that's frightening.

Instead, Rin transfixes onto Jennie's comment. “Focus on your studies. I better get a copy of your final results or I am not taking you out for mannis next week like we planned.” 

Jenny withdraws in on herself, masks an eye roll beneath her wispy bangs.

“I’ve never felt quite ready for a soulmate.” Rin’s distrust persists. What most would call the long-awaited day of their fates, Rin is convinced is an impractical scheme only meant to ridicule whatever drop of hope she could muster. Leave it to the trust issues she carried every day of her life, of whose origin she is constantly unaware of. “I don’t think I feel anymore ready now, and yet…” she waves at the air around her, gesturing to some higher presence amongst them. “I just...don’t get it.”

“Give it time,” mother reassures, aware she’s coming across as redundant as a broken record skipping tracks. She elaborates, so as to not have the sentiment lost on her eldest daughter: “Give him a chance. People do change, you know. Other times, there’s more to the story than what was originally revealed. Maybe hear his side of it. Maybe it’ll surprise you.”

“Maybe it won’t.” 

A hopeless sigh seeps from her mother’s lips. She sees her eldest daughter has a long way to go and a lot to learn. She can’t help but to be reminded of her younger self. Of the many petty, unnecessary fights she crafted out of immaturity and stubbornness. And how much time it robbed her of. 

Time is money, as most say. In mother’s book, though, time is memories. Memories which are priceless. One of a kind. Unique reminders to persist living. Promises that no matter how difficult it gets, how dark the night dims, there will be moments of light and comfort further down.

A sudden thought occurs to Jennie: “What if someone’s never ready?” 

“Some people do go their entire lives without a soulmate." Donna frowns. "It’s not uncommon. Matter-of-fact, I was reading about one man’s testimony - an 80-year-old man who’d lived alone for most of his life. One day, walking out of his driveway to grab mail, he spots his neighbor. She had just returned from a visit to the family in Chicago. As soon as he caught sight of her–” she snaps her fingers before her two girls “-he starts hearing strings, violins, harps, of that kind. He’d initially blamed his hearing aids. Had thought they were broken. Then, she asked him ‘Do you hear that?’”

“That’s when he knew," Jennie rushes to conclude. Then exclaims "That's too sweet!" before even receiving confirmation from her mother that that was what happened. How it ended. Her uncontained eagerness in her clapping and thrashing makes her weight tilt unsteadily on the stool. "What happened next?"

With a deep inhale, mother concludes her recount, “Sadly, the old man passed away a week later, while in his sleep – painless, thankfully. Apparently, he’d had this long-going arrhythmia. That night, a clot traveled to his brain. Truly, a sad story.” 

Rin lifts a hand, flushes it against the bony traction of her sternum, where there's an alarming racing.

What if she's like that man?

What if she only has a week left to live?

Could that be the punishment imposed by the gods for her neglect of this revelation?

Moved to tears, Jennie scowls in her mother’s direction. “You had to set it up so well only to rip my heart out! Couldn’t you have lied to us? Told us they’d lived happily ever after?” 

Rin rolls her eyes. “More sugar-coating? What good would that do? I mean just look at you?” 

Jennie slaps her shoulder. "What's that supposed to mean?"

Slicing the incrementing tension between the two, mother voices “Then, there’d be no lesson.”

“I’m all for telling the cold, hard truth, mom. Give it to me straight, no rocks,” Rin starts, “but even I’m at a loss with this one.”

“Is the lesson supposed to be that life’s brutally cruel?” Jennie dabs at her lash line with a napkin. Her mascara smearing the cloth. 

“Well,” mother starts, “that could certainly be one. Though, I was specifically referring to gratitude. Appreciate what you have while it’s still yours. You never know how long you have. Never know how long its been, until the rug’s pulled from beneath you.”

Jennie inhales longly, sniffles. "When can we meet, Mr. Soulmate, anyways?"

Taking that as a queue to leave, Rin groans and slips out of her stool, drags her upper torso over the counter in dramatic gesture. As if the news is all too burdensome to carry; a weight strapped to her back when she's meant to be ascending a mountain.

She pretends to have not heard the question as she pries open the fridge and stares down at the half-empty containers lining the shelves.

“Jen, dear. Let’s give your sister some time. It’s much too early. I think she barely knows his last name as it is.”

“Growing up, I always assumed..." Rin tears into triangle of cheese spread - the dainty, individually-foil-wrapped, picnic kind. She concludes: "it was Dickhead. Who knows?" Shrugs and tears another bite. "I might be right.” 

While Jennie giggles innocently behind her curled chestnut bangs, Mother glares disapprovingly. A scold is delivered without the need for words. 

“It’s alright, ma. The hatred is mutual.” 

"Was he that awful in high school?" Jennie hadn't shown much interest in Rin's daily teenage tribulations back then, much too preoccupied playing dollhouse with her neighborhood friends. As much as she's actively trying to recall a single detail about him, she's growing convinced Rin never mentioned him until now.

Rin shuts the fridge, turns and bores her eyes in a knowing way. A what-do-you-think? look. A why-else-would-I-be-so-opposed? look.

"We're all sort of awful in our youth. All so confused," Donna justifies.

Jennie objects, "I wasn’t!"

A mild frown starts deepening the aged-lines on her mother's countenance. She turns to dry the freshly washed dishes before Rin is able to witness it deepen further, darken as if casted over by shadow.

Palpating the sudden shift in mood brough on by her comment, Rin draws close and wraps her arms around her mother's torso, anchoring her chin over her mother's shoulder. It's the kind one can viscerally acknowledge but are reluctant to voice. The type that makes you want to ask "Did I do something wrong?"

Rin weighs the reality that ridiculing the entirety of the soulmates notion means ridiculing the love her mother had worked so diligently to protect and nurture in her marriage to her father. It belittles the daily efforts, the daily trust it takes to make a marriage survive so many decades.

"I'll try, mom," Rin mumbles, barely audible against the fabric of her mother's shirt. Loud enough only for her mother's ears.

She pats Rin's head with her moistened hand, dampening Rin's crown in the process, as if baptizing her with well wishes and dish foam.

Watching from her wobbly stool, Jennie tilts her head to a side like a puppy before hopping off to join in on the hug. “Give me some sugar, too.”

"You've had all the sugar, you brat." Yet she pulls her into the embrace with a knuckle rub over her bangs.

Jennie pokes her tongue out mockingly.

"No, really, could it be Ian?" Jennie starts. "After he kissed me, I felt lightheaded."

"Kissed?" Rin abruptly withdraws from the embrace. "First of, who? Second, what? When??"

A grin tugs lopsidedly at Jennie's rosy lips.

"Miss Jennie, you don't mean to tell me you've already shared your first kiss?" Rin gawks, feeling lightheaded herself. Mocks a fanciful accent in light of the reality TV they've watched together, mimicking the gossipmonger hosts that bring celebrities onto late night shows and probe at personal lives.

"Second, actually," Jennie corrects. "The first was Choi Joon. It was a little awkward and toothy but it was memorable. I walked straight home from school and crossed it off my bucket list."

Rin dances her incredulous gaze between her oddly calm mother and her sister's mischievous grin.

"Does dad know, too?"

They don’t say anything. They don't need to. Of course he doesn't. Jennie would not see the light of day if it were otherwise. She'd be locked in her bedroom until her eventual wedding - which wouldn't come to happen in her socially-deprived state.

Rin's expression falls flat and lifeless, completely surrendered to her unfortunate fate. "I can’t believe my little sister got her first kiss before I did. That’s pitiful."

"What's more?" She asks no one in particular, blankly lifts her gaze. Oh right! My alleged soulmate is my childhood rival and life-long enemy! I’m pitiful!" Slumping back down into her stool, she slams her forehead over her folded arms. A gavel sealing a fate.

[long one (for me). honestly, i got stuck about 3/4ths of the way and could not get myself to write anything of significance from that point onward. so if the ending feels a bit rushed, it's cuz of that he he

it's why i don't like long chapters. makes it so hard to keep track of everything, to not ramble aimlessly :/

I don't LOVE this chappie cuz it's so filler-y and I feel it overexplains the lore behind the soulmates but it's this working draft for now or nothing at all]

[pennedbylisse]

BETWEEN COMFORT & CHAOS | 001

wc: 2k

tense & pov: present, third person

tracklist:

002 | 003 | 004 | AO3

Inconveniences.

Small, quaint, little blips in a routine. 

Like tiny, little lint balls lining the inside of a shirt - a shirt that had been practically flawless prior to the misfortunes of laundry day; discomforting, irritating, but miniscule enough to dismiss. To learn to tolerate. 

Inconveniences. 

Small, quaint, little blips in a rushed run-down of a formerly organic routine. 

The first of which, a missed alarm - correction, it would have been ‘missed’  if so it had run in the first place. Rin, however, had forgotten to turn the dial on her bedside clock the night prior. 

It rang around 9 AM, instead; a rise time for off days. 

Today is Monday. The opposite of an off day.

Rin stumbles out of the cushioned embrace of her bed, entangled at the ankles by a knot in the sheets, which she doesn't became aware of until the solid wood of the floor slaps her chin.

The unanticipated impact leaves her breathless for a number of seconds, before she releases a long and painful groan. Her ribs contract at the slightest twist, in response to what Rin can only imagine is a developing bruise, as she starts up and towards the adjoining bathroom.

She scrambles for her cellphone amidst the sheets that billow around her like a dress, or a cloud.

When she lifts the screen to her line of sight, she squints through the dimness to find its display of a low battery warning. There's another painful blow to her cheek, only this time it's not from the dense, solid wood, rather the weight of realizing she'd forgotten to plug it in the night prior.

Unfortunately, this is not the first occurrence. She makes a habit of sleeping the night with her phone at the foot of her bed, unplugged. At first, only ever intends to scroll her socials mindlessly for increments of half-hours until midnight falls; means to lay it on its charging port by then, but more often than not, drifts into slumber before that point. In the morning, it's always the same; she reprimands herself, promises to never do it again.

The next night, unsurprisingly to everyone but her, she does it again. Jennie, her teenage sister, jokes that her forgetfulness will one day be her demise; says something along the lines of "She'll forget the date and place of her funeral."

With about 20% residual battery (estimating up, for the sake of optimism), her screen illuminates. A sort of squawk leaves her parted lips as she reads the time. A squawk like that of a goose with its tail feathers catching light.

She’s up, now, legs squared determinedly. Yet, she trips clumsily over sleep-drugged feet while they wrestle with the persistent tug of the sheets who plead Stay, just this once. 

Trampling over miscellaneous objects scattered around her bedroom floor, she reminds herself of the urgency with which she must clean her room, but it's only one of many tasks on her immediate to-do.

Right now is not the time.

Her tail’s on fire. Heart’s pumping erratically. Adrenaline saturating her system. Heat flushing her cheeks and nape. 

“Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck…” 

The second inconvenience of the day is a diluted cup of coffee, served not in her usual thermos, but in the first vase she could salvage out of the pile seated at her sink.

The amber liquid’s aroma falls flat and drowned over her palette; a cloud of candied cotton dampened by humidity on what should have been a sunny festival day.

Groceries, her mental to-do list elongates. Don't forget coffee for tomorrow. Don't' forget coffee, a voice in her mind recites obsessively.

Running groceries today tops all other items on her list in terms of priority. It's more urgent than the cleanliness of her bedroom. She cannot survive another morning living off crackers and a few pinches of coffee grounds. But even more urgent, she must catch her bus and make it to work before her boss hears word of her tardiness. 

Rin shuts her eyes, her grip strangles the ceramic handle of the mug as she forces the gulp down, despite the objection of her palette. 

She heaves a sigh upon succeeding, and brings the pads of her thumb and forefinger to pinch the bridge of her nose, in a bid to discourage a growing migraine. 

Inconveniences. How even the ones you train yourself to dismiss grow unbearable under the right measure of pressure. They keep adding, amounting; a string being pulled, stretched, tensed until it snaps clean. Retracts and slaps you on the cheek. Leaves a red mark, blotchy with blood. 

She makes up her mind. Determinedly decides that today is not her day, could not be, will not be. There is no redeeming it, for the more she recites it in her head, the further it continues to manifest itself. Until she's too deeply caught in the whirlpool to convince herself otherwise.

Days like such make her wonder how many inconveniences, exactly, it would take to conclusively alter the course of one’s fate? 

The notion isn’t foreign to Rin. She’d read testimonies before, about people who’d been lead away from a tragic fate by some minor and random inconvenience – a blip, or glitch, or something that absolutely shouldn’t have happened, that wouldn’t otherwise have happened, on any given day. Say, the person whose car breaks down on the commute to work, who later discovers through a news report that a shooter unleashed havoc at their work-place, claiming the lives of a dozen victims. A dozen. Could have – would have – been a dozen-and-one if by some stroke of luck, or misfortune, their car had not broken down. 

In light of those rare, almost ordained cases, Rin attempts to see light in even the worst possible conditions. Today, though, her optimism is gasping for breath, attempting to match pace with her dashing body. She left it in the heaps of blankets at the foot of her bed. 

Silver linings fall dull and mute. 

Everything seems to serve as an obstacle in her blazing path.

The keys get lost. Shoe laces become undone. Chatty neighbor happens to step foot out of the house at the same time as Rin; there goes ten priceless minutes of Rin nodding incessantly and feigning a polite smile all the while trying to end the conversation that should have never begun. 

Left shoe still undone, her legs slice through the chill morning fog, as she sprints down her neighborhood street. Leaving the rosy-cheeked, grey-haired lady chatting to herself. (She doesn't notice until Rin's five doors down; never really talks to others to hear their perspectives, but rather feel self-important from the influence of their audience)

Rin's worn satchel is pinned under her arm. A young golden sun tints her cheeks with some life, as it streaks in between buildings. 

A green bus slows near a couple of gathered people. A half-a-second before it comes to a complete halt, it pries its gates open with an elongated creak. 

Rin’s still sprinting a few blocks down. Her chest is galloping, short of air; it burns in that oxygen-deprived way. The fine muscles of her calf, do to. As if they are wearing away under the erosion of acid.

Her pace slows from fatigue and resignation. Starts imagining what's the worst that could happen if she were to half-ass a last minute call-out from work. Stands like an awkwardly placed tree amidst the street, swaying, bag sliding down her frame, shoelaces sprawled over the concrete like roots burying her there.

The breath she gathers to lift her voice and plead for a bit of patience is knocked out of her lungs before the words form at her lips. Her palms slaps against the cold concrete on either side of her already bruised chin, her cheek suspended by mere inches. 

The culprit lies on the ground, by her feet, groaning and clutching his knee. 

Rin’s lips whisper a forlorn “Noo!” as her eyes watch the bus pick-up and drive-away. Tears pool on her lash line, either from the frost biting her face or in response to the overwhelming frustration that comes with the shattered expectations of what should have been a ‘normal day.’ 

Normal days are never extravagant, until you are deprived of them. Until you are reminded they are not something inherently owed to you, and that much like all things, they too can be deprived.

Chord snapped, patience drawn thinly, Rin sits up, heated and ready to pounce. Her sharp eyes lock onto the wrecker. She’s made up her mind. She’s ready to name him the culprit of all the inconveniences of today. 

When she glances over at the soon-to-be-subject of all of her projected frustrations, that’s when she feels it. The sharp, stinging slap of the metaphorical rubber band against her cheek. 

Her throat chokes with the threat of a sob. Just when she thought the day could not possibly get worse, it does. 

The biggest inconvenience yet. 

The bane of her existence. 

A subject she’d sought refuge in never, ever, seeing again. 

There’s a distinct luminescence haloing his crouched figure. Could be the early morning sun, beaming over the neighborhood. Could be a concussion. Regardless, it's dizzying. Has this optical illusion effect of making the subject in her field of vision double, like when she'd wear 3D glasses to the cinema.

Rin blinks incessantly. She can’t bring herself to trust her sight. Can’t believe she body-slammed into him of all people. In the seven years she’s spent living in the neighborhood, not once had she brushed shoulders with him. 

The last time she'd seen him had been at their high school graduation ceremony - which must have been nearly six years ago, now.

Weighing the abstract concept of time in her shaken mind, she finds it hard to palate how much time has lapsed, and how little he appears to have changed. Like a stand-still capture on a polaroid square, he's just the same.

He scrunches-up his nose in disturbance, and turns over his hand to the palmar side, eyes peeling over his newly acquired abrasion. As the seconds lapse, the adrenaline in his system wanes, and the sting of scraped flesh starts settling in. 

He winces and diverts his attention from it, gathering that looking at it only will make it hurt worse. 

Dark brown eyes meet Rin as he finally acknowledges the collision. The reality that he’d somehow inconvenienced someone even further than the day had started to inconvenience him. 

The halo persists through Rin’s desperate blinking. Futility lies in her attempts to clear her field of vision, as she rubs the dorsal sides of her hands over her eyes in a bid to remove what she believes is only a pesky little speck of dust, a lash, or even a tear. 

Inquisition curves his healthy brows but the curiosity quickly dims, becoming replaced with a sour frown. A distasteful grimace. Reality and recognition strike him. But worse than the reel of memories snapped onto the film player of his mind, is the Earth spinning vertigo that comes on as his eyes trace over the aura emanating off her. Brighter than the sun. 

Loud-bright. Like a mallet smashed against a bronze bell within his head. Like he’s suddenly developed synesthesia and every glimpse of light is painfully loud. 

Rin dances her gaze around, reading the disinterested people who brush hurriedly past. They appear awfully dull in demeanor and appearance in relation to him. Absent of any halo, they are akin to gray bodies blurred into the background scene of the lens of a camera. 

Slowly, and fearful, Rin draws her gaze back to him. Traces over the halo. 

That’s when her mother’s voice rings across her head, like an ominous tolling bell, indicative of an end. An armageddon. Her armageddon. When I met your father, it was like I could see for the first time.

Rin wouldn’t call this newfound sight, rather sudden-onset blindness. She feels like her optic nerves are being torn by the fibers. Imagines this distortion is was what cats see on a daily basis. Understands why they constantly want to strangle and mangle anything within their vicinity. 

She wants to strangle him. Toys with the idea the more she looks at him. The more the lights dizzy her. 

Somehow, she places the fault in his hands. She's still run by a childish instinct, to want to kick his shins and run away from his stupidly handsome frown. He had always felt like too much to handle, to understand, to wrap her tiny adolescent mind around. Now, older, and hopefully wiser, Rin still defaults to running away from complexity. Likes to coax life with a broad brush, shoving worries under her bed like monsters to run from, behind closet doors, into the margins of tomorrow. 

She figures that if she continuously runs, the problems will never catch up to her. But, she’s only selectively ignorant to the snowball effect. Hopes it amasses enough to crush her at once and allow her no room for reflection on how things could have – should have -- been. 

His lips almost mouth Don't run. Fear-stricken. Please, don’t run. 

Instead, he voices (cracking voice): “I think I’m having a stroke.” Then braces his clumsy weight against the nearest wall. His breathing quickens, mirroring the alarming panic blaring within Rin.

“What are the chances that we are both having a stroke at the same time?” 

He lifts his worried gaze, a bead of sweat forming on his temple, complexion awfully pale. Rin thinks he might just hurl. “What are the chances that you are my soulmate?” 

It’s funny, because Rin didn’t see this coming – Rin didn’t see much of today coming, but certainly not what happens next. 

Rin is the one that hurls. Chunky acid made its way up the column of her throat without as much as a warning. The contents – whatever it was she managed to down while standing in the fridge light last night. 

All over his lavish shoes.

[pennedbylisse]

INTELLECTUAL CRUSH

ep. 2 | ep. 3 | ep. 4 |

a multi-part series centered around the anonymous exchanges of namjoon and a literature girl. a separate but related installment of the halley universe (see Cupid Operation)

Books Nine Lives Company

Eco-friendly and sustainable trade of old books. Where we repurpose the neglected.

Namjoon pushes his weight into the swinging door and the store sign rattles.

A bell rings overhead - a jaunty, youthful chirp - as he enters the familiar bookstore to be encased in the scent of aged leather, the subtle-sweet vanilla essence of lignin wood-based parchment and the musty scent of carpet that has endured soiled shoes, coffee spills and bladder accidents from the part of the resident senior dog sleeping by the shop window.

He takes a practiced sharp left down a thin hall lined with mahogany-variation shelves, all crammed with books, without a single cubic inch to spare. The walls seem to encroach in on him, the further he disappears into the shop. Hardcovers and paperbacks - some surprisingly intact in condition, others faded, sun-bleached, tearing at the spines - spill from the shelves, pour into unstable, uneven stacks on either side of his legs.

Over the terrain of an old tapestry carpet, his worn logger-lace-up boots part a sliver of shuffling space.

His eyes dart over the labels meant to trim the seams of unrelated sections. During some point in the lifetime of the store, it proved effective. Now there's impractical irony to it. The books spill over their borders, congregate into uncategorized mounds, beg assortment and the inquisitive human graze.

Non-fiction, Poetry, Modern Poetry, Classical Philosophy . . .

"Kant...Kant...Kant," he recites beneath his breath, whilst drawing the tip of his forefinger over the lined spines. The ribbed feel of it in conjunct with the continued drum of his touch reminds him of sliding a hand across piano keys. An unattended grand piano on the courtyard of a local mall, the sound inflating beneath his hands, swirling up and around, diffusing through empty space and through an idle mind.

"Ka-" his finger halts, and shortly after, so do his steps.

He shuffles back to trace down the spine.

Namjoon saunters towards the front desk, skimming the dorsal face of the book cover with a furrowed brow.

There's a golden - well, once-golden, now-rusted coppery bronze - call bell that he would have once rang and been met with silence. He would have questioned ringing it once more at the risk of irritation.

Now, he only sets the book by the register and folds down to greet the senior dog curled into a ball over its dented, worn pillow. Grey, melanin-deprived hairs shade the corners of its snout, and highlight its brows, the tips of his billowing ear-lobes.

"How are you today, Apollo?" he whispers.

The dog lifts its head groggily to sniff Namjoon's outstretched palm. It scrunches and wrinkles its cracked nose and slightly parts the drooping lids of its eyes. Murky white clouds greet Namjoon.

"You make twenty the new twelve."

At the beep of the scan gun, Namjoon starts to rise.

The shop owner, Ruki, has a near-psychic ability to sense the presence of a customer within the maze of shelves. The call bell is for formalities, as is the dainty one hanging off the entrance frame. Uses them as fail-proofs while he disappears into the storage closet towards the rear of the store and pastes barcodes onto the covers of new arrivals.

Namjoon fishes a hand into the internal pocket of his winter coat for his wallet.

Ruki, behind the desk, mirrors the grey, melanin-deprived complexion of the dog, who once had been golden. The old man drums his knuckles on the wood counter and stares out the shop window contemplatively. It looks like it might snow today.

"Stray dogs," he voices, puckering wrinkled lips into a slight frown. "Invincible little creatures, aren't they? At this rate, I fear the damn dog will outlive me."

Namjoon thumbs the lined green bills nestled into his brown wallet.

"2.50's the sum, kid."

Namjoon folds the cash onto the counter and slides it into the man's wrinkled, patchy, outstretched hand.

"Everything alright, Ruki? With you, your family?"

"Yeah, I suppose." He shrugs. "Cancer's back." In a swift and practiced motion, he slips the receipt between the book pages like a bookmark. "I guess I can't be too upset with this fate. I only ever wished to live 'til 85. 84's not bad. Not bad at all." He slides the book face-up toward Namjoon, lets out a dry, humorless chuckle. It doesn't quite reach the point of crinkling the lines strewn around his eyes.

Namjoon grabs the book, taps it on the edge of the counter, as if gathering a deck of cards or a pack of printer paper. "I'm sorry to hear that."

"Don't be, kid," he slices right through the platitudes, having felt sorry for too long, having learned how much of a waste it is to live in regret and pity. "We all die at some point. It's nature. No use defying it."

"What about treatment? Technology, nowadays, is so advanced. I read a paper discussing the transplantation of a pig heart into a human recipient. Promising developments."

Ruki shakes his head markedly. "Can't go through that all over again. I won't spend whatever time's left - months, maybe a year, if I'm lucky - rotting because of chemo, not being able to tolerate my favorite foods, bleeding from my gums, in hospital rooms surrounded by people in the same death-bound state as me. I wanna be out here, where life is, all types of it. The pretty kind, sweet kind, the ugly, the morose, rude, and real kind. I wanna make memories with my daughter while there's still time."

Namjoon absent-mindedly frays the edges of the book with his thumb, liking the fluttering friction of the thin corners against the pads of his fingers. Tries to think of something better to say but realizes that sometimes silence holds more meaning. Ironically, his words fall short of any value, even amidst a bookstore overflowing with them.

Instead, he voices his unbridled curiosity. "What'll happen to Apollo?" He looks down at his left, at the dog. Very faint golden strikes up its flanks, transitioning into colorless white. "The store, too?"

"Ask myself that daily." He lifts his brows and lets them fall just as quickly, as if he's at a loss for a response himself. "I've been trying to persuade my daughter to assume my position. I even offered her the compromise of opening the shop only two days a week, so that she'll have the rest of the time to dedicate to her studies - wants to be a doctor, my little girl. I have no doubt she will be. Unfortunately, I likely won't be there to see it, to see her pledge her Hippocratic oath, get her white coat."

Namjoon sits at the bus stop, string earbuds in his ears, the book held splayed by the sturdy hold of his right hand over his crossed lap.

He draws the flame of his lighter to the cigarette balanced between his lips before slapping the case over the amber, extinguishing it swiftly.

Ashes descend onto his denim lap.

When the snow starts to glide through the sky, the grey nicotine ashes blend with the pale blanket by his feet. It is clean and fresh, yet untarnished by scruffy boots or bicycle tracks.

He'd read once, a statistic accusing nicotine as the leading cause of lung cancer. Quickly and half-mindedly brushed it off, like burdensome lint on a freshly-washed sweater. Plucked the doubts from his mind one by one before they could poison the rest of his thoughts.

It wasn't because he found it hard to believe. He was certain of its validity, the statistics were convincing, as was the logic, rather he didn't care. Cared more for taunting death a little, daring the universe to kill him the way he predicts. It's a little morbid but something deep inside him knows that life is rarely predictable or tamable.

He could do one action, and the opposite would unfold. It's not hypothetical. He'd tried to refute his hypothesis with trials; the amount of times it was supported soon became too burdensome to track.

Life isn't straight-forward. Good people get sick, die; the evil persist. The talented go unrecognized in the shadows, ghost writers; the connected thrive. It's all pointless to try and make since of any of it. It's all absurd, as Albert Camus would put it.

He tosses the butt of the cigarette to the ground as the bus pulls up, comes to a screeching halt before him, and squanders the faint amber with the sole of his boot pressed into the snow.

It fizzles a little through the worn-thin sole.

The bus shudders to a halt, and Namjoon shakes the slumber from his head, unfolds his lap, stuffs the book into his back pocket while he starts up, swaying clumsily, sleep-drugged. It was a routine practiced enough that he didn't need to count the stops, or read the street signs to know when to hop-off. There's some internal clock in his subconscious that starts ticking away at the minutes as soon as he climbs the steps up the bus before Nine Books.

The gates unfold and slide across the frame of the bus. It drives away with a long draw of its engine, and a squirt of inky smoke from its exhaust.

Replacing its sight, a vintage-style diner comes into view across the street.

Namjoon crosses the striped pedestrian markings towards it.

At the door, he tugs on the sign, hung around a snagged nail, twists it from displaying a scribbled "Closed. Come Again!" to a "Welcome!"

He strolls in, heavy boots echoing dully across the vacancy. Dispersing muddied snow on impact.

On the trajectory towards his quaint square office space towards the rear of the facility, he can't resist the nagging urge to flip the chairs resting on tabletops. He's got a chronic case of twitchy hands, likely a result of the incessant nicotine crave. Makes his mind race, his legs unsteady, unstill.

At first, he means only to flip one, and scratch the mental itch.

It persists.

After the second chair he starts circumferencing the table, figure eights in swift motion towards another table.

The chatter of the legs on tile is enough to fill the buzzing vacancy of his mind. Enough for his hands to clasp onto and anchor themselves.

But just as quickly, his focus starts to blur. Eyes skit over the distant counter in search of the next thing to occupy his time. His mind.

He's been down this road before. Has made it until noon stil in his winter coat, robust keychain clanking rhythmically against his belt clip. Goes hours without eating anything of substance. The gnawing of an empty stomach numbs before he circles back around to the first intention of the day: visiting his office.

"Office first," he reminds himself today. Inhales deep into his diaphragm and holds it lest it escape his dominion, like the rest of his thoughts and intentions.

He slips the jagged teeth of a golden key into the lock and twists the rusted knob. The door lets out a long groan as it swivels on tired hinges.

Nearing the disheveled surface of a wooden desk pressed against a wall, he plops down his latest read over an assortment of folded papers, receipts, stacked notebooks of moleskin and annotated promotional pamphlets. Try as he might to assign each item its designated square space, it never remains organized long enough. The universe tends towards entropy, he'd justify, it's just the law of nature.

Upon shrugging out of his winter coat, he drapes it over the backrest of his office chair.

His eyes habitually trail over a circular frame standing on the desk's edge. The textured frame accentuates a black-and-white image of his grandpa and grandma caught in a side-embrace, hands clasped over one another's at grandpa's breast.

Gingerly, his tremoring hands collect the frame. He draws his pointer finger over the smooth glass preserving the image, the single moment solidified in time.

He shakes his head clear of some dense sensation and places it back on its designated place, indicated by a square frame of gathered dust.

Shutting the creaking office door behind him, he fishes the carton of cigarettes from his back jean pocket. Plucks a single cylinder from its place and plants it between the groove where his ear adjoins his scalp.

He meanders into the vacant kitchen. Starts a pot of coffee. Nostrils flare as the acidic aroma starts to permeate the empty lot.

The brew drips and bubbles as he strolls to the dormant jukebox on the far end of the establishment. He bends down to plug its chord and starts up. Digs a spare coin out from his front pocket and slips it into the slit on the machine.

In response, it illuminates to life, flickers neon in a hypnotizing pattern.

Pressing a neon green button, he flips through the title slips. He's not registering any of them, though. Just lets his eyes become oversensitive by the mechanized motion of the slips. Defaults to inputting "1-2-4" on the selection panel.

Inside the glass, a wheel of two-hundred discs spins in search of the selection. It slows until it halts and a robotic arm upends a record disc from the rest, lays it out over a turntable.

In a synchronized choreography, as the record is laid over the turntable, a needle descends over its grooves and holds steady pressure.

The machine emanates a crackle that falls into a single voice: [The Song]

Namjoon shuts his eyes in that moment. Allows the familiar tune to send him back in time. An easier time, a more innocent one. Where his only worries consisted of finishing school assignments and coming home by the parent-designated curfew.

His grandparents would dance circles in the diner, hands clasped together, heads leaned to this very song. The customers would cheer, eyes sparkly. They'd submit petitions for the next songs by holding up a shimmery silver coin.

Namjoon would collect them, have them whisper the desired track into his ear. He'd skip back towards the illuminated machine and recite the corresponding track numbers until the current song would come to a cadence.

He sighs. Thinks, I should visit them while they are still there to visit.

It's not something he looks forward to, however. To come to terms with how much time has changed them. To accept that those fond moments are never coming back.

Circling around the kitchen, he procures a metal bowl from the cabinets. Tugs open a drawer and clasps a whisk, its metal cool to the touch.

Opening the fridge door, and bathed in its sterile light, he grabs a couple of eggs, skims the container counting the ones that remain. Provisions should arrive today.

While there, he grabs the tub of butter. Flings the door close with his boot and swivels to pour the ingredients over the counter space, next to the shimmering bowl.

He turns and leans over his head, grabs the flour and sugar from a high shelve. A bit of flour escapes a tiny hole on its bag and dusts his cheek.

Instinctually, he crinkles his eyes, coughs. Shakes his head.

As the batter inflates under the warm luminance of the oven, he grabs a broom propped against the wall inside a storage closet.

His boots clunk rhythmically over the tile floor when he makes his way towards the entrance. Props the door open with its embedded door stump. Starts to part a walkway through the compacted snow. Can't have customers slipping.

It's a cold day in January. The merciless kind of cold that can't be nullified by the festive spirit of the holidays. There's mutable wind changing directions immediately as it blows into him. Delivering the caress of winter and just as quickly withdrawing it.

The muscles of his back and shoulders tense in anticipation for the next gush of frigid wind. The hairs on his exposed forearms prickle.

He starts to envy the batter heating in the kitchen.

He thinks of burning the cigarette nestled over his ear. Imagines how the smoke would warm him up from the inside out. As though a steaming chimney lived inside him.

When he balances the cigarette between his chapped lips, he becomes aware of an approaching figure, strolling up the walkway. She's bundled in a coat, hunched in on her small figure. Raven black hair blowing in the wind.

Namjoon nods in her acknowledgement as he digs around his pocket for his lighter. It's clumsy and desperate and hurried, so the lighter slips his grasp on multiple occasions.

The incomer doesn't slow or detour.

"Morning, boss" the girl quips. Plucks the white cylinder from his lips.

He grimaces at the sensation that a part of his dry lips had been torn along with it. Cups his mouth to verify it isn't true.

"First time I actually get here before you light it."

"You owe me a pack."

"Yeah, well, you owe me the two years of extended lifetime I've gathered you."

"I don't think that's the actual math."

"I've saved you time. Can we just leave it at that."

Namjoon resumes brooming. Still cold. Still tense and prickled. Nicotine deprived.

She shrugs her shoulders out of the billowing coat to reveal at least three more layers of clothing beneath. Long sleeves tugged over her wrists to keep her fingers from tingling.

Norah's armored herself with a black apron, her name affixed to the collar with a pin. She pops out of the doorframe long enough to hand Namjoon a mug of steaming coffee, no sweetener, light milk, but not long enough to allow the wind to ripple a shiver through her.

Namjoon gratefully accepts. Holds the broom handle beneath his arm to allow himself to cup the mug with both hands and derive warmth from that. "Where's your partner in crime? Sleeping late, again?" He mumbles against the ceramic rim, steam billowing up his nostrils.

"En route," she responds over her shoulder. She rounds into the kitchen. Grabs the glass coffee pot and pours herself a black.

Namjoon chortles, accidentally inhaling a gulp of the hot drink. Dissolves into a coughing fit before he's finally composed enough to verbalize "From where? Mars?"

"Actually..." she sets down her drink on the counter. Loses her gaze out the front windows, ravaging her mind for recollection. "No. I think he mentioned it was from Saturn." She angles her head pensively. "Got caught in the current of those spinning rings or something like that."

Namjoon translates, "He's stuck in rush-hour traffic."

[thought of henry's place in addy larue while writing this so thank v.e. schawb for the imagery inspiration]

[tubborucho]

WAIT WHAT

i mean, i am mot surprised that it was RIGGED, i am just surprised to hear about it

[pennedbylisse]

OPERATION CUPID

howdy :) so, the characters you're about to read sort of sprung out of their own volition as I worked on a namjoon fic. I wanted to see how these scenes would do as standalones, as little slices of life, peeks into the daily ups and downs of the cast. scenes proceed in no particular order. sometimes chronological, sometimes as time-skips. I'm just going with the flow, wherever the tide takes me.

wc: 3.0k

tracklist: 'halley's comet' by billie eilish, 'pink skies' by lany, 'safety net by ari g

tense and POV: 3rd and present

ep. 2 | AO3

OPERATION CUPID Classified Excerpts

Jimin is lean, and comparatively small when standing next to Namjoon. His hands are chubby, and his fingers are stubby. None of this, however, subtracts from his agility and his swan-like elegance even as he glides across a fifty-year-old, small-town diner at rush hour.

It's the kind of awe-inspiring grace that belongs on stage, spotlit amidst tule skirts and disciplined ballet point shoes. The kind of grace that is chiseled to perfection through years of arduous practice and patience.

Norah, who is sat on a swivel bar chair behind the register, takes inventory of crinkled green bills. Between lining the bills with a few taps against the counter and reaching over to scribble on a tracking sheet, she steals glances his way.

She wonders just how many falls it had taken him to trust his quick and light footing not to betray him. How many bruises he'd acquired and endured to no longer fear pain.

Jimin never seems to catch on to her stray glances, or the twinkle in her gaze every time he comes into frame from behind the shoulder, or broad back, of a customer that shuffles in, or out, of the establishment.

He's used to having eyes affixed to him; feels comfortable in the spotlight, in crowds. Naturally charming and approachable, he makes friends left and right, and talks to them as if they are years-long acquaintances meeting over dinner. How's your family doing? My, that must have been so hard for you! Say what, here's a plate of Saturn rings, on the house. He'd wink and utter something, while holding a hand to their shoulder, about keeping it a secret from the boss, Namjoon.

Norah would wince. It's not like they are financially flexible enough to afford freebies.

As for Namjoon, he'd pretend to have not seen anything.

Jimin gently sets down a tall glass of strawberry milkshake, adorned with a dollop of white foam and a single, shimmering cherry on a table where a customer is hunched over a book.

He'd noticed, on his glide her way, that she'd been pensively entranced, entirely engrossed in the blotchy ink of the pages, brows pinched beneath the slight part between her curled bangs.

He didn't want to interrupt her careful consideration. It appeared of utmost importance, and if not that, than at least of utmost enjoyment. In the case of the latter, she had a peculiar way of displaying it (enjoyment).

At the drum of the glass's rim over the wooden table, the woman snaps her head to capture his studious gaze.

The pinch of her eyebrows dissolves, much like the foam atop her drink, and becomes replaced with an appreciative smile.

"Is it any good?" He glances, suggestively, at the book she'd hurriedly closed over her forefinger, which she'd been using as a make-shift bookmark.

Her cheeks and ears grow flushed, as if it were a shameful thing to enjoy reading.

Jimin wonders if it's the nature of the text that makes her so bashful, hiding her blush by flattening her bangs.

Regret hardens like cement over his feet, leaves him paralyzed to assess her response.

"Ah, this?" She drums her fingers over the hardcover, and it resonates wonderfully crisp. "Quite unexpectedly, yes."

Jimin's smile returns, as does his graceful fluidity. There's a single crooked tooth that peeks through when his smile reaches his eyes. It's just barely noticeable. It's Norah's favorite detail.

Unaware, the woman elaborates further: "You see, a friend of mine-" She halts as if holding a mental debate over whether that was the proper term for it. She shakes her head, dismissing the flurry of questions and doubts brought forth by a simple six-letter word. "It was his choice for the month. We have this thing where we trade books after each turn. We read each other's margin annotations, and sometimes try to identify doodles done in the likeness of classical art pieces. It's our way of getting to know each other."

"It's unexpected because," she explains in a sort of round-about way, "he knows, and knew while picking out this title, that I loathe Nietzche."

"Ah, that's lovely! It's a clever take on penpal-ship," Jimin quips.

"Oh!" She chokes a chuckle down, not meaning to sound so excited.

She hadn't been able to conceal her smile at the mention of the friend; Jimin had caught on to her wandering, dreamy gaze falling down at the book's cover amidst her recollection. "I hadn't thought of it like that, but now that you mention it, it is, isn't it?"

Perhaps only now made aware of her rambling by the holler of a nearby customer for Jimin's attention, does she let her voice diminish and takes up interest at the glass before her. Condensation dotting her fingertips.

"In short: Yes, it's good." She takes a decided sip of her drink, the foam smearing her upper lip only for a second before she licks it away. Her eyes expand and soon enough she's eager for another sip of the decadent drink. "As is this!"

Jimin's turning to tend to the customer who had been hollering and whistling for his attention. He halts mid-step, and swivels back to face her, doesn't leave her table until he prompts: "You should tell him you like it over coffee, chocolate, or even a milkshake sometime. Step out of the pages, the margins."

"No-" she stammers. "No, no." It's more a bid to persuade herself out of pointless delusional than it is an attempt at shutting him up.

"We've never talked about meeting," she adds. "I think it's a mutual desire to keep it anonymous. It's perfect like this, safe from external pressure to be anything more than two friends bonding over literature and internal jokes."

"Perfect's not real," Jimin responds. "Forgive me for being pushy, here, but if you like him, as you appear to, why only limit yourselves to footnotes in each other's lives?"

"That's a preposterous proposition!" She hides her blush this time behind the rim of the glass she brings up to her lips, and what little frothy cream is left. When she sets the mug down, a triumphant smile momentously strikes her face like lightning at the realization she'd weaved in her word-of-the-day so subtly, and with added alliteration.

She continues, reigning in the smile (Jimin wouldn't get that inside joke): "How can you like someone you haven't even met?"

"Haven't you, though? Met him, in a sense? I'd argue you're intimately aware of all the pages of his life, like that little book of yours." He taps the sturdy cover lying on the dinner table before bowing away, leaving her to ponder - not before slipping a circular coaster beneath her drink as it had already started to condense.

Namjoon would get on him about the wood, how old it is, how delicate, how financially inflexible they are.

For, possibly, the first time in her life, since she was an infant, she sits in silence. The concerto of intriguing words playing in her mind falls mute. All diction and syntax is replaced with a profound note of realization. A note she ushers to silence, lest anyone else hear. A note that's her secret - like a bookmark, or dollar bill, sticky note, or receipt shoved between pages and preserved over time.

After tending to the demanding customer with an unwavering smile, Jimin glides around the counter and rubs shoulders with Norah, who is still hunched over the register — has been for the past half-hour, impatiently stabbing her fingers over its blank screen.

Fucking Mercurcy retrograding; it always had to cause some sort of glitch. She always happened to find herself dead-center to its discovery.

The register had functioned fine for Namjoon just an hour ago. Now, it'll appear as if it was her doing. How much of a deduction would that be from her paycheck?

Oblivious to her inner turmoil, Jimin whispers over her shoulder: “It’s her.”

At Norah's lack of enthusiasm, he repeats himself, only now forcing her gaze onto his suggestive one.

Norah's face twists with bewilderment. "Who?"

Jimin casts his eyes at the star-dotted ceiling with an exasperated roll. Then, he slams his shoulder cloth down on the counter (more for dramatic effect than intimidation) and subtly nods in the direction of the bibliophilic woman.

Norah squints. Unamused, she blankly stares back at Jimin. Irritation is starting to settle on her face.

"Namjoon's penpal," he finally comes out with it, spells it out with each syllable as if it had been painfully obvious all of this time.

At that, her chocolate eyes light up, the way they do after her first espresso each morning.

Jimin crafts up this "amazing" (his words, not Norah's), and densely convoluted plan to stich the two up. He's convinced that just because they don't glide at his swift pace, they are helplessly in need of intervention, lest they waste their youth away pining and brooding aimlessly.

Norah holds her refutes deep in her chest, merely lends a curious ear to his inspired rambles. An assumption bubbles to the surface of her mind that this hyper-fixation with establishing a romantic interest for Namjoon was only a projection of Jimin's own scarcity in the love department. Even since he'd become a single father, he'd not had much time, space or privacy to afford a fling.

And even if a desperate fling did happen to materialize itself at his front door, he'd kindly decline; stringless hook-ups are no longer his thing. He's looking for something solid, something long-term. Thinks baby Byeol will benefit from a feminine role-model.

He's trying his best as a father, and in his defense, that's more than most absentee fathers out there, but he's fearful that as she grows, he'll be of less use to her. All he has to worry about now is feeding her, bathing her and providing a roof and clothes. Later, he'll have to procure answers to increasingly difficult questions.

Regardless of the intrinsic motive, Jimin's buzzing, talking a mile-a-minute as he walks circles around the diner.

Norah furrows her brows as she hoists a chair onto its corresponding table.

Jimin likes playing Cupid a little too much. He forgets that those red-tipped arrows are sharper than they seem in folklore. Perhaps Cupid wasn't born blind, rather his own carelessness with those arrows blinded him before he learned fates weren't something to toy with when bored and idle.

Jimin's first warning arrives in the form of Norah's apprehension. "I don't know, Chim," she whines.

His eyes round with quiet concern, and he cranes his weight onto the edge of a table. Crosses his arms over his chest, a stained rag dangling between his hold.

"Why? Why not? Don't you think Nam deserves some excitement? All he ever does is overwork himself and play the same miserable song over and over. " He shoots a deathly glare at the vintage juke box at the edge of the bar at the mere recollection.

"He's young. Has a build most girls would gawk over." He's listing the attributes on his stubby fingers. "Smart, kind, generous- I mean, do you think any other boss would put up with my BS on a daily? The man's an angel."

In the dim light of the overhanding star lights, Jimin's eyes glisten, and he averts his gaze, fearful his composure will crumble.

"He deserves happiness, Nor. if this all goes up in flames, he deserves a speck of happiness to carry him through it, guide him to a new horizon. This can't be his everything, because as soon as it falls, so will he."

"You're saying he needs a safety net."

"Yes, exactly! A safety net." He recites the term, weighing its shape on his lips, surprised at how properly it fits.

Norah weakly hoists the last of the chairs. "I thought that was us. You know? Us three, to the end?"

"Nor..." he frowns, launches his weight off the table he'd been reclining himself against, and saunters his way through the maze of stacked chairs to Norah. "We will always be there for one another, but you and I both know there are things he carries in secret. Things he keeps from us, for our sake. Maybe she'll crack through his shell, and make it less..." He looks for the word somewhere over and past her head, and physically palpates the air for its shape. "Less...you know...less heavy." He's not please with the selection, but it's the only word that comes to mind in that instance, and bears resemblance to the abstract idea of his mind.

"Maybe he'll allow her, unlike us."

"I get it. I hear you. I just don't know how to feel about this. What if it blows up and he hates us for it?"

Jimin takes up the role of devil's advocate, an un-orthodoxically hopeful one: "What if it works out wonderfully well?"

"Fine," her agreement falls flat, but he makes up for her lack of enthusiasm by doing a little fist hoist in the air.

She grabs his wrist and forces his gaze back onto hers. "This is Nam we are talking about. We need a good plan and an even better execution. Absolutely no room for fuckups."

"Hey, Jimin?"

"Hmm?" His gaze flies up at the sound of such formality, and the absence of the familiar 'Chim.' His furrowed brows frame a set of eyes rounded with concern. They scan her countenance, attempting to pick up on subtle, unspoken moods that could explain that sudden change.

"Whatever happens -if this place goes belly-up..." Norah does a motion with her forefinger, its silver band reflecting in the waning amber of evening. "We'll still be..." her gaze dances, unsteady between his steady and attentive one, but she proves incapable of holding it.

Circling the bands around her now clammy fingers, she orders her thoughts, lines her words over the plateau of her tongue. Like perfectly placed and aligned dominoes, she intends to let them charge forth with unbridled momentum.

But instead, they clank awkwardly and with no set rhythm as she stammers between what should be said, and what should be censored, eternalized to secrecy.

"It'll be us three, forever, right? Nothing will change?" Of course things would change, drastically. Namjoon alone would have to uproot his life to comply with the terms of agreement he'd established with his parents in allowing him to take-up the risk of running the diner. That alone would suggest him moving away. Communication between the three would fall, their bond crafted over years would loosen and come undone like an improperly fastened knot, or one that just wore away, sun-bleached and tattered.

He wants to procure a worthy response, to at least undo the tears starting to form on her lash-line, but he can't bring himself to lie to her. Nothing was certain. Not ever, and certainly not now.

He would be lying if he denies having scouted for jobs online once he puts Byeol down to bed each night.

It's less about holding different jobs than it is about the distance between those routines. The fall-out wouldn't be palpable during the first few months as they would make every attempt to overcome the discrepancy, to meet and chat, with everything being freshly new. Once they were to give into monotony and convenience, though, those meetings would shorten into oblivion.

Perhaps this is why Jimin is so adamant about helping Namjoon conquer love; it's his way of leaving an impression that will outlive his presence in Namjoon's life.

Instead of voicing his reasonable suspicions, he coos, much in the likeness of the tone he uses to calm Byeol. "Hey, hey... It's okay. It'll be okay."

He encroaches with outstretched arms, ready to collect her before she shatters into a million pieces right before him. His small, delicate hands hold her head and stroke her hair.

Norah renders her guard useless, and sheds it with a few tears that stray from her shut eyes. She nuzzles the bridge of her pierced button bose against the side of his neck.

No longer looking into her eyes, he musters a pretty, white lie, sweet like cane sugar, to coax the bitterness of medicine, of reality, of life: "Until the stars burn out."

She wants to call him out on the lack of accuracy in that statement; processes it's fallacy, but stops herself from speaking. Instead, she relishes the embrace as if it were the first and the last.

She allows herself to enjoy the imagery of the sentiment and locks her hands behind his back, just in case the stars do burn out in that instant. In case they drift off into the void together, to face that dark unknown together.

Norah's unspokenly ambitious, hazardly competitive. Rather than boasting about how she's the very best, she'll take up any and every opportunity to one-up her opponent in the most obscure trivia, a match of chess, tennis (you name it).

Her ambition is merely a deep, infiltrating greed that courses through her like an infestation. She's conditioned herself to fear coveting something. Taught herself that to want is to lose; and that vulnerability is dangerous.

She's recited a million times over in her head declinations of her blossoming feelings for Jimin. Every bud that blooms in daylight, she snips in moonlight.

She wants it all. She wants him. She wants forever. She doesn't merely want to buy an extension for the inevitable. She doesn't want to convince herself out of the want. Not with this want.

Something deep inside her is gnawing with want - not the lustful desire kind, rather, the I've been alone for so long that I am touch-starved, and wholly lonesome and tired and I just want a place to rest.

She wishes on every lash of her eyes that Jimin could one day be that for her, and likewise, her for him.

A safe place.

But she also wishes incessantly for the diner's success and Namjoon's happiness, yet the bills continue to pile. With winter unfolding, the crowds are thinning, the diner grows quiet and stale.

Wishing has never proven to suffice. It never has been the magical remedy. Stars are just pretty orbs of light in the sky, not wish granters.

𓍢ִ໋🌷͙֒ this teeny series is lowkey a love letter to jimin for being such a loving, warm person. a literal angel x

𓍢ִ໋🌷͙֒ also, probs unconsciously influenced by peyton x jake oth dynamic (we were robbed!)

𓍢ִ໋🌷͙֒ the ode to jimin continues >> ep. 2

[tubborucho]

in honor of the pride month, my asexual themed post:

[tubborucho]

Tommy talks about the elephant in the room