#maybe I should 'fix' my sleep schedule but lets be honest
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voidc4t · 1 month ago
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so I've been listening to 'Too Sweet' by Hozier for aprox. 10h now and the lines 'It can't be said I'm an early bird / It's ten o'clock before I say a word / My coffee black and my bed at three' could describe my day, gave me a good chuckle lol
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gonzo-rella · 2 years ago
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The Bitter Taste of Regret | Izzy Hands
MASTERLIST | AO3 | KO-FI
Based on/a follow-up to: Blackbeard Asking/Ordering You To Join His Crew (Partially For Izzy) (an imagine written by yours truly) 
Relationship(s): Izzy Hands x gn!reader (implied romantic), Izzy Hands x Edward Teach (ambiguous)
Summary: Izzy’s not as content as he should be in his life as the first mate of Blackbeard’s new crew. Ed’s becoming more erratic than he can handle, he’s starting to feel more than a twinge of guilt about marooning most of Stede (fucking Bonnet)’s crew, and you’ve become an obedient shell of the person you once were. To be honest, I’m not completely sure what this is. Just go with it and we’ll all have a good time. Apart from Izzy.
Warnings: Description/reference to Ed’s less than great mental state. (Let me know if I need to add any)
Word count: 1.4k
(A/N: I don’t tend to broadcast this fact but I write self-insert fics just for my own enjoyment with no intention of publishing them in any capacity. I started writing something and thought it’d make a good reader-insert thing, so I polished it and added to it until it turned out like this. In case it wasn’t clear, I love writing things where I can make my angry middle-aged man suffer (see: this fic I wrote on AO3; and no that definitely wasn’t some smooth af  shameless self-promotion). Also, I finished and edited this in the aftermath of an all-nighter I pulled in an attempt to fix my nocturnal sleep schedule so I didn’t end up sleeping through most of my birthday (26th August, if anyone’s curious), so I wouldn’t be surprised if this is littered with mistakes. That’s also why my writing in this one has all the subtlety of a cricket bat to the anus. If you’re a big believer in ‘show, don’t tell’, well...)
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“Cabin boy!” Izzy called as he hobbled across the main deck.
Perched on a stool, you looked up at him over the large wooden tub filled to the brim with soapy water and continued to scrub at his jacket in an effort to avoid being yelled at to carry on. Tucked under his arms was another pile of laundry. He seemed to be struggling to carry everything because of his cane, you noted. You decided against assisting him- he’d only bark at you for thinking him incapable of such an easy task, wouldn’t he?
"Bring these to my cabin when you're done."
"Yes, sir."
He dropped the clothes and bedding on top of the pile of his own that you were due to wash. Considering the fact Izzy had just emerged from Blackbeard’s cabin, you deduced that your reclusive captain was finally allowing you to do his laundry. You neglected to comment on the strong scent of rum and sweat emanating from Blackbeard’s heap beyond the involuntary scrunching of your nose.
"Does Captain Blackbeard want me to clean his cabin too, sir?" you asked.
Considering you were the ship’s ‘cabin boy’, it was strange that you had yet to clean your new captain’s cabin. Though, Izzy had generously allowed you to clean his room so many times that you had lost count. 
"No. You're still not to go near it," Izzy answered sternly. "Unless you want to explore the bottom of the sea."
It was a warning he’d given you early on in your voyage as part of Blackbeard’s new crew. You guessed he was mercifully sparing you (for reasons unknown to you) from your captain’s wrath, not unlike how he’d spared you from being marooned. It wasn’t as though Blackbeard had been in particularly high spirits as of late, which is why you, Jim and Frenchie were so on edge. None of you would have been surprised if you woke up with your erratic leader holding his gun to your head.
You noted that Izzy appeared just as unsettled as you felt beneath your stoic veneer. Maybe he was shaken after another unpleasant interaction with Captain Blackbeard, you thought. However (as was the case with many questions you had nowadays), you knew better than to ask. You didn’t want to explore the bottom of the sea, after all.
"Alright." you nodded. "Do you need anything else, sir?"
Izzy stared blankly at you. He noticed that you hadn't stopped scrubbing since his arrival, and you were repeating the motion as though your life depended on it.
Perhaps it was just due to his recent altercation with his sobbing, screaming captain, but he was experiencing this creeping feeling of dissatisfaction. His captain was a drunken, weeping mess in his cabin, he didn’t get much out of scolding Jim and Frenchie for their fatigued scowls and muttering, the relief of having rid himself of Bonnet’s incompetent band of misfits was dissipating and he was beginning to resent the only one aboard the ship who obeyed him without question.
"What's the matter with you?" he demanded.
You tried your best to hide your unease behind a demeanour of neutrality.
"Pardon me, sir?"
"You've been acting like a-a... fucking plank of wood ever since you joined Blackbeard's crew."
"I'm sorry. I don't understand, sir."
Izzy clenched his jaw. Your eyes widened.
In your defence, you were only half-sure you knew what he meant. That said, you were completely sure you didn’t want to discuss it with him.
"Don't lie to me. Of course you understand."
You swallowed your saliva.
"I wouldn't like to… speak out of turn, sir," you hesitated, shaking your head dismissively. The scrubbing intensified, alerting Izzy to the fact that you were more uncomfortable than you’d been letting on. “And I doubt you’d like me to- not that I presume to know your mind.”
He raised his arms in exasperation.
"I'm giving you permission to say what you want."
You froze. "I'm afraid... I don't have anything I want to say, sir."
That wasn’t necessarily a lie. There were plenty of thoughts residing in that head of yours, but you’d taken an unofficial vow of silence (well, silence involving things you suspected would earn you an involuntary one-way trip to the seabed).
Izzy huffed.
"I'm not trying to catch you out."
You didn't say anything.
"Christ." He rolled his eyes.  "Who knew you'd be more fucking annoying when you're actively trying not to piss me off?"
"I'm sorry for annoying you, sir."
"For fuck's sake." Izzy groaned. He would have preferred it if the tone of your apology was dripping with insincerity, rather than a poorly suppressed desperation to not be tied to the anchor. “If you don’t say something in the next 10 seconds, I swear to-”
Well, if he really insisted…
“You know exactly why I’m like this.” you snapped.
He looked at you stiffly. You allowed yourself to roll your eyes, something that strangely pleased Izzy.
“You want a crew that gets on with the work without a word. I don’t know what the Captain wants, but I know how to avoid pissing him off.” you continued. “I want to keep all of my toes, or, if I’m being optimistic, my life. If I want what I want, I have to do what you two want. Hence the ‘acting like plank of wood’.”
Your gaze lingered on him.
“Well, I thought it was what you wanted,” You couldn’t help the smirk that crept across your face. It had been so long since Izzy had seen it. He hadn’t realised how much he’d missed it until it reappeared. “And I’m guessing you thought you wanted it, too.”
You glanced down and went back to scrubbing. He guessed that this time it wasn’t to appease him as much as it was to irritate him. It was bloody working.
“So, you’re finally disillusioned.” you declared sardonically. “What sent you over the edge, then? Blackbeard? Guilt?”
You grinned beneath his irritated glare, not bothering to look up at him.
“I might be wrong in assuming this,” you went on (though you didn’t sound as though you thought you were wrong in the slightest). “But I can’t help but wonder if maybe you had something to do with this miserable situation we find ourselves in.”
Finally, you briefly met his gaze again. His eyes widened. He shifted uncomfortably.
"Even so, you want to fix this, right?” You didn’t bother waiting for confirmation. “Well, since you asked for my thoughts, First Mate Hands,” you said mockingly. It made him wonder if, all the other times you had formally addressed him, there was some taunting hidden within your words. “I suppose I can make a suggestion.”
“What?” he uttered gruffly.
“Get Stede back.” you advised. Before he could protest- “He’s our only real hope. If he started this downward spiral, as I suspect he did, he’ll be able to put a stop to it. Hopefully he’s managed to keep himself alive.”
You maintained your bitter grin and looked Izzy straight in the eyes.
“Of course, if he is dead, or if Blackbeard ends up killing him, we’re completely fucked.” you shrugged. “In which case, I’m off to the Republic of Pirates at the first chance I get. You’re welcome to join me, if you actually try to get Stede back.”
“Do you seriously think the promise of running off into the sunset with you is worth searching high and low for that fancy man?” he sneered.
“Well, I was worth ‘vouching for’, as the Captain put it.” you countered smugly, pretending not to notice the blush that spread across his cheeks. “Besides, I’m hoping it won’t come to leaving. I tend to like it here when things aren’t totally miserable. I’d quite like for things to go back to the way they were.”
You cleared your throat. The smirk fell from your face. Izzy watched as your whole demeanour shifted once again.
“I hope you’ll consider what I’ve said, sir.” you stated, your voice lacking most of the humour that it had possessed mere seconds ago. “If you want me again-” You looked up at him. Your eyes were unlike your voice. His heart leapt at the glint of mischief. “You’ll have to ask.
“I wouldn’t like to say something at the wrong time and incur your wrath.”
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luci-in-trenchcoats · 4 years ago
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If I Fell For You (Part 1) - The Nanny
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Summary: The reader interviews for a new live-in nanny position with Jensen and quickly gets the job but she starts to slowly see that her new employer is going to be different than any other she’s had before...
Masterlist
Pairing: Jensen x nanny!reader
Square: Slow Burn
Word Count: 4,800ish
Warnings: language, mention of death of a spouse/death of a parent
A/N: Please enjoy the first part of this series! This was also written for @supernatural-jackles​ Tell Me A Story Bingo!
________
If someone had said you’d be celebrating your 30th birthday by accepting an interview to be a live in nanny when you were a kid, you would have told them they were nuts. Beyond nuts. Beyond help for that matter.
But there you were. Thirty. Single. Childless. Taking care of other people’s families and not doing much else with your life. You weren’t sure if your mom would have been on you about the no kids thing or the no boyfriend thing more to be honest.
But the pay was normally good and sometimes great and it gave you a taste of family, even if you were just the help to the adults most of the time.
You buzzed the button by the gate at the end of the driveway, a brief moment passing before it opened. It was probably on a timer like most of the people you’d worked for before, an alarm system kicking on at some point in the evening that required a buzz in, the code or a car sensor. You drove down the driveway and parked a little behind a black SUV. The house was a little modern, a little grand, a little overwhelming. A fence and lots of trees surrounded the property. The yard appeared large but you could see houses on either side. Private but suburban. 
The cadillac wasn’t a shocker. Most everyone in these neighborhoods had Escalades. You walked past an open garage on the way up, a muscle car and a more modest smaller SUV parked inside. You went up the very short path and stepped up, ringing the doorbell and fixing your shirt. You were in jeans and a plain gray shirt. It was your normal wear for chasing small children around all day and you weren’t a fan of uniforms.
“Hi,” said a very tired, very handsome man as he opened the door. “You must be from Nanny Core.”
“I’m Y/N Y/L/N from Home Pair,” you said with a smile. He shut his eyes and leaned his head against the door. 
“The last girl was from Nanny Core,” he said. He blinked them open and shook his head. “I’m so sorry. Yes, Y/N. You’re the one that’s a consultant, not firmly associated with Home Pair, right?”
“Correct,” you said as he opened the door more and you stepped inside.
“Can I ask what the distinction is?”
“Mostly it has to do with benefits,” you said. “Consultants pay out of pocket for their own or negotiate with their client for those to be covered.”
“Gotcha,” he yawned. You looked ahead and he wiped his hand over his face. “I’m sorry. I must seem like an ass.”
“You seem tired is all Mr. Ackles. Not a crime,” you said with a smile. He nodded and he returned it, no fake cheesiness to it. 
“Mind if we do the interview in the kitchen over a cup of coffee?” he asked.
“Wherever you like, sir,” you said. You took off your shoes when you noticed he didn’t wear any inside and he chuckled as you walked back farther into the house.
“Uh, for the record, call me Jensen. None of that sir stuff. They must teach that at nanny school or something huh?” he said, motioning to a table. “I noticed all of you do it.”
“Something like that,” you said. You took a seat and watched him go to a coffee machine, fumbling with it before he spilled some ground coffee on the counter. He shut his eyes and gripped the counter’s edge, taking a deep breath to himself. “How about I make the coffee and you take a seat, hm?”
“I’m okay,” he said as he opened his eyes. 
“Well making you coffee is probably going to come up in my job quite a bit so consider this part of the interview. It’s alright, really,” you said. He glanced over to you and you smiled. 
“Thank you,” he said. You swapped places with him and got him a cup going, taking a mug off the counter and waiting a beat before liquid started pouring out. “I’m gonna ask you the same question I’ve asked all seven other women I’ve talked to today.”
“Yes?”
“Why should I trust you to watch my children?”
“Honestly?” you asked as he nodded. You smiled and carried the cup over to him, Jensen taking a long sip. “You shouldn’t.”
“I shouldn’t. That seems counterproductive.”
“I wouldn’t trust any stranger with my child. Trust is earned, not given. I think the real question is do you believe I’m capable of earning that trust with you and that’s something intrinsically only you know.”
“How so?”
“You meet a lot of different kinds of people with this job. My gut reaction to you is stressed, overwhelmed, sleep-deprived father who doesn’t really want any nanny at all but is forced into this situation. It’s going to be impossible for you to trust any of the seven woman from earlier or me off the bat, Jensen. You should be thinking of who will you come to trust. Who can you count on.”
“This is why my wife should have been the one doing this,” he said, smiling to himself as he drunk down most of the hot liquid.
“We could always re-schedule for when she’s available.”
“Oh, we’d have to wait a very long time for that,” he chuckled. He sat the mug down and glanced down briefly, smiling as he looked up. “She passed away unexpectedly six months ago. Car accident.”
“I’m sorry for your loss,” you said. He nodded and made a face like he wanted to make a comment. “My mom died kinda unexpectedly. I know it’s...harder.”
“You’re young. How old?”
“Turned thirty today,” you said. He laughed and you heard the life behind it, Jensen shaking his head.
“Well Happy Birthday. I meant with your mother though. If that’s okay with you I mean.”
“It’s fine. I was sixteen,” you said. 
“That...fucking sucks doesn’t it?”
“So does losing your wife,” you said. 
“Yes it does. I’ve grieved. We all have. The kids are small. They’ll be okay.”
“Is dad okay?” you asked.
“Yes. Ready to start moving on with life again,” he said with a soft smile. “You’re kind. Not in a I’m trying to get this job kind of way. Just kind.”
“Well being cruel doesn’t sound like very much fun,” you said.
“You’re not trying to impress me.”
“The first rule of nannying, Jensen. You think you’re interviewing us when in reality we’re interviewing you too.”
“How am I doing so far?”
“Nice coffee choice,” you said with a smile that he nodded at. “You respect people. You’ll employ me but won’t treat me like I’m second class. You’re checking the boxes so far.”
“What if I don’t check all the boxes?”
“You don’t get to know the luxury of knowing the answer yet, Mr. Ackles,” you said. “Interview isn’t over.”
“You got fucked over by somebody, didn’t you.”
“Also perceptive,” you said. “Like I said, I don’t tolerate being treated unkindly anymore. It’s why I left my last position.”
“I have one more question,” he said. “Would you treat my children like they’re your own?”
“Again, asking the wrong question,” you said. He sat back and crossed his arms, smirking at you.
“What exactly should I be asking?”
“Will you treat my children kindly and with respect but take charge when required?”
“What’s the difference?”
“One is me doing my job and the other is me doing yours.”
“How old did you say you were again?”
“Thirty today.”
“Right. Well I think I know where I stand. Do you have anything for me?”
“Can you show me a picture of your kids?” you asked. He reached into his back pocket and pulled out his wallet. “You answered my question.”
“I didn’t show you anything yet.”
“You’d be surprised how many fathers I’ve met don’t carry pictures of their children in their wallets. That one is just a me thing.”
“Your dad do that?” he asked as he tucked it away.
“Maybe,” you said with a shrug. He was polite enough to not go down that route though and this was already getting more personal than you anticipated. “I think I know where I stand as well.”
“I’d like to hire you,” he said.
“Assuming our negotiations go well, I accept,” you said. He held out his hand over the table and you shook it.
“I did come up with what I thought was fair for salary and benefits. Let me go grab the paperwork and hopefully settle on something,” he said. He excused himself and you looked around the house, already trying to familiarize yourself with things. He was more relaxed when he returned with some papers and a notebook, handing you a few sheets. “If I’m missing anything let me know. I-”
“This is my weekly rate?” you asked when you saw the number at the top of the page.
“Oh no. That’s your daily,” he said as he took a seat. “So I think that’s-”
“Jensen,” you said, pushing the paper back. “I have to ask, things like insurance, are those coming out of your pocket or mine?”
“I’ll cover the expenses of your health, dental, all of that. You just choose and I’ll subsize it as part of your paycheck,” he said. 
“This is for a live in position. Um...can you just...explain what makes up that daily rate number?” you asked.
“It’s simply your base pay. Obviously I pay for housing, utilities, gas obviously. I will get you a credit card to make purchases with for the kids and all of that so it’s simple to keep track of. You’re free to any of the food in the kitchen. I’m guessing the salary is the sticking point here.”
“Jensen,” you said as you scratched your head. 
“I can go up fifty more dollars a day.”
“Jensen. This is way, way too much money. Way too much,” you said. “The average rate around here is about twenty five an hour or two hundred a day. Jensen this is double that. Are you factoring in like time and a half for additional nights and weekends?”
“No. That’d be on top of that. I thought that was a fair value based on the fact you are going to be taking care of the most valuable things in my life. It’s gonna get taxed too so it’s not like you see all of it.”
“You’re sweet, Jensen,” you said, writing down a number at the top of the page. “The average in Austin is twenty five an hour. I would be very happy with that.”
“You have to literally be the first person in existence to negotiate their salary down from the offer,” he said.
“Are you rejecting my offer?” you asked. He took the paper and crossed your number out, jotting down his own and spinning it back. “Jensen.”
“Y/N,” he said, crossing his arms. “I came down. Now it’s your turn. Do you accept?”
You knew thirty five was still way overpriced for the job, especially considering everything else he was paying for.
“I will accept on the condition that you get four hours of what we’d call evening or weekend at the normal rate ever week.”
“I can agree to that,” he said with a smile, writing that down. “So medical plan. Single, plus one, family?”
“Single for all that,” you said. 
“I should mention that there is an in-law suite off to the other side of the garage where you’ll be staying. It’s just down the hall but it has its own small living area and kitchenette. There is a separate entrance to it. If you have guests over I just ask you keep them to your area of the house,” he said.
“Absolutely. I don’t tend to bring people over much anyways while I’m on the job,” you said. He let you read over the rest of the benefits, a good amount of sick and vacation time too. Technically you were free evenings and weekends but he could ask you to work longer if he needed you and you were available. Overall everything seemed in order. “Alright. Everything looks good to me.”
“Awesome. Are you available to start Monday?” he asked.
“Sure,” you said. “It gives me plenty of time to move in things tomorrow so I can jump into the kids routine first thing Monday.”
“Perfect,” he said. “I’ll show you around. We can start with your side of the house.” You got up and followed him over to near the front door and down a long hallway, past a set of doors. There was a frosted glass one to your left just before he pushed open a wide white one.
Behind it was a living area and kitchen. Not huge, about the size of a small apartment. There was a TV and sectional, a table tucked against the wall and a kitchenette like he’d mentioned with full size appliances. 
“Like I said, I know it’s small. Please like, seriously watch TV out in the family room at night if you want or hang out wherever or the yard or pool. This is just your own space when you want to be away from us.” You hummed and he showed you a closet and then a bedroom and bathroom. It was simple but decorated nicely and looked relaxing. “If there’s something obvious I’m missing please let me know. A cleaning service does come by every two weeks on Tuesdays at around ten in the morning. They’ll do in here too. Otherwise you can keep after yourself. Cleaning stuff is in the laundry room. Oh yeah. Um, this is probably the last time I’ll like, ever come in here unless you need help moving things in since this will be your space.”
“Thanks. I don’t have too much. I do have one request before we sign all the paperwork.”
“What’s that?”
“I’d like to meet the kids if that’s alright. There’s not much point in hiring me if they hate me.”
“Fair point. We’ll get ‘em over here and then get you all squared away.”
Monday Morning
“Good morning,” you said, a cup of coffee in your hand already as Jensen yawned. 
“Morning,” he mumbled. His hair was a mess and he was in only a pair of boxer briefs before he paused and looked down. “I should probably put on some clothes.”
“This is your house. Wear whatever you normally would. Pretend I’m invisible,” you said as you poured a cup of coffee into a mug for him.
“Sounds like you worked for some real assholes,” he said, graciously taking the cup. “As long as it doesn’t bother you, me walking around in my undies.”
“No, not at all,” you said with a smile. “Would you like me to drop the kids off at school and daycare this morning?”
“Sure,” he said. “Car keys are on the table by the garage.”
“Okay great. I’m used to driving that kind of SUV,” you said. You snuck a look at your schedule you’d printed out again, knowing the twins would get need to get picked up around noon. You started to work on their lunches and snacks for the day while he took out the carton of eggs from the fridge. He cracked one into a pan and turned the heat on, yawning again as he got out some bread and threw it on a plate. “Would you like me to make lunch for you as well?”
“No thank you. I’m getting lunch with my manager today. You don’t have to make me coffee in the morning either, Y/N. Your job is to take care of the kids, not me,” he said.
“A cup of coffee is not difficult, Jensen. My job is to help you so if I can make dad’s life a smidge easier it’ll make theirs better too,” you said with a smile.
“You’re not like, a morning person are you,” he chuckled. “I don’t do peppy in the morning.”
“Oh no. I’m always a little nervous when I start a new job. I’ll get a rhythm down soon,” you said.
“So what do you normally do once the kids are dropped off?” he asked as he got out a spatula.
“On a weekday I’ll review their schedule, see if anything different is going on. An average day like today I will clean their rooms, their bathroom, do some laundry while they’re at school, maybe some shopping. I’ll pick up the twins, bring them home for lunch, a little playtime, a nap. We’ll have some quiet time and maybe a craft or coloring before we get JJ from school. Then I’ll give them all a snack, we can get outside and play to get some energy out. I’ll help JJ with any schoolwork she has while the twins play and then I will start on dinner about the time you’ll be getting home. Since you have no plans currently tonight I’ll leave you guys be at that point until tomorrow unless you ask me for help.”
“So when do you take a break?” he asked.
“Naptime. I’ll have lunch with the twins. Don’t worry about me Jensen. That’s my normal plan but if you would like me to run some errands in the morning I can,” you said.
“No, no. Just…” he trailed off. “I still want to make them breakfast and dinner and play with them too is all.”
“We’ll figure out the right mix of things,” you said. “You just gotta tell me is all, okay? It can vary day to day too,”
“Yeah,” he said, taking his fried egg out of the pan and placing it on one piece of bread. He made a sandwich and took a big bite, looking out the back window. “I never asked. How was your birthday?”
“Hm?” you hummed, dropping some carrots into a reusable bag.
“On Saturday you said it was your 30th. You do anything fun that night?” he asked with a soft smile.
“I got a new job. That was the highlight of my day,” you said, Jensen cocking his head. “I ordered pizza, binged netflix. My normal Saturday routine.”
“I know everybody jokes about 30 but it’s really just jokes. Wait until you’re 42,” he chuckled. “Then you really feel old.”
“Most 42 year olds would kill to look like you,” you said. You shut your eyes and shook your head. “I’m so sorry. That was so inappropriate.”
“It’s alright. I took it as a compliment,” he said, smiling again. “So you did nothing for your birthday, huh?”
“Uh, no,” you said, mixing in some grapes into each of the snack bags.
“I’m gonna get you a birthday cake,” he said.
“Mr. Ackles-”
“I thought I said it’s Jensen. I’m the boss so what I say goes. We’re gonna have a birthday cake for you tonight. So. What’s your favorite flavor?”
“Whatever you want is perfectly fine.”
“Y/N.”
“...I like red velvet,” you said. He smiled and chuckled. 
“That was my wife’s favorite,” he said. “Haven’t had that since her birthday. She would have liked you.”
“You think so?”
“Yeah. You’re quite kind to me. She was always protective of me, even if she was the scaredy cat most of the time.”
“Can I ask how…” you said as he took another bite.
“Accident. Tractor trailer versus her car. He tried to miss her but it was too late. I wanted to hate the guy too but it was an accident and I couldn’t blame him for that.”
“My father died in a car crash when I was six. It does get better with time,” you said.
“That’s why you didn’t know if he had a picture of you in his wallet or not,” he said as you nodded. “You’re too young to have that much tragedy in life.”
“So are you.”
“I’m not young anymore.”
“You’re young and overly generous,” you said with a smile. 
“Misery loves company,” he said as you both heard a few feet above you running around. “Munchkins are up.”
“You want to make breakfast or should I?” you asked.
“Give me five minutes to get them in some clean clothes. Then I can show you how they like their eggs.”
“Sounds like a plan, Jensen.”
Later That Evening
“Y/N?” said Jensen, knocking on the door to your room. You got up from the couch and answered it, Jensen standing there with a smile. “The kids and I were wondering if you’d like your birthday cake for dessert.”
“You actually got me a cake?”
“I did indeed,” he said. You followed him down the hall and back into the living space, Arrow running up to you.
“Y/N! Are you sleeping over?” she asked as she gave you a hug.
“I live just down the hall now, cutie,” you said.
“Daddy, can we have ice cream too?” asked Zeppelin as he climbed up into his chair at the table.
“Sure thing bud. Girls, would you like some too?” he asked. Both the little ones said yes as he looked back at you.
“I really shouldn’t,” you said.
“We eat ice cream in this house,” he said.
“You don’t have to twist my arm over it,” you said. He got out the container and set it down on the table by the cake, lighting the match on the candle on top. “Oh please don’t-”
He started to sing though and the kids joined in, Jensen having a really good voice actually. You blew out the candle when they were through and he dished up some dessert for everyone.
“Y/N, can you read me a bedtime story later?” asked Zeppelin and you glanced at his father, Jensen making a face.
“Well Y/N’s not at work right now so she doesn’t have to unless she wants to,” said Jensen. “We’re already cutting into her-”
“I would love to, Zepp,” you said, his little face lighting up. “Maybe you guys want to join us?”
“JJ’s a little big to get read to at night I’ve been told,” said Jensen.
“Am not,” she said. “I can get a story too, right?”
“Of course,” you said. You took a bite of the cake and hummed. “This is really good.”
“I bought it myself,” said Jensen. 
“Well you have good taste,” you said. “In fact, I’m gonna have another slice.”
“Good,” he said as Zeppelin grabbed the ice cream container. “Alright, alright. You can have a bit more, bud.”
“Night, JJ,” you said, getting a hug from her as you put her back to bed an hour later. JJ smiled from her bed and you flicked off the light, pulling the door shut after you turned on her night light.
“Thanks for giving up your night with them. I didn’t mean to have that happen,” said Jensen as you headed downstairs with him.
“It’s no problem. It’s good bonding for us,” you said. You helped him pick up the plates at the table and wash them off, Jensen grabbing a bottle of whiskey from a tall cabinet as you covered up what was left of the cake. 
“Drink?” he asked.
“A small one,” you said. He poured a single into a whiskey glass and slid it over to you, smirking when you took a sip. “Oh that’s smooth.”
“Very,” he said, drinking from his own glass. “Thank you for tonight. JJ’s been…”
“She’s the oldest. She’s gonna have a harder time with it.”
“You were about her age when your dad died you said?”
“She’ll be okay. She’ll miss her but it won’t be a deep pain. She’ll have nice memories of her mom. She’s doing pretty good, trust me.”
“Can I ask another personal question?”
“I’m off the clock. Shoot,” you said.
“Your mom ever...try again with someone else?”
“Yes. Years later she found a good guy. He actually is who I stayed with after she passed. He’s married now, has some kids of his own but I know if I call him up he’d drop everything for me.”
“Good. I was getting afraid you were a complete Shakespeare tragedy,” he chuckled.
“Nah. I’m not at that level of crazy in my life,” you said. “As long as we’re off the clock, can I ask if you’re asking because you’re thinking of getting back out there?”
“I am. My wife kind of insisted on it. When we first got serious we had this deal that we’d go try again if something happened. I mean, I don’t cry everytime I think about her now. I can smile and be happy and that ache doesn’t try to swallow me up everyday anymore. I think it’s time I could get back out there.”
“I’d say it is. The kids are ready. They’ll understand.”
“You think your mom loved the second guy as much as your dad?”
“For sure. She was a bit of a free spirit but she didn’t think you had to have just one soulmate. She told me that after she’d met Ray. She said she got two so maybe I had two out there. I haven’t found either one of them yet so I’ll take increasing my odds as best I can.”
“Well you’re not gonna meet your soulmate sitting at home on Saturday nights, Y/N.”
“Just a lot of douchey guys,” you said.
“Ah. You need to meet a better kind of guy is all,” he said.
“Yeah see I’m thirty. All the good guys are married by now.”
“Oh all of them are taken. I didn’t realize that,” he said with a chuckle. “What am I then? Another douchebag?”
“You don’t count. You’re…”
“Too old for you?” he chuckled.
“My boss. Plus you’re like famous. You can go get like a victoria secret model or something.”
“Looks ain’t everything.”
“Maybe I ought to try older guys now that you say that,” you said.
“Y/N, you gotta be careful with that. I don’t want to see you get taken advantage of.”
“And this is why I watch netflix on Saturday nights,” you said.
“You serious about the older guy crack?” he asked. 
“I do find them more...attractive sometimes. I guess it depends on how old. Why?”
“I got a friend my age, might be interested?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” you said. “No offense to your friend but...I mean if he’s 42...I want kids and stuff you know? Although a dude it doesn’t really matter how old...I don’t know.”
“It was just a thought,” he said with a smile.
“I’ll think about it,” you said. “He’s not a weirdo, right.”
“No. He’s an actor. Something to think about,” he said.
“I will,” you said. “Thank you for the birthday cake, Jensen. You’re a good person.”
“I bought a cake.”
“Yeah but I haven’t really had one of those in years. You’re a good person.”
“You’re very welcome,” he said as you slid off your seat. “You’re free to hang out if you like.”
“I’m kinda tired. I won’t be getting up that early from now on I don’t think.”
“I completely understand,” he said. “Goodnight, Y/N.”
“Goodnight Jensen.”
________
A/N: Read Part 2 here!
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persephones-wren · 3 years ago
Note
Hi, so I had this idea for a Kaz Brekker x reader one shot were kaz is have trouble sleep and is becoming tired and grumpy during the day. So, the reader starts secretly putting lavender in his room and clothes (lavender is a good herb to aid sleeping). He starts sleeping better and doesn’t know why until he finds the reader in his room and then they can have a bit of fluff at the end of something. Idk hope you find this useful <3. Have a nice day/night!
Lavender (Kaz Brekker x Reader)
First request! Thank you for the idea anon <3 sorry this took a bit long, but I really enjoyed writing it and I think it turned out alright! I hope you like it as well :)
Warnings: spoilers for Kaz’s backstory
Genre: Angst to Fluff (?) 
Word Count: 2082
He thought he had outrun the nightmare of his past.
The gloves had protected him, becoming his weapon, and the reputation that followed him had been another impenetrable fortress. How ironic that the one who led him back to his past was himself.
...
It was on a mission gone wrong, where the only way of escape was down, back in the cold harbors of Ketterdam. The frigid waters had brought his brother’s bloated and ice-cold corpse underneath his hands, fighting to keep his vision from blurring, fighting to keep himself alive.
“...Kaz!” 
You were treading the water lightly, trying to stay afloat while supporting him. He tried to say something, anything, but he felt as if he were drowning as you half-hazardly pulled him onto the dock, your breath ragged and your shoulders sagging. He seemed to see right through you, and he was pale and shaking slightly, not just from the cold- something there had haunted him, though. It was obviously more than just the cool waters.
“Kaz, are you alright?” Your inquiry went unanswered, and you waited patiently, before he somewhat snapped to attention, roughly pushing himself off of you, probably bruising your shoulder as he stood and backed away furiously.
“Don’t touch me, get off of me-” he forced a shuddery breath in- “I’m fine.”
Your eyes were wide as you stared at him, and he cleared his throat and refused to look at you. He didn’t apologize, nothing of the sort, because Kaz Brekker never apologized, even rare and brief moments of weakness.
Kaz Rietveld might’ve apologized to you.
“Right, okay,” your voice was soft, but firm. “We should find the others, they’ll probably be at the meeting spot.”
You both got up slowly, muscles sore and stiff from hitting icy waters, but you swiftly and quietly towards the carriages Jesper had prepared. Neither of you said a word on the way back. Upon your arrival, both Inej and Jesper grew increasingly concerned at your condition.
“What the hell happened to you two?” Jesper had asked.
“Are you two alright?” Inej echoed.
“We survived,” you muttered, sparing a small glance at Kaz, who still wasn’t saying much. “It’s a long story.”
...
Long story indeed.
Kaz had presumed that you had told them what had happened, but he was almost praying to the Saints that you had left out the details of his condition. It wasn’t that he would necessarily be too ashamed to ever tell Jesper or Inej- but they needed him for his reliability, and any moment of weakness could be used against him, both by friends and enemies. He’d prefer that Jordie be kept with him only. After all, it only took a couple shots for Jesper to reveal almost anything.
He didn’t sleep well that night, hell, he didn’t think he’d sleep right for at least a month. His normal sleep schedule was one that could barely keep a normal person running, but with his brother lurking in every corner of his unconsciousness, it was better to stay awake, where he could be in control.
It was affecting his mood, he knew that. He had to heavily restrain himself not to snap at people, but even without snapping, his words were still scathing. He’d find more to criticize, more to hate, and he’d probably scolded every member of the Dregs in the last week. Everyone, except you. Whether it was because you were there with him or it was something more, that wasn’t something he wanted to think about.
Then suddenly, the insomnia stopped.
It had only been a week, before his sleeping schedule reverted back. Jordie was there, but it was more of what he could remember in life than death, smiles and sunshine rather than plague and death. It was a bittersweet sadness, but it had been one he’d grown used to, one he could get past quicker. He fixed himself back into his office, working on another plan rather than hovering over everyone just to find something to criticize. 
What had changed?
It might’ve been the light smell of herbs, was that lavender? that permeated his office now, but he’d never caught the culprit of who had done it. And despite his ability to find cracks in any facade, he had caught no lies in any members of the Dregs. 
His first thought had been you, admittedly. He knew you knew something the others didn’t, you saw him panic on the docks, and he knew you could act your way through nearly anything. It didn’t seem hard to put two and two together.
But you seemed honest enough, when he had asked you. Perhaps it was his like of you that clouded his judgement, but you genuinely didn’t seem to know anything.
“Stop that.”
“Huh?” you whirled around, and Kaz was there, cane in hand, glare piercing through you.
“Stop putting whatever herbs in my room.”
You stared at him, confused, before you burst out laughing. “Is someone putting herbs in your room? That’s why your office always smells like lavender now...I’m sorry, Kaz, but that isn’t me, although it would be funny if it was. Ha...I don’t think I could get away with sneaking in your office if I tried.”
“Any ideas who it could be, then?” He asked impatiently.
“I’m sorry, I have no idea. It could be anyone, really. Even though I-” was the one who saw you at the docks, the words hung unspoken, “um, yeah, everyone’s noticed you’ve been different. Truthfully though, I think they just think it’s because a mission went wrong.”
“Fine.” He nodded at you, and then he’d went to go find Jesper at the Crow Club.
It was a truth, in a way. You couldn’t go around sneaking herbs in his room. You weren’t silent enough for that, you were an actress, not a shadow. Inej, however, was the Wraith, and if anyone could get away with it, it’d be her. 
So you’d ask for her help, whether it was distracting him or asking her to put the herbs in herself.
And you’d both play dumb until he was back to the person you knew.
It had only been one unfortunate night, where you were finally caught putting the lavender on his desk.
You had gotten better at just sneaking in and doing it yourself without Inej’s help, as you’d successfully done it for at least three nights in the past month. Tonight, though, Inej had been running some other task, probably nightly reports for Kaz, and luck had finally run out without her assistance.
“Y/N.”
You froze, and a chill ran down your spine. Though Kaz Brekker was never exactly friendly by any means, the slight warmth of his tone towards you had withered into frost. You were completely fucked. If he was lucky, maybe he’d let you out of the Crows alive. He doesn’t think you’re the one putting lavender in this room- he probably thinks you’re a traitor. Have fun talking yourself out of this one without admitting to it, you berated yourself. Saints know you’ll need the luck.
“If you’re here to steal plans and distribute them, then it’s certainly a pity that I liked you,” he muttered. “And I suppose even more impressive that you had me fooled.” He advanced forward, and his slammed his cane into the ground next to you, making you flinch. “How did you do it, then?”
“I- um, well, it’s,” you tripped, frantically trying to find the words, “it’s nothing like that. I’m not taking your plans. They have no use to me. I dislike Pekka just as much as you do. Do you think missions I’ve done with you would’ve gone successfully if I was working with him?”
“If you aren’t, then why are you in my office?”
“I’m just trying to-” you cut yourself off and sighed. Help was not going to be a good word to use. Kaz didn’t need help, and he’d probably just be more furious it you stated it for how it was. “Lavender is good for sleeping.”
He had long forgotten that someone actually had to be putting the lavender there. It just showed up now, for a month. He’d just accepted it.
“So it’s you, then?”
“Yeah,” you say sheepishly. “I’m sorry I lied to you, earlier. I don’t like seeing you in pain, though. People rely on you, they need you, Kaz, and well, I thought- never mind what I thought. I just hoped you would rest better, after...”
“You didn’t tell them what happened?”
There’s an odd vulnerability in his words, but you don’t remark on them. “No.” A faint smile is etched on your lips at the thought of your lie. “I told them that you were upset that the mission had gone wrong, and that it was mostly my fault. You scolded me on the docks and gave me the silent treatment in the carriage, that’s all it was to them. If you want to talk- I mean- what happened there?”
You know you’re seconds away from breaking the ice you’d been treading on lightly, but curiosity takes the better of you for a second before you’re rapidly apologizing, getting ready to leave the office before he kills you.
He found you in his office, he thought you stole plans, and then you admit you’ve been there more than once because you’re the girl who put lavender in his room. You really need to think things through more. 
“Good that you didn’t tell them. Stop apologizing. Take a seat, for a second.”
You do so, keeping your questions to yourself. He stares at you for a long moment, conflicted, before he gathers himself again. “What happened at the harbors. I had a brother, Jordie Rietveld. He died during the plague. We both got thrown in the harbor. He was dead. I was alive, surrounded by death.” He’s quiet for a bit, but when he glances at your expression, there’s no pity, no horror on your face, you don’t believe he’s weak. You’re quietly waiting for him to continue. So he does. 
“I needed to get back onto land. I got there using my brother to hold onto.”
“You wear gloves because of that now,” you point out quietly. 
He takes a shuddering breath in. “Yes.”
“When we had to dive, it came back to you. Kaz,” you whisper, “thank you for telling me.”
 “Thank you,” he echoes your words. He’s shaking and vulnerable, even though he hasn’t said much. Even then, there’s no look of fear or judgement of anything he’s done in your expression. The respect he has worked to earn is still there, and he could sigh in relief.
He’s twisting at his hands, before you realize he’s slowly slipping off his gloves. Your voice cuts through the air, talking frantically again. “No, no- Kaz, we don’t have to do this. I don’t want you to do this if you’re not ready- you don’t have to-”
“I want to.”
His voice is quiet, but full of resolve.
“Okay.”
His hands are normal. They’re not ugly, or disfigured, or strange. They fit him.
“Your hands are pretty.” The words slip out of you before you realize.
He laughs, a little breathless, and the tension eases a little. “My hands are pretty?” 
“Yeah.”
You outstretch your hand, and he waits a couple of moments before slowly interlocking it with yours. It’s sickening and he has to will himself to hold on, but he does. He feels content, content that you’re here, content that you’re willing to help him.
“You can let go if you need to.” Your voice sounds far away.
“I’m alright.” He’s not, but you’re warm. You’re alive, you’re not Jordie. He’s in his office, with the girl who put lavender in his room, not in the cold harbor with death.
You both stay for a long while, before he lets go.
“Thank you,” he repeats, before he slips on his gloves again.
“It’s nothing,” you answer, but you both know it’s everything, everything to you, everything to him. 
You start to walk towards the door, before his voice calls out again. “Tomorrow. I can’t promise I’ll-” be a good person, be the person you want, be there for you-
“Tomorrow,” you agree. “Goodnight, Kaz.”
“Goodnight, Y/N.”
The smell of lavender lingers in his room. He picks up the flower you had left on his desk, and an uncharacteristic smile blooms on his face.
Tomorrow.
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alreadyblondenow · 3 years ago
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Cupid in love
Pairing: Cupid!Jaehyun x female!reader
Genre: SMUT, FLUFF, angst?
WC: 3,150k
Warnings: FANTASY GALORE. rough break up sex, unprotected sex, slight nipple play, swearing, mentions of other idols
A/N: NOT PROOFREAD. I’ll fix it once I have time.. For NCT-WRITERS Cafe Resonance
—————
Walking around the mall alone and witnessing yet another beautiful, and successful Valentines Day for the year of 2021 and you’re the only person in the world who knew the man behind this beautiful day.
“Alone during Valentine’s day Y/n? Jaehyun hyung can’t come?” Mark, the waiter from the cafe asked you while he serves you your third round of your favorite warm drink. This is where you and Jaehyun first met, and you have been celebrating Valentines day for nearly three years here now just because Jaehyun can see all the lovers holding hands through that clear glass. All his hard work has paid off.
But tonight, he is already two hours late and you wonder why because he has never been late on Valentine’s Day.
“Uhm, Jaehyun will be a little bit late. Business trip. But I completely understand his schedule” you smiled and thanked him.
Of course you’re not sad that Jaehyun couldn’t make it on time this year. Maybe he got caught up with a little work an emergency perhaps? But you do hope that this is nothing serious.
Three Valentine’s Day ago
You were sitting quietly at Cafe Resonance with a warm drink on your side. Just admiring the happy couples that are enjoying the day with flowers, sweets, and different kinds of surprises. It was a normal day for you, but not until a very handsome man sat in front of you on the other side of the table. Giving you three pieces of Cafe Resonance’s Valentine cookies.
A cupid in his human form. Came out to play and enjoy his day for his own selfish needs. The gods forbade Jaehyun to celebrate his own day so he could stay pure like the god that he is and remain sinless and worthy. But the young cupid is full of passion and curiosity that he took his chance to walk on Earth and make himself meet someone that can satisfy his physical wants.
“The cafe manager said that if I want someone to fall on love with me, I should give them a Valentine cookie” he said and flashed a very handsome smile at you. Knowing all too well that what the manager told him was complete bullshit, because no one can force love to happen with anyone but him.
At least that’s what he knew.
Your first encounter with Jaehyun was surprisingly refreshing and fun. You ate all the cookies that he gave and to be honest you only did that to show him that you’re interested with him too, and also it’s not so bad to fall in love with someone like him. He’s nice, decent and well mannered. Though it’s pretty obvious that he’s after for some Valentine’s sex, and you have no problem with that.
At the end of the day, the man made you scream in bed, fucked you on the wall and made you cum for more three times using his cock. He sure knew how to fuck, you thought.
But the bitter feeling and ugly thought of waking up without him by yourself the next day is something you don’t want to happen so even though you’re dead tired from the sex, you try si hard not to sleep yet and make the best of this moment by asking too much questions to him that he likes answering.
Was the valentine cookie from Cafe Resonance real? Is it really possible for you to fall in love with a stranger?
“Go sleep. I promise I’m still here when you wake up” he said.
And he kept his promise not only the day after Valentine’s Day, but also for the next few weeks. Who would expect that a cupid who just wanted to have fun during his day, wasn’t so immune with love after all. And who would expect that he’s willing to be punished by the gods because of you? But what amazes Jaehyun the most, is how you fell in love with him. Because even as a cupid, he didn’t made you like him or used his powers for his selfishness.
Either way, he still refused on believing that the Valentine cookie was real and effective. Such kind of love mustn’t be tolerated he thought.
Life with Jaehyun was sweet and real. Too beautiful to ruin. That’s why when Jaehyun said that he’s leaving, you didn’t take it lightly which soon lead to your first fight.
Jaehyun didn’t have much of a choice but to tell you the truth. Even though you just laughed at him when he finally said the words, he secretly hoped that you’d still understand because he believes that you love him.
“I don’t have a choice Y/n. I’ve been away for months now. I am neglecting my duty as a cupid, by this time the happy couples that we saw during Valentine’s day could have broken up already because I’m not around” he explains frustratedly.
“So you’re saying that you’re the cupid and couples can break up because you’re not around. Because you’ve been busy being happy with me?”
“Yes” he answered weakly and reached for your hand to kiss it. Promising you that he will come back and find you. “It’s just for a year. I’ll sort everything out and I promise I’ll give the love that you deserve”
And as Jaehyun left you as soon as the truth was revealed, you let him leave you with a big doubt and judgement in your heart. Is he secretly married and you’re a mistress now? Have you done something wrong to make him leave you like this? And these ugly thoughts ran thru your mind for months and months during his absence.
During your wait for Jaehyun’s return, you decided to move on and just date anyone to forget everything about Jaehyun. But every time that you plan a date with someone, the set date will be either cancelled or the guy won’t show up. Little did you know that Jaehyun is the man behind those unfortunate events. Secretly watching you from a cloud above you, guiding you towards patience until he returns and win your heart again.
It was not easy for Jaehyun to see you like this, purposely forgetting everything about him like he was just a dream to you. He can’t let that happen, for he knew that what you have is love.
On the next Valentine’s Day, you can’t believe who showed up in your doorstep. He didn’t change a bit, and neither his feelings for you.
“Can I come inside?” the cupid asked nervously.
“I don’t know what game you’re playing, but seriously what are you doing here Jae?”
“I told you I’d come back right? I’m here now, and we don’t have much time-“
“I have a boyfriend now so please leave me alone”
“That’s a lie. I know everything about you, I’ve watch you every day from above for a whole year. Please just believe me. Don’t push me away, I kept my promise didn’t I? I’m here now”
And the thought of Jaehyun keeping his promise was enough for you to welcome him in but your heart is still cold and broken because of what happened from the past.
As you and Jaehyun sit and have a decent conversation, he showed his wings which is enough proof to believe him that he really is the cupid. You were speechless for hours, and your apartment’s for corners was suffocating you so Jaehyun decided to have a walk with you.
He wanted to hold your hand like every couple he sees now. He wanted to whisper how much he misses you and loves you. Ironic isn’t it? He’s the cupid who spreads love on Earth but he can’t have love for himself.
“So how old are you?” you finally spoke. Those were your first words after seeing his wings, and that was four hours ago.
“Human age is 25, but cupid age... I have no idea but let’s say almost 127 years old? That’s still young in cupid years” he smiled and let out a small laugh. Completely missing that you’re shocked to the core upon hearing his age. But now that you know more truths about him, the normal thing you would do was react hysterically and make him leave you alone. Surprisingly, you wanted to hear more about him. To hear more about the truth.
“Tell me more?” You said shyly, slowly reaching for his hand for you to hold and hold it tightly. Oh you missed him.
He smiled so big and reached in for a kiss on the forehead before he tells you more about him and to what he do. The simple walk turned into a date, and of course he brought you to Cafe Resonance to celebrate your reunion and basically your first year of knowing each other. And when you got back to your apartment, he immediately brought you to your room and fucked you all night in different positions.
“When are you going to leave?” you asked while drawing circles on his chest and savouring his warmth.
“Tomorrow” he answered weakly and tightens his embrace, “I can’t be away from duty like what I did last year. The gods might not let me see you if I continue to be stubborn”
“It’s sad. But I understand, and at least now I have something to look forward to”
Three Valentine’s Day later
Thru the years of being together, even when you don’t see each other everyday, Jaehyun always finds a way to show his love for you thru unexpected things. Big or small.
Like during your birthdays, he always sends gifts to you with sweet and short notes. Or like whenever you wake up on your side of the bed and see a feather on his side of the bed. That simply means he’s always with you, like an angel.
This year’s Valentine’s day marks your three years if staying in love with each other, and you’re more than excited with seeing him today. But given that he was hours and hours late already, you decided to call it a day and go home to rest. Maybe he will come by the next day? Nonetheless, you still believe that he will do everything just to be with you.
Three days later, he’s still nowhere to be found and it’s weird how you can’t feel him watching you anymore. What is happening?
“Hi Y/n” Mark greeted you with his normal cheerful aura. “Were you and Jaehyun supposed to meet? You completely missed him. It’s weird actually, he came here not have some coffee but instead he had a talk with the manager”
“Uh- yeah, sorry. I guess I’ll see him at home then,” you answered awkwardly and forgot the cake that you purchased.
When you came back to your apartment, finally you see his unique figure standing by the window and staring blankly at the sky.
“I thought you forgot about me, are you okay? Jaehyun?” You hugged him from behind and kissed his broad shoulders.
“Sorry about that, how are you?” He turned around and return the hug and kisses. Saying that he’s really sorry for leaving you hanging on a very special day.
“I’m fine. What happened? Is there something wrong? You look troubled” you asked, but he didn’t answer your question but instead he kissed you deeply and motioned you towards your bedroom, making a trail of discarded clothes on the floor.
And once you landed on your bed, Jaehyun immediately went on top of you and kissed your neck, all the way down to the valley between your boobs while kneading them and sucking them. His breathing was heavy and you quickly noticed it. You wanted to make him stop and make him talk, but you’re too late.
He already spread your legs wide and positioned himself between your legs, kneeling in front of you so handsomely as he starts touching your pussy with his thumb. Up and down he makes you wet and sensitive, not to mention he was really gentle and slow. At first you thought he was going to fuck you already, but to you surprise he put his two fingers inside you and came closer to you again, to suck your nipples and bite them softly until he’s satisfied.
Swollen and sensitive, that’s how he left your nipples and starts lining his cock on your entrance, slowly pushing in his cock. “Fuck” he comments with a grunt. Putting every inch of his thick and veiny cock inside of you, moving his hips slowly. His head rests on the crook of you neck, his breath tickling you but all you can do now is moan.
Moan and keep him close with your arms wrapped around his frame. And when you whispered “I love you, Jaehyun” that instantly melted his heart and fucked you even more deliciously. But he also wished you didn’t say it to him because now he knows your love is not real. Cafe resonance put you in a spell and only your true love can break it.
He got up from his comfort close to your body and got a hold on your hips, slightly lifting it so he could fuck you harder and so he could see your boobs bounce up and down, grip it whenever he wants to, pinch it whenever he wants to and suck it whenever he wants to.
Suddenly, he pulled out completely only to push back in a little harsher that your head hit the head board. He did it again. Making you hiss with the stretch from your cunt, but the pleasure is driving you insane. He then started to lick your neck and chest, pinning your arms on your side while he fucks you harder. Your moans became louder and you started gripping the sheets and just stop fighting the feeling, and accepting the intensity of every thrust Jaehyun gives you.
“Why are you so rough tonight?” You asked with ragged breaths, toes started curling, and you begged him to go slower because you don’t want to cum yet but he didn’t listen.
He made you cum for the first time tonight and it wasn’t anything you’ve ever had before. You gripped the pillow so tight, moaned his name weakly, and let you shiver and curl beneath him while his hands still roams around your body, his cock still inside you and he hasn’t cum yet, a sign that he is not yet done with you.
Little did you know, he’s scanning every inch of you, engraving your beauty while you’re naked in his mind. For this is your last night together.
“I wanted to talk-“
Jaehyun started talking but to his surprise you voluntarily move your hips and started fucking yourself. He was sure he made you weak already and fucked you hard, how is possible that you still wanted to go for another round? But he wasn’t complaining, in fact he loves the image of you fucking yourself and using him to go off.
“That’s right baby, fuck me. Go deeper” and so you followed what he wanted, after all you’re not doing this for your own pleasure, you’re doing this because you wanted him to cum too.
With widely spread legs and bouncing tits, you moved your hips up and down while Jaehyun is kneeling in between your legs and you have a complete view of Jaehyun’s fucked out face. Eyebrows furrowing, parted swollen pink lips, chanting your name over and over again and telling you how much he loves what he’s seeing and feeling.
“Oh fuck Y/n, you feel so good”
“Fuck baby”
“Go slower, I don’t want to cum yet-“
But you didn’t gave into his request simply because he didn’t go slow earlier with you. So you moved your hips faster, up and down and put on a show for him by kneading your boobs in front of him and pinching your sensitive nipples to make yourself clench around him.
In a matter of seconds, Jaehyun’s hands are around your rib, perfectly placed under your boobs, and your legs are folded so he could go deeper. He took over until he’s finally shooting his warm, thick cum inside you. Satisfied for what you’ve done to him because he landed on top of your body, so weak and his legs are still shaking.
Too tired to clean the cum dripping from your hole, too comfortable in Jaehyun’s arms and presence that you never want to let go.
On the next day, you woke up quite late and you’re all alone in your cold bed. Though you’re completely cleaned and dressed, maybe Jaehyun took care of you last night before he leaves.
Scanning your apartment for something Jaehyun left, a small note or a flower placed somewhere... but you didn’t find anything. He usually leaves with a promise of seeing together again. Maybe he forgot?
When Jaehyun found out the truth about that Valentine cookie, he immediately hated himself for giving it to you and being the root of his heartbreak right now. He needs to fix this by looking for someone that will love you despite still having his effect on you. He’s positive that once your true love showed up, you will completely forget and move on from him.
It’s weird how this year, all you did was feel an unexplainable pain in your chest. A year full of pain and you dont know where your heartbreak is coming. Not to mention, Jaehyun hasn’t been making you feel his presence lately. That’s why you feel so lonely.
6 months have already passed since the last time that you saw him. And suitors always comes in the way, and you wonder how and why because you knew Jaehyun would get rid of them.
And as months passes by, you continue to fool yourself and still believe that Jaehyun will come back to you. Even tho you felt nothing from his presence the whole year.
Until finally, you received a note from him on Valentine’s day 2022.
Go to Cafe Resonance tonight -JH
And so you did, with a big smile on your face and with a new dress you bought specifically for this occasion. You waited for his arrival, looking at your watch every minute... but he never came. Instead, he sent you another note given bu the manager of Cafe Resonance.
“I’m sorry Y/n,” Manager Chenle said handling you the note that contains the saddest news you’ve ever received.
But just before you could open the note, someone sat in front of you and asked permission to share the table with you because everywhere else is full.
“Yes its fine,” you said without even looking at him and proceed to minding your own business. Reading Jaehyun’s last note to you that says.
He is a good man, full of love and has a heart of gold. He is the one destined for you, not me. The love I can give to you, has no match to what he can give to you. I’m sorry.
“By the way I’m Johnny”
The man reached out his hand for you to shake, smiling so handsomely at you. It’s weird how your heart instantly skipped a beat. Jaehyun how could you do this to me.
345 notes · View notes
eliemo · 3 years ago
Text
Little Talks
Summary: As Logan starts spending more time with the Duke in an effort to keep him under control, Remus has to come to terms with the fact that the way he treated Logan may have caused lasting damage after all.
TWs: RSD, violent thoughts, strong language, blood mention (it's Remus, what did you expect)
Pairings: Developing friendship. Can be seen as platonic or romantic Intrulogical
Notes: Thank you to @cheshirevalentine for helping me create and edit this. They're amazing and I love them dearly. Their AO3 is here!
Having Logan in his room was… weird.
Remus had known it was going to be happening. Logan had made the offer to stop by Remus’s room and let the Duke bounce his ideas off of someone. He’d let Remus ramble, listen to the flood of intrusive thoughts and gory, outrageous ideas, all so that Thomas wouldn’t have to.
Remus had cheerfully referred to Logic as his “test subject” the first time he’d come in, laughing outright at the way Logan’s face had screwed up in indignation.
He didn’t really plan on actually doing anything to Logan, despite the incredibly dangerous position the light side had put himself into. He mostly just talked, reciting each and every thought that came to his head in detail, watching to see if he could get an entertaining reaction out of the ever-stoic Logan Sanders.
It didn’t really work. Logan was stupidly boring with his stuffy clothes and perfect schedule and condescending eyebrow raises. He didn’t say much the first few times he stopped by, their “talks” only lasting ten-to-fifteen minutes at most, but after a week he seemed to warm up to the idea of talking to Remus a little.
He’d ask questions- ask where Remus had gotten an idea, or ask him to expand on a particularly disturbing thought- and while Remus didn’t always have an answer, it was nice to not be completely shoved aside and ignored for once. Besides, Remus always thought of the best answers to those sorts of things on the spot. He liked the challenge of having to think on his feet.
It was still weird, though. But Logan kept showing up, day after day, and Remus could almost pretend he wasn’t the only one enjoying their talks.
He knew that Logan didn’t want to be here, of course. Their meetings were on his calendar, so it was obviously an obligation. He was doing it so Thomas could get some sleep, and Remus could be a little less of a burden. Of course.
Remus had only only expected it to last a few days, if he was honest. A week at most. He knew he was a lot to deal with, especially alone, and he knew it would only be a matter of time until Logan decided it was all too much and forgot all about their little “arrangement”.
But Logan came back the next week, and the week after that, and soon fifteen minutes turned into twenty, then thirty, and some days he even stayed almost a whole hour.
Remus found he actually felt a little less agitated after Logan left, his head just a tiny bit more quiet. Tormenting Thomas was the closest thing he’d ever had to talking things out, and it was a little discouraging when the reactions were either horrified screams, insults, or pretending he didn’t exist.
Logan actually listened. He listened and engaged.
Remus loved Janus. And Deceit did what he could, but he didn’t have the same tolerance as Logan did for some of the gross things Remus came up with.
Maybe Logic would be open to dissecting something with him sometime…?
-
He should have known it wouldn’t last. Nobody stuck around Remus very long. He always did something to fuck it up.
He really should have known the way he’d treated Logan when he’d first made his appearance would be a problem. Logic separated himself from the Imagination, the side grounded deeply in reality, but a lack of lasting damage didn’t mean it hadn’t happened.
Remus had still hurt Logan to prove a point. And then had promptly moved on and forgotten about it until the next time it was brought up. Sometimes object permanence- or lack thereof- was a pain in the ass.
Remus had been ranting as usual, pacing around his room while Logan watched from the chair. He honestly couldn’t even remember what he was talking about, his mouth moving without much thought as it tended to do.
Whatever it was, he’d gotten worked up and excited, pacing the room, waving and flapping his arms as he talked, smile bright and mischievous and he whirled back to face Logan and-
And Logan flinched back, squeezing his eyes shut as his hands clutched the arm of his chair, shoulders hunched protectively.
It only lasted a second, Logan quickly pulling himself together and compulsively smoothing his tie once again. He seemed to do that when he was trying to pretend he was collected, Remus had noticed. His shoulders uncurled as he leaned forward again, but he wouldn’t quite look Remus in the eyes.
“Continue,” Logan said, when he realized Remus had stopped talking. “You were rambling about...something objectively disgusting.”
“I’m not stupid, you know.” Remus said, crossing his arms and ignoring the stupid, pointless hurt that blossomed in his chest when Logan couldn’t even recall what Remus had been saying. “I saw that.”
Logan blinked, staring at the Duke blankly. “Saw what?”
“You flinched.”
Logan scoffed, adjusting his glasses to avoid meeting Remus’s eyes. Again. “I did no such thing.”
“No, you did. I saw it.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Logan said, jumping right back into that emotionless facade he was so obsessed with. “Are you going to continue?”
Remus couldn’t even remember what he’d been talking about, his head flooded with images of Logan flinching away, eyes wide in terror, scrambling to get away.
Logan with a throwing star embedded in his forehead, with his mouth full of blood, crimson dripping down his forehead and chin, seeping into his pristine clothes and staining his tie. The thoughts seemed to dip into that spiral they always went down, swirling down the metaphorical drain pipe into his metaphorical pit-of-sewage excuse for a brain.
“No,” Remus said, shaking the thoughts away for the moment. Like stirring the cesspool a little so all the muck settled to the bottom. Metaphorically. “I’m good.”
Logan sighed, and Remus stepped away as the logical side stood up from his chair. “Then we’re done for the day.”
“Bye then.”
If there was one thing Remus was good at, it was pretending not to be bothered by the little things, by the way everyone perceived him. He was a terror and a burden, and he enjoyed it. It was funny! He didn’t care if he was liked, intrusive thoughts were never liked.
Remus flopped down on his bed, watching Logan’s back as he left. He was moving quickly, almost panicked, slipping out the door and closing it shut behind him.
Remus didn’t care if the stupid light sides liked him. He never had. But Logan… Logan was scared. Of him.
Scaring people was never the goal. Making Logan flinch like Remus was going to hurt him was never the goal.
Logan would deny it to his grave, of course. He was stupidly stubborn like that, somehow more stubborn than even Remus at times.
He’d insist that Logic had never felt a revolting feeling like fear in his life. He had no feelings on the matter, and Remus couldn’t frighten him because Logan had no feelings at all. Not enjoyment, not dislike, and not fear. Remus was another obligation on his schedule. Something to attend to. Nothing more.
And while Remus knew all of that was true… he also knew Logan was full of shit. He had feelings. His feelings might even be stronger than Patton’s or Roman’s. (Though it was doubtful. Weepy bitches they were- far too emotional for Remus’s tastes.)
And he was afraid of Remus. He’d made that perfectly clear today.
He… didn’t know how to fix that. His job wasn’t to fix problems. He made the problems. It’s better to start now than to never start at all, he supposed.
Well, obviously he had to start by finding a new coping mechanism. Logan was helpful, and possibly the healthiest outlet Remus had ever had, but he wouldn’t force someone who was terrified of him to come sit in his room and listen to him talk about guts and gore for an hour. He would have to find something to do in place of their talks.
A part of him doubted Logan would even come back again. Remus had caught him flinching, and with Remus’s reputation he wouldn’t be surprised if Logan assumed he would use the fear to his advantage.
And yeah, maybe under different circumstances he would have. Scaring people was fun but… not like this.
But that was fine, he could readjust to being alone. He’d done it before. He could lock himself in the Imagination, annoy Janus until he finally snapped and drove him away, maybe even pay Thomas another visit if he really got desperate.
He wasn’t disappointed. He’d gone his whole life without Logan’s company, he had no reason to miss it. It wasn’t fair to miss something he had barely begun to get used to. Logan was annoying and boring and stuck up, and Remus didn’t know why he enjoyed his company in the first place.
Not that he enjoyed it. He didn’t. He didn’t care.
He spent all night feeding himself those repeating lies, preparing to entertain himself all on his own tomorrow, so he was almost more annoyed than surprised when Logan walked right into his room the next day, same time as always.
Remus sat up in bed, watching in disbelief as Logan made his way to the chair and set his notebook on the table, settling in like nothing had changed.
“What the fuck are you doing here?”
Logan looked up at him, hands folded neatly in his lap. “I said I would make an effort to see you everyday. I put it in my schedule. If I’m not going to be able to make it, I will inform you the day before.”
“Oh,” Remus said, not bothering to move from the bed. “Well, that’s boring and predictable.”
“I prefer to have a schedule rather than do things on a whim. And I’m here now.”
“Yes,” Remus said, shifting to stare blankly at the wall beside Logan’s head. He bet he could spit that far if he really tried. “You are.”
There was a beat of silence that didn’t often exist in Remus’s room. Usually he would start talking right away about whatever late night thoughts he’d been plagued with, chatting on excitedly until Logan cut in to add something dumb and nerdy.
Remus didn’t plan on breaking the silence this time, choosing to sit and quietly dwell on his thoughts on his own, smirking at the utterly baffled look on Logan’s face.
Logan cleared his throat, frowning slightly. “What’s on your mind?”
“Lot’s of things!”
“Are you going to talk about them?” Logan asked. “That is why I’m here.”
“Nah.” He hated this, hated the way Logan was pretending to care, like he didn’t want to get up right now and run as far away from Remus as possible. Just like everyone else. “Intrusive thoughts aren’t always words, Nerdy Wolverine.”
He saw Logan shift uncomfortably, eyes darting briefly to the door, and Remus realized that might not have been the best way to phrase things.
“Ah,” Logan said, sitting back like he wasn’t terrified. “You can always show me instead. That is what I’m here for.”
“I’m good,” Remus said, doing his best to sound uncaring. “It’s gross.”
“Yes, I’m aware it probably is.” Another beat of silence and Logan sighed, standing from his chair. “Remus. The point of me being here is to keep Thomas’s intrusive thoughts under control. We’ve discussed this.”
And Remus knew Logan didn’t actually enjoy Remus’s company, he’d known that from the beginning, but it still hurt to hear. It hurt something fierce, a deep, sharp slash in his chest that he would swear he could feel, that he was just something to “keep under control”.
He pushed the feeling down, flashing Logan a toothy grin that he knew looked ridiculously fake. “Okay.”
Logan sighed again, pushing up his glasses to pinch the bridge of his nose. Remus wondered if he could frustrate Logic into storming out. “I’m here to help you.”
“I don’t need your help.”
“You do,” Logan argued, like he had any idea. “Surely talking to someone is better than being alone with your thoughts,”
Remus scowled, shoving himself off the bed and stalking past Logan, moving towards one of the various piles of rubble and bones scattered around his room. He bet Logan hated how cluttered it was in here.
“At least my thoughts don’t pretend to care about me.”
Remus kicked idly at something that looked a bit like a spine, staring blankly at the floor as he let his words settle.
“What?” Logan sounded genuinely confused for the first time. “What does that mean?”
“Hm?” Remus glanced over his shoulder, grinning. “What did I say?”
Logan stepped forward, shoes clicking against the floor, echoing against the now silent room. “I do not understand why you’re suddenly being difficult.”
“Suddenly?”
“Yes, suddenly,” Logan said, and Remus turned away again with an eye roll. “We had an arrangement.”
“Did we?”
“Yes.” Logan touched his arm, and Remus yanked away so fast he thought he might have pulled something. “This is beneficial for everyone.”
“Right,” Remus scoffed. “For everyone.”
Logan actually had the audacity to look taken aback, brow drawing in further confusion. “Yes? You have an outlet, and Thomas gets a break.”
“I don’t need it. I can bash skulls in the Imagination.”
“Which is significantly more unhealthy.”
Remus shrugged, kicking another bone until it slammed into the wall. “It’s easy and fun.”
“We were doing fine,” Logan said, trying to move around him so Remus would meet his gaze. “I thought coming in to talk to you was helping.”
“You don’t care,” Remus snapped. “And you don’t want to listen.”
“I want to,” Logan said. “That is why I’m here.”
“Right.”
“I am incredibly busy, Remus,” Logan said, and Remus felt like he was being lectured. “I would not be here if I didn’t want to be.”
“Then get gone!” Remus spun around gesturing to the door. “Just fucking leave already!”
“I think I’d prefer to stay.”
“You said you’re busy,” Remus snarled. “If you’re so busy you don’t need to carve out time for me.”
“I chose to.”
“Thomas can live with intrusive thoughts,” Remus said. “He’ll be fine. Patton and Virgil will ease up eventually. You should be focused on them.”
“I have been.” Logan was still staring at him, and at this point Remus was considering storming out of his own room. “I have time for you.”
“I thought you were busy,” Remus argued, back to being difficult on purpose. “Which is it? Are you busy or do you have time?”
Logan sighed, and now Remus felt like a child throwing a tantrum. “I’ve made time. I’m making time for you.”
“Right.”
“I don’t understand what changed,” Logan said. “I thought you were getting some enjoyment out of our talks.”
“Yeah, I was,” Remus admitted because despite everything, that was the truth. “But you aren’t.”
It took a moment for Logan to respond, no less confused than before. “I am perfectly content.”
“Yeah?” Remus finally turned around to face him, looking the logical side right in the eyes. “Then why did you flinch?”
Logan blinked, shoulders tense, a mix of panic and understanding flickering in his eyes. “I...did not flinch.”
“Yes, you did. Don’t lie.”
It was Logan’s turn to scoff, like Remus was being ridiculous and dramatic. And he often was, but he was serious this time. “I don’t see how one involuntary movement has become such a big deal.”
Remus didn’t look away, even as Logan’s eyes began to wander. “You’re afraid of me.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Logan said. “I do not feel fear.”
“Yes you do.” Remus stepped closer, taking in the way Logan’s jaw clenched. “You have feelings.”
“No I don’t.”
“You do.”
“You’re figuratively jumping to conclusions,” Logan said, quickly changing the subject. “I am perfectly content spending time with you.”
“I’m not jumping to anything,” Remus said. “You’re scared.”
Logan rolled his eyes, hands lifting to brush over his tie before crossing his arms across his chest. Compulsory comfort action.
“You think you saw me flinch once and now you believe that I’m afraid of you, when there is no logical reason to be. You cannot cause any lasting damage to me, so I—”
Remus lifted a hand without warning, fast and sudden like he was going to strike Logan, keeping it frozen in the air as he took in the reaction before him.
Logan flinched back as soon as Remus moved, his own hands moving to protect his face, eyes glued to Remus’s raised arm, widening in genuine fear and shock.
Remus sighed, slowly lowering his hand as he watched Logan struggle to compose himself. “You’re afraid of me.”
“No,” Logan still had the audacity to argue. “I am not.”
“You flinched.”
Logan fixed his tie again. Remus knew it was some kind of nervous tic. “You startled me.”
“I lifted my hand.”
“Yes,” Logan agreed. “Unexpectedly.”
Remus sighed and stepped back out of Logan’s space, too tired to keep arguing.
“I’m not going to hurt you.” He winced at his own words, images flashing in his mind of Logan stumbling backwards with wide eyes, of Logan covered in blood, of Patton screaming. “Not again, anyway.”
“Well,” Logan said, carefully clearing his throat. “You can understand that I wasn’t exactly…sure. That does not mean I dislike you. Or that I’m frightened of you.”
Remus found himself looking at his shoes, trying and failing to get images of Logan hurt, Logan dying, out of his stupid cesspool sewage pipe head.
He wondered if this was what guilt felt like. If it was, maybe he should start being nicer to Patton. This sucked dick and balls.
“I won’t.”
“And I appreciate that,” Logan said. “But you could not cause any lasting damage to me anyway.”
“So? It still, like… hurt you. I’m not gonna do it again.”
“Well then, I have no reason to be afraid.” Logan straightened, smiling at Remus like that had just solved everything. “Which I wasn’t in the first place.”
Remus’s eyes narrowed. “You flinched.”
“Yes I did,” Logan admitted. “I apologize for that. I can assure you it won’t happen again.”
Remus didn’t move, staring at Logan in disbelief, at a loss for words for the first time in his life. He hoped the exhaustion on his face resembled a glare at least a little bit.
“I don’t… understand,” Logan said, and Remus couldn't even stay mad at him. “Was an apology not what you wanted?”
“No, Logan. I don’t want anything.”
Logan tilted his head slightly, brow furrowed, and Remus could practically see the gears turning as he looked Remus over. “You’re still upset.”
“Why’re you still here?” Remus finally demanded, throwing his arms out in exasperation. “If you’re afraid of me why don’t you just leave?”
Logan blinked, seemingly unfazed. “Because I enjoy talking to you.”
Logic may as well have just punched him right in the chest, the air leaving his lungs in a rush as he took a step back, choking out a shocked laugh. “That can’t be it.”
Logan frowned. “Why not?”
“Nobody enjoys talking to me.”
“Well,” Logan said slowly, and it was like Remus could see some of his walls coming down. “If it helps, no one particularly enjoys talking to me, either.”
Remus wasn’t entirely convinced that was true, but he figured he wasn’t the right one to give Logan a talk on self esteem.
“I like talking to you,” he said instead. “I just think you’re kinda stuffy.”
“I enjoy talking to you as well,” Logan said, and it really did sound like he meant it. “I would just prefer if your more violent thoughts were not physically manifested.”
“Oh.” Remus swallowed, absolutely refusing to show Logic how much this meant to him. He wasn’t going to cry. “Yeah, I can...do that. Sure.”
“Then I’m glad we could come to an understanding,” Logan said, right back to the stiff, professional persona Remus was learning to see right through. “I’m not afraid of you.”
Remus nodded, and realized he was actually starting to believe him this time. “Yeah. Ok. That’s good.”
Logan stepped back out of Remus’s space and Remus quickly did the same, the two of them standing on opposite sides of the Duke’s now painfully silent bedroom.
“I can leave,” Logan said after a moment. “If you’d still like me to.”
Remus hesitated, fighting to keep acting like he didn’t care. “Do you want to leave?”
“Not particularly,” Logan said, and Remus hadn’t expected to feel so relieved. “But it’s your room. I don’t want to intrude.”
“You’re not.” Remus moved back to his bed, dropping himself unceremoniously onto his back. “Don’t leave if you don’t want to. I don’t care.”
“Then I’ll stay.”
Logan pulled up his usual chair, leaning back comfortably as he picked his notebook back up and began flipping idly through it. He looked content and relaxed when Remus risked a glance in his direction, and he smiled to himself.
“You can talk if you like,” Logan said, glancing up from the pages. “I’m listening.”
Remus did eventually start talking, dumping his latest ideas on Logan like he usually did, diving into last night’s fantasy of setting an office building on fire in the middle of the week.
Logan had added on, and Remus had listened intently as he’d recited statistics and calculations, the likelihood of survival, and the two of them eventually decided it would be a waste of time, the fire likely to be put out before even causing any real damage to the building.
That was a talent Logan had. He could get Remus to let go of a thought that typically wouldn’t have left him alone for weeks.
It wasn’t until Logan had stood up to leave for dinner, promising he’d be back at the same time tomorrow, that Remus realized Logan had stayed twice as long as he usually did.
Huh.
Weird.
246 notes · View notes
maxismatchccworld · 3 years ago
Text
Patch Notes
Update 07/20/2021
PC: 1.77.131.1030 / Mac: 1.77.131.1230
Console: Version 1.44
Hello Simmers!
Hope you are well wherever you are in the world and that you are all having a fantastic Summer of Sims! We are excited to share today’s update with you. There is a lot of info, so make sure you have your tea/coffee/beverage of choice ready to read on. You all know I have my coffee ready for this!
As we continue to get ready to explore the countryside charm of Henford-on-Bagley and cannot absolutely wait to play with the adorable animals in Cottage Living, we also have updates and fixes that should improve and complement your Sims’ everyday life. We have something for everyone and we hope that you all enjoy them. Thank you for all your feedback and support.
Cheers!
-SimGuruRusskii ft. SimGuruRomeo and SimGuruJoAnna
What’s New?
Let’s start with some items that we shared in our last Sims 411! For this update, we partnered with two talented artists from the LGBTQ+ community, Ashley Lukashepsky, and Mohammed Iman Fayaz, and they have brought their inspiring and beautiful artwork into the game. We have also included the modernized version of the large afro hairstyle that we showed you. But more than tell you about it in text, let me actually attach a screenshot of everything put together:
Tumblr media
I love everything about this scene, not only it shows you how the artwork looks in a real game setting, but the whole scene with the two Sims and their surroundings is quite magical. Also, look at that hair! The way the light highlights it, perfection! You may also notice the hair of the Sim on the right, which was also added with this update for everyone. I want to personally thank all Simmers for their feedback and recommendations, as we are continuously working on adding more diverse hairstyles and textures to not only packs, but also to our base game.
Now that we are talking about artwork, the last patch notes I forgot to add the artwork made by the wonderful Jupiter Stevens-Hill. I apologize for that, I totally blanked out. However, I’m happy to see that a lot of you are enjoying it and placing it in your Lots! That makes a very happy Russkii =)
To find Jupiter, Ashley, and Mohammed’s paintings in Build Mode, make sure you take a look at the Paintings and Posters sort and filter by Base Game items. These artists are amazing and we hope you enjoy their creations.
Now, without further ado, let’s get to some new features and improvements that are part of this update!
A little bit of Gallery
When you download a lot made with the bb.moveobjects cheat, the game now notifies you about this so you know to activate the cheat before placing the lot. Builders, this means you won't need to mention it in the lot’s description anymore!
A little for Sims
Trying to find the Sims in the current neighborhood? Select their portraits in the Relationship Panel.
"Focus the Camera" moves the camera to the Sim.
"Lock the Camera" moves the camera to the Sim and keeps following them.
Where did the Notebook go?
Found it! The Notebook has moved out of the Phone and into its own button for quicker access.
The "Center on Current Lot" button that used to be there has moved to the top right, adjacent to the Camera Controls.
Water Tool
You now can make natural, organic bodies of water! Just head into Build Mode, make a hole with the Terrain Manipulation tool, and fill it with water. It is that easy! The Terrain Manipulation and Paint Tools also have more brush sizes to enable finer detail.
In adding the Water Tool, we also took the chance to overhaul the related tools and object categories. Why not? Enjoy!
Pond Effects
All sorts of critters are available to complete the look of your pond ranging from ducks and swans to pesky mosquitoes. There is even an alligator!
New Pond Objects
Outdoor Water Décor now has an assortment of new Pond Objects to decorate the perfect pond. Some of these objects such as the Bog Log and Colorful Lily Pads have interactions on them in Live Mode to activate Turtle and Frog effects. The new Fishing Allowed Sign enables you to stock your pond with any fish your Sims have previously caught. Try it out!
New Water Styles
Go beyond the original crystal blue and dreamy magenta water. Additional options range from “Mossy Water” to “Pond Scum” to complete that au natural look.
The Shrubs category includes new plants to complement the water styles: "Green Fern", "Leaning Not-Grass Grass", "Not-Grass Grass Sans Inflorescence."
Gardening with Children
Children now can help out in the garden by planting, watering, and weeding. They build their Mental skill as they garden. The process of purchasing and planting seeds is streamlined as well to make gardening more enjoyable for everyone.
Group Cooking
Cooking no longer is a solo affair. Sims now can cook in groups of up to five Sims including children. Start cooking together by selecting a fridge, stove, or any empty countertop.
Zoomers Food Delivery Service
Are your Sims getting tired of the same old pizza delivery every night? Well, gone are the days of redundant pizza nights. Maybe you are in the mood for pasta primavera or even a fancy steak dinner. All this and more are available courtesy of Zoomer Food Delivery. Order delivery through the phone or the refrigerator and the food will arrive in a jif.
Calendar
The calendar, previously available only with Seasons, now is available with Base Game to see upcoming events such as birthdays, school and work schedules, festivals, and fairs. You even can use it to book events, so it’s time to get to party planning!
Bug Fixes
Consoles
In Snowy Escape, skiing, sledding, and snowboarding on Bunny Slopes now contribute to the Extreme Sports Enthusiast Aspiration.
Also in Snowy Escape, Sims with high enough Skiing and Snowboarding skills now can enjoy the more advanced slopes. Sims also use the Lift to go to the top of the slopes and not go “the hard way.”
Simmers can now rotate Sims downloaded from the Gallery in Create a Sim. Spin them ‘round, ‘round, Simmers ‘round, ‘round -  like a record ‘round, ‘round, ‘round, ‘round.
The Sims 4
We made some improvements that should help our Simulation lag, particularly on the usage of some computer interactions like playing BlicBlock, along with fishing interactions, which should make the game perform a bit better. Note that this doesn’t entirely fix simulation lag but it should help and it is a step in a good direction.
Fixed an issue in which placing Mirrors directly opposite Doors would create a visual glitch in which walls and borders would disappear around them and well it was quite spooky to be honest, glad we solved that one!
Ever wish your food didn’t expire? I know I do, especially when it comes to traveling and coming back to see a fridge in pristine condition, that is a dream… but alas, it is not meant to be in life or in Sims. Fixed an issue in which traveling didn’t let food expire.
Sims stuck sleeping and couldn’t cancel that interaction? Not a product of a sci-fi film as I thought, but I can say that we have fixed this issue, well I hope.
You want to know how to not make my day, have my coffee brew endlessly but without giving me the coffee! Luckily the issue in-game about the Brew Coffee interaction being stuck has been fixed. Wasn’t it odd? Wait… Sleep and Brew Coffee were stuck in a mysterious loop? SUS.
If your Child Sims suddenly interrupted their computer sessions to draw on the activity table when Inspired, worry not, this should not happen after this update.
Fixed an issue that caused the “Items Removed” pop-up to appear when no items were removed from the game.
Fixed an issue in which setting Lots on Slipshod Mesquite would sometimes generate a crash of the game for some Simmers. The Lot couldn’t handle that much flavor.
Some blush and lipstick opacity sliders are back as they were greyed out.
Step-Parent/Child relationships are no longer missing in the Genealogy Panel. Similarly, other cases of broken families in the Genealogy Panel have been fixed as well. It is all about reconnecting or connecting with what is important.
Platforms will no longer raise in height automatically when creating new walls to intersect part of them.
We also fixed an issue in which if you placed platforms in basement levels and a staircase from the floor to the platforms, it would create this gap or hole in front of the stairs and Sims were not able to route correctly. You know, I have played many platformers in my lifetime, but do you imagine Sims trying to jump those gaps? I mean, I am called JumpFail for a reason… glad we fixed this one!
World view Lots that had some off-centered border have been adjusted.
Toddlers will no longer gain negative Sentiments against their parents randomly, especially the Festering Grudge Sentiment. I should not be laughing at this issue as I type it, I should not…<giggles>
We got word that the camera was malfunctioning and bouncing uncontrollably in some Lots across multiple Worlds. We fixed an issue that caused this, but let us know if there are new instances.
Sometimes Ghosts can be part of our Households if we choose to, however, it is really hard to live with Ghosts that constantly break things, it makes it a bit… unlivable. So our expert team of Simghostologists has communicated with these Ghosts in the non-physical realm and they have agreed to not break everything all the time.
Fixed an issue related to flooring glitches while placing the dance floor or crystal clear flooring.
Went through all the trouble in hiring a Nanny only to have your Toddler get sent to Daycare? More than a schedule conflict I imagine having the Nanny show up and there is no Toddler so what does the Nanny do in this case? Do they leave? Do they stay and wait? I must know… However, This should no longer be an issue.
Fixed an issue where using ‘{}’ (curly brackets)  in renaming objects would make these invisible in lists or UI in general.
Fixed an issue in the Likes and Dislikes section in Create a Sim that had some categories displayed incorrectly (either cut off, or words broken apart in new lines incorrectly) for some languages.
There was a clipping issue with the eye preset ymAsian13_Eyes that occurred when Sims were in extreme emotion, like Angry, and blinked. We adjusted this preset so this should not occur.
Toddlers can be picky eaters, but Toddlers not eating any fish recipe? That is suspicious, so we had a chat with the little angels and we have found a way to help them enjoy the complex flavors of our fish recipes.
Our UI team has fixed an issue in which a scrollbar appeared in the Sentiment section in the Relationship Panel when there were no sentiments. The mysterious scrollbar was mysterious. Similarly, they have also fixed an issue in which if multiple Sims gained sentiments together their thought bubbles look quite not right with the incorrect colors, so now they should look proper.
The Likes and Dislikes icon in Create a Sim will no longer overlap its text. It looked weird, honestly.
Droids (if you own Journey to Batuu) and Drones (if you own Get Famous) clipping into all kinds of objects in Build Mode? We saw that too, so there should be a fix for that in this game update. I mean this went beyond just crashing into things…
The option “Join After School Activity” will no longer be available if Simmers don’t have Seasons or Get Famous packs installed.
Sims in deviant paths now can properly reach the Level 4 of the Criminal Career.
Now, this is one that made my day, Cowplants are now able to dance again when Sims play music in front of them. Dance Cowplant, Dance!
Fixed an issue in which relationship points gained by friendly introductions were more than usual if Simmers didn’t have Snowy Escape installed.
We adjusted the color swatches for the S. Cargeaux Counter Island so that when it gets dirty, the counter doesn’t completely change colors. Dirty Counter - who dis?
Fixed an issue where the Scared Emotion UI was displaying a broken pose for Toddlers. The pose was kinda more scary than what the Toddler had been scared of, so glad that is done.
Outfits worn while Purchased and Worn in Festivals/Kiosks/Stalls should no longer remove accessories that were in place for the Sim.
Error code 134:571e5862 that occurred to some Simmers should be fixed now.
We fixed a few hairstyles (yfHair_EP05WavyBob, yfHair_EP01PartedFlat, yfHair_EP05UnderCutDreads, yfHair_EP01ShortSwept, and yfHair_DreamyCrew) that when used with the recently added color options would create splotches in the eyes, change the color of teeth, and/or change the eyelashes color.
As always the Localization team and this author have fixed and improved text across all packs and updates.
Get to Work
Aliens can now enjoy their custom Blush options in Create a Sim. Lewks out of this world!
Retail employees will now appropriately change into their assigned outfits. Listen, I grew up wearing uniforms for school, I get it, sometimes they are not the prettiest… but you have to wear them if you have to go to that establishment. I know the pain too well… but my sense of style grew from that… I think.
We made a fix to some of the swatches from the Barely Better Digital Camera that were missing a description for the item, so now all the swatches will display the text in all its glory.
Get Together
Some of these Sims are not like the others, some of these Sims just don’t belong. Can you tell which are not like the others by the time I finish writing these notes?
Fixed an issue in which some of the rooftops in Winderburg were not displaying Snow (if you own Seasons) correctly.
Fixed an issue where Sims didn’t sometimes change into their Club outfits when a Club Gathering was being held.
City Living
The Scattered Panes window in Build Mode now displays appropriate shadows in all options.
Sims enrolled in the Social Media career will now gain influence at the end of their stream instead of every few Sim-minutes.
Two hairstyles (ymHair_EP03BunHighPins and ymHair_EP03BraidedFlateBun) have been updated to reflect the correct look when choosing the Neutral Black color option.
Your Sims want to shoot some Basketball Close Shots, but they are trying to eat first? Well, now your Sims can finish eating before trying those hoops. Nutrition is important!
Cats and Dogs
We fixed an issue in which whiskers were not being seen applied to Cats. A Cat without whiskers is like Peanut butter without Jelly… or something like that! Just wrong!
Robot Vacuums should all now return to their docks accordingly. I hope this issue was not a sign that they were becoming sentient.
Sims will no longer get a Moodlet referring to the death of their Pet when witnessing the death of another Sim. The loss of a Sim is heartbreaking, but also getting a Moodlet for the death of their Pet when the Pet has not died, that is cold Grimmy, very cold.
Speaking of Robot Vacuums becoming sentient a few lines above, we fixed an issue that made the game crash when Cats would sit on the Robot Vacuum. CatonRobot.exe is now working.
We fixed an issue in which some Simmers experienced a crash with their last played Household loading into Brindleton Bay.
Seasons
Sims were changing into their cold-weather gear… while not in cold weather? We had some conversations with Sims and even though they love their winter outfits, dressing up in full winter gear in the summer was probably not the wisest choice. So the issue in which Sims randomly would change into their winter outfits while not in winter is solved.
Egg Hunts are adorable and fun! But not being able to have the furniture reset after looking for Eggs in them, can be quite the rain on Sims’ parade. But this should no longer occur.
Island Living
Mermaids will no longer keep the “Dried Scales” Moodlet when they are hydrated. Mermaids’ skincare regimen pays off! Moisturize, moisturize, moisturize!
Fixed an issue in which Lots that are placed in the sand looked quite odd displaying all edges of the Lot when it rained.
Sims that have the Collector Aspiration Trait are now able to catch Frogs in Sulani as part of their adventures exploring the island waterfall. Good Luck!
We fixed an issue in which some Simmers experienced game crashes when loading into certain lots in Mua Pe’lam. Happy Exploring!
Discover University
Sims having a hard time in Uni? No matter what they do they keep failing classes? Worry not, Sims will no longer fail classes when meeting all the criteria for course completion. Work hard, pass your classes hard!
Having Roommates can be hard. Have your Sims had Roommates complain constantly and leave even when their needs are met? Yeah, we made it so that Roommates don’t do this any longer.
Fixed an issue in which beds were counted incorrectly when placing an ad for Roommates. I mean, as much as Pets and even Toddlers can live with Roommates, the ad should be truthful to how many beds there are actually in the Lot, not count Toddlers and Pets as needing adult-sized beds.
We fixed Servo animations so that they don’t look like they are walking on one leg when hovering to their destination. Now they will hover properly.
We fixed an issue in which in some instances Professors could not go to work when a Professor NPC is added into that same Household.
Fixed an issue in which removing and adding back Household members as Roommates would create some… inappropriate moments, ahem.
Eco Lifestyle
Evergreen Harbor’s peace has been restored: roads and parts of neighborhoods no longer disappear or turn blue when businesses open in Port Promise while the Modern Development N.A.P is active.
yfBody_EP09DressShirt no longer has a weird texture in some of the footwear from various packs, especially platform shoes and chunky sneakers.
Had you moved to Cypress Terrace in Willow Creek and found you couldn’t really do anything there? We fixed the routing failures and interaction failures on the Mitey-Mitey Home - Insect Farm.
Snowy Escape
Mountain Climbing can be challenging, even for those experienced. But having indecisive moments before a climbing route like getting off and on your bike constantly seems that a lot of doubt is passing your mind… However, we did speak to these Sims that were experiencing this behavior and calmed their fears and doubts, so this should no longer be an issue.
The hairstyle yfHair_EP10BobBluntOmbre now covers all of the Sim’s ears.
For Simmers who own Seasons together with Snowy Escape, rain options no longer affect snow.
Sims no longer have the option to give a respectful or military introduction during activities such as Dancing or Bike Riding. I mean, I’m not sure about you, but I can’t dance and respectfully introduce myself at the same time. So many falls… so many falls.
We made some corrections to the Slippers that came with this pack and they should no longer display a greenish texture on Sims’ toes when selected in Create a Sim. Yikes.
Fixed an issue in which for some Simmers playing with the Yoshida Hall Household would generate a game crash when loading into Mt. Komorebi.
We took a look at our Ramen menu and have updated our cooking menu to label Miso and Egg Ramen as Vegetarian safe options. Buen Provecho!
Want to run a Restaurant in Yukimatsu but also want to enjoy the slopes? Now your Sims can enjoy the slopes and dine in style. However, this action is only directed, and will not be autonomous. In the same vein, Restaurant employees will not be tempted to leave work to enjoy the slopes.
Journey to Batuu
Batuu is an awesome destination for those who want to enjoy something fun and different, but if you bought a Droid from the Droid Depot and never saw it in your inventory, I know how frustrating it can be. Never fear, the Droids you were looking for will appear now in Inventories when purchased.
In Journey to Batuu, the First Order ID no longer disappears from inventory so Sims now can Access First Order Plans for the Top Notch Trickery Mission.
Fixed an issue with the Leveling the Playing Field Mission in which the Scoundrel Informant would not appear on the scene after Sims stole the Prototype Blaster and went to Oga’s Cantina to wait for the informant.
Dine Out
Eggs and Toast sound super basic and easy right? They will continue to be that way for our unassuming Chefs on the Chef Station since we fixed an issue that made them… challenging. Sims can also use the second burner for other recipes without fail or routing out.
StrangerVille
The Decorations and Kid's categories in Build Mode should no longer have a "New" highlight when there's nothing actually new.
Dream Home Decorator
Lighting can change the ambiance of a room, and your mood in a flash. Luckily we have fixed an issue that lighting was not even on sectional sofas to continue to set the right mood for our Sims.
Our stylists fixed the Sleep ‘N’ Study Styled Room to remove the P.R.I.M.A Computer from it as this is not an item that is accessible for everyone, pardon our dust.
Laundry Day
Fixed an issue where an animation clipped when Sims were loading their laundry machines. Because having your clothes go through you is awkward, are Sims made of fabric? I don’t think so.
Bust the Dust
Don’t need Simoleons, don’t need Fame. Don’t need dinner to have this date. It’s strong and it’s sudden and it’s cruel sometimes but it might just end your night… the power of Dust, that’s the power of Dust.
Our cleaning agents have determined that Sims won’t get romantic negative Moodlets related to filthy levels of dust in public places like parks.
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minshookie · 4 years ago
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Petting Zoo.
Pairing | Stalker!Jungkook x reader
Genre | yandere,angst
Summary | “your secret admirer turned close friend wants to be more than just that, and he always gets his way.”
!warnings! | 18+ mature language, stalking , mentioned sexual acts, violence, sick pets, pet death...
| this is not in anyway shape or form a true depiction or representation of BTS, this is a work of fiction and is not to be taken seriously. For entertainment purposes only.|(this is my work, please don’t repost or steal)
Requested [closed for request] words: 2k.
A/N: another request done! I love taking a finishing request I just get so nervous in the end. Also trying something new. Any type of interaction is greatly appreciated! Edited, but please excuse errors. {should petting zoo be my first series?}
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He knew you’d love it, you’ve always had a tender heart. The bunny coo’ed as he gently placed her into the plush box. He knew you were lonely, your roommate recently left you for her boyfriend, he knew fully that you were struggling. He’d push his ear against the wall to hear you two bicker in the deep hours of the night. He didn’t mind, he’d save you...but only if you let him.
Knowing your financial struggles, Jungkook went all out to make sure your bunny had the best even providing a months supply of food. He fully planned on this being the light of your month, you’d never stop thinking of him. He secured the new pet under one arm and the equipment under the other, he pushed his door open checking if the hall was clear. Of course, nice and clear just how he needed it, he slipped through the door with stealth leaving the gift in front of your door. With care he pulled the note card from his pocket perching it on top of the punctured box. Heavily he knocked before slipping inside his rightful apartment.
Leaning against the wall he listened for you to open your door. Finally when you did, it felt like his heart was attempting escape. Expertly he creeped to his door looking through it cracked ajar, he heard you read.
“I’m hopping mad for you, take me in as a friend, from your lover.” Fearfully you opened the whining box. In awe you gladly took in his gift, without a second thought. His heart fluttered he felt like floating in love, like in the cartoons hearts in his doe eyes.
Shutting the door he skipped to bed, exhausted his mind finally at ease, he finally has a shot with you! His heart was racing. He rolls onto his bead, head full of sweet thoughts of you, the plans he had for you. Closing his eyes he knew, this is only the beginning.
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Overtime you’d grown fond of your new furry friend, inviting people over to meet your mysterious new fur ball of joy. With this new happiness and motivation, you started leaving your apartment more often. As a result Jungkook started seeing you a lot more and he loved it. He loved it so much that for some reason his schedule now aligned with yours almost perfectly.
You have a class? Oh so does he....would you like a ride? Time to head to work? How funny,him as well.....hop in!
Jungkook planned to be just what you needed, in a foreign place like this all you really needed was a honest friend. And he planned to be that and more. It isn’t hard to notice Jungkook loves it when you depend on him, you need him, your life would be in shambles without him. He knows it deep inside he believes it, but he knows you don’t. No worries for him though, you’ll see the truth soon...
Like any other day, like clockwork, Jungkook waited for you in front of your door like a royal guard. Today though he had plans for you, for days Jungkook perfected today’s schedule...big plans to tell you his feelings. Plans to pour his heart out to you, and to get yours poured to him, but something wasn’t sitting right.
you didn’t come on time, checking his watch like a mad man he paced in front of your door in anticipation. Your prolonged time inside threw off the agenda severely. Beside the settle irritation, he was worried something happened to you he was going insane. What if you left him? What if you died...what if someone kidnapped you?
Two seconds from ramming his fist against your door...Finally, while on the edge of his sanity your door creaked open. “Hey, running late today huh?” He looked your figure up and down. You weren’t dressed for the day, pajamas and Nikes weren’t your usual fashion choices.
“Oh, Kook it’s Bella she’s sick.” The whining animal sat curled into a ball inside of the pink carrier. Your voice floated to his ears, soft and worrisome. He crouched, looking into the dark cage. “Sick? Sick how?” He prodded his limber finger inside rubbing the frail animals head. “I-I don’t know she hasn’t been eating,her breathing is strange.” He could hear you on the verge of tears as he got up, slightly annoyed though he tried to hide it. “We’re late to class y/n maybe you should just leave her, she’ll be better later.” The way you batted your lashes told Jungkook he’d said something wrong. You griped the carrier locking your apartment door before begging to leave towards the elevator. “Wait Y/n where are you going?” You Kept walking carful not to rock the poor bunny too hard. “Kook, Bella is half dead and you want me to leave her? I’m taking her to the vet.”
He groaned coming closer as you waited for the aged elevator to reach you. “Yeah? Okay well wait for me I’ll take you.” The elevator stoped with a horrifying screech, you stepped in Jungkook was kicking your last nerve this morning. “I already had it planned for today.” He got closer barley missing the door, “Jin offered to take me.” The door closes quickly and you descend.
Jin? Did you say Jin? Like a angered child he almost stomped back to his apartment door. he threw his bag against it, crouching to search for his key inside. “If I knew she was going to bitch over the thing-” he cut himself off opening the door,kicking his bag inside. “ I bought the fucking bunny, who is he to take care of our bunny.”
He threw himself down onto his couch, unmotivated to go to class now, or do anything for that matter he decided to miss today, and maybe even tomorrow. He mentally facepalmed, of course Jungkook noticed you and the new older man downstairs getting closer. He didn’t think anything of it, until he saw him walking into your job when he came to pick you up. Handing you his cheap flowers and gifts whenever he’d see you around the building. Jungkook thought you were smarter than that, it made him fiery with anger thinking about him manipulating you. The only person that loved you was Him. How could you blow him off for some guy downstairs, some guy you didn’t even need.
He let his mind jump from one angering topic to another. Oh! And that fucking rabbit. Bella had been getting a lot of love from you recently, he didn’t mind he saw that pet as a connection between you two. But to suddenly you kick him to the side because the rodent refused to eat? From Bella to Jin, his head spun. He could feel his face heat up at the thought of Jin getting close to you in the car, touching you, playing with your hair. It made him sick, he could almost feel the bile in his throat. If it wasn’t for that walking ball of fur, you’d be in his car, getting touched and loved by him.
He sat up with a groan. “I’ll wait until she gets home.” He stood going to the kitchen grabbing a drink. “And I’ll talk to her, I’m sure she can explain, she’ll tell me the whole story.”
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It seemed like decades before your laughter was heard coming into the hall. He’d been sitting facing his door, waiting for you, his hair disheveled his mind distraught. “Thanks Jin, talk to you later.” Your voice so sweet to him he felt himself physically react, oh how he missed you today. He heard the creak and slam of your door. What am I to say? Maybe I should ask about Bella? He got up fixing his appearance before leaving and turning to your door.
He cleared his throat before letting his knuckles beat against the hardwood. “Coming hold on!” He took a step back painfully waiting. Thankfully you arrived quicker than expected. “Hey Kookie.” You answer in hushed tones. “Hey, going to work today?” You shook your head “no, I called out on emergency.” He nodded hands in his pockets. “How’s Bella?” You looked behind yourself quickly, “Uhm, she’s a bit better just weak would you like to come see her actually?”
He nodded enthusiastically following you in, “sit down if you’d like.” You left him to go retrieve the sickly pet. He stood admiring the room, everything from the pictures to the decorative items resembled you, not only did it look like you but it smelt like you. Jungkook could swim in this scent all day.
“Here she is, a sleepy little one.” The soft hum coming from her sleeping figure earned endearment from you. Jungkook came closer rubbing her back softly. “So, why didn’t you ask me to take you this morning ?” You looked up from Bella. “I thought that you were gonna to be in class.” Your head tilted adorably. “Mm no, I’ll always wait for you.” He took Bella from your motherly arms. “Oh how sweet of you.”
“Hm So, since when have you been taking to Jin?” He looked at you inquisitively. “Jin? Eh Jin is... We’re...complicated, I’ve known him since I moved here he’s helped me quite a bit.” You answered keeping a loving gaze on Bella.
Jungkook felt himself grip the rabbit tighter he looked at you with furrowed brows. “Huh?” “I met him in a bar with my ex roommate, we’ve been talking since then.” You explained lightly trying to not hurt his feelings, of course you knew how Jungkook felt, and it wasn’t mutual.
You plopped onto the couch patting the cushions inviting him to sit. “He moved downstairs to be closer, he’s making a good effort but I’m not sure how I feel right now.” Sighing you toyed with your fingers, unaware of the grimace on Jungkook’s features.
He couldn’t believe what he was hearing, he felt that he’d been lied to and he didn’t a appreciate that. “What do you think Koo, what should I do?” You asked, getting anxious at his sudden silence. He was upset and he was doing his best to hide it, with a sigh he sat next to you. “Don’t let him fuck up your mind y/n.” Confused you looked up to him, “we both know what you want.” You crossed your arms, curious. “What’s that?” Already being aggravated, he sighed deeply,letting the now awake rabbit escape onto the floor. “Me.” You were visibly taken aback by his unusual boldness.
“Uhm Jungkook.” Anxiously you rubbed the nape of your neck. “Y/n don’t pretend for Jin’s sake, I can hear you through the walls talking to friends about me.” Without noticing he started leaning towards you. “I’ve heard you in here being lewd with yourself, who was on your mind.” He could read the fear in your eyes, you grew uncomfortable at the personal information he was throwing at you. “Jungkook please wait-” “who was it?” You pushed a firm palm into his chest in attempts to get him away from you, the sweet dorky neighbor you’d befriended now lurking over you like a beast. “Who do you love y/n, c’mon?” “Kook-” “before you answer, know that I’ve always loved you it’ll never be complicated with me y/n you want better I can give you much be-” you pushed his muscular chest roughly to shut him up, your back now touching the arm of the couch. “I’m with Jin, Jungkook please leave I’m afraid.” A statement you thought would save you, turned to bite you right in the ass.
You could visibly see the anger play along his features, grimly he chuckled. “I’m not going any-fucking-where until you come to your senses.” He gripped the hand you had up against him. “Jungkook that hurts please I’m scared!” “You should be, how dare you use me, fucking whore I loved you!” He ran a finger over his lips, his emotions clashing harshly with each other. “I love you...but you probably let Jin fuck you silly, disgusting...but don’t worry you’ll learn.”
He proclaims pushing you to the floor, he rushes to slam and lock your apartment door. He turned and saw you clutching the coffee brown rabbit,sobbing. “Y-you fucking stepped on her Kook!” the whining of the pained animal began to creep onto his nerves. If that rodent wasn’t here you would’ve been going out with Jungkook today, and Jin wouldn’t stand a chance. He bent down pulling Bella from your clutch, with little to no struggle.
“You get what you want, and you run with it, you get what you want and you go snuggling under some other asshole huh?” He held the injured animal in a primal grip. Uncontrollable he’d held in his anger, his love,and his thoughts for far too long. “Kookie please...please...please no, l- I love you!” You desperately pleaded for your pets fragile life. “Never have I met a bitch that lies as much as you.” Coldly he responded, not appreciating your falsehood, he gripped Bella’s neck harshly putting the disturbed animal to death. “Jungkook!” You let out a shrill scream. “I bought her I can kick her to fucking curb if I want, go ask Jin for one, or did he lie and say he bought her.”
Silently all you could do is whimper and sob, the thud of Bella’s body made your throat constrict. His heavy steps near your quivering figure sending chills through you. “Say it like you mean it.” With no mental strength to look up, you collected yourself enough to speak. “I lo-ve you j-Jungkook.” He groaned. “Suck it up it was a fifty dollar animal, you’re pissing me off.” You’ve never heard him in this tone. “I love you so much, Kookie.” He gripped your chin forcing you to look at him. He pulled up his other hand slowly touching your face causing you to flinch. “Ah Ah don’t run.” He cleaned your glistening face.
“Now, tell me who we hate.” He looked into your eyes darkly. “J-Jin.” His once adorable smile, now made you want to vomit. “Good, and I’ll snap his puny neck if he gets in our way.” He brushed more tears from your features. Giving into his temptation he gripped the back of your neck, bringing his lips to yours before pulling back to whisper. “Now tell me, who were you thinking about during those lonely nights?” You shook swallowing thickly “and you better not lie.” Closing your eyes in defeat, warm tears spilled from you like a fountain. “You Jungkook.” Pleased he kissed you warmly, while you resisted the urge to react. “Keep being such a good girl, and I’ll get you a whole petting zoo of bunnies baby...would you like that?”
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Not my image
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tobiosmilktea · 4 years ago
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umpah umpah! smau
↪︎ bokuto x f!reader x iwaizumi
[033] — epilogue!
masterlist | prev. | next
a/n: this is definitely not my best writing cause my brain was going brr the entire time i was writing this, but i honestly can’t believed i have finished yet another smau! 🥳 ✨if i’m being completely honest this smau took a complete turn to what i was initially planning,, but it ended up not being that bad. i certainly feel like this smau would’ve been a lot better if i didn’t have school preoccupying me 24/7, but i’m still really proud of this. thank you guys for reading and dealing with this messy, messy smau!! ☺️
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a year flew by faster than you had hoped. Two weeks turned into a month, a month turned into six, and six months turned into a year. A lot of things can happen within a year. Hell, a shit ton of things can happen within six months, yet here you were, all glammed up in your best dress at the move premiere of love cemetery.
you hadn’t felt this nervous in ages. the quickening of your pulse, the rapidly beating heart, to your pals that perspired as the seconds ticked on by. akaashi stood by you this whole time as your gaze keeps looking over to the guest list as if it were to magically change if you were too look away for one second. akaashi had been by your side, your moral support and the absolute backbone of your sanity the moment you and the team landed in los angeles a year ago. he noticed everything about you. he was one of your best friends, how could he not notice the way you were suddenly quiet and not excited right now?
he laid a careful hand on the small of your back to comfort you, leaning over to the same list of guests you were worrying about. “are you worried about who i invited again?”
“i’m more worried they’re not coming.” you confess without a single beat missed.
“oh, they will,” he assured you confidently. there was even a rising smirk in his expression when he let go of you, “have a little bit of faith in me will you? i was the one who got you back in touch with them.”
you huff playfully, rolling your eyes as you recalled the strange feeling of isolation over six months ago when you landed in la. it was in no doubt the longest flight of your life, lasting a good fifteen hours if you counted the two hour layover in hawaii due to reckless turbulence (it was one of the scariest flights in your life too). you had read their texts then, drowning in the sudden downpour of emotions when you read their words, i love you.
it almost didn’t seem real. you swore it had to have been the fatigue playing games on you as you couldn’t sleep for the life of you on the plane. yeah, maybe that was it, you excused. you were so desperate for their messages to be a figment of your imagination, you literally tried everything—turning your phone on and off, asking sugawara for eye droplets, and even ignored it until you were back on the plane and landed in los angeles. it had to be fake, please be fake. yet, in the back of your head you knew damn well it wasn’t.
there was a plaguing thought within you, one that’s so destructive and degenerative that you hated the fact you thought this way. but it wasn’t like you could help it. insecurity was a troublesome venom that coursed through your veins everyday and there didn’t seem to be an antidote to your own self-destruction. 
you loved them both, but you weren’t entirely sure if you had enough love to give for the both of them, let alone one. iwaizumi and bokuto’s feelings confused you to the core. you broke their hearts, yet how could they still love you so dearly?
you didn’t know the answer nor did you have time to even find it.
the film crew stayed in los angeles for two weeks and filmed over the course of that time period. days were filled with twelve hour shoots and a tight film schedule. being the author of the work itself, you were a major part of the production alongside the director. he trusted your vision and you’d often find yourself staying on set the entire day while kaori and the rest of the ddd team felt like they were on vacation. your only free time during that time was the ten minute holy grails in between takes that you were able to check social media.
you simply didn’t have the time to think about them. and yet they were like haunting ghosts that followed you relentlessly. every time you checked twitter or instagram, you would see every post, every tweet, every story. all of which would send your heart spiraling and tugging.
you missed them. but it wasn’t like you could do anything about it. you couldn’t possibly strike up conversation with any of them after completely ignoring their calls and texts for weeks. you had to have an odd amount of audacity to do that, and you simply didn’t have the guts to do so. if anything, the only lasting form of communication between you and the boys was the ringing notification that you liked each other’s posts.
it was quite the sad reality.
the film set then transferred to new york city, where the next two weeks would be filled with yet another plethora of twelve hour work days. fortunately for you, the rest of the ddd team were pulling a bit more of their weight, helping you on the creative side of things, yet still having the time to do all the fun touristy things whilst in the city.
you could remember the way your heart lit up seeing iwaizumi and bokuto’s names beneath who saw your story. it was a video of you and your team at the lady liberty statue. in it, kaori and yuko were chomping down on gigantic $2 street hot dogs, sugawara was yelling at semi for getting in the way of his film camera, while akaashi was complaining that the wind kept knocking down his green lady liberty hat.
it was strange thinking how fast things can change. within the first week, you were always up for an adventure in the city when the days were filled with work, but as the week progressed, your social meter decreased more and more. 
loneliness hit you then. it was a peculiar type of loneliness, the type that you felt alone despite being surrounded by your closest friends and working on your dream project. you figured you were just homesick the way everyone else was getting all ready for a night out going bar hopping while you sat in the living room of your hotel room in your pajamas.
“are you sure you don’t want to come with us, (y/n)?” kaori asked you, concern washing over her slightly as you flickered her a tired look. 
you shook your head, a small smile of gratitude melting upon your lips. “no, you guys go on ahead and have fun.”
your friends could only give you a look. they knew why you were being like this and they knew damn well it wasn’t homesickness. semi specifically threw you a look that’s meant to be teasing and oddly persuasive. “it’s been over a month, this can be a chance for you to finally meet someone new!” he exclaimed optimistically.
what was stopping you, anyway? it was clear nothing was, yet you still held yourself back. homesickness couldn’t possibly be to reason for it either. why are am i being like this?
“it’s okay, i’m with akaashi,” you decline once more, “he’ll keep me company.”
“alright then, join us once you feel like moving on.” says yuko with a hint of venom in her tone. you couldn’t blame her for saying that though as it was the harsh reality of it all.
your friends filed out the door, closing it in a thud and once again you felt alone. isolated as if you were in a void of your own silent thoughts that even the loud murmurs coming from the television wasn’t enough to drown out your shallow inhibitions. 
the night continued on like this for a few hours. eating snacks in the dark living room with the remote in your hand, flipping channels every five minutes as your running thoughts couldn’t keep your attention span still. it felt like you were missing something, a part of yourself that you couldn’t exactly pinpoint. you thought of all of the possibilities why you felt like there was a void in your heart, yet the only thing you could properly convince yourself on was that you just missed home. but was that really all that you had missed?
you thoughts are interrupted by steps approaching you. akaashi walks into the living room, flicking on the switches and causing you to grimace at the bright lights. your eyes stung slightly as they adjusted from being in the dark for too long.
“where are you going?” you ask akaashi as you noticed his dressed up attire.
“i got done with all the paperwork and emails,” he answers while he fixes the collar of his dress shirt, “i’m deciding to have some fun tonight with the rest of the group. are you still up for it? i’ll wait for you to get ready if you want.”
the thought occurred within you that you should agree. that the possibility of this unexplainable feeling of isolation you were feeling would disappear if you were to just say yes and go. but as self-destructive as you were on yourself, you continued to hold yourself back—hesitant and always second guessing your actions.
you open your mouth slightly, but you ultimately just shook your head no.
akaashi lets out a sigh. he was genuinely hoping you would come around sooner or later. granted, it had been over a month since you guys left japan and he figured you would be over everything by now, but that obviously wasn’t the case. “you might be receiving a call soon... i suggest you should answer it.”
confusion flushed over your expression, giving him a strange look. but before you could even utter a single question to him, akaashi was already up and out the door.
he left you in a wake of curiosity for the rest of the night. it was nearing one in the morning and you still hadn’t yet received a phone call. it honestly sounded incredibly ominous that you grew a tad bit nervous. there were only so many possibilities on who would call, but it would actually infuriate you if akaashi was just joking around. but then again, akaashi isn’t the type to play something childish like that unless it was kaori or semi’s idea. regardless, the thought kept you awake as you eyes practically weighed like cinder blocks at this point.
you couldn’t believe you wait for two hours for a phone call that might not even happ—it shocked you at first, the ringing of your obnoxious ring tone and the buzzing of the vibrations on the table.
furrowing your brows as you reached over, a gasp left you the moment you read the contact name. your slapped a hand over your mouth to muffle your shock. your hand shook from the growing bundle of nerves in your gut as you hesitate.
the name ‘kou’ shined brightly against your face, coaxing you to answer as if your thumb wasn’t frozen the accept button. out of all the possibilities on who would be calling you tonight, it just had to be him. it wasn’t like you opposed talking to bokuto. if anything, you had spent countless of sleepless nights wondering if you should finally answer that text of his. yet no matter how many different messages you have typed, none of them ever saw the light of day. a hurricane of stupid conversation starters and ice breakers swarmed in your head, all messy and disorganized that if you didn’t just suck it up and answered, you would’ve probably missed a chance to reconnect with him.
fuck it, you thought as you accepted the call.
“(y/n)!” bokuto called out to you, sending your heart running thousands of miles an hour. it had been ages since you heard your name come out of his mouth, “how’ve you been? a little birdy told me you needed a little company.”
you had to hold yourself back from smiling too much as you could already feel your cheeks ache. you wanted to scoff and perhaps groan at the sudden embarrassment of what akaashi could’ve told him. “bo—” you started, but is immediately cut off.
yet another familiar voice emitted from bokuto’s line, almost as if they were shouting, “you’re supposed to say that i’m here too, idiot!”
the volleyball player chuckles, “oh sorry, iwa-chan! here.” muffles and cups clanking against each other travel through to line to what you assume is bokuto handing his phone over to iwaizumi.
“uh... hi.” his voice sounded deeper than usual.
“hi iwa, how have you been?” you chuckle, finding his sudden shyness absolutely adorable.
“good, good. i’ve uhh... missed you.”
“i do too.”
“yeah, yeah, you miss me most though right?” bokuto’s loud voice thunders through the call.
the juxtaposition of how daftly different they were was something you could never get enough of. perhaps it was at that moment you finally understood your loneliness through their bickering. you were in fact homesick, but the home that you were thinking of wasn’t what you were missing the most. you suppose the home you missed was them. they were your home.
you let out an amused laugh, “right.”
“that’s good because iwaizumi and i should be mad at you for ghosting us for the past month, but we understand since akaashi explained to us already.”
your eyes suddenly widen into saucers, panicking what he could have possibly said. “what did he tell you?”
“everything,” bo sings.
you audibly groan in embarrassment, throwing your head back onto the couch in retaliation. you were glad they couldn’t see how flushed and red your cheeks were right now as they even extended out to the tips of your ears.
“you know it would’ve been easier to say that you love the both of us and didn’t want to choose right?” iwaizumi points out in between your panic.
“exactly!” cuts in bokuto, “besides we don’t sharing you, you know. who knew you were such a prude, (y/n).” you could practically hear the smirk in his voice as you couldn’t stop the heat from spreading any further from your face.
now you were really glad they weren’t able to see you at that moment. if they did, you would’ve died from the embarrassment then and there. “give me a break, i was too embarrassed to ask,” you mutter, fearing that they could hear how fast your heart was beating through the call.
“ask what?” iwaizumi teases, “ask if you could date the both of us?”
you were internally screaming at this point. everything that you didn’t think was going to happen, happened all within five minutes and you honestly couldn’t believe it. you were pinching yourself as if you were in a dream, yet no matter how hard you squeezed, this was actually happening. “shut up!” was all you could say.
“even if you did ask... it’s not like we could ever say no to you, (y/n).” says bokuto, his words so enticing that you weren’t sure if you’re heart can handle any more of this.
his words left you absolutely speechless. you honestly didn’t know what to say at this point.
"i’m fine with it and bokuto’s fine with it.” iwaizumi says, “it’s just a matter if you’re willing.” 
bokuto then leans forward towards his phone, “so what do you say, (y/n)?”
you swallowed the lump of nerves forming into your throat as the one question you never thought you would ever be asked was right in front of you. and yet you still hesitated despite everything that had just happened. you loved them both, so why weren’t you answering?
a few beats of silence passed before your gained the courage to push out the the very words, “... i’ll think about it.”
“boo! that’s lame!” bokuto shouts.
“i’ll give you guys an answer when i get back home.” you add, hoping to ease the disappointment they were probably feeling at that very moment.
“that won’t be for another few months, though.” iwaizumi deadpans that you could practically see the pout on both of their faces. “but we’ll promise to wait for you, (y/n).”
and so they waited for you to come back home, but you never did. schedules misaligned even when you were finally back home in tokyo. bokuto was getting progressively more busy now that the olympics were coming up and iwaizumi was just as busy, if not busier with the amount of athletes he had to take care of. there was even a constant flying back and forth from tokyo to los angeles for the film, all of which lasted for a few weeks at a time and you swear your couldn’t catch a break.
this went on for months with the only contact between you and the boys were from texting and phone calls that ended up shorter than you anticipated. and now a year had past since you left and this very movie premiere would be the first time you have seen iwaizumi and bokuto for the first time in a year.
this was so ironic how this all played out. you haven’t even realized you already reached the end of the red carpet when an interviewer calls out your name, microphone in hand and a camera pointed directly at your face.
“ms. (y/l/n)!” the woman shouts over the ruckus of snapping photos and other interviewers asking questions to the actors behind you. “there has been rumors going around about your dating life. are you dating msby’s bokuto koutarou or their athletic trainer iwaizumi hajime, who has been getting a lot of attention from stan twitter just recently! could you share some insight on your live life as love cemetery’s creator?”
“um,” you start, not sure how to answer the question as you nervous chuckled, “that’s a secret i’m afraid i can’t tell.”
before the woman could ask you any other questions, you walked away from the carpet and rushed towards the banquet hall. thankfully, akaashi and kaori was nearby and gratefully took your place in the interview without a second thought.
you let out a relieved sigh as much of the noise from the premiere died down as the only people inside the banquet hall were movie critics, the film crew, and other celebrities who were invited. by now, no one in this room would have the audacity to ask you such a personal question which caused weights to fall off your shoulder. you honestly should be used to those types of questions right now as a webtoon author that literally writes romance, but it always catches you off guard when you least expect it. honestly, you were just glad you didn’t slip up.
as a small little reward for yourself, you grab a flute of champagne from the refreshment table, decorated all fancy that you even hesitated to mess up the display. you turn around to face the growing crowd of mingling individuals, talking and laughing amongst each other as you sipped your drink gently. but as you watch you feel a presence on either side of you, both of which sent your heart soaring and a smile to appeared on your cherry colored lips. you didn’t even have to look them up and down to see how handsome they both looked. to think they were all yours.
“so what did you tell that interviewer?” bokuto asks nonchalantly as if he could just get away from a proper greeting. you were surprised he didn’t just engulfed you into his arms then and there.
instead, you opted to play along, “about what?” you tested with a smirk.
“the question about who you’re dating,” iwaizumi adds in from your other side.
you shrug, taking a sip of your champagne, “you guys probably wouldn’t like the answer i gave her.” you could feel the brazen stares bokuto and iwaizumi were giving each other—competitive and oddly provoking.
“she probably said she was dating me,” bokuto hums in response, confidence radiating off him that it caused you to scoff.
“i doubt it,” debates iwaizumi, giving him the same energy. “she probably said she was dating me.”
“actually,” you cut in before the two could possibly start bickering with each other, “i remember specifically saying that i’d thinking about it.” 
the boys give you a look, downing their drinks as if they were like the shots they swallowed many nights ago at that bar. it was as if they were trying to win your over again like your feelings had changed since then. 
“oh yeah?” bokuto starts, inching closer towards you while iwaizumi rested his arm on the table behind you.
“so what do you think, (y/n)?” says iwaizumi.
they both towered over you, just inches away from your body, but you didn’t cower or back away. if anything there was a playful smirk inevitably resting upon your lips.
now this, was going to be fun.
fun facts! —
sugawara has five rolls of film he had to get developed once they wrapped filming in osaka, each roll is from each city they went to for filming
iwaizumi and bokuto became really close friends when y/n left for la as they bonded over getting ghosted
bc of this,, bokuto posted a pic of him and iwa on his instagram and it got lots of attention that iwa went viral on stan twitter
taglist: (closed!)
@moonlightaangel @elianetsantana @k4tiepie @memorableminds @wheeshllumi @suhkusa @kitsunetea @airybby @noeminemi @truly-a-snitch @keichan @cosmicmermaid25 @bap-kingdom @saturnfarie @kwdflash @ennos-baby @dinablossom @chrisrue15 @seikamuzu @nestlevanilla @chasekudo @yammmers @pixcldust @iwaizluv @h0ngh0ngh0ng @emogrils @tiredandkindaoverworked @tsumue @underratedmage @bokutosuwus @kellesvt @unstableye @oh-tapeworm @scrappyfka @alittlebitofrain @mxngy @tpwkatsumu @atsumuwoah @macchiatoast @dicerawr @kageyamasbabygorl @some-random-stranger-007 @vhskenma @wntrmn @little-plants @stargirlara @kissungjae @je11yfishwriter @sbaepsae @apollochjld
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red1culous · 4 years ago
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Oh part 3
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Part 1 // 2 // 3 // 4 // 5 // 6 // 7
“Wait a minute” she says grabbing hold of your hand. You stare down at it and she promptly let’s go. “That’s it? You’re just going to walk away?”
“I don’t know what else you want from me, Nat” you say letting out an exasperated sigh. You take a few steps away before turning back to face her. “What else do you want?” you ask.
“An explanation would be nice” she says digging her hands into her jeans pockets rattling some of the shillings there, “I didn’t even know you’d be here tonight. Next thing I know, you’re kissing me.”
“You know exactly why I kissed you” you spit out rolling your eyes a little.
She quirks an eyebrow at you choosing instead to remain silent as you stare on in disbelief. “Seriously? You need me to remind you that we are supposed to be a couple and I don’t need to schedule in when I want to kiss you?” You hiss clearly irritated. “Or the fact that as a couple, it’s kinda normal that we go places together. Not everywhere, but generally everywhere. And if I turn up at a place where you’re at you shouldn’t have to act surprised” you continue. 
You turn to walk away and you know she’s trailing a few steps behind you. Slowing your pace you turn abruptly causing her to almost crash into you. 
“Tell me one thing” your voice is low. You’re glad for the humidity in the air. At least this way if Natasha notices the flush on your cheeks she can assume its from the walk in the warm night air.
“Ok…” her voice is uncharacteristically small and suddenly you’re finding it hard to breathe. Like it was a conscious thing, a fight to not panic and flee. It felt like someone was holding your head underwater and asking you to inhale. 
You take a few steps closer so you’re mere inches from her. You want to be able to see the emotions, if any, that may flicker across her features. “Sometimes you make me feel like I’m the only person in the room,” she gives off a little smile as you pause for a breath, “…and other times I feel like I’m a rearview window ornament you keep dangling around for use when you need something” you add and she bites her lower lip casting her gaze to her shoes. “Why is that?” you push ducking to catch her eyes, something she avoids with expert ease.
“What do you want to happen next?” she finally says gingerly taking your hands in hers. She rubs her thumbs across your knuckles and the sensation calms your blood from completely boiling over.
“I can’t answer that, Nat. You need to figure that out yourself. You’re the one who keeps pushing me away.” Despite your best efforts to be mad at her you just can’t. You feel something real for her. Even though you know how toxic she is to you, you can’t seem to stop wanting her. Or hoping that she’ll want you back.
Her green eyes roam your face. She looks at you. In what feels like years she is finally looking at you. She’s looking at you the way she used to before things got complicated. “We can fix this” she says her voice barely louder than a whisper.
“Baby I’ve been trying to fix this for years.” She doesn’t have her guard up this time and it unnerves you a little. Right now you’re staring into the face of the woman who stole your heart years ago. At this moment, it’s just you and Natasha, the Natasha that your heart has been holding a vacancy sign up to hoping she’d finally drop in and take residence. You swallow hard because you know if you don’t do this now, you’d never be able to. “I should be mad at you. I should hate you. Even when you say you’re out on missions but I know you’re actually sleeping in one of the safe houses. Even when you leave my messages on read. The funny thing is…I think about you all the time. I freaking dream about you every night. But me dreaming for the both of us is not going to fix us.”
She sniffles softly. She lets a tears fall from her eyes unwilling to let go of your hands to wipe them away. “Maybe…” you sigh, “…maybe you’re my person but I’m not yours.” A sob escapes her lips as you release yourself from her hold. You turn and walk away, quickly, unable to hold your own tears back anymore.
xx
“Y/N? Y/N that is you!” 
“Oh hey Carol!” you blink a few times wishing away the memory that had invaded your thoughts when Wanda left to go attend to some donors.
“Thought I was seeing things. What are you doing here?” she says coming up to you and enveloping you in a tight hug. 
“I’m just…ah, you know…” you chuckle unable to explain yourself. You take a few minutes to look at her. She is wearing a tight fitting black dress that showed off her slim, toned physique. Her hair was down and she glowed with just the right amount of makeup. Not that she needed any, to be honest. 
“God you look good” you blurt out and she smiles and blushes at the compliment. “And you smell so good too!”
Carol surprises you by pulling you in for another hug. “Ok stop! I’m supposed to be the sweet talker here.” You giggle and pat her back before she pulls away from you and fixes her hand firmly in yours. “You clean up well too” she smirks, “come on I want to show you off..”
“Carol I’m not even supposed to be here” you protest but she ignores you and pulls you along with her.
“Oh please you’re here now. Remember how we used to raise hell at these things?”
“Much to Tony’s dismay and horror?” you add and she laughs full heartedly throwing her head back as she leads you towards a group of people.
Thank God for Carol. She was always there for you when you needed an ear to bend about Natasha. Carol kept your mind away from thoughts of your ex. At least for awhile. 
“Maybe you should go say hi” Wanda says, “she knows you’re here.”
Green eyes watch you from a distance. They notice Carol’s hand has moved from yours to rest on your waist as you laugh at something Carol whispers in your ear. Was that hold possessive or protective? She knew she had no right to feel jealous but she can’t help the pain that starts to radiate from somewhere deep inside.
----
Tagging: @thewidowintheweb​   @natasharomanoffismywife​  @imnotasuperhero​  @cybeleceto​  @silverwing2522​  @thelastavenger-3000​  @peggycarter-steverogers​  @rooskaya-yelena​  @blackwidowromonoff​  @lesbian-x-blackwidow​  @nowthisisliving27​   @izalesbean​  @aaron-despair​  @marvelfansince08love​  @rileigh519​   @wannabe-fic-reader​  @hcartbyheart​  @marvel-randomness​  @thewitchandtheassassin​  @username23345​  @xixxiixx​  @rebeliz777​  @summergeezburr​  @frostedfavesmain​  @higherfurther-romanova​ @sapphicluxanna @xxxtwilightaxelxxx​
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thesims4blogger · 3 years ago
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The Sims 4: New Game Patch (July 20th, 2021)
There’s a new Sims 4 update available for PC/Mac and Consoles. If you have auto updates enabled in Origin’s “Application Settings”, the game will auto-update once you open Origin. If you have auto-updates disabled, you will need to manually update by clicking the game in your library.
Your game should now read: PC: 1.77.131.1030 / Mac: 1.77.131.1230 / Console: Version 1.44
Remove all MODS and Custom Content before updating your game
Hello Simmers!
Hope you are well wherever you are in the world and that you are all having a fantastic Summer of Sims! We are excited to share today’s update with you. There is a lot of info, so make sure you have your tea/coffee/beverage of choice ready to read on. You all know I have my coffee ready for this!
As we continue to get ready to explore the countryside charm of Henford-on-Bagley and cannot absolutely wait to play with the adorable animals in Cottage Living, we also have updates and fixes that should improve and complement your Sims’ everyday life. We have something for everyone and we hope that you all enjoy them. Thank you for all your feedback and support.
Cheers!
-SimGuruRusskii ft. SimGuruRomeo and SimGuruJoAnna
What’s New?
Let’s start with some items that we shared in our last Sims 411!
For this update, we partnered with two talented artists from the LGBTQ+ community, Ashley Lukashepsky, and Mohammed Iman Fayaz, and they have brought their inspiring and beautiful artwork into the game. We have also included the modernized version of the large afro hairstyle that we showed you. But more than tell you about it in text, let me actually attach a screenshot of everything put together:
I love everything about this scene, not only it shows you how the artwork looks in a real game setting, but the whole scene with the two Sims and their surroundings is quite magical. Also, look at that hair! The way the light highlights it, perfection! You may also notice the hair of the Sim on the right, which was also added with this update for everyone. I want to personally thank all Simmers for their feedback and recommendations, as we are continuously working on adding more diverse hairstyles and textures to not only packs, but also to our base game.
Now that we are talking about artwork, the last patch notes I forgot to add the artwork made by the wonderful Jupiter Stevens-Hill. I apologize for that, I totally blanked out. However, I’m happy to see that a lot of you are enjoying it and placing it in your Lots! That makes a very happy Russkii =)
To find Jupiter, Ashley, and Mohammed’s paintings in Build Mode, make sure you take a look at the Paintings and Posters sort and filter by Base Game items. These artists are amazing and we hope you enjoy their creations.
Now, without further ado, let’s get to some new features and improvements that are part of this update!
A little bit of Gallery
When you download a lot made with the bb.moveobjects cheat, the game now notifies you about this so you know to activate the cheat before placing the lot. Builders, this means you won’t need to mention it in the lot’s description anymore!
A little for Sims
Trying to find the Sims in the current neighborhood? Select their portraits in the Relationship Panel.
“Focus the Camera” moves the camera to the Sim.
“Lock the Camera” moves the camera to the Sim and keeps following them.
Where did the Notebook go?
Found it! The Notebook has moved out of the Phone and into its own button for quicker access.
The “Center on Current Lot” button that used to be there has moved to the top right, adjacent to the Camera Controls.
Water Tool
You now can make natural, organic bodies of water! Just head into Build Mode, make a hole with the Terrain Manipulation tool, and fill it with water. It is that easy! The Terrain Manipulation and Paint Tools also have more brush sizes to enable finer detail.
In adding the Water Tool, we also took the chance to overhaul the related tools and object categories. Why not? Enjoy!
Pond Effects
All sorts of critters are available to complete the look of your pond ranging from ducks and swans to pesky mosquitoes. There is even an alligator!
New Pond Objects
Outdoor Water Décor now has an assortment of new Pond Objects to decorate the perfect pond. Some of these objects such as the Bog Log and Colorful Lily Pads have interactions on them in Live Mode to activate Turtle and Frog effects. The new Fishing Allowed Sign enables you to stock your pond with any fish your Sims have previously caught. Try it out!
New Water Styles
Go beyond the original crystal blue and dreamy magenta water. Additional options range from “Mossy Water” to “Pond Scum” to complete that au natural look.
The Shrubs category includes new plants to complement the water styles: “Green Fern”, “Leaning Not-Grass Grass”, “Not-Grass Grass Sans Inflorescence.”
Gardening with Children
Children now can help out in the garden by planting, watering, and weeding. They build their Mental skill as they garden. The process of purchasing and planting seeds is streamlined as well to make gardening more enjoyable for everyone.
Group Cooking
Cooking no longer is a solo affair. Sims now can cook in groups of up to five Sims including children. Start cooking together by selecting a fridge, stove, or any empty countertop.
Zoomers Food Delivery Service
Are your Sims getting tired of the same old pizza delivery every night? Well, gone are the days of redundant pizza nights. Maybe you are in the mood for pasta primavera or even a fancy steak dinner. All this and more are available courtesy of Zoomer Food Delivery. Order delivery through the phone or the refrigerator and the food will arrive in a jif.
Calendar
The calendar, previously available only with Seasons, now is available with Base Game to see upcoming events such as birthdays, school and work schedules, festivals, and fairs. You even can use it to book events, so it’s time to get to party planning!
Bug FixesConsoles
In Snowy Escape, skiing, sledding, and snowboarding on Bunny Slopes now contribute to the Extreme Sports Enthusiast Aspiration.
Also in Snowy Escape, Sims with high enough Skiing and Snowboarding skills now can enjoy the more advanced slopes. Sims also use the Lift to go to the top of the slopes and not go “the hard way.”
Simmers can now rotate Sims downloaded from the Gallery in Create a Sim. Spin them ‘round, ‘round, Simmers ‘round, ‘round –  like a record ‘round, ‘round, ‘round, ‘round.
The Sims 4
We made some improvements that should help our Simulation lag, particularly on the usage of some computer interactions like playing BlicBlock, along with fishing interactions, which should make the game perform a bit better. Note that this doesn’t entirely fix simulation lag but it should help and it is a step in a good direction.
Fixed an issue in which placing Mirrors directly opposite Doors would create a visual glitch in which walls and borders would disappear around them and well it was quite spooky to be honest, glad we solved that one!
Ever wish your food didn’t expire? I know I do, especially when it comes to traveling and coming back to see a fridge in pristine condition, that is a dream… but alas, it is not meant to be in life or in Sims. Fixed an issue in which traveling didn’t let food expire.
Sims stuck sleeping and couldn’t cancel that interaction? Not a product of a sci-fi film as I thought, but I can say that we have fixed this issue, well I hope.
You want to know how to not make my day, have my coffee brew endlessly but without giving me the coffee! Luckily the issue in-game about the Brew Coffee interaction being stuck has been fixed. Wasn’t it odd? Wait… Sleep and Brew Coffee were stuck in a mysterious loop? SUS.
If your Child Sims suddenly interrupted their computer sessions to draw on the activity table when Inspired, worry not, this should not happen after this update.
Fixed an issue that caused the “Items Removed” pop-up to appear when no items were removed from the game.
Fixed an issue in which setting Lots on Slipshod Mesquite would sometimes generate a crash of the game for some Simmers. The Lot couldn’t handle that much flavor.
Some blush and lipstick opacity sliders are back as they were greyed out.
Step-Parent/Child relationships are no longer missing in the Genealogy Panel. Similarly, other cases of broken families in the Genealogy Panel have been fixed as well. It is all about reconnecting or connecting with what is important.
Platforms will no longer raise in height automatically when creating new walls to intersect part of them.
We also fixed an issue in which if you placed platforms in basement levels and a staircase from the floor to the platforms, it would create this gap or hole in front of the stairs and Sims were not able to route correctly. You know, I have played many platformers in my lifetime, but do you imagine Sims trying to jump those gaps? I mean, I am called JumpFail for a reason… glad we fixed this one!
World view Lots that had some off-centered border have been adjusted.
Toddlers will no longer gain negative Sentiments against their parents randomly, especially the Festering Grudge Sentiment. I should not be laughing at this issue as I type it, I should not…<giggles>
We got word that the camera was malfunctioning and bouncing uncontrollably in some Lots across multiple Worlds. We fixed an issue that caused this, but let us know if there are new instances.
Sometimes Ghosts can be part of our Households if we choose to, however, it is really hard to live with Ghosts that constantly break things, it makes it a bit… unlivable. So our expert team of Simghostologists has communicated with these Ghosts in the non-physical realm and they have agreed to not break everything all the time.
Fixed an issue related to flooring glitches while placing the dance floor or crystal clear flooring.
Went through all the trouble in hiring a Nanny only to have your Toddler get sent to Daycare? More than a schedule conflict I imagine having the Nanny show up and there is no Toddler so what does the Nanny do in this case? Do they leave? Do they stay and wait? I must know… However, This should no longer be an issue.
Fixed an issue where using ‘{}’ (curly brackets)  in renaming objects would make these invisible in lists or UI in general.
Fixed an issue in the Likes and Dislikes section in Create a Sim that had some categories displayed incorrectly (either cut off, or words broken apart in new lines incorrectly) for some languages.
There was a clipping issue with the eye preset ymAsian13_Eyes that occurred when Sims were in extreme emotion, like Angry, and blinked. We adjusted this preset so this should not occur.
Toddlers can be picky eaters, but Toddlers not eating any fish recipe? That is suspicious, so we had a chat with the little angels and we have found a way to help them enjoy the complex flavors of our fish recipes.
Our UI team has fixed an issue in which a scrollbar appeared in the Sentiment section in the Relationship Panel when there were no sentiments. The mysterious scrollbar was mysterious. Similarly, they have also fixed an issue in which if multiple Sims gained sentiments together their thought bubbles look quite not right with the incorrect colors, so now they should look proper.
The Likes and Dislikes icon in Create a Sim will no longer overlap its text. It looked weird, honestly.
Droids (if you own Journey to Batuu) and Drones (if you own Get Famous) clipping into all kinds of objects in Build Mode? We saw that too, so there should be a fix for that in this game update. I mean this went beyond just crashing into things…
The option “Join After School Activity” will no longer be available if Simmers don’t have Seasons or Get Famous packs installed.
Sims in deviant paths now can properly reach the Level 4 of the Criminal Career.
Now, this is one that made my day, Cowplants are now able to dance again when Sims play music in front of them. Dance Cowplant, Dance!
Fixed an issue in which relationship points gained by friendly introductions were more than usual if Simmers didn’t have Snowy Escape installed.
We adjusted the color swatches for the S. Cargeaux Counter Island so that when it gets dirty, the counter doesn’t completely change colors. Dirty Counter – who dis?
Fixed an issue where the Scared Emotion UI was displaying a broken pose for Toddlers. The pose was kinda more scary than what the Toddler had been scared of, so glad that is done.
Outfits worn while Purchased and Worn in Festivals/Kiosks/Stalls should no longer remove accessories that were in place for the Sim.
Error code 134:571e5862 that occurred to some Simmers should be fixed now.
We fixed a few hairstyles (yfHair_EP05WavyBob, yfHair_EP01PartedFlat, yfHair_EP05UnderCutDreads, yfHair_EP01ShortSwept, and yfHair_DreamyCrew) that when used with the recently added color options would create splotches in the eyes, change the color of teeth, and/or change the eyelashes color.
As always the Localization team and this author have fixed and improved text across all packs and updates.
Get to Work
Aliens can now enjoy their custom Blush options in Create a Sim. Lewks out of this world!
Retail employees will now appropriately change into their assigned outfits. Listen, I grew up wearing uniforms for school, I get it, sometimes they are not the prettiest… but you have to wear them if you have to go to that establishment. I know the pain too well… but my sense of style grew from that… I think.
We made a fix to some of the swatches from the Barely Better Digital Camera that were missing a description for the item, so now all the swatches will display the text in all its glory.
Get Together
Some of these Sims are not like the others, some of these Sims just don’t belong. Can you tell which are not like the others by the time I finish writing these notes?
Fixed an issue in which some of the rooftops in Winderburg were not displaying Snow (if you own Seasons) correctly.
Fixed an issue where Sims didn’t sometimes change into their Club outfits when a Club Gathering was being held.
City Living
The Scattered Panes window in Build Mode now displays appropriate shadows in all options.
Sims enrolled in the Social Media career will now gain influence at the end of their stream instead of every few Sim-minutes.
Two hairstyles (ymHair_EP03BunHighPins and ymHair_EP03BraidedFlateBun) have been updated to reflect the correct look when choosing the Neutral Black color option.
Your Sims want to shoot some Basketball Close Shots, but they are trying to eat first? Well, now your Sims can finish eating before trying those hoops. Nutrition is important!
Cats and Dogs
We fixed an issue in which whiskers were not being seen applied to Cats. A Cat without whiskers is like Peanut butter without Jelly… or something like that! Just wrong!
Robot Vacuums should all now return to their docks accordingly. I hope this issue was not a sign that they were becoming sentient.
Sims will no longer get a Moodlet referring to the death of their Pet when witnessing the death of another Sim. The loss of a Sim is heartbreaking, but also getting a Moodlet for the death of their Pet when the Pet has not died, that is cold Grimmy, very cold.
Speaking of Robot Vacuums becoming sentient a few lines above, we fixed an issue that made the game crash when Cats would sit on the Robot Vacuum. CatonRobot.exe is now working.
We fixed an issue in which some Simmers experienced a crash with their last played Household loading into Brindleton Bay.
Seasons
Sims were changing into their cold-weather gear… while not in cold weather? We had some conversations with Sims and even though they love their winter outfits, dressing up in full winter gear in the summer was probably not the wisest choice. So the issue in which Sims randomly would change into their winter outfits while not in winter is solved.
Egg Hunts are adorable and fun! But not being able to have the furniture reset after looking for Eggs in them, can be quite the rain on Sims’ parade. But this should no longer occur.
Island Living
Mermaids will no longer keep the “Dried Scales” Moodlet when they are hydrated. Mermaids’ skincare regimen pays off! Moisturize, moisturize, moisturize!
Fixed an issue in which Lots that are placed in the sand looked quite odd displaying all edges of the Lot when it rained.
Sims that have the Collector Aspiration Trait are now able to catch Frogs in Sulani as part of their adventures exploring the island waterfall. Good Luck!
We fixed an issue in which some Simmers experienced game crashes when loading into certain lots in Mua Pe’lam. Happy Exploring!
Discover University
Sims having a hard time in Uni? No matter what they do they keep failing classes? Worry not, Sims will no longer fail classes when meeting all the criteria for course completion. Work hard, pass your classes hard!
Having Roommates can be hard. Have your Sims had Roommates complain constantly and leave even when their needs are met? Yeah, we made it so that Roommates don’t do this any longer.
Fixed an issue in which beds were counted incorrectly when placing an ad for Roommates. I mean, as much as Pets and even Toddlers can live with Roommates, the ad should be truthful to how many beds there are actually in the Lot, not count Toddlers and Pets as needing adult-sized beds.
We fixed Servo animations so that they don’t look like they are walking on one leg when hovering to their destination. Now they will hover properly.
We fixed an issue in which in some instances Professors could not go to work when a Professor NPC is added into that same Household.
Fixed an issue in which removing and adding back Household members as Roommates would create some… inappropriate moments, ahem.
Eco Lifestyle
Evergreen Harbor’s peace has been restored: roads and parts of neighborhoods no longer disappear or turn blue when businesses open in Port Promise while the Modern Development N.A.P is active.
yfBody_EP09DressShirt no longer has a weird texture in some of the footwear from various packs, especially platform shoes and chunky sneakers.
Had you moved to Cypress Terrace in Willow Creek and found you couldn’t really do anything there? We fixed the routing failures and interaction failures on the Mitey-Mitey Home – Insect Farm.
Snowy Escape
Mountain Climbing can be challenging, even for those experienced. But having indecisive moments before a climbing route like getting off and on your bike constantly seems that a lot of doubt is passing your mind… However, we did speak to these Sims that were experiencing this behavior and calmed their fears and doubts, so this should no longer be an issue.
The hairstyle yfHair_EP10BobBluntOmbre now covers all of the Sim’s ears.
For Simmers who own Seasons together with Snowy Escape, rain options no longer affect snow.
Sims no longer have the option to give a respectful or military introduction during activities such as Dancing or Bike Riding. I mean, I’m not sure about you, but I can’t dance and respectfully introduce myself at the same time. So many falls… so many falls.
We made some corrections to the Slippers that came with this pack and they should no longer display a greenish texture on Sims’ toes when selected in Create a Sim. Yikes.
Fixed an issue in which for some Simmers playing with the Yoshida Hall Household would generate a game crash when loading into Mt. Komorebi.
We took a look at our Ramen menu and have updated our cooking menu to label Miso and Egg Ramen as Vegetarian safe options. Buen Provecho!
Want to run a Restaurant in Yukimatsu but also want to enjoy the slopes? Now your Sims can enjoy the slopes and dine in style. However, this action is only directed, and will not be autonomous. In the same vein, Restaurant employees will not be tempted to leave work to enjoy the slopes.
Journey to Batuu
Batuu is an awesome destination for those who want to enjoy something fun and different, but if you bought a Droid from the Droid Depot and never saw it in your inventory, I know how frustrating it can be. Never fear, the Droids you were looking for will appear now in Inventories when purchased.
In Journey to Batuu, the First Order ID no longer disappears from inventory so Sims now can Access First Order Plans for the Top Notch Trickery Mission.
Fixed an issue with the Leveling the Playing Field Mission in which the Scoundrel Informant would not appear on the scene after Sims stole the Prototype Blaster and went to Oga’s Cantina to wait for the informant.
Dine Out
Eggs and Toast sound super basic and easy right? They will continue to be that way for our unassuming Chefs on the Chef Station since we fixed an issue that made them… challenging. Sims can also use the second burner for other recipes without fail or routing out.
StrangerVille
The Decorations and Kid’s categories in Build Mode should no longer have a “New” highlight when there’s nothing actually new.
Dream Home Decorator
Lighting can change the ambiance of a room, and your mood in a flash. Luckily we have fixed an issue that lighting was not even on sectional sofas to continue to set the right mood for our Sims.
Our stylists fixed the Sleep ‘N’ Study Styled Room to remove the P.R.I.M.A Computer from it as this is not an item that is accessible for everyone, pardon our dust.
Laundry Day
Fixed an issue where an animation clipped when Sims were loading their laundry machines. Because having your clothes go through you is awkward, are Sims made of fabric? I don’t think so.
Bust the Dust
Don’t need Simoleons, don’t need Fame. Don’t need dinner to have this date. It’s strong and it’s sudden and it’s cruel sometimes but it might just end your night… the power of Dust, that’s the power of Dust.
Our cleaning agents have determined that Sims won’t get romantic negative Moodlets related to filthy levels of dust in public places like parks.
65 notes · View notes
lovelybnhaimagines · 4 years ago
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@bbslayed​ thank u for your request! I hope I didn’t make it too sad for you <3 love u. I got carried away oop made it 2K words
A little pink plus. That’s what the pregnancy test came back as. You put your hand over your mouth. You couldn’t believe it. Try after try, you never got it. But now, you do. Wanting to surprise your husband, you decided to wrap it up in a box.
You would make sure to grab your camera to take a picture of his shocked face. When he came back from his hero work, that’s when you would celebrate.
He missed dinner. You expected it. Typically, Todoroki would be on patrol for hours, never taking a break for himself. Or for you.
You checked your phone to see if he called or texted or something. Sadly, nothing. Glancing at the box, you put it up getting yourself excited to show it to him when he finally came home.
He didn’t come back. Not at least while you were awake. When you went to bed, you felt the mattress sink down on the other side and a small kiss on your forehead. It was Todoroki. You were too tired to get up and tell him now. You went back to sleep.
The next morning, you expect Todoroki to pull you in his arms like he normally does. He wasn’t there. You groan. He left early for patrol work.
You figured he would come home later in the day. A better time to tell him. Maybe you should make a surprise dinner. Maybe a cake also saying it. You went to the store to get all of the ingredients.
You spent all day making the cake. When you frosted it, you wrote a little surprise on it, because this child was going to surprise him.
He still hadn’t come home. You checked the time and see it was the afternoon. No big deal. You cleaned up the small apartment, thinking you’ll need a bigger one soon. The baby room was going to be yellow. That’s what you wanted.
After making dinner, you checked the time. It was becoming late, and you still had no word from him. You were frustrated. The food was getting cold, and you just sat there staring at it becoming colder. He wasn’t coming.
You did the normal routine of packing up the food to have for later. You put the cake in a box to put in the fridge. You’ll just have to celebrate later.
Same routine. Todoroki comes home late at night, and he’ll leave early in the morning. You were becoming angry now.
The same routine as usual. You buy food, you clean the apartment, and you make dinner for the two of you. This time, you texted him
Are you going to be home?
Satisfied so far, he probably come home after your text message. Remind him that he did have a wife and a home to come to. And soon, a kid.
A ding came from your phone, and you felt like a teenage girl texting her boyfriend. You quickly grabbed it and read the response.
Sorry, I’m going to be late
Sorry over text message is all you got. You had to remind yourself that he is doing hero work. This was his big break, and he needs to put in the hours to become successful.
You gave a simple response.
Ok
You packed all the food up and went to go put them in the fridge. The cake as sitting there on the top shelf, calming you down. It will come soon enough and then he’ll get time off work to celebrate.
Same routine, once more.
And over, and over.
You felt like you’ve lost your husband.
“Are you feeling ok Shoto?”
“I’m ok.” He sounded blunt. He was finding gear that was rarely used for this mission.
“Are you going to be at home for dinner?” He looked at you and gave his usual honest answer.
“I don’t think so.”
You took a sharp and deep breath, trying to calm yourself as he left. He was your husband. He’ll have time off soon and that’s when you will tell him.
After you came back from the grocery store, you walked in to see a very tired Todoroki.
“Shoto! You’re back.”
“Not for long, I thought I should see you.”
“Of course,” you sat next to him and started to play with his red and white hair. He looked beautiful with it and his eyes matched too.
“Works been hard I’m sure.”
“Yeah.” Todoroki isn’t much for words, but he was never this bad.
“I’m sure you’ll get the break you need as well as the position.”
“Thank you.”
The conversation ended there before his pager beeped. He kiss you goodbye and walked away. You finally had him. Tears started to wheal up in your eyes, but you took a deep breath. You were over acting you said. He’ll come home soon
Soon turned into days turned into weeks. You were practically almost about showing. You wanted to surprise him the way you planned when you found out immediately.  You still had faith in your husband.
After leaning on the couch, he came in looking pretty rough, “Oh my god, Shoto are you ok?”
“Yeah (y/n), I’m ok” is all he said. You started to treat his wounds, maybe now would be the perfect opportunity to give him the pregnancy test.
“Hey Shoto-“
“I’m going to go back to work. I should be back before midnight.”
You glared at him, not going to him leave.
“Shoto, you’ve been working so much. I feel like you don’t care anymore.”
“I do care. I’m just busy.”
“I know, but do you ever consider asking to take the day off or getting off early. I know you’re a hard-working individual and one of the strongest heroes alive. I just want to see my husband.”
“I know but-“ the pager starts beeping louder. He groans and puts it on silent, “Can we talk about this later?” You couldn’t say no. You had to do it his way. You had no choice in the matter. They were taking your choices away.
You bite your lip as you walked to the fridge and threw the cake into the garbage. It was going stale and needed to be cleaned from the kitchen. You stare at the pieces in the trash can and started to feel negative feelings again.
You wish you could drink a bottle of wine.
This routine continued day after day again. You were tired of it.
“Shoto!” You shouted when he finally got free time at home, “We need to have a talk.”
“I figured you would.”
“Don’t get that way with me. I want you to put more effort in this relationship!”
“I do put effort-“ You let out a gasp of anger, not believing a word that is coming out from his mouth.
“No, you haven’t! You’re never home. You don’t text or call to let me know if you’re ok or if you’re coming home.” The tears started to fall down your cheeks. It took all the strength you had to have this conversation.
“I’m sorry (y/n). I’ve been busy with-“
“Hero work.” You completed his sentence and rolled your eyes, “Can’t you see that I’m neglected! I’m your wife you should spend time with me.”
“I do spend time with you. I have to work to help substation us. I don’t see you doing that.”
You saw red, “I can’t believe you said that! You asked me to stay home and cook the meals in this household. And I’ve done just that, and you’re never home for any of it. I’m sick of it you know.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t know what you want me to say or do. I still have to do hero work” You realized this, and you couldn’t get in between him and his dream.
“I know you do. I just ask that you let me know that you’ll be out late.”
“I don’t think I can.”
Your fist clenched. More tears started to fall down your face. He didn’t comfort you, and you wanted to scream at him about it. You knew that wouldn’t solve anything.
His pager beeped, letting him know that he was needed. Todoroki didn’t say anything. He gave you a peck on the check and left.
Once more, you were alone.
With the same routine as always, you’d cook dinner, pack it back up, and clean up the apartment. You would spice it up and watch a movie instead of the news. You became tired, and you wanted to see him get home. You still wanted to discuss the issue at hand.
You did exactly that when he came back, “You’re back. Are you back for good tonight.?”
“I’m on call but for now I am free.” Todoroki sat down stretching, you could hear every bone pop. He must have had a hard day.
“I know we talk about your schedule, but when do you have free time?” You hoped it would be some time soon. You were still excited to give him his gift.
“I don’t think so. I’m booked on patrolling for the rest of the week.” This did it for you.
“Why can’t you be with your wife? You know the one who wanted to be with you for the rest of your life? I was hoping it was the same way.”
Todoroki looked caught off guard. He quickly tried to fix the situation, but he couldn’t come up with a response.
“Unbelievable. You’re really choosing work over me?” You gripped on whatever object that was nearby, “you know I had big news for you, but I’m not going to tell you unless you take me on a date. I was to spend time with my husband. Not the hero that everyone relies on.”
Todoroki looked as if he was going to say something, but his pager rang. Your heart stopped; words caught in your throat.
“We’ll discuss this later.” He then walked out the door to go to work.
“Liar.”
He actually did come home early, which surprised you. Todoroki walked through the door to see you on the couch reading a book.
“Ok, (y/n) what’s wrong?”
You closed your book to put on the coffee table, “You’re always gone. I never see you anymore. I miss the cuddles; I miss making you dinner. Ever since you became a pro-hero, you’re gone all the time. I just want and need you to be here.” You felt tears start to fall down your face. He quickly came over to wipe them off of your face.
“I know. I’m sorry. I need to take more time off. I-“ His pager rang again. You pushed him off of you.
“I’m tired of this! Can’t you let another hero do it?”
“You know I can’t do that.” Todoroki looked at it to see where the location is, “I promise I’ll get tomorrow evening off. We can have dinner then. I promise.”
You had to take him on his word. You gave him a kiss, and he was gone again. After thinking a bit, did you even want him with you? Would he even be a good father?
He was gone early the next morning. No surprise.
You went to make yourself breakfast. When you were cooking some eggs, you heard your phone ding. It was a text message from your husband.
I got the night off. We can be together
A smile grew on your face. You could tell him tonight. The box now sat on the counter, ready for him to open.
A dinner needed new groceries. You got dressed and went to the supermarket, humming to yourself. Getting what you needed.
You left, needing to cross the street to get to the bus stop.
“LOOK OUT!”
The next thing you saw was a car. Heading right towards you.
Crash
--
Todoroki was the first one to the hospital after he heard what happened. When he saw you in the ICU, you had bandages all over your face and body. The doctor looked at him, sadness on his face.
“Thank you for visiting Mr. Todoroki. Your wife is stable right now, but she’s in a critical state. I don’t think her, or your baby will make it.”
What? Todoroki paused, processing what he said.
“A baby?”
“You didn’t know. She’s almost 10 weeks pregnant. With the lack of oxygen she had, the baby is probably not going to make it, even if your wife does. I’m sorry.”
Then the doctor left. Todoroki felt numb, not knowing what to say or do. He became quiet.
Todoroki entered the room to hold your hand. You didn’t squeeze his hand back. You just laid there.
He stayed there as long as he could, but he had to go to bed. Todoroki trusted the doctors to take care of you until he can be with you again tomorrow.
When he got back to the apartment, he walked in to see a tiny box that sat on the counter. He dreaded opening it; but when he did, he saw a pregnancy test with a tiny pink plus on it. Under it was a note.
You’ll be a wonderful dad <3
He gripped the test, feeling a crack come from the plastic. If only he had been with you. Maybe you would have gone out to lunch together or go to your favorite bookstore. He was stuck with what ifs.
Suddenly he heard the phone ring. Walking over he felt his heart race, he normally didn’t show emotion, but his face was full of worry. Scared at what was to come.
“Hello Mr. Todoroki, it’s Musutafu General Hospital, Dr. Takai. I’m sorry to say…”
Don’t say those words.
“Your wife has passed away.”
137 notes · View notes
kozumekenza · 3 years ago
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on my mind :: five
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:: suna rintarou x f!reader :: playlist :: masterlist ::
:: taglist: open :: wc: 2.2k ::
After a drunken one-night stand with your ex, you thought you could get him out of your life for good. Unfortunately, the two of you can’t seem to keep away from each other. Why can’t you leave each other alone? And more importantly, why is he still on your mind?
tw: alcohol, profanity, mentions of sex
author’s note: this chapter is v self-indulgent + fluffy but i hard a hard time getting it to flow while covering everything, so i’m sorry if it some parts seem kinda confusing. as always, thank you for reading and i hope you enjoy this chapter <3
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After another week of deliberation, you were no closer to determining if another relationship with Suna would be worth a shot. You didn’t hear from him or speak to him at practice, even after you rejoined the team on the court later in the week. He kept his distance, seemingly wary of talking to you after you left him at his kitchen table Saturday morning. 
You weren’t quite sure what to make of it. Based on his reaction Saturday, you guessed he was probably pissed at you, and you didn’t blame him. He had specifically warned you about regrets on Friday night, and you completely blew him off, just to tell him you regretted everything the next day. It was a dick move on your part, and you understood that. There weren’t any excuses; it was simply your drunk versus sober self warring against each other. 
Nonetheless, you still felt awful. You kept your distance; you didn’t want to further anger Suna with your presence. During practice, you kept to the sidelines, performing your duties with a calculating eye and absolute precision. 
Still, by the end of the week, you were exhausted. Besides the intense contemplation you were performing in your head, work was also draining. Sakusa Kiyoomi sprained his wrist (apparently, it happened quite often), Yaku Morisuke nearly tore his ACL (a devastating injury for a libero), and on top of it all, Hinata Shoyo somehow managed to break two toes, his pinky finger, and got a concussion. Top it all off with the fact that Tobio Kageyama was always hovering over Hinata when he was injured, questioning your every move, and you had a recipe for disaster (or at least extreme exhaustion). By the time Friday’s afternoon practice was finished, you were ready to fall asleep while standing up.
You said your goodbyes to the team, approved the weekend’s schedule with Iwaizumi (it was your turn to work Sunday’s practice match), and took the train home. After unlocking your apartment, you debated whether or not you should go straight to bed without dinner or suck it up and make something quick and easy. In the end, your desire to not wake up starving at five in the morning won, and you went to change before starting dinner. You threw on some old running shorts and Suna’s stolen jersey, which had become your new favorite sleep shirt (who could blame you, it was comfortable as hell). 
However, a quick search through your cabinets and fridge showed that you had almost no food, whatsoever. Not a big deal, you could just run to the convenience store down the street. 
So you did, with no makeup, dressed in sleep clothes, hair in a messy bun. 
Grabbing a basket, you made your way around the small store, ignoring the stares you received from other customers (you chose to believe it was just because of your tangled hair, but you knew it was because you were wearing a Japanese National Team jersey). You picked up some eggs and noodles for ramen, along with some broth. You were in the frozen food aisle, considering the merits of cookies and cream versus matcha ice cream, when someone tentatively called your name.
You spun around, cursing yourself for not at least putting on a jacket, when you began to curse yourself even more for wearing the stupid jersey. 
You came face to face with Suna Rintarou, who was considering you with a pained expression on his face. 
“Hey, Suna,” you switched your basket from one hip to the other, “what are you doing here?”
He held up the package in his hand. Jelly fruit sticks. “Had a craving.”
You inclined your head. “Cool.”
“What about you?”
You looked down at the basket. “Needed stuff to make ramen.”
He nodded, then looked off to the side before looking back at you. “Um, y/n, who’s jersey is that?”
Panicking, you laughed. “Just an extra I found.”
“Really? It has my name on the back.”
Shit. “Oh, well, must be a coincidence, I guess.”
He cocked his head to the side. “I also lost mine a few weeks ago.”
“Oh wow, that’s awful, I’m sorry.” You turned, trying to make an escape.
“Y/n.”
You looked back at Suna. “Yeah?”
“That’s my jersey.”
You laughed again, dread really becoming apparent now. “What? No way.”
Suna just continued looking at you. “Your bra is at my apartment.”
You quickly shook your head. “No-”
“So is your torn skirt.”
“No, tha-”
“We slept together.”
“Yeah, but only-”
“Twice.”
“No, def-”
“And you knew.”
You were really starting to panic, hands waving around, like that would somehow convince him. “No, no, no.”
Suna looked you in the eye. “We need to talk.”
You sighed, accepting defeat. “Yeah, I guess we do.”
---
After awkwardly paying for your food and an even more awkward walk back to your apartment, you and Suna were finally in private.
“D’ya want anything to drink? Water, soda, juice? Wine, something a little stronger? Vodka?”
Suna just sighed, shrugging out of his jacket. “Water’s fine, thanks.”
You poured him a glass of water and yourself a glass of wine, but not before taking a few shots of vodka. You were going to need it to get through this. You approached with the glasses, setting one down in front of Suna before curling up on the other end of the couch. 
“Nice place you got.”
“Thanks.” You sipped from your glass, waiting for Suna to make the first move. When it became apparent that he wasn’t going to speak until you did, you spoke up. “I’m-”
“We-”
You laughed, setting down your glass. “You can go first.”
Suna took a deep breath. “We both have fucked up, in the past and now. I’ll admit it. The way I treated you in high school was shitty, and it’s taken me a long time to own up to it. I’m sorry for all the pain I caused you back then. And I don’t know if it’s you getting back at me, or purely coincidental, but I’m kinda hurt that you hid this from me. I mean, for fuck’s sake, y/n, I talked about it in front of you. And you just kept quiet!” You silently watched as Suna took a sip of water. “I guess my main question is why. Why didn’t you say anything to me? Were you just hoping that I would never find out?”
You assessed Suna, allowing yourself a moment to think. “I didn’t hide it from you to get back at you. I’ve long since forgiven you for all of the shit in high school, and it wasn’t just you. I was immature and insecure back then, so for what it’s worth, I’m sorry too. I think I didn’t say anything because I was scared. I mean, I woke up that morning in your apartment, with no memory of the night before, and I hadn’t seen you in eight years. I had no clue what happened or why I was there. I didn’t know why you were in Tokyo, and honestly, I thought you would’ve been disgusted. We hadn’t spoken to each other in a long, long time. I didn’t want our first meeting after all those years to be an awkward morning-after. And about the jersey,” you laughed a little to yourself, “that was pure coincidence. I had no clue what I had taken until I got home, and I had no idea how to return it.”
Suna nodded, seemingly thinking something over before speaking. “I forgive you. I’m not even that upset about everything, to be honest. I think it just kind of hurts that you kept it from me. And I’ll admit, I was really bothered when you just left last Saturday. I don’t know how much of what you said Friday night is true, and I was a little drunk too, but I meant everything. I didn’t want you to have any regrets, and I don’t regret it.” He chuckled to himself, “I mean obviously, I wish we had slept together under different circumstances, and I wish that you didn’t regret it either, because it clearly made you upset.”
“I think it just took me by surprise, that was all. I had promised myself that I wouldn’t get drunk and sleep with you again, and I did exactly that. I was upset at myself, and I took it out on you. I’m sorry.” You made eye contact with him, hoping that your eyes could convey the emotions that your words could not. “For what it’s worth, I meant everything as well. I did miss you, all those years we were apart, but I hope you understand why I had to leave back then. We were tearing each other apart, constantly. I had to do the hard thing and get out before there was nothing left.” Tears started to well up in your eyes, and you quickly wiped them away. “I had to leave. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done, because I loved you,” your voice broke, “no, because I still love you, so much. For eight years, I focused on bettering myself, and I tried every single day to forget about you, but you were always on my mind. And I was terrified when I saw you again, fuck, I’m still terrified. But you’re my best friend, you always have been, and I love you, Rin.” You couldn’t stop the tears that were flowing now, after bearing your heart. You let Suna pull you in, and cried into his chest as he stroked your hair and whispered calming words. When the tears finally stopped, you remained tucked into Suna, your head underneath his chin. 
“I never stopped thinking about you, or loving you.” Now Suna was the one who sounded close to tears. “You can ask ‘Tsumu. I always asked him for updates on you. I remember, when I got my National Team letter, the first thing I did was ask ‘Tsumu if you’d be a trainer here. I kept up with you, and I knew you had just completed your training with another team. So I knew you were gonna be here, and I thought, maybe, just maybe, this was my chance. Our chance to fix the whole ‘right person, wrong time’ thing we had. ‘Cause that’s what I’m convinced it was. We just didn’t know how to balance each other out yet or how to be in a real relationship yet. We were still kids, learning about ourselves and the world. When you left, I was determined to not make it the last time I ever saw you. I knew you had to leave, had to find your place in the world, without me. I never blamed you. You did the hard part by leaving. What you didn’t know, though,” Suna hugged you a little closer, “is that I was always there, right next to you, cheering you on.” Now the both of you were crying. “I want to fix things with you, make things right. If there’s anything I learned last Friday,” Suna gave a wet laugh, “it’s that we can still talk to each other, and we can do it better than we ever did. I want to be with you, again. I want there to be an us, again.”
You sat up a little, putting some space between the two of you. This, you weren’t so sure about. You looked to the side, trying to avoid Suna’s pleading eye contact. “Rin,” you looked back up at him, “you know I love you. You know I missed you so, so much. But I just need a little bit more time. And I’m sorry to even ask you-”
“Shh, shh, it’s okay.” He held you close as you began crying again. “I understand, I do. I’ll wait, as long as you need me too, I’ll wait for you. Just promise me that you’ll let me know when you’re ready.”
You nodded against his chest. “I promise, Rintarou. Thank you.”
You stayed there, head on his chest, just listening to his heartbeat. It felt as if a weight had been lifted from your shoulders. It was nice to get everything off of your chest, to figure out where the both of you stood with each other. It was nice to know that you would have the time and space to sort your head out, to fully work out if a relationship with Suna was a good idea or not. There were still so many aspects of your high school relationship that you had pushed to the side years ago, and you needed to sort through it. You needed to separate that Suna from this Suna, the old you from the present you. You needed time to be in a better mental state, one where you could give him your all. 
But you knew, no matter how much time it took, Suna would be waiting for you. 
---
When Suna finally left your apartment, it was hours and a teary goodbye later. You promised to keep in touch, and he promised to give you time and space. 
You went to bed feeling significantly lighter, dreaming about a future where you could fall asleep on Suna’s chest every single night. 
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taglist: @sunasexual @call-me-lulu​ @ntimacy​ @circleglasses​ @porcolie​ @keikotaro 
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tundrainafrica · 4 years ago
Text
Title: Lovebug (3/10)
Summary:  
“It might be a bug.”
“A bug?”
“Sometimes the developers of this application make mistakes. This is our first time meeting I’m sure so…Isn’t it a bit weird that we just met for the first time and it rings like this? And for two strangers to coincidentally ring each other’s alarms?“
Levi is the developer of the Love Alarm App and Hange is married to Zeke.
Link to cross-postings: AO3
Other Chapters: 1 2 4 5
Notes: So I was really planning on my posting the next chapter tonight and wahhhh right on time @renrampant posted this beautiful piece of art inspired by lovebug. I hope this chapter satisfies <3. I hope the zekehan kiss which will be coming in a chapter or two does justice to the art too.
Levi was a man of his word and he always had been. The night he created his tinder profile, such a penchant had turned out to be more than just an inconvenient truth.
Something so ideally simple as to create a tinder profile, shouldn’t have taken him more than a few hours. Yet, Levi found himself searching, grappling for the right words to say, finding some way to make himself more attractive than he actually was. It turned out with his own meagre attributes, drawing the right person was an altogether daunting task.
Maybe he was overthinking that night. Overthinking had been enough though to leave him exhausted, retiring for the night even before he even noticed he had forgotten to place the phone by his bedside.
When he came into his senses again, sunlight was streaming through the room, turning even the dimmest corners a little less black and a little more gray. The phone was a warm heavy weight vibrating on his chest.
He had to leave for the office soon.
His sleeping schedule only provided him a generous hour and a half to shower and to commute. Frustration at not being able to complete his bio the night before had him sluggish. It had him unwillingly reaching towards the back of his mind as he showered, as he shaved and pulled his light sweater on.
He considered extirpating that nagging thought. All you have to do is put a bio right? Levi thought to himself as he made his way to the subway station. He memorized the way to work like the back of his hand, all the way until the train platform He took the risk of walking straight ahead, eyes completely glued to the screen in front of him.
How it had taken him so much focus to decide on a bio. How it had taken him so much energy and thought. He didn’t know.
Levi though was a man of his word and thus, he had ended up clicking save after typing only a few simple straightforward words.
'Currently software testing. If interested, please swipe right.’
***
“So Levi, you’re a software tester?”
Levi found himself stifling a surprise snort at that question. The sound had come out as something he managed to disguise as a clearing of his throat. Hopefully it worked.
They had just settled on one of the corner seats of a chain coffee shop, a conservative choice for a first date. That is, if he were planning on impressing her. The date felt more like an obligation than an actual passion project. And obligations always had Levi’s mind running on overdrive, even with things as simple as ice breakers.
He didn’t expect that to have been the first line of conversation. He didn’t even know how to pronounce her name yet. The woman was looking expectantly though, bending a little forward. Whether she had been feigning interest or whether she had been genuinely interested, Levi couldn’t really tell.
Technically he tested software for a living and he didn’t need to really expose himself as the head engineer of the software so he settled for a nod.
“Oh, what kind of software do you test?” The woman in front of him pressed.
Levi snuck a glance at his phone under the table. Lynn. But was it pronounced ‘lint?’ Or was it pronounced ‘line?’
He was overthinking again. But when the woman had pronounced his own name correctly, it seemed almost criminal to have to mispronounce her name. Maybe he could table that question for a while.
Or never go on a date with her again. Levi thought to himself as he looked back up at her with the most casual face he could muster. “I test biology related software,” he answered. He purposely kept it vague. He had to note she was also a love alarm user. She had mentioned that part in her bio. Bringing it up in a conversation though was another issue altogether. If he brought it up, she might ask. If the conversation continued, she might ask more.
Did he want to expose then that he was the one who had designed the actual application?
“Biology sounds very interesting,” she commented. She didn’t seem interested in Biology though.
Not as interested as Hange. That quick comparison came like an uninvited visitor and Levi found himself just slapping the phone on top of the table on impulse. The clack of the phone on the table, the metal on hardwood rattled him enough to drive those thoughts away.
Lynn jumped in surprise. “Are you okay?” she asked.
Levi felt the blood rush to his face. When he was thinking longingly about someone married, and comparing her to Lynn, his date for the day, blushing seemed like an almost welcome sensation. “I heard you use the love alarm,” Levi started. When he was already making a fool of himself, might as well go straight to the point.
“You would like to check if we’re attracted to each other huh?” She asked. “But I don’t think we’d find out by the first date…”
“I said on my profile, I wanted to test a software so that’s why I’m here now actually.” Those words forced themselves out of Levi and they came out as a disturbed flow, as guttural sounds that burned in his throat. In the end, the honest man inside him prevailed.
“Test?” Lynn had been nice enough at least to mirror him and put her phone on the table. “You wanna test the love alarm now?”
Levi nodded as he fixed his eyes on the screen in front of him. He was familiar enough with the banner in the front of the screen to know with just a quick glance. The love alarm was active.
He didn’t have to open the application or pull down the banner to know the result. He was all too familiar with how the application would work even when placed on silent mode. The banner should at least appear, with the words ‘Someone nearby is in love with you.’
If there were at least two people around them then, if somebody else rang it, Levi would have been compelled to check. Both applications were void of hearts though. Levi closed the application and pocketed his phone. “It looks like we aren’t attracted to each other.” He only realized as those words escaped from his lips, how awkward or maybe how rude of a comment it came out as.
Lynn’s eyes were wide for a second before she furrowed her brows, framing those brown eyes. “Of course, we just met. I think attraction is something that can be built over time right?” Lynn answered.
“You’re not wrong,” Levi said. Really, he didn’t even believe he could be someone who could rattle off facts about love. Hange had said it herself, he was a little inexperienced.
He wanted to be right about it though. He wanted to believe attraction could be built over time. By extension, he wanted to hold on to the possibility that attraction could also dissipate into apathy. After all, all those emotions should have been in the same ballpark.
“So what do you think?” Lynn asked. She had said some words before that but maybe Levi had reflected too deeply to have processed anything more than the face of the woman before him.
If he blinked and squinted a little afterward, he could pretend that same wavy brown hair was Hange’s. Hange’s hair though was a little shorter and a little messier and when bright light shone at it from certain angles, it came off as a little red. Hange’s eyes were a little bigger and her face was a little rounder.
Lynn was just too different from Hange to ever be Hange.
When Levi let his vision blur though, let it focus on her features slowly then all at once, he could play pretend. When looking from his peripherals, settling for blurs instead of clear pictures, he could pretend the brown hair was Hange’s, the waves that fell on her shoulders as just another layer.
He didn’t even notice it, even after they had split the bill and when she turned down his half hearted offer to take her home. That was until her last greeting came out as they parted ways along the main street that led up to the train station.
Her last greeting was a long way off from a conventional goodbye but it had done its job to get Levi’s attention.
“By the way Levi, my name isn’t Hange.” She unmatched him on tinder after that.
***
Levi decided to put a small note under his name.
Software Engineer. Currently testing software. If interested please swipe right.
It turned out though, there were people who never read bios. “So, what do you do for a living?” The woman in front of him asked. His case in point.
Hange likes reading. An invasive thought tore through him then and Levi wondered how that could have ever been related to the situation at hand.
When he questioned himself, he found out why he even reflected on it in the first place. Right, since Hange likes reading, she wouldn’t have overlooked my bio if she found me on tinder.
Of course, she wouldn’t have tinder. Levi took a deep breath then, reminding himself for the nth time that he was going to have to settle for people who weren’t married to billionaire business tycoons.
He was going to have to settle for people who weren’t Hange.
But he didn’t have to settle for her either. She was underwhelmed yet underwhelming at the same time and Levi was starting to miss Lynn already as the more desirable option.
He quickly shook his head. You don’t have to see any of these people again. All you have to do is turn the love alarm on and watch it ring. But he was feeling so underwhelmed, so disappointed with the turn out of the date in front of him just minutes into meeting her. He had entertained just the thought of cancelling their food there, the only thing stopping him being the wasted food and the poor waitress who would have to clean the mess. So he decided he could at least stay long enough to at least try.
“So, have you heard of the love alarm Nanaba?” Levi asked. He may have put just a little more emphasis in her name. After all, he didn’t want the Lynn-Hange incident happening again.
“Of course, who hasn’t learned about the love alarm app? Actually I have it with me right now.” Nanaba pulled out her phone and dropped it in front of him.
Ten years of hard and stressful work made Levi immune to even the slightest compliments. “You wanna do some testing?” He asked. “Don’t you want to see if we’re compatible?”
Compatible. That was a complex word and Levi started to doubt the applicability of that application in determining compatibility. It was a love alarm, not a compatibility alarm.
Nanaba grinned. “Sure but I have to tell you, I don’t think it actually works.”
Levi raised his eyebrows in mock surprise. He hoped it seemed genuine though. “Really?” When he momentarily thought back to the numerous support tickets logged just within the past two weeks thought, his expression may have turned just a little genuine. It was a mess of an application after all.
“I’ve been using it for a few months already... And it hasn’t rung, not even once. .”
Maybe nobody likes you. Levi had some ironclad rules about testing, always start with user errors, not with application errors and that had him instinctively blaming her but he had to note, most people had one to two matches, Nanaba didn’t look particularly unlikeable either. Just with the thought of statistics, it should have at least rung once if she kept it on regularly.
Levi quickly switched from his engineering hat to his much more empathetic yet still very shitty customer service persona. “Maybe you just haven’t found the one who could ring it for you?” The words tasted so sweet they almost instantly clabbered into sour milk in his mouth. He felt like he was in some sappy Korean drama.
“Well, it rang with my friend Mike once but we don’t see each other that way…”
“Oh, really? Then why did you say it’s broken?”
“Because it rang with my best friend and that doesn’t count...” Nanaba wanted to say more. It was all over her face and her tone.
Levi was in no mood though to play love counselor. But he wasn’t an asshole enough to cancel the food and ditch a seemingly sad woman either. The food came at the right time when Levi was entertaining the prospect of just leaving.
Nanaba looked very much in the mood to speak, speak about something a little more emotional, a little more serious than hobbies and Levi found himself hesitant to force the conversation elsewhere.
Levi came out of that date with no second date, no results. Nanaba on the other hand came out of that date with new found confidence to confess her feelings to her long time best friend.
By the time they had exited the shop, Levi was already swiping again, grumbling obscenities about how testing wasn’t supposed to be that hard.
***
“Rico Brzenska,” Levi said. There were only too many ways to mispronounce ‘Rico.’ Still, two failed dates had him careful about names already. “So what do you do for a living?” And careful about other things as well.
“I’m a student.”
Levi almost spit his tea out at that. He should have been more careful. He had read her bio, she had mentioned something about a love alarm app and that had him swiping right already. He was sure if he had seen any indication of a minor, he would have swiped left. “Really? What kind of student?” He asked, having gone subtly for his phone and pushing it further under the table.
“A graduate student taking business and commerce.”
Levi only had to take a quick glance at his settings to be sure, there were no chances of him dating a minor, as long as nobody was lying about their age on tinder. Being an honest man though, Levi had a harder time looking through white lies.
Such awareness had him studying her round face, her large blue eyes for a little longer. She could have been a minor. Or he could just be paranoid.
But when dating a minor could actually mean jail time, Levi didn’t want to take any chances. “Do you have any ID on you?”
“ID?” Rico frowned. “Why would you need an ID?”
“You said in your bio you wanted to test the love alarm right?”
Rico nodded. “Yes, I just wanna make sure before I start dating someone, we already have the initial attraction. I don’t wanna waste my time with people who aren’t attracted to me or I’m not attracted to, if you get what I mean?”
In response, Levi hummed in understanding. He did get what she meant. The last thing he wanted to do though was inadvertently ring the love alarm of someone a good many years younger than him and risk jail time. He probably wouldn’t ring it anyway.
But just in case. Levi put his phone out on the table, leaving one hand outstretched as if to wait for an ID.
No ID. No Love Alarm. He was sure that was the sign he was giving.
"Wait you don't think I'm off age do you? You think I'm lying on my profile?"
"No, I don't think you are," Levi said. Maybe his expression betrayed his words.
Rico eventually let go of an ID, a school ID from a familiar university logo Levi was sure he had seen a few times. And her face then had been one of pure irritation and maybe a hint of fury.
She narrowed her eyes at him. "There? Legal enough for you?"
Still a student, still too young to be engaging in anything with an older man, at least by Levi's standards. Still, he found himself almost obligated to just test the alarm in front of her.
Rico didn't look happy at all to be heavily scrutinized, or doubted. When she activated her application, Levi saw it as a cue to activate his own.
All you have to do is press the button. Levi told himself. He knew it wouldn't ring. He felt no attraction to her but paranoia had his brain going in all sorts of directions at once. Maybe the blood that rushed through his cheeks then was love. Maybe his hands shaking then were nervousness and excitement at meeting one's destined partner.
Also Rico wore glasses. For some reason, that had him thinking back to someone else with glasses, he wondered for a second if her eyes were much larger without those on. And he wondered if it was similar for Hange.
How such a long train of thought could have occupied him in such a short frame of time, interrupted by a quick sleight of hand, Levi didn't know.
But it had ended so abruptly, almost violently with the familiar cacophony of two love alarms ringing at once.
For a second, Levi sat frozen on the table as his mind went ahead, racing over theories and potential testing methods to deduce the root behind the outcome.
Do I have a glasses kink? That had been Levi's first thought. He looked down at his own phone to see the one heart and the bright message on top.
One person nearby is in love with you.
His second thought had been a little more objective. It's a bug. He told himself. I'll just have to do further testing.
Rico’s eyes were wide in shock. For a few seconds or so, she struggled to move and he couldn’t blame her. After all, the ringing of multiple love alarms in such a silent place like a cafe on a weekday morning was a scene that definitely had the potential to catch some people’s attention.
Levi couldn’t be too sure. He didn’t want to survey his surroundings either so he narrowed his view to just his own love alarm and back at Rico. The latter went for her phone.
From his own angle, Levi couldn’t see her interface but he was familiar with the way she had swiped it, to know she had turned it off. The two love alarms continued to ring in the silence. Even with the tension and awkwardness so thick that made it difficult to slog through, his brain was still moving.
He was blessed with at least enough deduction skills to quickly figure it out for himself.
He was in love with someone else in the room. But who? He surveyed his surroundings, keeping his view closed to only one person at a time. That gave him enough time to brush away the rest of the stares that surfaced from having made such a scene with the harsh ring of the love alarm.
Only after scanning for a second longer did his spatial awareness catch up to him. The other ringing was coming from behind. Levi turned behind him, quickly enough to catch the mop of chestnut brown hair. Fortunately, he had been slow and careful enough to pull away at the last second, missing her forehead by a hair’s breadth.
“Watch where you’re fucking going!” That had been Levi’s first instinct. After all, he was still seeing red, just imagining their heads slamming into each other in the middle of a very silent cafe.
The brunette in front of him, put one finger to her masked mouth, pointing at one of the old fashioned signs just above her seat.
In silence, there is eloquence. It read.
Hange was a very eloquent person. Levi had read enough messages from her and stalked enough of her works to know that much. Any other day, maybe any other minute, he would have been happy to listen, learn a thing or two from the master of diplomacy.
But Hange had virtually come out of nowhere. In the middle of a date.
Giving her a onceover though, noting her masked face. The only two things that made her recognizable then was her mop of brown hair tied in a ponytail and her masked mouth. Still, that had been more than enough for Levi to have seen through it.
She had settled on the seat behind him. The way she looked back at him and the way she had seemed a little too relaxed with a half finished cup of coffee just in front of her, Levi was sure she had been there for a while.
How much did she hear? Levi couldn’t ask just yet. The alarms were still ringing and as soon as Levi turned it off on his end, it stopped. Yet people continued to stare. More importantly, Rico was still staring from behind him.
“Do you two know each other?” She asked.
The answer didn’t come as quickly for Levi as he would have wanted it too. They knew each other, they’ve met at least twice. They’ve eaten out together once. But technically, did it count as ‘knew?’ Did Hange feel the same way?”
“We’re colleagues, working on the same project,” Hange answered for him.
Levi almost instantly realized he liked that answer. Colleagues. It was definitely more intimate than ‘knew each other.’ While at the same time, it held more respect in one’s skills and talent than the word ‘friends.’ And it implied in its own little way that Hange cared about the project just as much as he did.
It had been difficult to muster a straight face then. Still, he pushed forward, nodding when he struggled to stifle the motions of his mouth and the blood that rushed to his face then.
“But the… the love alarm… it…” Rico continued to speak. She shifted her eyes quickly between both Levi and Hange. “And you…” Her eyes fixed on Hange then.
Levi followed her eyes instinctively. Did Rico recognize Hange? He couldn’t confirm it for himself. Soon after that, Rico didn’t say anything in response. Instead she blinked back surprise. She started to clean out her things and place them into her bag.
“Wait, you’re leaving?” Levi wanted to pull her back. For a split second, he had reached out his hand, grasping his hand before pulling quickly back. He didn’t mind losing the chance at a second date. Just the thought of putting someone in such a tight and uncomfortable position had his stomach turning. He couldn’t for the life of him tell what she was thinking but he at least felt the tension.
Rico didn't have the most eloquent response either. “Sorry about this… I guess on my end it just feels wrong meddling in somebody else’s relationship… I don’t wanna be the one who’d stop people from getting together.”
Levi was quick to understand though. His thoughts flew back to Nanaba just a date ago and the long one sided counseling session which consisted of Nanaba’s long drawn monologues and Levi’s own grunts of understanding. The date which eventually ended with Nanaba finally figuring out for herself the best course of action.
You know, you’re right, Both of our love alarms rang. And that’s the whole point of this app right? If they both ring, it’s a sign, we should act on it.
And that was the whole point of the love alarm. How many times had he reviewed marketing material, love story commercials which ended with that same message?
Levi opened his mouth ready to speak up. By then, Rico was already out the door, any evidence of her presence just a second ago disappearing within seconds of her leaving. The chimes by the store entrance gradually slowed to a weak dance, the people who watched her leave eventually fell back to whatever they were doing beforehand, and Levi’s own protests had deadened into a light whisper.
It’s a bug. Besides, she’s married. The words had settled in his tongue like a familiar friend and he was sure if given the chance, he would have managed to say it loud and clear.
Levi looked back in his phone to see Rico had unmatched him, just a little too quickly.
“I think we should get that bug fixed soon,” Hange whispered. She sounded like she was stifling a laugh.
"For someone who's worried about the bug, you looked like you had a swell time ringing our alarms just a while ago," Levi said bitterly.
"Zeke's on a business trip and I'm bored and lonely."
“Well, don't take it out on me.” Levi took out his wallet and dropped the cash by the side of his drink, counting enough to pay for Rico’s drink too. He didn’t think too much about the receipt or the change.
The murmurs around him were more than enough to have him hurrying out of the cafe. Did they recognize Hange?
He thought it an appropriate time to satisfy his curiosity when they were both a good distance from the shop. “Do you think people recognize you as Zeke Jaeger’s partner?”
Hange put one finger to her mask. “I saw you outside the shop and when I thought of ringing your love alarm, I did what I could to prepare." Her eyes were still smiling though and Levi was sure there was a laugh behind that mask. "Besides, even though most people recognize Zeke, I don't think they'd notice me. I don’t join the interviews or events as much as he does,” Hange said.
Levi noticed though that Hange was the type to just get lost in her surroundings. Ort hat was at least what Levi had picked up on her the first few times they have gone together. She quickly relaxed after that short and quick question and answer, and in the way that she navigated through the crowds a little too clumsily yet a little too playfully, Levi found evidence backing up his mini theory.
Even if anybody did recognize her, she probably wouldn’t have noticed. And that little realization had made it much harder for Levi to stomach what just happened in the cafe. They needed to get the bug fixed fast. “Let’s go back to the office, maybe do some more testing.”
“Isn’t that why we’re here now?” Hange asked, pointing towards the general direction of their building. “I visited your office this morning because I didn't have much to doand I thought I could be helpful. You weren’t there so I asked around and one of the people from the support team told me you were out. She said probably in your favorite tea shop.”
“You met Petra?” Levi asked. “Redhead? Short?” He soon added, noting her confused expression.
Hange snapped her fingers. “Yes, that’s her name.”
“Yeah, she knows my favorite tea shop. Gets me my favorite mix of tea leaves every year for Christmas,” Levi said, more to fill the air with at least some conversation on the way back.
It took Levi a while to notice Hange had peeked at his face even as he averted his gaze, looking elsewhere.
She spoke up. “Say… Have you ever tried testing your love alarm on her?”
***
Petra was one of the newer employees, a little shy but particularly mature for her age. She was notably competent and had a particularly better handle of her emotions than most of the other colleagues. Her most important asset had been her level headedness even under the pressure of scrutiny. Petra was the type of person to know when she was attracted to someone and she was the type of person to admit it for the sake of a smoother testing process.
Thus, she was one of Levi's favorite volunteers when testing the love alarm.
And Levi was sure, to some degree she could have liked him. If he were to consider her words as truth, and the hearts at the bottom of the screen as some indication.
When they were testing every release on fifty employees over a one week period, putting results side by side with checklists and biometrics tests, they were as thorough as it could be. It was always the case that when it was the two of them testing with each other, Levi’s love alarm always rang, Petra’s didn’t. Every single time, Petra would tag that instance as ‘QA passed.’
It could have been a placebo effect or it could have also been just an admittance to get the testing process done just a little faster but Petra never seemed like the type, breezing through the awkward scenes that came with testing a love application like they were part of a job. If it ever bothered her, she never showed it.  
Levi’s alarm never rang in any of the tests he had ever taken anyway. When he double checked though, lining up the results side by side with checklists of what to look out for when one was in love, he found that it never had been a big deal. He had never been attracted to anyone in particular anyway.
“So, I’m the only one your love alarm rang with huh?” Hange asked.
Except maybe Hange.“Yeah, when doing QA work, I’ve had to test with the other employees and it never rang with any of them,” Levi admitted.
“How does QA work?”
“We test with employees, users… All on a volunteer basis if I may clarify.” Levi added that last part for just a touch of professionalism. “We have acceptable ranges for biometrics, checklists and we have a certain number of results which need to fit there to consider a release viable.”
“Why don’t we test using the QA procedure?”
“Because the QA process is a logistical nightmare. We plan a venue. We plan a schedule and we have to get a certain number of people to show up.”
“No, I meant… What if we try it, just the two of us. We answer the checklists, we take each other's biometrics and see if that falls in the exact range for ‘love'?” Hange suggested and her excitable tone only made it seem like she was suggesting something almost revolutionary.
Levi sighed. “I’d rather we use QA testing as a last resort.”
Hange’s face fell. “Why?”
“Because.”
“Because?”
“Because…” Levi would have liked to leave it at that. As he looked at Hange who had leaned on the wall, crossing her arms and staring back at him expectantly, he remembered, it was a professional relationship. If the partner of their very important investor demanded answers, she would get answers so he settled for something seemingly acceptable yet very pathetic in the grand scheme of things. “We’re going to have to answer standardized psychology quizzes and take some physical tests.”
“And I’m sure you’d have a few samples lying around. Let’s see what information we can get,” Hange said.
There were other reasons Levi had been hesitant to suggest such an exam in the first place. It had been difficult to grasp for the exact reasons until they arrived in the conference room Levi had reserved.
The room was a vacuum that had the special power of just drowning out voices, footsteps from just outside the hallway. The tables were empty, the white board put away towards the side of the room. It was clean, empty, void of any presence or even trace of it. It made Levi just a little more painfully aware of his heartbeat, his moist palms and his wild uncoordinated breathing.
He might just fail the physical exam. More specifically, he might just fail if he took it then, at the exact moment.
Grasping for some win, or at the least some comfort in that situation, he had half the mind to run through the ‘Am I in love?’ checklist or at least what he remembered from it. If he were a little honest, there might have been some things he would have checked.
But it didn’t mean he would fail it right?
“What do you think?” Hange pressed. She had settled for one of the chairs in the room.
Levi had answers, but he couldn’t share it just yet. Inviting her to take that meant that he was entertaining the prospect that they might just be in love with her---a cursed prospect.
“Or do you have any other ideas?” Hange asked. She cocked her head to one side in thought.
“If you give me a little more time to come up with something…” Levi said.
“Petra told me you have a week or two before they release the next fix. You’ve done most of the coding work. You just need to fix this bug right?” Hange was very talkative. It turned out Petra had been just a little talkative too with the right prodding by Hange. “Why don’t you wanna just test it now?” Hange's face darkened then to something almost threatening.
And maybe Levi was a little intimidated. He quickly turned away, unable to control whatever expression would force itself out of him then.
“Levi?” Her voice was grating. The echoing in the room didn’t do much to help alleviate it. “Come on, please? I want this investment as much as you do.”
If the partner of their very important investor demanded answers, she would get answers.
But it didn’t have to be the correct answers. “Fine,” Levi said. “You know, maybe the way we test this application… the way we test for love might actually be flawed so maybe some feedback from a researcher like you could be useful.”
Hange grinned from ear to ear, the ominous face of a while ago just a memory Levi could probably forget. “So where do we start?”
***
Testing for the biological numbers was quick with the right tools.
Heart rate. Hormone levels. Stress Levels. Pain Sensitivity. They had all the right test kits on hand with a document detailing the acceptable range.
All reasonable levels, albeit a little too far from the midpoint that Levi held on to the possibility that maybe they could log it all in as some coincidence. The checklists were just a little more difficult and maybe Levi was just thinking a little too far off that he had started to have a mini identity crisis.
I think about my partner a few times a day.
Partner: Referring to the person one tests the application with. Levi was aware of that much having tested the application long before. Yet for some reason, he had to loudly remind himself of that, even within the confines of his mind.
He entertained hypotheses. If Hange were his partner, that would be polyamory and that could even start the scandal of the year, or even the decade. He didn’t want to be part of that.
So he ticked ‘never’ because technically Hange wasn’t his partner anyway.
I want to be with my partner everyday.
Hange was Zeke's partner. Just the idea of getting in between a married couple had Levi's stomach turning and it had been easy to tick never right next to it.
My partner trusts me.
It was too early to tell, or so that was what Levi told himself then.
The word ‘partner’ had been a convenient term. Zeke had been a convenient presence in his mind. And that had him ticking all the 'nevers' towards the edge of the page just a little more confidently.
Technically, Hange wasn’t his partner. Technically they just met, so words like trust, amicability, happiness, charisma, compatibility and charm, didn’t have to apply to them just yet. A few minutes later, he had checked enough ‘nevers’ to have armed himself with the confidence to look her in the eye.
Hange though wasn’t reciprocating, looking deep in thought with whatever question she had been answering. She bit her lip.
Hange eventually met his gaze. Instead of being just a little more satisfied, Levi was a little disappointed, more in himself than in anyone else. For that few seconds that Hange bit her lower lip in thought, her cheekbones had seemed fuller, her hazel eyes held an almost imperceptible yet still very enthralling glimmer, and regretfully, he didn’t take the time to relish it when it was right in front of him.
“How’s the test?” Levi asked.
“It’s fine,” Hange said.
Levi slid his own answers towards her. “We just have to calculate the number of ‘always,’ the number of 'sometimes,' the number of ‘nevers’ and just match it on the document over here.” He turned his laptop towards her.
“I can do it,” Hange said, pulling the laptop towards herself. The next few minutes passed in silence. Levi stared at the ceiling, trying to keep his heartbeat in time with the clack of the keyboard. Hange typed fast and chaotically but in a way, there was rhythm and order and that had helped him get into a position where he could just drop his shoulders and fall back on the chair behind him.
“You don’t think I trust you?” Hange asked.
“It’s too early to tell right?” Levi said. That answer had been scripted and it slipped out of his mouth easily.
Hange’s let out a light sound, a cross between with a hum and a chuckle. “Well, to tell you the truth, I put here that I didn’t trust you either.”
“Well that makes both of us, I guess,” Levi said.
Hange continued to type, filling the room with some predictable rhythm, a predictable rhythm his own wild heartbeat failed to provide. Eventually, it stopped, with one loud clack on the ‘enter’ button or at least, Levi guessed it was the enter button.
Soon after, Hange leaned back on the backrest of her own chair. “Biometrics all fall in the acceptable range. Test results all fall in the unacceptable range,” she said, her tone unreadable. Too professional but Levi surmised it could be her usual ‘research’ tone. He hadn’t known her long enough to be certain.
“Maybe we should get to know each other first and try to answer again?” Hange suggested. “We just met so I can’t fully trust you yet but I think, we could get along with the right…”
Environment? Amount of time? Mutual Processing? Levi couldn’t be too sure of the answer. She had said something else after the word ‘right’ or maybe she didn’t. Still, there was a problem that needed to be solved, there was an issue that needed to be addressed that extended beyond the need to resolve the feelings between two strangers.
Or two colleagues. Levi decided he liked the word colleagues better. “So what do you suggest Hange?” Levi asked.
“I wanna do further research with this application. We can tweak whatever processes you’re using now to QA, whatever processes you’re using to determine whether people are in love. Maybe we just have to fix that a bit.”
“This application took years to develop. It’s gonna be difficult to overturn a lot of the processes.”
“Without the right funding…” Hange said. She wagged her finger and gave Levi a knowing look.
Levi narrowed his eyes accusingly at Hange. “So how’s convincing Zeke been going?”
“That’s the caveat,” Hange said. “He’s not a very techy guy. He’s an investor and scientist more than anything and sometimes, even with the right proposition, he’ll stick to some really weird reasons why he wouldn’t invest in something. I don’t blame him though since millions of dollars are usually on the line with each investment.”
" So, I’m guessing you tried to convince him?”
Hange nodded. “I did. And it looks like he won’t budge unless you fix that ‘bug.’”
“The bug which caused his love alarm to not ring around you?” And the bug which is causing our love alarms to ring. Levi added silently to himself. “Can you explain to him that we need the money to continue improving the system?”
“I’ve been with him for years, Levi. I know how he is.”
“So what do you suggest we do?”
Hange hummed. “I don’t know how programming works but...Maybe you can program the application to make it work just the way that Zeke likes it... For the time being?”
***
No. Just no.
Those were the words written all over Petra’s expression. Levi only had to look at the other faces around him to be very much sure, everyone agreed with Petra
For posterity’s sake, he repeated those words. “I understand that the regression test is done but unless I am able to get to the bottom of this bug, we won’t be able to release the fixes,” Levi said. He kept his words soft, yet still loud enough to echo through the conference room. He said it slowly and clearly. Just in case it was a bit harder to hear through shock and surprise.
“Sir, a lot of the fixes in this release have been promised for months,” Petra argued. The professionalism in her voice was still admirably apparent.
“Erwin’s orders. I’m just repeating them now,” Levi said.
“Is there anything we can do to help?” Gunther asked. “Have you found the reason behind it? I’m guessing if you do… we might have to make some changes to the code and go through regression testing again.”
“If ever that happens, I’ll handle the testing on my end,” Levi said. “It wouldn't be too hard, it’s just a blip in the code.”
“So you’ve found the cause?” Eld asked.
“Yes.” If Levi didn’t open his mouth to speak then, he was sure no one would have for the next few minutes. There was something festering in the silence, some common sentiment that he sensed among them, among those doubtful faces tinged with irritation and confusion.
He had always told them before. Always assume a user error first. And there was an apparent user error which he was sure everyone was entertaining.
What if Hange just didn’t love Zeke? A prospect that was ambrosia to Levi’s lips but at the same time a piece of ambrosia that he was sure was laced with poison. He couldn’t chew it, he couldn’t swallow for fear of just letting go for a few seconds longer, letting a smile curl up his lips during the most inopportune times.
Levi turned to Oluo in particular who he guessed would have been the one most likely to bring it up. The latter remained begrudgingly silent. It looked like no one else wanted to bring it up either. After all, Zeke was a huge opportunity for company growth, a huge opportunity for investment.
Eld spoke up.“If there’s anything we can do, just please ask. It might be too difficult of an investigation to do for one person.”
Levi shook his head. “I think this is an investigation I’d rather do alone.” There were parts of the investigation he hadn’t admitted to the team yet. All they had gotten in the report from Erwin was that Zeke’s alarm didn’t ring with Hange there but the scandal of their alarms ringing together was something he didn’t want circulating around the building.
And more importantly, there was another plan he and Hange have been entertaining, an almost unscrupulous scheme and he didn’t want anyone else involved.
***
It felt like he had run a marathon and he had been doing that slow jog for at least three days already. Or maybe it felt like he was trudging through a dessert and had been trapped there for the past three days.
He couldn’t tell for sure but his throat was constantly dry, his heart was constantly beating fast and any notification from Hange was either a water break or an oasis.
Three days ago, Zeke came back from his business trip. Four days ago, Levi sent the apk file to Hange.
“It’s a test build,” Levi said as soon as she confirmed she received it. “A test build I hard coded just for Zeke’s use.”
“Meaning…”
“Just say it’s a test build. Say I’ve fixed the code.”
“Meaning…”
“I hardcoded his data and the expected result. If he opens the alarm around you, his phone will ring," Levi explained. "It’s just a quick fix for now.”
Just a quick fix. Levi told himself multiple times. He had changed the code drastically enough though that the love alarm wouldn’t work as an expected love alarm, having customized it just to fit Zeke’s desires. For just long enough to get the money and long enough to find the actual cause of the bug.
“And tell him we’re asking for feedback before we release it,” Levi had added then.
The last time he had met her was three days ago when he dropped her the file, explained its use and when she had promised to download the apk file to Zeke’s phone.
She sent intermittent updates over the four day period. He liked it. He was enjoying it. He had confidence in the application.
Levi had to ruefully note though that the conversation never strayed too much from work. As expected from colleagues, as expected from business partners working towards the same goal.
Maybe a few times he had asked some vague questions just to get a hint of her daily life.
How’s Zeke? How are you guys?
Still, the answers always went back to updates on the application. When he was trudging to the desert or while running through some dirt track in his mind, even when the water tasted too artificially like plastic---too professional for his taste---he settled for it.
That was the only water he had after all.
Hange limited herself to ten messages a day, mentioning something about being bad at replying, apologizing for late replies. Levi had to admit though when he was working, he was guilty of a similar thing. Yet he found himself just a little irritable, a little desolate at such an outcome.
A week after he had last seen Hange, he decided to start reading the books about love again.
Love is a choice. Overused.
To love others, one must love themselves. He got that already.
Levi dropped his reader by the side of his bed and stared at the blank ceiling above him. The books on love were biased. They created for themselves an assumption, an assumption that she was his and whatever he had to deal with was some inner turmoil inside him, an inability to love. But what if he was willing to love? What if it was just a matter of circumstances just not letting him indulge in such an emotion.
He had entertained that for just a second before brushing away the nagging thought and the annoyingly sticky guilt that clung to it. Maybe there was merit in just turning off his emotions then, just discarding the overall idea of love. He deleted the books Hange had sent him from his ebook reader.
If the company got the funds, if Hange got the greenlight on her research, he would see her again, he would be forced to read those books and they would be forced to work together.
Then and there, he didn’t need to think about it just yet. He didn’t have to put himself through the pain of analyzing circumstances and emotions that left a heavy weight and an ache in his chest.
He could forget Hange until then. He could ignore her messages and maybe focus on something else like an action movie or a video game. He had streaming service subscriptions, he had game emulators on his laptop. Soon he discovered, with the right combination of focus, willpower just getting through slow starts, it was easy to immerse himself in something as mundane as a city building game.
He was halfway through building one of his farms and was already attached to the regular city goers of the small city he created for himself when his phone rang. That abrupt and grating sound had been enough of a reminder, Levi still wasn’t completely over being sad. He quickly reached for the phone on the side of his bench in an ungraceful and seemingly desperate chain of motions that had him almost ashamed of himself.
His laptop had been one of the victims, toppling over to the side of the bed but by god’s grace it had only skimmed the edges before laying flat on its side.
Levi muttered a soft curse. This message better be worth it. And the only message he decided would be worth it, would be a message from Hange which didn’t involve that stupid application.
Leviiiiiii are you free? :))))))))))
Free when? Levi was quick to reply. Now? Tomorrow? Next week? Really, he was always free, it was just a matter of asking for a leave and opening his schedule. He didn’t want to seem so pathetic as to tell her that though
Long weekend this weekend so Zeke offered to take us south to one of our country clubs.
Us?
Erwin is coming too. Levi didn't’ know whether to feel relieved or disappointed at that exposition. Before he could reply though, the messages kept coming.
Think of it as a thank you for the app ;)
And a start to a great partnership ;)
Hange had too many smileys, too many winky faces but recently, she had started to pepper her messages with just a little too much. They were colleagues, very friendly colleagues. For a second, he wondered how many smileys Hange used when messaging Zeke.
Still, Levi saw some glimmer of hope and optimism in the fact that they were creating a special bond in their own way.
And who would he be to turn down a special invite from a special colleague. I’ll see you there then :) He added his own smiley in the end, trying to forget the fact that he had wasted a good few seconds vacillating between the winking smiley face and the normal one.
Hange’s reply came quickly and maybe a little more enthusiastically. Okay! We’ll pick you up Friday night at the office :D
Levi was grateful at least he had something to look forward to.
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gukyi · 5 years ago
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four weeks | kth
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summary: four weeks. that’s how long you’re trapped on campus after missing your flight home because of a grossly overtime final. and as you’re walking around your empty campus, thinking that you could sink no lower, you find yourself alone in the art building with a certain freshman-year-dorm-neighbor from hell, and he’s got an offer that you don’t think you can refuse: he’s staying on campus this winter break as well, and he’s happy to let you live with him.
or, four weeks is all it takes to fall in love.
{enemies to lovers!au, roommates!au, college!au}
pairing: art and chemistry double major kim taehyung x female reader genre: fluff, angst, comedy, the whole nine!! word count: 20k warnings: alcohol consumption (be safe!), unwanted sexual advances (not between main characters and not at all explicit), and a ton of college tomfoolery. a/n: i’m finally finished with my very first semester of college! it was a lot, but finishing this fic was a treat after my damn finals, which were very stressful. this is part of the stranded for christmas collab, and i’m so honored to be doing this with such amazing, talented writers! please give them and their fics lots of love, and enjoy this super fun train wreck of a fic!
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Admittedly, Global Politics in the Twentieth Century has never treated you particularly well. 
Your lecturer is about as interesting as grass growing, the readings are low quality scans of book pages with the tiniest font and absolutely no line spacing, and any friends you had in that class in the beginning of the semester dropped out of it by the time mid-September rolled around, leaving you trapped due to societal pressures and a History and Politics general education requirement you still have yet to finish. 
But, of all the things you could imagine Global Politics in the Twentieth Century doing to you, like charging you an exorbitant $200 dollars for a textbook you would never open anyway, burning your house down, or even straight up just murdering you, this is by far the worst. 
It’s bad enough that your final for Global Politics in the Twentieth Century is on the last possible day for finals at the latest possible time, but when the clock strikes 8:00PM and you have just about fucking had it with this semester, you realize that no one else is standing up. 
This panic intensifies as you begin thinking of all of the terrible things that could be the reasoning behind this: you’re just the dumbass who finished their final first and got all of the questions wrong, the clocks have yet to adjust to daylight savings and you think that it’s 8:00PM when really it’s 7:00PM, or, worst of all, your final is running overtime. 
You have only ever heard of horror stories about overtime finals. Things like having to cram the next three-hour final into one hour, or having to reschedule the final to some other time that is equally as conflicting. Stuff that is, to a normal human being, a minor to moderate inconvenience at best (and to an overdramatic college student—pure, unadulterated hell), but when this is the last final on the last day at the latest time, there are no other finals to be had. No other school-related scheduling conflicts barreling into you. 
It’s just your luck, really, that on the last day of the semester, at the latest time you are allowed to be here, Global Politics in the Twentieth Century would come back to bite you in the ass one last time. As if all the times you dozed off in class (or just plain skipped), forgot to turn in your reading analyses, and showed up late to your recitation are finally catching up to you. Like the very worst kind of karma that could ever befall you. 
Well, to be fair, it’s not as if the rest of the day has treated you any better. The entire time you’ve been awake on this fine December day has been an absolute trash can of a day. 
This is how the beginning of your very last day of the semester played out:
Your alarm went off at 8:00AM sharp, purposefully set that early so you could wake up and have a productive day studying before your final at 6:00PM.
You hit snooze and ended up waking up around 11:33AM.
You scrambled out of bed very inelegantly and attempted to get your life together before noon so you could at least have six hours worth of a productive study day before your final. 
You remembered that you hadn’t packed yet, so you spent the next hour frantically stuffing your belongings into the singular carry-on sized suitcase meant to last you through your month-long winter break. 
You also realized that you hadn’t done your laundry for the week (well, week and 6 days…), and you obviously want to bring clean clothes back home so you spend the next two hours doing your laundry and finishing up your packing.
By the time you finally managed to get the time to study, the panic had fully nestled itself into your bones, so you could not focus and spent the next three hours staring at your study guide and praying that osmosis would kick in so you could actually retain information. 
You left to go to your final five minutes later than you should have and then ran across campus (with absolutely no dignity left) in order to get there on time. 
You arrived at your final just in time, only for there to be technical difficulties with printing the exam because your professor is a procrastinator, just like you are.
The next thirty minutes were then spent contacting the IT department, attempting to fix the printer, having to go print in another building, and then coming back with the final exam to a room of aggravated students who thought that they would be thirty-minutes into the exam by now. 
You are taking the final exam. It’s stupid difficult and you’re absolutely going to tank it. 
You are watching as the final runs overtime for about half an hour.
You are watching as the final runs overtime for about an hour. 
You are watching as the final runs overtime for about an hour and a half.
And on your very last day of the fall semester, your final runs overtime by two whole hours because of some mystic force determined to ruin your life, and your flight heading back home took off fifteen minutes ago. 
You know, it could be worse. You could have failed all of your classes. Instead, you paid an exorbitant $500 to miss your flight, fail your Global Politics in the Twentieth Century final, and end up trapped on campus for all of winter break because you don’t have the money to buy another plane ticket at such late notice (or at all). 
So, it could be worse. 
You trudge out of your final exam and try not to burst into tears on your way back to your dormitory. Barely anybody is left on campus now that finals are officially over, but you still want to save that last shred of dignity. As you’re walking down the pathway, you begin to feel wet splotches on your face. For a moment, you think that they are fat tears rolling down your face, but you look at the cobblestone beneath your feet and realize that instead, it’s raining. 
The perfect weather to match your mood, if you’re being honest. 
Not wanting to get caught in a downpour, you end up taking refuge in the coffee shop connected to the art building on campus. It’s a genius business design, if you say so yourself, because there is no one more dependent on caffeine than sleep-deprived, eyebag-laden art students. Surprisingly enough, there are still people behind the counter bustling around, so you use the last of your university dollars to order a peppermint hot chocolate to warm your insides (but not your cold, dead soul). 
From there, you take a quick detour to explore the art building, a building you have, admittedly, never really taken much of a look at. It must be empty now, with everyone off campus—except you, of course—which gives you the perfect opportunity to wallow in peace while admiring art. 
Walking inside, you stare at your reflection in the enormous glass walls. Look at your tired eyes, slouched shoulders, lips pressed thin, and hands warmed only by the heat of your cardboard coffee cup. Count each acne mark and hair out of place. It’s almost like you’re watching yourself as you look in the mirror, a third person standing in the background. The audience. Like the person who’s looking back at you isn’t you at all. 
It's quite artistic, actually. Ironically enough.
But no matter how picturesque, how cinematic this particular moment of your life is, nothing can really soothe you after missing your flight, failing your final, and pretty much having the worst day of your entire life.
Just then, you hear footsteps echoing down the halls.
You assume that it must just be a professor leaving their office, or even maybe one of the hardworking security guards, but as you watch the glass walls to catch a glimpse of who's passing by, you realize that it's not a professor, or a security guard, or even a very large mouse scurrying across the floor.
"I thought I would be the last one in here," Kim Taehyung says when he spots you, stopping in his tracks with a canvas about half the size of him underneath his arm.
"So did I," you muse in response, not really wanting to turn around to save yourself the trouble of talking to him.
Still, Kim Taehyung has always been one hell of an observant guy, so by the time he's stopped behind you, he's already peering into the reflection of the glass windows to look at who he's talking to.
"Y/N?" He asks, walking up to you with his eyebrow raised. He comes over, standing next to you as you look at each other's reflections in the glass. "Never thought I'd see you in here."
"Me neither, to be honest," you say. Seeing as you aren't a visual studies major, you never really considered the art building to be a location of top priority. Until now, that is.
The last time you spoke to Kim Taehyung was the last day of your freshman year, when everybody was getting ready to move out, packing up their belongings and removing the fifteen thousand Command hooks stuck to their walls. You and him made eye contact as you placed the last of your boxes for the semester into those enormous Residential Services carts, glaring at each other from your adjacent rooms. 
“First year flew by, didn’t it?” Taehyung asks, smirk lacing his features. 
“Thank God it’s over,” you tell him. 
“Not gonna miss me, huh?” Taehyung winks, and it makes you want to take this cardboard box filled with all of the notebooks and lined paper and folders you used throughout the year and chuck it at his head. 
“Miss you?” You ask with a scoff. With the final box finally out of your room, you can officially lock the door behind you, closing the chapter on your very first year at university. “Please. Nothing makes me happier than the fact that I don’t have to live next to you anymore.”
“Why are you still here?” Taehyung asks, tapping his fingers on the side of the canvas underneath his arm. “Thought you’d be off campus by now.”
“I had a late final,” you say, pretending that your life and every aspect of it is fine when it is, in fact, not fine at all. The best case scenario is that Taehyung accepts your bullshit answer for what it is and heads off to do whatever it is that he does, leaving you alone so you can wallow in pity and ponder the meaning of life. The worst case scenario is that Taehyung stays. 
And Taehyung has always been very good at picking the latter. 
“Ah, sucks, for what class?” Taehyung asks. You can’t tell if he’s genuinely curious or just wants to interrupt your personal self-wallow time for as long as possible. 
“Global Politics in the Twentieth Century,” you tell him with a sigh. You don’t want to have to hear, say, read, or write that name ever again. 
“Oh, really? I took that class last semester,” Taehyung says with an eyebrow raised, surprised. “I thought it was super interesting.”
As if you needed any more proof that you and Kim Taehyung are exact opposites in every way. You are hardly surprised that Kim Taehyung enjoyed Global Politics in the Twentieth Century—not when the two of them have so much in common, like inconveniencing you, being annoying, and sort of always having it out for you. It’s like they were meant to be together. 
“I can’t say I thought the same,” you say pointedly, lips pursed into a tight line. 
“Ah, well, I never did peg you for a history buff,” Taehyung says with a shrug of his shoulders. 
“Why are you still on campus? I thought art students had to turn in their final projects on the first day of exams,” you ask, turning the focus onto him. It’s obvious that he has no intention of leaving you alone, so your next best option is to interrogate him until the tension between the two of you is so suffocating, so thick and heavy, that he wants to leave. 
“I had a couple of chem finals after I finished up my art classes,” Taehyung says. Right. You forgot he was doing a double major. “And, my parents are actually travelling this winter break, so I was planning on staying on campus. Didn’t really want to go back to an empty house, you know?”
After the day you’ve had, you can think of nothing better than opening the door to your home, knowing that you have the entire place to yourself and can spend the night in your bedroom, watching Netflix. 
“You’re staying on campus?” You ask. Great. The only two people who will be on campus this winter recess are you and Kim Taehyung. Fantastic. 
“Yeah,” Taehyung says, clearly unaffected. He seems particularly unbothered by the fact that he can’t go home, almost like he’s been looking forward to having the entire university to himself. “You’re about to head home, then, aren’t you? Just taking a quick break in the art building?”
Well, almost to himself. 
The chances of running into Taehyung this winter break, despite being probably the only two people on campus, is still slim. It’s a big campus, and there are people who are not part of the university that walk on campus all the time. 
And still, you don’t know what you’ll do if you lie to Taehyung and tell him you’re about to fly home, and then bump into him at the local coffee shop. You might just perish. That might be what happens. 
So, for once in your life, you suck it up and tell the truth. For once. 
“Actually, I missed my flight because of my final running overtime, so I’m sort of stuck here,” you tell him, and as the words leave your lips it feels like your whole body gets weighed down, like you’re cemented to the floor.
It’s only then that Taehyung actually turns to face you, so you aren’t standing shoulder to shoulder and staring at the rain pattering on the pavement outside. You look at him, meeting his eyes and to your surprise, they aren’t filled with mirth. He hasn’t got this pleased grin on his face. He’s not milking this situation for what it could be milked for at all. He could be standing here, bathing in the satisfaction of your timely demise, and he’s not. 
He actually looks quite sad. 
“Really?” He asks, genuine. 
“Yeah,” you say, and it’s then that you accept your fate, resign yourself to the fact that you’re trapped on campus with no way (and no money) to get home, and try to look for the silver lining. “So, I’ve actually got to get going, grab my stuff and everything.”
“Oh, do you live off campus?” Taehyung asks. “We should get together sometime this break. Who else are we gonna talk to, right?” 
Spending time with Taehyung on your lonely-ass winter break sounds like the absolute worst thing in the entire world. It’s been two years since the last time you were forced to be within fifty feet of each other, so even having this conversation is taking you by surprise.
“No, I’m still staying on campus. But my dorm is closing for the winter break, so I need to go and find an Airbnb or something to stay somewhere,” you say, feeling your heart break at the notion of spending even more money this winter break after having watched your $500 dollar airplane ticket get flushed down the toilet. 
Taehyung stays silent, eyes gazing at the lines between the linoleum tiles on the floor. He’s stopped tapping on the side of his canvas, a painting which you still haven’t fully gotten a glimpse of. In the quiet of the art building, the dust settles, and you wait for Taehyung to say something. Anything. 
After a few more seconds, you decide that the two of you have been standing in awkward silence for long enough. 
“Well, I’ll see you around, I guess,” you say nervously, letting out an unnatural and forced laugh as you turn on your feet and begin to head towards the exit. You have no idea where you’re going to go or what you’re going to do, but what you do know is that you have to be out of your building by noon tomorrow, so you’ve got less than a day to figure it out. 
And then, Taehyung says the worst thing he could possibly say at this given moment:
“Do you wanna stay with me?”
You stop dead in your tracks. 
“What?”
“You don’t have to say yes,” Taehyung immediately clarifies, as if that makes the offer any less sudden. “But I live in an off-campus apartment year round, so you could always stay with me if you’d like. You wouldn’t have to book an Airbnb or anything. But you don’t have to.”
You close your eyes, feeling your chest rise and sink as you inhale and exhale. You can’t believe you’re actually considering his offer. You can’t believe that Taehyung would willingly offer up his personal abode, his private apartment to you, the freshman year next-door neighbor who knocked on his door every six hours to tell him to shut the fuck up. You cannot believe that you are on the verge of accepting. 
“Are you sure?” You ask, both eyebrows raised. Yes, the idea of free lodging and no-hassle appeals greatly to you, but you’re not so certain that Taehyung or you actually want this. After all, you spent all of freshman year hating on each other’s living habits as personal hobbies of yours. “You don’t have to offer just because I don’t have a place to stay. Seriously.”
“No,” Taehyung says, taking a step towards you. It’s barely a foot, but it feels like he’s a thousand miles closer to you than he was before. “I mean it. If you want to stay with me, you’re welcome to. I have a futon in my living room that you can sleep on. I’m being serious.”
You cannot believe that he’s asking this. 
You cannot believe you’re considering this. 
You cannot believe you’re about to say yes to this. 
“You really mean it?” You ask one more time, just so you can be certain. You’d hardly be surprised if this whole thing was just a mindfuck. 
“I do,” Taehyung says. “No matter what, I don’t think anybody should be alone for the holidays.”
“Then yes,” you say, letting Taehyung catch up to you as you begin to walk towards the exit, step by step. “I’d really appreciate it.” You turn to look at him, your eyes meeting his own chocolate brown ones, nearly ink black in the dark. You can’t offer much, certainly not anything to top this gracious proposal, but you smile, and he smiles back, and you think that’s enough. 
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Your first order of business is trekking back to your dormitory and grabbing your fully-packed suitcase. At least spending an hour shoving as many of your belongings as possible into a tiny carry-on has its benefits despite you not setting foot in the airport. 
“Been a long time since we’ve done this,” Taehyung comments mindlessly as you walk through campus, following the cobblestone path as a shortcut to his apartment. 
“Done what?” You ask snarkily. “Hung out with each other?” You scoff. You and Taehyung spent all of freshman year skirting around each other, desperately trying to avoid contact while also banging on each other’s doors every ten minutes. It was essentially two semesters worth of shouting at each other through walls and sneering when you actually locked eyes. 
“Talked,” Taehyung simplifies, because he’s right. 
“Isn’t that what we were aiming for?” You ask with a raised eyebrow, turning to look at him as your suitcase wheel skips on a stone out of place. “I thought we had reached that consensus already.” It’s been a year and a half since you last spoke to each other. You were almost confident that, without any overlapping classes, you would be able to keep that streak going long after graduation. 
As it turns out, things change. 
“I don’t know if we ever actually agreed on that,” Taehyung says, thinking back. “Almost like it went…” he pauses, and you can’t be sure if it’s for dramatic effect or because he actually doesn’t know what to say. “Unspoken.”
The irony is not lost on you. In fact, it hits you smack dab in the forehead as you watch Taehyung’s curious expression morph into the sleazy frat boy one he wore so much back then. He looks very pleased with his pun. It makes you want to sock him in the face. 
And as it turns out, some things never change. 
You resist the urge to punch him in the shoulder because he offered you a place to stay for this break and you sort of (actually, really) owe him big time right now. But that doesn’t mean you can’t send a disapproving frown, which seems to do the trick. 
“I distinctly remember how you were so excited to never have to live next to me again when we moved out,” Taehyung says like he’s remembering a fun trip to the zoo. Almost like he looks upon the last time you ever interacted with each other fondly. 
You mentally sigh. If only freshman year you knew what was going to happen in the middle of your junior year. If only your final hadn’t run overtime by two hours. If only you had booked a later flight. 
If only. 
“I don’t remember that at all,” you lie like a liar, saying the words as the picture of you snarkily spitting them at Taehyung at the end of your freshman year plays in your brain on repeat. 
“You sure about that, Y/N?” Taehyung says, turning to look you up and down. He’s always been such a people reader, and you’ve always felt so helplessly transparent in front of him. Even back then. Even now. “Because I don’t really think that your memory is that bad.”
“Nope, no, I don’t,” you say quickly, trying to get Taehyung to stop eyeing you like you’re a question on an exam that he thinks is suspiciously easy. 
“Well, I suppose it doesn’t matter then, does it?” Taehyung muses as you round the street corner and his apartment complex comes into view. “Since we’ll be living together, anyway.”
“Miss you? Please. Nothing makes me happier than the fact that I don’t have to live next to you anymore.”
Before you can wheel your cart down the hallway and kiss your freshman year goodbye, Taehyung opens his mouth and says one more thing. You almost don’t hear him, too busy reminding yourself that you’ll never have to see him again, but then he says, “One day, Y/N, you’re going to realize that we’re closer than you think.”
When you walk into Taehyung’s apartment, your eyes zero in on these three things: the navy blue futon pushed up against the wall by his television and the fact that it doesn’t look like the kind of used furniture from off of the street that most college kids typically resort to, the little wooden kitchen table that looks straight out of a family-owned Italian restaurant (looks like the two of you will be eating dinner together), and the paintings on the walls. 
“Did you paint these?” Is the first thing you ask once you’re inside, putting your suitcase up against the wall as Taehyung takes off his coat. 
“Those? Yeah, I did them early last year. My walls looked so damn plain without anything on them.”
In freshman year, Taehyung seemed like the kind of artsy hipster who shopped at Urban Outfitters and put vinyl records on his wall with Command Strips but never actually listened to them. 
But the pieces on his walls aren’t vinyls of bands like Arctic Monkeys and Modern Baseball. They’re paintings, oil and acrylics and even a bit of charcoal. Still life and portraits and shadows. 
You had never seen one of his paintings before. You never imagined you’d ever want to, or even get the chance to. And now, you’re standing in the middle of his apartment, and you’re surrounded by them. 
“They’re…” You trail off, eyes bouncing from wall to wall as you take all of them in. There’s at least ten, one, if not two on each wall in sight. His bedroom is probably filled with them. His apartment’s not enormous, rather small since it’s only got one bedroom, but the paintings make the whole place bigger. Make it feel full of life. 
“They’re alright,” Taehyung finishes. He’s already grabbing extra blankets from the storage closet in the side of the wall. “They were assignments we had during the semester so I figured that they’d be put to good use on my wall.”
“It’s very impressive,” you admit. “Kind of a flex, but an impressive flex.” There is something so perfectly Taehyung about the fact that he’s got art all over his walls, but they’re his very own pieces that he has framed and hanging, on display for the entire world to see if they’d like. 
“They’d collect dust otherwise,” he says with a shrug. He tosses two blankets and a pillow your way, letting them plop onto the futon. “Are those enough blankets? It can get fucking cold in here, so I don’t want you to freeze to death or anything.”
And for a moment, you think that Taehyung has actually outgrown his asshole-y freshman days, maturing into someone with an actual moral backbone.
“How considerate,” you say sarcastically, “but I think I’ll be alright. I’m a big, strong girl.”
“Just don’t come crawling into my bed if you want a taste of that weighted-blanket life,” Taehyung says, pretending to flip his hair. “Though, I wouldn’t blame you if you did want to sleep with me.”
With a pillow right at your disposal, you waste no time grabbing it and chucking it straight at Taehyung’s face. He easily dodges, having spotted the move from a mile away, and chuckles. 
“Come on, Y/N, you can do better than that,” he says disapprovingly, shaking his head as he makes his way to the kitchen. “Your arm was much stronger back in freshman year.”
Scowling, you watch as he puts on the kettle to boil, letting the water begin to bubble as he goes about his business like he doesn’t have a guest in his living room that absolutely can’t stand him. 
And you realize that maybe Taehyung’s a couple of years older, a couple of years wiser, but that doesn’t make him a couple of years any less unbearable.
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If you were a sleep-deprived engineering student three cans of Monster deep who, in their 4AM haze, invented a time machine to go back to freshman year, and you told your eighteen-year-old self that you would be living under the same damn roof as Kim Taehyung in two years time, freshman year you would probably sock you in the face. And ask you if you changed majors. Which, you did.
It’s not a far reach to wonder why. By the time October rolled around, the two of you had already established yourselves as archenemies until the end of time. 
It was a natural progression, really. Two tiny dorm rooms right next to each other, two beds pressed up against opposite sides of the same paper-thin wall, and two disgruntled freshmen trying their hardest not to die of alcohol poisoning. 
Now, you don’t have a track record for going to sleep at a reasonable hour. In fact, you don’t think you’ve gone to bed before 11PM since middle school. But is it really that irrational of you to want to get some well-deserved shuteye at two in the morning after a long day of procrastination and a long night of doing the studying you should have done during the day? Your roommate is fast asleep across from you, having gone to sleep at midnight like a regular college student who has her life together, which means that she’s immune to the fact that right next door, you can hear nothing but pounding drums making the very linoleum floor of your dormitory shake. 
Scowling, you scramble out of bed, sliding on your shoes to go give a certain Kim Taehyung a bit of a reprimanding. 
Why the fuck does he listen to heavy drums at two in the morning? What the fuck is he doing? Does he not own headphones, or anything that might restrict the sound to his own two ears and nothing else? Does he not have any respect for the people next door to him that might also have to listen to the sound of a thumping bass while they’re trying to go to sleep?
Some of you have 9AM’s tomorrow morning. And by some of you, you mean you. 
You quietly shut the door behind you so as not to wake your roommate, dead-bolting it so you don’t get locked out and have to trudge down to the Help Desk looking like a tired piece of non-recyclable garbage, and immediately bang on Kim Taehyung’s door. He hasn’t got a roommate, and you know he’s awake, which means that if he doesn’t respond, you’ll know why. 
Surprisingly enough, he does, opening the door and immediately grinning once he sees who’s on the other side, like he can’t get enough of the fact that his mere existence bothers you. 
“It’s 2AM,” you tell him, in lieu of a greeting. 
He checks his watch. “That it is.”
“Would you mind turning down the music? I’m trying to go to sleep.”
“This late, Y/N?” Taehyung asks, an eyebrow raised. “No wonder you’re always so cranky.”
“Maybe it’s because my next-door neighbor plays loud fucking music when I’m trying to go to sleep!” You say, already beginning to raise your voice like a loser who can’t control her emotions.
Which is exactly what you are, actually. So this is very on brand for you. 
“Hmm, never thought about it that way,” Taehyung says innocently. He’s got a gleam in his eye that says otherwise. 
“I’m being very nice to you right now, Kim Taehyung. Please turn your music down. Because it’s loud and you’re probably bothering other people as well,” you say, restraining yourself. If you were any more sleep-deprived you’d storm into his room and pound in his face like it was the fucking drums he’s listening to. 
“But you’re my only neighbor,” Taehyung says, a bitter reminder that you were unlucky enough to be the second-to-last room in the corridor, and he, the very last one. 
You inhale, trying to not lose your cool despite having probably already lost it. Kim Taehyung makes you want to tear your eyeballs out. Or buy heavy-duty earplugs off of Amazon Prime. The thing is, one of those options costs you money, and one is entirely free. So, it’s not difficult to see which one you’re leaning towards. 
“Taehyung, please turn your music down, or so help me God. I’m asking nicely,” you can feel the carbon dioxide paths coming from your nose as you breathe, in and out and in and out. 
“Just for you, Y/N,” Taehyung says with a grin. God. You could just straight sock him in the face right now. “It helps me focus, but so does getting to see you.”
“Perish immediately,” you tell him sharply before pulling the door shut, marching back off to your room. 
True to his word, Kim Taehyung does turn off his music. Or puts in headphones. At least he’s conceded.
That is, until you wake up to a crash of glass later that morning at 7AM, coming from only one direction. 
The fact of the matter is, everything you and Taehyung did that year bothered the other so immensely that hatred, pure, unadulterated dislike, was really the only thing that could have come out of it. 
“You still listening to loud ass drums in the middle of the night?” You ask, eyeing the speakers by Taehyung’s television as you sit on his couch (as far apart from each other as possible) and eat some leftover spaghetti. 
“I invested in some AirPods as a treat to myself last year, so yes, but don’t worry,” Taehyung says. He’s mindlessly flicking through the available Hulu options on his TV, severely unimpressed by every one of them. 
“Wow, AirPods, sounds like you’re moving up in the world,” you say callously. “At least I don’t have to listen to it with you anymore.”
“I wasn’t kidding when I said it helped me focus,” Taehyung says, all matter-of-fact about it. “It was from a Spotify playlist of modern orchestral music. You should give it a listen, it really gets you into the zone.”
“My relationship with classical music has, unfortunately, been tainted by a certain someone,” you remind him, taking the time to shoot him a glare just in case he doesn’t already know who exactly is at fault. 
“What a shame, you might actually like it,” Taehyung says sadly, shaking his head. 
“So what are the speakers for, then? If not for your fuckin’ drums,” you ask, motioning to them again as you slurp up the last of your spaghetti. It’s not as if you’ve got some sort of sacred reputation to protect in front of him. He’s seen you at your best (the first day of freshman year, when there was still light in your eyes), and at your worst (2AM, coming out of a drunken stupor, and bedhead-ridden). Like an ex-boyfriend, or something. 
“My friends really like singing karaoke,” Taehyung says. He points to the bluetooth microphones underneath the television as extra proof. 
“Why does that not surprise me,” you muse to yourself. Taehyung always struck you as someone that needs people not to calm him down, but to elevate his already boisterous personality. Friends who are equally as unabashed as he is. 
“Since you’re here for a whole month, we should try it some time,” Taehyung suggests, taking the empty bowl from your hands and heading back to the sink to wash up. 
“You need help with that?” You ask, immediately getting up because even if Taehyung has a tendency to drive you up the wall, you’re still going to be a good guest.
“No, don’t sweat it,” Taehyung says with a shrug. “You know, I have karaoke for All I Want For Christmas Is You. Super seasonal, right?” 
You dust off your hands from where you’re standing, loitering in that weird halfway point between his kitchen and his living room. Checking the clock underneath his television, you realize that it’s already past ten. And while you haven’t gone to sleep this early in a while, being in Taehyung’s apartment makes you feel all sorts of strange. Subdued and exhausted, too grateful to be your normal aggressive and witty self. And after such a long goddamn day, passing out on his navy blue futon seems like absolute heaven. 
“Not right now,” you say, shaking your head. Karaoke is something that friends do with other friends. And despite currently living under the same roof, you and Kim Taehyung are not friends. 
(But perhaps you will be. And that’s the scary part.)
You sigh, absolutely tanked. It’s been a stupidly long day. “Maybe later.”
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Living with Taehyung is a sort of strange limbo you never, in a million years, pictured yourself in. You aren’t close enough to be friends but you’ve matured out of being the true enemies you had both envisioned the yourselves as in freshman year. The both of you walk around his apartment like you’re afraid to talk to the other, waiting patiently for the bathroom when the other person’s inside, trying to keep yourself busy with nonexistent work (it is winter break, after all) and the apps on your phones. 
This is the sort of thing you dreamed of when you were a freshman. A Kim Taehyung that you could co-exist with peacefully. Someone who didn’t spend every waking moment of his life making every waking moment of yours unbearable. You used to find excuses to sleep overnight in the library (it was open 24/7, after all) just so you wouldn’t have to go back to your dorm and see his stupid face. Now, the two of you sit on opposite ends of the couch minding your own goddamn business and doing two totally unrelated activities. In silence. The only noises being his refrigerator/freezer combo when it starts making ice and the sounds of your fingers hitting the keyboards on your laptops. Maybe he’s playing a video game on the Playstation 4 he keeps out in the living room, but he has headphones on and isn’t saying a word. 
It’s a very strange sort of limbo indeed, because no opportunities arise for you to become friends nor do any arise for you to become enemies. At this rate, you’ll live together for the month-long winter break and when it ends, you’ll go back to never speaking to each other again. 
And that, strangely enough, makes you sad. Makes you want to reach out to him, try and build up a relationship that last ended in absolute chaos so that when you leave this place, it won’t have been for naught. You will have gained something from it, no matter how small. 
But just like usual, Taehyung beats you to it. 
“Hey,” he says one day, walking into the living room and already pulling on his overcoat. “You free right now?”
“Yeah, why?” You ask, shutting your laptop as you turn to him. He’s all dressed up and you’ve been wearing the same hoodie for the past forty-eight hours. 
“Let’s get hotpot. I’m freezing and I want some hot soup and meat.”
So, you go and get hotpot. 
Like any normal university with more than approximately three East Asians enrolled, there’s a hotpot place right off campus that many a college student frequent. You have, admittedly, not been since freshman year, but this winter break you seem to be reaching back into all of those memories anyway, like a can of worms. Memory worms. 
“I’m starving,” Taehyung says as the two of you sit down. He’s already opening the menu, eyeing all of the different ingredients he can order for a simple All-You-Can-Eat fare. “Plus, I’ve been craving hotpot for weeks now.”
As if on cue, his stomach grumbles and you can hear it from across the booth.
“Even my tummy knows,” Taehyung says, placing a palm to his belly to soothe it. “Have you gotten hotpot before?”
“Yeah, but it was a while ago. I just never had the time to go for a whole two hours and pig out on food,” you say with a sigh. It’s been so long that you barely remember what it tastes like. 
“Then we’ll spend every minute that we’re allowed to here, eating as much food as we want and gaining a few pounds while we’re at it,” Taehyung says, determined. The waiter comes by to pour you both some water and he already begins to order, pointing to about fifteen different things on the menu before the waiter whizzes off. 
“I don’t think I heard a single word you told that guy,” you say candidly. Taehyung listed everything off so quickly that it went right over your head. 
“I just ordered a lot of food, so be prepared,” Taehyung says like it’s a promise. He’s got this glint in his eye, one that tells you that you should be glad you came on a fairly-empty stomach because it’s about to be filled to the brim. 
And prepared you are. Within five minutes of Taehyung ordering, there are plates and dishes and boards of food in front of you and a steaming pot of broth in the middle. There’s so much on the table that you can hardly see the marble table top underneath. 
Taehyung dives right in, clearly an experienced hotpot eater. He grabs two bowls filled with various sauces and pops a couple of the vegetables into his mouth as he waits for the broth to boil. And when it begins to bubble, he immediately begins dumping everything in sight into it, from meat to noodles to vegetables. It all looks ridiculously appetizing. 
When the first round of hotpot is over and done with, you already feel yourself starting to get sleepy just from the consumption overload. Taehyung, on the other hand, has apparently no limit and is already ordering more, pointing to another fifteen things on the menu. 
“Never thought we’d be doing this, did you?” Taehyung asks, and you can hear the knowing tone in his voice. Like he already knows how you’re going to answer him. 
“I have to admit that I never did,” you say. It must the food that’s softened you up. No wonder Taehyung invited you to a place where you can literally eat as much as you want in a two-hour timeframe. 
“This is nice, though, isn’t it?” He asks. 
And for once in your life, you agree. It is nice. Not just the food (though the food is very nice) but being with someone on a winter break that would otherwise be overwhelmingly lonely. Eating out with someone, even if it’s someone with whom your relationship isn’t all that strong, isn’t that sturdy. It’s nice. Because it means that, somewhere along the way, you both wanted something to change for the better. 
“It is.” You nod. “Way better than all the times we fought during freshman year.”
“Remind me why we never went to our RA to resolve things like we should have?” Taehyung says, but he doesn’t make it sound like you both made a mistake. He asks because he’s curious, and because the past is the past. 
“I think we were both too fucking prideful for our own good,” you say, shaking your head. You now would disapprove of you in freshman year so strongly. “We thought that we could either resolve it ourselves or spend the rest of our lives hating each other.”
“Isn’t that crazy?” Taehyung asks, holding up his water like it’s a glass of vintage red wine from the 1800’s. “That we thought that we could just spend the rest of our lives hating each other?”
“I was prepared to do it,” you say, taking another piece of meat from the hotpot in front of you, letting the steam waft from it like a tiny campfire. “With how big this school is, I was convinced that you and I would never have to see each other again. Never have the opportunity to change how we felt about each other.”
“But that’s not how life works, Y/N,” Taehyung tells you, looking into your eyes like he’s trying to reach into your soul, pick apart the memories of freshman year and watch as your relationship deteriorated as each day went by. “It doesn’t matter if we see each other every day for the rest of our lives or if, after this, we never say another word to each other. You will always have the opportunity to change how you feel about someone, even if you aren’t with them. Even if you aren’t seeing them at all.” He takes a deep breath, and reaches over the steaming pot of soup to nudge your shoulder with his finger, ever so slightly. It makes you look up at him, meet his dark brown eyes with your own, foggy from the steam. “That’s what makes us human, Y/N. We’re human because we can change.”
Your heart, still and silent, begins to thump. 
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“Do you wanna go to New York?”
“Today?”
It’s early in the morning on Christmas Eve, and the two of you are wide awake after Taehyung’s neighbors a floor below him called the fire department as an early wake-up call for the entire complex. You’ve always been a light sleeper—Taehyung made sure of that in freshman year—but even he woke up as the fire trucks pulled up to the fire lane next to the apartment building. He came stumbling out of his room in nothing but a t-shirt two sizes too big and sweatpants hanging low on his hips, locks of his hair sticking every which way, face illuminated by the blue, red, and orange lights of the emergency vehicles beneath the window. 
And he stayed like that, even as the noise died down and the sun rose. He marched around looking like he had just rolled out of bed, barely sparing himself a second glance in the reflection of his refrigerator. 
“Yeah,” Taehyung responds like it’s obvious. “If we hopped on a bus now we could make it there by nine and spend the day there. How about it?”
“You mean, right now?” You ask, just as clarification. College and its many features have forced you to grow used to spontaneity, but it usually came in the form of “I’m hungry, so I am going to eat an entire bag of Hot Cheetos at this exact moment” or “Yes, my bank account is crying but these pants are very cute,” and not, “Do you wanna go to New York?”
“In a bit. Buses leave from here every hour to go to New York, especially since it’s the holiday season. Tickets are ten dollars. We could do it, if you’d like,” Taehyung says casually, like he’s suggesting that the two of you go grocery shopping or something else equally mundane. 
“Just for the day?” You ask, a girl of both many questions and a shocked expression. 
“Sure,” Taehyung says with a shrug, biting into a tomato as if it were a goddamn apple. “We can go to a museum or two, eat a nice lunch or dinner, and go ice skating at Rockefeller. See the tree, too. It’ll get us in the holiday spirit, don’t you think?”
And normally an outing to New York would have you planning weeks in advance, organizing reservations and buying tickets for entry into exhibits, but it’s winter break and you’ve got more free time than you know what to do with. 
And maybe you’d hate to admit it, but you need someone like Taehyung to get you off of your ass and out of the house, do something fun and spontaneous like college students do in the movies. 
Taehyung is practically a movie portrayal of a college student in real life. He’s spontaneous, secretive, sage. He’s artsy and worldly, paints but is also extremely smart and well-educated. He lives in a quaint off-campus apartment by himself and spends his days making friends and keeping busy. He loves to tease you, and has that sort of lopsided smirk that all casanovas do. And he is, as much as you’d hate to admit it, always been something of a looker. He’s got the same sort of handsome, classic look that young European men in paintings from the eighteenth century have, a portrait of them in the prime of their lives. One wink and he’d send every preteen girl in the audience to their knees.
And you? Well, you suppose you’re the tragically unlucky female lead who has to live with him until classes resume. 
Taehyung’s standing in the kitchen, leaning on the counter island as he scrolls for bus tickets on his phone. “There’s a bus leaving from the station in thirty minutes. Think we can make it?”
It might be the fact that you’ve been holed up in Taehyung’s apartment for the past forty-eight hours that makes you say yes. Or it’s the desperation to do something, anything, literally anything, to keep yourself busy this break. 
Or maybe, just maybe, it’s that little voice in the back of your chest, one buried in the depths of your heart, that makes you go. Because there is something so wonderfully exhilarating about being spontaneous.  And there is something even more exciting about it being with someone you know. 
You grin. “Let’s do it.”
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Two hours later, the two of you are standing outside Penn Station in New York City, staring at the road signs to try and orient yourself. It’s chilly and a little windy, but the sun beats down regardless, shadows of skyscrapers cast along the streets. 
You pull out your phone to pull up the Maps app, looking up directions, but Taehyung just begins to walk down 7th Avenue, not a care in the world. 
“Where are you going?” You say quickly, scrambling to catch up to him. This early in the morning, your breath still turns to fog as you jog towards him to meet his abnormally long strides.
“Do you want to go to the Met, MOMA, or Guggenheim?” Taehyung asks simply, like he’s trying to decide which type of Doritos to get in the chips aisle. 
“Uh…” you are, admittedly, not that particular to the art that you’ll see. Art does not have as much of an immediate relevance to you as other things in your life, like your bank account, or your final semester grades. “Why don’t you pick the museum, and I’ll pick the restaurant we go to?”
“Deal,” Taehyung says, that same devilish gleam in his eyes, a trick (or two) up his sleeves. Only this time, you aren’t afraid of what he’s got in store. 
You find that you are very much looking forward to it. 
Twenty minutes later sees the both of you standing outside the gigantic glass doors of the MOMA, surrounded by a pitch black exterior about as edgy and contemporary as the pieces of art inside. 
“You never struck me as a modern art kind of guy,” you tell Taehyung as the both of you walk inside, glass windows and ceilings on every side of you and a bustling crowd right in front of you. Modern art seems rather stuffy. And perhaps, two years ago, you would have equated Taehyung to such, but now, stuffiness couldn’t be the furthest adjective to describe him. He may be a little obnoxious and overwhelmingly charismatic, but he is certainly not stuffy. 
“I prefer Impressionism and the subsequent periods,” Taehyung tells you, another fact you never knew but happily stow away. “But I am, admittedly, a bitch for modern art, no matter how goddamn stupid it is.”
“Good to know we’re spending our money on a museum that will definitely be worth our while,” you say dryly, taking the two tickets from the woman behind the desk. You pick up a map while you’re at it, almost certain to get lost in this maze of a museum, but Taehyung is already zooming off, forcing you to scurry through the herds of people just to keep up his pace. 
“Do you know where we’re going?” You ask, entirely serious. You fumble to open up the map and suddenly you’ve got a piece of shiny paper larger than your backpack in your hands, overwhelmed. 
Taehyung stops, the two of you standing right by the middle of a doorway, blocking everybody’s path. And he places his hands on top of yours, lowering the map as you gaze up at him, wondering why the heck you haven’t moved to the side so you aren’t inconveniencing the thousands of people roaming the museum. His brows are soft, a little furrowed, like someone began to knit them together but then forgot halfway through. Like he’s thinking. Like he wants to tell you something. 
“No,” Taehyung says softly, large hands enveloping yours as he begins to fold the map back up, “I don’t know where we’re going.”
You open your mouth, about to prove your point, but Taehyung continues. 
“But I don’t need to. Because we’re supposed to get lost,” he tells you, honest, candid, and true. “That’s the whole point. It’s not about the destination, it’s about the journey.”
You scoff, heart a little warm on the inside but wit still sharp. “You sound like an infomercial for a cruise.”
Taehyung laughs, tilting his head back in the way that says that he means it. “I’m serious, Y/N. Please. We don’t need a map. We can guide each other. All we need is faith, trust…” He pauses, leaning in and waiting for you to finish his sentence. 
Begrudgingly, you give in, mostly because he’s too naturally charming not to. “And pixie dust.”
Taehyung grins, satisfied, before he catches you by surprise, takes your hand in his, and pulls you into the elevator. 
Much like the corrupt businesses whose main offices are only a few minutes walk away, you go from the top down. Taehyung says that it is like a very, very long slide. You say that it’s an extremely slow walk. 
He’s an art student. You don’t really know what else you were expecting. He stares at each piece until it bores into his eyes, fills up another cup in his soul, overflowing with color, with light and meaning and everything in between. Every now and then, he and you stop at the same one, inspecting each and every detail, and Taehyung will lean to the side and whisper in your ear. 
He will tell you what he thinks of the medium, what he thinks of this piece and what he thinks of the positioning of that specific object. He tells you not how he interprets it in the eyes of the artist, but what it means to him, and how he perceives it. And, as the hours pass, you realize that, while you have been in museums before, you had never felt like you were truly there. And here you are, standing in front of priceless pieces of art with a boy in love with art beside you, and he holds your hand as he takes you through what brings him more joy than anything else. 
(Well, besides perhaps, chemistry.)
When you reach the first painting and sculpture floor, Taehyung lets out an audible gasp. 
You round the corner and before you know it, you’re standing in front of what could very well be the most famous painting of the nineteenth century. 
“I forgot it was here,” Taehyung says distantly, like he’s forgotten who he’s talking to. In the ink black of his pupils, you can see the oil painting reflected, the thick blue and yellow brushstrokes, each and every line on the canvas. 
“Now, this piece I’m familiar with,” you say, standing next to him and staring up at The Starry Night, an artistic feat, worth more than probably a hundred times your tuition, and a legacy. The legacy that The Starry Night left behind is one that you see still reflected today. You see it in all of the other people in this little room, clambering over one another just so they can get a glimpse. You see it in the little children who draw self-portraits in art class, Sharpies and markers and crayons littering the page. 
And you see it in the boy next to you, who loved something so much he knew that he would be doing it for the rest of his life. He would be following a legacy, forever, until he forged one of his own. You look not at the art but as Kim Taehyung gazes at it, memorizing each and every stroke and imprinting it onto his brain. And you finally realize what art means: passion. It means that it fills you up, flows through your blood and into your heart, consumes you. And it means that the only thing you can do to prevent it from eating you alive is to spread it, and let others get a taste of the madness. 
“It really is beautiful, isn’t it,” you muse. You don’t know much about art but when there is something so mesmerizing, so stunning, in front of you, it’s difficult not to notice. 
You feel Taehyung turn his head, letting the gaze of his piercing brown eyes rest upon your figure for a split second before he turns back. “It is,” he says. 
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The way that the two of you go through art museums, by the time you emerge, it’s already dark and the streets are beginning to empty as tourists and cityfolk alike find places to eat, walking into every bar, restaurant, cafe, and house on the hunt for a good meal, whether homemade or curated. You had spent nearly an hour in the gift shop alone, laughing at the overpriced t-shirts and kitschy pillows. 
“Where to next, m’lady?” Taehyung asks as you push open the glass doors and let the biting cold hit your noses. 
“You know, we were so busy in there that I didn’t even have time to find a nice place to eat tonight,” you admit sheepishly. 
“That’s alright,” Taehyung says with a shrug. “I like surprises. Spontaneity is my thing.”
“You don’t say,” you comment sagely, making Taehyung roll his eyes. 
Knowing that it’s nearly impossible to get a reservation now, you and Taehyung make your way south, following the flow of traffic heading towards Times Square and keeping an eye open for any places that look relatively nice and busy, but not too busy, the perfect sign of both a delicious and available restaurant. 
After walking for a few blogs, cuddling together (in a totally platonic way) to preserve as much body heat as possible in the now freezing weather, air no longer warmed by the sun’s rays, you stumble upon a tiny hole in the wall Mediterranean place. You can’t really see anything inside due to the fog on the window, forming from the combination of cold air and hot, but Taehyung does a quick google search and says that it’s a modern Mediterranean restaurant that specializes in pizza. Google says it has two dollar signs. You hear the word pizza, and everything pretty much goes out of the window. 
“Hi,” Taehyung says as you squeeze through the little hallway to get to the host, voice warm and silky. “Table for two?”
“Your last name, sir?” The man asks. 
“Oh, we don’t have a reservation,” Taehyung says with a shake of his head. You two are college students. It’s not like you plan ahead anyway. 
“That’s okay, we still ask for every customer’s name for a more personalized experience,” the host says. He leans forward, eyes wide, waiting for Taehyung to respond. 
“Kim,” Taehyung says simply as the host gathers two menus and a wine list. 
“Right this way, Mr. and Mrs. Kim,” the host says, and you open your mouth to correct him (Because you are not married. You’re not. You’re not even dating. This is not a date. It’s not a date, right?), but Taehyung puts a finger to his lips and tells you to zip it. It’s almost like he’s enjoying this. 
For the rest of the evening, the wait staff all address you and Taehyung as Mr. and Mrs. Kim, which is absolutely outrageous for multiple reasons: you are college students, you both look like college students, you’re not dating, you don’t act like you’re dating (other than the hand-holding and cuddling which was purely out of survival and nothing else), and most importantly, you’re not interested in each other like that. That part is obvious. Isn’t it?
When you order a glass of champagne each they call you Mr. and Mrs. Kim. When Taehyung has a question about one of the ingredients on one of the pizzas they call you Mr. and Mrs. Kim. When you order your food they call you Mr. and Mrs. Kim. When they come by to clarify Taehyung’s request of no anchovies they call you Mr. and Mrs. Kim. When they bring these massive pizzas and place them down on your table, wishing you a pleasant meal they call you Mr. and Mrs. Kim. 
Mr. and Mrs. Kim, they call you. 
“Everything alright, Mr. and Mrs. Kim?” Your waiter asks as you’re plowing through your individual pizzas very inelegantly. 
“Yes,” Taehyung grins cheesily. “Thank you very much.”
He’s positively beaming. 
“You’re really enjoying this, aren’t you?” You ask, a single eyebrow raised. 
“This pizza is really good,” Taehyung tells you. 
“Not that,” you say with a roll of your eyes. You know that Taehyung knows exactly what you’re referring to, he’s just being annoying about it, as per usual. “The whole ‘we’re married’ thing. You like it, don’t you?”
“The “Mr. and Mrs. Kim’ thing?” Taehyung says with a smile. He’s relishing in the feeling, especially when it’s obvious that you’re not as keen on the collective nickname. “I fucking love it. You don’t?”
“We’re college students,” you remind him. 
“So? That means that they think that we look old enough to not be college students. I consider that a win, especially because Jimin always says I look twelve,” Taehyung says with a shrug. 
“We’re not married,” you add. It’s the truth. 
“You’re right, we’re not, but Mr. and Mrs. Kim has such a nice ring to it, don’t you think? I love the way that it sounds,” Taehyung says. He basks in it. 
“We’re not even dating, Taehyung,” you say with a sigh, exasperated. Doesn’t he get it? It’s weird, being Mr. and Mrs. Kim, because you never have been. There never was a Mr. and Mrs. Kim. And quite frankly, there never will be. “We’re not even interested in it.”
“Who says?” Taehyung asks, and the path he’s directing this conversation down is not one you’d like to take. It’s rocky and bumpy and unclear, hazy with fog. You don’t do fog. You like when things are clear cut and visible. 
“I do,” you say with a frown. “Are you interested in dating me, Taehyung? Because I don’t know about you, but I don’t really want to date you right now. Or, like, at all.”
Taehyung pauses. His brows are furrowed again, but all the way this time. He stares down at his pizza, and he contemplates. You sit there and watch him, feeling the weight of every second as it passes by. Were you too harsh? Maybe you were. But it was the truth, and he deserves something honest, even if it’s brutal. 
“Oh,” Taehyung says, like he wasn’t expecting those words to come out of your mouth. What you said has been lingering between you like smoke, refusing to dissipate. “Well, I—I guess that makes two of us.” It’s obvious that there’s something else there, just underneath the water, but you don’t press further. It sounds like he’d rather keep it hidden. 
When you leave, the waitstaff bid you goodbye exactly as you had predicted. 
“Enjoy your evening, Mr. and Mrs. Kim,” they say cordially as you and Taehyung pull on your coats and hats and gloves and head out the door. 
“You too,” Taehyung says softly after a few seconds, like he was waiting for the words to fade away before speaking. “Thank you.”
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Your bus leaves from Penn Station at 9:30 that night, and it’s barely seven. Plenty of time for you to continue exploring, see Times Square all lit up like it’s New Year’s Eve, go up to the top of the Empire State Building, or even take a peek into Central Park at nighttime, when the moon is high and the lanterns are lit. 
“How about we go ice skating?” Taehyung suggests as the two of you walk along the pavement, side by side. Your hands are buried deep into the pockets of your coat. 
“At Rockefeller?”
“Sure, why not?” Taehyung says. That sentence pretty much sums up your trip to New York thus far. “I’ve always wanted to go skating and see the tree during Christmastime. When else will we get the chance?”
Five minutes later you’ve paid for rental skates, a locker for your shoes, and a ticket to the rink. Visible right next to you is the enormous tree, the lights twinkling and cameras flashing as everyone scrambles to get their Instagram picture to prove that they actually went to the tree at Rockefeller Center in New York City. 
When the zamboni is finished and the employees have skated over the ice enough to increase the level of friction, Taehyung and you balance on your skates as you walk towards the entrance. Slowly, everybody begins to glide on, wobbling at first before eventually getting the hang of it. There are a couple of small children holding onto those little penguin skate assistants, laughing as their older brothers and sisters guide them along the ice. 
“I’ve never skated before,” you admit nervously, about two seconds before you’re about to enter the rink. 
Taehyung’s mouth drops open. “Never?”
“No,” you reiterate, even more nervous than before. “I have no idea what I’m doing, I just said yes because like you said we’re in New York and it’s nearly Christmas and we should just seize every opportunity that we have and—”
“Y/N,” Taehyung says, calming you down as he ushers you away from the entrance so you aren’t blocking other people’s paths. “It’s okay. You don’t have to worry,” he tells you, holding onto your wrists to make you look up at him. “I can show you how to. It’s easier than it looks, I swear. I won’t let you fall. You just have to trust me, alright?” He shakes your wrists to catch your attention, make sure that you heard him. “Alright?”
Deep breath. Inhale, exhale. 
“Alright.”
Everything is, in fact, not alright. No matter what Taehyung says, ice skating is way more fucking difficult than it looks. Taehyung steps onto the ice and it turns into second nature for him, gliding around a small circle to get warmed up as you cling onto the side railing like an idiot. You have no idea how to move, you have no idea where to go, you just shuffle along the railing with the rest of the children who are far younger than you, also trying to skate for the first time. 
This is embarrassing. 
“You’re a liar,” you tell Taehyung pointedly as he circles around, coming up to rest next to you. You’d point at his chest for emphasis, but you’re afraid you’ll fall without both hands on the railing at all times. “This is—” you pause, remembering that there are children present, “—very difficult.”
Taehyung just chuckles. “You have to be brave, Y/N, come on,” Taehyung implores. He holds out his hand, motioning for you to let go of the wall and take a leap of faith. 
“No, I will not be brave. Please let me be weak,” you beg, scared for your life. One wrong move and you’d go splat in the middle of the rink and embarrass yourself in front of all of New York City. 
“Come on, Y/N,” Taehyung says, holding his hand closer. “You said you trusted me. I told you, I won’t let you fall. Come on. Be brave.” And then he adds, leaning in to meet your eyes, “for me?”
He’s always been too charming for your own good. 
Tentatively, second by second by painstaking second, you remove your hands from the railing, first the left and then the right, as Taehyung pulls you right next to him, holding on tight. 
“See?” He asks as you begin to move on your own, Taehyung’s short glides pulling you along the ice. “Look, it’s not that bad.”
“I am scared for my life right now.” You blink. 
“Focus on me, okay,” Taehyung says, making you meet his eyes once more. “Eyes on me, alright. You’re doing fine. You’re skating, isn’t this fun?”
“I am terrified that I am going to perish on this very rink,” you repeat for emphasis. 
“Look, Y/N, look! You’re skating!” Taehyung tells you, and finally you glance down at your feet and realize that they’re beginning to move on the ice, all on their own. 
“Oh my God! I’m skating! What the—heck!” You say, eyes widening in excitement. 
“I knew you could do it,” Taehyung says, hands gripping on tight. You can feel the warmth from his palms seep into your own, feel the back of your hand burning from the touch. “You just had to trust me.”
“This is so cool,” you say, immediately very pleased with yourself. “I’m such a pro, I can do anything. Who said skating was scary?”
Taehyung opens his mouth to respond, but you shoot him a warning glare and he zips his lips. 
“Watch this, I can even do it on my own. You’re gonna be very impressed, Kim Taehyung, just watch me!”
Within the next moment, you’re letting go of his hand and pushing yourself away from him, gliding along the ice ever-so-slightly as you begin to balance on your own. 
But power is short-lived, and much like every leading male in Greek tragedies, your hubris gets the best of you, and you face the ultimate demise. 
The moment you attempt to pick up your left foot, your right toe pick gets caught in a dip of the ice and you go toppling over, collapsing onto the ice in a cold, bruised ball. 
Luckily, your coat takes most of the hit, its length preventing your knees from hurting into the next century, but that doesn’t make it any less embarrassing. Ashamed of yourself and even more mortified to have to face Taehyung after boasting about how amazing you are, you slowly push yourself off of the ice, wobbling like a baby deer. 
“What was that, Y/N?” Taehyung says with a raised eyebrow as he skates over. He’s clearly just recovered from a laughing fit. 
“Fuck off,” you mutter, and you don’t even care if children hear you. “I got excited.”
“Clearly,” Taehyung notes, eyes wide and knowing. He holds out a hand, and before you even have time to think of a snarky retort your palm is reaching out for it, letting him pull you up off of the rink. “Here. Come on.”
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One hour and two fairly bruised knees later, you and Taehyung are taking off your skates and relishing in the feeling of your feet, flat on the ground like feet should be. 
“You alright?” Taehyung asks. You didn’t have any massive falls following the first spectacle, but you admittedly, still cannot ice skate very well. You’ll have to figure out a way to learn. 
You round out the night by going to look at the Christmas Tree. Now that it’s fairly late, the massive families with young children have all gone home, leaving only the young adults left to bask in the glory of the peak of Christmas decorations. 
“It seemed bigger in photos, didn’t it?” Taehyung asks as the both of you crane your necks to look at the tree in all of its glory. “Like it was the size of a small tower.”
“Yeah,” you agree. It looks somewhat disappointingly small, now that you’re here in front of it. “Today was a lot of fun, Taehyung. Your spontaneity paid off.”
“When does it not?” Taehyung asks, proud of himself. He even has enough of an ego to do a little hair flip, making you shake your head disapprovingly. “But I’m glad you enjoyed yourself. I certainly did.”
“What was your favorite part?” You ask. 
“Definitely when you were in your prime for one moment and a puddle on the ice the next,” Taehyung says, and for that, he earns a punch to the shoulder. “I’m kidding, I’m kidding. But I did really enjoy ice skating.”
“Yeah, because you can actually do it,” you remind him. 
“What about you?”
You think. This day has been so long, from getting woken up by Taehyung’s irresponsible neighbors and the entire city’s fire department outside your window, to hopping on a bus to New York, to museums and restaurants and ice skating and the city, you feel like you’ve lived three days in one. 
“The museum,” you finally decide. “I’m not really an art person, but I thought it was lovely. Nice and heated, too.”
“Yes, the best part about the Museum of Modern Art was its modern, state-of-the-art central heating,” Taehyung repeats, making you laugh. “I’m glad you liked the museum. I was worried you’d think it was too stuffy.”
You had thought that too. And then you watched someone fall in love with each and every piece, right in front of you, and you realized that there’s more to art than putting a price tag on it and critiquing it. It’s passion, materialized. It’s real.  
It’s Taehyung. 
“No,” you say with a shake of your head. “I thought it was beautiful.”
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On Christmas Eve, it snows. 
Correction: On Christmas Eve, it snows a lot. 
Correction for the correction: On Christmas Eve, it blizzards. 
When you listened to “White Christmas” last night, this isn’t exactly what you had in mind, if you were being honest. Maybe an inch or two. Maybe even just a flurry. But certainly not nearly two feet worth of snow, effectively trapping you inside of Taehyung’s apartment complex until the next day because not even the snow plows are allowed to go out on the roads. Not until the snow stops. 
“Good thing we don’t live on the first floor, right?” Taehyung asks with a laugh that late afternoon, taking a peek out of the window to stare down at the white expanse below you. “I’d hate to be those guys.”
“It must be so cold,” you say sadly. You’ve spent the better part of today huddled up in as many blankets as Taehyung owns in his apartment and you have no intention of shedding even one of them. Not even as you sweat right through your pajama shirt from high school. 
“We can just make dinner here, tonight,” Taehyung says, fishing around in his kitchen to see what the options are. It’s already beginning to get dark even though it’s not even five o’clock. God, you hate winter. 
“What are we making?”
Taehyung fumbles through the cabinets and his fridge, hunting for anything that might make a good meal. Eventually, he pulls out two cartons of Trader Joe’s vegetable broth and every vegetable in his fridge. 
“Wanna make soup?”
Soup is very easy to make. You set the broth to simmer, chop up vegetables, and dump them in the pot. 
But the idea of you and Taehyung sharing his tiny kitchen space, both with knives in your hands is, well, a recipe for disaster.
Luckily no knife mishaps occur, but, like the children at heart that you are, you eventually end with pelting uncooked lima beans at each other in the most adult version of a food fight you have ever had in your life. No fuss, no mess, no tomatoes or key lime pies or spaghetti doused in sauce getting chucked across the kitchen floor, the dinner table. 
No, your little food fight ends with you and Taehyung kneeling down on the tile as you pick up each little lima bean, gathering them in your palms. 
You make to toss it out but Taehyung stops you. 
“Wait,” Taehyung says, a hand on top of yours as it hovers over the trash can, “don’t toss them out.”
“Huh?” You ask. 
“I’ll feed them to the birds,” he says, taking the pile from your hands and placing all of the lima beans, along with his own, in a Ziploc bag. 
“You have a porch out here?” You ask, looking around. You’ve never seen it. 
“No.” Taehyung shakes his head. “They land on my bedroom window sill so I feed them.”
When you were in freshman year, you remember how Taehyung always left his window open. You know this because even though yours was always closed, anytime a police car, fire truck, ambulance, or particularly loud motorist drove by, the sound was always loudest on the wall of your room that bordered Taehyung’s. You hated how he always left his windows open, even in the winter. Wasn’t he goddamn cold?
And now, even though it’s Christmas Eve and there’s a blanket of snow outside nearly two feet deep, Taehyung will go and open his bedroom window again and feed the birds lima beans like a fucking Disney prince, and it makes your heart flutter, ever so slightly. 
You end the night sitting on Taehyung’s couch, only a foot or so of space in between your bodies as he multitasks, channel surfing and gulping down your homemade soup. 
“I haven’t made soup in a while, but damn, this is good,” Taehyung says, drinking the rest of it before getting up to help himself to seconds. He sticks a hand out to take your bowl as well, and wordlessly you hand it to him. 
“It’s my magic touch,” you tease. It was not. Taehyung did most of the work. You don’t have much of an affinity for cooking.
“It’s my chemistry brain,” Taehyung corrects. “Chem is basically like making soup.”
“But it can kill you,” you tack on.
“But it can kill you,” he agrees, returning to the couch. This time, when he sits down, he plops right down next to you, your sides touching as you sit in front of his television, slurping up homemade vegetable soup. “How’s your major? What is it, again?”
“English with a minor in Psych,” you say over a mouthful of carrot. 
“Sounds like too much reading for me,” Taehyung comments. “I’d only like picture books.”
“Yeah, wonder why,” you tell him sarcastically. “But it’s going well. I’m thinking of maybe adding Consumer Psych as another minor since there’s a lot of overlap, but I’m not sure. I’ll think about it.”
“Sounds busy,” Taehyung comments. 
“Almost as busy as visual studies and chem,” you remind him. “Seriously, do you ever sleep?”
“Inspiration is a fickle mistress and the will to do my chem problem sets, even more fickle,” Taehyung muses like the two subjects aren’t the absolute bane of his existence. “But yeah, I mean, I made it this far.”
“Our majors are so different,” you comment. They are. Encompassing all sides of the college major spectrum, from STEM to art to humanities. The only thing you’re missing is a business minor. But only snakes would ever be interested in something like that. 
“It’s nice,” Taehyung decides. “Because this is forcing us to talk with someone with whom we don’t already share all of the same classes with.”
“I couldn’t imagine taking the same class as you,” you say, not because you’d hate having to be in the same room as Kim Taehyung or dread the potential to be paired up for group work, but because your tastes are so different. They’ve always been different. Art, English, chemistry, psychology. Headphones or speakers. Closed windows or open. It’s always been opposites with the two of you. 
“Maybe I’ll take a psych class so that way we can,” Taehyung says. 
“Maybe I’ll take an art history course,” you retort.
“You’d really take an art history course? They’re awfully boring, and I’m an art major,” Taehyung says, in disbelief. 
You ponder it for a moment, but then nod. Yes, you would. Even if it sent you to sleep. Because it looks genuinely interesting. “After today, I wouldn’t mind it. You showed me a lot about art, Kim Taehyung. More than I thought I would ever learn in my lifetime.”
Taehyung sighs, shutting the television off. You guys weren’t watching it anyway. You hardly realized it was on. He looks down at his empty soup bowl, and then at you. He always does that—always looks somewhere else before looking at you, like he has to muster up the courage by first staring at an inanimate object. And then he says, “You’ll never stop learning about art. Neither will I. It’s a constant cycle, learning and relearning and changing your mind and revisiting old pieces. Because art is all around us.”
He looks at you, like he’s trying to say something else but doesn’t have the words. “You just have to look for it.”
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New Year’s Eve is often a time of reflecting on the year that’s passed, making a list of goals to achieve once the clock strikes twelve. Thanking your friends and family, your loved ones, for being there for you this year, and promising to be there for them as well next year. 
To you and Taehyung, it’s literally your last chance to get piss drunk this year without repercussions. You’ve never stayed here, at your university in the city, for New Year’s Eve (obviously). You’d be interested in getting all dressed up to go out. Taehyung would also be interested. 
And so, after a day of slouching around and making half-assed resolutions you know you won’t keep (like managing your time better. As a college student? Impossible.), you and Taehyung decide to get dressed up and go out, pulling out the winter jackets you don’t care if you lose, or if they get trashed, or if they stain with vodka. All you want is to lose your goddamn mind in a tiny club with a bunch of other wasted young adults who don’t want to stay at home on the last night of the year. 
You are, unsurprisingly, a self-proclaimed not-a-going-out person, but tonight is something of an exception. It’s your last night to do this this year, and honestly, you can’t really think of a better way to end the year. There’s been plenty of ups (that A+ on your paper on the ethics of Beowulf, yay!) and plenty of downs (Global Politics in the Twentieth Century, yikes), and no better way to say goodbye to them all than with alcohol in your system. But even if, during the regular college season, you’re something of a stick in the mud, you remembered to pack a nice party dress just in case, so you tug on a little black velvet mini-dress that sparkles rainbow in the light, covered with tiny glitters that get stuck in your hair and never come out. 
As you’re fishing around for some tights that you don’t care about so your legs don’t freeze off in the cold, the door to Taehyung’s bedroom opens. 
Out he walks in all of his New Year’s Eve glory, a full black ensemble complete with structured belt and a leather jacket. You turn around to look at him and he stops dead in his tracks, eyes blinking like he doesn’t know where to look. It gives you a clear view of him and his simple yet extremely flattering outfit. He looks like Danny Zuko. He looks like a boy you would avoid in high school. 
Funnily enough, seeing him now draws you closer to him.
“Wow, hot stuff, you clean up nicely,” You comment, tugging on some black tights with a hole in the back that no one’s going to notice. 
“I could say the same thing about you,” he adds on, a hand coming up to rub at the nape of his neck. “I didn’t even know you had this.”
“I packed it just in case,” you say with a shrug. 
“Came in handy, didn’t it?” He asks. He comes up to stand by you, holding his arm out for you to wrap yours around, two people on a mission to not remember most things about this night. “You ready to go?” 
Stuffing your phone and wallet into your purse, you quickly link arms with him as you walk to the door, your black boots clopping on the floor like the obnoxious high-heel owner you are. 
“Yeah, you ready?” You ask, doing a quick double check. You’ve got everything. 
“Let’s fuck some shit up.”
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And fuck some shit up you do. By the time you reach the club that Taehyung had found online, you can already hear the bass pounding through the walls, feel the ground shake from the speakers alone. Go big or go home, you suppose. 
As you expected, the club is already packed with bodies. Every young adult within a twenty-mile radius is out tonight, eager to spend the last night of the year doing what young adults in the primes of their lives do best: drink. And you and Taehyung are no exception. 
Like everybody else entering the club at the same time as you, you make a beeline for the bar, already itching to get something into your system. You don’t love being drunk, and you like the taste of alcohol even less, so you just order a simple cocktail that should keep you occupied for a while. 
Taehyung, on the other hand, well. He seems to harbor the go big or go home mentality quite firmly. It’s obvious that he’s here to do one thing and one thing only, which is not remember what he did when he wakes up tomorrow. You watch, a little impressed and a lot nervous about what exactly he’s trying to achieve, as he downs several shots in a row, pays the bartender, and immediately pulls you into the crowd of people dancing in the center of the room. 
“The more I move, the faster my body can process the alcohol,” Taehyung tells you as your cocktail sloshes around in the glass in your hand. It’s an alright cocktail. A little too sweet for you, but you suppose that that’s your fault. 
“Wow, when you said you wanted to fuck shit up, you meant it,” you comment as Taehyung dances, jumping and swaying to the beat of whatever Top 40 pop song is blaring from the speakers. You can barely hear the music over the volume of the rest of the club, people shouting to speak to each other, the sound of feet hitting the floor. 
Within approximately fifteen minutes, Taehyung is already fairly tipsy and eager to keep going, bubbling over with excitement. 
You convince him to dance a little longer before he goes back to get more, trying to make sure at least a bit of the alcohol he had at the beginning of the night goes through his body. The song changes to something much sultrier, like honey dripping from the speakers themselves, and suddenly, the entire club’s atmosphere changes. 
“I love this song,” Taehyung says, and it must be the lack of control that causes him to place a hand on your waist and pull you in close to him, making you gasp. 
“Wow, okay,” you comment, blinking. Taehyung rests his chin on your shoulder, leaning down as he holds you tight, your bodies swaying in tandem. 
“You don’t mind this?” Taehyung asks. 
“Not if you don’t,” you respond. He’s practically drunk, and you’re even a little buzzed. There are worse things you could be doing. 
“This is nice, isn’t it?” He inquires aloud. It’s a good thing that you can’t see his face, can’t watch the haze in his eyes, otherwise you might lose your footing and collapse. 
“What is?”
“This,” Taehyung repeats unhelpfully. 
The next three minutes are some of the most confusing ones of your life as Taehyung rests a hand on your waist, palm rubbing up and down as the two of you dance together like it means something to the both of you. 
But it doesn’t, does it? You chalk it up to both of your minds not being as sharp with some alcohol in your systems. That must be it.
When the song ends, the mood disappears as well, and Taehyung’s back to his bouncy, tipsy self. He’s practically stumbling over himself once he determines that it’s time for more shots, and you’ve never seen Taehyung drunk before but you can tell that he’s nearly there. You’ll probably put a hard stop on the drinks after this round, since Taehyung is the one most familiar with the way back to his apartment and you wouldn’t mind going home and sleeping after this.
“Come with?” Taehyung asks as he eyes the bartender like he’s the love of his life. 
“No, it’s alright, Tae,” you say.
“You never call me Tae,” Taehyung comments mindlessly. Even when he’s nearly drunk, he still picks up on the little things. 
“I guess the alcohol is making me soft,” you admit. “You go. I’m gonna find the bathroom and hope that nobody’s having sex in it.”
“Okay,” Taehyung singsongs as you pull away from him, looking for a dingy hallway to go down. “Be safe.”
“You too, I’ll be back soon,” you promise him, and that’s when you go rushing down the hallway.
Things are certainly weird down here. It must be the feeling of the new year looming over your heads. Like this is the last night to do everything wrong without regretting it in the morning. The bathroom is, luckily enough, empty, so you rush in and splash your face with some water, not caring about if your makeup runs. You’d sweat it off, regardless. You stare at yourself in the mirror, and this feels so stupidly like a goddamn romantic comedy that it makes you want to laugh at the irony. 
Beautiful male art student lead gets drunk, confuses hardheaded and impenetrable female lead who doesn’t believe in love and supposedly hates beautiful male art student’s guts. Tension ensues. 
Your life may as well already have a shitty Rotten Tomatoes rating stamped on top of it. 
After collecting your thoughts and praying that that white stain on the wall isn’t what you think it is, you leave the bathroom and scurry down the hallway, eager to find Taehyung and make sure he isn’t bouncing off the walls after a second round of shots. 
He’s not. 
Instead, he’s still standing by the bar as a beautiful young woman speaks to him, long dark hair resting against her shoulders and a model-esque smile on her face. She’s leaning in with a suggestive look in her eyes, a hand coming up to rub at the side of his arm. 
You furrow your brows as you watch them from afar, a little hurt by the fact that beautiful male art student lead is confusing hardheaded and impenetrable female lead even more, but then you notice Taehyung’s hesitance. The way he backs up a little when she gets closer. How he stiffens when she touches him. 
And, well, fuck that. 
 “Tae,” you say, rushing up to him faster than you’d like to admit. “There you are, I was looking for you.” 
The girl next to him frowns at the sight of you, and it’s clear she feels no shame to hide the immediately dislike. Sure, you don’t have model proportions or a smile whiter than snow, but you have morals. 
“Who’s this?” You ask, trying to be nice. 
“Nobody,” Taehyung tells you, and his hand immediately interlocks with yours. Standing next to him, you can feel as the tension fades from his body, his whole demeanor relaxing now that you’re by his side. “She just wanted to talk.”
“Are you a friend?” She asks, because she knows. 
“I’m a special type of friend,” you say. There’s no way she’ll leave Taehyung alone otherwise. And this is definitely on the cocktail you drank (and nothing else, you swear!), but you even reach up to plop a kiss on his cheek for proof. Taehyung’s eyes widen as you do, but he plays it off as catching him off guard and grins, wrapping an arm around you to pull you even closer. “Can we help you?”
The girl is absolutely pissed, which means that you did your job. 
“No, it’s alright,” she hisses through gritted teeth before turning her sights on someone else. Someone without a friend to protect them. 
“Thanks,” Taehyung whispers once she’s gone. Even though she’s probably not coming back, Taehyung keeps you close, a hand on you at all times like you’ll fly away if he doesn’t hold on tight. 
“Of course,” you tell him. “You’d do the same for me.”
“She scared me,” Taehyung says, and if his red face is anything to go by, it’s clear that he’s pretty much reached his alcohol intake limit. “I’m glad you came.”
“I could tell you didn’t want to talk to her,” you say. 
“Because I wanted to talk to you,” Taehyung says, and it’s definitely the alcohol that’s erased his filter. “I was waiting for you to come out of the bathroom and she just came up to me and started flirting with me. I think she wanted to get in my pants. I didn’t want her to get into my pants.”
“I know.”
“I’d much rather be with you than with her. Than with anybody else. I would always want to be with you, instead.” He tells you, keeping your hands firmly intertwined as you lean against the bartender counter. 
And well, huh. That’s different. Taehyung’s aforementioned lack of a filter means that any thoughts that run through his mind immediately turn into spoken words, but you weren’t expecting those words. You never thought you;d hear them, not in a million goddamn years.
“Okay, Tae,” you say, patting him assuringly. He’s just drunk. That’s all. 
“I’m serious, Y/N,” Taehyung tells you firmly, pushing your comforting hand off of his shoulder and turning to face you directly. “I mean it.”
“I know, Tae.” you reassure him. It’s easier than trying to fight him, especially when he’s this hammered. You check the time on your phone. Maybe it’s time to leave. If you go now, you’ll be able to make it back by midnight. “Let’s go home, okay? I’m ready to go home.”
Wordlessly, Taehyung nods, and the two of you leave the club before people are even thinking about ringing in the New Year. 
When you reach Taehyung’s apartment, he takes off his leather jacket to hang on the coat rack and turns the television on. Only three minutes to midnight. 
“I had fun,” you say, trying to lighten the conversation. The way back was silent, the only noises the sounds of New Year’s Eve parties on every block you turned onto. Taehyung kept his face forward and his eyes ahead, even as you tried to huddle close to him to conserve the warmth. 
“It was sort of fun,” Taehyung halfheartedly agrees. 
“Did you drink too much?” You ask. His face is still beet red. 
“I don’t think I drank enough.”
Two minutes to midnight. 
You frown, brows furrowing. Why on Earth would Taehyung want to drink more? What would change if he had another shot, a can of beer or a little cocktail?
Slowly, you begin to peel off your own layers, resting your coat on the back of the couch and slipping off your boots. The both of you stand in his living room as the TV begins to buzz with excitement, the broadcast of Times Square lighting up the otherwise silent, tense atmosphere. He’s only a couple of feet away but it feels like he couldn’t be farther from you. 
One minute to midnight. Everybody begins to count down, and you feel yourself holding your breath. 
“Will you be alright going to sleep?” You ask. Even if Taehyung’s still drunk, he’s far less bouncy than he was at the club. 
“I’ll be fine. Goodnight, Y/N,” he says, beginning to walk past. 
Three. 
“Okay.”
Two.
“Okay.”
One. 
Something overtakes Taehyung, something quick and brief. He stops right next to you and flinches, like he wants to lean in and do something, anything, goddamnit, but stops himself before he goes through with it. Everyone on television is cheering, but this apartment couldn’t be less festive even if you tried. 
Taehyung sends you a small smile as the world rings in the new year, dashing off to his bedroom and slamming the door behind him. 
And you stand there, in the middle of his living room like the goddamn fool you are. Turning to the television, you watch over and over as every couple in Times Square kisses, clip after clip after clip, and like a goddamn idiot, you wish that Taehyung had done the same. 
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The end of winter break approaches faster than you’d like it, just like it does every year. Before you know it, there’s less than a week left before classes resume and you go back to the daily college life. Less than a week left before you can go back to your dorm and pretend like this year’s winter break mishap never happened. 
Less than a week before you and Taehyung go back to never seeing each other. 
You’re sitting at his kitchen table, clearing out your backpack and recycling every paper, every syllabus and assignment and study guide from last semester, doing a deep cleanse of your life (because holy shit, you need it), when you come across the purchase you had made at the MOMA. 
“Taehyung,” you call out before you can stop yourself. 
“Yeah?” He asks from where he’s sitting on the couch, reading a James Joyce book. You love that novel. It was one of the very few you read for fun last year. 
You take the small paper bag in your hands, walking over to the couch. “I almost forgot about this, but since winter break’s starting to wind down, I just wanted to give you this as a thanks. For everything.”
“You got me a belated Christmas gift, Y/N?” Taehyung asks as you hold out the gift, clearly something thin like a posterboard or an art print.
“If it means I don’t have to buy you two things, then sure, consider this a belated Christmas gift,” you say with a laugh, sitting down a foot away from him as he slowly opens up the packet. “It’s sort of cheesy and very basic, but I just wanted to get you something nice as a thank you.”
Out Taehyung pulls is a print of van Gogh’s The Starry Night, big enough to fill up the empty spaces on his walls, so every inch of his apartment, of his life and his home, is filled with art. 
“Oh my God,” Taehyung says, mouth agape. “This is…”
“It’s basic, I know. But I know how much you loved seeing it in person, so I thought that a memory of that would be nice,” you say, trying to ease the nervousness that has bubbled up inside of you. 
“It’s wonderful,” Taehyung says, and you swear you’ve never seen him so happy, other than perhaps when you saw the real thing. “This is so fucking thoughtful of you.”
“I just—you told me a lot about the art we saw that day, but when we reached this painting, you were speechless. And I sort of knew, then, that it was your favorite piece. Because you didn’t have to explain it with words,” you tell him. “I could just tell. It was like your whole body warmed up the moment it came into view.”
“I’m touched, Y/N.” Taehyung beams. “This is all an art student could ever want, really. To be able to know that their love for art meant something to someone else.”
“I just wanted to say thank you for everything. Taking me in, cooking me food, being really nice me despite me entrenching on your living situation.” You smile. 
“I was happy to do all that stuff,” Taehyung tells you honestly. “I’ve had a lot of fun this winter break, even if we’re still trapped on campus.”
You loved getting to go home for winter break your freshman and sophomore years. You loved being able to escape from the college mindset and just relax, no deadlines, no assignments, no worries. 
But looking back on it, you think that you’ve had the most fun this winter break, stuck at school, a five-hundred-dollar plane ticket short, with your dorm neighbor-slash-nemesis from freshman year. Never have you done so much in so little time. 
“Yeah, me too,” you say, thinking back fondly. It feels like this winter break has lasted for years, but also as though it went by in the blink of an eye, 
“I have something for you as well,” Taehyung says, scrambling up to dash into his room. “Consider it just a Christmas gift, because I don’t really have to thank you for letting you stay at my apartment for free for a month.”
“Roast me, why don’t you,” you muse jokingly, rolling your eyes as Taehyung fumbles around in his bedroom before he emerges with an equally flat, similarly-sized gift wrapped up in some spare tissue paper. 
“I don’t recall you buying anything at the MOMA,” you tease as Taehyung hands you the gift, settling back down on the couch to watch as you open it. 
Slowly, you peel back the tissue paper, and when you reveal what he’s wrapped up for you, it drops to your lap. 
It’s a portrait of you, done entirely in pencil. It’s you smiling, with your eyes closed, lashes fluttering. He’s memorized your entire face, drawn it neatly onto this piece of sketch paper, like he was just passing the time and suddenly he had a picture of you on his hands. He’s even remembered where your freckles go. 
“What’s this, Tae?” You ask, like you don’t already know. 
“Uh, it’s you,” Taehyung says sheepishly. “I wasn’t planning on drawing you, I didn’t have a gift in mind, but I was practicing sketches the other day and an hour later I looked down and I had drawn you. And I felt bad for not telling you, because that’s weird, so I thought that you could see it.”
“You drew a portrait of me? Just randomly, from memory?” You ask, looking down at the sketch in your hands like it’s just ruined your life. 
“Yeah, so?” Taehyung asks. He looks terribly nervous. 
“So, that’s—people don’t just do that, Taehyung. You don’t just draw a picture of someone purely from memory while you’re practicing sketching,” You say, reeling back as he tries to lean in, attempts to explain himself. 
“What do you mean? I did that. I thought of you and I drew you, what’s so bad about that?”
“I don’t know if you missed the memo, Taehyung. I told you in New York. We’re not dating, Taehyung,” you tell him, so firm and certain in your conviction that you hardly pay attention to the way his shoulders sink. “We’re barely even friends. I’m not interested in you like that. Please don’t think otherwise.”
“Don’t tell me what to think,” Taehyung snaps, and he’s mad. Really mad, not like the fake anger from freshman year when you tried to get back at him by being an equally-annoying neighbor. “Don’t tell me how to feel. I drew you, Y/N. Not because I’m obsessed with the idea of us getting married, or because you’re my muse or some bullshit like that. I drew you because I thought of you, and I draw what I think of. Don’t tell me what to fucking think.”
“Do you like me, Taehyung?” You ask, on the verge of shouting.
Taehyung’s furious. “So what if I do? Huh? What difference does it make? You’ve told me over and over that you don’t like me back, so why does it matter? It’s not like I’d ever have a chance.”
“I told you because I didn’t want to confuse you,” you hiss, standing up and beginning to grab your belongings. It’s clear that this conversation is turning sour. 
“Confuse me? You didn’t want to confuse me?” Taehyung shouts. “You did a damn good job at that. Telling me in New York that you hated being called Mr. and Mrs. Kim, but holding my hand as we walked around the city and looked at art together. Kissing my cheek in the fucking bar but then patting me like on the back like I’m just a sadass friend of yours. Can you blame me if I was confused, Y/N?”
“I told you,” you say again. 
“I’m sorry, Y/N,” Taehyung bites. “I’m sorry that I fucking fell in love with you, even though half of the time you acted like it was alright. My mistake.”
“It was your mistake. I never said I wanted to date you,” you tell him firmly. You refuse to take the blame for something you had made so explicitly clear. 
“Can you fucking blame me for being hopeful?” Taehyung asks. He’s standing up, about to head back into his bedroom, absolutely furious. “You held my hand and kissed me on the cheek and I thought that meant that you felt it, too.”
“Taehyung—”
“Keep the portrait, Y/N,” Taehyung spits. “I don’t ever want to see it again.”
He slams his bedroom door. 
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It’s a good thing you made friends with some upperclassmen when you were a freshman. 
After packing your belongings into your little suitcase and standing in the lobby of Taehyung’s apartment complex, you remember that one of your old friends who had graduated last year still lived in an off-campus apartment since he would be beginning graduate school at the same university. 
“Yoongi?” You ask when you hear him pick up your call. 
“Y/N? What’s up?”
“Long story,” you say with a sigh. “Would it be alright if I stayed with you until school started?”
“Holy shit, you’re on campus? What the fuck, yeah, sure, you know where I live. I’ll be here whenever you stop by,” he says without question.
Fifteen minutes later, you’re standing outside his door, double checking to make sure you’d got the right apartment. 
You barely get the first knock in before the door swings open to reveal Min Yoongi himself, clad in all black and looking very tired. 
“Are you okay?” You ask. He looks exhausted. 
“I could ask you the same thing,” he says, ushering you inside. 
“Have you been up all night?” You ask, resting your suitcase against the wall. 
“I took a brief nap between two and three, but yes, I have been,” he says like it’s natural. 
“You’ve always been a chaotic sleeper,” you say with a shake of your head. 
“The grad school grind stops for no one,” Yoongi says with a sigh. “What’s up? Why are you on campus?”
“It… it’s a long goddamn story. Do you have time?”
“I have a piece due for a small indie band tomorrow at noon that’s barely finished,” Yoongi says.
“Oh,” you say. You suppose the story can wait. Yoongi offered up his abode to you until classes resumed if you needed it, and there’s no way in hell you’ll be going back to Taehyung’s. 
“What do you mean, ‘Oh’? I got loads of time,” Yoongi says. He plops down on his couch and motions for you to sit next to him. “Tell me everything.”
Yoongi has always been a particularly good listener. Not just to other people’s words, but to music, to the sounds of the chords and the notes of the piano. He has an ear for things that most others would never notice. 
It’s the same thing for when he’s doling out advice. 
“To clarify,” Yoongi says when you’re finished telling your story, thirty minutes later. You had warned him that it would be a long one. “You had once hated his guts, but no longer hate his guts?”
“I stopped hating him after freshman year,” you admit, more to yourself than to Yoongi. It’s true. The moment the two of you stopped seeing each other, everything dissipated. 
“And now you like him.”
“We’re friends,” you say, tentatively. Maybe less than friends after the disaster that just went down in his living room. 
“But he drew you a portrait of yourself,” Yoongi mentions. 
“I said that it was complicated,” you say with a frown. 
“It doesn’t sound that complicated,” Yoongi says. And maybe he is a graduate student with more life experience under his belt than you, but you think that it’s pretty complicated. 
“What do you mean?”
“It sounds like he likes you, and you like him. I wasn’t really interpreting it in any other way,” Yoongi says casually. 
You reject the notion immediately. “I do not like him.”
Yoongi frowns. “Would you really be here, in my apartment having a relationship breakdown, if you weren’t confused about your feelings for him? Really?”
“I just needed to get out of his damn apartment, that’s all,” you say, avoiding eye contact. Yoongi has this very annoying habit of being extremely reasonable all of the time, and it bothers you immensely. 
“Sure, okay. Y/N, I’m not gonna dictate how you feel and try to change your mind, or anything. But if you can look me in the eye before the end of your break and tell me, one-hundred percent honestly, that you don’t like him, then I’ll believe you,” Yoongi tells you simply. “How about that?”
It sounds like a very doable deal. Maybe it’s not doable right now, but it certainly seems possible in the future. In the future, specifically. 
“Fine. But you’re making a big deal out of nothing,” you tell him matter-of-factly. Why does he care? It’s not like you’re worried about it. 
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As it turns out, you’re worried about it. 
You’re worried about it because even though you’re not in the same room, not in the same building, not even on the same goddamn street as him, you’re thinking about him. Thinking about how much fun the two of you could be having right now as you relish in the last couple days of your winter break before the cold reality of school hits. 
Think about the things you could be doing. Exploring, going out to restaurants, finding new little gold mines in this city that you call home. And instead, you’re moping around your friend’s living room wishing that the two of you hadn’t ruined the whole thing. 
Maybe you had been too harsh. Taehyung has a right to be mad at you for lashing out at him. How was he supposed to feel? You held his hand and kissed his cheek and pretended that it was still freshman year, that the two of you were still just two people stuck together by unfortunate circumstances. Acted like nothing had really changed despite the years going by. Going through with all of these adventures with him knowing, in the back of your mind, that once classes started back up, you’d probably never make an effort to see him again. 
Drawing a portrait of you says one thing, but dancing around him says another. Every time you fucking see Yoongi in his own goddamn home you try to muster up the bravery to tell him that you don’t like Taehyung the way that he thinks you do, and you can’t. 
He sets up his pullout couch in his living room for you when you go to sleep that night, you dream of Taehyung. Envision him wandering the halls of a nameless museum, priceless pieces of art hung along every wall, from van Gogh to Monet to Picasso. He turns back around so you get a view of his face, dream up his curly black hair and soft eyes, sparkling with wanderlust as he roams the corridors, stopping to spare a quick glance at every painting he passes. 
And then at the end of the hall, he pauses in his tracks, looks up at the painting on the wall. You watch as the camera zooms in on what he’s looking at, what made him stop in his tracks the moment he laid eyes on it. 
It’s your portrait. A simple piece of paper out of a sketchbook, graphite on the coarse canvas. It’s barely more than a line drawing, your eyes here, your nose there, the little freckles that decorate your skin. It’s only in one color and still, even now, it leaves you speechless. Taehyung made that. He drew that, line by line. He made that for you. 
You wake up in a cold sweat at seven in the morning. Yoongi’s fast asleep in his bedroom, and you know he won’t be waking up until the hour on the clock reads double digits. Frantic, you scramble through your backpack until you pull out the sketch paper a little bit larger, a little bit thicker than the rest, still wrapped up in tissue paper. 
Pulling the paper away to reveal the canvas, you stare down at it in the hazy light of the sunrise, small rays beginning to stream through Yoongi’s window. Your fingers trace along each line, picturing Taehyung as his pencil scratched along the paper, over and over until it looked perfect. Taehyung made this. He sat down, thought of you, and drew this. 
A picture may be worth a thousand words but this one doesn’t say a thousand words. Instead, it only says three. 
Curiosity getting the better of you, you flip the sketch over to see if there’s anything else he’s drawn. There isn’t, but you find a little note in the bottom right corner. 
Y/N,
I hadn’t realized that I had drawn you until I was nearly finished with this. My bad, but it was too late to stop. I don’t know if I’ll ever give this to you, or if I’ll just have a guilty conscience for the rest of my life, but just in case I do, I want you to know this: art inspires me, and you are no exception. 
Tae ♡
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When Min Yoongi wakes up that day and trudges out of his bedroom, he finds you sitting on his pullout couch, staring down at a sketch in your hands. When you turn to look up at him, he sees your red eyes and wonders how long you’ve been out here, crying. 
“I can’t do it, Yoongi,” you tell him. 
“Do what?” Yoongi asks, even though he already knows the answer. Why else would you be letting your tears drip onto your portrait?
“Tell you that I don’t like him. Because I do. And I can’t lie to him like that.”
Yoongi grins. He knew you’d come around, like you always do. You may have quite the stubborn streak, but you’ve got a big heart, and it always gets the best of you. 
He sits down next to you, glancing down at the portrait. It’s gorgeous. Taehyung did a wonderful job. He looks at you as you cry over a sketch of yourself, and he thinks that, even if he doesn’t really know this Taehyung character, the two of you will make a perfect pair. 
“You should tell him that,” he tells you with a nudge. You look up at him, scared for your life. “I think he deserves to know.”
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The night before winter break ends, you ask Taehyung if tenants of his apartment complex are allowed on his rooftop. He says no, but also says that his landlord is out of town for the holidays. 
In the biting cold of a mid-January evening, you climb up the stairs of his apartment complex and push open the heavy metal door to the rooftop, a gust of wind nearly blowing you right over. Looking around, you spot Taehyung in nothing but a sweater and a scarf, sitting on the edge of the rooftop and looking out over the city. 
“Aren’t you cold?”
He turns around to find you standing next to him, wrapped up in a long coat, gloves, a beanie, and a scarf. 
“I’ve got a warm body,” Taehyung tells you, looking back out into the sea of lights. 
“This is scary, isn’t it?” You ask, sitting down next to him. Your feet dangle off the ledge, and normally you’d be insistent on sitting in the middle of the rooftop where no danger can befall you, but this feels a lot more personal. 
“Why did you want to meet me up here?” Taehyung asks, all business. 
“I just wanted to talk,” you tell him. “You know, since it’s the last day of winter break and all.”
“It went by fast, didn’t it?” Taehyung muses. 
“I remember failing my final and missing my flight like it was yesterday,” you remember fondly, laughing. It seemed like the end of the world at the time, but there’s always a silver lining. You just didn’t know what it was, back then. 
You think you have a pretty clear idea of it now. 
Taehyung chuckles, letting the two of you fall into a comfortable silence as you gaze out at the rest of the city. Taehyung’s apartment building isn’t particularly tall, but it’s got enough height to it that it feels like you’re looking out over a place you hardly recognize. There are so many things you don’t know about this city, despite having lived here for over two years. So many things you are aching to find out, and only one person you’d really like to do it with. 
“What’s your New Year’s Resolution?” You ask randomly, interrupting the quiet that had befallen the both of you. 
Taehyung jumps at the sound of your voice piercing through the atmosphere, caught off guard. You lean in, expecting him to answer. 
“Oh, um, I guess to draw and paint for fun more. A lot of the stuff I’ve been making in school I’ve been doing because I had to,” Taehyung says quickly. It’s sort of obvious that he made up the resolution on the spot. “Uh, what’s yours?”
You press your lips into a thin line, smiling to yourself. “To be honest.”
Taehyung scoffs at that. “Believe me, Y/N, you are more than honest. Brutally so.”
“To others, yes,” you reason. You always were a tell-it-like-it-is sort of person. “But I’m not very good at being honest with myself.” You swing your legs slightly as they dangle over the ground below, kicking into each other. Taehyung turns to look at you, waiting for you to continue. “Yoongi says I’m a very stubborn person. I always have been. Once I determine something is the way it is, it’s very difficult to change my mind.”
Taehyung chuckles to himself. He’s probably quite familiar with that aspect of your personality. 
“But I realized recently that sometimes, things change without you even realizing it, and that instead of being afraid of those changes, you should embrace them. So that’s what I’m trying to do. I’m trying to be more honest with myself, because I think I’ll make everybody around me, including myself, happier.” You continue. 
“Good for you,” Taehyung tells you mindlessly, turning back to face out towards the city. 
“Kim Taehyung, I’m not finished talking, yet,” you demand, forcing him to look back at you. “I hated you in freshman year. You were the worst thing to happen to me that year, annoying and full of yourself. And I didn’t know you in sophomore year. We stopped talking and decided that it was better if we never did again.”
He lets out a little huff of breath, visible in the cold night air. 
“But I do know you now. You offered me a place to stay when I missed my flight after what might have been the worst final I have ever taken in my entire life. You took me to New York, and we made vegetable soup together. You let me hold your hand and kiss you on the cheek, and you drew me a portrait,” you say firmly. He looks up at you and finally, finally, his eyes aren’t foggy. There’s no haze, no mist. You look into his eyes and you can see yourself reflected in the ink black of his irises. He’s beautiful. He’s sitting on the ledge of the roof of his apartment building in the middle of January with nothing but a sweater and a scarf on, and he’s beautiful. “You are the best thing to ever happen to me.”
Before you can even take another breath, Kim Taehyung places a cold palm on your scarf-covered cheek and pulls you into a bruising kiss, his other hand wrapping around your waist as you shuffle along the ledge, closer and closer. And even if his hands are cold and his lips are chapped, his mouth is warm and soft, wanton and desperate. You beam at the feeling of his lips on yours, wrapping your arms around his neck as you ring in the New Year for real. This is how it was supposed to be. This is what you had been waiting for. 
When you part, Taehyung’s lips are a cherry red to match the tip of his nose. His brown eyes are twinkling, and not from the light pollution of the city. 
“Can I be honest, too?” Taehyung asks. He’s got the biggest goddamn grin on his face. “I think I’m in love with you.”
The words are music to your ears. “My honesty is rubbing off on you,” you tease. “Because I think I’m in love with you, too.”
Smiling, grinning, positively fucking beaming, Taehyung wraps his hands around you and kisses you again. It warms your heart from the inside out, blossoms like a tulip in spring. When you started this winter break, you thought you had reached your lowest point, but you’re finishing it on a high that you hope never fades. He loves you, he loves you, and most importantly, you love him back. And as it turns out, the movie where beautiful male art student lead and hardheaded and impenetrable female lead are stuck with each other for four weeks has a happy ending, after all. 
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just-dreaming-marvel · 4 years ago
Text
Love and Medicine ~ 7
MASTERLIST
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< previous chapter
Word Count: 4,400ish
Summary: Clint has feelings. You try not to cause too much drama at work.
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You immediately began avoiding Steve after Gamora caught you two in the car. You need not need her, or anyone else, thinking that you were sleeping with him to get ahead. Having no desire to get ready for work, you laid in bed, staring at the ceiling, as your alarm buzzed.
Outside in the hall, Clint was nervously walked towards your door with two cups of coffee.
“Wouldn’t it be easier to just ask her out?” Valkyrie suddenly asked, popping out of her room.
“Ah!” Clint jumped, slipping the coffees on him. “Val!”
“She’s right, ya know?” Scott added, stepping out of his room. “Just ask her out. It’s not like it will be awkward when she tells you no.”
“I hate you both,” Clint grumbled. He leaned into your door, able to hear to slam on the snooze button for the third time. “She’s gonna be late.”
“Maybe not.”
“We should wait for her.”
“Definitely not,” Val shook her head. “I’m not her mother, and you are not her boyfriend.”
“Not yet, anyway,” Scott added.
“Stop, both of you, okay?” Clint said, frustrated. “I told you I’m not interested.”
“Life is short, Clint,” Val said, putting a hand on his shoulder. “Do you really want to die before you ever ask her out?”
“I do not want to ask her out.”
“Do you really want to die a liar?” Scott said.
“I’m not… I’m not dying.”
~~~
From the parking garage, you rushed towards the building. Late for work. As you wait for the elevator, you see Steve coming toward you.
“Crap,” you mutter.
“Crap?” Steve repeated, having heard you.
“Hi. I’m late.”
“Hi, late. You’re avoiding me.”
“You’re right. But I can’t do this right now. I’m late.” You hurried towards the stairs, only for him to follow you.
“Okay, but are we going to talk about this?”
“No.” You marched up the stairs.
“About us and Gamora and what she saw?”
“I don’t need to talk about it. I experienced it. Naked.”
“This is getting complicated.”
“Complicated for me. Not necessarily for you. I’m the intern sleeping with the attending. Gamora isn’t even speaking to me anymore!”
“Not that, that’s a bad thing. If I was a better guy, I’d walk away.”
“Yes, you would.”
“Do you want me to be a better guy.”
“Yes. Now,” you reached the level of the locker rooms, “I’m late. Please leave me alone and get to my job.” You opened the door. Steve caught it, keeping it open as you walked away.
“Take your time! Think about it!”
“Think about what?” Tony asked, walking over to Steve. He looked to where Steve was looking, watching her rush down the all. “Ooohhh… I get it now. Well, at least she’s talking to you.”
“The date go bad with Pepper?” 
“It didn’t go at all. I was pulled into a surgery and completely forgot about it.”
“Yikes.”
“I think I’ve blown it.”
“Me too, Stark. Me too.”
~~~
“That was definitely worth being late,” Natasha sighed as she put on her pants.
“Thanks,” Bruce smiled shyly, doing the same. “Is this a… should we talk about this?”
“Yeah,” Natasha slipped her shirt on, “definitely. Just, I’m late.”
She rushed out of the on-call room and straight to the locker room, where you were getting ready.
“You’re late,” you stated.
“So are you,” Natasha responded.
“I know, and I can’t afford to piss off Gamora any more. Do you think she told anyone?”
“About you and Captain McDreamy?”
“Yeah.”
“No, he’s her boss too.”
“If they find out, what can they… Can they kick me out? Or—“
“No…. Well, I don’t think officially. You'll just get edged out, blacklisted, banned from his surgeries, passed over for chief resident. It’ll be humiliating, but you’ll live.”
“I have to end it. I definitely have to end it… I have to end it, right?”
“Y/N, shut up.” Nat headed out of the locker room.
“What?” You chased after her. “Did you seriously just tell me to shut up?”
“Oh, please. You got a hot doctor who like to make you open up, and say "ahh." It's the American dream, stop whining about it.”
“No. No good can come from sleeping with your boss.” You two arrived in front of Gamora.
“Natasha, you’re late,” Gamora stated, unhappy.
“So is Y/N,” Natasha replied, pointing at you.
“When we walk in this door, you will maintain decorum,” Gamora continued, ignoring Nat and you. “You will not laugh, vomit, or drop your jaw. Are we understood?” She walked to a door.
“Why would we laugh?” Val asked quietly.
“Oh, just you wait,” Peter replied.
The interns followed Gamora into a patient room. On the bed, there was a heavier woman with an extremely large tumor bulging out fo her side.
“Good morning, Miss Anderson,” Gamora greeted.
“Good Morning,” Miss Anderson, the patient, replied.
“What is it?” Scott whispered.
“Tumor,” Nat responded.
“Good morning, Millie,” Peter smiled, walking around to the other side of the patient’s bed. “How are you? This is Dr. Gamora and some of my fellow interns.”
“Dr. Quill, we refer to patients as ‘mister’ and—“ Gamora began to reprimand.
“I old him to call me Millie,” the patient interrupted. “Miss Anderson makes me feel old and fat, which I am, but why have to feel that way?”
“Good morning,” Dr. Banner greeted upon entering, eyes lingering on Natasha a beat too long.
“Millie, this is Dr. Banner,” Peter stated. 
“Dr. Quill, give us the run down.”
“Millie Anderson is a 43-year-old woman who presented last night with progressive shortness of breath fo the past three months. Found to have a very large tumor of unknown origin pressed against her diaphragm. Stable vital signs. Scheduled for CT this morning, sir.”
“Thank you, Dr. Quill.” Banner turned to Millie. “Are you at all claustrophobic?”
“I’ve been housebound for the last year,” Millie replied. “How claustrophobic could I be?”
“Alright then. Dr. Valkyrie is going to take you up for a CT. It’ll give us a better look at the tumor, and we’ll know how to proceed.”
“Could someone tell my dad? He’ll worry if he gets back and I’m not here.”
“Yeah, of course.”
“And would it be possible for Peter to take me instead? I mean, he… he’s just so fun to look at.”
“Millie,” Peter laughed, clearly trying to gain favor.
“Sure,” Banner said. “Sure, Miss Anderson. Excuse me.”
Dr. Banner left the room, with Dr. Gamora and the interns following.
“How much do you think it weighs?” Scott asked.
“60 pounds,” Clint answered.
“More,” Val said. “She’s carrying a whole extra person.”
“This one’s going in the books,” Natasha said. “I’ve got to get in.”
“I almost did,” Val glared at Peter.
“I was on call last night when she came in,” Peter said. “I’m never leaving this place again.”
“Let’s move, people,” Gamora said. “Miss Anderson’ surgery, should we choose to proceed, will take most, if not all, of the surgeons off the floor. Which means you people will have to work extra hard not to kill anyone, cause we won’t be there to fix your mistakes.”
You and the others listened to Gamora’s orders while Natasha slipped away to talk to Bruce.
“I really want in on this,” she whispered to him.
“I thought we weren’t talking,” Bruce replied, eyebrow up.
“I’m not talking. I’m just saying.”
Bruce sighed. “Find her father, get a family history, and I’ll tell Gamora.”
~~~
“I know you both think I like Y/N,” Clint stated as him, Scott, and Val walked up the stairs. “But I don’t like Y/N.”
“What?” Val questioned.
“No. I like Y/N. Obviously, I like her. She’s my roommate. I just… I don’t have a thing for her.” Scott and Val shared a look.
“Okay,” Scott said.
“It’s just this morning… I know you two were probably just teasing. But I don’t want you to say anything like that to her. Because, you know, we live together and that’d be awkward.”
“Clint, stop talking,” Val ordered.
“Okay, then… It’s just—“
“Seriously, dude,” Scott stopped in front of Clint. “You’re making this all worse. Just stop.” Scott peered behind Clint where you were making your way towards them. “Or you could just be honest with yourself and us and ask her out now.” Clint looked back to see you almost there.
“What are you guys standing here for?” You asked. “We’re going to be late meeting Gamora.” 
You and Val continued on your way with Scott watching Clint watch you.
“Liar,” Scott muttered, shaking his head.
The two guys caught up with you and Val. The four of you met up with Gamora in another patient room. Inside the room, a man is trying to walk but was having difficulty. Steve was also in there and a younger woman.
“Morning,” Gamora greeted.
“Mr. Jones, this is Dr. Gamora and her fine staff of surgical interns,” Steve introduced. Steve, yourself, and Gamora all exchanged glances.
“Welcome to hell, kids,” Mr. Jones stated.
“Who’s presenting?” Gamora asked.
“Edward Jones,” Clint stated, “is a 63-year-old man admitted for pain management for Dyskinesia. He's been stable since last night, and responding to the bolus injections.”
“Val, possible treatments?”
“For Parkinson’s disease?” Val questioned. “Um, deep brain stimulation has shown—“
“Not for Parkinson’s,” Steve clarified, “for spinal pain.”
“Oh, um…”
“Instraspinal catheter,” you stated. “That way, he can have constant pain medication.”
“Excellent,” Steve smiled. “This is Dr. L/N. She’s gonna prep you for the procedure and assist.” His pager beeped, causing him to look down. “Excuse me.” He left.
“You make yourselves busy,” Gamora said, following Steve out. “I’ll catch up with you.”
She followed Steve to the elevator. Where they end up alone.
“Gamora,” Steve greeted.
“Excuse me?” She responded.
“Well, that’s your name, right? It’s on your jacket.” She wasn’t impressed. “Alright, fine. Dr. Gamora then.”
“You think you're charming in that talented, neurotic, overly moussed hair sort of way, good for you. But if you think I'm going to stand back and watch while you favor her—“
“I don’t favor her. She’s good.”
“I’m sure she is.”
“You know, can I point out that, technically, I'm your boss?”
“You don't scare me. Look, I'm not going to advertise your extracurricular activities with my intern. However, the next time I see you favoring Y/N L/N in any way, I'll make sure she doesn't see the inside of on OR for a month. Just for the sake of balance.” 
~~~
“Okay, Mr. Jones,” you said with a smile. “We're going to get you more comfortable, okay? I'm going to go downstairs and I'll be back up shortly.”
“Okay,” Mr. Jones responded.
“Okay.”
You left, with the younger woman from the room following you out.
“Excuse me,” the younger woman called out, causing you to turn your attention to her. “I’m sorry, doctor…”
“L/N,” you smiled.
“Dr. L/N. I’m Lucy, his daughter. My dad seems to like you. He’s always liked your type. Is that rude? I’m sorry. I’m so tired.”
“Is there something—“
“I was wondering if you would talk to him.”
“About?”
“Brain surgery. The doctor mentioned it, and I've read about it online. If it worked, it could help with most of his symptoms, not just his pain.”
“Is he a candidate? I don’t—“
“He is, but he's afraid of it. Surgery on his back, he can understand, but his brain...And there are risks. But his quality of life…”
“There isn’t any.”
“And, it keeps getting worse. I'm getting married next month. I already lost my mom. And I want him to walk...I want him with me. Maybe that's selfish, but...you don't know what it's like having a parent...Watching him…”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
“Thanks.”
You immediately left in search of Steve. You watched outside a room where he was talking to Gamora and Banner about Miss Anderson.
“Dr. Rogers,” you called as he walked out. “Mr. Jones, the Parkinson's patient, is he a good candidate for DBS?”
“Yes,” he replied, “but he’s not interested.”
“Okay, but I think it's worth talking to him again, pushing him.”
“We're talking about a brain surgery that is performed while the patient is wide awake, a risk of paralysis, a risk of death. And, the patient doesn't want it. It is not my job to push him into anything and it's definitely not yours.”
“Okay.”
“And since you’re clearly uncomfortable with my decision in this case, it's probably best you don't scrub in.”
“But—“
“It’s a minor procedure. You won’t be missed.” This took you by surprise. “I’m good here, Dr. L/N.” With your mind reeling, you walked away. Steve turned to Gamora, who had been watching. “You know that you’re a bully, right?”
“So I’ve heard,” Gamora replied.
~~~
You and Val were sitting in a corner of the cafeteria, eating lunch.
“It's just that he blatantly favors me in front of her and then blatantly dismisses me,” you complained to her.
“How do you know he was favoring you?” She asked, which you didn’t answer. “Look, you've got a brain. You got into this program. Just because Rogers wants to munch your cookies doesn't mean you didn't deserve what you worked for.”
“But he’s making me look bad. I have to end it.”
“Right.”
“It’s over.”
“Sure.”
“Is it true you get to scrub in on that tumor?” Peter asked Natasha, appearing out of nowhere with Val. They both sat down at your table.
“Don’t sit here.”
“You get to scrub in?” Val repeated. “How psyched are you?”
“On a scale of one to ecstatic, ecstatic.”
“It’s unbelievable,” Peter complained. “You know what I think? I think Banner wants to get into your scrubs.”
“Why are you sitting here?”
“He kicked me off that surgery for the same crap most of you pull every day.”
“You know what.” Natasha held up her fork. “If I stuck this fork into his thigh, would I get in trouble?”
“Not if you make it look like an accident,” you answered.
“Hey!” Clint greeted, coming up with Scott.
“Thank goodness,” Peter exclaimed. “I’m drowning in estrogen here.”
Clint sat down next to you, studying you. “You look… is everything okay?” He asked you.
“Rogers is a jackass,” you muttered.
“Really?” Val questioned. “I think he’s kind of great.”
“He reamed her out in front of Gamora,” Natasha said.
“Why?”
“Cause he’s a jackass,” you repeated.
“Well, bad days are… bad,” Clint said. “Maybe tonight, uh, if, you know, if you drink alcohol, I mean… we could, all of us, I mean, go out and rink alcohol… because of the bad day.”
Your pager beeped. “I’ve got to go.” And you left.
“Dude,” Peter laughed at Clint once you were gone.
Clint groaned and rested his head on the table. Scott panted his shoulder while the others laughed.
~~~
Steve had called you to Mr. Jones room. You stood near the door, watching.
“How’s your back?” Steve asked Mr. Jones as he checked him over.
“Still good,” the patient responded.
“Good.” Steve turned to Mr. Jones daughter. “How are you? Good?” She nodded as he turned his attention back to her father. “Can you lean forward for me? I just want to check something. Does that feel okay?”
“Yeah.”
“Right here?” Steve pressed along Mr. Jones’ back. The man grunts slightly and Steve looked up, finally noticing you. “Mr. Jones,” Steve took his hands off the man, “have you given any more thought about the other surgical options we discussed this morning?”
“What? Why would I? I already told you no. I'm letting you cut into my back, but that's not enough for you. All you guys ever want to do is cut.”
“Dad,” his daughter scolded, “just listen to what he has to say.”
“I already listened.”
“Sir, there’s a very small window of opportunity here,” Steve stated. “You know, once the Parkinson's progresses to a point of dementia, there's, you know, you're no longer a candidate for DBS.”
“And when I'm no longer a candidate, is that when you people will leave me the hell alone! What? Do I have to start drooling, and forget my name to get a little peace and quiet?”
“Alright,” Steve nodded. “I’ll check back with you later. Try to get some rest.” Steve left while you lingered a bit longer, just more in the hallway.
“Dad, you’re being unreasonable,” the daughter said. “The doctors are only trying to help you.”
“It’s my damn life, and it’s my damn brain,” Mr. Jones stated. “You want me to let them cut up my brain while I'm lying there awake, for what?”
“Dad!”
“I'll be at your wedding. I will sit in the back. Your uncle will walk you down the aisle. I know it's not perfect, but it's life. Life is messy sometimes.”
“I know that.” The daughter walked out and Mr. Jones looked at you.
“If she knows, then what the hell are we still talking for, huh? Why in the hell can’t she drop it?”
“It is your life,” you said, stepping further into the room. “But it’s her life too. And you have a chance to get better here. And all she's asking you to do is try.”
~~~
Mr. Jones agreed to the DBS. But you needed to hurry and find Steve, before the man changed his mind. You found him scrubbing in for Miss Anderson’s surgery with Banner and Gamora.
“Dr. Rogers,” you called.
“Yes?” He responded, looking over with his red, white, and blue scrub cap on and a mask.
“Mr. Jones has agreed to DBS. Only if we do it today. If he leaves, he won’t come back.”
“Don’t worry, Steve,” Bruce said. “It’ll take hours before we get around to the spine. I’ll page you.”
“Alright, then,” Steve said, shaking off his wet hands. “Let’s do it.”
Steve walked out of the scrub room while Bruce walked into the OR, leaving you and Gamora alone.
“Dr. Gamora. I didn’t know… I din’t know that he was my boss, when I met him,” you said. “I really didn’t know.”
“I don’t care,” she responded.
“Really? Oh, well, you sort of seemed to not be talking to me, so I—“
“You see this, what's happening right here? This is the problem with you sleeping with my boss. Not whether or not you know him before, but how it affects my day. And me standing here talking to you about your sex life affects my day. And the longer this little fling goes on, the more favors you get over the others, who are fighting tooth and nail just to make it through this program without any assistance. When those people start finding out what's going on and they don't want to work with you and talk to you or look at you, and they start bitching and moaning at me, the more it affects my day. So, no, Dr. L/N, I don't care what you know, or when you know it. Are we understood?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
~~~
“Neuro sponge,” a male nurse said, handing a sponge to Steve.
“How you doing, Mr. Jones?” Steve asked.
“Alright,” Mr. Jones responded.
“Drill bit’s charged,” the nurse announced.
“Where’s the girl doctor?”
“I’m right here,” you responded, stepping closer. “Can’t you see me?”
“I’m shaky, not blind. Anything goes wrong here, I’m blaming you.”
“Okay, in that case, I'll stay where you can see me. Now we just have to drill a hole and try to find the spot that controls the motor function.”
“You can't see my brain from there. Aren't you supposed to be learning something?”
“I’m good,” you grabbed onto his hand, “right here.”
“EEG waves look good,” the nurse stated.
“Okay, Mr. Jones. Just take a couple of deep breaths,” Steve told him. “Focus on the pretty girl. Okay, this is going to sound really scary, but try and relax. You shouldn't feel a thing.”
Then Steve began to drill into Mr. Jones’ head. After a few hours, Steve asked you to have Mr. Jones try and mimic you.
“Just keep trying, Mr. Jones,” you encouraged. “Mimic my motions. You can do it.”
“Oh, damn it!” His body was too shaky to mimic the motions.
“Take a breath and try again. The probe is almost in. You’ll know when we find the right spot.” Mr. Jones tries again, to find that he stopped shaking and was able to mimic you. “Well, how about that?” You smiled, though it was covered with a mask.
“There it is,” Steve said.
~~~
After the surgery, you and Steve brought Mr. Jones back to his room and met back in the hallway.
“I know you’re probably asking yourself why I took you off the surgery,” Steve said. “Gamora was on the warpath. I was trying to protect you.”
“You trying to protect me is why she's on the warpath,” you replied, the both of you heading down the hall. “You can't do me favors. You can't ask me to scrub in when I haven't earned it.”
“Okay, okay.”
“And you can't treat me like crap when I haven't earned that either.”
“Okay.”
“I can take care of myself. I got myself into this mess, and I’ll—“
“And you'll get yourself out?”
“I don’t… I don’t know that yet.” Steve’s pager went off as you arrived at the staircase. “Don’t let me keep you.”
“You did great work here today.” He smiled at you then headed off.
“Dr. Rogers,” you called after him.
“Yeah?” He turned around to face you.
“Sorry I called you a jackass.”
“You didn’t.”
“I did. Twice.”
Steve chuckled and continued on his way. Tony had heard and seen the exchange from behind. He came up beside you.
“You both are love sick idiots,” he said.
“And you aren’t?” You responded. 
“Yes. But I blew it.”
“Dr. Potts will give you another chance.”
“How do you know? Did she tell you that?”
“No. I just know from experience.”
~~~
You decided to go to the OR gallery and watch Miss Anderson’s surgery. Peter was up there watching as well.
“Wow, it’s unbelievable,” you said, looking at the mess down below.
“Right,” Peter agreed.
“How did she live like that?”
“Watch what you say. You never know who's listening.” He looks down below, then laughed. “Look at Scottie. He looks like he's about to fall in.”
“Are you really as shallow and callous as you seem?”
“Oh, you want to go out for a drink later and hear about my secret pain?”
“Does that line ever work for you?”
“Sometimes.”
“Oh. Must be because you look like that.”
“Like what?” You laughed at him. “So is that a yes?”
“No. I can't. I’m… seeing someone.”
“Look, if you don't want to go out with me, just say so. No need to lie.”
“Oh, okay. Well, I don't want to go out with you. But I think I really might be seeing someone.”
Suddenly, Val entered the OR below. And you could hear everything that was happening.
“Mr. Collins, the post-op heart patient in 2114. I had to open his sternotomy bedside,” Val stated, almost panicked.
“You what?” / “What?” 
Peter quickly left the gallery and you stood up to watch from the glass.
“He had cardiac tamponade. His chest films were clean this morning,” Val explained. “It just... It happened fast. He was in PEA. There was no time.”
“Go ahead,” Steve told Bruce. “I got it. We’re okay here.”
“Okay.” Bruce hurried out with Val.
“I need some retraction. Pull back on the retractor. And someone page Hill to help… Never a dull moment here at the medical center.” A blood vessel burst, suddenly, squirting blood all over Steve and Gamora. “Oh!”
“Oh!” Gamora exclaimed.
“Get right in there!”
“She can’t afford to lose this much blood. We need more blood.”
“Get me some suction here. I can't see what I'm doing. Clamp, clamp, clamp, please. Is there any blood in the rapid infuser?”
“We’re waiting on two units,” the female nurse stated.
“What do you mean, waiting?”
“Well, we didn’t anticipate this much blood loss,” Gamora replied.
“They’re on their way,” the nurse said.
“We prepped a double supply. We’ve used it all.”
“What did you cut?” Steve asked.
“Nothing. It just blew. She came in with too much damage. The artery walls are too weak. Ten units of o-negative.”
“I cannot see. Lang, give me your hand. Push right down here. Pull it towards you. Suction! Suction!”
“The pressure’s dropping,” a nurse stated.
“She needs blood. Where the hell is the blood?! Somebody grab that. Push it back, Lang. Come on.” Everyone is breathless as they move Miss Anderson more onto the table. “Oh, God. Just squeeze it off right there. Here we go… Some suction, please, in here, now. Come on. We're losing her now. Look at this. Look at this. Come on!” He started CPR, with the flatline of the machine going. "Oh, come on! Come on!” He continued with the CPR. "Come on!” After a few more times, Steve breathlessly stopped CPR. “Time of death is 11:42.”
~~~
Natasha found her way to an on call room after Miss Anderson’s surgery. She was stretching when Bruce entered.
“I'm not doing you any more favors,” he stated. “This was it.”
Natasha scoffed. “I've been holding up 50 pounds of tumor for the past 12 hours. My back's going to need traction, and the patient died anyways. And you think you did me a favor?”
“Look, I'm just… What is this… that we're doing here? What is it?”
“You need a definition? You really want to be that guy?”
He watched as she continued to stretch, then he locked the door.
~~~
You waited in the parking garage for Steve to leave the hospital. He walked up to you.
“I, um, know this place where they’re an amazing view of the sunrise and ferryboats,” you told him, pulling out some beers from your bag.
“I have a thing for ferry boats,” he smirked.
“I remember.”
He took a hold of your hand, leading you to his car.
next chapter >
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