#me totally not thinking of ideas as to what happened to him to make the others so clingy like this
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frillydolle · 3 days ago
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Hiiii! This is my first time requesting ever, I really love your writing and was wondering if you’d be interested in a fic where Arthur Morgan and this high-class lady love each other but due to their reputations can’t ever meet in public. So Arthur has to sneak into her bedroom or vice versa??
Maybe she ends up abandoning her high class life for him?? It’s up to you!
Sorry if this is confusing and please don’t feel the need to respond, I’m sure you have so much other work to do. thank you so much!
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arthur morgan x rich female reader
꒰ 𝝑𓏲 ꒱ sooo ur like mary linton , slightly aka very suggestive near end
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he was an outlaw from the west. and u were a high society lady living in the big city saint denis. it could never work... a lady couldn't live and love with a cowboy, could she?
with the magic of letter sending and meeting up during the night, the two of u always enjoyed your time together. he'd give some flowers or a necklace (that he totally didn't steal) to u, as action spoke louder than words. arthur wanted nothing more than to make sure that u knew he absolutely adored u. even if the small voice at the back of his kind tells me that he shouldn't be pursuing this.
he's practically letting u be in the hands of danger. he's an outlaw, anything could happen. he could be jailed.. or even worse- which u didn't dare to think about. or just what if something does happen and he goes cold? he just hates the idea of upsetting u in any way. it was something he couldn't handle.
you were in the comforts in ur bed, reading some fantasy novel u got from the bookstore a couple of days ago. even if your mother suggests that a lady shouldn't waste her time on such things, u didn't care. books were like your brain, a sort of escapism from your strict, wealthy life. since you would do anything to leave this heavy life of urs. and that's when u heard some footsteps..
and this caused me to look to ur right, watching the window fiddle and shake for a little bit. u adjusted urself as u sat up, putting ur book down beside u. and soon, seeing a thick arm come through before his leg goes through, and oh, u recognise that gun belt from anywhere.
“...arthur? i didn't think i'd see you again, the papers-” “oh, i have my ways, sweetheart.” he says as he pulls himself through your window, staying aware of his surroundings as not to bump into anything that will cause your parents to walk in. and how glad u were to see him! a sight of relief left ur lips before u stood up, leaning up to give him a kiss on his cheek.
“i missed you, arthur.. how is everything?” u ask him as u sit back down on ur bed, and he follows ur action, sitting next to do as u felt his callous hand reach for urs. and soon, ur fingers intertwine with his, a small subtle of intimacy. eveeytime he let himself into ur room, those same feelings that bubbled up inside from the first time u met him. ur eyes would be in such adoration for the man, like he was a forbidden fruit, a desire that wasn't good morals.
“'m better now that 'm with ya.” he says before he leans into u, his lips soon landing on urs as a giggle as u felt his hand provocatively slide up ur thigh. “dutch wants to rob the bank here.. but i ain't sure of it.” he murmurs before he moves down, lightly kisses your neck as he feels ur arms snake around his neck.
“... your life is always more exciting than mine.” u reply softly, trying ur damn best to stay so as not to make a sound in fear of ur parents hearing either u or arthur. and by ur words, he leaned up slightly to look at u, his head tilted slightly. “if yer thinkin' what 'm thinkin' then it ain't happenin'...” he replied before going down to ur neck once more and then to ur collarbone. it was like he was trying to distract u, that damn-
“i'd rather leave in the middle of the night to come see ya, knowin' that nothing ain't happened t'ya.” he hummed softly before he bit down ur collarbone, and that left a pretty mark on ur skin. it always made u giggly, knowing that he was often careful like that to make sure that no one didn't see anything. i mean, he was always so observant, until now.
until the two of u heard the sounds of ur parents' footsteps making way to ur room.
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leesolbeesol · 22 hours ago
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LIGHTWEIGHT
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univeristy!au taesan x fem!reader (ft. the rest of bonedo!)
SUMMARY: Meeting Taesan at a basement party doesn't go as planned, what happens when you can't get rid of him? Do you even want to?
GENRE: fluff, slightly suggestive in one chapter, university!au (mentions of fraternities, classes, lectures, dorms, etc.) WARNINGS: Taesan gets punched, he doesn't deserve it but everything is okay | swearing | mentions of moaning but it doesn't get too crazy, reader makes fun of Taesan for it | fem!reader | heavy mentions of alcohol in the first chapter | EXCESSIVE flirting | ends with a confession!! NOTES: I have never been to a frat party. I have never participated in Greek life. I do not drink for personal reasons. I have never dated Han Dongmin (unfortunately). In other words, this is likely very unrealistic because my information comes from speculation, reddit threads, and other fanfics on tumblr dot com. This was so fun to write WC: 16.2k, divided into 6 "chapters" of varying length
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RIDE OR DIE
You shift on your twin bed and feel the crinkly sheets shifting under your weight. You glance at the egg-shaped off-white clock on your wobbly, school-provided desk. The clock hits noon, your roommate will be home any minute and you’re hoping to power through the end of this report before then. Since you chose her as your roommate freshman year (because of maybe five instagram messages), Jen’s been your best friend, your literal ride or die, but she’s not the best body-doubling partner for cranking out assignments. When she’s with someone, she needs to provide commentary on whatever's going on, which is both a blessing and a curse. It’s a curse when it comes to being someone’s study partner.
The wooden door opens in an instant, and Jen’s frame appears in the doorway, flanked by about three bags. “Oh, dear roommate!” She greets you in song. She lets the bags fall from her arms with a thunk on the floor, and a couple papers scatter on the floor out of one of many of her partially-zipped backpacks. She marches towards you, waving her phone in your face.  “Look at this! One of our sisters invited us to a party Sigma Chi’s is throwing this evening!” She says excitedly before steadying her gaze on you. You back up as a carefully manicured finger stretches out towards your face. “We need to go.” She always refers to her sorority sisters as your (plural) sisters, which you think is sweet. It’s her way of including you. You figure that, at some point, she decided ‘my sisters this, my sisters that’ got a little bit exclusionary.
“No.” You answer her and turn back to your computer, entering the link for a hopefully-penultimate citation. This is the one thing you’re maybe not so “ride-or-die” about with Jen. You like parties, sure, but you aren't going to give up a good night’s sleep (without midterms, and all) so easily.
“What do you mean? It’s going to be so much fun!” She whines. “We just finished our midterms, we need to celebrate! What could you be even working on anyway?”
“There’s a presentation after midterms for some fucking reason, I don’t know. Plus, it's a totally bad idea to bring me. Nothing good happens at frat parties.” You tell her, pointedly. You do this dance with her semi-frequently: she invites you, you say no, she asks why, you say why, she asks again, you (sometimes) give in. You’ve got this waltz down to a science.
“Can you finish it later? Come on, please? You skipped out on the last three.” She looks at you with pleading eyes, ignoring your advice. You wonder if this was how she got everyone to do her bidding; pouting at them with her big brown eyes. You eye her suspiciously. It was true: you had denied her invitation to the last three events and probably the last three hosted by Sigma… what was it? Sigma Key? Whatever. You don’t particularly like most frat boys. In your experience, they tend to be on the annoying side… the very annoying side. The avoid-at-all-costs side.
You look at her as a smile grows on your face, “Will you do my laundry for a week when we get back from break?” At this point, you were considering going anyway, but you were going to try and milk it.
“And I’ll take out the trash.” She smiles back. Now… maybe hanging out in a dingy basement flanked by drunk college kids doesn’t sound that bad, right?
“Promise?”
She raises her hand as if to be sworn in to lawyerhood—or whatever they call it. “I, your loving, adoring roommate, solemnly swear to do your laundry and take out the trash for two weeks when we get back from break.” You suppress a laugh.
“What time is the party?” Satisfied, you surrender, albeit happily. She does manual labor for a couple weeks and you only have to go with her for a couple hours? Sounds like a dream.
“11pm.”
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BUDDING ALCOHOLIC
The faint taste of tequila on your lips is your only reminder of your promise not to get the fuck out of dodge. If you hadn’t pregamed this party, you would have been regretting coming right about now, even if it means two weeks worth of chores being eliminated from your future. The music is noise-complaint worthy and not that good, even as far as frat music tends to go. Your best guess for timing is that it’s about midnight, and a couple of your peers are already drunk by the looks of it, making out by the window and stumbling on the grass out front. It already smells like vomit as you walk through the front door. To be fair, you’ve never been to a frat house in the daytime, so maybe the smell of vomit is just a permanent feature.
“You’re the best! Thanks for coming!” She swings an arm around you, at least a little tipsy. You shift in your Jen-approved outfit: a (very) tight black tank top, light-wash jeans, and a pair of Jen-borrowed, frat-designated, almost-destroyed sneakers. You’ve gathered from your brief excursions into the world of Greek life that this is the frat uniform.
“Hey, Jen-fer!” A guy, clearly a brother, comes up to the two of you with a cheeky smile on his face. It seems like every time someone greets Jen, she has a new nickname. Or maybe he’s just drunk and slurring his words. The guy looks like “people call me Chad but you can call me tonight” personified in his khaki shorts and impressively only slightly wrinkled t-shirt, sporting your school’s mascot with ‘VARSITY BASEBALL’ across it in loud, chunky lettering. “Who’s this?” He inquires as a girl swings her arm around his neck. The smile never leaves his face as he leans down to peck her. You watch as the girl and Jen have some sort of telepathic conversation by exchanging big smiles and little waves — she’s a sister, maybe? You really only know the girls that Jen’s closest to: Madelin (spelled like mandolin), Avery (who you thought was a boy for a couple months because you only know one other Avery, a boy), Elliann (whose name you remember how to spell only because you wrote Ellyanne once and you got a talking-to), and Gene (whose contact you have saved as the jeans emoji).
“Ugh, Jay! She’s my roommate, I told you about her.” You smile weakly as she points her attention towards you, “this is Jay. You remember Jay, right? From Econ?”
“Yeah… from Econ.” You mumble something unconvincing because you very much do not remember Jay from Econ. There are about a million Jay’s at this school. There’s Jason’s and James’s and Jongseong’s and Joshua’s and Julian’s who all go by Jay. Hell, there’s even a Jachariah (pronounced exactly like Zachariah but substitute the Z) who goes by Jay in your English Comp class. You think it would make sense to go by Jack (Like Zack) because there are less Jack’s, somehow, but whatever. When you return from zoning out, Jen starts talking at you. Some people are touchy drunks, some people are sad drunks, but Jen is a very, very talkative drunk. To be honest, she’s a talkative sober too.
She asks you to choose between the two drinks in her outstretched hands, naming both, though you can’t identify the taste or ingredients either, even with the name provided. Both looked like water.
Fuck it, what’s the difference? “Um, that one.” You say, pointing to the red cup in her right hand.
“Great! Are you okay on your own? I’m going to talk to Ellen!” She smiles big. Who’s Ellen? You have no idea. “Oh, hey! Meet my friend —hic! This is Tay!” She waves to someone behind you, and beckons them over with a finger. Great, now you have a Tae to keep track of.  Her goodbye is sonorous, “Bye bye!” 
“Bye, Jen-fer.” You tease her with the drawling nickname, but she doesn’t seem to notice as she waltzes off. You break into a slow smile as you see her leave. If you could remember what feeling sober is like, you would know by the drowsiness alone you’re a little more than tipsy. If Jen is a talkative drunk, you’re a sleepy drunk. You take a big swig of the red cup and it burns as it goes down, making you cough instinctively to get rid of the sensation. After taking a moment to compose, you shotgun the whole cup. Aside from the burning, you’re left with the distinctive aftertaste of artificial sweeteners sticking to your throat. 
You back up a little, and bump right into a wall. You curse, thinking you probably looked stupid doing that… that is, before you nearly jump out of your skin when the wall puts a hand on your shoulder. Sufficiently scared, you jump right back to where you started like a tennis ball. 
In your inebriation, you're pretty sure it might be the worst mistake of your life to look at the wall when you land eyes on the definitely-not-plaster you bumped into. 
You realize that she was saying Tae, not Tay. Tae, though you know him as Taesan, is the name of a—kinda emo—guy in your World Literature class who you decided was cute one time when zoning out in a lecture and have been a little shy around ever since. Why is he here? A frat does not seem like his scene. Your drunk self agrees with your sober self on the former issue, however. He is cute—really cute. His hair is straight and black and his bangs fall just above his eyebrows. You were definitely catastrophizing, because bumping into Taesan is maybe the best thing you could have hoped for at this Greek-whatever party.
“Oh… it’s Taesan!” It doesn’t even cross your mind to suppress the giant grin that spreads across your face as you say his name as you sway. “Can I call you that instead of Tae? Too many ay’s around, I think.” You mumble, feeling as cloudy as ever.
He shrugs, “Sure, I mean, I call you by your full name, usually.” 
Mostly ignoring him, you continue, focusing on the way the edges of his lips curl like he’s suppressing a smile. Squinting at him, you monologue. “You’re cute. But you’re bad at…” You squint harder, circling your finger in front of his face as if to cast a spell. He looks a little confused with his straight eyebrows raised, but he doesn’t look scared—yet. If you were in your right mind, you would have been amazed and totally terrified that you hadn’t scared him off with the wiggly finger. Maybe the slipped compliment at the beginning helped build some rapport? “You’re bad at… analysis.” You decide on pinpointing a weakness of his. Now, his analysis is actually pretty good. Sure, he's not going to win any awards with it, but who is in an undergraduate World Literature class taught by a less-than-enthusiastic professor nearing retirement? The alcoholic fog is just a little much, anyway. Maybe you’re more of a lightweight than you care to admit. 
“I think my analysis is pretty good, actually.” He frowns, but doesn’t seem offended in the slightest. He’s always quiet in lecture, you’re surprised he hasn’t made a quick excuse to get away yet.
You part your lips as you squint harder and point up at his face again, grasping for words that don’t come all that easy to you. “You… should kiss me.” As the words fall out of your mouth, he seems to look around a little bit in surprise. To your luck, he still doesn’t run screaming.
It’s his turn to point a finger at himself and his cool, bad-boy act slips, “kiss—kiss me?” He stutters, going wide-eyed and glancing around like this is a big reality TV-style prank and there are cameramen waiting in the shadows of this sticky, stinky basement, itching to catch him off guard. Perhaps you’re subconsciously practicing rejection therapy. 
“Yeah… you should analyze kissing me.” You attempt a smile as you try to keep your eyes open. The music is pounding in your ears as you stare into the gap between him and the wall to his left.
Still dumbfounded, he tries to find words, now staring at you staring off into space, “well, uh… you… that would be cool, but… I don’t… I don’t think you actually want to kiss me. You smell like tequila.” The alcohol is definitely taking its toll on you, evidenced by the way you lean forward and slump onto the boy in front of you, closing your eyes. His words don’t even go in one ear and out the other, they go over your head entirely. You could feel his body heat even through his thick navy tee. You hear his heartbeat and—you’re no medical student—it’s loud. With your eyes closed, you hear the DJ switch the song to something with less bass and you feel a warm hand come to your shoulder blade, patting it awkwardly. You hear an attempt at words coming from his vocal chords, but you hear nothing identifiable as human language. Just a few um’s and maybe an uh.
“Hey, Tae!” You hear Jen approach behind you, calling out to the boy who you’ve designated as your new mattress. You open your eyes for a second, and you’re kindly greeted with a view of his chest. Slowly analyzing your field of vision (which includes a fuzzy wall and his shirt), you blink once, twice, and then, the third time you close them, they stay closed. As fast as that, you’re gone: disappeared, asleep.
Before you can open your eyes again, you’re assaulted by a pounding headache. You haven’t felt a headache like this since the first time you got drunk with Jen. You’d assumed you’d learned your lesson. This time, it’s not a good thing that you exceeded your own expectations.
You open your eyes and see a rather unwelcome sight of Jen who has her hands on your shoulders, shaking you. It’s certainly not helping your headache. As you come to consciousness, you become aware of the damp, suffocating sweat that clings to your body and the aching that you feel in each and every of your muscles and joints. You can’t even lift a finger.
“Hey. Wake up! Don’t worry, you’re not dying. It’s just a hangover.” She consoles you, but she doesn’t stop pushing you, however. “You drank way too much.” She laughs, drawing out her words and turning her head to the side as her hair falls in front of her face.
You muster your words, “what?” Your voice is grainy and low. You feel like pure, unadulterated hell. The pounding in your head doesn’t stop, it just migrates from one side to the other. Back to left to front to right and back again like a cue ball bouncing around the table.
“You… are… hung… over.” She says like she's trying to teach a baby to say mama. You groan and roll over, freeing yourself from her manicured hands and burying your head in your sheets. As you roll over, you feel the familiar and deeply uncomfortable scratch of the seam of your jeans. You were still wearing the clothes you wore to the party, hooray! “And,” she continues, “you’re going to tell me why Han Taesan is at our door.” Her voice sounds half like she’s scolding you and half like she’s waiting for you to spill. Processing this information, you scrunch your eyes and groan again.
“He’s not.” You deny with a murmur despite the knocking that you hear on the door. The person at the door, reportedly Taesan, knocks one, two, three times.
“He is. He wants to know how you are… tell me what happened between you two!” She urges.
“You’re lying. He is not at the door.” Maybe if you say it enough he’ll go away. Manifesting, you know? You want to know nothing about why he’s here. The party last night was a blur. You remember drinking, seeing a couple familiar faces, bumping into Taesan and then it’s dark and you wake up in your bed with Jen shaking you.
“He is.” She says solemnly. She cocks her head and continues in a more sympathetic tone, “do you want me to tell him to go away?” She asks.
“Yes.” Regardless of whether you want to see him, specifically, you don’t want to see anyone at all. You’re still in your clothes from last night, your whole body hurts, you feel like total crap, and you doubt you showered last night. You do not want to see Han Taesan, and that’s final.
“Yes, ma’am.” She says and jumps off the tall bed. Through half-lidded eyes, you see her crack the door and exchange words with the visitor. You confirm it’s Taesan when his stupid face appears in the crack. Almost involuntarily you close your eyes. As the saying goes, out of sight, out of mind. Even with a foggy mind and a throbbing headache, you know nothing good can come out of talking to him, or even seeing him, when you’re so wildly hungover. You feel like a ghost haunting your body. You hear the door shut, and you open your eyes to see Jen shimmying over to you with her eyebrows raised and a disbelieving smile across her face. You close your eyes again, you do not want to see or hear what she has to offer unless it’s an ibuprofen.
“I can’t believe he came to check up on you! Isn’t that sweet? I have no idea what was happening with you two before I got there, but he was so cute about you. He looked so nervous! It’s not like him at all.” You can practically hear her dancing around in excitement. “Your love life never goes anywhere, this is so exciting!” You grumble in protest at her jab at you. She’s been begging to let her set you up with someone, but the only people she knows are frat bros and sorority girls, neither of which are your type, usually. Is Taesan part of a frat? Doesn’t seem like him.
“Jen… advil… please.” You reach out for her with a weak hand.
“You’re not dying.” She assures you, but dutifully returns to your bedside with two little red pills, a bottle of water, and a bag of goldfish. This is how Jen is, you’ve learned; poking fun at you while still looking out for you. “Come on, take them.” She says, holding out the pills. “You’re lucky it’s a Saturday. For a hangover, you need water, food, and sleep.” She recites. Maybe hangover care is a required class for members of the sorority known for the most functions.
“Thanks…” You mutter, bringing a weak hand to your still pounding forehead. “What happened?” You ask. It might help to know what you’re up against in terms of embarrassment.
“Before I got there? No idea. After I got there? Well, you were passed out,” she laughs, “I had no idea you could fall asleep that fast. He looked crazy confused, having you slung over him and all, you know? Anyway, he was dry sober, he just got there. I had the car, obviously, and so he offered to give you a ride back to the dorm in my car. Now, I went with you, of course. For one, I’m always going to come with you when you’re asleep and being taken care of by some man. Two, there’s no way I’m letting any man drive my car without serious supervision.” Now, this elicits a stifled laugh from you, after which you immediately wince in pain. Laughing isn’t good medicine for hangovers, apparently. “Anyway, he picked you up bridal-style, it was really cute, and brought you to our car, and then drove both of us home. I put you to bed, and he left after.” She states, "I wiped your drool, don’t worry.” She nudges you with an elbow.
“Ugh, Jen. Don’t joke with me right now.”
“No, seriously, you did drool. It’s one of, like, five reasons I’m never going to put you in a room with alcohol ever again.”
“I told you it was a bad idea to bring me.” You lament. You don’t like the idea of drooling in the vicinity of Taesan. And he carried you to the car? Seriously, not a high point for your ego. It’s not even about your germinal maybe-crush on him. “Give me some goldfish.”
“You always say that it’s a bad idea, but okay.” She hands you a handful and you shove it into your mouth. It doesn’t mix well with the morning-breath taste and somehow lingering tinge of alcohol. Your head is pounding and if the headache doesn’t kill you, the embarrassment might.
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THE ILLUSION
Dr. Woo claps his hands together as the final undergrad enters the lecture hall. The long tables that act as desks proceed away from the central board in stairs. 
“Yeah. Big project coming up, right?” He says with a hint of fake enthusiasm. “It’s going to be a group project, if two people count as a group. Hooray.” A resounding groan emanates from the student body. Dr. Woo is visually unphased by this. “Despite the fact that choice is an illusion, you can pick your own partners. This is college. I don’t care.” He waves a hand dismissing any rebuttal, not that any was coming. Regardless of any other feelings about Dr. Woo, everyone knows he’s a great (read: easy) grader. “Anyway, go crazy. You all know the topic.”
Your heart drops as the room immediately erupts in chattering. Your circle was small at best, and you knew no one in World Lit except for… oh no. You feel a tap on your shoulder. Almost in slow motion, you turn around and see Taesan’s damned handsome face.
“Hey,” he says, very, very casually, “do you want to be my partner?” Oh, what the fuck.
“Um…” You furrow your eyebrows. It’s not that you don’t want to be partners with him, really. It’s just that you don’t want to recoil in embarrassment every time you work on a project worth 20% of your grade. 
He cocks his head to the side, “so?” You’re pretty sure his face could bring world peace. Have him try to convince a warlord to stop fighting by flashing a smile and they’d be a pacifist in under ten minutes.
You sigh, “yeah. Sure.” You try to smile, it doesn’t work that well. Fuck it, what’s the worst that could happen? Do it for the plot, right? Choosing to partner with him is definitely for the plot. You’re not entirely convinced that he’s pure in his intentions to partner with you; maybe this is part of a bigger frat boy scheme.
“My analysis is actually good, I swear.” He says as he pulls back the chair next to you to sit down. Is that a reference? To what? You are thoroughly confused, clearly remembering very little of that fateful night. He tucks his hands behind his head and leans back.
“What?” You laugh a little, if only out of awkwardness. 
He presses his lips together and they contort as if a laugh is threatening him. “Nevermind. It’s nothing, really.” He is utterly unconvincing when he lies. Maybe he couldn’t convince the warlord.
“Taesan, what?” Your arms cross as you lean back in your chair. Around you, there’s a buzz of new partnerships and dates being set to meet. You two, however, are alone in your own world. In your periphery, Dr. Woo is staring you down. You’re pretty sure he can sense when work isn’t getting done. You can’t tell if he’s just a salty old man or a teenager with a gossip itch trapped in an old professor’s body.
Taesan notices, “Dr. Woo is creeping me out. I’ll tell you in the hall.” He picks up one of your pens and hands it to you in a non subtle suggestion for you to pack up. 
You sling your backpack over one shoulder (despite how you’re told it’s bad for your back) and lead Taesan out of the lecture hall.
“So, are you partners with me just to make fun of me?” You probe him as he catches up to you. “I’m taking you to my dorm, by the way. We can get started on the project.” There’s a silent addition of ‘even if you’re being an asshole, I chose to be stuck with you for some reason’ when you give him a purposeful glance. Maybe Dr. Woo is right. Maybe choice is an illusion. He looks completely lost.
“No, no. It’s not like that, really. I didn't mean to make you feel bad, I just thought it was funny.” He turns around and shakes his head to punctuate his point. 
“Is it better if I don’t know what happened at the party?” One eyebrow raises and you stare him down with some weird level of confidence. Maybe knowing that he’s seen you drooling, drunk, and looking crazy makes you feel like you don’t have much else to lose.
“No, nothing bad happened. You were just drunk. It happens to the best of us.” He shrugs as you enter onto the green.
“Don’t drag this out, let me bite the bullet if I want to.”
He laughs a little, “alright. In summary, you backed into me, told me I was cute, told me my analysis sucks,” so that’s what that was about, “and told me I should kiss you and I told you that you were too drunk,” oh, what the fuck, “and then you fell asleep on me and Jennifer came over. I carried you to the car and drove both you and her home because she had a couple drinks and I had none. I checked up on you because I knew you were going to have one hell of a hangover.” Great, you’re stuck with this fucker you borderline harassed while blackout drunk.
“You were right. It was one hell of a hangover.” You grumble, looking at the floor to avoid any eye contact with him.
“Don’t be embarrassed. You’re not the first person to tell me I’m cute when they’re drunk.” He teases and you roll your eyes. In your heart, though, this is deeply, deeply embarrassing. The thought of what happened stings like a blade in your heart and in your mind. It’s not as bad as the hangover, but it’s pretty damn bad.
“Yeah, right. I was drunk, okay?” Your words are biting. “Why are you partners with me, then? I wasn’t that great the one time you met me.” Maybe you don’t want to know the answer, but the words are already out of your mouth. You scuff your heels as you walk, still avoiding contact with the one and only Han Taesan.
“You’re cute and you’re smart.” He shrugs and you break your rule of avoiding his eyes because now you’re staring at him in disbelief. “Plus, you’re great at keeping me humble.” He meets your eyes now and you’re immediately regretting thinking anything about the previous compliment meant anything at all.
“If you keep being a jerk, I’m going to keep you humble as hell.” You grumble.
“Sorry,” he frowns mildly, “the first part holds more weight.” And now, you’ve flipped. It does mean something… maybe. You face forward again to hide a smile that he totally catches anyways. You’ve made great time alongside Taesan, you’re almost to your dorm.
“Thanks?”
“My pleasure.” He postures. “Why were you there in the first place? No offense, but you don’t strike me as an alcoholic. An alcoholic can handle being drunk better than that.” It’s sort of a compliment, you guess.
“None taken, I don’t believe that being an alcoholic is in the cards for me.” You snort. “Jen dragged me there. I told her it was a bad idea, but she convinced me to go anyway by bribing me with doing my least favorite chores for a week or two.” You explain, crossing your arms and he laughs. “No offense, you don’t seem like you’re part of the frat nor do you seem like an alcoholic. So, what were you doing there?” You redirect. It’s true: he doesn’t seem like a brother nor a drinker.
“I lost a bet. Riwoo bet me that I couldn’t fit fifteen grapes in my mouth and I wanted to prove him wrong because, well, he’s Riwoo, but I lost the bet.” A laugh bubbles up from your chest imagining the situation. Not only did he try, but he tried and failed. “My punishment was either to go to a frat or to do mine and six of my roommates’ laundry for a semester. I picked the frat, obviously. I’ve lived with those guys for long enough to know that all of them stink like hell.” He adds, grimacing. “Plus, ‘doing laundry’ meant changing the sheets and picking up laundry, too.” He looks at you, pointedly.
“You’re lying, no way.” You laugh, partly with him and partly at him.
“You clearly haven’t met my roommates, this way?” His finger points to the building that you’re rooming in with Jen. You pray she’s not there or you’re going to be met with a litany of highly invasive questions.
You nod at his direction, “yeah, there are like seven thousand people here and I can recognize about thirty faces max. That’s like nothing-percent.”
“Good for me, then. I don’t think I’d be the first person you’d be calling cute if they were there with me.” The tone of his voice is light, but in his eyes you see that he fears it’s the truth. Huh, Taesan is just like the rest of us, who’da thunk?
“Where did your cool guy act go?” You tease, leading him up the stairs to your dorm, distinguished by the handmade felt pennants, spelling your’s and Jen’s names. “Drunk me wasn’t lying when she said you were cute, seriously.” You assure him. “Now, I just have to learn if your analysis is as bad as she said it was.” You push open the door with your back, mostly so you don’t have to face him after calling him cute to his face. Last week, you would have run away on the spot; Taesan has you acting like a bad ATM—all out of order.
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ENTOURAGE
You hated to admit it, his analysis was great. By spending hours writing and rewriting scripts to memorize for your oral presentation, you watched Taesan connect dots you didn't even know were there and recall obscure details from lectures that happened to be integral to the coherence of your project. You can practically see the cogs turn in his head, the way he bites the inside of his lip when he’s really focused, the way his face lights up when he gets an idea, the way he slides his thin wire glasses up his straight nose with a knuckle when they slip down because he furrowed his eyebrows too much.
This is how you find yourself at four on a Wednesday afternoon, weeks after your first incidental meeting with him: admiring his work on your dorm floor.
“Damn, Taesan.” You still kept to calling him his full name instead of Tae, you felt like it meant something. “This is amazing, I would have never thought to connect those passages, we read that first book ages ago!” You shook your head, his analysis was that good. Maybe not award-winning, but definitely worth an A, even in your harshest grader’s class. He smirks as he laughs a little, taking off his glasses and stretching his hands up, grasping at nothing while trying to stretch his back. You two had been sitting for hours on the hard floor of your dorm room; you told him to sit on your chair, but he refused, demanding he sit next to you so that he can ‘see what you’re writing’ better.
“You brought up At the Bottom of the River in the first place.” He deflects your praise. You’ll gladly take the compliment even if you had no part in his discovery. As you shrug his deflection off, you feel his arm come down around your shoulder and you jump a little, not expecting the touch. Of course, his hand feels nice where it rests, but you’re still not quite used to the way Taesan evidently shows affection. The first time he pulled the classic ‘I’m-just-stretching-actually-I’m-putting-my-arm-around-you’ move, you didn’t expect it in the slightest. You had finished a part you were putting off and he moved to stretch, suddenly putting his arm around you and shaking you while cheering you on about your victory. The laugh you let out when that happened was something entirely unprecedented for you, you laughed until your stomach hurt and your eyes watered, and you couldn’t even pinpoint why.
“Yeah, sure.” You look at him, exaggerating your skepticism with your one raised eyebrow, his arm still around you.
“When’s Jen getting back? Do we have time to mess around or should I go before she starts pestering you?” He asks, half-joking as he tilts his head towards yours. Jen had taken a liking to him, if not too much of a liking to him… for you. Whenever you and Taesan were together and Jen spotted you, she made the least subtle comments possible telling you to get together, wiggling her eyebrows and full of exaggerated winks. It wasn’t surprising in the slightest. Hey, look at the position you two are in right now: foreheads so close they’re almost touching, alone in your dorm, with his arm wrapped around your shoulder. Still, you’ve gathered that’s just kind of how Taesan is with his friends. From what you’ve heard, he’s like that with everyone. It’s not unique to you.
“She said she’d be back at five, so…” you check the egg clock, “like, thirty minutes?” 
“Nice.” He purses his lips. “Are you nervous for the presentation? It’s tomorrow, you know?” Taesan has his sensitive moments, for sure. He sounds—he is—genuinely concerned about how you’re feeling about it, you can hear it in his voice. He’s not great at hiding things like that. Even when he’s making fun of you, it’s never malicious.
“I’m fine. I’m nervous, but it is a big presentation, after all. It’s nothing I can’t handle.” You tell him, flexing an arm to prove your point, though the action is inhibited by his arm still around you.
“Never doubted you for a second, Miss Independent. You can still be nervous though, it’s okay to be nervous.” 
“Are you nervous? You sound like you’re projecting.”
He exhales, “yeah, I’m nervous as hell.” He laughs a little after the admission, but it’s not a humorous one.
“Hey, text me if you get nervous before, right? Doesn’t help to keep it to yourself. And, no offense, but I think I’ll be better at commiserating with you than your roommates, however lovely they are.” 
He exhales. “Yeah, thanks.” He’s being surprisingly soft, and you can’t help but seize the opportunity to connect a little with the sensitive side of Taesan instead of the cool, nonchalant Taesan. From what you’ve gathered, his Nirvana-decorated headphones, monochrome black clothes, and his sullen resting face makes him less approachable to your peers.
“You’ll be fine. As you said to me when we were partnered, you’re cute and you’re smart. You’ve got it.” You tell him, leaning your head onto his shoulder. You wonder if he can feel your heart beating out of your chest. Can you feel someone’s heartbeat through their shoulder? Probably not, but the human body is full of surprises. One surprise is how hard you can see his pulse through his carotid artery, pulsing in his neck. Good God, this boy is going to get high blood pressure if his heart is always going a million miles an hour. “Tell me about writing music. I’m tired.” You tell him, closing your eyes. 
You’re brought back to what you were told about the first time you met him. This time, however, you falling asleep on him isn’t so much of a surprise. Your knowledge of composition contrasts Taesan’s, you know little more than the basics. Asking him to talk about it is an easy route to a one-sided conversation where you get to listen to him talk, which is always a good time. He gets so animated, it’s hilarious and adorable.
“Your wish is my command.” He laughs, and you feel the vibration against your head and he starts on a critically tangential spiel. 
Before you can get too comfortable leaning on Taesan listening to him talk about rhyme schemes, the door swings open. Jen walks in after opening the door with her signature slam. Why you haven’t gotten any complaints yet, you have no idea.
“Oh… my God.” You can practically hear her freeze in the doorway. Out of sight, out of mind, so you keep your eyes closed.
“Jen, no one’s dying.” You assure her, suddenly deeply uncomfortable, shifting on the floor.
“You’re right, no one’s dying. My heart is so happy, look at you!” She almost giggles.
“Is this a good time for me to go?” Taesan starts to ask the pivotal question that’s going to determine exactly how embarrassed you are going to be this afternoon.
“Yes—” “No—” You and Jen say in unison. You open your eyes just to glare at her, seeing her standing over you.
“No… I’m going to get to know my best friend’s… group project partner.” She winks very not-subtly at you. Taesan looks at you just as you look at him, and he shrugs. 
“The more the merrier, right?” He asks. The rhetorical question becomes immediately very literal as Jen continues.
“Oooh… I like the way he thinks, girl.” She says, pointing to you. “Taesan, invite your roommates over, too. We can have a party!” She’s almost clapping with how excited she is, rolling back on her heels.
Taesan lights up, “oh hell yeah! I’ll see who’s available.” Oh, Taesan. Always the extrovert.
You groan, but it’s futile to try and stop the scheming. How did this get so bad so fast? “No drinking.” You instruct them.
“Half of them can’t even drink legally yet, plus, do you seriously think I’m going to drink the night before our presentation? No way.” He assures you, and you groan again in hesitant acceptance.
“I’m never letting you drink again. Don’t worry about that.” She promises you quietly before switching back to hyped-up Jen mode. “Oh, this is so exciting! When can they get here?” She’s sitting cross-legged in front of you two now, rifling through contacts on her phone in its sparkly case.
“Well,” Taesan pauses, “If they’d answer my texts—” ding! Almost like he scripted it, he gets a notification. “And there we go. Turns out they’re just hanging out at our place, all of them are free. Do you want them here now?”
“Hell yeah, I do! We should watch a movie… what movie should we watch? Don’t tell me they like horror…” She pushes her eyebrows together in what sounds half like a threat and half like a plea.
“Yeah, not that I know of.”
“We should watch 10 Things I Hate About You.” You suggest.
And that’s how you got to be sitting in a circle on your room’s floor with Taesan, Jen, and every single one of Taesan’s five roommates. You’d only briefly met a couple of them in passing before. Right now, you’re even managing to not cut each others’ throats out while playing UNO! What an achievement!
“And the color is… wait for it!” Taesan’s roommate with the light brown, almost orange hair and rounder, blueish-green black glasses says, leaning around to intimidate the others with a giant smile on his face. Everyone erupts in laughter at him. You remember that this is Riwoo, the one who dared Taesan to stuff 15 grapes in his mouth in the first place. “Blue!” He announces.
Your last card was red. Damn it.
Jaehyun immediately slumps over, Sungho frowns, Leehan stares at the card deck and Woonhak stares, terrified, at Jen when she jumps up, screaming “Uno!” as she slams her blue five on the pile. Shouts resound from the boys around you. Taesan is laughing. 
As the room erupts around you, Taesan nudges you with his shoulder, showing you his card. His last color was red, too. “We’re both winners in my heart.” He tells you with a wink. What a sap. You push his face away with a hand, stifling a laugh as you feel a heat come to your cheeks. Your light push makes him dip away from you like the inflatable tube men outside gas stations.
“You’re so corny.” You tell him as you take in the scene unfolding around you. Inviting Taesan’s friends over was a great idea. Jen is yelling at Jaehyun, Jaehyun looks terrified. Woonhak and Sungho are yelling at Riwoo, Riwoo is laughing at them. Leehan is laughing at Riwoo laughing at Woonhak and Sungho.
Taesan catches you smiling at the camaraderie, “if people yelling at each other was all it took to make you smile, I’d have invited them over way earlier.”
“Taesan,” you laugh, “I don’t like schadenfreude. It’s nice to see Jen let loose sometimes. I don’t think she gets to argue with anyone very often.”
“If she wants anyone to argue with, I’m available.” He spreads his arms to punctuate his point. At this, you laugh even harder. As you look around again, you see everyone laughing and collapsing on the floor, except for Jen, who’s pretending to fume and sulk on her bed. You know her well enough to catch the smile that pulls at her lips.
“It’s like watching kids at the park.” You motion towards Taesan’s friends, who’ve clearly become very comfortable around you and Jen.
“This weird authenticity is kind of their whole M.O.” He smiles, very clearly adoring their antics. “Imagine having to do their laundry though. I’m glad I chose to go to the party instead.” He pretends to shiver which draws out a laugh from you.
“Yeah, if you had chosen to do their laundry you also wouldn’t have been able to see me drool on you when you carried me to the car.” You snort. You’ve made peace with your drunken night. After all, you’ve already lost your dignity and he’s still hanging around.
“It was so cute though!” He contests and you roll your eyes at him. You have sworn up and down that he doesn’t like you like… that. Even if he did like you, you’re pretty sure no one likes anyone else enough that their drool is cute. Therefore, Jen’s points are null. Simple as that.
“I’m just soooo adorable,” you roll your eyes, “you don’t have to rub it in, dude.” you smile incredulously at him, throwing one of your legs over the other, just short of taking out Riwoo’s leg.
“I’m not joking!” His tone is defensive in ultimate Taesan fashion.
“Yeah, sure.” You tell him as Jen reaches out to you and pulls you to your feet, leaving Taesan alone on the floor.
Jen whispers to you, “so, when’s the wedding?” You roll your eyes.
“Shut up, you always do this.” You groan. “Do you get some sadistic joy from seeing me uncomfortable?” You cross your arms, almost elbowing Woonhak. This room is not big enough for eight people to fit in comfortably.
“Can I be the maid of honor?” She ignores your complaints and you let out an exaggerated groan in response.
“Don’t make me regret not making him go home.”
“Fine, fine.” She looks to be backing down. That is until she smirks, meeting your eyes again. “I’m not the only one who sees something!” She says cheerily before bouncing off as far as one can, which is about a foot. She looks back at you and winks before (lightly) punching Woonhak in the back to get his attention. She’s immediately drawn into some debate of some sort or another. Earlier, Leehan had assigned you both fish and Jen had been assigned a ‘Cherry Barb’ and she immediately took issue with the name for some reason or other. It was very cathartic for Taesan to watch someone contest Leehan’s fish opinions. He was totally dumbstruck; it was hilarious. Then, of course, you got an informational speech from Leehan which quelled Jens’ argument. Now, she’s a Cherry Barb.
Maybe this is how it should be, friends arguing with friends and laughing about it after, cramped in a too small room. When you meet Taesan’s eyes, you see the sparkle in them tell you he thinks so too. Maybe your friends will become the opposite of children of divorce, gaining family instead of it being separated. Is that just children of marriage? Ugh, Jen’s infected you.
“So, when’s the wedding?” Taesan wiggles his eyebrows, clearly having heard the conversation. You roll your eyes.
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BREAKING CODE
Jen is passed out on her bed on the opposite side of the room. The egg clock greets you with the time in blaring white: 11:32 pm. Head in your hands, you groan. No amount of free-on-youtube reality TV was going to calm your nerves. None of your favorite episodes are helping, even the one you have open on your computer. 
After the boys had left, you guaranteed yourself that everything would be fine. Your presentation would go great, no questions asked. Now, sitting in your room practically alone, you feel way less optimistic. 
Thoughts of Taesan cross your mind and you furrow your eyebrows, trying to shoo them. You wonder if he’s awake right now, if he’s anxious like you. You try to calm yourself by thinking that it could be worse, the presentation could be 30% of your grade. Unsurprisingly, that doesn’t help. Your phone, thrown aside earlier and laying on the bed, is practically inviting you to make a bad decision with its open, empty screen.
You stare out the window, contemplating whether or not to take the risk and text him. Your window opens up to a view of the door to enter your dorm building, and you can see the freshly fallen snow settling around it. The snow covers the creaky benches and even the overhang above the door. It’s while you're doing this contemplating that, to your fortune or maybe misfortune, the risk decides to take you with a ding from your phone.
On your home screen, you see a contact pop up and you freeze. You read the name again, it still says MOUNTAIN. Taesan put that as his contact name.
You look again, you weren’t hallucinating. It’s Taesan texting you. Is he nervous? Did he seriously take you up on your offer? You were simultaneously hoping that he would text you while hoping that he would never, ever even think to.
You steel yourself and open your phone, that’s when you get your answer.
[MOUNTAIN]: are you up [MOUNTAIN]: i’m nervous are you
You did tell him to text you if he was nervous. That offer, however, happened when you were feeling a little bolder. You are not feeling especially bold right now.
[you]: i might be [MOUNTAIN]: meet me lets go to the convenience store [MOUNTAIN]: chills me out before midterms usually and this is like the same thing
You didn’t need to even try to make a bad decision, the bad decision came to you, enticing you with the lure of a convenience store and a chance to escape your stuffy dorm.
Resting your phone on your chest, staring at the ceiling like a corpse with the way your hands are positioned, you weigh your options. Mentally, you make a list.
PROs:
You see Taesan
You get a snack probably
CONs:
You see Taesan
It’s been established that crazy shit goes down when you see Taesan past like nine pm—it’s like your friendship is a vampire but night-intolerant instead of day-intolerant
The last time you made a for the plot decision it didn’t turn out that bad. Yeah, partnering with Taesan could have sucked, but it didn’t. Going to the party was a kind of yolo-esque decision, too, and that was kind of a blessing in disguise. You rationalize your preference for meeting him with the fact that you know him better now. He’s not a rando and, as far as you know, he’s not evil.
You only live once, right?
You pick your phone back up and text him before you can rethink it.
[you]: meet where? [MOUNTAIN]: outside your dorm building in 10
You squint at the screen. His place is like a twenty minute walk away and you’re pretty sure he doesn’t have a car, that would be weird for him. You can’t pinpoint why, but you don’t like the idea of him owning a car, despite the fact that he’s driven Jen’s with you in it. Ugh.
[you]: okay
You are totally chill about this.
Looking over at Jen in her bed, you decide you don’t want to be interrogated about this decision yet. She will not let you hear the end of it, and that’s not going to calm your nerves. It’s kind of against customary law safety recommendations to not tell your roommate where you’re going at night, but you decide that’s not applicable here.
Taking your computer off your lap and swinging your feet over the side of your bed as quietly as possible, you assess the situation. The nice thing about totally embarrassing yourself the first time you met him is that you now don’t particularly care about how you look. You’re wearing Jen’s mother’s giant Hartford Whalers hockey team brand shirt and some irritatingly red plaid pajama pants that totally crash with the cool blues and greens of your shirt.
Tiptoeing to the square, wooden-framed mirror hung in the entrance you check how your hair looks. You pull on your oversized puffer jacket as quietly as possible from the command hook-provided coat hanger adorning off the back of the exit door. The zipper is cold in your hands as you check to make sure Jen is oblivious to your impending excursion. She is still fast asleep, evident from the way her chest slowly rises and falls and the faint snores that you hear from her. 
The door handle is freezing to the touch. You expected as much from a dorm building with as little central heating as it tends to cater, but it’s still unpleasant. The door opens with a loud creak. You stand assured that no one has successfully snuck out of any single one of these dorms because the floorboards creak and the doors practically announce over the loudspeaker when anyone opens them.
Thankfully, Jen is none the wiser as you glance back at her, she’s in the same sleeping position you last saw her in: lying on her stomach with one leg thrown up closer to her chest and an arm flung over her head. It’s completely bizarre and totally adorable of her.
You make your way through the straightforward yet somehow labyrinthine halls of your dorm building. As you approach the glass entryway, you see Taesan illuminated by the orange streetlight, leaning against the red brick of the adjacent building standing on a recently-hardened layer of snowfall. He’s layered an unzipped black puffer jacket, similar to yours, over a gray hoodie and accessorised with a hat that makes his head look round like an egg. He’s rubbing his gloved hands together to keep them warm. He sees you before you even open the door, and his face lights up when he does.
After suppressing a smile, you scold him, “I can’t believe you called me to meet you at this hour!” 
“You told me I could!” He defends. You notice how you can see his breath against the cold air. It’s colder than you thought, you push your bare hands further into your pockets.
“How did you even get here so fast? Do you secretly live in the next building, or something? Are you my tropey boy next door?” You nudge him, wiggling your eyebrows as if this was some plot straight out of a fanfiction.
“Yeah, right.”
“Come on, you’re not secretly pining for me?” You tease him, sinking deeper into the collar of your coat on account of the biting wind that hits you once you leave the sanctuary of the protected building and, though you’re not willing to admit it to yourself, because the boy next to you makes your cheeks hot.
“Yeah, I’m secretly hanging off of your every word, just waiting for the moment I can confess my undying love for you.” He rolls his eyes. Noticing your hands shoved in your pockets, he changes the subject, “are you cold? I brought some extra gloves, do you want them?” His words are surprisingly considerate considering the incessant teasing you subject him to daily.
“Yeah.” You laugh, freezing as he takes the knit black gloves out of his pocket. Taking them from him and putting them on, you adjust them carefully. They’re far too big for you, but it’s the thought that counts, right? The “thought that counts” is definitely keeping your hands warmer. As you examine your new apparel with a smile, you feel a pressure over your head. Somehow, you hadn’t noticed him taking his hat off and now he is pushing it onto your head. You jump back, “hey! You could have lice!” Your smile disappears in favor of a pout. The hat does feel nice on your ears though.
Taesan bursts out laughing, “I do not have lice, I promise.” Still laughing, he elaborates, “plus, you’re cold. Your ears were so cold they were getting red.” You glare at him as he only laughs harder. Instinctively, you throw up your hands to cover your ears
“Point me to the convenience store or I’m going back inside whether you’re nervous or not.” You grumble.
“Okay, Miss Grump. Just follow me.” He says with a stupidly charming smile and grabs your wrist before picking up the pace. To him, picking up the pace means speed-walking, but for you, it means jogging.
“Ack!” You jump at the sudden movement, “Taesan! You can’t do that!” You try to free your wrist and, when you succeed, you cross your arms, standing solid in place as he turns around.
“If you don’t come with me, I’ll yell that you think Heath Ledger is super sexy during the presentation!” He yells, running backwards. Your jaw drops open. You want to trust Taesan enough to think he wouldn’t do that, but you also know Taesan well enough that he totally would do that. It was a bad idea to watch 10 Things I Hate About You with him, Jen, and his roommates after the Uno game. You do not need your personal preferences aired out to an auditorium of your peers and Dr. Woo. Plus, the only thing you like about Heath Ledger is that he essentially serenaded Kat Stratford!
Damn it. Stuck between would and would not, you narrow your eyes and start sprinting after him before he can turn a corner.
“You’re so on, Mr. Mountain!” He turns to look behind him, seeing you gaining fast on him as you run as fast as your legs will take you towards him. It’s his turn to be surprised, and he speeds up. After all, he wasn’t going that fast in the first place. As you close the gap between the two of you, you can hear his infectious laughter that makes you press down a swelling in your chest. You do not like Taesan, you assure yourself. It’s all in good fun. It’s only good fun. Focusing on the challenge ahead, you see Taesan just ahead of you, about to turn down a sidewalk.
He’s right behind a snowbank. If you’re the sun and the snowbank is the earth, he’s the moon in a solar eclipse.
It’s impulsive, your next action, truly. Presented with the right circumstances, however, you like to take your chances. With a shout that’s more primeval than you intended it to be, you grab onto his puffer jacket and tackle him onto the earth that is the snowbank.
It’s almost like slow-motion when you, with an evil smile, keep your eyes focused on Taesan as you see the world around you slowly become more horizontal as you fall, yourself falling on his back as he falls flat on his chest.
When his front compresses the snow enough to stop his descent towards the obscured grass, you hear him let out a moan. A moment of silence passes as both of you process what just happened. You’re propped up on your hands (gloved, thanks to Taesan) and he’s lying on his back, hands thrown above him because of his attempt at stabilization during the fall. His lips are slightly parted in shock, and his eyes are wide open, staring at you. He looks like he’s seen a ghost. He totally moaned when he fell. At least you can play teasing offense on him instead of having to defend why you tackled this man that is in no way, shape, or form your boyfriend. To be fair, men whimpering is hot. It’s just that you didn’t expect the man whimpering to be Taesan. It doesn’t really fit with his image.
You hold yourself up with one hand, clutching your stomach as you double over in laughter. “Oh my gosh, this is hilarious! I’m going to tell Riwoo that you moan when you get pushed around by women. He’ll never let you hear the end of it!” Taesan looks completely scandalized. His mouth is open and he looks totally terrified, you almost feel bad for him. 
Almost.
He covers his eyes with his gloves, “don’t you dare say anything.” Tears form in your eyes as you attempt to suppress a laugh to try and spare any more of his dignity. That doesn’t extend to teasing, though. It’s simply too good of an opportunity to pass up.
“What if, during the presentation, I yell out that you moan when someone pins you down?” You theorize him, sitting down on the dry ground next to him, throwing your legs over his stomach.
Still holding his hands over his eyes, he mutters a defensive response, “it’s not like that!” Flat on his back, he looks, somehow, handsome with snow visible in and contrasting against his darker hair, and his gloves covering his reddening face in embarrassment. If you’re lucky, maybe this is how he felt watching you fall onto him when you were drunk the first time you met. It’s more adoration than disgust.
“Aw, there’s no shame in it.” You coax. He is completely and totally embarrassed, you can tell by the way his ears are bright, cherry red.
“Don’t tell anyone, okay? What do you want?” He whines, refusing to look at you even when you try to pry his hands away from his face.
“Whatever we do and wherever we go together, it’s on you. Monetarily, I mean.” You push a finger into his chest as he finally frees his eyes from his own grip, daring to look at you face on.
“You serious?” He groans, he’s still red but looks to be over the initial shock. Either from the biting wind swirling around you or because of your teasing, his cheeks are coated in a dusting of red.
“Yeah, unless you want everyone to know about your sexual preferences.” Releasing him from your pushed finger, you cross your arms and shrug innocently.
“This is blackmail. This is extortion!” He complains, covering his eyes again.
“So… yes or no?” You grab his wrists and rip them from his face, revealing his angsty stare.
“...Yes, I’ll pay. Will you let it go now?” His words are harsher and he’s sulking, glaring at you. Maybe you pushed it too far.
“Hey, I meant it when I said it’s nothing to be ashamed about.” You let go of his wrists, opting to rub his shoulder instead, in an attempt to reassure him. “Listen, I lost my dignity by falling on you and drooling when we met, and you lost your dignity just now. Let’s just say we’re even.” You smile optimistically, hoping it will psych him into believing you because what you say is the truth, even if it’s a touchy subject, apparently.
Once he’s reminded of your not-so-cute meet-cute, he seems to relax a little. “You did drool like crazy. Do I really have to pay?” He’s smiling now, thank God. He rests his hands on his chest, looking way more comfortable.
“Yup. You do.” You laugh, it’s a softer laugh than your earlier fit, though. “Convenience store?” You prompt him, offering a hand to have him get up. As your hand interlocks with his, a smile tugs at the sides of your lips and you still can’t tell if the heat in your face is from the wind chill or Taesan. “And, take your hat back, idiot. Your ears are red.” The hat traps all the heat radiating from your flushed face and it makes you almost feel sweaty.
He laughs a little before speaking, “thanks for the hat. My ears are just so cold.” He jokes. “The store is just this way.” He points to the right he was going to take when you knocked him down. He was leading you the right way, at least. “Never try to blackmail me again, I swear.” He threatens, pouting, and then shoves you, however lightly. He doesn't look very scary.
“Yeah, yeah. We’ll see.” You retort. He glares at you, keeping eye contact as you walk closer to the glowing, welcoming arms of the convenience store in the form of its bright lights, illuminating the street from the inside, casting an eerie glow onto the otherwise dark and snow-ridden street. In response to his look, you childishly blow a strawberry at him. This hasn’t been either of your finest hours. Your antics draw out a smile from him, at least. Practically skipping along, you try to change the subject to something less personal, maybe. “What did you expect when you called me out here? You said you were nervous, after all.”
“Yeah, I did say that. I got the pre-presentation nerves, you know? ‘Thought we could talk about it.” He rubs his neck. This is definitely a less personal topic, but that’s not to say it’s impersonal.
“So, talk.” You command, avoiding eye contact mostly so you don’t laugh, replaying him falling over.
“What is there to say? I had some nerves.” He laughs, opening the silvery door to the convenience store, stepping aside to let you through.
“What a gentleman,” you muse, “how’d you learn that? Rom-coms?”
“I’m allowed to be nice, too, you know. You watch more romantic comedies than me.” He rolls his eyes.
“I do it ironically.” You drawl. “I was nervous too, to be honest,” you were not going to tell him that you were watching rom-coms trying to relax, that would be a little too much ammo for him, “Jen was fast asleep and I was just kind of… lying there.” You pick up a miscellaneous chip bag, lazily inspecting it.
“Oh, I totally get it. The only other person awake was Leehan, and he was going to trap me in fish conversation if I even so much as approached him.” You snort at this. Even from your brief interactions with Leehan this afternoon, his passion is palpable. You can just see it in his face that he’s a little bit of an uber-nerd about those particular animals. Nerd is being used affectionately, of course. His interest is admirable. “Do you want those chips?” He asks, pointing to the bag in your hand.
“Not really, I like those other ones better.” You shrug, pointing to the alternative, an equally fluorescent bag of slightly better-tasting chips. “We can tame the worries together,” you smile at him, reaching behind you to grab your preferred flavor, “the question is how.”
“Going to the convenience store is a pretty good start.” He pushes his bottom lip into the top one. As you watch this action, he suppresses a smile, suddenly. “I have an idea.” Of course he does. He says this with a growing smile on his face as he locks eyes with you. “We should have a snowball fight.” Your own smile grows as he waits for your response.
“We should.” You nod. This time, you have an idea, a bad one. “Only if you moan again.” You charge him with the scandalous comment, and he looks affronted again, and immediately reaches out a free hand to shove you.
“Don’t say that so loud!” He hissed, looking around the almost empty store to see if anyone heard him. “That stays between you and me.” You roll your eyes but you can’t hide your amusement.
“Yeah, okay.” You walk off towards the cashier across the store to buy your snacks, sticking out your tongue at him. On the way, you inspect and in turn pick up a chocolate bar and a mediocre-looking apple to buy with your chips; it’s all about balance.
Taesan comes up behind you as you place your haul on the mini conveyor belt and gives a small bow to the cashier. He sets down two bags of chips and an enoki mushroom snack that has Japanese writing on it, for which you give him a disgusted look. Perusing his other selections, you smile when you see the second chip bag, for which you change your disgusted look for one of gratitude.
“Aw, did you get those for me?” You ask, pointing to the less perfect, but still pretty good flavor.
“No, I got them for… um…” He pauses, seemingly unable to think of someone else he would get them for. It’s kind of cute, if not a little embarrassing. “I got them for you. I can be kind, remember?” Sassy man apocalypse.
“Duly noted.” You purse your lips. You look at him expectantly, going from him to his card on the back of his phone, again.
“What?” He asks, innocently. Sungho wasn’t joking when he said that he looks like a cat. As he realizes you’re deadass, he narrows his eyes and turns to you, “are you serious about the whole paying thing?” He cocks his head.
“I was pretty clear. That is, unless you—” You’re cut off by Taesan clamping a hand over your mouth, for which he gets a repulsed and highly suspicious glare from the middle-aged cashier, he meets this with another bow, unclasping your face from his grip. When you’re let go, you raise your eyebrows at him as if to say ‘really?’ His hand smells like lavender soap, it’s kind of pleasant, actually. From the state of his and his roommates’ everything-but-sleeping room, you wouldn’t have guessed they were in possession of floral hand soap. When you’re done thinking about how he smells, you’re feeling a little embarrassed and also physically being led out of the store, hopefully after Taesan paid.
“Was that really necessary?” You ask, hands free because Taesan’s holding the store-provided bag that houses all of your treats.
“I don’t need anyone hearing about… that. Especially a middle-aged anyone.” He clarifies and fair enough. You take the opportunity, however, to scoop up a clump of snow (distinctly not yellow, you checked) and pitch it at him. Still carefully holding your bag, he looks at you with a sense of betrayal. “Oh, I’m going to get you.” He threatens before hurling a snowball that splashes against your only water-resistant coat.
Snowball after snowball is thrown, before your brief yet intense brawl is cut short by ice cold rain slicing through the air around you. Without Taesan’s hat, the sleet pummels your head and it hurts. Your puffer has no hood. Before you can let out an ‘ow,’ even, you find your oasis above you, a puffer. Taesan’s puffer. He managed to, in the short time it started sleeting and you noticed it, drop all of his stockpiled snowballs, pick up the convenience store’s bag, take off his puffer jacket, and cover your head with it, protecting you from the harsh, half-frozen rain. When you look at his face to your right, he looks totally angelic. The streetlight behind him makes him look like he has a halo from the light filtering through the edges of his hair. He’s smiling, despite all the teasing and irritation you put him through in the short time you’ve been out of your dorm.
“Yikes, that came fast.” He comments, looking around and noticing how the sleet pelts down around the two of you. “I’ll take you home, I think it’s our cue to wrap this up.” He suggests. His sweetness contrasts against the wistful feeling that unexpectedly forms when he mentions parting. Maybe it’s the sleep deprivation or maybe it’s the chill getting to you, but you feel like you’re on cloud nine, it’s the most you’ve laughed since Jen told you the crazy goings-on between her highschool ex-girlfriend and one of her friends. Apparently, her ex-girlfriend is absolutely smitten for her friend and said friend completely ignores her at every turn. You laughed until your cheeks hurt that day. Your cheeks don’t hurt from laughing, necessarily, but it’s the same sort of freeing feeling. You don’t know what to make of that, but you’re damn sure you like the way he’s smiling at you.
“Whatever you say. Thanks for the roof.” You beamed, pointing up at the make-shift shelter he’s made for you.
“My pleasure, Miss Grump.” He says this with a posh accent that makes you laugh. You have no idea since when he’s started calling you Miss Grump, but there are worse names, probably.
“Don’t make me kick you.” You threaten, trying (and failing) to suppress the grin that tugs at your lips.
“Sorry, Madame Grump.” He corrects, still holding the cover over your head.
 “I’m not even being grumpy.” You warn him, not even trying to hide the smile that spreads across your face. “Come on, get moving.” You cue him to start the walk back to your dorm.
“Your wish is my command, Miss—” 
“Don’t you dare.” You threaten and bump your shoulder into his. The walk back to your dorm is short, it took you far longer to get to the convenience store because of… well… tangential events. Checking your phone, you finally learn the time. It’s fucking two in the morning. Great! You’ll get essentially no sleep, but that’s nothing a little caffeine can’t fix.
“I dare more than you think I do.” He purses his lips.
“Okay, I dare you to admit you moaned when you fell.” You challenge him with a smirk.
He groans, “I pick truth.”
“This isn’t truth or dare, you don’t get to pick. Plus, truth would be ‘did you moan when you fell.’” You can see your dorm from where you stand in front of the red brick building, it’s still brightly lit. Hopefully that means that Jen is still asleep and hasn’t woken up to turn the overhead off.
“You can’t subpoena me so I’m not playing this game.” He shrugs, stopping underneath the overhang above the glass door that marks the entrance to your building and the separation from Taesan. As he steps aside, taking his puffer with him and putting it back on, you’re suddenly and unfortunately aware of his body heat now that it’s gone.
“I’m less nervous.” He says with a smile that seems almost confidential, like a secret only you know. He’s undeniably easy on the eyes with his stupid hat and soaked gloves and hoodie. 
“Me too.” The words come out of your mouth softly. Somehow, they’re vulnerable words to say. “Goodnight, Taesan.” After your parting words, neither of you make a move to leave. His full name feels more meaningful than his nickname, somehow. You stand there, lit up by the LEDs of the hallways, staring at each other, and you’re not entirely sure why. The tension might be thick, it might not be, you can’t tell by the way you’re focused on his face. Well, it’s not exactly his face. It’s the way his hair frames his face, yes, and the way that his eyes scrunch when he smiles, even slightly, it’s also the way his egg hat looks and the way his hoodie is so damp because he was trying to keep you warm and dry. 
Then it’s all over. When the tension breaks, it’s not like it’s cut through. It’s more like it dissipates. It dissipates thanks to the man who barrels down the street adjacent to your bubble, blasting a Spanish ballad and singing his heart out. Soy capitán, soy capitán, soy capitán! blasts through the complex. You break eye contact with Taesan just to laugh at the oddity passing you. You watch him coast down the street on his green bike, singing, without a helmet, hands-free. Your mother would not approve. Taesan’s not laughing, but he’s beaming and staring at you as you crouch down because of your laughter. You try and convince yourself it’s not even that funny, but something about the era of the night just makes you heave with how hard you’re laughing.
“I mean,” recovering, you let out a sigh, finally releasing a breath that you don’t remember holding, “it is a college campus.”
“You can say that again.” His hands are on his hips, and he’s managed to pry his eyes away from you. The sleet’s stopped somewhat, but the ground is still icy from the snow and sleet and rain that have frozen and refrozen over the past few days. The same wistful silence settles between you two after the interruption.
“Maybe it’s a sign.” You laugh in disbelief. Now you’re sure you’ve laughed more than when Jen told you about her friend’s drama. Way more.
“A sign for what?” He questions, jocose and almost suspicious of your deduction.
“A sign you’ve violated like a million rules of common decency!” Another voice, one other than the singing man’s melody and Taesan’s and your chatter, is heard echoing throughout. “Han Taesan, I’m going to beat your ass!” The voice threatens angrily. At first, you don’t know where it’s coming from. At second, you don’t want to believe where it’s coming from. You slowly look up to your open dorm window and see Jen’s disheveled figure poking out with the single most serious scowl you’ve ever seen her wear. The only time that gets close to this nouveau expression is the time she decked a guy for… being a total freak for one of her friends, let’s say. Your body is confused on whether to panic, run, or just freeze. Waiting to act is still an action, and it’s the prognosis your body suggests. You freeze, looking from Taesan to the window, where Jen is notably absent.
You look at Taesan. 
You look at the window. 
You look at Taesan. 
You look at the hallway.
Taesan looks terrified, you look utterly and visibly confused, and for Jen… well, it looks like there's smoke coming out of her ears as she storms down the hallway towards the doors that open to reveal your two-person symposium. Jen slams open the door and, if it wasn’t specifically made not to slam, the impact of the slam would have reverberated until even Dr. Woo heard it across the campus in his (probably sound-proofed) office where he probably still is because, you know, he’s Dr. Woo.
“You motherfucker, what did you do to get her to go out without telling me! What are you hiding? Are you a criminal? Are you a smoker? Oh no, you’re just a piece of shit trying to get in her pants!” Jen steps in front of you, blocking everything but Taesan’s head from your view. From what you can see, Taesan hasn’t been sucker punched yet. His eyes are wide and he’s holding his hands up like he’s waiting for her to swing, and maybe he is. You know he doesn’t know her well enough to know that she wants to beat the shit out of him, but she did say explicitly that she was going to beat the shit out of him so he had some reason to suspect that that’s what was incoming.
“W-what? I don’t— I didn’t do any of that stuff!” He’s shaking his hands wildly and Jen still looks like she’s about to swing by the way she’s pushing a finger into his chest. Still too shocked to do, well, anything except watch.
You see her rear up in a way that’s all too familiar to you, and when you remember you can move, “Jen, wait! It’s–” As soon as the words leave your mouth, you see her closed fist collide with his cheekbone and the impact make him reel back, clutching the affected area with a mittened hand. He almost knocks his head into the pole supporting the overhang, and you can see he’s visibly out of it. Is this a good time to mention that Jen is freakishly good at karate? What Jen is, however, not amazing at is analyzing the situation. As she battles with the follow-through of the swing, she loses her footing on the icy ground, falling flat on her ass. Now, both parties accompanying you are on the icy ground and you’re the only one still standing.
You act in a delay. “Jen! He didn’t do anything, I swear!” You reach for her shoulders that are no longer there, trying to stop an action that’s already happened. You watch as Taesan crumples further into a fetal position and you stand there in shock.
“See!” She spits, snapping her head back to look up at you. “He’s not even trying to help me up!” Her eyebrows are furrowed and angry.
“Jen,” you almost can’t help but laugh, “you decked him, he doesn’t even know what planet he’s on.” You look from your best friend to your… Taesan, and wonder how you attend to both of their bullshit situations at once. “Okay, first of all, Jen, please don’t punch his ass again—”
“Yeah, I’ll punch him in the gut.” She snarls, cutting you off.
“No! There will be no punching.” You declare, trying to sound confident but you’re so bewildered it comes out more as a question. You turn your attention to Taesan, whose nose is bleeding ever so slightly. He’s holding his hat-clad head in his hands and is grimacing in pain. You mirror him, a grimace appearing on your own face as you look upon his pitiful condition. This is going to be so fun to explain. “I came out here because I told him he could call me if he was nervous for the presentation tomorrow and I’d talk to him about it and so we went to the convenience store and… I’m fine! He’s not just trying to get in my pants, he would’ve done that already if he wanted to.” You ramble, using logic that probably wouldn’t withstand in court but works well enough when you talk a million miles an hour to a less than law-savvy subject, that subject being Jen. The subject, Jen, looks scandalized by this information.
“Where did my innocent baby go?” She pouts, getting up to put her arms around you. “Where did my sweet, lightweight, baby with no love life go? She’s sneaking out to see boys?” 
“Jen, I’m a grown woman.” You tell her, incredibly blasé and stiff as she embraces you in a hug. From over her shoulder, you catch Taesan’s eye. When your eyes meet, he laughs and then winces. It probably wasn’t a good idea to welcome an uncontrollable movement when you have some sort of abrasion on your cheek and blood coming out of your nose. Jen pulls back to look at you and shakes her head, you can almost hear her saying they grow up so fast. Maybe this is the same kind of telepathy that goes down between her and her sisters. Maybe you get it. Jen, coming back to earth from her sappy, self-appointed caretaker meltdown, narrows her eyes and looks from you to Taesan, and then from you to Taesan, again.
She opens her mouth and lets out a puff of air as if to start speaking, but she only does so a few seconds later. “So… there was no reason for me to deck him?” She asks, raising an eyebrow in genuine confusion. You nod, solemnly. Her jaw drops and her eyebrows push together. She puts her tongue in her cheek, mind reeling. This is when she realizes she gave this poor man a bloody nose and probably a black eye for no damn reason. Suddenly, she fixes her gaze on you, “you’re the one I should be chewing out! Do you know how many staples of girl code you’ve violated?! You could have died!” She exclaims, clearly ready to give you a talking-to, way worse than when you spelled ‘Elliann’ as ‘Ellyanne.’ She’s like OSHA but for general female wellbeing.
You reach out to grab her hands that are moving dramatically to illustrate her point, “okay, you can chew me out after Taesan isn’t bleeding out.” She seems to relax like a combative patient injected with midazolam.
“I’m not bleeding out.” He huffs, but is still holding his nose bridge, so he’s still bleeding, at least, and that’s not exactly ideal. 
“You look like shit, though.” You tell him
“Thanks,” he groans, “can I get some tylenol, or something?” Yeah, he totally looks like a hurt puppy. It’s kind of cute, you guess.
“Yeah, we’ll get you patched up.” You assure him, breaking away from Jen to attend to Taesan.
“No ‘we.’ Only you. Don’t let her punch me again.” 
“We’re over the combat phase, it’s fine. Get up, do your legs still work?” You try to say your biting words as comfortingly as possible. It’s past two in the morning, you’re too over-tired to try to pick your words so they’ll feel better for the receiver. What’ll make Taesan feel better, physically, at least, is tylenol and making sure his nose isn’t broken.
“My legs don’t, my ass hurts like hell.” Jen complains, but helps in picking Taesan up anyway.
“It’s very hard to break a tailbone, a nose, on the other hand…” You raise your eyebrows but say no more. Taesan gets up just fine, but still clutches his nose. “Campus clinic’s probably closed, we have a first-aid kit, though.”
Jen issues a half-hearted-sounding yet fully meant apology in the form of a mutter of “sorry for punching you, man.” 
“You’re cool, man. Cool that you were looking out for her.” He gives her a small thumbs up. It’s a weird moment of friendship between these two. For having met barely a week ago and having spent five hours together tops, these two have a more tumultuous relationship than most twin siblings at the age of nine, which is saying something considering most have chased each other with a knife by the age of five and a half. Jen has gone from asking to be the maid of honor to decking the presumed groom and now having a hopefully more stable relationship with said groom. So much plot it’s not even ‘for the plot’ anymore, you’re just riding the wave of unexpected inciting events.
“The more the merrier.” You mutter as you sling Taesan’s arm over your shoulder. Why he abets this when the damage is to his face, who knows. The more the merrier indeed in your cramped dorm, trying to ignore how the cold compress on his bruise keeps melting even though it’s so cold and the fact that you have an injured and sleep-deprived boy on your hands.
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GOT GOOD
You bite the inside of your cheek, not hard enough to draw blood, but hard enough to express your dismay. You kind of bombed your presentation. 
Scrap that, you really bombed your presentation. 
As you step out of the lecture hall following the sea of your peers, you step aside to press your back into a free wall. It’s one of the moments where you need to just detach. Crossing your arms for stability, you melt into the wall. The overhead light that you can see even through your closed eyelids is obscured every so often by a moving body. This drowsiness is familiar.
Amid the frequent passings of students, the light is masked for longer than would be caused by someone in passing. You know who it is.
“Hey, it wasn’t that bad.” You open your eyes to a squint and see Taesan leaning against the wall next to you. Despite how you try to ignore it, you’re immediately drawn to the squashed berry purple color that blossoms on the inflamed skin under his left eye, giving way to a lighter almost green tint near his nose. Jen got him good. Your blinks are slow, the scant hours of sleep are getting to you. You slept through your alarm, foreboding you from even getting coffee before the presentation. Despite his injury, he’s smiling.
“I lost where I was like every other sentence.” You attempt to mirror his smile, but it doesn’t really work, leaving you with a smile that reaches your eyes but not your lips, somehow.
“It’s Dr. Woo, you’ll be fine. He doesn’t care nearly as much as you do. We got all of our information out. It doesn’t matter how graceful it was.” He lays out his reasons and you cock your head, weighing the possibility that he’s right.
“Are you like a vampire, or something? You don’t need sleep?”
“I’m used to it.” He shrugs. Maybe living with five as many people as you do makes you sleep way less; especially since it seems like Taesan is their chaperone despite the fact that Sungho and Riwoo are older than him, you’ve learned.
“You shouldn’t be. Sleep is good.” You close your eyes again, and a silence settles over you. You’ve created your own little bubble in the hallway, and it might not even include Taesan. Right now, it’s just you and your desperate need for rest. You are not the kind of person to pull an all-nighter.
“I told you you were going to crash.” He reminds you and you hum in response. “Look,” he gets your attention by putting a hand on your shoulder, “the boys are out, come back to my place and you can take a nap. I know that your room still smells like disinfectant.” A smile creeps across your face at this. It’s true: your room smells like the pungent iodine that you used to clean the minor abrasions on his cheekbone. You still have no idea why Jen has that much power in her.
“Lead the way.” 
“It’s way closer to this building than it is to your building, it’s barely any walk at all.” He assures you. Regardless, you have to speed walk to keep up with the pace.
“Do you have hot chocolate, or anything?” At your drawled request, he tsks. Pressing his lips together, you take that as a no.
“I’ll see what I can do. Woonhak owes me like nine favors.” He laughs a little at this, and you smile too. Unremarkably, it hasn’t become spring overnight, and so the wind is still nipping at your face. You were wise enough to wear your Taesan-provided gloves, though. Looking at Taesan’s face and the way the wind makes his face a little pink, you’re pretty sure you could find the whole color palette on his face. Except blue, maybe. You’ve got the other colors covered. Red for his cheeks, orange, yellow, green, and purple for his bruise. Huh, that bruise contributes a lot. “It’s just this way.” He says, guiding you with a pointed hand towards a complex highly similar to your own. Same red brick buildings and same overhang. The difference is that, you know from picking your roommate, this building is the apartment sector. Frankly, it’s incredible that Taesan and his roommates are all friends. You know other people who got apartments, or even quads, who aren’t so happy.
As you step into the entrance way, you feel the warm air hit your face. This building is much warmer than yours, maybe that’s a good thing. Walking up the stairs, Taesan is steady behind you. You wonder if he’s thinking about catching you like he had to the time you were drunk off your ass.
As soon as you enter the apartment dorm, your focus tunnel visions on the soft couch in the middle of the room. It looks like heaven as you step towards it. You were unfairly ripped from the comfort of your bed for that fuckass presentation and now you can return to your natural state, sleeping. You thank whatever power is out there because this is so incredibly opportune.
As soon as you shed your backpack and winter coat and collapse on the couch, you’re out like a light. No words from Taesan can wake you now, even if it is him professing his undying love for you. No, it’s up to your internal clock to make you up, lest you sleep forever.
Your internal clock does wake you up. You’re groggy, but it’s still light out, so you couldn’t have slept for so long. As you assess your situation, you notice two differences.
First, you’re warm.
A navy blue throw blanket has been carefully draped over you, and you’re pretty sure you didn’t do that yourself. You bite the inside of your cheek—happily, this time. It’s proof he does care, and maybe you’re letting the gesture get to your head. You do… not like Han Taesan, right?
Second, you’re alone in Taesan’s living room.
There are no signs of life, not from his roommates nor from the mountain himself. That’s more puzzling. You would have assumed he would have stayed for one reason or another, maybe he went out to get hot chocolate? He told you that he would have Woonhak do it.
Looking around the room, you take in the sights. There’s a modest TV with various video game consoles, there is a section of the room clearly designated for guitars, and it’s remarkably clean. Not too bad for five early 20-somethings and one 18 year old. It’s kind of impressive, actually. There isn’t any leftover food out and even the dishes in the sink have been rinsed, if not thoroughly washed. You pat down the area around you in search of your phone, mainly to check the time, but also to figure out where the hell Taesan went. Something about his absence hurts your heart in an uncomfortable way. You would have liked to see him when you woke up. Still… you do not like Han Taesan… do you? No, no. You don’t like him, that’s silly. He’s just your partner for a group project.
As you locate your phone, you hear the door open behind you and you swing your head around to see Taesan standing in the doorway with a hand behind his back and a bag in the hand that’s visible to you. Another bag, nice.
“Good morning.” He smiles at your state. The way he looks at you suggests your hair is out of order. You fail obviously as you try to subtly sort it out.
“I had a great nap. You have a good napping couch.” You bring a hand up to rub your right eye even though your mom says it causes astigmatism. It would suck to have contacts in right about now.
“Well,” he says, setting down the bag on the counter, “I have your hot chocolate.” You’re pretty sure your face lights up at this, it’s the perfect thing for this kind of dingy day. “And,” he continues, “I got it from a café near here; store-bought isn’t as good.” He takes a cardboard carrier out of the bag and presents his finds to you, two lidded cups.
“You sure know the way to my heart.” You mean that on a deeper level that you hope he doesn’t catch. “What’s behind your back?” You ask, pointing to the obvious hand still tucked behind him. 
He looks sheepish and brings the hand to his front, “I got these for you.” His cool act is far gone, he seems almost timid. In his left hand he grasps a bouquet of an assortment of colorful flowers. There are assorted yellows, blues, pinks, purples, and reds. It’s like a sunset wrapped in brown paper and tied in a pretty twine bow.
“Taesan!” You exclaim excitedly, jumping up from the couch to go collect your gift. “Why?” You poke. He’s quiet for a second, the question seems to echo throughout the room. A chorus of ‘why.’ You meet his eyes for just a second, but the shared glance makes your heart beat faster. He seems to bite his tongue, there’s a shining reflection of the kitchen light in his dark brown eyes. You don’t see them crinkle up, indicative of a straight face.
He swallows like his throat is thick, “I got them for you because I like you… I like you romantically.”
You’re not sure if your heart swells or drops.
From this one statement, you learn two things. You learn that Han Taesan likes you, and you learn that you like Han Taesan. You really like Han Taesan. You like the way he’s cold but kind and the way his bangs fall and his endless care for his roommates and his hardworking nature. 
You like Han Taesan.
You take the bouquet in your hands, analyzing the flowers. You notice they’re mostly tulips, but flanked by carnations, baby’s breath, and bluebells. A smile grows on your face as you look back up at him. He looks absolutely terrified. It’s not worth it to tease him here. He’s vulnerable, you should be too.
You begin to open your mouth, but before you can, he continues in an attempt at defense, “listen to me, please. I thought you were cute and smart even before the party and all of those incidents, but now that I know you I can’t not tell you. You’re witty and stubborn and playful and it’s so easy to talk to you. You were cute when you were drooling, I didn’t know that was possible. You make fun of me but I like it because you’re so kind. I… I like you.” He confesses, he’s talking fast and you think your heart might burst with excitement. Excitement isn’t the right word—euphoria? Joy? Happiness? Exhilaration? No word is quite right for how you feel about Taesan. “The tulips symbolize love.” He says under his breath and the flowers take on a whole new meaning. You feel like a tulip. Tulips symbolize love.
The smile that bursts across your face makes his eyebrows release all their tension immediately, “Taesan, I like you too. I really like you,” you tell him, “tulips symbolize love.” You look down at the bouquet and see the array of tulips that smile back at you.
“Can I kiss you? I’m not drunk, I swear.” He promises. The allusion to your first meeting makes you laugh. You met with an ask for a kiss, and now he confesses with an ask for a kiss.
“Yes.” You whisper, and he throws his arms around you, pressing his forehead to yours. You sway like that for a moment, you feel the cold of his jacket against your arms and the pressure of his hand on the small of your back. You look at him and in his eyes you see him. No walls, just you two. Just you and Taesan.
You wrap your arms around his neck, one hand still holding the bouquet and pull his lips to yours. Warmth blossoms in your chest—his kiss is soft and tender and he tastes like mint. Mint might be your new favorite flavor. His lips fit perfectly with yours. You feel the soft press of his fingers into your back, pulling you closer to him. Your lips part slightly and you’re out of breath before he even starts to pull away. His kiss is just like him, just when you think you know him all, he shows you a new surprise, something new. After stalling for just a second, he pulls you back to him and deepens the kiss. You could kiss this minty boy forever.
When he pulls away, he rests his forehead against yours again, fluttering his eyes open and shut.
“I wrote a song about this. A serenade.” He says breathlessly.
Even in the dead of winter, you think your heart melts all over again.
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NOTES: Shoutout Hartford Whalers even tho they sports disbanded! SINGING MAN CAMEO! The singing man is a genuine character in my life. Living in the city center of a major city means I get LOTS of people doing weird shit like the emoji guy (who wears outfits only with bright fucking emojis, my friends have seen him too, he’s wacky), the tree guy (a man who always walks around with a fallen branch on his head, no idea why), and the supercar medical worker (woman in scrubs who drives down the streets with a loud ass car that looks like one of those fuckass shoes with big holes in them you know what im talking about the kidney shoes). I take a pic and keep them in a folder on my phone called “recurring characters.” I have never seen the singing man. He walks past my house every weekday at 11pm and I like to have my windows open and he sings loud Spanish ballads. I love him. Singing man my beloved. Sorry this is a slowburn, it was forced out of me i fear. is this a slowburn? methinks so.
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weebsinstash · 17 hours ago
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you know what I wanna see. A yandere finding out they're getting platonicly cucked and getting like really offended because they find out you basically pretend to be a different person around them?
Like I can't decide which Hazbin man I'd like the idea for more but I keep veering back towards Alastor/Vox/poly radiostatic where they find out that you've just been keeping up an act with them and that you show the true you to other people, which hurts especially bad if he/they is a soulmate to you
For example, both men know you as this, shy reserved young lady who mostly keeps to herself and you do things like read books and do puzzles and you're overall pretty softspoken and kind of awkward. Then they catch you hanging out in public with a group of friends and you're standing there in a totally different outfit than they usually see you in, getting, basically just loud and happy as you interact with your friends? Just hollering out on the side walk or something, "no, no, you don't understand, when rock lee dropped the weights that was THE best anime moment of my entire childhood, it was iconic, rock lee was HIM, he was THAT GUY--" and you're laughing and snorting and all shoving each other around as you talk and goof off and you happen to look over and see Vox/Alastor there and just, deflate. You very obviously don't want them to see you like that. You have a very "oh shit I've been caught doing something I'm not supposed to and I'm going to get in trouble and I'm really worried and sad" visible reaction that they both clock immediately
Because imagine like... you were just doing this because you thought they would judge you and they never actually gave you a reason to hide things from them, you were just insanely anxious and feeling under pressure from the relationship that you hid everything you assumed they wouldn't like, which was... almost everything about you, so your new demonic hubby finds out you've been, in a way, essentially scared of him this whole time? Thinking he's a judgmental piece of shit which maybe he is but thinking he would do that to YOU though?
The two wanting to like actually I mean it genuinely HURT your friends because, what the fuck do you mean all of them have been getting to see this adorable true unique side of you and meanwhile the people you're actually 'supposed to be with' scare you and you lie to them and think they'll be cruel to you, kinda justifiably because they're notorious Overlords but also kinda unwarranted since they've been really nice to you specifically?
"what if Alastor didn't like if his darling was a gamer or heavy tech user" well what if Alastor wasn't a fan but he ultimately respected your autonomy enough to let you do it anyways because you're a working bill-paying adult and he's actually significantly more upset about the fact you think he would treat you poorly and would go to significant lengths to hide such huge parts of yourself from him?
"what if Mr Professional CEO Vox thinks his darling is a huge dork and cringe and wants to make you more traditionally feminine" yeah and what if Vox would LOVE a darling that can smoke weed and binge on pizza and anime with him and he's mad that you two could've been hanging out sharing genuinely mutual hobbies this whole time? (And also Vox is... a huge dork already ok the way he talks to the tvs and stuff is such dorky white guy shit fr if you told me he was in a frat with guys named Tanner and Hunter and Skyler and they chugged beer and watched family guy I would believe it immediately)
I'm even over here like, "what if Valentino started trying to force his employee crush to start looking and dressing a certain way and he's like 'hmm you know what? I hate it actually. Go back to doing your own thing, boo'" because he's actually like So Down that when you stop cracking jokes and being as cute he immediately hits the reverse
Lucifer finding out you've been trying to like, pretend to be this calm collected woman because you're trying to be formal and fancy with him as the king of hell and a creature that has existed since your entire family line existed and you're EXTREMELY intimidated, and then HE'S ALSO trying to be all macho and tough because, pwease dont hate him for being a lil small, he promises he can be a good husband for you 🥺👉👈 he's just a silly lil guy who loves his daughter and is a little goofy about ducks and then he finds out you're like, one of those "weird girls" who spent recess catching bugs and you can start rambling off about things like, "you know there's this misconception that mantis shrimp can see colors in a larger spectrum than humans can but some of the colors we can see that they cant involve certain 'transition' colors that are helpful for actually fully perceiving objects and seeing fuller shade ranges and things like shadows and--" and now you guys can watch nature documentaries together
But it's just like. You get the two sides of the same coin because, you can think of cute bonding moments when they find out who you really are and their opinions on your interests, AND you can think about them being INCREDIBLY jealous and possessive that you were trusting other people in a way you didn't trust them, and sometimes even people you know much less than them as well. Just because they're willing to share you by letting you have your own autonomy doesn't mean they're not going to get their feathers ruffled that you've been having what they perceive as actually quite intimate moments with, you know, people that aren't them :) it's the kind of thing that might make certain types awfully CLINGY, you know... some may even get a little POSSESSIVE over a discovery like this. good thing you've been practicing your charisma on all your little friends, because something is telling me your social circle just got a whooooole lot smaller.....
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ggensblog · 2 days ago
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Marauder request!!!!! The type of music they use as background white noise. Simple mundane stuff they like. Glad to see this fandom alive.
rahhh thanks for the request <3 i saw this on my way to the grocery store and was thinking about it so much i forgot to buy milk lmaoo
just miscellaneous headcannons ! this was fun! let me know if i should do this for other characters!
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james potter
i feel like James would 100% buy into the idea of listening to classical music while he studies. like he heard about it from lily or something and fully convinced himself it works
that being said, i also feel like he would totally be the type to get distracted by said classical music and be like nodding his head along to the beat of it instead of actually locking in
physically cannot study when he's around other people, he will just start yapping about his day or quidditch or literally anything
accidentally sits too close to anyone else on the couch in the common room. like if remus was sitting on one side of the couch and the whole other side of it was open, he would still sit right next to remus.
remus lupin
he has this playlist of music that he's listened to so much that it has become background noise. does that make sense? like he doesn't have to pay attention to it- it's just kind of on
he either puts a shit ton of milk and sugar into his tea/coffee or none at all. there is no in-between and it depends on the day
he refuses to wear shoes in his room or even around the common room unless he is actively leaving. so instead he wears a pair of the most grandpa-esque slippers you've ever seen.
sirius and james hid the slippers one time just to see what would happen and remus didn't talk to them for the rest of the day
has awful posture
sirius black
maybe this is just in my head, but I feel like sirius would be really into jazz. not like the slow, sleepy stuff but the kind that people would dance to in parisian bars- yk?
alternatively he does not like classical music because its boring and predictable- peter asks him what the difference is and Sirius just sighs
regularly steals from remus' stash of chocolate and regularly blames it on james or peter
actually really enjoys reading, but only by choice and when he's alone because- similar to james- if there is another person around, then he will simply not get anything done
i feel like its a really common hc for sirius to speak french but my favorite caveat of this is him forgetting a word (like refrigerator or something) and not being able to remember it in any language
peter pettigrew
go-to fit is a striped sweater of some kind button up underneath with the collar showing because his mom said it made him look 'smart'
the psychopath studies in complete silence. the smallest noise and he's complaining about not being able to focus
collects figurines of some kind (super hero, celebrity, etc) and they're his prized possessions
sleeps with socks on (am i being too mean?)
left handed and grips his pencil/quill/whatever in a weird way
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theweeklydiscourse · 3 days ago
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tw: mention of CSA and abuse
just saw your recent reblog about Nosferatu and idk what is your actual take on it but i've to disagree with the op saying <this is not a story about grooming nor abuse... it can be,> the movie is very obviously and directly concerned about sexual abuse and the uncomfortable eroticism only enhances the horror of the whole situation. i just find posts that constantly need to mention "it's not about abuse it really isn't!" entirely dishonest and intentionally denying the very obvious theme of the movie just so they don't have to face the fact that they liked a ship that is as noncon as it gets. it is essentially a grooming rapist/victim relationship which obviously makes people uncomfortable to admit which is why they don't want to acknowledge that. and that explains the vehement push back against the SA narrative (which isn't a simple interpretation but very much what literally happens in the movie). i just think that people need to just start being honest with themselves like there's nothing wrong if you end up liking an absolutely fucked up dynamic and the whole “death and the maiden” of it all but please stop with the "this isn't a story of abuse" takes because that is actually harmful. not the shipping but denying the fact that this is a movie about abuse because it has led to some very horrible takes of rape apologism with people saying "it's not abuse because she called to him so it can't be" like... no. just no.
There are a few issues at play in the current discourses surrounding Nosferatu. First, one side makes sweeping generalizations about what the film is definitively about, and then the other side counters it with its own sweeping statements. This predictably gives way to certain over-corrections in the discourse that try to find an absolute answer to subject matter that is up for audience interpretation. I actually had a similar thought occur to me when I read that quote in that particular post, and I say that as someone who is really into the "Death and the Maiden" dynamic. We're talking about a film that provides more than enough support for multiple interpretations and it's frustrating that people reject other people's ideas so they can have the *one ultimate correct* take on it.
This issue is exacerbated by the current internet climate of moralizing textual interpretations and the lack of understanding surrounding the genre Nosferatu belongs to. Gothic fiction often features taboo subject matter that is considered by many to be off-putting and disturbing, and usually, that leads to the judgement of those who enjoy it. The reason that people are overcorrecting by saying that it's not about abuse is responding to the denial of the existence of themes of repression, desire and love in the film. It's a phenomenon I also find irritating. Viewers who are totally unfamiliar with the kinds of themes and subject matter gothic fiction deals with seem to be imposing only one possible interpretation of the text while acting like people are immoral for thinking otherwise.
I also consider Robert Eggers's words in my own reading of the film. In an interview, Eggers noted that his approach to the film was informed by the trope of the "demon lover" and even referred to the relationship between Ellen, Orlok, and Thomas as a love triangle. The film is explicitly erotically charged in a manner that can be taken either way, and I believe that both interpretations are valid ones. Outright denial of interpretations of Ellen and Orlok's relationship as abusive seems foolish to me. But I also get why people might be uncomfortable fully acknowledging the more twisted nature of their dynamic. Nobody wants to get labelled as an abuse apologist over fictional matters or shipping, and there are times when merely engaging with darker subject matter gets people labelled as such. However, people need to stop being so absolutist about these things and learn to substantively engage with differing viewpoints.
I think that the online tendency to moralize fictional preferences plays a large role in people's resistance to being honest with themselves about liking taboo subjects or twisted dynamics. There's nothing wrong with liking it, but it's hard to do so openly without incurring some form of criticism and contempt. Denial gets us nowhere.
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dont-offend-the-bees · 3 days ago
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I would love for Ponyo AU to hear more about a) the seaside town where Edwin lives or b) how the Night Nurse and Kashi met (something which is never addressed in the Ponyo film actually, I think) - apologies if this constitutes a spoiler for future chapters!
Thank you, my friend! Apologies for the delay in answering, life sure keeps life-ing all over me 😑
I did think about choosing an actual British seaside town to set the story in -- we do have plenty of them to choose from -- but ultimately I decided that in the name of the sort of, dreamy imprecise magical whimsy of the piece, that having an exact town you can point to on a map wasn't really what was needed or wanted.
Edwin lives in a Pushing Daisies-esque small beach town named something whimsical like Bottleby-Upon-Tweed or West Wombling or some such achingly British nonsense, and it's all brightness and noise and candy striped colours in the summer and a desaturated frame of salt-roughened old celluloid in the winter. Those two mirroring states are sort of reflective of our POV characters. The POV of the overall fic is a little muddled, there may be parts where it leans more heavily into Edwin or Charles (the growing up sequence ended up almost entirely Edwin, which I regret a bit now!) but there will often be asides to both in the same section because in my mind they're sort of learning to see the world not just through their own eyes but through each other's; Edwin, who's tired of this grey old place and these grey, miserable people, and Charles, who sees the world on the shore as this big exciting adventure. It's an odd balance and one I defo didn't nail in chapter one because I was still sort of percolating ideas, but there's a tribute to both of their viewpoints in the way I'm trying to build this fictional town around them out of drab and dour things like cold cliffs and beach litter and panopticon-esque family homes that watch you with their beady window-eyes, and out of larger-than-life adventure set pieces like killer seagulls and travelling circuses (woops chapter 2 spoiler!) and the same house again but as a castle on the hill, a stronghold. Essentially, the town is a Frankensteined scrapbook of your quintessential English beachside town, cobbled together by two children with very different memories of how the summer holiday went!
And as for Night Nurse and Kashi, well, I won't go into what the later chapters hold for them, but I have no idea how much of their backstory will make it into the fic, so. In the interest of anyone who wants to keep that part of the fic a complete surprise I'll pop it under a cut!
N.N. and Kashi aren't the focus of the fic, so I wouldn't say I've thought through every aspect of their relationship/backstory, however as soon as their role in this fic revealed itself to me I did get way more invested in them than I planned! In this fic, N.N tends to be referred to as either the sea witch, or the witch of the waves (slight Howl's Moving Castle nod, there!), but she has another name, and a relatively well-known role in ancient Greek mythology. What her history is exactly has been somewhat lost to time, oral histories and retellings being what they are, but she was once a powerful sorceress with a gift for transforming people who crossed her into animals. She's had various romantic entanglements and a number of children, all lost to her now.
She'd always lived by the sea and done a number of dealings with some famous -- or infamous -- sea-dwellers, so it was a happy coincidence that one day she happened across a strange and friendly man on the docks. He was an odd man, seemingly totally unbothered by the pain and strife in the world; and she, being a woman who'd lived through a great deal of tiresome human loss and pettiness (of literally mythic proportions), found herself drawn to him. He turned out to be a minor god of the sea and a self-described inveterate wonderer, always swimming from ocean to ocean, never having had enough of all the world can show him, but his kindness and his refreshingly direct manner of speaking seduced her, and she gave up on the world of men for good to live on the bottom of the sea -- and grew to adore it so much that she's now quite sure that the world could do perfectly well without the land or the humans in the picture, actually. They love each other very dearly, in their strange way, they're honest with each other; and she's never begrudged him his lifestyle, or his adventures, or his infrequent and unpredictable visits.
...She does take SLIGHT issue when that ridiculous overgrown seahorse of a man blows back into her neck of the woods with a winsome smile and a fresh batch of magical immortal fish-children smuggled under his arm like souvenirs from abroad, but. Fortunately for him she's been a mother before and even finds herself missing it on occasion; although the sort of broods this man produces are FAR larger than any she's had to deal with in her human years. No wonder she's just a tad stressed.
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zepskies · 16 hours ago
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Oh my Goooood I've been so excited to see what you came up with, Michelle!! You know I love your takes on characters and these shows, so I knew you would hit these headcanons out of the park. 😍 Thank you so much for using my idea/taking on my request. 💕💕
Now, to dive right in!
Dean:
Oh, I was smiling so hard reading his part. 😏
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It hurt my heart that she thought him coming up to her in the bar was a "bet" of some kind, and that she didn't think he was seriously hitting on her (probably would be my reaction tbh). But I loved this:
“If I wanted to talk to her, I’d have gone over there. Now you can tell me to get lost or you can give me a chance.” “Chance to what?” “Take a beautiful woman home,” he’d grin, looking up through his lashes.
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And I also love how 1 drink turned into a 3 week relationship. 🥰
“My favorite girl? Always,” he hummed, body jerking when a waft of cherries floated through the room. He tilted his head, eyes wide. “You…made pie?”
First I melted from the adorableless, but then YES, she made him PIE. 🥧🥧 She's definitely a keeper. 💞
Beau Arlen
Oooh I actually liked the slow burn of this one. I could so see this as a full fic btw! (One that I would totally read. 😏 Been rewatching Big Sky season 3 lately.)
The "wanting to prove it to himself that he was ready for another relationship and that Emily was doing better after everything that happened over the summer" are both so valid for Barlen. 👌🏽
Still, I love the hints that he picks up on that the reader is into him, even though he's kind of biding his time. And when he finally just goes for it...
“Beau. Come on. I know I’m not your type.” Beau rose from the other side of his desk, striding around it and stopping in front of your chair. “You are my type and before you open that mouth of yours to argue, I thought I owed it to you to get my shit together before I did this. I ain’t perfect but I am ready to try.”
God I love me some Beau. 😩😩🙏🏽
“I am. In all of you. But I wanted you to get the best version of me. The one that is emotionally available and that’s taken time.” He’d lean down closer, sliding his hand up your leg, grazing your hip, your ribs, all the way up to your cheek. “I’m ready if you want me.”
We love an emotionally mature man. And I love the "protective and watchful" part of the HC towards the end. 😏
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Soldier Boy/Ben
Ooh here we go. 🤣
It tracks that he already is coming on strong lmao, no regard for what she might be feeling. 🙄
Challenge accepted.
Ooh something tells me he's met his match!! loll She manages to turn his head with that sexy AF leather skirt, huh?
“What a shame. I bet you’d beg real pretty.” Soldier Boy wouldn’t fight the way his breath hitched.
Ooooh so we got a true badass in the house! 😏 She fully got him wrapped around her finger by the end of the night. 💞
Nobody laid a hand on his girl. Not unless they wanted to lose theirs.
Hahaa that kind of jealousy tracks with this guy for sure. 🤌🏽
Russell Shaw
Ooh this one had an interesting setup! The juxtaposition between being in the office vs. out in the field, and then smacking right into the reader in one of my favorite kinds of meet cutes! loll
Also love his adorable "nervous energy." 😂 I think out of all of these, Russell's and Beau's felt like a full on story, and I love that!
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And what a lovely, melt-worthy line that makes me wanna read or write even more Russell:
“I got a beautiful woman right at home and she is all I want. Just me and her. Understand?”
🥰💜
I absolutely loved these, Michelle!! Great job, and can't want to see what other HCs you might cook up next. 💖
Headcanon: How They Meet Their Plus Size Girlfriend
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I'm officially trying my hand at headcanons (only a few years behind the ball there)! If these go over well, I might start to incorporate them more around here.
Special thanks to @zepskies for the idea (okay, it's a little different than we talked about but I think it still fits the bill) and getting me on the headcanon bandwagon! 😘
Warnings: language, implied smutty times, implied body insecurity
Dean Winchester
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Dean’s always been the kind of guy to think if a woman’s beautiful to him, she’s beautiful. Case closed. Which was exactly his thought when he caught a glimpse of Y/N at a dive bar outside of Lawrence. He’d do a double take, not being shy about how he took you in or hiding the smile on his face when he saw you watching him. One quick look away before you were looking back and that was more than enough invitation for him.
He’d be on his feet, at your table in under ten seconds, not deterred by the furrow of your brows. In another ten he’d have laid out one of, in his opinion, his best lines. His confidence fell a sliver when all you did was stare back at him but that was alright. He wasn’t going to give up that easily. 
“Why don’t you try that line on the blonde over there that’s mentally undressing you?” you’d say, fighting back the urge to say something snappy at the ridiculously handsome man in front of you. Before he had even come over, you knew he was trouble, knew his type. He surely had made a bet with the longer haired man at his time and had come over to play a game with you. There was no way in hell he was actually interested, not when there were at least five different women at the bar ready to jump at the chance to take him home.
The man would smirk, lifting his head as if he realized something. To your annoyance, he’d slip into the empty chair beside you, taking a short sip of his beer along the way. He’d adorably rest his elbow against the table’s edge, leaning his head against his hand as he slumped down, all the while smiling at you.
“If I wanted to talk to her, I’d have gone over there. Now you can tell me to get lost or you can give me a chance.”
“Chance to what?”
“Take a beautiful woman home,” he’d grin, looking up through his lashes. You’d laugh, gesturing down to yourself, his brow furrowing in confusion. “Hey now. Don’t tell me when I think a woman is hot and I won’t tell you.”
You’d raise your eyebrows, the mysterious stranger inching closer, lifting his head with a certain boyish mischievousness. “C’mon sweetheart. One drink.”
“Fine. One drink.”
One drink turned into five. One night turned into six. Six nights turned into Dean spending the night and making breakfast for three weeks straight. 
Dean smirked when you let him inside the house, his hands immediately shooting to your hips and pulling you crashing into his chest. 
“Down boy,” you’d teased as he tried to kiss under your jaw, his grip keeping you from returning to the kitchen. “Dean. It’ll burn.”
“We can order takeout,” he mumbled, nipping at your neck. You rolled your eyes, smiling when Dean chuckled. “How’s that one drink working out for you, sweetheart?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know,” you said, Dean walking you back against the front door, his hands shooting to your face, capturing it like he had been starved all day. “Someone miss me?”
“My favorite girl? Always,” he hummed, body jerking when a waft of cherries floated through the room. He tilted his head, eyes wide. “You…made pie?”
“Well you said you like-” He’d slam his lips to yours with an almost bruising force, leaving you breathless before jogging away. “What are you doing?”
“Saving the pie!” You crossed your arms, laughing as he scrambled to put on an oven mitt and yank it out of the oven. “Crisis averted. You didn’t say it was pie, sweetheart. We never let a pie burn.”
He walked back over much slower as it cooled on a rack, Dean placing his hands on either side of your head, a dangerous smile on his face. “Now, where were we?”
Beau Arlen
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Beau would wait a while before making a move on you. He had to prove it to himself that he was ready for another relationship and that Emily was doing better after everything that happened over the summer. So he quietly waited and settled for your friendship. There was no reason in his head to drag you into his crap or jump the gun when he knew it’d cause problems. But he didn’t miss the way you caught him staring during movie nights, dinners, at park yoga (that truth be told he only did at first because Emily’s therapist thought it was something nice to do together but didn’t want to admit he actually enjoyed). 
Beau knew he would be sending conflicting signals. Eyes that said for the love of god I want this, words that said this is platonic as hell. He had to go so far as to keep his hands off of you completely for fear he would break his resolve and just plant one on you. Naturally when he finally felt like he was in a good place to give things an honest shake, you’d tell him on his lunch break that you had a date that night.
“Cancel it,” Beau blurts out. He’d watch you scrunch up your face but he’s already let the cat out of the bag. Might as well go all in. “Go out with me.”
“Beau, we can hang out tomorrow. I want to go out with this guy, see where it leads. I'm not getting any younger. I need to get serious about finding someone.”
“Yeah and I’m serious about going out with you. Let me take you out on a date.” He’d understand your hesitation. He was the one backing off whenever you’d put out feelers in the past. Beau knew he had to go all in if he wanted to earn that trust with you.
“Beau. Come on. I know I’m not your type.”
Beau rose from the other side of his desk, striding around it and stopping in front of your chair. “You are my type and before you open that mouth of yours to argue, I thought I owed it to you to get my shit together before I did this. I ain’t perfect but I am ready to try.”
He’d rest a hand on your thigh, waiting for your reaction, inching up ever so slightly to make it clear that was more than a friendly gesture.
“Beau, I don’t…you never seemed interested-“
“I am. In all of you. But I wanted you to get the best version of me. The one that is emotionally available and that’s taken time.” He’d lean down closer, sliding his hand up your leg, grazing your hip, your ribs, all the way up to your cheek. “I’m ready if you want me.”
“Of course I want you. But…” He’d hum, leaning in close, pressing his lips to yours. 
“But you don’t think I want you?” He frowned when you looked away, his hand catching your chin. “I’m a big boy and you’re a big girl. I think we’re both old enough to trust that we’re telling each other the truth. So go out with me tonight. I promise it will be a million times better than whatever guy you were going to go with.”
It’d take a moment but he’d grin as you texted your date you had a change of heart, Beau already planning the perfect evening together.
Not long after that first date Beau would be spending most of his nights with you, whether that was at home with Emily, out at your favorite bar, or exploring town. He’d constantly have an arm around you, your waist, your shoulders, your hips. Beau liked to keep his girl close. Maybe he’d worked through a lot but he was still protective through and through and that meant he was always watchful of you. Including the occasional stray eye when you were out. Beau always made sure to give them a look to back off and that you were taken. 
“What are you doing?” You’d ask one night, catching him with narrowed eyes. 
“Nothing, dear,” he said, tucking you into his side, forcing a smile. “Just fending off the sharks.”
“Sharks?”
“You really have no idea how beautiful you are, do you.” He’d watch you do that thing with your nose which meant you were fighting back the heat trying to rise to your cheeks. But he wouldn’t fight his own, smirking as he kissed you deeply. “Thank god you’re all mine.”
Soldier Boy/Ben
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Ben would make a move on you the second he saw you. Long strides across the club and an arm draped around your shoulders as he almost ignored your presence in favor of order a round of shots. He’d keep you close even as you attempted to pull away, turning his head with a coy smile. 
“Where you going, gorgeous? Didn’t you come out tonight to have fun?” he grinned darkly, enjoying the mixture of disgust at his arrogance and the intrigue hidden underneath your frown. “Someone in a skirt like that is looking for a good time. Well, here I am. No strings attached”
He’d lick his lips as you’d take your shot without breaking eye contact, Soldier Boy’s eyebrows raising in surprise. He wouldn’t have been sure if it’d be that easy but he’d take it. Until he’d watch you down the other shot and turn around, walking off to the dance floor with a wave over the shoulder.
Challenge accepted.
He’d follow you out, letting you take the lead, growing frustrated every time you’d teasingly pull him in only to push away. His desire would only grow when you gave him the slip at the end of the night, no longer a game in his mind. You weren’t simply a conquest anymore. He was curious about the woman in the leather skirt and how on earth she was resisting everything he was offering.
Finally, finally, he’d find you outside the club, leaning against the cold brick wall, hands clasped behind your back.
“Now don’t you run off on me again,” purred Ben, taking your hand in his, eyes dark and hungry. He’d smirk at your feigned disinterest, putting on his most innocent expression he could muster. “My place. Let me do wonderful things to that body of yours, gorgeous.”
He’d take your nonchalant shrug for a yes and before he knew it, he’d have you in his apartment, down on his knees, making good on his promise. Before he could get his head on right though, he’d hear the click of your heels on the marble floor. With a wobble and fixing the tent in his pants, he’d catch you halfway out the door, his eyes wide in bewilderment. “Where you going, baby?”
“Like you said, I was looking for a good time and I had it. I don’t remember saying you were getting any more than that.” He’d lean against the wall, cocking his head and letting the coil in his gut unravel.
“Baby, stay and I’ll keep on chasing you until you’re sick of me. Scouts’ honor.” He’d smile at your laugh, jutting out his lip. “Aw, don’t make me beg.”
“What a shame. I bet you’d beg real pretty.” Soldier Boy wouldn’t fight the way his breath hitched. He’d been with plenty of teasing women before but they always wanted him in control. Something about that threat, promise, whatever it was would make his skin itchy with need.
“Want to see if you can make me?” He’d know his hook was in the moment the words left his mouth, the way your eyes raked over his body. “No one’s ever been able. Think you’re that good?”
“Oh sweetie, you’ll regret that.”
Two months later, Soldier Boy wouldn’t regret it for one second. Not just for what you’d brought out in him in the bedroom. You challenged him, called him on his shit and damn he liked you putting him in his place. He wouldn’t quite understand it but somewhere he likened it to something akin to deeper feelings. Everything had started out at pure sex but there was something about you that stayed under his skin, something that him taking you out on real dates, to movie premieres and parties. Something that made him want this to last. He’d growl at the man that once tried to lay a hand on your ass, not even pretending to be sorry when you’d chastised him for breaking the guys arm.
Soldier Boy knew his anger was quick and he wasn’t the easiest person in the world to deal with but he didn’t care. Nobody laid a hand on his girl. Not unless they wanted to lose theirs.
Russell Shaw
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Russell didn’t love going in the office. He considered the field his true workplace. But every so often he had to go in to deal with contracts, paperwork, or in this case, get reimbursed for a phone that’d been destroyed somewhere along the Amazon river.
So that was how he’d turned the corner too quick and slammed straight into you. He’d fall smack on his ass and look across the way, finding you in a similar position, coffee staining your peach colored blouse and a shattered mug on the ground.
“Oh fuck,” he’d say as he’d notice the red streaks coming from your hand. He’d slide across the floor, pulling the forest green handkerchief he kept on him and quickly covering your bleeding palm. “I’m so sorry.”
“It was an accident,” you’d say, wincing as he tightened it. 
“Let me take you to get that stitched. You shouldn’t drive like that,” he’d say before ducking into a nearby room and alerting an admin to what had happened. Russell would stay in the waiting room the whole time you got checked out and after getting you out of work the rest of the day, he’d take you down the street to his favorite food truck, encouraging you to get your blood sugar back up even if you’d barely lost any in the first place. 
“I’ll happily pay for the dry cleaning or new clothes,” he’d say as you sipped on a glass of sweet tea, finding his nervous energy kind of adorable. “I can’t believe I did that.”
“Well, you know you contract guys. Break into enemy territory in the dead of night? No problem. Walk down a hallway? Now that’s dangerous.” Russell would smile hard at your teasing, more than happy to not have incurred any of your wrath in the long term. He had the feeling you were uncomfortable in your messy clothes though, despite the cardigan you were holding closed with one hand over your shirt. 
A gust of wind would come through and threaten to throw all your food to the ground, both of you reaching and grabbing before it could fall. In that instance, Russell would spot that you weren’t just uncomfortable. Your peach blouse had turned completely see through and was revealing a light pink bra. 
“Here,” Russell said without thinking, shrugging out of his jacket on the cool day and standing, handing it across the table. You’d blink up at him before slowly taking it, holding the much thicker material to your chest. As much he might have liked, he kept his mouth shut about the bra, instead letting you eat your lunch quickly and quietly.
Russell would insist on driving you home with an offer to take you into work to get your car in the morning.
“Sorry about ruining your clothes again,” he’d say on your front porch, holding up a hand when you tried to give his jacket back. “You keep it. Not like we’ll never see each other again, right?”
“Right. I’ll uh, see you tomorrow then.”
Russell would pause halfway down the steps, feeling your gaze on his back. “Do you want to maybe…get dinner later? I don’t have any jobs lined up for a few weeks and I’m a sucker for pink.”
He’d turn around with a hesitant smile, one eyebrow raised as you lifted your chin. “Seven. Don’t be late.”
Russell smirked when he picked you up that night wearing a pink zip up, enjoying the smug look on your face. 
“So where you taking me, Shaw?” you’d ask, Russell opening the passenger door for you. “I normally don’t wear jeans and a hoodie on a first date.”
“Maybe you’ve been dating the wrong men,” he’d wink as he closed the door. “It’ll be fun and no coffee will be thrown or shrapnel will occur, I promise.”
“Oh well, is it even a first date without those?” He’d chuckle, quickly hoping behind the wheel. 
“I guess that makes this our second date then,” he’d shoot back with a smile.
Russell finds out after his first job away that he doesn’t like being away for weeks at a time from you. Phone calls and face time aren’t enough. He puts in a word with his supervisor about taking shorter missions only from then on out. He’s absolutely giddy to pull up to your house when he gets home from the airport, even if you haven’t been answering his texts today.
“Hey,” he says when you answer the door. He doesn’t like the sliver of doubt on your face. “What’s wrong?”
“I should have asked them before but when you go away…are there others?” He’d hate how small your voice sounded, the way you’d rub your arm absently. “I mean, I know we’re new and didn’t really talk about it and you go to some places with some very beautiful women-”
“I got a beautiful woman right at home and she is all I want. Just me and her. Understand?” Russell would kiss away that worry until it was a faded memory, one he would be more than happy to dispel to you over and over again.
___________
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withthewindinherfootsteps · 3 months ago
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Wei Wuxian and Narrative Agency – Part Three
For Xiantober Day Five: Past and Present, in which the author gets very unhinged about what parts of the past are shown and how that’s affected by the present!
(Part One | Part Two | Full version on AO3)
The Power of Agency: Shaping the Narrative
When I've discussed Wei Wuxian's agency previously, I’ve talked about how what’s shown and omitted tells us about a character, and we’ve talked about the character himself. Though this is a niche topic, it’s not necessarily something out of the ordinary to analyse, and we can assume everything up to here has been in some way intentional.
This? Linking structure to a character’s in-universe preferences?
This is where we get unhinged.
Before I start, let’s quickly establish something which will be important later: although Wei Wuxian is the central character, MDZS isn’t strictly from his POV. While omitting events a character doesn’t like to dwell on and concealing things the character wishes to hide is common in books with only one narrator, MDZS has multiple narrators which it switches between relatively quickly. This includes Wei Wuxian, but it also includes nearly every major character that appears in the story, and omniscient narrator as well. As a default, this format doesn’t lead to this deliberate shaping and omission because of one character’s preferences, since we have many other sources of information and events – which is what makes Wei Wuxian’s influence over the narrative and structure so interesting. We could have access to a lot more information, and access to it at different times, than we do (and that’s not an insult, quite the opposite!).
To begin: we’ve established that times such as Wei Wuxian’s time on the streets, his three months in the Burial Mounds and his loss in the Siege aren’t shown because Wei Wuxian has little agency there. But that’s not the only special thing about them. They’re also the three most traumatic times in his life, and so moments Wei Wuxian himself either can’t remember, or doesn’t like to dwell on.
This is why discussing Wei Wuxian’s treatment of tragedy in his life was important. Firstly, it shows he doesn’t focus on the tragedy in his life, so the idea that the narrative not focusing on this tragedy relates to his character has merit; secondly, it affirms that this is not a passive trait, but a choice. Therefore, when the narrative omits events due to this aspect of Wei Wuxian, it’s respecting not only a character detail – which would be cool by itself – but also an active decision. One that shapes the story it’s made in.
In other words, its very structure is respecting Wei Wuxian’s agency!
Now, of course there are flashbacks to other moments of his past he probably wouldn’t like to dwell on, too. But within the structure, they’re only shown when Wei Wuxian is thinking about them (or when he has reason to)!
Wei WuXian hadn’t woken up yet. His eyes were still tightly shut, yet his hand didn’t let go either. He seemed to be dreaming, muttering, “… Don’t… Don’t be angry…” Lan WangJi seemed somewhat surprised. His voice was gentle, “I am not angry.” Wei WuXian, “… Oh.” Hearing this, as though he finally felt assured, his fingers loosened. Lan WangJi sat beside Wei WuXian for a while. Seeing that he was motionless again, he was about to stand up when Wei WuXian grabbed him with his other hand, hugging his arm and refusing to let go. He shouted, “I’ll go with you, quick, take me back to your sect!” Chapter 63, EXR translation
Which, of course, is him dwelling on…
Lan WangJi spoke one word at a time, “Go back to Gusu with me.” Hearing this, both Wei WuXian and Jiang Cheng were surprised. Quickly afterward, Wei WuXian laughed, “Go back to Gusu with you? To the Cloud Recesses? Why go there?” He immediately seemed to realize, “Oh. I forgot. Your uncle Lan QiRen hates crooked people like me. You’re his proudest disciple, so of course you’re the same as him, haha. I refuse.” Chapter 62, EXR translation
…the painful flashback immediately preceding this. The third set of flashbacks (which are also painful) are a similar case. Look at the contex:
He lifted the bottom of his robe, revealing a prosthetic leg made of wood, “This leg of mine was destroyed by you, that night in the Nightless City (…)” (…) “Wei WuXian, I won’t ask you if you remember or not. Both of my parents died by your hands. You owe too many people. You definitely won’t remember them either. But, I, Fang MengChen, will never forget! And never forgive you!” (…) “In the fight at Qiongqi Path, my son was strangled to death by your dog Wen Ning!” “My shixiong died by poison, his entire body festering due to your cruel curse!” Chapter 68 (immediately preceding the flashbacks), EXR translation
And Wei Wuxian’s own thoughts and words:
Wei WuXian looked at the cultivators before the Demon-Slaughtering Cave. Their expressions were the absolute same as those of the cultivators from the night of the pledge conference, pouring their wine on the ground as they took the pledge to scatter the ashes of the Wen Sect’s remnants and him.  (…) Wei WuXian, “Now it’s time to ask just whom it is that treasures it so much. It’s like Wen Ning. Back then, some certain sects or so were scared to death of the Ghost General. They said they’d kill him on the surface, but behind their backs they hid him for over ten years. How strange. Who was the one that said his ashes had been scattered back then?” Chapter 79 (immediately succeeding the flashbacks), EXR translation 
Once again, Wei Wuxian’s own thoughts relate to the flashbacks we’ve just been shown. And, as I previously mentioned, though all the events which are shown are tragic, they’re also events which Wei Wuxian’s own choices and actions shaped – which he has this to say about:
“The things I did, not only do you remember them, I remember them too. You won’t forget them, and they’ll stay even longer in my mind!” Chapter 82, EXR
Admittedly, this applies more to the third set of flashbacks than the second (which is still fitting as the third set was the most recent), as in the second, although he still had agency within and influence over his circumstances, the majority of the pain was caused by others’ actions (excluding, of course, the Golden Core transfer… which is something we know stays for a long time in his mind, albeit with a caveat we’ll soon discuss). But it’s still important to note – especially considering that otherwise, focusing on this very painful time in his life wouldn’t seem like something very in-character for Wei Wuxian to do.
Of course, this can all just be explained by good writing. It is best to insert flashbacks when they’re relevant to the characters and events in the present day! But it is interesting to compare these to the start of the (not painful) Gusu flashbacks, which open this way:
At a later time, Wei WuXian pondered upon the reason why his relationship with Lan WangJi wasn’t good. Getting to the root of the matter, everything started when he was fifteen, coming to the GusuLan Sect with Jiang Cheng to study for three months. Chapter 13, EXR
Again, considering the circumstances around which these flashbacks take place – returning to the Cloud Recesses for the first time since the lectures, and meeting Lan Wangji once more – it makes complete sense for Wei Wuxian to be thinking about these events*. So it does fit the pattern of Wei Wuxian dwelling on something, thus leading to the narrative dwelling on it, too (and being shaped by his thoughts)… but there’s another layer to this. Importantly, it is the only flashback where Wei Wuxian’s present thoughts don’t lead to this happening, with his thoughts at an unspecified future time leading to it, instead. I like to interpret this as the text saying that, since these events aren’t something Wei Wuxian wouldn’t focus on in normal circumstances, he can dwell on them at any time. Therefore, they’re free to come up in the narrative at any time as well, even if he’s not dwelling on them in the present moment!
So, to summarise: Wei Wuxian’s decision not to focus on the painful times in his life directly influences the narrative to not focus on these times. When painful times are brought up and shown to us, it’s in the context of him thinking about them in the present day, and even then, his most painful moments still aren’t shown to us. His agency in this regard is still respected by the narrative structure.
This is the main way his agency influences the structure of the narrative, but I’d like to talk about the revealing and concealing of information, too. For example, I said I’d talk about the Golden Core transfer – though Wei Wuxian does think about this many times, as evidenced by his internal narration in Chapter 103. But unlike everything we’re shown through the flashbacks, this is something Wei Wuxian is actively trying to hide from others. And the narrative respects this choice (Wei Wuxian’s agency, again), never reveals it even when it would be relevant in the flashbacks, and we find out not through narration, but through a character’s dialogue!
And to clarify – I know these aspects may not be in the book for this exact reason. Showing flashbacks in relevant moments is good writing, concealing an important plot point you want to do a reveal for is necessary writing, and MXTX has said she didn’t want to write about Wei Wuxian’s time in the Burial Mounds, due to not liking to write transformation sequences (and also because it would not be pleasant at all, which likely also applies to Wei Wuxian’s death). That doesn’t prevent it from also being intentional – MXTX’s intelligence is shown in many aspects of this book, and there’s nothing disproving it – but there’s no proof for either option, so I won’t pretend there is. I bring this up because I know this feels like I’m overanalysing, as I feel that way as well.
But, whether it’s intentional or not, it exists in the text, and I adore it – so, regardless, it’s something I’ll explore. Because taking this into account… We aren't just told about Wei Wuxian having agency, we aren’t just shown it in the text, we aren’t even just shown it through which parts of his past are shown and hidden in the structure of the text (as I talked about in Part One). The parts of the past that are shown and hidden also have an in-universe reason for being shown and hidden, this reason being the choices he makes! Agency is the ability of a character to influence the story they’re in, but Wei Wuxian’s agency, as a property of a character who only exists in-universe, shapes the out-of-universe structure as well! That’s how we’re shown its importance! How cool is that?
At The End Of The Road: Summary and Final Thoughts
In this essay, we’ve covered how important Wei Wuxian’s agency is not only to the events of the plot, but to the structure of the narrative as well. The narrative omits periods in which Wei Wuxian has little or no agency, in favour of showing us periods in which he does, even when important events happened in the former. This indicates that who Wei Wuxian is without agency isn’t important enough to be shown to the audience, and therefore that his agency is an integral aspect of his character in MDZS. We’ve discussed how both in-universe and out-of-universe, tragedy does not define him – out-of-universe, the tragic events in Wei Wuxian’s life are used not to build sympathy but rather to show his strength of character and who he still is despite going through them; and in-universe, he chooses not to focus on the negativity and resentment caused by his circumstances or others’ actions, instead staying true to his moral compass and enjoying his life in the present day. Finally, we’ve also explored how this choice is another reason for the omission of certain events from the narrative, resulting in his agency shaping the story in a very literal way – it affects the out-of-universe structure, as well.
It’s quite fitting, for a story whose essence is about defying a conventional narrative – that of righteous clans rising up and defeating a great evil – and about a character who defies many conventional narratives on his own – that of status defining how skilled you could be, that for a golden core being necessary for cultivation and other paths being unavailable, that of a tragic but complete story of someone killed for staying true to their moral code (instead, that character returns to life and has a happy ending) – to have its own narrative play a role in such an important and interesting way.
(Or, if an image would be preferable:)
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Thank you for reading!
(Part One | Part Two | Full version on AO3)
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*This strong relation to the present day circumstances is another reason I love the flashback placement so much (and why I think it’s such a loss both screen adaptions altered it so strongly)! 
#get ready for tag thoughts because there are a LOT of them#it’s for THIS reason that fanon wwx bothers me so much (didn’t want to get negative on the acual post)#bc so often all the changes are changes that woobify him!#self-sacrificial idiot wwx?? only doing things because… poor him he has so many internal issues and values himself so little-#-so of course he’d sacrifice everything before thinking of another option? woobifying#(whenever he sacrifices something it’s a deliberate choice to act on his morals because he values his morals so much – and he’s also very-#-capable and DOES often find ways for no people to get hurt!)#wasn’t aware that what happened to him at lotus pier was wrong and needs lwj to tell him that for him to have any idea if it?#woobifying (as we see in the lotus seed pod extra he KNOWS it’s unfair)#(he downplays it retroactively in his memory (links into not focusing on the bad things in his life))#(but that’s the actions themselves that are being downplayed not their fairness!)#he chooses to act! he is defined by acting! not tragedy – all the more impressive in the face of the amount of tragedy that’s happened#he could SO EASILY have been a woobie but instead he’s the opposite of one: defined BY his agency instead of the absence of it#that doesn’t mean he’s not impacted by tragedy or trauma – he is! but it’s not the most important aspect of his character (bc he doesn’t le#it’s also something that bothers me about the changes cql made#by making qq path and nightless city the fault of someone else it means he IS someone who’s more a victim of circumstance than anything els#he had no control over the tragedies of his first life at all#apart from ig his death being controlled by him? because he just leaps off the cliff during the nightless city siege?? but in THAT case it’#i watched that part recently (i’m getting through it very slowly) and yeah it reaffirmed my love for this aspect of the book even more#despite. having these exact thoughts for two years already#he also dwells on the past events a lot more than book wwx which adds to that version of him BEING defined more by tragedy rather than who#anyway over 7.3k words total (and 400 more in the tags apparently)... it'll be posted to ao3 in its completion this evening!#mdzs meta#my meta#wei wuxian#mdzs#mo dao zu shi#魔道祖师#grandmaster of demonic cultivation#gdc
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oceanwithouthermoon · 4 months ago
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i posted abt this on my tiktok story but i need to rant more so im putting it here 😭😭 the way a lot of mikosai shippers (on tiktok, pinterest, reddit, etc) are is such a big reminder to me of why i hate the strictly romantic soulmates trope with every fiber of my being 😭😭😭 people who interpret soulmates as "that means theyre canonically together" regardless of how the characters actually feel about each other and if they ACTUALLY get together is so fucking gross to me oh my god its so fucking gross i hate forced romance so bad 😭😭 someone cant just say "hey, we're soulmates so you HAVE to date me and its literally weird and impossible for you to like anyone else because i said so!!" and also aiura WOULDNT do that anyway ???? HELLOOO???
you have no idea how many people ive seen call all saiki ships with anyone other than aiura "problematic ships" just because "theyre soulmates"
#SOULMATES DOES NOT MAKE A COUPLE CANON <333#'she SAID theyre soulmates so that means hes HERS now and its gross for u to think he liked anyone else'#hey thats actually... really bad!! hey she actually cant and wouldnt force him to date her!!! hey what the fuck!!!#not a mikosai hate post#only weird forced romance likers hate post <3#if someone doesnt like someone then they dont like them... them being soulmates doesnt change that...#thats actually just not how it works and the idea that that WOULD be how it works is gross#and a lot of the fics ive read of them end up with aiura being all 'ha i told you so! i knew id break u eventually!'#'i knew id get to u if i just kept calling u my boyfriend without permission and saying we're soulmates!'#which like not only would she not do that... its also just really gross#like u really thought 'he doesnt like her so she wears him down and doesnt leave him alone until he relents' and like... u went with that?#oh...#weird...#idk maybe im crazy and also im having a hard time phrasing any of this#but it just brings up so many consent issues and it makes me really uncomfortable#like according to THOSE shippers it wouldnt be by his own will or feelings if he eventually fell in love with her#it would just be because the universe said so and he never had any choice#mikosai is so cute when u think of it in like the totally opposite way#in MY opinion i love mikosai AFTER aiura accepts that soulmates doesnt mean he HAS to date her#that HAS to happen before they date and THEN theyre really cute#saiki k#tdlosk#the disastrous life of saiki k.#meows post
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s0fter-sin · 9 months ago
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it’s the sound that tips him off.
it’s late, half-past hell by his last count, and mactavish knows there shouldn’t be a single soul in the showers this time of night. though he’s sure if he asked, he’d be told a soul isn’t in there.
just a ghost.
he almost chokes on the thick steam filling the locker room; humid and hazy and the perfect cover. or it would be, if the man collapsed in the far stall cared about hiding.
mactavish hates himself a little for the low sigh that falls from his lips. he wishes he wasn't so disappointed; that the promises he's heard over and over and watched be broken as many times hadn't wedged their way into his heart and convinced him that maybe, maybe this could be the time it sticks.
he doesn't know what's worse; the disappointment or the lack of surprise.
he holds his breath through the steam and leans over the limp body; stinging hot water hitting his back, instantly soaking through his clothes and already starting to burn. he flicks the tap enough to take the bulk of the heat out and straightens; a groan startling out of the man beneath him at the sudden lash of tepid water.
mactavish crouches, knees clicking and hooks a hand under his bicep to pull him up straight against the wall. if there was any vomit on his skin, it's been washed away by the pelting stream and he supposes he can count himself lucky for that. he tilts his limp head back and slips his fingers into his mouth; holding down his tongue and ignores the way it lazily jolts under his fingers to check his airway.
clear.
another small victory.
mactavish pulls his fingers out and cups his chin, keeping him tilted up and moves in the way of the water again so he can pull at his eyelid.
the eye he's met with is cloudy, so dilated there's hardly a ring of blue left.
he sighs again; hand falling away and letting his eye fall shut. "god damnit, riley."
riley moans, all his weight resting on the hand holding his jaw.
"aye, 'm talking ‘bout you," he grunts tiredly.
he lets riley's head fall forward to grab his arm, pulling him away from the wall to sit behind him; propping his body up against his chest. he leans his head back over his shoulder, keeping his face out of the water and his airway open just in case he hasn't actually finished throwing up.
he takes the rag riley'd half-managed to soap up and mechanically runs it over him; cataloguing new bruises and cuts and checking if the old ones are healing. sickly yellow fingerprints ring his hips, red splotches paint his ribs; too new to have settled into the deep purple he knows they’ll become.
riley slowly makes more noise as he rubs life into his body; still lying limp against his front but his head's starting to roll restlessly on his shoulder. he swipes between his legs and carefully doesn't think a single thing about what he finds.
"sean?" he rasps and mactavish's hand stills; eyes falling shut. he bites his check, hand clenching around the rag tight enough to shake and breathes hard out his nose.
he doesn't say a word, just forces himself to go back to cleaning.
he's not sure what would come out of his mouth if he did.
riley isn't conscious enough to hear him anyway.
he runs his fingers over his inner elbows for tracks and manages to muster some relief when he doesn't find any. seems to be a pill and booze night; far from the worst condition he's found him in.
he rinses him off, running a curtesy hand over his shaved head only for it to fall back to his jaw; his thumb stroking over the thick scar carved into his cheek.
"you gotta stop doin' this," he whispers.
he isn’t sure if he’s talking to riley or himself.
mactavish gathers up riley's too-light body into his arms and turns off the shower. his head lolls into his throat and he throws a towel over his dripping body and another over his shoulder. it doesn't stop him from tracking water all the way to his quarters but he'd like to see someone try to put in a complaint about it.
he lays out the other towel on the bed and sets riley down; moving his body into the recovery position in an all-too familiar routine. he dries him enough that he won't soak the covers as he pulls them up to his chest and kicks the waste bin within grabbing distance of the bed.
he goes to pull off his sodden clothes when a different noise makes him freeze.
a low sniffle.
mactavish slowly turns back to the bed to find riley's eyes squinting open; glazed with tears as he kneads at the covers.
he stares at him for a moment as he looks around the room and those hazy eyes lock on him for the first time. "cap'n?"
he swallows. "aye; s'just me, riley."
his hand pokes out from under the covers and for all the promises he's made himself - all the “never again”s and “this is the last time”s - at the end of the day, he's weak.
he sits on the side of the bed and takes riley's hand in his; already so cold after nearly boiling himself alive.
"y' mad a' me?" he sniffs.
mactavish runs his tongue over his lip and slowly shakes his head. "no, i'm not mad at you."
"prom'se?" he pushes.
he reaches out and caresses his temple with his thumb. his hand almost covers his head and it cuts like a knife to remember just how small riley is. "aye," he says, hushed. "i promise."
riley's eyes fall shut, voicelessly murmuring 'promise’ to himself over and over.
"I’ll ge’ bett'r," he slurs and between one breath and the next, he's out.
mactavish sighs, running his hand in a final pass over his head and stares at a face that looks so much younger in sleep; bruised and sallow skin hidden in the shadows. "i know you will."
he presses a slow kiss to his forehead, shutting his eyes against the grief that wells in his heart and gets up to pull a chair over to the bed; settling in for another long night's vigil of watching his broken lieutenant sleep, ready to tilt him over if he throws up, eyes locked on the slow rise and fall of his chest fearing tonight may finally be the time it stops.
#drug use#tw drugs#guess whos back on her 09 shit#its me bb!!!#anyway 09 ghost who’s just completely messy#if he’s not on an op then he’s at clubs drinking & taking anything he can get his hands on#mactavish knows what he gets up to and hates it#hates watching him destroy himself stumbling back to base with no memory of what - or who - he’s done#hates seeing him prod at bruises knowing he has no idea where they came from#mactavish is more pissed that whoever riley was with just left him like that and that riley is totally fine with it happening#more than once he's found him almost od'ing half passed out in his room or the showers#and every time riley will slur out apologies and promises mactavish knows better to believe#riley knows how much it hurts mactavish to see him like this but its just so painful to live in his head#he can’t help but try and get out of it the only way he knows how#this is pre relationship btw just to make it all hurt a little more#ghost never remembers how he ends up back in his own bed after a bender#the whole point of them is to forget#he’ll end up missing days at a time and never question what happened to him in the meantime#if he thinks hard enough sometimes he can pick up flashes of a familiar voice rasping in his ear and big hands moving his body#but it’s hard for him to believe they’re anymore than drug induced hallucinations of what he really wants#coming out of my cage and ive been doing just fine.txt#talk to me ghost#we’re a team. ghost team#09 soapghost#09 ghoap#soapghost#john soap mactavish#soap cod#simon ghost riley#ghost cod
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zalder · 1 day ago
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“Anything is possible,” she believed and she actually did. She’d seen enough, read enough to think that just because you couldn’t experience something or see it for yourself, it didn’t mean it wasn’t a reality. She knew there were probably a million and one things that scientists had created in military labs out there that had been used. They were never going to tell the civilian populations about it, probably out of fear of people getting their own hands on the technology and utilizing it in ways they didn’t want them to. That was probably a big reason why most people were not born smart enough to actually build any of these things. The world simply couldn’t handle it! There had to be little time jumps and parallel universes where things were completely different though and they were all happening at once. “Obviously,” she said with a laugh. “I mean, I like to think we’d do alright if we got ahold any technology like that. It wouldn’t end up like some bad Netflix movie where someone decides to change the past to never be born and then hooks up with their sister’s murderer. That’s a bit too awkward for me.”
The thought of someone rolling up to the world’s biggest rubber ball or anything else and thinking they could just throw it in the back of a pickup or a rented U-Haul was ludicrous. People made decisions that she didn’t exactly understand a lot of the time. It was fair though since she assumed there were a lot of people that she left scratching their own heads. “I think that there have probably been plenty of people who thought they were criminal masterminds and quickly found out they were not,” she said with a shrug. “Don’t get any ideas about our trip. I draw the line at criminal enterprise. I definitely think that a massive rubber ball dropping into the Grand Canyon would be like dropping pennies off a skyscraper. You’re more likely to harm someone that get exciting science unless you’re idea of fun science is homicide then maybe.” She didn’t really get homicidal vibes off Elias though. In general, she thought he was fairly harmless. She offered a nod. “I’d like to not be on the news for destroying the planet. It goes against everything I stand for.” She listened as he discussed all the things he was going to do to prepare for the trip and she offered a nod of support. “I think all of that sounds great. We have plenty of time to really get it together.”
In general, Zarah was a responsible person but she didn’t seek it out. She loved her cat, could keep a plant alive. She was totally content with that. Between work and trying to make it through school, she preferred to spend the rest of her time just having fun and spending time with the handful of people she considered a friend. That didn’t mean that she didn’t occasionally have to put the fun aside and do the right thing. She was fully capable of saying no. This wasn’t one of those occasions though. She wasn’t going to not have a life because there might be scary noises outside. If she did that, she would never have a life. “That’s probably what he’s doing,” she said with a nod. “I wouldn’t worry about it too much. I’m sure he’ll be fine and ready for you the minute you return to him. In general, she tended to speak whatever was on her mind, do whatever she felt compelled but there were times when she took a moment to think about what she was going to say. “I don’t mind watching fireworks with you,” she said before shaking her head. “And I’ll probably be kissing everyone in proximity but… like in a non-threatening, Zarah being Zarah kind of way.”
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“huh.” elias thoughtfully replied, intrigued. “you know, i supposed that isn’t too far fetched.” it was nice to think that the a good deed could be the reason millions of lives were saved, without the consequences of something else drastically happening. he tried not to think about if one of the lives saved could be the reason something does happen, perhaps their evil outweighs what we are prepared to handle as a society, instead he focused on the positive outcome of it all. now he knew that with all this time travel talk, he was going to go down a rabbit hole the moment he got home later. he was determined to gather all the theories he could for their next encounter because now he wanted to ramble on about space and time travel with zarah. he nods at her question, “yes, that’s true.” he pauses, then smiles, “well, all in all, at the end of the day, i think the choice we make would be the best one. i don’t know about you, but i think we make a killer duo.”
much like zarah, elias could easily adapt to various topic changes in conversations. actually it was quite fun to him to have different conversations going on in the same one, as long as it wasn’t too confusing. this was not confusing, it was fun. the idea of someone actually patrolling the worlds largest rubber band ball was amusing, unlikely, but he could see how even that might need protecting. “if you’re stealing the worlds largest rubber band ball and you manage to get away with that…i am both impressed and curious as to what the intentions are with said rubber band ball. maybe they would want to roll it off the grand canyon and see if it bounces up and how high it would bounce.” now he was just being a bit silly, but it was ideas like that that called for protection at even the most isolated of place like road side attractions. it was a shame, really. “i never really understood that, not being able to leave well enough alone. isn’t it enough to know you were there and simply take in the beauty?” as they continued on with their conversation and it turned to their road trip he got more excited at the idea. he smiles when zarah encourages his book savings idea, but nods at the auto draft option. “i will do both. get the book and begin auto drafting. that way if one fails, at least the other is in full effect.” though he wasn’t sure how auto drafting would fail, but he guesses there is a first time for everything and that would be no exception. “you know what? i’m going to invest in an adventure scrap book for our journey too.”
you were basically a parent, when owning a pet. luckily the only schedule that mochi was on was feeding times. he chose cat over a dog at the moment because he liked how independent they could be, and he did not have the time to properly give a pup. he understood that she couldn’t just get up and leave (as much fun as it sounded like) because he was in a similar boat. but there were times, like tonight, in which he simply had to trust mochi was going to be okay without him. he felt like the cat had already known something was on the horizon anyway, as he was also a firm believer that animals had a strong sixth sense. “i would be surprised if he wasn’t being a loaf on my bed or burrowed under blankets. but yes, once I get back home, i will be giving mochi extra love and affection to make up for my absence during the fireworks show.” when he hears her answer to his question it pulls a lighthearted chuckle from his lips, shaking his head before replying, “not even a little bit. i was just wondering if you wanted to watch them together.” then he thinks of something, not wanting her to feel like he has alternative motives, he ends up also adding, “we don’t have to kiss at the count down, just to throw that out there.”
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nebulations · 4 months ago
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Fish, 7 (For your prompts! ❤️)
Hi, anon!! Thank you for the prompt, you were the very first one to send one in! 7 was, again, the wildcard, so I randomly generated a different number to land on Yue Qingyuan (from Scum Villain)! I have no choice but to dedicate this to @bytedykes, because I told her about this prompt and she said “yqy pet fish mental health speedrun” and we went, uh, a little insane about it. Enjoy some yuefang, folks!!!!
“Mu-xiong,” Yue Qingyuan says. “I’m sorry to bother you. Are you available?”
“Yue-xiong is never a bother,” Mu Qingfang says warmly. “And I am, actually, yes. Is everything okay, Yue-xiong?”
“I think I need help.” A bit dramatic, perhaps, and Yue Qingyuan hates to trouble Mu Qingfang on a rare day off, but Yue Qingyuan and impulse have never been the best combination, and he would appreciate a second opinion.
Mu Qingfang’s voice turns hard. “Where are you? I'll come right away.”
“What—?” Yue Qingyuan stares at his phone like the blank call screen will tell him why Mu Qingfang suddenly sounds so serious. “I'm at home, but—”
“I'll be right there,” Mu Qingfang says, and hangs up.
Yue Qingyuan stares at his phone for another second, then lifts his gaze to his sparkling new aquarium. His new betta, white and black and resplendent of fin, stares back. Was his crisis of faith about his viability as a fish owner really so deserving of such urgency…?
“So,” Mu Qingfang says. “This was your emergency?” He looks about as unimpressed by the betta as it does by the two of them.
Yue Qingyuan feels obscurely like he’s being scolded. Mu Qingfang is one of the nicest men he knows, but that just means that his censure takes the form of a blunt instrument of mass disappointment.
“In my defense,” he points out meekly, “I didn’t say there was an emergency. Mu-xiong just assumed.”
“That’ll teach me,” Mu Qingfang huffs, but at least he looks amused. “Yue-xiong should get used to asking for help more so this gege doesn’t have to panic every time he does ask.”
Yue Qingyuan’s mouth almost drops open. He can only hope his cheeks aren’t as red as they feel. “Er—well, I asked this time, didn’t I?”
“You did,” Mu Qingfang allows, looking something horribly close to fond. Yue Qingyuan swallows and tries to hurry on.
“So—not an emergency, but I do want your opinion,” he coughs out. “I’m having… doubts. About the fish.” Mu Qingfang’s eyebrows contract. Yue Qingyuan rushes it out. “Do you think I should keep it?”
“Yue-xiong…” Mu Qingfang looks politely incredulous. “Why does my opinion matter? The fish is already yours, isn’t it? If you don’t think maintaining its upkeep will be feasible, that’s one thing, but… Surely Yue-xiong did the research before getting it?”
He doesn’t sound judgemental, but Yue Qingyuan feels his cheeks warm. “I did, but I wasn’t planning on getting a fish; I was only admiring the tanks. There was a salesperson who was… very insistent.”
Mu Qingfang regards him doubtfully, which is fair. Yue Qingyuan towers over most people he meets, and his bulk only further adds to the impression of immovability. It’s only when he opens his mouth that it becomes clear how spineless he actually is.
Yue Qingyuan falters. “I had thought… I thought it might be nice.” The bettas had seemed so majestic in their tanks, iridescent monarchs of false grass and plastic coves, and Yue Qingyuan had thought, wildly, that one might be rewarding to keep, might breathe a touch of life into his immaculately sleek living room. The whole affair hadn’t even been expensive by his shiny new standards, forget difficult to physically arrange. It was only when installation and set-up for his new aquarium had finished and he was left to watch that jewel-bright being swim disaffectedly through its new home that doubt had seized him, all-consuming and black. He had, admittedly, panicked a little after that.
(Yue Qingyuan’s apartment is very large, and very clean, and very empty. It holds the barest amount of decoration and muss to qualify as lived-in rather than a snapshot from a magazine ad. The fish may, in fact, be the only thing in the entire place which really qualifies as his. No wonder Yue Qingyuan wanted to jettison it from his life as soon as he got it.)
Mu Qingfang’s expression hovers between concern and simple confusion. “I’m sure Yue-xiong will be a more than adequate caretaker,” he says, more gently than Yue Qingyuan and all his neuroses probably deserve. “What’s this really about, Yue-xiong?”
Ah. There it is. Being the mildest person of Yue Qingyuan’s admittedly sharp-tongued social circle doesn’t preclude Mu Qingfang’s wit from being as keen as the scalpels he works with.
“I don’t…” Yue Qingyuan falters. How to express to Mu Qingfang how manifestly unfit Yue Qingyuan is to care for any living creature at all? He changes tack. “I think he hates me,” he admits dolefully.
Mu Qingfang stares at him for a long time, long enough to imply that he’s reevaluating certain opinions about Yue Qingyuan’s intelligence. “Yue-xiong, with all due respect to your new pet—it’s a fish.”
“Fish have emotions!” Yue Qingyuan argues. He flushes at the volume at which it comes out, and at the way Mu Qingfang’s eyes go wide-eyed in startlement. But the salesperson had been very insistent about that, as well. “Bettas are intelligent animals. They dislike certain colors, apparently, and they’re very sensitive—ah, to environmental disruptions, that is. And—”
Mu Qingfang’s eyebrows are still high, but his face has relaxed into a smile. “It sounds to me like you like it quite a bit already. Isn’t that reason enough to keep it?” His tone curls with sudden mischief. “Have heart, Yue-xiong—you’ve hardly known each other for a day! Give it time to adjust to you, and I’m sure you’ll win it over as surely as you do everyone else.” And he grins, sure and easy in his trust that Yue Qingyuan won’t fumble and shatter something so small and monumental as a life that he could cup in his palms.
While Yue Qingyuan is still dazed by that, Mu Qingfang’s eyes alight with interest. “Ah, Yue-xiong—what have you named it?”
“...”
Mu Qingfang’s face falls as devastatingly as it had lit up. “Yue-xiong…”
“Mu-xiong is aware that I was unsure of whether or not I’d keep him!” Yue Qingyuan is terribly aware that his ears are now heating up to match his cheeks. Mu Qingfang’s ensuing laughter does not help with that matter.
Yue Qingyuan is not very good at holding onto things. More often than not, he makes a mess of whatever he’s set his clumsy hands to, lets it fall right through his scarred fingers. But Mu Qingfang’s words ring through his head: Isn’t that reason enough to keep it? And, well, isn’t it? Surely Yue Qingyuan is adult enough to follow through on this. Maybe happiness can be look like his new betta swimming up to the tank to observe the new colorful form moving in front of it, can come as easy as Mu Qingfang quipping that his knowledge about fish is clearly lacking and vowing casually to read up on bettas to be a better fish uncle.
Yue Qingyuan buries a smile and walks over to let Mu Qingfang know that bettas can be trained to follow fingers around. The betta’s clear preference for Mu Qingfang over Yue Qingyuan is as good a marker of intelligence as any fun fact the pet shop worker could have given him. Yes, Yue Qingyuan thinks with a smile—he thinks he’ll be keeping this after all.
#yqy in canon: i make impulsive decisions of a scale where they torpedo my entire life#me: got it. in a modern au he makes expensive impulse purchases and then returns them immediately after#bc he can't conceptualize doing things for himself and also has no idea how to spend all his money he doesn't know what to do with#(this is suchh a vague modern au lmao like mqf is obv still a doctor#but i didn't write yqy as his boss here and am not sure what he does in this world or why he's rich now#and i have no idea who the fucking pet shop salesperson was either. i think it's sqh though)#don't worry about it okay? just enjoy the yuefang and the fruits of my and nik's agenda to make all our fave sect leaders fish owners#i personally see mqf as older than yqy! in this au he thinks he could be really into yqy#but he respects that yqy doesn't seem to be looking for a relationship (and that he has some shit going on that he hasn't seen fit to share#with mqf yet)#so he's content to stick to some mild flirting while enjoying their friendship#meanwhile yqy is totally divorced from the concept of attraction (directed at or coming from him)#so he panics every time mqf flirts with him but has no fucking idea that that's actually what's happening on either end#they would be so good together :)) mqf is going to be such a good fish co-parent :)) this fish is going to get these two together okay :)))#the betta is a black dragon/orchid; i couldn't decide so it's up to you#writing this was kinda funny bc the fish could and probably should have been a metaphor for sj#but i wanted to write smth yqy-centric that didn't directly allude to him even once#and i succeeded!!!#the entire reason i wrote this as modern au was bc i thought of mqf calling yqy 'yue-xiong' and went insane btw#OKAY SHUTTING UP NOW. THANK YOU AGAIN ANON!!!!!#asks#anonymous#my writing#svsss#yue qingyuan#mu qingfang#yuefang#yqy tag#betta blues
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charlesreedscoolhat · 3 months ago
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Charles: and how do I contact you in the future?
Johannes: you don't 🌟 bye you soggy bitch ✨️🕺✨️🕺🟨🟨🟨
#and then you barely see him for the rest of the game#the sinking city#coolhatposts#man i would have loved to be able to visit johannes's house! maybe you go there to discuss a case or catch up or whatever#i can totally see a dramatic parlor scene playing out that could give a lot more foundation for future story events#and maybe you can just visit his place sometimes and read philosophy books or something. maybe he rotates a couple books out for charles#on a table or smth and you can go read it#or maybe it's excerpts from lovecraft!!#GOD you guys do you see what i mean there's so much to add to the game#Johannes is fascinating as a character but then we only see him like. three times max#and at least one of those times he's probably dead#i just think it makes sense for charles to seek company with the only person he knows in the city a couple times before the plot starts#picking up. i could see maybe they have two or three dinners/drinks with Important Conversations#but i do think it's a wasted opportunity not to have johannes be more involved. he's the player's window into the upper class weird shit#in oakmont. he's our connection to a secret society and he knows graham and i would bet money he knew about the cannibal restaurant#GOD as soon as I'm done w the project I'm working on I'm gonna be replaying and writing SO MUCH you guys#never been a writer before but I'll make it happen#the possibilities are too cool to ignore#please please please someone else start posting abt tsc I KNOW YOU GUYS ARE THERE. I KNOW ME AND LOVELYHEADS ARE NOT THE ONLY ONES W IDEAS
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longagoitwastuesday · 5 months ago
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I have learnt things about Geto that I wish I could unlearn
#I think I'm getting about the same amount of spoilers as a few weeks ago except now I understand them#But like. I expected so much of him#Seeing gifs of that one scene in which Gojo gets distracted because of Geto almost made me watch this a year ago#Geto was actually my favourite character in that one JJK fanfic I read that I mention so often even if he had literally one scene#I know so much of the emotional turmoil and conflict in JJK and Gojo in particular depends on him#And you're telling me he's Thanos?#I learnt a few days ago that everything pretty much happens in one year. That there's one year between Geto's death and Gojo's#I thought it would be like ten years. Ten years of the act haunting him#But no? So it's not a broken teenager who has these ideas and is killed by another teenager to stop him?#It's a what? ~30yo man saying Light levels of stupidity? Even worse perhaps?#Goodness I hope this is not so. I hope this is better written than what I am seeing#Because goddammit I can't do it. It would kinda ruin every emotional scene from then on?#That one scene I was so looking forwards about patting Gojo's back or whatever. The one in which Gojo gets distracted. It just. I don't know#I won't be able to be moved if Geto doesn't work xD#I was fearing I wasn't going to like him a lot because my expectations were big but oh my god please not like this#This is way worse than I expected. Someone tell me he actually makes sense. What's the point of this whole political play#in which no one is fully wrong and no one is totally right otherwise? What is the point of the haunting. This feels just idiotic xD#And I don't care about the traumas and all that. That works for the teen not the ~30yo man#It would have worked if Gojo would have killed him like 1-2 years after everything not like a few months ago. Last winter#After like ten years a 30yo man should have realised this plan sucks.#Even if it's utilitarian. Who is going to make clothes? Buildings? Streets and railways? Bread??? Go have a talk with Nanami please#We have been told there are not a lot of jujutsu sorcerers. How are you going to fulfill all those needs out of nothing?#And even if it were little by little so the needs could be getting fulfilled little by little too#If you decimate humans won't that cause more curses? I guess he's thinking on the long run but still this plan seems like a mess#I hope it makes more sense than it's looking it will make because of my god this would truly be the last nail on the coffin xD#I am being more and more tempted to get to Utahime and then just drop this. This is breaking my heart xD#It could be soooo good and it always almost is#And then. AND THEN. Abfksbfndbfkan#Jen pick me up. Come solve this. I am scared xD#I talk too much
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majorproblems77 · 6 months ago
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It’s still the weekend in my timezone. So sliding in to the end of the celebration with a cuddle pile for Sky… I don’t have good context to give other than “I read a fic where it was implied that the reason Sky wasn’t a part of Hyrule Warriors is because Ghirahim got his hands on a certain Sky-child and he was gone for the majority of the Skyloft campaign.” And then played with the idea of the chain being sent to rescue the poor kid.
The thing haunting him, like the chimes of the Clock Town tower, was the horror of losing Sky’s heartbeat under his hands. He needed... wanted to assure himself that it was still Sky, that the heartbeat was still there, that it was over and Sky was... alive to tell the tale. He didn't think he could believe Sky as ‘ok’ —not after that—but he could settle for alive. Sky scooped up his hands as he remembered the burns, cuts, lightning that had been on shoulders and neck and didn't dare make contact. Sky set one of Time’s palms on his chest, where he could feel as the Chosen Hero took a slow, deliberate breath before guiding Time’s other hand to the pulse point in his neck.
“I'm alive.” He assured. Time hung his head, focusing on the pulse under his fingers, on the steady breath under his palm. He was ashamed he needed that assurance but also couldn't convince himself to pull away until he'd committed the sensations to memory.
They'd eventually settled in camp for the night. Sky had accepted the hugs, the fussing, the clinging. Eventually, he'd ended up in the middle of a pile of the heroes who'd been in the dungeon. His head lay in Time’s lap, while Warriors and Twilight crowded him on either side, and lay each with one ear pressed to shoulder and chest where they could hear that proof he was alive. It left hands free for Legend and Hyrule to cling to while Wild unabashedly clung to his front, wrapped around his torso like a long-limbed octorock.
“Are you comfortable like that?” Four asked quietly.
Sky thought about it for a moment.
“Strangely enough, I really am...” The weight of the others piled on him was grounding and the warmth from the contact chased away all of the strange cold that had been clinging to him for... for so long he couldn't remember when it had started. But his gaze tracked up to the Eldest hero. Time had fallen asleep braced against the wall.
“But is there any way we can get him to lay down or something? He can't be comfortable like that.” Four followed Sky’s gaze and nodded before frowning in concentration.
“Yeah, we'll figure something out.” The ones not in the pile were the youngest and the smallest. But somehow, and with a lot of sleepy grumbling, they replaced Time’s leg under his head with a pillow and got the Eldest hero to lay down, still curled up next to his head, where a very short reach put him in contact with Sky.
So I've been holding onto this because i love it sm. So thank you very much friend!
Cuddle pile vibes are wonderful and we love them
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themyscirah · 6 months ago
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Just gonna put this here.
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