#mutual relationship clearly my brain and i have going on here

[iced-souls]

Me: damn i really want to write and draw rn.

Myself: … then draw and writ—

I: BUT I DONT WANNA

[lionhanie]

han taesan ; back 2 u (part four)

you can’t help but find yourself coming back to taesan everytime

this is part four of my series, back 2 u! read the previous part here!

fuckboy!taesan x fem!reader, college au

...featuring! BFFS jaehyun + woonhak, fuckboy leehan (AND he's taesan's roommate), and lovely roomies sungho + riwoo <3

word count: 11.1k (EXTRA special ty to my beloved @serejae for beta reading for me T_T)

warnings:  ANGST,,,, cursing, one kms joke, gongfourz fboy activities, woonhak is a little lost, alcohol/weed usage (reader smokes and drinks one (1) single beer), shotgunning (smoke), insecurity + overthinking, toxic relationship behaviors, mentions of other idols as side characters :P (newjeans minji, gidle minnie, enha heeseung, zb1 matthew)

a/n: apologies for disappearing off the face of the earth .... but wanted to mention that i joined @onedoornet !!! ^_^ plsplspls go support and check out everyone else in this lovely network hueheuhe <3

reblogs ↺ + feedback always appreciated!

A mess consisting of scrap paper, pens, and various scribbled notes from the lecture was currently occupying the entire span of your desk. You were supposed to be studying for an exam you had in a couple days, but you were currently sprawled out in the comfort of your bed as you scrolled mindlessly through Twitter. 

[Instagram] the_myungjaeee sent a post by kminji04! the_myungjaeee: LOL look at woonhak dancing in the 3rd slide

Opening Instagram, you’re faced with what looks like a photo dump from a girl who goes to your university. It was recently posted, the caption reading “late night finds”. Swiping to see the video Jaehyun was referring to, you cover your mouth to stifle your laughter at seeing one of your best friends dancing horribly in a parking lot, laughter coming from the background of the clip. 

Out of habit, you find yourself scrolling through the rest of the post’s contents, finding various pictures of what you assume to be the girl’s friend group, neatly-arranged drinks in a cafe, pretty skies from places you recognize around campus. You don’t think much of the post until a particular picture catches your eye. 

To anyone else, it just looked like your typical soft-launch type post. There was no account tagged, but you’ve seen enough of the relationship-esque genre of pictures to recognize them when you see one. A set of masculine hands doodling hearts on the condensation of the driver’s seat window. The quality of the photo isn’t great, clearly being taken late at night, but the head that’s half cropped out of the photo is one you recognize all too well. The bleached blonde streaks towards the nape of the man’s neck confirms the suspicion brewing in your gut: It’s Taesan. You don’t really want to think too hard about why the inside of the car is fogging up the windows like that, or why it’s a heart he’s drawing, out of all things, because you know it’ll only hurt your feelings even more. 

Curiosity gets the best of you as you tap on the user who posted the image. kminji04. Kim Minji. You’re glad the profile was public in the first place, but maybe it wasn’t something you should be thankful for. You shouldn’t be diving head-first into this rabbit hole. But what you don’t know can’t hurt you, surely. 

You ignore your brain’s attempt at protecting you as you examine the profile further. Having your fair share of experience when it came to social media digging, it was easy to get an idea about who Kim Minji was. Her feed reflects the same feeling you got from the first post you saw— She seemed to take a liking to posting a variety of pictures that revealed different slices of her life. Looked to be an English major, and in the same year as you. She was undeniably stunning, model-like, even. Asides from Woonhak, you didn’t share many mutuals. You shouldn’t be looking too deep into this. You wouldn’t get anything good out of doing so.

You kept going. In her highlights, you didn’t notice anything too out of the ordinary. That is, until you got to one in particular, labeled only with a heart. Two weeks ago, a scenic view by the water. After that, two iced coffees are neatly placed side by side in a cute cafe, followed by other food-related pictures of the same nature. Clicking through the slides, you were about to write it off as just another compilation of aesthetic stills-- Except you see a familiar jacket appear in the background of one of the stories. The same jacket that currently resides in your closet. The same jacket Han Taesan wrapped around you before he kissed you for the first time. 

Putting together the pieces, you quickly realize the entire highlight showcased various dates they went on. You never got the chance to exchange anything besides a brief kiss and your number, but it was easy to find Taesan in both her followers and following. It was more than enough evidence for you to assume that it was Kim Minji he was talking to in the library. The one he called baby. He probably wore that jacket with her in the days leading up to the party. You think it’s dumb the way your heart hurts at the understanding; you’re unsure of why you yearn so badly for someone you’d only recently met, but maybe that’s why he built up such a reputation in the first place. 

[Instagram] the_myungjaeee: ok leave me on seen do u want me to kms

The notification on the top of your screen pulls you out of your thoughts. Rather than replying, you decide to open your messages, looking for one group chat in particular. 

to: “woonhak’s babysitters”! can i see u guys tmr :( 

The responses are instantaneous, and you’re happy to see that your friends are still awake– probably procrastinating their assignments as well. 

woonhak’s babysitters Jaehyun: OKAY NOW U TEXT THE GC INSTEAD OF REPLYING ON INSTAGRAM You: girl are u free or not Woonhak: yes let’s hang out Woonhak: but wats with the :( why are we :( y/n Jaehyun: bro ik u have my schedule memorized…. you KNOW i’m free  Jaehyun: don't forget we literally operate under the assumption that we are going to see each other everyday 🙄 Jaehyun: but ^^ is something wrong did something happen You: not really but i need to debrief again… 😀 Woonhak: mystery man? You: …….maybe 👎👎👎 meet at our usual cafe @ 3? Jaehyun: not u using us as love counselors again…. what’s in it for us 🤔 You: i’ll pay Jaehyun: 😍😍😍 SEE YOU GUYS TOMORROW 💯LOVE YOU! 😇

⋆ ˚｡⋆୨୧˚

“It’s crazy how things taste better when you aren’t the one who paid for them!” Jaehyun stirs the iced coffee in his hand with the straw, grinning ear to ear.

“Yeah, whatever, I knew you would still show up even if I didn’t bribe you with free food.” You roll your eyes at the boy next to you, who is clearly enjoying the drink you just bought for him. “How can you tell if a guy is flirting with you?”

“You’re just going to drop a bomb on us like that?” Jaehyun lightheartedly criticizes. The teasing never seemed to stop when it came to talking about your love life, but you were glad to know they would always lend you an ear if you needed one. “Can you give us another hypothetical scenario for context?” 

“You remember how I texted that guy about his overdue book? Well, he showed up while I was working on Tuesday,”  They nod, listening intently as they periodically take small sips from their straws. “He’s always calling me pet names, like things my boyfriend should be saying... He even noticed I did my makeup differently that day too!” 

“I’m almost certain he likes you if he’s complimenting you like that all the time,” Woonhak affirms. “He’s definitely trying to woo you over with that sort of act.”

“Yeah, I don’t think I’d be so bold with calling a girl those names if I wasn’t at least somewhat into her. Did you ask him to hang out after your shift was over?”

“I mean, I tried to. He stepped away to answer his phone, and it sounded like he was talking to a girl. At least, I think he was.” You’re fairly certain that you were right, but maybe it was safer not to jump to conclusions. 

“What makes you think that?”

“He kept talking about how he was almost done and that he’d be coming over soon… And he called them baby.” Who else would he call ‘baby’ if not another girl? Talking about it out loud brings back all the conspiracies going through your head when you’d stalked Minji’s profile before bed. 

“Wow, what kind of man would call someone that after blatantly flirting with you? I was almost rooting for him until you said that, you know.” Woonhak looks disappointed as he picks up a strawberry off the plate on the table and pops it into his mouth. 

The conversation goes dull for a moment, sounds from neighboring tables filling the silence at the table. “Woonhak, how do you know Kim Minji?” You pry, deciding not to dance around the question that could give you the answers you were desperately searching for.

“Minji? She helped me write some papers for English 301,” He’s taken aback by the direct question, but he answers quickly regardless. “She’s really nice though! I was hanging out with her and a bunch of other people the other week.”

“Woonhakie, what was that video she posted of you?” Jaehyun’s laugh rings throughout your corner of the cafe as he recalls the post he sent you last night. “You looked so funny dancing like that!” 

“Ah, is that what we’re talking about? Yeah, I lost a bet and I had to dance to a random song for three whole minutes. l didn’t think she’d post that though… Why do you ask?”

“...Is she dating anyone?” You shyly ask.

“What, are you interested? I have her number if you want it-“

“She’s pretty, but that’s not really what I’m trying to get at here,” You take a moment to think about how you’re going to go about this conversation. Might as well just rip off the bandaid. “Is she dating Han Dongmin?”

“Dongmin? I don’t know anyone named Dongmin.”

“Mm, Taesan?” You correct yourself by addressing him by his nickname. 

“Oh, that guy with the weird hair? I mean, he was with us a couple times,” Woonhak scratches the back of his head, trying to recall the events of the night. “But I don’t think they’re together. Not officially, at least.”

“I thought the contact I saw on your phone said Han Dongmin, though. Is he Han Taesan?” Jaehyun recollects the last time you went to them for advice. 

Cat’s out of the bag now. “Would you get mad at me if I said yes?” The laugh you let out is dry as you watch the condensation drip down the side of your cup. 

“What’s so bad about Taesan hyung?” Woonhak innocently asks, clearly lost.

“Woonhak, you know who he is right?” Jaehyun seems shocked as he seeks for confirmation.

“Duh, didn’t I just say he was out with my friends and I? I mean, who else has hair like that? I’m sure we’re talking about the same guy.”

“I don’t think you should keep talking to him, Y/N.” Jaehyun’s voice is stern from his place next to you. 

“Oh, you like Taesan Y/N?” Woonhak seems to finally grasp the situation. “You should’ve told me sooner! I’ve only met him a couple of times, but I could always invite you if I know he’s coming out with us! But then again… I only really see him when Minji is there.” Oh. He only shows up when Minji is there. Everything seems to make a bit more sense now. 

“Hey, am I even in this conversation?” Jaehyun whines, smacking the table with the palms of his hands. “I don’t like him for you, Y/N.” 

“Oooh… Are you jealous?” Woonhak wiggles his eyebrows at your best friend, who is clearly upset with the newly revealed identity of the main character in your dilemma. 

“Dude, I don’t even know why you’d say that. You know Y/N and I aren’t like that.” He’s glaring at the younger boy across from him, but his eyes soften when they turn back to you. “I just don’t want you to get hurt.”

“If he’s dating Minji, then I guess there’s no reason for me to be talking to him anymore.” Your throat feels dry. You take a sip from your drink, which was untouched for the past ten minutes. 

“You’ve never heard anything about Taesan then, Woonhak?” The boy in question shakes his head no, waiting for an explanation. “Han Taesan; music major famous for his rager parties and picking up girls anywhere he can– If anything, I’m more surprised you haven’t heard any word of him just by being on campus.” 

“Okay, so he throws dope parties and is popular with girls. So what? Don’t act like you didn’t have girls from different classes lining up for you back in high school.”

“That’s not the same as what I’m trying to get at. Han Taesan goes through girls like they’re nothing. And this is our sweet Y/N we’re talking about here— Do you want her with a guy like him?” At this point, Jaehyun’s visibly frustrated with his naivety. 

You place your hand on his shoulder in an attempt to calm him down. “Oh, he’s like that? He just seems so… Normal?” Woonhak comments, seemingly in disbelief, that Jaehyun’s version of Han Taesan is the same as his.

“Yeah, I thought that too.” Your voice trails off. You wanted to smack your past self for thinking everything everyone said about Taesan wasn’t true. That they were just baseless rumors. 

“Sorry, Y/N. If Taesan is really that kind of person, I don’t want him with you either. Plus, Minji was practically all over him that one time so maybe they actually are a thing-“

“Not the best thing to say right now, bro.” Woonhak shrinks in his seat, shutting himself up by taking a bite of the pastry he had in front of him. “So do you have feelings for him, Y/N? Didn’t you meet like, two weeks ago?” You nod, ashamed to admit the way you feel about someone who only came into your life recently. Sure, you’ve had similar crush upbringings in the past, but this felt different than your previous temporary infatuations. “I don’t think it’ll be easy, but I think you should take a couple steps back when it comes to a guy like him.” 

“Normally I wouldn’t be one to butt in so heavily when it comes to the guys you like, but I seriously have a bad feeling about him now.” Woonhak frowns, feeling like he lost his previous appetite.  

“Hell, if he’s getting all up close and personal with another girl and then telling you to kiss him the next time you’re at his place, it sounds like he only wants one thing from you. You’re just going to end as another one of his hook-ups.” You gnaw on the plastic straw in your cup as Jaehyun goes on. 

Just another one of his hook-ups. And with how well-known Taesan was around campus, people would find out who you were sooner or later. Maybe it wouldn’t be too bad. At the very least, you could probably see him more often if you were friends with benefits– What the hell are you saying?

“Don’t even think about it.” Almost as if reading your mind, Jaehyun raises his voice at you. You’re startled at his tone, flinching a bit in your chair. “Fuck, sorry. You don’t deserve to be discarded like one of his one night stands, is all I’m saying.” 

“I second that,” Woonhak’s equally as upset as Jaehyun now. “Man, screw this Han Taesan… Han Dongmin… Whoever he is. Literally any other guy would be better for you.” 

“I figured you’d react like this if I told you it was him from the beginning.” You tuck your hair behind your ear, chuckling at your friends’ concern. “Was it so wrong for wanting to see if he isn’t the bad guy that everyone makes him out to be?” 

“...I guess not, but if you knew he was a shit person, why even bother trying in the first place?” Jaehyun looks at you with genuine confusion written all over his face. 

“Dunno. I just thought I’d be interesting enough for him to want something more with me.” Maybe if you were prettier, or more popular. Maybe just then, that’d be enough for Han Taesan to change his ways. 

“I wish you saw yourself the same way we see you, Y/N.”

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It’s been a few days since you broke down the situation properly with Jaehyun and Woonhak in the cafe. Even if whatever you had between you and Taesan was close to nothing, it’s hard to deny that it hurt a bit to think that your story ended so fast. You’d be lying if you said you didn’t want things to end up like this. Rather than dwelling too hard on what could’ve been, you focused all your energy on cramming for the test you needed to study for. 

Despite that, you still found yourself wishing the two of you could run into each other, just once more. When you leave the elective class you share with Sungho, you scan around the building in hopes of getting a glimpse of Taesan’s hair in the hallways. When the library doors slide open, you can’t stop yourself from looking up from your monitor just in case he’s come to return his book. If Jaehyun knew you still had him on your mind after his scolding, he’d be furious. 

Unlocking the door to your shared apartment, you melt into the couch after another session of tutoring Woonhak after he’d desperately begged you to save him from failing his math class. The agreement was that he would pay for your lunch for an entire week in exchange for your help– You would’ve helped him regardless, but you wanted to see how desperate he would get for a tutor.

“Long day?” Minnie, your roommate, and friend from high school, greets you from her place in the kitchen. 

“Yeah, Woonhak is impossible to teach sometimes. He gets distracted every five minutes, I swear.” You complain as you run your hands through your hair.

“Aw, that sounds like him. How’s he doing?” The girl rests her head in her hand as she leans onto the kitchen island, looking over at you. 

“Good, aside from the fact that he currently has a 64 in math.” You chuckle, closing your eyes as you lean back into the plush pillows.

Minnie snorts, moving to open the fridge and bending down to find a drink. “Want something?” 

You pry one of your eyes open to see the girl waiting for your response by the refrigerator door. “Why not? I’m gonna need something to take away all the stress of trying to get Woonhak to understand how derivatives work,” Minnie smiles at you as she grabs two cans, bringing them to the living room and handing you one.

“Beer? Gross.” The drink feels cool in your hand as you look at the label. “It’s all we have, unless you want to go buy something different yourself,” She cracks the can open and takes a gulp, groaning at the carbonation.

You pout at her, but you open your drink and take a sip yourself regardless. “You wouldn’t want to come with me?” 

“Nope, I’m all showered and comfy already. You’d catch me dead before you see me leaving the apartment at this time.” You laugh as you stretch your arms into the air before they fall at your side comfortably. “You aren’t going to shower yet?” 

“Hey, it’s a Friday night. A girl can’t relax in her living room anymore?” 

“Yeah, a Friday night you spent three hours hunched up in those old study rooms again.” She props her legs up on the coffee table from her seat next to you, scrolling on her phone. “When was the last time you went out? You gotta take me with you next time.”

Taesan’s party. You weren’t one to go out too often, and you weren’t sure about the next time you would given the way your last outing ended. “Three weeks ago? I don’t remember.” You bluff; practically every detail from that night and the days that followed it were etched into your memory. 

Placing your can down on the table, you get up. “I’m gonna wash up, I’ll be back.” Minnie hums at you as she looks up briefly from what she was watching. You picked up the bag that you’d haphazardly thrown on the floor when you first got back and made your way to your room. Opening your drawers, you sort through your sleepwear, looking for one of your sweatshirts. On the bed, you hear your phone vibrating against the comforter. 

“Ugh, no way Woonhak has another question. He said he didn’t need my help anymore.” Taking off your clothes from the day and throwing on your hoodie and shorts, you move closer to look at who’s calling you.

Incoming call from “Han Dongmin”!

Just when you thought you weren’t going to hear from him again. What could he be possibly calling you for? If anything, you would’ve thought he’d be throwing another party. Or maybe he dialed the wrong person? You let it ring twice more before picking it up. 

“Hello?” You curse silently at the way your voice shakes when you speak. 

There’s laughter coming from the other end, alongside muffled voices. Is this some sort of prank? You’re about to hang up when you don’t get an immediate response. “Y/N? Hi.” It’s been a while since you heard him. 

“Taesan? Why are you calling me?”

“Not the name I want to hear from you, angel.” You let out an annoyed laugh, sitting on the edge of your bed. He has the nerve to talk to you as if he didn’t ghost you for the past two weeks. “Haven’t heard your sweet voice in a while. I guess I miss talking to you.”

“Dongmin, what’s this about?” You feel your heartbeat speed up, much to your disappointment. Curse him for having you wrapped around his finger still even when you thought you were getting over him. 

“There’s my girl,” He chuckles into the mic. “You busy?” You’re taken aback at his words. His girl. 

“Fuck off, don’t call me again.” …Is what you want to say, but your cheeks heat up against your will. You feel your composure falling apart at the mere sound of his voice. “...No. I just got home.” 

“Come over then.” Now, it really feels like a setup. You knew there were other people with him; he could have you on speaker for all you know. He’s probably trying to show off how easy it is to call a girl over at midnight. “...Only if you want to. It’s only me and a couple of other people here.” 

“Like who?”

“Leehan, of course. And some of my friends, Matthew, Heeseung, Minji.” His voice hushes into a whisper as he continues his thought. “To be honest, there’s a few more people here, but I can’t remember their names right now.” He giggles at his confession. It’s uncharacteristically cute– you’ve never heard him laugh like that before. 

Kim Minji. Another name you’d temporarily erased from your mind. “Who’re you talking to?” It’s Leehan; he sounds like he’s a couple feet away from Taesan, but you can tell it’s him by his voice.

You’re silent as you wait to hear what he says in response. Surely he wouldn’t admit to talking to another girl in front of his girlfriend. But then again, maybe he didn’t care to be cautious when it came to things like this. “Y/N, duh. You wanna talk to her?”

“Ah, I don’t really think you need to-” You get out, not seeing the point in talking to his roommate at this point of time, but ultimately getting cut off by Leehan taking the phone. 

“Hey, Y/N. Long time no see, yeah?” His baritone tone shocks you, sounding much deeper now that he’s properly speaking into the phone. “Our sweet Taesan over here was hogging the joint while he was chatting you up, so I hope you understand why I had to pull you away for a sec there.” Ah. He’s high. 

“Oh, sorry. I didn’t know,” You fiddle with the string of your hoodie as you apologize, even if there isn’t anything for you to be sorry for. “I’m going to hang up now, just tell Dongmin I’m going to sleep or something.”

“Woah, hold up. Your Dongmin called you for a reason. You’re free to come over, you know. You don’t need to smoke with us, it’s cool.” There are more voices in the background, but the phone struggles to pick up the noise. “Who am I to stop a pretty lady like yourself from coming to our house again?” You can hear him smile as he talks. 

If Jaehyun would be mad if he found out you were just thinking about Han Taesan, he’d be livid if he knew you were seriously considering taking up the offer. Rustling comes from the other end, and you assume it’s Taesan getting his phone back.

“Hey, don’t try and take what’s mine, Leehan.” There he was again, calling you his. At this point, the title seemed rather fitting with the way you’re still on call, even after your friends warned you about the man you were speaking to.

“I’d love to see you again, Y/N.” Your name rolling off his lips sounds foreign, especially when he’s been known to exclusively call you pet names. “Door’s unlocked if you show up. Don’t keep me waiting too long, yeah?” 

There’s a small beep as he ends the call, giving you no chance to keep the conversation going. You fall back onto your bed, groaning out loud. “Are you okay?” You hear your roommate ask you from down the hallway. 

“Yeah, I’m good!” Not really, though. You’re upset at how quickly you decided to get ready to leave the apartment nstead of getting ready for bed like you initially intended to. Standing up, you move over to the mirror to address your current appearance. You internally thank Taesan for not calling you to come over after you’ve taken off your makeup completely. You touch it up slightly, glad that it hadn’t worn off much during the day. Grabbing your perfume on the dresser, you spritz yourself a couple times with the sweet scent. The clothes you would’ve worn to sleep were good enough– After all, it's likely nobody will be in the right state of mind to care too much about what you had on anyways.

You make your way back to the living room, walking past the couch where your roommate was still sitting. “You going somewhere? Aren’t you in your pajamas?” Minnie looks up at you with a confused expression on her face, beer can in hand. 

“Yeah, just going to stop by a friend’s place real quick.” You grab your keys off of the coffee table before moving towards the door.

She gives you a skeptical look, raising her eyebrow at your explanation. “I’m not going to ask you any more questions, but don’t do anything you’ll regret. I’ll be awake if you need me to save you or something– And don’t come back too late!”

“Got it, Mom.” The two of you share a laugh as you walk out into the hallway of your apartment complex, hearing the door beep as it locks shut behind you. You internally apologize to Woonhak and Jaehyun as you wait for the elevator to come up to your floor. You were seriously doing this, huh?

⋆ ˚｡⋆୨୧˚

In any other situation, you probably wouldn’t be going out of your way to walk across campus at midnight— But because it’s a Friday, there were groups of students roaming around, making their way to bars or house parties. 

The weather was perfect for the walk, albeit it was only about ten minutes long. Even in your shorts, you weren’t too cold on the short trip to the house. It was hard to expect anything in particular by showing up, but you prayed you wouldn’t feel like a fool no matter what happened tonight. 

Just as Taesan said, the door to the house was unlocked; you turned the knob and slowly opened it, revealing the familiar interior. It was significantly cleaner than the last time you were there, probably because they weren’t throwing a party tonight. In this sort of setting, it looked more like a regular home than anything. The led lights towards the ceiling were set to a cool purple, enveloping the room in the color. The speakers were playing music, but at a more casual volume; just loud enough to hear the people you were talking to without being too disruptive to the conversation, maintaining a chill background noise for the smoke session you walked into. 

“Y/N? Come sit with us. Taesan just left to go buy some drinks.” Leehan’s head pops up at your entrance, motioning you to sit next to him on the couch with his hand. “You know anyone here?”

Taking the spot next to him, you glance around the faces scattered around the room. You’re glad they’re all preoccupied with passing around a bong, otherwise you wouldn’t be looking at everyone so shamelessly. There were only about six other people there, but you could only name Minji from her Instagram profile.

You shake your head no in response, giving him an awkward smile. “That’s okay, it doesn’t really matter. You can just stick by me tonight, then.” Leehan reassures you, oddly sweet compared to your last interaction. “Do you smoke?”

“Not really,” You answer. Weed wasn’t your drug of choice– you would’ve much rather preferred to drink, but it wasn’t something you were opposed to. It wouldn’t hurt, right? If anything, it’ll help you take away all the anxiety that was currently weighing down your shoulders. “I’ll smoke tonight though. It’s hard not to join in when you’ve all started without me.” There was no way in hell you were going to stay in that room longer than fifteen minutes if you were sober. 

“Atta girl, I knew you would fit right in.” The brunette praises as he reaches to pick up the tray on the table. You watch as Leehan fills up the rolling paper, skillfully turning it into a neatly packed joint. It’s kind of mesmerizing– you can tell he does this often with the way he finishes in an instant, licking the edge of the paper to close it. Of course, he doesn’t fail to make eye contact as he does so, effectively bringing a blush to your cheeks. Leehan’s looks were no joke. 

It made so much sense to think that Leehan and Taesan were roommates. Leehan reaches into the pocket of his shirt, pulling out a neon green lighter. He places the joint in his mouth, cupping the end and inhaling as he lights it on fire. His head is thrown back onto the couch as he exhales into the air after holding it towards you, urging you to take a hit of your own. 

You take the spliff from him, noticing how large his hands are in comparison to your own. Your actions mimic his; bringing it up to your lips and breathing in the smoke. You immediately cough at the taste, embarrassed that your body seems to reject the weed despite having done this before. Leehan giggles at you, covering his mouth as he rubs the small of your back to help your coughing fit. 

“First time?” He takes it back from you, holding it between his fingers as it burns into the air. “You can be honest, I won’t judge.”

“...No, but it’s been a while.” The two of you are in your own bubble at this point, as you pay no mind to the other people just a couple of feet away. Almost as a means of proving yourself, you snatch the joint from his hand, taking another deep inhale-- successfully without interruption this time, making you internally sigh in relief. The two of you go back and forth sharing it, alternating hits as it slowly shrinks, his spare hand resting on your bare thigh throughout the whole thing. 

“You look like a natural now,” His laugh is breathy; he looked dazed over. It’s unknown how long they’d been at it before you arrived. “You feeling it yet?” He questions as he looks you in the eyes; his own are already glazed over, making them sparkle more than they normally did.

You can’t hold in your giggle at seeing him in such a state. “You are, that’s for sure.” You’re not sure when the two of you moved closer to each other, but your shoulders are touching as you both rest against the comfort of the couch. “I feel really good.” 

The eye contact between you two is broken as you look towards the sound of the door opening. Taesan walks through the entrance with a case of drinks under his arm, taking off his shoes before placing the box onto the table, only after taking one for himself. His face lights up once he sees you on the couch, sending you a grin as he takes his place next to Minji. “Nice to see you again, pretty.” 

Oh, right. You almost forgot she was here– you were so caught up in smoking with Leehan that you weren’t trying to get to know any of the other session attendees. Not that anyone cared, though. Most of them were just lying around, either swaying to the music that continuously played throughout the room, eating from the bags of open snacks laid out on the table, or nonverbal on their phones. 

Minji tries to wrap her arm around Taesan’s as he sits down, earning a side-eye from him as he gently pulls it away. It feels like you should be jealous after seeing that, but your mind is fuzzy. “Looks like Leehan stole my seat.” His tone is passive-aggressive as he addresses the man currently curled up next to you.

“Your seat? Maybe you should’ve called dibs if you wanted to sit next to Y/N so bad. I got her fair and square.” Leehan bites back. “I don’t know why you left right after you asked her to come over.”

He moves to put his arm around you– you can tell he’s trying to push his roommates’ buttons, and you decide to play into it. You two share a brief look, mischief in your eyes, as you both silently understand what you were doing. Instead of pushing his arm away like Taesan had just done with Minji, you lean into it, resting your head by his shoulder as you take another inhale of smoke. The pair of roommates are entranced by the way the cloud leaves your mouth, swirling and twisting into the air before ultimately disappearing. 

Leehan moves the both of you to where you’re sitting up properly and takes his arm off of you. Across the room, Taesan can’t keep his eyes off of the two of you; the way you’re feeding into Leehan’s obvious moves on you. “Can I try something?” You’re a little lost, but you nod your head regardless. His fingers brush against yours as he takes the blunt from your fingers, now a little less than half the size it was when he first rolled it. 

He takes a long drag, pulling away while keeping the smoke in his mouth. You’re shocked to feel his hand on your cheek, bringing your face closer to his and using his thumb to part your mouth open. You also feel Han Taesan’s gaze burning into your skull, but you can’t turn to look with the grip Leehan has on you. 

Leehan slowly pushes the smoke out between his lips, which were currently only a couple of inches away from your own. You inhale instinctively, a bridge of smoke connecting you as you do so. The scene feels like it’s in slow motion, or maybe that’s just the high you’re currently feeling. You don’t know when other people began watching the exchange, but you can faintly hear witnesses egging on the intimate moment you’re sharing with Leehan. 

After all the smoke has passed between you, he moves his thumb to your mouth again, caressing your bottom lip gently. Leehan wants to kiss you. You know he’s not entirely there as he gives you a dopey grin, biting his own lip as his thoughts are fixated on how pretty he thinks you look right now. 

As much as you enjoyed the way Leehan was currently making you feel, you knew that it was all a game to him. It was significantly easier to read him– his intentions with you are as clear as day, unlike Taesan’s. The way he spoke to you didn’t fool you; his words were laced with nothing but lust, and you weren’t interested in taking it any further than it needed to be. This, you were sure of. With Han Taesan, you could never be too sure about what he was thinking. You wish it was this easy to see through him the way you could see through Leehan. 

You know exactly what you’re doing as you lean into the brunette. He smiles again, seemingly satisfied with your movements, as he closes his eyes and does the same. Of course he thinks he’s going to get what he wants. It pisses you off how smug he currently looks when he moves to kiss you.

“Please don’t, Y/N.” Right before you turn your head to swerve the kiss like you’d initially planned to, Taesan’s voice makes both you and Leehan halt your movements. His voice is… small. It’s not as confident as he would normally sound when talking to you; rather, it sounded like he was uncertain about whether or not you’d go as far as kissing his roommate in front of him. Leehan scoffs in annoyance, as he turns his head to look at the source of the interruption. 

“Way to cockblock, dude.” The room suddenly feels tense. You can feel more eyes on you now with the way Leehan’s voice pierces the music coming from the speakers. “She isn’t yours, you know that right? Just accept it, Taesan. If she wants to sleep with me, she can make that decision herself. Isn’t that right, Y/N?” You can’t tell if this is all a part of Leehan’s plan to piss off his friend, but you weren’t having it anymore.

“Leehan, I’m not going to sleep with you.” He’s laughing in disbelief-- Like he couldn’t believe anyone would turn him down like that, especially in front of people watching. You can tell his pride is hurt when he moves to the opposite end of the couch, as far away from you as he can get without having to stand up. 

“Your loss. I’m sure you’ve heard already, but I’m a good fuck-” Out of nowhere, Taesan is grabbing your wrist and brings you up to your feet, dragging you towards the door. Your limbs feel weightless as he holds on to you, your steps gliding on the hardwood floors. You’re barely able to put on your own shoes as you walk into the night, Taesan leading the way.

⋆ ˚｡⋆୨୧˚ 

The cool air is refreshing; you take deep breaths, relishing at how nice it feels to be free from the smell of weed surrounding you. “Dongmin, you’re holding me too tight.” You pull back against his grasp, and he immediately drops your wrist, standing in front of you now.

“Why’d you do that?”

“Do what? I came over like you asked me to.” 

“Yeah, and you were all over Leehan when I walked in.”

“It should’ve been you,” You breathe out, just barely above a whisper. “He told me you left when I got there.”

“If you wanted it to be me, then why’d you let him do that? You know how he is.” He looks hurt as he confronts you, and you almost regret what you did back there.

“No, Dongmin, I don’t know how he is. And I also don’t know why you’re angry at me right now. You’re acting like I knew he was going to pull that stunt on me!” He doesn’t know why he’s feeling this way either. Your annoyance is clear as the night sky above you. 

“...Fine, say you didn’t know he was going to do that,” His brows furrowed as he interrogated you further.  “Why’d you lean in?”

“I knew you were watching us. I wasn’t going to kiss him either way.” You confess, not seeing the point in dancing around the bush. What you did could be seen as toxic, but you wanted to see if it would affect him at all-- to get him annoyed, jealous. Anything that could signal that he actually gave a shit about you. 

“Can you cut the bullshit? Do you want to sleep with my friend or not?”

“Did you not hear what I said to him? I told him straight to his face that I didn’t want to have sex with him– In front of everyone, for god’s sake Dongmin! Are you hearing yourself?” Taesan is quiet, not knowing what to say.

“Why does any of this matter to you?” You prod, impatiently awaiting his response. Because he likes you. Because you’re more than another one of his groupies. More than just a meaningless one night stand. You just need him to say it himself.

“Forget it, then. Where’s your apartment? It’s late, I’ll take you back.” He dismisses his previous outburst. You aren’t surprised that he changes the subject, but you wished he took the chance to clear up whatever it was between you two. 

“I can go on my own.” You turn away from him, knowing that if you look at him properly your resolve will fall almost immediately. 

“I’m not letting you walk back at one in the morning, Y/N. It’s not good for a pretty girl to go home alone like this.” Why does he want to ensure the safety of a girl he won’t even admit he has feelings for? 

“You don’t need to do that. I’ll just call someone while I go home, it’s not that serious.” You brush off his offer nonchalantly despite knowing you wouldn’t want to go back alone at this time of night. 

“I want to.” Taesan’s insistent; you didn’t take him as the type of guy to be so stubborn when it came to things like this. “It’s either you let me walk you home, or I’m just going to trail five feet behind you until I see you get back safe.” 

“You’d look like a freak doing that, by the way.” You tease, laughing at the image of him following you around like a bodyguard. 

“Oh, I’m very aware. Which is why I’m politely requesting that you let me walk you home.” His gaze is soft as he pleads with you for the last time. “Please, Y/N?” 

The next three minutes go by in silence, the only noise being the nearby chatter of the occasional groups of partygoers passing by the area. You never explicitly told him to go away, but he matches your pace as you make your way towards your apartment. 

Halfway through the walk, you realize that this could be your chance to talk to Taesan properly. A chance to learn more about him without any intrusions; to see the type of person he truly is. At this very moment in time, this is the closest thing he’ll ever be to being yours.

“I’m thirsty, Dongmin.” You blurt out, suddenly realizing how dry your mouth was, having had nothing to drink for the past hour. 

“Are we almost at your place? You can drink something when you get home, no?” His steps slow down as he turns to you, his hands resting in his pockets. He isn’t wrong, but you were searching for an excuse to extend the time you had alone with him. 

He’s met with your pouty face looking up at him, and he swears his composure dissolves in an instant; he would do anything for you right then and there. “…There’s a convenience store nearby.” 

Your face lights up as you put your hand out for him to take, telling him to bring you there. It’s things like this— you always manage to find a way to catch him off guard. Taesan’s not used to being the flustered one when it comes to women, but he'll gladly endure it if it was you doing it to him.  

The neon sign is bright in the dark of the night, lighting up both of your faces as the boy moves to open the door, motioning for you to go in first. You wrap your arms around your torso as you head towards the refrigerated section, selecting your drink of choice after some thought. “Are you hungry?” 

He shakes his head no, but his eyes are fixated on you across from him standing in your pajamas, playing with the strings of your hoodie as you stand in the middle of the convenience store. His heart is beating so fast, he’s worried you can hear it from where you are. “Why are you looking at me like that, Dongmin?”

The speed in which his cheeks turn pink is endearing. “Uh, your eyes are red.” Taesan clears his throat as he looks back to the various beverages in front of them, pretending to read the labels as he puts an end to his obvious ogling. 

“Thanks, genius. Who would’ve guessed?” You tuck the bottle you were holding under your arm, moving to look through the aisles of snacks and pre-packaged food lining the store. “You aren’t high anymore?” 

“I stopped smoking right after I got off call with you. I don’t really feel it.” To be honest, Taesan wasn’t much of a smoker either, but you didn’t need to know that. The smoke sesh was planned by none other than his roommate, and Taesan only happened to walk in on it after returning home from one of the campus recording booths. He only took a few hits before he thought it’d be a good way to invite you over; it was not nearly enough to get him in the floaty state you were coming down from. 

“Well, I still am. And I’m fucking starving,” He lets out a small laugh, watching you exaggeratedly ponder about which pack of instant ramen you were going to get. “Do you want anything?” 

“Mm, no. Not that hungry.” You squat down to the floor in an attempt to see the bottom shelves better. He’s glancing around the aisle as well, moving to pick up something from above you. When you turn to look at him again, he’s holding out a cup of Shin Ramyun in your face. 

You tilt your head. “I thought you didn’t want anything, though?” 

“I don’t,” He answers matter-of-factly. “This is one of my favorites.” You hesitantly take the ramen from his hands as you get up, walking towards the cashier at the front of the store without any further comment.

You can feel Taesan standing behind you as you both watch the worker scan your drink and ramen. “It’s going to be 3,000 won.” Pulling out your phone to pay, your face recognition fails once, preventing you from opening your Apple wallet. You send an apologetic smile to the cashier for the hold-up.

Your card finally shows up on your screen, allowing you to finally tap the corner of the pay screen– except you’re met with Taesan’s hand holding his card and paying for your items. “Thank you, have a nice night!” The worker pushes your purchases towards you on the counter. Taesan moves to pick them up from behind you, bringing it to a table in the corner of the store.

He slides out the chair for you, which you move to sit in afterwards. Taesan grabs your drink and twists the cap off, offering the opened bottle to you. You gladly accept, taking big gulps and soothing your cottonmouth. “I could’ve done that myself, Dongmin. Same with paying back there.” 

“I know,” Opening up the ramen halfway, he brings the cup up to the hot water dispenser, filling up the line inside. “You probably haven’t noticed it, but you’re moving in slow motion. It makes me want to take care of you.” His last comment is just barely loud enough for you to hear. He finally sits down next to you after he uses a pair of chopsticks to pin the cover of the ramen closed while it cooks.

“I owe you then,” You comment, taking another sip from the bottle in your hand. 

He almost looks offended at your offer to pay off your debt, waving his hand no in front of your face. “Just take it as an apology for me lashing out at you earlier… Sorry. I don’t know why I got so angry back at the house.” 

You want to roll your eyes and tell him the answer to his obliviousness. Surely he should know why. It’s because you like me, isn’t it? Perhaps it’s a big conclusion to jump to, but it’s the only reason that would justify his jealousy after seeing you and Leehan together. 

Taesan takes the chopsticks off of the cup ramen, breaking them apart and mixing together the noodles. Bringing a wad of noodles into the air, he gently blows on it, the steam rising into the air. You gasp at the smell, suddenly reminded of the intense case of munchies you were experiencing. He hums as he finishes cooling down the bite, bringing the chopsticks to your mouth. “Here.” 

Is he trying to feed you? Your eyebrows raise in shock, moving away slightly before leaning in, accepting the food he was holding out for you. The smile he gives you as he watches you eat is sickeningly sweet; he looks content seeing you so happy while you eat. Taking the chopsticks from his hand, you mirror his actions, except this time you offer a bite to the boy currently watching your every move.

It was cute the way he looked like a surprised puppy once he realized you were giving him a bite of his own. He opens his mouth, letting you feed him the cooled-down noodles. You watch as a blush creeps up his neck once more; he covers his mouth as he chews, looking away to avoid your gaze. “Thanks.” He utters, voice quiet with the way he was currently refusing to face you.

This side of Taesan is what truly baffled you. Despite your tendency to fall for people quicker than most, you were smart enough to catch onto the signs of someone liking you back. And in Han Taesan’s case, it couldn’t be clearer to you– his usual cool-guy image disappearing when it comes to you, his atypical moments of concern, his jealousy when it comes to other men, his current acts of service. 

Even to Woonhak and Jaehyun, it sounded like Taesan liked you. The only thing that made you question your theory was the fact that he seemed to have a tendency to run. To run away when things between you two became a little too real. But what was holding him back from being honest with himself? 

“Do I make you nervous, Dongmin?” You wanted to try and pry the words you wanted to hear out from him. 

Now, he reminded you of a deer caught in headlights. His head snaps back towards you, eyes the widest you’ve ever seen them. His sudden movements make him choke on the ramen he has in his mouth. Your hand immediately moves to his back to pat it as he coughs. Pushing your bottle of water towards him, he gladly takes a swig from it to end his coughing fit. “Why do you think that? Do I seem nervous around you?”

“Sort of. I can’t really think of a good way to describe it right now.” You pick up the chopsticks that were resting on the side of the cup to take another bite into your mouth. “But I feel like there’s more to you than what you let on.”

He’s resting his head on his hand now, elbow propped up on the metal table. “What do you mean? You think I’d be different than I am now?”

“Not exactly. In fact, I think the way you act with me is what I’d expect from you. It’s more like… With what little I know about you, I’d think you weren’t this sweet just based on how you look.”

“...Is there something bad about the way I look?”

You scoff, playfully pushing his shoulder. “You can’t seriously be acting like this right now. Everyone on campus thinks you’re hot.” It’s true, yourself included. 

“Oh, is that so?” His lips curve up into a smile. You both know damn well that he’s attractive. 

“Whatever,” Grabbing the drink sitting in front of him, you wash down the taste of your last bite. “I think I’ve almost got you figured out, Dongmin. There’s just a couple things I can’t quite place.” It’s only somewhat true, but you were hoping saying this would make him open up about himself more. 

 “If that’s the case, you could’ve just asked me, angel.” Taesan looks taken aback at your admission. In all honesty, he doesn’t know what you’re referring to, but that doesn’t stop him from wanting to find out. “What do you want to know?”

“Anything, really.”

“Anything?”

“You realize you probably know nothing about me, right? I’d say the same about you.”

“What? That’s not true,” He pauses for a second to think about what he could possibly recall about you, only to find that you were right. “Oh. I guess you have a point.” He scratches the back of his head, feeling guilty agreeing with what you just said. “It’s weird, though. I feel like I’m comfortable with you even if we don’t know each other that well.” 

“So, are you going to tell me more about yourself or should we just keep pretending we’re friends like we have been this whole time?” 

He pouts at you. “You don’t think we’re friends?” 

“...Okay, I’ll get going then.” You glare at him as you clean up your mess, dumping it into the empty ramen cup. You move to stand up, only to find him tugging gently on your sweatshirt sleeve and pulling you back down into your chair. 

“Sorry, I was just joking,” He gives you an apologetic look before straightening his posture and turning to face you better. Your knees were touching now, faces only a couple feet away from each other. “Where should I start, then? My MBTI or something?”

“Whatever you feel like telling me, Dongmin. I’m not looking for anything in particular.” You shrug. You truly didn’t know anything about him from just your interactions and what you heard people say about him, which weren’t necessarily the best, to say the least. Anything he said would be new information to you.

“I don’t really think MBTI is that serious, but I’m an INTJ. I wanted to be an idol until I graduated middle school, but I don’t think that kind of spotlight fits me too well anymore. That’s why I settled on being a music major instead. I think I’d rather be behind the scenes instead of being on the main stage all the time.” 

You can feel a smile creeping up on your face at the way he’s genuinely indulging in your request. “I can see it. You being an idol, that is.”

“You think so? I don’t know. Seems pretty tiring to keep up an act like that all the time. Plus, I think I’m happy where I am right now,” Taesan looks down at his hands, twiddling his thumbs as he continues. “It’d be hard to not be able to see my family all the time as an idol.”

“Your family?”

“Yeah, I have two younger siblings back at home. I miss them a lot, even if I’m not that far from home. It’s kind of sad to think that I miss out on watching them grow up when I’m at school.” 

You place your hand atop his, making him stop his fidgeting. Just like that, Han Taesan felt a lot more real to you. He feels like Han Dongmin. “I’m sorry. It must be difficult for you then, huh?”

“Oh, yeah, sometimes.” He takes your hand in his, playing with your fingers now instead. The action makes you giggle to yourself; he really resembled a big baby. “It’s fine though, I text them all the time. My dad’s always sending me pictures of our new dog or them having dinner together. It’s not like I can’t call them when I want to. I’m just grateful.”

You hum in acknowledgment. “Yeah, I get it. It’s nice having some of my friends from high school go here too, otherwise, I think I’d be way too homesick for my liking.”

“Are you far from home then?”

“I’m only a couple hours away, but I’m kind of sappy when it comes to things like that. Like, I find a lot of sentimental meaning in different things, and my hometown obviously holds a lot of that for me, growing up there and all.” 

“It’s great you have people here you know though, seriously. When I first got here, I knew no one. I only met Leehan by chance at some club event I went to.” Taesan lets out a small laugh at the memory. “He was a lot different back then, I’d say. He pisses me off sometimes, but he’s a good friend most of the time. Dude’s a lot more normal when it’s just us at the house together.” 

You think back to your few interactions shared with his roommate. How different could he have been if that’s the way he acts now? It’s hard to imagine Leehan anything else than your typical college fuckboy, but you initially saw the boy sitting next to you the same way, so you don’t write it off as impossible.

“I don’t know why I’m talking about him. He’s been annoying me lately,” The grip he has on your hand tightens slightly, but quickly returns to his previous gentle hold. “Who are your friends from home? Sungho and Riwoo?”

“Huh? No, I only met them last year, but they’re the best. It was some dumb assigned group project thing, but we get along really well. I’m usually hanging out with my friends Jaehyun and Woonhak, though.” Saying their names aloud reminds you of how they pleaded with you to drop Han Taesan just days before this– yet here you were, your hand in his as you talked about your lives in the middle of the local convenience store. 

“Ah, Woonhak? He’s younger than us, right?” You nod, completely forgetting that Woonhak was the reason you found out that there was another girl Taesan was currently entertaining. “He’s funny, I’ve hung out with him a few times here and there. He keeps asking me to show him what songs I’ve been writing recently.” 

This makes you think they were closer than they really were, but you knew it was just Woonhak’s usual (endearingly) nosy self at work. “Wow, Woonhak gets to hear them but I can’t?” You pull your hand away from him to grab at your chest, pretending that the realization broke your heart. 

“Come on baby, don’t be like that.” Taesan takes your hand back into his, letting them rest where your knees meet. “I can show you sometime, just not now though. I’ve been working on something special recently, and it’s not perfect yet.” 

“Do you call everyone that?” His eyes meet yours, tilting his head to the side slightly. 

Upon understanding what you’re trying to get at, he waves his free hand in front of you defensively. “Ah, it’s not like that. Just force of habit, I guess?”

“Okay, so by force of habit, you mean yes. I got it.” Taesan opens his mouth to defend himself again, but you cut him off. “Don’t freak out, I don’t really care. We’re friends, right?” You laugh to yourself at the irony of your own statement. Yeah, friends who kiss and call each other pet names. So stupid. 

The chime above the door jingles as a group of very obviously inebriated college students come in, loudly seeking out food to satisfy their drunk cravings. “It’s getting late, can I walk you home properly now?” 

Quickly cleaning up after yourselves, you both make your way out of the convenience store before you run into more groups of people coming back from the parties that just ended. Taesan grabs your hand as you start walking, interlocking your fingers in his. You were surprised, but definitely not complaining. The way his large hand felt in comparison to yours was addicting; you’d never let go if you could. Feeling your phone buzz in your pocket, you use your free hand to see who’s texting you. 

2 new messages from “babygirl minnie”! Minnie: babe r u coming home tonight or do i need to pick u up from somewhere 🤔 Minnie: i’m going to sleep in like 20 mins lmk ASAP or ill kill u 😘 to: “babygirl minnie”! You: yes mother i’m omw back now 👍 u dont need to stay up someone’s walking back with me

You watch the screen as she hearts your message almost immediately, and you slip your phone back into your pocket. “Who’s that?” Taesan asks, who was peering over his shoulder while you replied.

“It’s my roommate. She’s worried I’m not going to get back safe.” 

“I would be too if I had a beautiful girl like you as my roommate walking all by herself at this time.” His hand squeezes yours gently as you walk, the night sky littered with stars. The route you were taking home wasn’t your usual route. In fact, it was the longest path you could take without straying too far off campus. Was it so wrong to want to hold hands with Han Taesan as long as you possibly could?

“I wish I got to see you like this more often, Dongmin.” 

“Well, you’re seeing me now. That’s not enough for you, angel?” His steps slow down, making you stop as well. 

“That’s not what I meant. It was nice to talk to you normally for once.”

“Ah, so my girl wants to talk to me more. I’m just a call away, you know.”

You scoff at his words. “We both know that’s not true.” If you even tried calling, would he bother to answer? For all you know, he’d just go back to leaving you with nothing but radio silence for days on end.

“…I don’t know what you’re trying to say.”

“What I want to know is why you treat me so nicely and then disappear for a week?” It might be the effects of your high coming to an end, but you suddenly feel all the frustration you’d previously felt when it came to Taesan coming out of nowhere. “Fuck, I hate to ruin the nice moment we just had but it’s hard not to say something when you make me feel like an idiot every time.”

In front of you, Taesan stares back with a blank expression. Nothing. It’s as if he doesn’t even know what he’s been doing to you. Seeing his face just angers you further. “Hell, I don’t even know why it’s so hard for me to not come running back to you the second you call. I look ridiculous going back to you even when my best friends told me not to.”

“Y/N, calm down. You’re thinking too deeply about things right now. Maybe it’s the weed.” Taesan tries to put his hand on your arm, but you pull away immediately. You felt like he wasn’t hearing anything you were saying. 

“Am I just someone you hit up when you’re lonely? Just someone who’s conveniently always going to answer? That’s the last person I’d want to be to you.”

“C’mon, sweetheart. You’re more than that to me, okay?” 

“I wish I could find it in me to believe you, Taesan.” 

“I don’t like hearing you call me that.” Hearing his nickname come from your mouth felt like an arrow to the heart, for some reason. It all felt wrong. You shouldn’t be calling him that intentionally; it wasn’t right coming from you. Taesan didn’t want you to see him the same way everyone else did, but he couldn’t explain why.  

“Even things like this, like calling you by your real name. You make it feel like you genuinely care about me, even when you have other girls wrapped around your finger the same way you have me. It’s like you go out of your way to make me feel special only to forget about me the next day!”

“Darling, you are special to me. I don’t know how else to prove it to you.” He couldn’t be serious. How did he expect you to feel special when, for all you know, he could be treating his next girl the exact same way? 

“You confuse me, Taesan.  Because just now, in that convenience store, you seemed like you were telling me things you haven’t told other people, but I know that the chances of me even hearing from you tomorrow are slim.”

“You’re acting like we’re dating or something. We were never anything like that, Y/N.” He spits back without thinking, feeling equally as frustrated now. The night air felt colder than it did before. Whether or not Han Taesan reciprocated your feelings, he was completely oblivious to his actions. Leehan was right. Taesan wasn’t yours, nor were you his, but you felt like tonight told you everything you needed to know. 

Your mouth opens in disbelief. “Don’t say that shit to me,” You turn on your heel, angrily resuming your way back to your apartment. Taesan raises his arm, debating on whether or not to try and stop you from ending the conversation as is, ultimately letting it fall back to his side. You look back at him after a few steps. “I’m fine going home on my own, so don’t bother following me to my place.” 

Han Taesan knew he screwed up. 

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[ineffable-suffering]

Re: "You go too fast for me, Crowley", because I think I finally figured out the real meaning behind that line

Naturally, this line of all lines, the most line of them all, is constantly circling around my rotten brain like a moth around a flame.

In addition, though, there's always been another Good Omen's line/exchange that has kept bothering me again lately. And literally until just about five minutes ago, I had never thought of relating them back to each other.

Now, five minutes later, I have and I think I just ... figured it out.

In case you were wondering: The second line that wouldn't leave my head is what Aziraphale says to Crowley during their clandestine meeting at St. James' Park in 1862 when Crowley asks him for Holy Water:

A: "I'm not bringing you a suicide pill, Crowley!"

And here's what bugs me about this: Why did Aziraphale, without a breath of hesitation, immediately assume Crowley wanted the Holy Water to commit suicide if things ever went wrong?

That's ... such a dark assumption to make. Especially because that is absolutely not what Crowley wanted it for, as he literally says himself:

C: "That's not what I want it for, just insurance."

And what does Aziraphale reply?

A: "I'm not an idiot, Crowley!"

Because he firmly, firmly believes that Crowley is asking him to bring him the Holy Water as a foolproof method of taking his own life in case Heaven and Hell ever find out about them.

To this day, that conversation gives me chills whenever I think about it. We so rarely get see what genuine emotions and thoughts for and about Crowley Aziraphale keeps neatly tucked away behind that tightly buttoned waistcoat of his. This moment in 1862 is one of the very rare ones where his façade slips a little – and the peak we get isn't a fun one. It's a very dark, scared and vulnerable one.

What am I on about and how does this all relate to the infamous "You go too fast for me, Crowley"-line? Let's look at it under the cut.

(Word count: 2560 | Reading time: ~10 min. | TW: mentions of suicide)

Like I mentioned up above, it always struck me to my core that Aziraphale very clearly immediately assumes Crowley wants the Holy Water for possible suicide. Not only is that a very dark and upsetting thought, it also poses the question: Why? Why is that the first place Aziraphale's mind goes to?

Crowley says at the very beginning of their conversation:

C: "We have a lot in common, you and me."

He's definitely referring to their (very mutual) relationship Arrangement and the fact that they both find themselves kept apart and watched by their respective head offices, not allowing them to ever misstep and give themselves away.

After bickering around a little like they do, Crowley asks his favour – and he makes it very clear in a quiet and serious voice that:

C: "This is something else. [...] For if it all goes wrong."

He's not just talking about Heaven or Hell finding out about some silly frivolous miracles, no. He's talking about them finding out about their Arrangement, their relationship. The worst of all worst case scenarios.

So bad, in fact, that he doesn't even ask his favour out loud but instead decided to write it down.

Aziraphale's reaction is ... severe.

We immediately see his face drop as, he too, realizes that this is all of a sudden a very serious conversation indeed. And he immediately and vigorously denies Crowley's request because he thinks it to be one for a suicide pill.

To understand how he could arrive at that lightning-quick (and also wrong) conclusion, we have to try and understand how Aziraphale sees Crowley and the threat that the angel himself as well as their relationship poses to Crowley.

Crowley can, at times, be a very self-deprecating and cynical character. He's without a doubt carrying a lot of trauma and unspoken fears and emotions with him at all times. Aziraphale at this point in their relationship probably has a good notion of what those are – but he doesn't know the whole depth of it because they've never been able to speak freely enough and Crowley has seemingly decided to keep many-a things to himself, still. They both tread the waters of plausible deniability very well.

So, to jump to the conclusion of Crowley entertaining suicidal thoughts in the face of unavoidable danger is ... quite a violent jump. And remember: "[...] underneath it all, Crowley was an optimist. If there was one rock-hard certainty that had sustained him through the bad times then it was utter surety that the universe would look after him."

So, what is it that Aziraphale does know that would drive him to such a drastic conclusion when, in reality, secret optimist Crowley only ever wanted the Holy Water to protect himself against Hell to come out safe on the other end of things?

2500 BC, Land of Uz: A: "That [going along with Heaven/Hell as far as you can] sounds, um ..." C: "Lonely? Yeah." A: "But you said it wasn‘t." C: "I‘m a demon. I lied."

After Crowley helps Aziraphale out in Edinburgh in 1827, Crowley is immediately sucked back down to Hell We don't know what exactly happened after that or just how long Crowley was gone. We also don't know if Crowley ever told Aziraphale what happened, once he returned. What we and Aziraphale do know, is that Crowley ends up asking him for Holy Water, out of the blue, only a couple of decades later.

1601, The Globe: A: "But if Hell finds out [about the Arrangement], they won't just be angry. They'll destroy you." (additionally, later in time, C: "My lot does not send rude notes.")

Ergo: It's very clear that Aziraphale seems to have put two and two together with his own angel math by what he has a) witnessed himself and b) what Crowley has said himself which equals: In going against Hell, Crowley has felt incredibly lonely before he had Aziraphale by his side and if Heaven and Hell were to ever find out about them, Hell's punishment would be a whole lot worse than Heaven's.

He thinks Hell would destroy Crowley.

So when Crowley, who so rarely says how he really feels and one of the few times he did, told Aziraphale he was lonely, says he wants the Holy Water, the immediate conclusion Aziraphale comes to is: He wants it as an emergency exit. In case things go pear-shaped. He wants it to escape whatever dreadful punishment Hell would have in stock for such a lonely traitor. He wants it as a suicide pill.

For Aziraphale to not even entertain the thought or believe that Crowley does indeed only want the Holy Water as a means of self-defense is, again, absolutely heartbreaking. Because it tells us a thing or two just how scared and desperate Aziraphale thinks Crowley to be. Something along the lines of: "If I myself am already so immensely terrified of Hell's punishment for Crowley, how terrified must Crowley be."

I think a whole lot of this is also very, very strong projection and shows us how Aziraphale himself feels about all of it. How scared he is for himself and Crowley. Of what would be done to them.

A: „Out of the question! Do you know what trouble I'd be in if they knew I‘d been ... fraternizing?“

He knows they would both suffer immense consequences and that Crowley‘s still would be worse. If anything, in a dark and twisted way, it shows that Aziraphale himself has definitely entertained the idea of suicide as a concept, at least. Maybe not for himself or Crowley, yet, but remember, he‘s awfully fond of Shakespeare‘s Hamlet.

A: „To be or not to be? Buck up, Hamlet!“

Yeah, buck up indeed. (By the way, there's a great meta by @greenthena on why Aziraphale likes Hamlet so much that kind of plays into my point a little. You can read it here).

And again, who knows what Aziraphale might have actually witnessed of Hell's cruel ways already in the past (Edinburgh of 1827, or at other times) that made him arrive at the conclusion that, ultimately, suicide would be the less painful choice for Crowley when faced with Hell's consequence for their relationship.

I told you this was gonna take a bit of a darker turn. So, here we are. At the turn. It doesn't get much lighter from here on out, I'm afraid.

Because all of this gives "You go too fast for me, Crowley" a whole new devastating meaning.

Personally, I always found it a teensy bit difficult to relate that line back to Aziraphale implying that Crowley was trying to push their relationship a little too fast for him.

Deducing that as the meaning of "You goo to fast for me" after we were shown in the montage of S1E3 that Aziraphale, from circa 1941 on, was undoubtedly fully aware of just how madly in love he was with Crowley, has always felt odd to me. And it continued to feel even odder after we got the whole story of 1941 in S2.

Because if that minisode showed us anything, it's that if you let Aziraphale take over the metaphorical wheel for about five minutes, "too fast" doesn't even match the astronomical speed with which he crashes head first into 15th base. Forget the hand holding and kissing, let's go straight to you shooting me on the first date I planned for us!

And they say romance is dead.

Now look, of course, Aziraphale is still keeping most of his romantic feelings and longing bottled up out of fear that Heaven and Hell could find out about them and have Crowley destroyed. We've established that this very big fear of his is the driving factor behind him never trying to overstep that invisible line.

But still, those feelings? They're there. Oh, Hell, they are t-h-e-r-e.

Our angel is a master of self-delusion but not even he is holy enough to deny the fact that, if he could, he'd want nothing more than to lock that demon down and elope together into their happily-ever-after.

So, when Aziraphale finally budges and hands over the Holy Water to Crowley in 1967, I've always had a hard time believing that that line coming from Mr. "I guess there's something to be said for shades of grey" himself actually meant: "I'm not ready yet, you want to go faster than I do."

Because really, apart from trying to convince Aziraphale of the Arrangement and rescuing him from every silly, coincidental predicament the angel has gotten himself into over the millennia, what exactly is it that Crowley did here to "go too fast"? Hell, he's been at it at the pace of a snail ever since, very well knowing that Aziraphale would take a lot of gentle nudging and lunch temptations invitations to agree with the Arrangement.

All Crowley does in that moment in the car is offer Aziraphale a lift, anywhere he wants to go. And yes, that is code their little dance, that is how he shows his love for Aziraphale. But Aziraphale has never before deemed that an issue or seen it as a too-fast progression of their relationship. He even suggests another date himself two seconds later, saying:

A: "Perhaps we could go for a picknick one day. Dine at the Ritz."

So, what, one sentence later he suddenly wants to hit the breaks again? After he literally looked like this the last time Crowley drove (literally way too fast) through burning London?

Nah, I'm not buying it.

Instead, here's what I think Aziraphale really means with this line that changed us all (and I'm sorry, but I'm about to one-up the sadness of the 1862 meeting):

I think Aziraphale is referring to what he thinks is the reason Crowley wants the Holy Water for.

Suicide.

And boy-fucking-howdy, does that change the game.

Because if we assume that Aziraphale, all throughout the one-century-long Holy Water standoff, thought Crowley wanted it as a quick, ahem, Escape From Everything, what I think Aziraphale really means with "You go too fast for me" is this:

To him, Crowley is asking the most cruel deed of him to bring him the one thing that could take Crowley away from Aziraphale for good. For ever. In case things go pear shaped. In case Hell finds out about them and comes after Crowley.

To Aziraphale, Crowley is asking him to load the bullet into his gun for the time it won't be a trick. So he can escape before Hell gets to him.

More devestatingly, I think Aziraphale even understands where that notion comes from. Aziraphale knows how dangerous their relationship is. And Hell does not send rude notes. So, I think after pondering on it for a good millennia, part of him has come to understand why Crowley would want an emergency exit.

Which is absolutely fucking heartbreaking.

Especially because that's not even what Crowley was thinking when he made his request. He truly only wanted it as a defense. But Aziraphale doesn't believe or fully realize that. Aziraphale believes the Holy Water is a suicide pill and to some extent even understands why Crowley might want that.

And yet, despite (wrongly, but well) understanding Crowley's intentions, Aziraphale is still deeply upset and terrified at the thought of Crowley taking his own life should they ever get caught. Which explains his extreme reaction all the way back at their clandestine meeting at St. James' Park.

Aziraphale assuming Crowley's way out of the most pear-shaped situation of them all would be suicide also means that Aziraphale would be the one who'd be ... well, left behind.

He recognises that choosing death over possible eternal punishment is maybe somewhat of an understandable choice. And yet, it's a choice that, to him, Crowley has made without him. Seemingly way before their first talk about it.

Aziraphale thinks Crowley seems to have made up his mind about his escape plan without him in it.

He thinks that if they were caught, Crowley would want some Holy Water around to quickly chug before he would be at Hell's mercy and that would be it.

Crowley would, for the first time ever, really leave. Not just for Alpha Centauri. But actually leave. Escape and run away to a point of no return. For good. Without Aziraphale. To a place where Aziraphale couldn't follow him, no matter how fast he tried to run himself.

It goes a little something like:

"If they found out about us, you would choose to go where I couldn't follow. And you're asking me to pave the road for you to walk there. Without me ever being able to get a say in walking alongside you. You want to go to places where I could never join you. You'd run away without me and I understand why but you didn't even give me a chance to catch up. You go too fast for me, Crowley."

F*ck, man. I think I need to lie down.

Y'know what else that gives new meaning to?

Alright, that's it, I'm out. Enough sad meta-ing for the day. See you all around once I've stopped slipping further into the void, folks. :')

[sarasade]

The Dragon Prince & Queer Subtext - Fandom and Media Analysis of Sort

Lately I’ve been pondering about the ins and outs of Viren and Aaravos’s relationship and why they give off such a queer vibe. So I ended up writing this 2 and half Word document pages long little breakdown because why not.

I think what’s going on here is about the underlying elements of the story- subtext and how their relationship could be perceived through a queer lens. Note: my brain has marinated in queer subtext juices my whole life and I have no intent trying to prove my reading is the only right one.

That Sweet Sweet Gay Shit- A Fandom Perspective

There is a lot of queer subtext between them. Homoerotic subtext even. Their scenes together definitely activated the search function in my brain’s queer coded villain trope lexicon. 

You know- mutual penetration with a phallic object (knife), sharing some kind of mysterious bond through blood magic, so, you know, bodily fluids are indeed involved, the classic slash fiction trope “we are close but we cannot touch” -gay pining because the mirror separates them. When Aaravos is shown for the first time in the mirror the camera does this Laura Mulvey Male Gaze 101 up-down pan shot of him from Viren’s POV. Something that’s usually reserved for female characters when male characters “check them out” in a movie. And then my personal favourite: Something that comes out of Aaravos enters Viren, comes out and then transforms into a creature with a toddler level intelligence- they made a freaky little metaphor baby together! Awwww!

And let's not even talk about the possession and Aaravos slowly taking over Viren’s body. The aesthetics of a toxic queer romance are all over their interactions.

No, Viren! Don’t express vulnerability as an intimidating male figure! Tumblr will babygirlify you!

Storytelling

So what about their interactions makes me perceive them in a queer way? By “queer“ I mean the broader concept of queer here; does the way the characters are depicted come across non-heteronormative and disruptive to gender norms.

I’m mostly talking about the season 2 here since they share their most intimate scenes together in that season.

1 Story Function

Aaravos and Viren’s interactions are supposed to have multiple purposes in the story: They move the plot forward, characterise both Viren and Aaravos, create emotional conflict and intrigue in the viewer etc. Viren observing Aaravos through the mirror is supposed to create mystery and spark the audience’s curiosity. Viren is a device through which Aaravos’s allure gets demonstrated to the viewer so of course their interactions come across pretty, hm, charged. Anyway there are layers of meaning here the audience can interpret in multiple ways both intuitively and through an analytic lens. The meaning naturally changes the more context we get. There are still three more seasons to come.

2 Gendered Tropes

There is a certain element of seduction present: Viren gives Aaravos more access to himself and his body little by little in exchange for Aaravos fulfilling his desires (for power). This could be read as having sexual undertones. Some of Aaravos’s first words to Viren are clearly something Viren wants to hear “How may I serve you?” Weaponising manipulation and seduction, where a character poses as submissive while having alternative motives, is something female characters traditionally do in stories. I don’t know about you but Aaravos’s character has a bit of a femme fatale thing going on if you ask me (haha!) There is something about him that defies gender roles that’s not just about his androgynous looks.

A traditional Femme fatale is often a tragic figure trapped in unfortunate circumstances. They are shrouded in mystery which prevents the audience from empathising with them or understanding their motives. The character often uses coercion to make their victim do what they want. And yes there definitely is an element of coercion and even a threat of violence present in Aaravos and Viren’s relationship. Their goals are aligned for now but what happens if/ when Viren decides to defy Aaravos? TDP makes me wonder (with horror) what it is that Viren has really agreed to.

3 How the Show’s “Camera” Portrays Aaravos

Even the camera emphasises him as an object of desire. Something he is from the story point of view as well. Viren desires access to Aaravos’s power after all. When the camera puts Aaravos on display in an objectified manner in the beginning of the season 2 it’s supposed to, in my opinion, heighten the feeling of Aaravos seeming harmless at the first glance. And by “objectified” I mean he’s portrayed without agency.

I joked earlier about male gaze and Laura Mulvey but I do actually think there is some truth to that. One of the biggest reasons behind me thinking Aaravos was a pretty pretty lady at first was how he was introduced in such a feminised way. And I wasn’t the only one. Just look at the comments under his TDP Wiki article. (Lots of het men being confused about their sexuality. Also shout-out to that one lesbian). This makes him appear less threatening so the story can build suspense around his true motives. It’s not evident that Aaravos is a completely sinister figure at first, at least compared to Viren who seems more like the main villain of the story prior to the seasons 3-4. Little did we know back then that Aaravos was the true alpha male of this whole sordid affair.

Aaravos in the mirror from Viren’s point of view, season 2, episode 3.

Why I’m not mentioning anything about Viren’s gender performance is because his story conflict is all about struggling with traditionally masculine gender expectations. Understanding how his character relates to hegemonic/ toxic masculinity/ emotional struggles men face in real life is a core part of understanding his character as a whole. That’s a broad topic and this post is long enough as it is so I’m going to leave it at that. (Maybe someone else has written about that already?)

4 The Audience Is Also at Aaravos’s Mercy

Aaravos’s submissive façade is supposed to fool both Viren AND the audience. The show plays rather cleverly with the audience’s expectations here. Slowly the roles are starting to flip until it’s clear that Aaravos is the one in control. Given Aaravos narrates the opening of the first story arc it raises even more questions: Is his control over Viren supposed to parallel his control over the whole world of the show? This circles back to the show’s themes of freedom vs destiny. It feels almost meta in a way how the story’s villain tries to gain control over the whole narrative.

5 Horror and Fantasy

The powerplay between the characters naturally creates a plenty of tension and it’s not unusual that this translates into something sexually charged in the audience’s minds. While this is the perspective I’m the most interested in, there are other layers to Aaravos and Viren’s scenes together.

For example this kind of breaking of bodily boundaries is common in horror as well. Aaravos is beautiful and mysterious but is also associated with repulsive things like larvae and blood and there is something very eerie about him in general. These kinds of emotional reactions of repulsion and attraction are essential to horror. The audience sees that everything isn’t definitely quite right about him but it’s also understandable that the audience (and Viren) find him fascinating. I think the key word for these scenes in the season 2 is “ambiguity“. Even if you aren’t invested in these characters this show would be much less fun without all the nuance their interactions have.

In a good story everything isn’t just literal. Especially since TDP is a fantasy story- A genre that’s traditionally been all about symbolism and intertextual references. I could go on and on about the genre traditions with similar flavour to what Aaravos and Viren have. Michael Moorcock’s classic sword and sorcery antihero Elric of Melniboné and his pact with the demon Arioch comes to mind.

Something Something Fandom

Viravos as a ship lives in the subtext but the subtext isn’t always black and white. Fiction uses metaphor and other storytelling methods to create meaning- To give a narrative experience. The queer subtext in TDP feels very elaborate to me and while I’m dissecting these scenes more analytically here my emotional reactions are the original source of that interest. No matter how much time passes I’m still a morbid teenage goth at heart and that part of me loves the dark fairytale aesthetics akin to TDP season 2.

I didn’t even touch on the element of Viren giving into a “forbidden desire” (literally his desire for power but- you know- multiple readings etc.) when making a deal with Aaravos. Something very typical to the horror genre as well. It’s a “deal with the devil” -sort of situation and those stories often paint the agreement as something corruptive and sinful and therefore transgressive. This post by Tiredsunrisesmeta got you covered on that. Also queer coded villains something something- Anyway, read Tiredsunrisesmeta’s blog for more.

Pictured: Yours truly

Last and Least

I remember when I saw a post here saying that “Viravos couldn’t be canon because it’d be too sexy.” and that’s just the funniest way to put it in my opinion. Their relationship feels a bit too, I dunno, mature? for this show. But what does “canon” even mean? Is a gay ship canon when two characters of the same gender kiss and declare their love? Get married? Have kids? Personally, I don’t want to see LGBT+ characters’ stories just copy straight romance tropes beat by beat all the time. I want something that feels authentic and what’s more authentic than Viren being a cringefail bisexual getting rejected by men and women and then getting his life ruined by the sexy femboy elf satan? Kinda iconic honestly.

[befuddledcinnamonroll]

15 Day BL Challenge

Day 7: Favorite Villain

I do like me a good villain. But good villains can also be hard to find. There's a lot of one-dimensional villains out there, or they're so horribly abusive & homophobic that you just want them to die.

I much prefer villains with some dimension and complexity, though I can be won over by a villain who's just clearly having a ton of fun.

So who to pick...

I do like Vegas a lot, but I kinda don't see him as a villain? He's an antagonist for sure, and does some dark stuff, but he's clearly a victim in a lot of ways, and gets the secondary romance in the story. Not that that's mutually exclusive from villainy, but it's just not how my brain categorizes him.

I looooved Heng's portrayal of Chalothon; he did so much to add dimension to a fairly thinly-written character, but we didn't get to see Chalothon's change of heart, or the incredible acting Heng would have brought to it, so that makes him slip down overall for me. (Can you just imagine the scene of Chalothon giving his Naga soul to Tharn? We get so few good villain turns in BL. I'm so pained at the deprivation).

I do have a soft spot for Aoey in Lovely Writer, largely due to Bruce's acting. He's a very interesting character in terms of a person who had a chance for his own beautiful real love story, and just made all the wrong choices, time after time. (I mean who in their right mind would say no to Chap?)

Oh who are we kidding, y'all know I am a fanatic for Not Me. I'm going to have to go with my boy Todd.

Sing is such a versatile actor, I don't think he gets nearly enough credit for what a chameleon he is. He's really good at fluffy roles for sure, but when he had to turn on the menace as Todd, he absolutely delivered.

He plays Todd's turn from "helpful friend" to "rich bastard" perfectly and in such a believable way. He's chillingly realistic in his belief that the only way to change the world is to buy it, and make it his.

And of course we can't talk about Todd without talking about his relationship with Black, how fucking thrilled Todd is when he realizes Black is awake from his coma (that Todd is responsible for), and how these two consistently try to kill one another, but can't, because of their deep fucked up love (they bone in between fights, you can never convince me otherwise).

Also, the scenes between Gun & Sing are goddamn acting masterclasses.

If we ever get our Joong Archen serial killer show, Sing needs to be his accomplice.

@negrowhat's full challenge here

[origamiplushie]

Do yourself a favour and read pretty much any fic written by starsdontsleep

Starsdontsleep has 45 amazing steddie fics on AO3. All of their fics are sweet or at least bittersweet and clearly written with a lot of love for their characters and care for the character's feelings. A lot of their fics have managed to distill queer pining down to its core essence. They are filled with pining, feelings realization, accidental confessions and sometimes even unrequited crushes staying unrequited.

I really do think reading through all of their works is worth it, but if you want to hear my favourites, here's a few recommendations to get you started:

one day I'll fall for you

Steve knows that Eddie is in love with him, he's known for a while. But falling in love back? That takes a little more time.

This really is so well written! I think it is a very realistic examination of relationships. Sometimes you're aware your friend has a crush on you and you both just ignore it and go on with your friendship without anyone ever saying anything. I could relate to both Steve and Eddie. But don't worry! This fic does not end in heartache ;D

Cooking With Love

After the Upside Down, Steve realises Eddie is terrible at eating regular meals, so Steve starts to cook for him. But somewhere along the way, Steve also falls for his friend too.

If you're a sucker for happily ever after endings this one is for you! Mutual pining and Steve taking care of Eddie!

Welcome To Our Club

Eddie invites Robin to a gay club in Indy, but as much as she wants to go, she's also terrified by the prospect. Wanting to be there for his best friend, Steve agrees to go with them. But being in a gay club ends up revealing some unexpected things about Eddie, and about himself.

This fic has everything you could want! Steve being a bisexual disaster, Eddie being jealous, fake relationships, and Steve slowly realizing that maybe he doesn't want it to be so fake.

do us a favour

Eddie helps Steve out of a problem and when Steve says he owes him and to name anything and he'll do it, Eddie's mouth works before his brain, letting him ask a very queer question of his straight friend and crush.

Sleepiness makes Eddie be a little to honest when Steve offers to pay him back for helping out with the party for a day. Eddie would be happy with just that favour , but Steve thinks a conversation is in order.

i can be pretty (why don’t you think I’m pretty?)

When Eddie comes out as gay, he assures Steve that he doesn’t find him hot. Steve tells him it’s fine, he even teasingly asks what he should do to change that. It becomes a thing. A way to always make Eddie laugh, blush and relax around him—but as the days and weeks pass, Steve begins to realise that maybe there’s another reason why he cares so much that Eddie Munson finds him pretty.

Starsdontsleep's newest fic! Eddie comes out and reassures Steve that he's not into him. Steve just thinks he want Eddie to be comfortable around him but soon realizes that maybe he wants Eddie to be a bit more than just comfortable. So he sets up a plan to woo Eddie who is very confused by what is happening!

so easy to like you

As much as Eddie tries to talk himself out of his crush on Steve, to convince himself there's nothing between them… there's just no getting around how much he likes him--or how easy it can be to make a mistake.

To be honest, I find an unrequited love fic where nothing comes of that crush very refreshing. Sometimes things just don't work out and it is no one's fault. Bittesweet but lovely!

[mosscreeper-ao3]

The Voltron brain worms are eating me alive…

Tell your James Griffin headcanons to me oh wise one who came up with the Catholic guilt headcanon.

Can he cook? (I believe so, I believe he’s a great cook)

How do the other Paladins feel about him? Do they know about his history with Keith?

How does he feel about the Paladins?

What are his relationships like with the other MFE’s?

Do you think he has siblings? To me he screams only child.

I could really talk all day but I’ll shut up about this, for now…

Shout out to this ask for making me finally update my headcanon masterlist. (also I have some James headcanons there already here and here)

Okay first things first, if you enjoy my Catholic guilt James stuff you HAVE to go check out this art, this art, and this art by my mutual if you haven't already. They bring it to life so well and their technique is just *chefs kiss*.

He can definitely cook, and I see the Arab version enjoys making Arab dishes for his friends. He makes a full mezze (meza? meze? idk I can't write Arabic words in English for shit) for the MFEs first chance he gets.

I'd like to think Hunk and Pidge probably think of James as the smart kid from class that was definitely going places but probably didn't interact with him pre-series to form much more of an opinion on him. Lance probably hates his guts around the start of the series given how much he beefed with Keith. I do think Lance probably calms down and respects him as a pilot by the time the Paladins get back to Earth since he matures A LOT over those two years. As far as Shiro goes, I think James would be a bit of a regret for him. While he would never regret taking Keith in, I do think with how caring he is that he would feel a bit guilty that he brushed off a kid who looked up to him so much.

Hunk walked in on them kissing once, which I'll probably write at some point. Teenage Lance was probably too busy having a one sided rivalry with Keith (and being a bit self absorbed) to notice anything of the sort. Pidge probably knew as I think both James and Keith helped them bust into the Garrison. Shiro had no idea, as they got romantically involved after he disappeared. I have a scene in my main Jaith series where he's actually rather surprised that they're together.

After the Paladins get back, I see them all more or less having a respect for James if not being outright friendly. I think Allura would be really impressed by him when they meet. I mean, she clearly trusted going into combat alongside him.

On James' side, he has a VERY positive opinion of Shiro and never really stopped looking up to him. He respects Pidge's tenacity. Despite the blow-up at Hunk, I do think he also respects Hunk and admires how empathetic he is. Though he doesn't necessarily dislike Lance, he found him irritating back when they were classmates. All that said, I think he does harbor some resentment towards the Paladins as a concept. Chain of command and merit are both something he places high value on. I think the Paladins having some mystical connection giving them authority would definitely strike a nerve, at least at first. He comes around, but yeah I do not see him being thrilled with the concept of divinely granted authority (may or may not tie into his religious trauma oops).

I have some MFE headcanons here. The MFEs are very found family. Kinkade is his best friend and they roomed together all four years at the Garrison. Rizavi would kill for him but is also his number one pain in the ass (she takes very liberal interpretation of James' orders). Leifsdottir became friends with him by following him around vaguely like a lost dog for months their freshman year until he finally asked her what she was doing. They help eachother with math a lot because James is good at calc type stuff while Leifsdottir is more a stats person.

I personally think he's second youngest of four with two older brothers and a little sister. To me there's not way he isn't either a.) the middle youngest b.) an only child treated like a disappointment. He just has those vibes.

(also never shut up, I love gettign asks)

[ryttu3k]

BECAUSE I AM DUMB (and it is almost 2am) I sent you an astarion ask for the ship ask, but my brain meant wyllstarion! (apparently my brain decided that astarion is intrinsically connected to wyllstarion)

Haha, all good! <3

[ship meme]

Ship It

1. What made you ship it?

lmao it was a post about that clip saying that Astarion used to dream of marrying a man like Wyll. Just the thought of Astarion feeling like he's too old and jaded and cynical for this very pure romance, but Wyll still being young and idealistic and intensely romantic and, you know what, he's going to woo the heck out of this mysterious and charming elf he's crushing on.

2. What are your favorite things about the ship?

Okay so. I have a List.

They bring out the best in each other. Wyll encourages Astarion, by his actions, to help people, to do good, to be heroic. Wyll so wholeheartedly believes in being a hero that it just... starts rubbing off on Astarion too. Conversely, Wyll can be selfless to a fault, and Astarion can sort of reel him back a bit, get him to think about himself and his own needs. I absolutely believe that left on his own, Wyll would agree to Mizora's deal and sacrifice his own freedom for his father, and Astarion is probably the one best positioned to get Wyll to think about his own future and reject the pact.

The contrasts and parallels in their story. The obvious contrast, monster vs monster hunter, starting out (more or less) chaotic evil vs lawful good, but eventually meeting somewhere in the middle (see: above point about bringing out the best in each other). And then the parallels - both of them are heavily under the influence of someone else, seemingly abandoned by the gods and any other important support structures (Astarion being cut off by Cazador from any kind of support, Wyll being disowned by Ulder who I still haven't forgiven, he was seventeen years old!!), and their main narrative arc is about breaking free from their respective tormentors, and working out who they can be as their own free people. Why not do that together?

The romance is so healing for Astarion. More one-sided here, in that it's more of a benefit for Astarion than it is for Wyll, but a slow courtship is exactly what Astarion needs, with this foundation of trust building, knowing that Wyll cares about him for more than just what he can do in bed.

The mutual attraction. They're so down bad for each other. Using your own post here, Astarion critically fails a charisma roll and Wyll is just. Lucky for you I'm into that shit.

The hands the hands. The hands!

3. Is there an unpopular opinion you have on your ship?

Honestly, I think they genuinely do work best as a poly ship (or like, a QPP thing) with Karlach. I love all three relationships individually, but I also love them together (there's a lovely post on their dynamic as a trio here, looking at them platonically, but it still holds out for a romance). Wyll and Karlach's storylines are intrinsically bound together, and indeed the only way for Karlach to have a happy ending at this point is with Wyll and/or a love interest accompanying her back to Avernus. I... can't really see Wyll being able to brush off not helping Karlach, leading to her death; I think if she does die, he'd be deeply depressed and feel a lot of guilt for it.

Astarion, too, really values Karlach. He's the most gentle about her if Tav is torn between them, there's just this very sweet dynamic between them. And Karlach clearly adores both of them too! She and Wyll become best friends, she's basically ready to go to war against Cazador to protect Astarion, there's just... so much love and care between the three of them that I can't see any one of them wanting to leave one of the others behind. My 'canon' ending for them would be all three going to Avernus (which Wyll openly offers to do and which Astarion is 100% willing to do as well), finding a solution for Karlach's engine and Astarion's sun issues, and then returning to Baldur's Gate to start working out a future - together.

So in conclusion:

Astarion/Wyll: Good shit.

Wyll/Karlach: Good shit.

Karlach/Astarion: Good shit (but please fix the Origin spawn Astarion ending, Larian!!)

Karlach/Wyll/Astarion: 👌👀👌👀👌👀👌👀👌👀 good shit go౦ԁ sHit👌 thats ✔ some good👌👌shit right👌👌there👌👌👌 right✔there ✔✔if i do ƽaү so my self 💯 i say so 💯 thats what im talking about right there right there (chorus: ʳᶦᵍʰᵗ ᵗʰᵉʳᵉ) mMMMMᎷМ💯 👌👌 👌НO0ОଠOOOOOОଠଠOoooᵒᵒᵒᵒᵒᵒᵒᵒᵒ👌 👌👌 👌 💯 👌 👀 👀 👀 👌👌Good shit

[tqmies]

FIRST OFF, thank you so much for 1k followers! I know I said it a few days ago but I wanted to put in a proper thanks! I love all of you <3 te quiero mucho :D

!! So I'll be running this drabble event for a week and a half! I know it's a short span but I have so many long wip I want to get out too! So in order to get everything out, this will have to be a bit smaller, though my thanks for you is huge!

☆☆ ☆ Below are a list of Au's and Dialogue prompts! Send in an ask with a member of your choice, an AU, and a Dialogue prompt! Please note if you'd like it SFW or NSFW! - And yes, you may send multiple!

☆ I write for all current members of NCT, Ateez, TXT, and TBZ!

☆ Enhypen and P1harmony legal members only!

☆ This event is over! Masterlist will be posted soon, thank you for all the requests!

Remember! Minors DNI :)

AU's ☆

College

Meet-Ugly

Fake Dating

Royalty

Assassins

Roommate

Enemies to Lovers

Rivals to Lovers

Exes to Lovers

Lawyers

Office Romance

Secret Relationship / Hiding

Soulmate

Coworkers

Teachers

FWB

Frat Boy!

Rock Band

Arranged Marriage

Idol Au

Superhero / Supervillian

Airport meeting

Vacation

Angsty Breakup

Friends to Lovers

Mutual Pining

-

Dialogue prompts ☆

“I was never a morning person, but then I started waking up to your face and you know… Maybe mornings aren’t that bad, after all.” 

“Why are you mad?” “I’m not mad, I just think you can choose better people to kiss.” 

“I fucking hate you.” “No you don’t. Take that back right now.” 

“You know I’d do anything to have you stay by my side, right? Anything.”  

“Oh, fuck. Do that again.” 

“You look stupid as all hell right now.”

“I want to believe you, but I don’t know if I can.” 

“You’ve given me so many reasons to walk away.” “Then why don’t you walk away? It’s not like I’m keeping you hostage here.” “You still don’t get it, do you? It’s because I love you.” 

“…Damn it all to hell, if I don’t get to have you tonight then I’m never going to be able to have you.” 

“Let me call you mine, just for tonight.”

“I think you and I make an amazingly stupid pair.” “I know! Our two brain cells combined together make for quality entertainment and a unique kind of stupidity.” 

“I’m going to have so much fun with you.”

“Oh God, yes, right there— oh my God, just like that, please don’t stop.” “…Can you stop that? You’re making it sound like we’re in a porno and now I’m getting kinda hard.” 

“Bet you they don’t make you sound like that, do they?” 

“Fuck, you’re such a wreck, and because of me, too.” 

“Can you stop moaning? I’m trying to help you relax but you’re making it hard for me to concentrate.” “Sorry, your hands just work a little too good.” “I’m going to pay for a masseuse next time if you keep doing this.” 

“You are driving me insane and I’m this close to losing my shit because of you.”

“Is hating me your only personality trait?”

“Never scare me like that again!” 

“Oh, don’t worry. I have every plan to make you submit to me.”

“I’m not even gonna lie, I’m just so fucking obsessed with you.” 

“That could be us.” “That is us.”

“Was it worth it?”

“Don’t worry, I’ve got you— slow down, you’ll get what you want soon enough.”

“I want you to remember every single second of this.” 

“Bet you they can’t make you feel the way I do.” “Bet’s on.” “Wait, what? That was not my intention—”

“Hm, but I think I like having you spread out like this. Such a gorgeous sight.” 

“Come and get your fix.”

“…You’re an addiction I never want to quit.” 

“I had nothing to live for, but then you came into my life. So thank you.” 

“Why’d you— why’d you do that?” “B-Because I promised you I’d do anything to keep you safe.” 

“I swear if we get caught then I’m actually going to kill you.” 

“You think I wanted this to happen?!”

“Just when I was about to give up…”

“I trusted you with my life.” “Well, I’m sorry but you’re clearly very gullible.”

“Look me in the eyes and tell me you don’t feel the same as I do, then I’ll leave you alone.” 

“You know, maybe you should bet on something else the next time instead of betting on someone’s fucking feelings.” 

“You’re such a dork.” “Yeah, no wonder you’re so in love with me.”

“Does me doing all these things not account for anything?” “I never asked you to do those things for me, though, did I?”

“You nearly foiled our plan, you idiot!”

“I… I think I’m happy.” “You think? So you’re not one hundred percent certain?”

“Who’s laughing now?” “…Clearly not you. You’re crying, dear God.” 

“I’m tired of being on the sidelines.” 

“You actually came back.”

“Christ on a fucking bike, I could kiss you right now.”

“That was a bold move.”

“We’re going to be late, all because you couldn’t stop scrolling through that damn phone of yours while taking your damn sweet time to shit!” 

"What are we?" "Probably stupid."

"You could punch me in the face and I'd still want you, not gonna lie."

"They just gave you the key to my house?" "Well no.. I asked for it!"

"You can kiss me, you know?"

"Will you just stay still?" "What, why?" "I'm trying to hold your hand, you idiot!"

"Hey, you haven't come out of your room in like two days...I'm not worried or anything but the dishes are piling up and i need you to be alive so you can take care of them, so..."

Smut Prompts ☆

54. "Can you feel how much I want you?"

55. "I can never get enough of your taste."

56. "Let's try something new tonight."

57. "We don't even have to take our clothes off."

58. "I want to ruin you."

59. "Yes, please, do it!"

60. "Your tongue is truly extraordinary."

61. "I have seen you naked before."

62. "No bed needed."

63. "Sleep is overrated. I have better ideas."

64. "You know me so well. You always find the right spot."

65. "Please, don't ever stop!"

66. "Our bodies fit so well together."

67. "I could do this all day. And definitely all night."

[yorsgirl]

I just read through both chapters of your Gojo fic and I’m OBSESSED! So many thoughts right now, you’re so talented 😭

Y/N has given us a bit of insight as to why she dislikes Kazumi and I can honestly say that IF what she’s telling us is true (since we’re really only getting her perspective) then I don’t blame her for her feelings. Your rich friend that can accomplish anything they want because they were born into wealth constantly reminding you that YOU can’t always get what you want? Nah, I wouldn’t let a friend shit on my hopes and dreams whenever I spoke of them. Then continuing to call someone a nickname they’ve clearly said they didn’t like is also pretty disrespectful too, I wonder if there’s any more though because… Y/N GIRLIE why not just stop being friends with her if you didn’t like her 😭 she’s been inconsiderate of your feelings enough for you to just drop her but… None of this is an excuse to have an affair with the man your “best friend” loves though like??

I wonder if Y/N has actually developed feelings for Satoru. I’m sure their affair has started out of mutual attraction and revenge on Y/N’s part, but given her reaction when Satoru promptly reminded her of her place of not being on Kazumi’s level (which I wonder if he’s said because he most likely knows she’s insecure about it) then she might have without realizing it.

There’s so many questions racking through my brain, has Kazumi really not suspected a thing even through their blatant flirting in front of her on their first meeting? Why did Y/N stick with someone she clearly can’t stand? Is there more to Y/N and Kazumi’s relationship that we have yet to see or is Y/N just that awful of a person to Kazumi? As of right now my mind is just racing!

I can’t wait to see the aftermath of this situation, Y/N babe let’s get some therapy maybe 😌 Kazumi, I’m so sorry you were betrayed by the two people you probably loved most omg 😭 Satoru, you can go to hell (need you so bad tbh)

THANK YOU FOR THE CHAPTER and I’m so sorry for the essay message 😭 looking forward to part three! Have a good one ❤️

First, I just want to say THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR SENDING ME THIS AND READING MY WORK!! ❤️ ✨️ and your character study is awesome dearie!!

Secondly, I love how you left messages for everyone, here's there answers for you:

Y/N: I am sure I can use a bit of therapy after all that, thank you.

Kazumi: I still can't... it's so hard to even believe but... I guess, I knew bits and pieces about it... Still it doesn't help but thank you for your concern.

Satoru: Would you accompany me on the road to hell, m'lady? *winks*

Now, to answer your questions, I won't answer about Kazumi and y/n's relationship and why didn't Kazumi suspect much cause anything it'll spoil the next part.

As for, why Y/N didn't leave Kazumi:

Its kind of an attachment issues. I have incorporated this trait in y/n recalling my behaviour with some of my former(toxic) friends. Idk if anyone relates with it or not but in this issue, you can't just let go of people who have done wrong to you.

There's a tendency to just stay with them even though you absolutely hate them. But the reason for the stay is because you want to witness and revel whenever the other person's suffering. And as we saw, y/n is a two-faced bitch – she'd provide fake support while laughing internally.

But this attachment issue also makes her suffer as she is not really "leaving" even though she might say that she doesn't care for Kazumi, she is actively present in her life and in a way does care (for her suffering). It is making her suffer too which kind of gives the feel of an internal masochism.

This brings me to my second answer:

I guess I have mentioned it that y/n does harbour feelings for Satoru even though she knows he is an asshole. And yes, the affair was mainly a revenge but then think about it, you are actively flirting, sleeping, meeting someone but all in secret. It gives you the - Us against the world vibe which is thrilling in itself and you don't know when you overstep the threshold of love even after knowing that your partner is a Dick.

Y/n knows that her feelings can be one sided and its causing her to suffer (internal masochism), still she can't stop this affair (attachment issues at play again).

That's just it!! And thank you for reading and writing to me. It really means a lot !! 💗 😭

[longeyelashedtragedy]

how did u fall into lamps

O gather round children, it's a longer story than some may think

the date was july 16, 2022, the place baltimore maryland, the event arsenal vs everton. i went with my friend nina, and while we were waiting for granit and the gang to come and warm up, i messaged our group chat with our mutual friend who was like, a hardcore liverperson from the gerlonso days, to tell her where we were, and when hearing we were seeing everton she said something along the lines of "oh, Fat Frank the Tory!" i was like oh...there's definitely some backstory and some lore here that i have no knowledge about and now i'm amused and intrigued/

right before the game started, the coaches came out, and i was struck stupid by mikel in his all black shortsleeves hairy armed top energy off the charts charisma passionate glory. we weren't sitting that close to the pitch, but it was still so easy to pick up on his vibe. it was clearly not "just a friendly" to him.

i was then kind of just as struck by the contrast in the two uh gentlemen who'd just come out. mikel in the sleek black, lamps chonky in the weirdly overly casual everton summeroutfit. the contrast was immediately appealing and so were the aesthetics. (i'm so consistent--we all know as far as looks go everton franko is my favorite franko lol) exhibit a:

we beat everton 2-0 and the whole time mikel was passionately charging around as he does and lamps was just sitting on the bench looking so annoyed and so defeated and i was like who is this chonky sadboy...i'm Fascinated and Pleased. like honestly, being the football toddler that i am, i knew very little about him. HOWEVER that didn't stop me from bringing him up frequently enough in conversation to nina that she was like FYI you talk about this man a lot!

but let's fastforward to one of the most distressing months of my life AKA may 2023. granit transfer rumors were ripping brutally through my life and they really seemed real and as we all know i was crying about it literally every day! i think by some point my brain was just in desperate need of something else to think about, and conveniently, i saw the god amongst fic authors @protect-daniel-james 's fic "Just," and not gonna lie, just the summary alone got me, but the fic finished what the summary started and i read it like 7584930 times, plus a couple others that had popped up in the tag after that (shoutout to @new-berry 's "Proud of heart (pride of London)" which was a fantastic twist on their relationship and ends with a BIBLE VERSE). then i read the NYCFC-related interview with him where he mentioned that one of his favorite NYC restaurants was this one that's like a 5 minute walk from me, and the very crude foundation of what turned into Digestif started forming in my mind. my summer vacation started just a couple weeks later, during which i did the world's fastest speedrun of a Person, and the Lampardverse began to gather strength.

the rest is Long Eyelashed History!

[coolcattime]

heyyy coolcat! my brain keeps thinking about capsize & tom and ianite & tom. there’s something strategic about how both of them go about interacting with tom.

when ianite says ‘heroes’ (plural), I personally never take it to mean that she’s including tom in that. but then she’ll single him out; be it calling him pathetic for dying by his own blade, or that she doesn’t care what happens to his god, puny even after he killed dianite. when capsize dies however, ianite calls him hero, calls him green man, appeals to him through his connection with capsize. while this could characterize her as manipulative, I think it also shows how intelligent she is.

While I do take capsize to have been more genuine in her approach to tom, she too is smart for having put her focus in cultivating a positive relationship with him. Even if she didn’t realize just how important he would be in all of that, even if she hadn’t gotten to witness the ending to her mission. I take her to be more genuine, because when she gifted him his fish back she had no idea that he was the literal key to getting ianite’s heart back.

Okay yes, I agree with this so hard. There's something so interesting about the way that interactions work with Tom & Ianite and Tom & Capsize.

Because like Ianite clearly doesn't like Tom very much. Like it's fully reasonable that she wouldn't since he's the champion of the brother that imprisoned her and stole her heart so there was always going to be dislike/uneasiness there (though still calling him puny after he kills Dianite I think is a bit much). And obviously the dislike is very much mutual since Tom clearly wants to fight her and is very much loyal to Dianite. So it makes sense that she is typically insulting him. Like you're very much right, I tend to feel with Ianite it's The Heroes + Tom.

Except for the meeting after Capsize is killed by Furia. For the first time Ianite calls Tom a hero and doesn't insult him, because Tom is actually willing to help when it comes to Capsize. And I'm absolutely sure Ianite knows that and knows she can get him on side. And yes I agree that this is more intelligent than manipulative. Though, there definitely is a way to read this as Ianite being purely manipulative, if you read her words as about being unable to save Capsize without leaving her unable to recognise them all as meaning Capsize would've become ended up a zombie there and Ianite always knew they would not be able to save her.

Now, I don't really subscribe to this headcanon, because I think Ianite genuinely thought she could save Capsize. I don't think she would have tried reviving her in the finale if she knew she couldn't, because regardless of what the heroes wish, Capsize was her friend and she wouldn't make her suffer needlessly. I mostly just wanted to say that there is a possible reading of Ianite saying that there's hope to save her to try and get Tom on side.

And also I bring it up because in my own personal headcanons, Ianite does lie a bit about Capsize's state here, though out of kindness rather than trying to manipulate them. As, within the universe of my post timeline, Capsize is already dead at this point (so she can't hear her crying) and was not being kept in the same place as she is, but both the lies are in an attempt to spare them from the knowledge that they could've rescued Capsize if they hadn't come to see her. In general, I do think Ianite can kinda manipulate via omitting information (both here and later with the alts), I think she does it out of genuinely wanting to stop more hurt that would otherwise be inflicted.

And off that very long discussion/ramble and onto Tom & Capsize: I absolutely agree that Capsize had a more genuine approach than Ianite. She does clearly know what she's doing in becoming friends with Dianite's champion, trying to get him on side in order to get him to help save Ianite rather than hinder as Dianite would likely prefer. But seeing how Capsize interacts with Jordan, there is no way she would've been so nice to Tom if she didn't genuinely like him. Regardless of her original intentions, Capsize sees Tom as her friend and as one of the heroes.

Their interactions are so genuinely nice and like, and it kinda sucks that Tom agrees to go save Ianite so he can save Capsize. He ends up killing his own god. He helps save Ianite. And the person he originally wanted to help dies anyway. Like there's something really narratively unsatisfactory about the whole situation because Tom gives up the most and gets nothing back? (Like yes he technically becomes a god, but nothing comes of that in canon.)

[the-invisible-queer]

HELLO I'VE DISCOVERED THAT YOU CAN SUBMIT ANONYMOUSLY BY LOGGING OUT OF TUMBLR so now we're finally back, with another wholly unnecessary and novel-length timeline of a Jonas Brother’s hoe ass antics. I almost didn’t do a Nick timeline after the Joe one, for reasons I’ll explain when I get there, but like I said I needed something to distract me/kill some time and writing out an extensive history of this man’s Nonsense turned out to be great for that, so here we are. I’m sorry so much of this focuses on the Disney love triangle (my preteen ass was HOOKED on that soap opera and apparently a lot of it has just been dormant in my brain ever since) and even more sorry it’s INSANELY long. Though at the end of the day it’s not my fault that this man’s teenage years alone were such a goddamn mess that they require extensive lore to fully explain so. Blame Nick for all of this is what I’m saying.

Same disclaimer as with Joe’s, this is all just stuff I remember with no research or anything, so I’m sure some of it is probably wrong and very sure some things were left out. Also I had to kind of weirdly switch up my formatting here since Nick’s first two relationships were extremely…entangled...for a while and couldn’t really be cleanly divided into “every girl gets her own bullet point” the way Joe’s timeline could, so bear with me:

Nick and Miley started dating in 2006, when they were both 13 years old. They were allegedly introduced by Zac Efron and Vanessa Hudgens (which is ICONIC honestly, like the passing of the Official Disney Power Couple torch) and apparently became attached at the hip right away. Here are some random bits of Niley 1.0 lore that I remember:

Nick once claimed that Franklin (who was like five at the time) also had a crush on Miley before they met and “tried to beat him up” when he found out they’d started dating. This is genuinely one of my favorite bits of Jonas lore ever lol like please that’s so funny and cute

At some point in like 2007 Miley was papped holding her phone in such a way that the background was clearly visible, and it was a pic of her and Nick kissing, which was hilariously major news on the tween gossip sites back in the day since they were still playing the “we’re just best friends!” game at the time; the same thing happened again when she was heavily photographed at an event with “I <3 Nick” written on her hand. At some point one has to assume she was doing this on purpose.

In literally like the mid-2010s Nick finally admitted that Miley was his first kiss (which, no shit??? Incredibly funny that he played coy about that info for years when like bro, you were 12 and homeschooled before her, literally who else would you have been kissing), and said he was embarrassed to realize later that he kissed her right after eating something with a bunch of onions on it and his breath probably smelled terrible.

According to a 2007 interview that I still vividly remember to this day, Miley and a certain “friend” (there’s Disney’s favorite word again) dressed up as Sonny and Cher for Halloween 2006. The fact that not a single photo of this has ever surfaced nearly two decades later remains one of the greatest disappointments of my life.

Niley 1.0 lasted roughly a year and a half: according to Miley’s autobiography, they started dating in June 2006 and broke up in December 2007, with one short ‘break’ at some unspecified point in between. During said break Miley wrote the song G.N.O. and a few others, and Nick wrote S.O.S., Still In Love With You and possibly some other songs I’m forgetting. They also worked together a lot during their relationship, filming the boys’ iconic Hannah Montana episode and then going on tour together with the boys opening for her on the Best of Both Worlds tour, which awkwardly was still going on when they broke up. Miley claimed they ended things mutually because they were just too busy to manage a relationship at the time, never getting to spend much time together because they were both so busy with work, and had started fighting a lot from all the stress they were under. Speculation abounded about whether or not that was truly the reason, especially once Selena hit the scene so quickly and the “you love me you like her” of it all, but it was the official story regardless.

Immediately post-breakup Miley dyed her hair black as a rebellion against Nick, who apparently liked her to have blonde highlights when they were together, and Nick seemingly coped with the breakup in a different way because rumors about him and Selena started cropping up as early as January 2008. One such rumor I remember involved them allegedly flirting at the Best of Both Worlds movie premiere, which is so hilariously shameless that I could easily believe it of Baby Fuckboy Nick despite there being, as far as I’m aware, zero actual evidence supporting it. Regardless of when it actually started though, by I want to say spring of 2008 Nick and Selena were definitely a thing and Miley was definitely mad about it. It was at this point that this entire mess truly started derailing into the endlessly chaotic trainwreck that captivated tweens all over the world for the next two years.

Very rough timeline of Nelena 1.0/general 2008 triangle lore, listed in the probably incorrect order that I vaguely remember things happening in when I was like 12:

Miley and her friend Mandy uploaded an episode of their “The Miley and Mandy Show” Youtube series pretty obviously making fun of Selena and Demi, who at the time were very close besties which just made Demi also guilty by association I guess. This video was the official start of The Feud between Miley and Selena (and their respective sidekicks for a while). Shortly after this they uploaded another video ‘apologizing’ for causing drama, saying it was all in good fun and the girls were all friends; this apology was blatantly insincere and nobody believed it.

Private photos Miley’d sent to Nick during their relationship, clearly intended for his eyes only, were leaked online after her computer was hacked. We don’t need to discuss this in any further detail as it was really gross and invasive, especially considering Miley was very much a minor at the time, but it was a notable event within the love triangle lore so I couldn’t not mention it.

The Burnin’ Up music video dropped, featuring Selena as Nick’s love interest. Fans everywhere were SHOOK by this, both because it seemed like much more of an official relationship confirmation than Disney “We’re Just Friends” Channel stars were normally allowed to give AND because fans quickly started putting together that Burnin’ Up was likely written about Miley, who’d worn the famous high heels/red dress combo commonly thought to have inspired it to an event with Nick long before Selena was even in the picture at all. The drama! The mess! To this day I would love to know if this casting choice was Nick’s decision or if it was Disney’s – it was heavily speculated that Disney sometimes escalated the love triangle drama on purpose, either to capitalize on it for publicity or to distance Nick’s image from Miley’s after the photo scandal by associating him with Good Girl™ Selena instead – but it was very entertaining either way. All of this was truly great television tbh.

The 7 Things music video also dropped, featuring a lot of very blatant references to Nick and completely gagging all of us again before we’d even finished gagging over Burnin’ Up. (I genuinely don’t remember now if these two songs/videos actually premiered like a week apart or not, but that’s definitely what it felt like at the time lol. Just new bits of wild drama dropping every other day like these damn kids thought they were Kendrick and Drake. It was insane to live through as part of the target demographic and tbh this whole experience probably rewired my brain permanently and is why I’m like this.) Dissecting this song and video kept fans busy for a good while; I still remember how super smart my friends and I felt when we realized the melody of 7 Things was just the melody of Hello Beautiful sped up.

Kevin, of all people, popped up somewhere wearing a “Team Demi and Selena” shirt in reference to the ongoing feud between them and Miley + Mandy. He of course denied that it was referencing this and IIRC tried to claim it had something to do with like a bowling team that Demi and Selena were supposedly starting??? Okay, Kevin. Again, I’d love to know if Disney orchestrated that or what bc otherwise what was his grown ass doing jumping into beef between a bunch of like 15-year-old girls to begin with lmao

At some point Nick was directly asked if 7 Things was about him and said it couldn’t be because his friends aren’t jerks, which is somehow the funniest possible answer he could have given so props to him for that one honestly

Miley performed 7 Things live at some event that all the other Disney kids were at, and during the song she walked into the audience to where Selena was and they sang a line or two together. Around this time (I can’t remember if it was also at this event or a different one) the three Disney girls took pictures together and Demi and Selena took pictures with the boys, but Miley avoided them. I remember there being speculation around this time that Nick and Selena might have been on a break or at least having issues, bc of how very suddenly the two girls appeared to start getting along and bc of Selena lowkey shading her own boyfriend? But I have no idea if that was true or not. Nick was probably rattled either way though lmao

Miley’s album Breakout dropped, obviously featuring a lot of songs about Nick but, infinitely more unexpected than that, also featuring a message at the very end of the dedication page thanking ‘Prince Charming’ for inspiring the album and saying “I loved you then, I love you now, and I’ll love you always.” Fans reached levels of gagged so unprecedented that one girl I personally knew jumped the Team Nelena ship and converted over this.

JB’s album A Little Bit Longer dropped (again, what felt like very very shortly after but may not have actually been idk, I’m not about to look up release dates for this) also obviously featuring a lot of songs about Miley – and ones spanning their entire relationship, at that. I don’t think I truly realized until years later how funny it actually was that Lovebug and Can’t Have You were literally released at the exact same time lol.

At some point in the midst of all this 15-year-old Miley started dating a 20-year-old underwear model, which always creeped me out even as a literal child. Not long into their relationship said pedo boyfriend took the tween gossip world by storm by dressing up as Nick for Halloween, which at the time I found somewhat funny despite my reservations with him, but looking back on that as an adult it’s sooooo…that kid is barely sixteen. Why are you dating this teenager and mocking her also teenage ex over their messy teenage beef that does not concern your grown adult ass literally at all AND ALSO WHY THE FUCK AREN’T YOU IN PRISON. Anyway. 12-year-old me always lowkey tried to avoid learning anything about this pedo since he creeped me out, so I really don’t know when exited the picture, but he must not have lasted super long because…

In roughly early 2009, Nick and Selena broke up. Just like last time it did NOT take Nick long to bounce straight back to his other option and in no time at all he and Miley were fueling rumors, publicly flirting and suddenly hanging out again – the iconic lunch date where they were seen alone together for the first time since their breakup and where Nick embarrassed himself by getting into a fender bender while driving his ex around lmao happened during this time period. I remember that Selena spent a lot of time publicly angsting and vagueposting about all of this on Twitter, but can’t really recall the specifics of that anymore. It was clear she was going through it though.

Niley 2.0/general mid-2009 lore highlights, again probably out of order somewhere (also for the full effect imagine all of these things happening literally back-to-back within the span of like two months):

Miley’s book released, suddenly revealing a ton of Niley 1.0 lore all at once. A lot of fans who met Nick around this time got him to sign the ‘Prince Charming’ chapter page of their copy, which admittedly was very funny and something I’m still surprised he actually did.

Before the Storm was written and recorded somewhere in all of this.

Miley, Selena, Demi and the boys all filmed the Send It On music video and its accompanying Disney Channel ads, including several clips the three girls had to do together in which it was painfully obvious that Miley and Selena couldn’t stand each other and poor Demi looked like she’d rather be eating glass than sitting there between them. Candids from the set dropped showing Nick appearing playful and flirty with both girls during filming, despite Niley being pretty obviously back on by this point and him and Selena still seeming to be on bad terms otherwise?

Joe opened his big mouth on Larry King and accidentally confirmed Niley 2.0 despite Nick trying desperately to avoid this, surprising no one but greatly amusing everyone (except Nick).

Nick flew out to visit Miley while she was filming The Last Song in Georgia, where paps caught potato-quality yet still iconic pics of them making out on a jet ski.

Miley made a surprise appearance to sing Before the Storm with Nick for opening night of the boys’ tour, which remains to this day the only time they’ve ever performed it live as a duet.

Selena Gomez & The Scene dropped a song called I Won’t Apologize which (on top of just dragging Nick for filth in general) pretty obviously referenced the love triangle, basically saying he’d tried to turn her into Miley or at least that she’d felt like she needed to turn into Miley to make him happy, and also seemed to imply there was overlap between Nelena 1.0 and Niley 2.0. At the time this last bit was very scandalous lore for young fans to digest, even though in hindsight that was really like. The least surprising revelation ever lmao. ALSO this song was meant to be like an empowered I Don’t Need No Man anthem, with her being all “you don’t deserve me” and “I won’t go back again” which is just…genuinely so fucking funny in context. Spoiler alert: she sure as fuck will go back again.

Then at some point that summer Miley got into her own insane love triangle which somehow seemed even messier than the first one, and after a few weeks of general chaos and confusion (apparently so confusing that even Miley herself walked away unsure of some of the exact dates involved) things eventually culminated with her and Nick apparently breaking up again and her stepping out with co-star Liam Hemsworth not long after. Mess upon mess. I very vaguely remember that in the months following Niley 2.0.’s death Nick was spotted two or three times with…some girl who had like a bit part in one of the Camp Rock movies, I think? I want to say Courtney or Chloe something but again I’m not looking shit up for this. To this day I’m not really clear on if there was anything to that or if it was just a rumor bc he was seen near a girl during his first time ever being single for more than like a month, but if he and Random Third Girl actually did have anything it must have been very brief because…

Did Nick learn from the experience of seemingly being on the other end of a love triangle, as one of the two people being played with at once by the third, that this feels like shit and maybe he shouldn’t do it to girls anymore? NOPE! By late 2009 he’d already run straight back to Selena, who happily took him right back as if she hadn’t just spent the last year publicly whacking him all over Twitter and in her music. God every single one of these kids was a fucking disaster GIRL WHERE’S THE SELF-RESPECT WHAT HAPPENED TO THAT ENTIRE DISS TRACK YOU WROTE

Anyway. Nelena 2.0 and general 2010 lore highlights, once again probably out of order but oh well:

Miley was very blatantly pissed when Nelena reunited and publicly shaded both of them several times, despite the facts that 1) she actively had a boyfriend at the time and 2) by all appearances she was the one who’d dumped Nick for someone else anyway, because apparently her not wanting Nick did not mean Selena could have him. Okay girl. One of these occasions that I remember being HUGE gossip was when she changed the lyrics in 7 Things to say Nick’s brothers were jerks, rather than his friends; it remains unclear to this day what, if anything, the brothers did around this time to suddenly warrant their own specific lashing.

Nick Jonas & The Administration’s album Who I Am dropped, featuring several songs commonly thought to be about each of the girls, but I don’t think Nick ever explicitly confirmed any of them.

For some occasion (maybe Valentine’s Day?) Nick, nothing if not dramatic, built some sort of elaborate rose garden at Selena’s house as a surprise – likely a reference to the NJ&TA song Rose Garden which was allegedly about her. Roughly a year later after they’d broken up again Selena would do her own on-stage lyric change in reference to this, bitterly saying something like “the roses you built me were only made of plastic.”

Justin Bieber made his first appearance in Selena’s life while she was still with Nick. While there’s no evidence that anything beyond some mild public flirting happened between them until after Nelena 2.0 ended, him showing up in this timeline at all is still just…incredibly fucking funny to me. A THIRD love triangle has somehow hit the fucking towers.

Nick performed the song Stay for the first time, setting off a fandom debate over its muse that still persists to this day. Some think it was about Selena because they were together at the time and because she was present and seen crying in the audience when he performed it; others think it was about Miley because she also had a song called Stay that Nick’s seemed to directly respond to in a lot of ways, and because Selena’s tears as he sang it didn’t really look like particularly happy ones. Many OG fans still have passionate opinions about this today, and we will almost certainly never find out which group is right.

Nelena 2.0 was ultimately rather brief, not lasting more than 3 or 4 months into 2010 I’m pretty sure, and with its death the official Disney love triangle era finally concluded as Selena jumped out of the frying pan into the fire left Nick behind to enter her Bieber era, which by all appearances was also a giant chaotic mess because apparently none of these kids ever did anything that wasn’t. It was at this point that Nick finally started to have confirmed relationships with people who weren’t the same two girls over and over, so we can finally try out the relationship bullet points now.

At some point that couldn’t have been more than a couple months at most post-Nelena, in like mid-2010, Nick started dating Samantha Barks whom he met while they were preparing to star in the Les Mis 25th Anniversary Concert together. They were pretty quiet about it, and I was also hyperfixating on something non-JB at the moment and not super interested in general, so I’ve never known too much about this and am honestly not sure if there was even any more public info to know. As far as I remember this relationship was also not particularly long-lived, lasting like 5-6 months maybe, but also didn’t seem to involve any public drama which was a new and refreshing change for Nick.

I’m really fuzzy on the order here but somewhere in 2010, right around the time Jonas L.A. started airing and their characters were will-they-or-won’t-they-ing and then dating, it was rumored that Nick and Nicole Anderson were together. Most fans never believed this (I personally still don’t) as with the timing it seemed like a very obvious ploy for show publicity, but to this day there are some truthers out there who insist something happened between them. If it did then it must have either been very short-lived or overlapped with either Selena or Samantha, if not both – but by this point it was clear Baby Fuckboy Nick was no stranger to his relationships lowkey overlapping so honestly who fucking knows.

GUESS WHO’S BACK, BACK AGAIN. MILEY’S BACK, TELL A FRIEND. Niley 3.0, which happened in I want to say very early 2011, was Nick and Miley’s briefest and last obvious attempt at…something. It was never clear if they were really back together during this period or just hooking up or what, but they were definitely doing something notable enough to include here. (Bonus: Miley was definitely also still being messy with Liam, who by this point she’d also already been on-again off-again with like twice, at the exact same time as this all this was happening because of course she was. Why would any of these damn kids ever have had one unhealthy situationship going at a time when they could have two?) They were pretty quiet about things this time and I also still wasn’t paying super close attention, so I don’t remember much aside from a few spottings of them together and a lot of vague Twitter flirting, and it didn’t seem to last longer than a few months. ALSO there was a really weird incident during this time where the day after an event they both attended, where they were rumored to have been very flirty and left in the same car, several articles came out alleging that Nick and/or his car had been spotted outside Miley’s house that night or the next morning…and then all of these articles just disappeared all at once. Like they were literally scrubbed from the internet, leaving only some gossip site comments from the young fans who’d happened to see them (including me which is how I vividly remember this) as the only recorded evidence that they ever existed at all. The most accepted theory for this bizarre occurrence is that it was true, there were pictures that someone was threatening to publish, and Disney, not wanting to clean up a “purity ring-touting teenage star spends the night with girl he’s not even officially dating” scandal and beyond rich enough to take the hit, just paid everyone off to make the entire situation go away by gaslighting everyone who had seen the original articles. So. That was a thing that happened once.

In like spring 2011 Nick started dating Delta Goodrem, who at the time was 26 or 27 and very fresh out of a broken engagement with another grown ass adult while he was barely 18 with no relationship experience outside of at most a small handful of teenage girls around his age. This relationship always made me uncomfortable at the time and if anything makes me much more uncomfortable now that I’m an adult, so I intentionally did not follow it at all then and am not about to seek out any information about it now either. All I really know is that it did seem to be relatively short-lived, which I can only imagine was probably a good thing.

At some point in like 2012 or early 2013, Nick and Rita Ora were seen talking at a couple of events. They looked kind of flirty but I don’t recall anyone thinking there was anything to it beyond them maybe hooking up once until he namedropped her in the song What Do I Mean, seemingly implying she’d burned him in some way…but when Rita was asked about it, she said she was super confused by the song because they were always just friends and she had no idea he liked her. Apparently she confronted him about it and he admitted he must not have done a good job expressing his feelings, and I guess it was all some kind of weird misunderstanding between them that he...made no attempts to clarify with her before publicly calling her out in an angry song. Alright then?

Olivia Culpo showed up in I want to say mid-2013. For full disclosure I was already not super into Nick when their relationship started, and after he broke up the band and then picked up his solo frat boy Jealous persona that I was just very very not into – it reminded me of my controlling over-possessive ex and grossed me out – I pretty much completely lost interest in him and just stopped following him at all for a few years, so I honestly missed most of their relationship entirely. Mostly all I remember of Olivia is that she wasn’t well-liked in the fandom (at least not in the beginning when I was still paying attention) because she and her family and friends were…incredibly blatant about very much enjoying the attention that her dating Nick brought them, we’ll say, and also quickly developed a reputation for being rude to fans both in person and online. Nick largely seemed happy with her though and they lasted…around two years? I think? She presumably inspired much of his early solo discography and I’m pretty sure appeared in at least one music video. Again, creepy possessive solo Nick gave me the ick, so I wasn’t consuming any of this and only know what I picked up through osmosis while keeping up with the fandom just enough to somewhat keep tabs on Joe and Kevin. (I do vaguely remember seeing a lot of discussion among fans about Nick’s then-bestie Demi not seeming to like Olivia/being subtly snarky about her on multiple occasions, which…hoo boy we’ll get to all THAT in a minute.) I want to say they broke up at some point in 2015. I feel like there should be more things to note in this section considering I’m pretty sure this was his longest continuous relationship until his marriage, but if there are I simply am not the person to note them because I just truly don’t know crap about this era of Nick’s life.

Continuing on from that, there was still at least a good few years post-Nolivia where I wasn’t keeping up with Nick at all, so other than the next few bullet points (that I learned about mostly via keeping up with the other person involved and not him) I really have no clue what he was doing. At some point he was connected to Kendall Jenner, and then I think Kate Hudson??? I have zero idea when these relationships happened, how long either of them lasted, or if they were even relationships at all or just rumors I saw on my infrequent trips through Jonas Twitter. This is why I almost didn’t write a Nick timeline to begin with, because there’s this whole big chunk of time that I’m just blank on so there’s definitely stuff missing. Sorry.

GUESS WHO ELSE IS BACK! BACK AGAIN!!! In I want to say 2015 there was a super weird little moment where Nick and Selena hung out together at some event, looking a little flirty, and then like a few days later he dropped the horny song Area Code out of nowhere and liked a bunch of tweets implying it was about Selena. Clearly this led to nothing, so I can’t count whatever this was as Nelena 3.0, but it was still notable and also very funny so I’m including it anyway. Jury’s still out on if they hooked up that one night and the song was written in response or if they didn’t hook up but he wanted to and put the song out as a request to be booty called; I’m equally amused by it either way. Maybe a tiny bit of subtlety next time, Nicholas.

This is kinda out of order but while we’re talking about the Disney days rising from the dead, Miley also popped back up a few times in surprisingly recent years, especially every time she and Liam broke up because Nick was apparently still perfectly eager to be her back-up plan. I feel like roughly 2015 and early 2018 both had periods where those two were suddenly interacting much more than usual, mostly via social media flirting that made observant fans wonder if something else was going on in private. Obviously we have no way to really know if anything was actually happening or if Nick commenting heart emojis all over every pic she posted was an attempt to make something happen that went nowhere, but either way it’s still enough to include here. (Also I didn’t mention it when we were on 2012 but obligatory shoutout to Nick performing Wedding Bells for the first time after Miley got engaged, which was genuinely ballsy as hell and a lowkey insane thing to do. Gagged the absolute hell out of literally everyone.)

Okay, now we have to talk about Demi. No one truly knows what exactly happened between these two, and unless Demi one of them decides to spill the tea in a memoir or something someday we probably never will, but whatever happened was definitely notable enough to be listed here. Basically they were very close friends for a long time and over that time other feelings definitely developed on at least Demi’s part, which was long suspected but finally confirmed in I think late 2017 when she dropped the songs Ruin the Friendship and Only Forever – both of which were clearly and unsubtly about Nick (No I Can’t Keep Denying Every Minute I think of you!), despite her refusing to outright confirm this no matter how many interviewers bluntly brought it up. She also claimed that the person they were written about had written songs about her too; many theories exist about this to this day but, as far as I’m aware, no one knows for sure which of Nick’s songs are about Demi or if these alleged songs were ever even publicly released in the first place. I can’t remember if Nick ever publicly responded to this whole ‘my best friend just told the whole world she’s both in love with and horny for me’ scandal or not (I kind of want to say he just ignored all of it and acted like nothing ever happened lol which…valid way to deal with that situation, I guess) but they did seem to spend a bit less time together right after that and it’s often speculated to have been the beginning of the end for their friendship. I’m not sure when exactly things exploded but I remember she publicly complained about not being invited to his wedding in late 2018, after unfollowing him on social media I think weeks or months before; there was seemingly a bit of drama between her and the boys when she left their formerly-shared team/manager and they stayed; and by 2020 she said in an interview that she no longer kept in contact with any of the boys. Two unreleased Demi songs have leaked in the years since that seemed to add more context to their falling out: Ain’t No Friend, which basically said he betrayed or abandoned her when she needed him most, and Big Little Lies, which seemed to confirm that there was something romantic between them at some point, or at the very least that Nick had made empty promises of something romantic happening in the future, and also implied he didn’t tell her about his engagement before the public found out and…kind of confirmed that the news was hard for her (I don’t really want to touch this too much but a lot of speculation exists that Nick getting engaged and Demi almost fatally overdosing like a few days later were directly related events). As far as I can tell they still don’t seem to be on speaking terms today, or at least they never interact publicly despite Demi having positive public interactions with Joe and Kevin since then, but apparently she did go to the boys’ Remember This tour in 2021? So. There’s that I guess.

In what must have been like April 2018, there was a series of pap pics of Nick kissing some totally random girl in Australia or somewhere after he like helped her when she fell off her bike or something???? Idk. The whole thing was very strange and I remember a lot of people speculating that it must be staged bc both the pictures and the whole situation were just so bizarre. As far as I know the girl was never identified and never popped back up with Nick again. Also this was very literally the last thing I heard that Nick was up to until literally like two months later when I heard he was suddenly engaged to a completely different person, which was a fucking insane thing to experience. This man’s life is such an enigma.

Anyway in like summer 2018 he got engaged to Priyanka, who I guess he’d met at some previous time when I wasn’t looking, and then a few months later they got married and now they have a kid. There’s…not much else for me to say about that really lol. The fun of these things is truly in recounting the past messiness, not the current longterm relationship everyone already knows.

SO WE’RE FINALLY DONE! That was absolutely ridiculous and I should be ashamed to have spent so much time on it but here it is. This actually was a really good distraction when I needed it but please feel free to judge me for possessing all this useless knowledge regardless lmao

[lucienne-thee-librarian]

For the choose violence ask game: 3,4, and 7 for The Sandman

Thanks nonny! I see how hard people lit up for the Choose Violence ask game and I'm like...you know what I gotta give the people the salt we've all clearly been craving 🤣

3 and 4 (worst take you've ever seen on tumblr/what was the last strae that made you block someone) I'm combining into one cause I fortunately haven't dealt with anyone actually harassing me on here, over fandom drama specifically anyway (yet). OKAY so you all are going to hear about the cold take I saw that lives in my brain rent free that made me unfollow and block a mutual in a fit of rage and bafflement.

Picture being me, a month or two ago. I'd recently followed someone on the spot cause they'd had such a good meta about queer!Rose headcanons. They followed me back. Cool. Everything's Gucci. And then I realize how much of their blog is Dreamling. Okay, I can tag filter or unfollow if it bothers me.

And then I saw them dead ass go into the part of the comics where Ishtar is talking to Dream in Brief Lives, and she says "You really don't like women, do you?"

(Which, ouch, but given his previous behavior, not at all an unfair comment.)

And this person's takeaway was, I shitteth you not, a rambling diatribe about how maybe the reason all Dream's relationships keep failing meanwhile he's friends with Hob Gadling, is that maybe...he's not that Into Women!!

Yeah. Seriously. Definitely not the emotional problems, lack of consistent communication and ability to maintain a relationship long term for various reasons, Definitely not the pride and anger problem that got him to send Nada to hell, which literally the entire arc of Season of Mists involved him trying to fix, no, all this can be waved away with what might as well have been a longer-winded version of that corny ass 2000s era meme "Sometimes a man...hurts a woman...because his soulmate is a man!!" And before you ask - no, this person didn't appear to be joking. I seriously wanted to believe it was satire but NOPE. So now you all have to suffer the knowledge that some people (because it was being just reblogged uncritically to praise) seriously think like this. I swear I lost braincells that day.

7. What character did you begin to hate not because of canon but the way the fandom acts about them? Well...oh you know. Hobert Gadling. Easy.

Look, I was never His Biggest Fan for. Obvious reasons stated below, but he's interesting when you look at him as a direct parallel and contrast to Dream - both of these men/man-shaped beings are immortal and have done absolutely horrendous, unforgivable things to others in their long lives, between Dream's sending a woman he supposedly loved to Hell for breaking it off with him, and Hob's participation in the slave trade. And now, the question is...what do they do with this? How do you live with yourselves, having done things you can never make up for? DO you choose to go on living? Then again the critical difference between them among others - Hob has the ability to choose to maintain his immortality, or not. Dream doesn't - or doesn't feel he can safely choose to abandon the role he was born into.

But the sheer SCALE to which the fandom has constantly, utterly erased the worst of this man's atrocities, like flat out refuses to acknowledge they even exist in both show and comics (it would be one thing entirely if they cut that bit out of the show I'd understand people going feral over show Hob then, but. They did not so where's people's excuse) so they can push him and Morpheus into the mold of their ship is...honestly kind of amazing (derogatory) and has driven me to wanting to grind my teeth every time I saw the ship and eventually, him, until I recently finally wised up and filtered tags. And what also irks me - that they've taken OVER the fandom to the point where it's getting genuinely hard to impossible to go into the tags of any other characters including Rose and Lucienne especially without MOST OF IT being about them being sidelined as cheerleaders in some way for this ship. And if you tag filter and block then that just means their tags are suddenly vastly diminished or full of "this post has filtered tags" "this post has filtered tags" "this post-" ughhhhhh.

[moefongo]

also me and my two whole brain cells forgot to send an actual request but a builder who also has good knowledge of ceramics for amirah and maybe just playing up the awkward tension of "we were best friends as kids! she probably doesn't like me" for nia

Hi! And dw about it, its ok and btw hope you don't mind i replied to both asks in this one

Also Amirah is the big brain choice i almost left Arvio for her at one point but I decided to break his heart by leaving him for Fang instead lol

Also i had so much fun writing for Nia lspdjtd and i may use this for a fic

Amirah

The builder had a hobby of doing pottery and ceramics back when they were in school but at some point as they grew up they abandoned that dream and instead became a builder. Though occasionally they would do a thing here and there just so they wouldn't be so out of practice.

When they arrived in Sandrock they were marveled to find someone else who was interested in ceramics, and that interest became a key point in their friendship with Amirah. They had become best friends and as Amirah admits, they became her first friend.

One important moment in their relationship was when the mysterious man stopped by her store and began criticizing Amriah's work. He was claiming that her work was of low quality and the builder was fuming, that man doesn't know what good pottery is even if it hit him in the eye and as much as they wanted to punch him in the face, they remained calm for the sake of Amirah, though Arvio was more than eager to do so.

After that unpleasant encounter, the builder lended enough money to cover half of what the man as asking for the blueprint of the kiln, but it was the only compromise Amirah accepted since she refused to accept the builder to pay it in full.

Once they finished building and installing the kiln, both of them made some vases and other pottery together as a test run for the kiln. What the builder didn't know was that Amriah's vase would be more than a gift, you see, her vase was basically her way of confessing the builder her feelings towards them. It was the loveliest vase anyone had ever seen and in the bottom part of the vase there was engraved 'I love you'. Clearly a priceless piece of art and one that was exclusive to the builder.

The builder was taken aback with such a sweet gesture and in one hand they were glad Amriah was the one to confess first, otherwise they would've never dared to be honest about their feelings since they cherished their friendship with Amirah.

In the end they spent the next couple of days doing a collaborative collection to show the mysterious man. However he was more interested in the vase made exclusively for the builder, but no matter the price it would never be for sale, leaving the mysterious man to envy the builder and the masterpiece in their possession.

Nia

Both Nia and the builder were two peas in a pod, and these two dorks clearly had feelings for each other ever since they were kids. But here's the thing, neither of them did anything because they both swore that the other just saw them as a friend so it was just an endless cycle of mutual simping back in Highwind.

When the builder left for Sandrock, they were both sad because they would be miles appart, but still Nia took it the hardest because she wanted to go to Sandrock too but she had to graduate first.

The time went on and, Nia finally got an opportunity to go visit the builder in Sandrock, and she intended to spend as much time with them as possible and perhaps make the first preparations to move to Sandrock once she was finished with her studies.

The funny thing is that neither of them planned to confess, but once Nia set foot in Sandrock, chaos would unleash. From the minute that the builder went over to meet Nia at the train station, their love could be felt.

Then the next day it became painfully obvious to the entire town that those two dorks were head over heels for each other. So what did the town do? Have a secret fireside meeting to help the builder confess their feelings towards Nia. The next day it all began with them both heading over to the Blue Moon for lunch and finding out that Owen and Grace had set a table just for them, which coincidentally was decorated to make it feel more romantic, in fact the enitre ambiance of the place felt romantic. But they didn't pay much attention to it as they ate and catched up talking about everything, except a confession. It was frustrating for both of them as they stood behind the counter paying close attention to them until they left without even holding hands.

Up next was Arvio who offered Nia a heart knot for a ridiculously low price, nudging her to give it to someone very special that perhaps could be a certain builder. She did buy it but it was mostly to get Arvio off her back, though she admitted that she swore the builder only saw her as her best friend, earning a frustrated groan from Arvio who was trying to keep his mouth shut and not tell her that the builder was very much in love with them.

This went on and on and at some point they both thought that the town was trying to set them up together, which yeah they were, but these to are either too dense or share one brain cell.

When it was time for her to head back to Highwind, as the entire town was unsuccessful in their plans then they let Arvio, who was going to have a stroke if neither of them confessed. So Arvio catched up to them in time to tell them to kiss already because the entire town knew that they were in love with each other, from the minute Nia got there. The two dorks were shocked and yes they both confessed, earing a sigh of relief from Arvio who went to tell the rest of the town the great news. Meanwhile Nia gave the builder the heart knot and a loving kiss before boarding the train.

Shortly after she got home, the letters increased ten fold as they kept their relationship long distance until Nia was able to move to Sandrock.

[hermannsthumb]

For the summer prompts I’ll take a number 16 and a number 9 with extra sauce :^)

9. Stargazing + 16. Weddings

from the summer prompts meme here

another little summer prompt as a break while I work on zine stuff and do a million other things, WAHOO

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One of the most annoying parts about Hermann is that he actually makes for decent company when they’re not forced to stay within a two-foot radius of each other in the confines of the lab. Even more annoying is that Newt actually enjoys it. (Ugh.) He enjoys it even more now that they don’t have to share a lab at all and Hermann has started being kind of nice to him. And, you know, does other stuff with him. They’re not really boyfriends yet, because Newt is too afraid to use that term in front of Hermann—he knows Hermann would probably call him juvenile or something—but they’re inching towards it. Slowly. Very, very slowly, like the two emotionally inexperienced academics they are.

Newt’s fine with it, mostly. He wishes someone would invent a word between boyfriend and partner that he could use that doesn’t make him want to curl up in agony. It does make social situations pretty weird sometimes, though, like when he took Hermann to dinner with his dad after one of their big lectures and he couldn’t exactly say this is the guy from work I hooked my brain up to and like to make out with, or when he met some of Hermann’s family at one “we didn’t die!” gala or another and Hermann stiffly called Newt his companion (somehow more weirdly suggestive than literally anything else he could’ve said?).

It’s made this one in particular kind of weird.

They’re at the wedding of a mutual—well, Newt’s not sure if he would call the guy a friend, acquaintance maybe, research collaborator (which also sounds like something Hermann would introduce Newt as, to be honest, but Newt means it for real)—and he clearly assumed there was more going on with Newt and Hermann than just some humble companionship when he sent out their invitation. Singular invitation. Both of their names at the top, no mention of an allotted plus one(s) anywhere on it. It was more understandable than presumptuous, at least, since they are kind of joined at the hip and still very slightly at the mind. Newt and Hermann met the kid (okay, he was well into his twenties, but that's basically a kid) when he interned as a research assistant in the lab for a few months, back at the start of Newt and Hermann’s tenure with the PPDC when they still had funding and willing participants for that kinda thing. Newt always privately suspected that he had a little bit of a thing for Hermann—and seeing the incredibly dorky groom today all but confirms that. Definitely has a type.

Newt has also always suspected the kid was assuming things about Hermann’s relationship with Newt the entirety of his time under their supervision, which, you know, this also kind of confirms.

“I’ve never liked weddings much,” Hermann says, stirring a straw aimlessly through his cocktail. Their former-intern has tucked them away at a private table in the very back of the reception hall, out of sight and out of earshot, which would probably be an insult coming from anyone who isn’t one-hundred-percent aware of how bad Newt and Hermann are at socializing. It works out better for everyone this way—Newt and Hermann don’t embarrass themselves or the wedding party. “Seems like a lot of fuss over nothing. My brother’s had two now, and neither of them have taken—just a waste of time and money. ”

Newt likes the open bar at weddings, and he likes getting tipsy enough for it to become socially acceptable to dance like an idiot with strangers, but the rest of it is, yeah, pretty boring. He hasn’t been to a wedding since his cousin got married a couple years back. Newt flew all the way back to Germany for that, and all by himself, because he couldn’t bribe Hermann into being his totally platonic(/vitriolic, since they still pretended to hate each other back then) plus-one for the night. Still, he loves being a pain in Hermann’s ass, and the need to be a contrarian majorly outweighs the fact that he, you know, agrees with the guy. “Weddings are fun,” Newt says, mock-defensively. “I’m sorry you’re not romantic enough to appreciate them.”

Hermann snorts and nudges their knees together under the table, and Newt caves with a grin. “We could just leave,” Newt suggests. He steals a sip of Hermann’s drink. “I don’t think anyone would even notice. I can call us an Uber and we could be back at the hotel in literally thirty minutes.” It’s his turn to nudge Hermann. “We came, we said hi, we met the husband, we left them a gift—” A joint gift, with a yay congrats! card signed by them both, they were very much not dodging those relationship assumptions. “—so I’m thinking our social obligations are prettttty much done?”

The romantic thing to do would be to ask Hermann to dance. They could wait for a slow song, and Newt could hold his weight enough for them to sway awkwardly like two middle-schoolers for a little bit, and then Hermann would give him a furtive and equally awkward kiss. Very romantic. It would be fun to do that if it wasn’t so hot in here. July heat and a million people crammed into a tiny ballroom: not conducive to comfort. Newton took off his suit coat and undid his tie about an hour ago, and unbuttoned his shirt down past his collarbones (to Hermann’s scandalized judgement) not long after.

The second most romantic thing Newt could do is pay for the Uber. Hermann visibly wrestles with Newt’s suggestion before finally sagging in on himself. “We ought to stay a little longer,” he says, sadly. He does the unthinkable a moment later and actually takes off his own blazer and ugly quote-unquote dressy vest. Newt spots sweat beading his brow beneath his uneven bangs.

The third most romantic thing to do would be to help Hermann preserve his dignity before—God forbid!—he undoes his collar, which he's buttoned all the way to his throat in typical Hermann fashion. The glass doors to the patio adjacent to the ballroom have been propped open to let in a breeze, and though Newt can’t imagine it’s any less humid or muggy out there, any fresh air would be an improvement. Hermann doesn’t do well in large crowds for very long and Newt can practically feel the last of his patience ebbing away. If someone so much as tries to small talk with them Hermann might lose it for real. Plus—the venue is isolated enough that Newt suspects they might have a pretty nice view of the night sky, something that they've been sorely missing out on from all those years slouching around a damp basement.

He stands and holds out a hand in offering to Hermann. “Let’s go outside,” he says. “We can look at the stars.” Also, Hermann looks kind of cute all flushed and sweaty, and if Newt can't dance with him he'll see if he can snag a kiss or two. Hermann raises his eyebrows at this, but gropes for his cane and takes Newt's hand anyway.

The patio is thankfully deserted. Heat aside, it’s pretty nice out: the space is enclosed by tall, well-maintained shrubs strung with twinkle lights, and there are a handful of benches spaced around evenly. The night breeze is warm but better than nothing. Hermann primly dabs at his face with his handkerchief as he takes a seat at one of the benches, and Newt drops in a sprawl next to him. They can just hear the dumb early-aughts pop song the DJ had been playing through the crack in the door. Hermann says nothing when Newt tucks an arm around his neck. “We have an hour until the reception is meant to end,” Hermann says, glaring at his analog wristwatch, like he thinks that will make time pass faster. "Is there a socially acceptable time to leave before then? We could invent an excuse. Or—" A sigh. "Newton."

Newt has pressed his face to Hermann’s neck to leave little kisses at his jaw, and Hermann wriggles around, dodging further attempts with a wrinkled nose and another funny, whining exclamation of Newt’s name. “Ah, ah, not in public,” he says. “It’s—” Unbecoming, Newt thinks in his Hermann impression, and maybe he mutters it too. But Hermann kisses him properly anyway, toying idly with the loose ends of Newt’s tie before pushing him away. “Looking at the stars?” he echoes Newt sarcastically.

“I did mean it,” Newt says, with another goofy grin. “Kind of.” They're efficient men (sometimes) and he imagines they could very easily find a way to compromise and multitask.

“You should know you're hardly the only one to try that,” Hermann says, and Newt thinks, with a flash of hot embarrassment, of the number of times Hermann has talked about the stargazing dates he used to go on in college with the hot nerds in his chess club. Well, Newt’s paraphrasing that last part. Hermann actually said something like charming young men, but Newt thinks the odds of someone being in chess club and not being a nerd are pretty slim, which Newt (who was also in a chess club) has firsthand knowledge of.

"But," Hermann continues, his eyes dropping down to the curls of ink on Newt's semi-exposed chest, "I suppose we do have time to kill."