#my mom was like ''yeah you got sick going outside as a kid in the heat a lot''

[celepeace]

Maybe this is an unpopular opinion but schools in hot climates should not be allowed to have extended outdoor activities in barren fields/paved lots with no shade (like PE classes) since kids 1. do not have the ability to monitor their wellbeing as effectively as an adult can and most of them won't know how to recognize symptoms of heat exhaustion/heat stroke in themselves and 2. literally are not allowed to leave when they feel uncomfortable and schools frequently don't allow kids to bring their own water bottles either. The amount of times I DEFINITELY got heat exhaustion as a kid in PE is likely up into the dozens and not a single time was I excused to go indoors to cool off. And that was before climate change started making summers ridiculously hot.

[cator99]

I was so weird about lesbian sex for a long time because when I was 14 I hooked up with an older girl at bible camp and suddenly got my period during it and I was so embarassed but she didn't care so we kept going and then I suddenly got a severe nosebleed for no reason while I was on top of her kissing her and you can imagine how that went so there was my blood everywhere all over both of us and this sounds like I'm making shit up but it was insane and k i was panicking but she was like all about it so we just kept going and like it was too late, there was already blood on both of us! Like all over us. and I thought it was kind of powerful. so I let myself get blood all over the cabin. we were feverish. At first I just let my nosebleed drip on the floor and we both laughed like fuck this place yeah lets get blood everywhere. And we did. This is just what makes us girls. We had this cabin entirely to ourselves too for 3 whole nights!! They didn't check on us in there even once!!! Not even the counselors wanted to be near us- we had wanted to be alone and not participate in the religious activities so we told everyone we were sick, however the absolutely insane family who single-handedly ran the camp (the mom was rarely seen of course but the dad was this freaky cult-leader type preacher named Greg, and they had ummmm I think 15 kids or something, most of whom were adults, so they had no issue running this camp on an acreage they owned with very little outsider involvement) genuinely thought we were just posessed by demons, and in response they gave us our own cabin in order to ensure that we were kept away from the other kids there. Major oversight on their part and also sounds illegal but I could tell they were scared shitless of me (weird hair I cut and dyed myself, 3 lip piercings, septum ring, mid kandi kid phase so I had rainbow bracelets up past my elbows) and the girl (who had a jugalette tattoo and was the only black girl at the camp, I think ever)... I ended up getting banned from bible camp for other reasons... lesbian sex blood rituals aside....... (a kid saw me smoking something in a pipe and snitched, and they thought it was weed but it was so obviously just mint tea...) yeah after that I was like "was god punishing me for being a lesbian by making me bleed everywhere during sex oh god I'm going to hell forever and ever waaah" because even though I didn't believe in that shit in any real way at all I still had raging paranoia about being punished for being gay... regardless I came to the conclusion that if all that bloodshed was the price of homosexuality then I'd just have to learn to enjoy it. And I was so right for that . But yeah when I did have sex again after that I was like Ok hellooooo God where is the blood are u there God...???

[lunajay33]

Desperate🍂

Summary: Embry was your best friend since birth never a day without him and when he magically disappeared from your life it shattered your world, desperate to just see him one more time

Pairing: Embry Call x f!reader

•Masterlist•

Being born in forks with your twin sister Bella, it was a crazy start, mom hated it here and took Bella with her leaving me with my dad, the chief of police Charlie Swan, we had a simple life and I loved it we’d have supper together most nights talking about our days, he treated me good he never went a day without making me feel loved, when mom left taking only Bella, I remember her saying I was too much to handle that Bella was quiet and would be easy, after that I feel incredibly bad about myself but Embry was there, even as kids he was always there for me and I was there for him

Today we planned to go to La Push beach and have the whole day together so I got in my shared truck with Bella since she moved back now, and drove down to the beach

Parking in my usual spot and walking down to the beach, taking off my shoes I let the sand cover my feet as I sat in the spot Embry and I always hung out in, close to the water so the breeze from the ocean could relax us, he always said it was his favorite thing to do, just sit with me enjoy the moments we shared

An hour had passed and still no embry so I decided to go to the little shack on the beach and get an ice cream, after getting my favorite flavour I went back to the spot seeing Embry finally here, quick to sit next to him

“Hey Em what took you so long?” I asked as he wrapped his arm around my waist

“Sorry sweets slept through my alarm but we still have the rest of the day right?!” He said smiling down at me, over the last couple of months he’s shot up in height and has become way leaner and muscular

“Of course!” We spent the next few hours walking along the shore with our shoes off, walking through the trees near the beach, getting more ice cream since he was complaining how hot he was even though it was a typical cool cloudy day in La push

Soon he was turning more red and getting light headed then angry, which I’ve never seen before

“I have to go, I’m sorry” he said running to his truck and driving off leaving me confused, finishing the day early I drove back home where it had become gloomy, Bella was always screaming at night and dad and I would barely get sleep anymore, some nights I was allowed to stay over at Embrys to help

I hung up my coat and made my way to the phone dialing Embrys home phone, it rang and rang and rang, sighing I left a message hoping he’d listen and call me back letting me know if he was okay

I slumped down at the dinner table picking at the fries feeling like something was wrong

“You okay kiddo?” Dad asked from across the table

“Yeah it’s just, something happened with Em today, he might be sick I’m just worried”

“I’m sure he’s fine! He’ll probably call you in the morning”

“Yeah I guess”

It’s been a month with no word from Embry, I called all the time only getting word from his mom saying he’s severely sick but I couldn’t believe it, and now I know how Bella feels well felt, she’s been hanging with Jacob and seems to be getting better now I’m the gloom of the house

“Kid you can’t stay in the house all the time outside of school, go for a walk at the beach or something I know you love that” his words made tears bead along my waterline

“Dad you don’t understand, I need him it feels like somethings broken in me, he’s never done this to me before I mean did I do something wrong?” I cried into my hands

“Honey you couldn’t do anything wrong you’re my like sweetheart, maybe he’s just going through something, maybe go for a little hike get some fresh air”

“Fine” I pulled on my shoes and left out the back door walking the trail all the way till I got to the jumping cliff, Embry had taken me here many times because it gave a great view of the ocean, he once even set up a picnic for my birthday

I love embry I always have but I could never admit that to him and risk the friendship we have

After about an hour I was ready to leave when I heard a growl from behind me, turning slowly full of fear with the recent hiker attacks, glowing yellow eyes in the trees as it had gotten dark, but when I heard a whine my fear disappeared

“Hello?” I asked stepping closer

Another whine was heard before a huge wolf emerged from the trees and my breathe was taken from me, it came nearer pressing its snout against my palm as I started running my hair through its beautiful fur

“You remind me of someone, you’re so gentle, I had a friend he was my best friend, I loved him but he’s gone now, I don’t even know if I’ll ever see him again if he ever wants to even see me again, I guess I just miss him” I don’t know why but spilling my heart out to this gentle giant made that weight of my chest lighter, the wolf licked my face before walking back into the woods

Another rustle was heard in the trees and a few seconds later the last person I expected to see came walking towards me, Embry but he was even stronger and taller and his hair was cut and a tattoo

“Em? Where did you come from?”

“It’s me well I mean…..that the wolf……it’s me”

“What but how you can’t be……” but then all the stories of the tribe I heard over the years came flooding back, descended from wolves

“By that look I think you already know, I never wanted to leave you god it killed me to be apart from you but that day……that day I got sick I was changing, there’s more of us, Sam Jared Paul, but it’s a secret you already know that, but when we change anger runs out entire life it wasn’t safe to be around you, I couldn’t live with myself if I hurt you, but then I caught your scent out here and I couldn’t take it anymore I had to see you”

“But if it’s a secret why are you telling me everything?”

“This is crazy but, people in our pack we have soulmates, picked when we are born the person who’s our other half, each wolf has an imprint and when you see them it’s like your whole world changes everything is about her, she’s your life the one that keeps you going”

My heart dropped the way he was explaining everything sounded like he already found her

“Have you….have you already got an imprint, you’ve found your soulmate” I said my voice shaking as my lip quivered

“I have and I knew, I’ve always known it’s only ever been you, I love you, forever”

“Forever Em”

[starlightkun]

❧ word count: 26.1k ❧ genre: angst, hurt/comfort, fluff, paranormal/supernatural au, ghost!jisung ❧ warnings: mentions of death, prominent side character dies early in the fic, depictions of grieving, family member of the reader is sick (it’s dementia-like, though the disease is never named in the fic), family tension/drama (reader has some family members that are not very nice to her), reader has some sleep/physical health issues at one point, reader is just really going through it in this fic for a while ❧ extra info: the reader’s mom in this has early-onset memory issues; i didn’t name a specific disease because im not a medical expert of any kind and didn’t want to misrepresent any real-life illness in this fic. i combined both my own experiences with my own family members who have had these kinds of illnesses and some research, but i am not an expert and the representation in this fic may not be entirely accurate! ❧ author’s note: i don’t think i’ve done a spooky fic like this before? but this one was super fun! also i will say it takes a little bit for jisung to show up, so please be patient when you don’t see him in the first few scenes, he’ll be there, i promise! ❧ sequel

That night, the rain was still pounding against the windows. Your mom had gone to bed a while ago, but your mind was restless. Something had happened again as you were helping your mom get ready for bed. Your stepdad’s reading glasses, which were on the nightstand on his side of their bed, as they had been since he passed, had fallen off with seemingly no rhyme or reason. Not wanting your mom to get spooked about the house again, you reassured her that you had just bumped into the furniture—her back was turned when they fell—but it left you with an uneasy feeling.

“Hi, Hyukjun.” You picked up the phone call from your stepdad as you headed back towards your office building from the restaurant you’d taken your lunch break at.

“Hi, sweetheart. How are you?” His warm, familiar voice was on the other end as always, though there was something different about it, something you couldn’t quite put your finger on from the quality of your phone speaker. Your steps slowed thoughtfully as you listened more attentively, a pit growing in your stomach.

“I’m good,” you answered shortly, suspicion creeping over you. “How are you two?”

It wasn’t that you didn’t appreciate hearing from your stepdad, you were on good terms with him. Your father passed when you were a little girl, and your mom continued to raise you on her own, not even considering any romantic prospects until you graduated high school. She and Hyukjun only dated for six months before marrying and had been happily married since. Hyukjun was a mild-mannered divorcee with three adult sons of his own, all of whom were at least a decade older than you, and none of which you were exceptionally close with. When your mom had been diagnosed only five years into their marriage, he began taking care of her—no question and no complaints. With her condition, you were fairly certain that you visited them more than Hyukjun’s own kids did, despite all of them living nearby to your knowledge.

He at least didn’t beat around the bush anymore. “She’s getting worse, Y/N.”

“How bad?”

“She thinks the house is haunted,” he admitted. “And I…”

“What?” You prompted him.

“She’s been asking for you. I know you’re busy, but if you could visit soon, I think it’d really help her.”

“Yeah, I have some time this weekend,” you agreed immediately. “I’ll be there.”

“Thanks.”

You were arriving at the building then, slowing to a stop outside as you prepared to hang up. “My break is ending, Hyukjun, I’ve got to go.”

“Of course,” he acquiesced. “Hey, I love you.”

“I love you too.” You looked up at the gray storm clouds gathering in the sky above you. “And tell Mom I love her, and I’ll be there soon.”

“I will. Have a good rest of your day at work, sweetheart.”

“Right. Bye.”

When your mom and Hyukjun got married, you already had a lease on a small place closer to your job in the city, so your mom sold your childhood home and moved in with Hyukjun. Despite the small twinge of sadness at her selling your childhood home, the place where you, your mom, and dad had all been together, you were happy that she was no longer there by herself. Their home was a quaint two-story, two-bedroom townhome, with well-tended flowerbeds and a porch swing out front. A long time ago, you knew that this house had been your stepbrothers’ childhood home, the three of them sharing what was now the guest room, Hyukjun and his ex-wife occupying the primary bedroom that was now his and your mother’s. Hyukjun had been divorced for many years before he met your mom, you didn’t know the exact number off the top of your head—you weren’t sure if you had ever been told.

The snapdragons were in bloom, stalks of purples and blues and pinks, and you squatted down next to one. Feeling a bit like a child, you gently squeezed the sides of one flower to make the “mouth” of the dragon open, like Hyukjun had shown you one of the first times you’d met, the very first time you ever went to his house. The front door opened, and you looked up to see your stepdad stepping out of the house. You stood up, walking up the three short steps from the sidewalk to meet him on their porch.

“I saw you coming up the street,” he explained, gesturing to the front window. “It’s good to see you, Y/N.”

“Hi, Hyukjun.” You hugged him. “Good to see you too.”

“I just wanted to give you a heads up. She’s calm, but she’s not exactly… here,” he explained. “I didn’t want you to be caught off-guard.”

You nodded in understanding. “Okay. Thanks for letting me know.”

Following your stepdad into the house, he guided you towards the living room at the back of the house.

“Hon?” He poked his head into the living room.

Your mom looked up from where she had been reading a book in an armchair, her face breaking into a gentle smile. “Oh, Sangwoo, you’re back.”

“Yes, I picked Y/N up, just like you asked.” Your stepdad stepped aside to let her see you.

You pushed aside the alarms going off in your mind to give your mother as calm of a smile as you could, approaching her with your hand outstretched. “Hi, Mom, it’s Y/N.”

“Y/N, hi, sweetie.” She beamed at you, taking your hand that was offered and squeezing it tight. “How was school?”

“It was good, I had a good day,” you answered brightly. Looking down at the book in her lap, you asked, “What are you reading?”

Your mother had been a Literature teacher for all her life, before her diagnosis forced her to retire many years before she ever wanted to. She would read to you at any opportunity when you were a kid, especially at bedtime. It was always easiest to get her talking now about whatever book she was reading, no matter where her mind was.

“Oh, I’ll tell you about it later. First, do you have homework?”

“No, Mom, nothing today.”

Hyukjun cleared his throat then. “You must be hungry, Y/N. Would you like something to eat?”

“Yes, yes, go get a snack.” Your mother insisted.

“Okay,” you acquiesced, giving her hand another tight squeeze. “I’ll be right back after my snack. I want to hear about your book.”

In their kitchen, you turned on your stepdad with wide eyes. “She’s not just mixing up your names anymore, she thinks you are my dad!”

“Sometimes…” Hyukjun nodded, leaning against a kitchen counter. “Not always. She has her lucid days still.”

In the bright kitchen lighting, you could see a certain tiredness in Hyukjun that was new, a pallor in his skin, a hitch in his breaths, a lag in his movements, none of which used to be there.

“What’s wrong?” You asked, eyes locking on his. “With you? You were going to tell me something on the phone, and you didn’t. Tell me.”

He sighed, the sound dragging out into a wheeze and then a hacking cough that he covered in his elbow, and you winced just watching him. When he’d caught his breath again, he answered, “They found a tumor, in my lung. I have maybe six months, Y/N.”

“That’s it?!” You blurted out. “I-I mean, even with chemo, or radiation, or whatever?”

“I’m not—”

“It’s not treatable?”

He cast a sidelong glance down the hall, at the room where your mother was. “Someone needs to take care of her. I need to be here, and after I’m gone, our savings will go towards her care. We can’t spend it all on something that might give me another few months.”

“Another few months with her! With us!” You grabbed his arm, knowing how desperate you sounded. “What about your kids? Do they know what you’re doing?”

“No.” His voice was heavy, but determined. “I know you all don’t talk… but don’t tell them, please.”

His face wavered in your vision as your eyes filled with tears. You tried to swallow them down, but a couple spilled over. “Let me move in, and help. I want to take care of both of you. Please.”

“What about your job?”

“I’ll figure it out. Don’t worry about me. You’ve done enough for me, for us. Let me do something for you.”

“Thank you.”

Your work agreed to let you move into a part-time remote position. Most days you were able to get all your done, early even. Not only was Hyukjun there, but a memory care aide named Nayoung came by for an hour three days a week to assist as well.

It had been a month since you moved into the primary bedroom on the second floor, the bedroom that used to be your mom and stepdad’s. You found out that they moved their things into the guest room on the first floor two months ago, when your mom hurt herself on the stairs. It had only been a skinned knee, but Hyukjun didn’t want to risk something worse.

That night you laid in bed with your laptop open, desperately trying to finish up a report that was due the next day. Today had been rougher, your mom needing constant redirection and reorientation, not to mention the conversation that you had with your stepdad earlier this evening. Usually after your mom went to sleep, the two of you would watch a movie or a couple episodes of a show, or just have a drink and chat. It was a nice, slow, easy part of your day with just the two of you. But this time as you rooted around the for the fresh tub of ice cream that you had just bought from the store, and called to him over your shoulder asking if he wanted a bowl, you saw him waiting for you with papers in his hand.

One of the errands he’d sent you on today, in addition to groceries, the post office, and the pharmacy, had been to an attorney’s office. You’d known that, you weren’t stupid. There, you had been handed a large envelope with the law firm’s name embossed on it, and your stepdad’s name typed on a label under that. You didn’t inquire as to the contents of the envelope from the receptionist, nor your stepdad when you delivered it to him upon returning home. It was none of your business. But at the kitchen table that night, he showed you the documents that he had drawn up.

Once he passed, you would own his house, the one that you lived in now, as a life estate pur autre vie. For the life of another. Until your mother passed, you would own his house, and could stay here and take care of her. Then, once she passed, the house would go to his sons, your stepbrothers, as he’d always intended.

You sighed and deleted the sentence you’d just written. “Stupid, stupid,” you muttered to yourself. Looking at the time, you let out another sigh and rubbed your face in exasperation. “I’m never going to fucking finish this.”

Setting the laptop aside, you pushed your covers off yourself and got out of bed. Keeping your footsteps light, you crept downstairs and into the kitchen to get yourself a glass of water. After drinking a whole glass in the kitchen, you refilled it to bring it back up to bedroom with you. Halfway up the stairs, the sconce on the wall next to your head flickered on, making you pause. You’d left all the lights off on your way down. Peering behind the frosted glass cover, you reached your hand back there and tightened the bulb. The light stopped flickering, and you looked around at the empty, dark staircase again. Shrugging to yourself, you finished your journey to your room.

Cutting up your mom’s breakfast into small pieces, you hummed a song that had been stuck in your head. The sound of something clattering startled your peaceful reverie, and your head snapped up immediately. You darted around the kitchen counter to get your eyes on where your mom was sitting at the kitchen table.

“You okay, Mom?” You asked, eyes searching her for any signs of injury or distress.

“Oh, I’m fine, sweetie,” she reassured you, pointing at a point on the floor further away from her. You saw that a silver utensil was gleaming up from the tile. “I dropped my fork, that’s all.”

“I’ll grab you another one when I bring your food in, don’t worry about it,” you reassured her. “Leave it, I’ll pick it up in a sec.”

Returning to the kitchen, you finished cutting her food, then prepared yours and Hyukjun’s plates. Carrying all three of them in, along with your mom’s clean fork, you cocked your head when you saw the fork sitting on the closest edge of the table to the kitchen. Looking at Hyukjun, who had joined your mom at the table in the interim, you said, “You didn’t have to pick up the fork, Hyukjun, I was going to grab it.”

His face betrayed his momentary confusion, looking between the food you just set in front of him, then to the fork on the edge of the table. “That was there when I came in. I didn’t move it.”

As you set your mom’s food down for her, you asked, “Mom, did you get the fork?”

But her eyes had a familiar far-out appearance, and you knew she wasn’t going to be able to answer you. You shook your head at yourself, putting your own plate down and grabbing the dirty fork off the table. Dropping it in the kitchen sink, you then returned to the table to take your seat next to your mother and across from Hyukjun.

You weren’t sure why you were awake at first. Everything seemed quiet, but something didn’t feel right. Sitting up in bed, you checked the time on your phone. 2:48 a.m. You desperately wanted to go back to sleep, but you couldn’t shake the uneasiness in your mind, and so you pushed the covers off of you.

As soon as you were at the top of the stairs, you could hear voices downstairs, your mother’s and your stepdad’s. Your stepdad was clearly trying to keep his voice down, but your mom wasn’t, and she sounded distressed.

“Sangwoo, I’m telling you something’s wrong with this house! We need to go! Where’s Y/N?!” She demanded of him.

“She’s fine, she’s sleeping. Please, tell me what’s wrong with the house, and we can try to fix it,” he pleaded with her quietly.

You finally made it to the hallway just outside their bedroom, taking in the scene of your mom’s wild, scared eyes and Hyukjun’s desperate concern. “Mom, I’m here, I’m okay.”

“Y/N!” She let out a gasp of relief as soon as she saw you. “Oh, you’re okay.”

“Yes, Mom, I’m okay.” You offered her your hand, and she grabbed it tightly. “What’s wrong? Why are you up?”

“I’ve been trying to tell your dad—” She gestured to Hyukjun pointedly. “But this house isn’t right.”

“What do you mean?”

“It just isn’t right,” she repeated insistently. “What happened to our old house? We need to go back there!”

You looked at Hyukjun desperately, at a loss for words to explain that she sold it years ago. Thankfully, he took over.

“It’s late, hon. We can’t go all the way back to the old house this late at night, especially not with Y/N. It’s not safe,” he persuaded her gently.

She seemed to relax a little at this. “Oh. Right. It’s late.”

“Can you read me something, Mom?” You requested sweetly.

This finally brought a smile to her features, and she nodded, her grasp on your hand turning tender. “Oh, of course, Y/N. I’m sorry I woke you, sweetie.”

“It’s alright, Mom,” you reassured her, leading her back into their bedroom. “Everything’s alright.”

Hyukjun’s funeral was quaint. It was kept to family and close friends, and organized mostly by his sons and ex-wife. You didn’t mind, your mother was in no shape to organize a funeral, and you were more than happy to step aside and support her through this while they dealt with the details.

Today of all days was one of your mother’s better days, possibly one of the best that she’s had in a while, and you didn’t know if that was better or worse. Better, you decided, so she could say goodbye to him properly. After the small funeral was the wake, held at Hyukjun’s home—which was now your home, you realized—and was a more open-door affair. Your mom’s memory care aide, Nayoung, came as well, which you were glad for. While your stepbrothers and their mother played host more than you, greeting guests as they showed up, chatting and reminiscing with them about all their shared memories of Hyukjun from years or even decades ago, it was still your residence, and you couldn’t bring yourself to just stay in a corner. Hyukjun had been your family too, for however brief a period of your life.

You were alone in the kitchen getting refreshments for yourself, your mom, and Nayoung when you sensed that you weren’t by yourself. Turning around, you did in fact see your stepbrothers entering the kitchen, followed by their mother.

You offered them all a small, polite smile. “Hi.”

“Glad we caught you, Y/N,” the oldest brother flashed you a grin. “You got a sec?”

“Yeah, of course.”

“We know it must be really tough for you, taking care of your mom by yourself now,” their mother said, her voice coated in an over-the-top sugary sweet sympathy.

You shrugged noncommittally. “Nayoung helps.”

The youngest jumped in, “We just wanted you to know that you and your mom can take as much time as you need to move out.”

“Of course, of course,” their mother agreed. “You know, a week or two.”

They all nodded and murmured in agreement, focusing the same overeager, empty, sympathetic faces on you that made you feel like you were surrounded by some kind of predator that wanted to empathize you to death. Steeling your nerves, you met all of their eyes in turn as you went to answer.

“We’re not moving out.” You informed them firmly. “Hyukjun left the house to me to keep taking care of my mom. After… it’s all yours.”

“And we’re supposed to believe you’ll just give it to us?” The youngest scoffed, immediately dropping his kind, caring act. All of their faces were somewhere between disbelief and anger.

“No, he set it up that way. You can get your copies of the papers from his attorney, Mr. Shin.” You brought out the business card for the attorney who drafted the papers. You’d tucked it into your wallet absentmindedly when it’d been given to you on your initial errand from Hyukjun, and you were glad you hadn’t had the time to clean out your wallet since. You set the business card down on the counter between you.

The oldest snatched up the card. “There’s no way…”

“We’re going to fight this. No way the house is yours,” the youngest swore.

The middle son spoke finally, his gaze hard as he glared at you. He practically snarled, “You’re not his family, you’ve never been.”

“It was good seeing you all again,” you said, no emotion in your voice. Abandoning your three glasses, you scooted around the counter, then around them, heading towards the kitchen door that they had been blocking the whole time. “Please have all communications about the property go through Mr. Shin. He’ll be able to answer your questions better than I can.”

Crying at a wake was normal. Encouraged even. But you weren’t amongst loved ones, remembering someone you’d lost. You were alone, sitting at the top of the stairs in the dark, crying into your arms to muffle your sobs as you tried to compose yourself from the confrontation you’d just survived. Barely. Your hands were balled into fists to keep them from shaking.

“Are you okay?” A quiet voice caught your attention, gentle, then hushed as he seemed to be speaking to himself, “Why are you asking that? Stupid, stupid.”

You picked your head up out of your arms, quickly wiping the tears that had been streaming down your cheeks as you spotted a young man at the bottom of the stairs. He had dark hair and was dressed in a pair of black pants, a white shirt, and what looked like a black cardigan over the shirt. You didn’t recognize him from the wake, but you hadn’t greeted everyone, nor did you know all the mourners personally. Many were either family friends of Hyukjun’s from before he met your mother, old colleagues, or distant relations.

Sniffling and trying to right your clothes, you offered him as much of a smile you could muster, “I’m sorry, it’s uhm, been a long day.”

He froze, his eyes locking on yours and going wide. The man looked behind him, as if expecting you to have been addressing somebody else, and upon seeing an empty hallway, he turned back to you and hesitantly replied, “That’s… okay. Are you alright?”

“Oh, as alright as I can be, I suppose,” you admitted, dabbing at your eyes with your sleeve again. You weren’t sure why you were telling this random man that, but he had spotted you sobbing at a wake, so there wasn’t much of a point in covering that fact up. “Were you looking for the bathroom or…?”

“No, just stretching my legs.” He pushed his hands into the pockets of his cardigan. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

“Thank you.” You nodded. “I don’t think I saw you at the funeral. How did you know my stepdad? Family friend?”

“Yeah, I was around when his kids were growing up.”

“Oh, are you a childhood friend of his sons or something?”

“Friend is a stretch, I think,” he chuckled.

You couldn’t help but laugh bitterly as well, adding a polite but hollow, “I’m sure they appreciate you coming out to pay your respects.”

As he shifted on his feet, the shadows on his face lessened, letting you see his features better. You furrowed your brow with interest.

“How old are you? I mean—You don’t look older than me, you must’ve been much younger than them growing up.”

“I-I mean, we weren’t very close,” he stammered, rubbing the back of his neck awkwardly.

Feeling bad about putting him on the spot in this sort of scenario, you offered him a sympathetic smile. “Sorry, I didn’t mean anything by that. I didn’t grow up with my stepbrothers, so I guess it’s a bit hard for me to imagine them having friends—Oh!”

As soon as the words were out of your mouth, you slapped a hand over it, wishing you hadn’t said them, especially not to some stranger, who for all you know could turn right around and repeat it to your stepbrothers. That would be the last thing you needed, to give them another reason to hate you, and by extension, your mother.

“That didn’t come out right!” You desperately tried to backpedal, holding your hands out in front of you. “I-I meant that I haven’t met a lot of their friends, since our parents got together later in life, and—”

“It’s okay, it’s okay,” he reassured you calmly, taking a couple hesitant steps up the stairs. You scooted over to make room for him to sit next to you on the top step. He pressed himself against the banister, leaving plenty of space between you two. “I didn’t mean to, but I heard some of what they said to you in the kitchen.”

“I would normally be upset at you for eavesdropping, but I’m kind of glad that somebody else heard some of the shit they said to me this time,” you chuckled cynically.

“‘This time?’” He repeated questioningly. “Are they always like that to you?”

“I don’t see them that often. I think the first time I met the middle son was at the wedding, actually,” you said. “They started spending more holidays with their mom instead of Hyukjun when my mom… after her diagnosis.”

“Oh.”

“God, sorry, you don’t need to be hearing all this shit.” You shook your head at yourself. “I mean, I don’t even know your name.”

“I’m Jisung.”

“Y/N.”

“For what it’s worth, I don’t think it’s true. You and your mom are his family, too.”

You messed with the sleeves of your shirt as you stared at the bottom step, gnawing on your bottom lip, ignoring the metallic taste of blood when you broke skin. Finally, once you’d swallowed down the lump in your throat, you replied with a tight, “Thanks. And I mean, I understand why they would be upset. Their dad just died and two people who are essentially strangers to them are now living in their childhood home. Of course they feel weird about it.”

“That’s... gracious.”

“It’s true. And like I said, their dad died, they deserve some grace.” From elsewhere in the house, you could hear your mom calling your name, and immediately jumped to your feet. “Sorry, I’ve got to go.”

“I understand.” Jisung nodded to you. “It was nice talking to you, Y/N.”

“Yeah, you too. Thanks for listening, Jisung.” You waved to him over your shoulder as you rushed down the stairs and off in the direction of your mother’s voice.

The next day, you had habitually started preparing three plates of breakfast before you caught yourself. In the first couple days after his passing, it was painfully in the foreground of your mind with everything you did, but this was the first time you’d found yourself going about a daily task and it had slipped your mind. You left the full plate of food in the kitchen to clean up later, and took just yours and your mom’s plates to the kitchen table.

“Do you want to go on a walk after breakfast?” You proposed as you ate.

It was something that Hyukjun and your mom did every morning. Sometimes you joined them, but usually you took the opportunity to clean up around the house or get work done in the quiet. Your mother had no trouble ambulating, it was her mind that was going faster than anything else. With Hyukjun no longer here to walk with her, you didn’t want her to lose that precious time going out, or the exercise. Not to mention, you needed to get out of the house again.

“Oh, I’d love to, sweetie,” she agreed with a smile, one that you noticed didn’t reach her eyes.

“After we’re done, I’ll clean up while you get ready.”

As you scooped the extra food into a plastic container at the end of breakfast, you realized the lid that you’d grabbed was the wrong size. Opening the cabinet that contained all the plastic containers, you squatted down with a sigh, mentally preparing yourself to ransack through the absolute mess that greeted you down there. Hyukjun normally kept it meticulously organized, all containers accompanied by their proper lids, but in your rush to clean up after everyone left the wake late last night, you had effectively ruined all of it.

You tried to just look under a haphazard stack of plastic containers, and they of course all came crashing out onto the kitchen floor. You groaned, plopping down onto your butt as you got ready to have to put them all back. But as you went to pick up the first one, an overwhelming, crushing feeling of loneliness and sorrow hit you like a bus, and you covered your face as you started sobbing. The hot tears stung your eyes, every shaking breath you took hurt your chest, and even the task of putting the tupperware back seemed impossible and monumental now.

Rubbing one of your eyes, you inhaled and forced yourself to grab just one container to put back. “Come on, don’t have time for this.”

Slowly, you put the containers away, until there was one lid left that had slid much further away from you. You crawled over to it, realizing the shape seemed familiar as you held it in your hands. Standing back up, you fitted it over the container of leftovers you had perfectly.

“Huh.” Your sobs petered out as you looked down at it curiously. “That could’ve been easier.”

Throwing open the front door, you grunted as you hauled your heavy grocery bags into the home.

“Y/N? Is that you?” Nayoung’s voice called out. She had increased the frequency and duration of her visits since Hyukjun’s passing, and today you took the opportunity to do some much-needed restocking of the kitchen during her stay.

“Yeah!” You yelled back.

“Do you need any help?”

“No, I’m fine!” You hopped on one foot as you tried to wedge your other foot behind the door to close it. “Just—Shit!”

The door suddenly came loose, slamming closed even harder than you had opened it. Nayoung came around the corner with wide eyes, looking rather startled.

“Is everything okay?” She asked, taking a couple bags from your hands, looking you over inquisitively.

You looked between your still-raised foot and the door, a bit dumbfounded. You swore you hadn’t kicked it that hard. This wasn’t actually your house, after all.

“Yeah, Nayoung, I’m okay,” you reassured her, leading the way into the kitchen. “Do you have a window open? There must be a cross-breeze or something.”

“No, I don’t think so.”

It was pouring rain outside, the sky dull and gray, occasionally lit up with flashes of lightning. The constant pounding downpour was interspersed with cracks of thunder that would rattle frames on the walls. The weather was so bad that Nayoung couldn’t even make it out, leaving just you and your mom all day. It wasn’t so bad, today was a better day for her. She was calm at least, despite the weather, absorbed in her books for most of the day. Maybe a little too absorbed, as it was hard to tear her away for meals or snacks. But you could get your work done and do chores around the house uninterrupted, and once you finished your own to-do list, you were able to sit down in the living room with her and read as well.

After a particularly bright flash of lightning, followed by a boom of thunder that made you feel like you were in a low-level earthquake rather than a thunderstorm, the lights went out entirely. You heard the telltale clatter of your mom dropping her book in surprise as she gasped.

“Mom?” You called out to her, both to check on her and so she knew that you were still there.

“I’m okay, sweetie,” she promised. “I just got startled and dropped my book.”

“Stay there,” you directed her, pulling out your phone and turning on your flashlight. You could see that her book had skidded some distance away from her, out of arm’s reach. “I’ll check the breaker. Don’t get up, I don’t want you tripping over anything.”

“Alright. Be safe.”

Opening the utility closet in the laundry room, you threw your hands up in exasperation as you looked over the circuit breaker. You had no fucking clue what you were doing. Right as you had turned on your phone, fully intent on searching the internet for what the fuck you were supposed to do now, the power came back on all on its own.

“Well, there we go!” You called out through the house, starting back towards your mom. “I’m a genius!”

Upon your return to the living room, you stopped when you noticed one key difference: The book was no longer on the floor. It was on the side table next to your mom. There was no way your mom could’ve moved fast enough to have gotten the book and then sat back down in the time since the lights turned back on.

You sighed gently. “I told you not to get up, Mom.”

“I didn’t.”

“Then how’d the book get there?” You pointed to the book knowingly.

“I didn’t—” She looked at it curiously, then at where it used to be on the floor. “Oh… I guess I must’ve… Sorry, sweetie.”

You walked over to rest a hand on her shoulder. “It’s okay, Mom. I’m sorry if I seemed upset with you. I just don’t want you getting hurt.”

She patted your hand. “I know, Y/N. You’re doing a good job.”

The rain was still pounding against the windows that night. Your mom had gone to bed a while ago, but your mind was restless. Something had happened again as you were helping your mom get ready for bed. Hyukjun’s reading glasses, which were on the nightstand on his side of their bed, as they had been since he passed, had fallen off with seemingly no rhyme or reason. Not wanting your mom to get spooked about the house again, you reassured her that you had just bumped into the furniture—her back was turned when they fell—but it left you with an uneasy feeling.

You’d pocketed the glasses instead of replacing them on the nightstand, and were staring at them on the kitchen counter now, fondly remembering the way he used to peer at you over the lenses as he read the newspaper in the morning and you made sarcastic quips about whatever headlines were on the pages facing you.

“Hyukjun?” You said his name into the empty air, uncertainty making your voice waver. After a beat of silence, you hissed, “Of course you weren’t going to get a reply, stupid, stupid.”

Trying to gather yourself, you moved to open the freezer, securing the tub of ice cream from inside it. Sitting at the kitchen table with two spoons, you set one in front of Hyukjun’s spot across from you. Glumly spooning some ice cream into your mouth, you barely tasted it as you stared at his empty chair.

“I miss you,” you said softly, not expecting an answer this time. “A lot. It’s not fair. I know that’s what your sons think, it’s not fair that it was you and not her. But… it’s not fair that we only got… so little time with you.”

You sniffled against the oncoming tears, eating another spoonful.

“I wish… I wish my mom had met you earlier, I wish you didn’t leave us so soon, I wish we got more time…” You looked down at the tub in front of you, your appetite gone. “And I wish I wasn’t eating your favorite ice cream by myself.”

You stood back up, taking both spoons with you into the kitchen. Dropping them into the sink to deal with in the morning, you put the ice cream away and shut off the kitchen lights. You left his glasses on the kitchen counter, deciding you would put them back in your mother’s room tomorrow. As you headed up the stairs, you paused at the top step, a memory of Hyukjun’s wake coming back to you. The nice guy who sat with you and listened to you. You really wished you could have somebody to talk to again.

Something in you made you look over your shoulder then, back down at the bottom step. You swore a darker shape was standing there, unclear in the night. Your heart rate spiked.

“Hyukjun…?” You whispered, hesitantly going down one more step to try to make out what you were seeing better. The shadow seemed to back up one step at the same time you did that, and another name came to your mind.

“Jisung?”

The figure moved closer, a beam of moonlight illuminating half of his shocked face. “You remember me?”

You should’ve yelled. You should’ve shouted at him to get out, called the police, any number of things ahead of what you actually did. Getting even closer, you nodded slowly. “Of course I remember you, Jisung.”

He was still staring at you in disbelief. “And you can see me? Again?”

“Yes,” you confirmed, standing on the step right above him. “You’re a ghost.”

It was meant to be a question, but it came out like a statement, like you had known all along, just saying common knowledge.

He swallowed. “Yes.”

You peered at the space around and behind him. “Is my stepdad here?”

“No.” He shook his head. “He wanted to stay, for your mom. I told him if he stayed, he could get stuck. He decided to go.”

“Go… where?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted.

“What about…” You looked up into his dark eyes hopefully. “Is my dad here?”

“It’s just me,” he answered quietly. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. I’m glad he’s not… stuck. Either of them.” You breathed out, a mixture of relief and disappointment in your chest. Remembering what he told you at the wake, you asked, “You used to live here?”

“Before your stepdad bought it, yeah.”

You recalled the surprise on his face both tonight and at the wake when you addressed him. “You’re not used to being seen, are you?”

“No, I’m not. You’re the first person who’s seen me since…” He trailed off, biting the inside of his cheek as he seemed to be picking his words. “Since I’ve been like this.”

You nodded slowly, understanding what he meant. “Have you been… helping? Picking up my mom’s book? And closing the door? And the tupperware lid and the fork?”

Jisung nodded fervently. “I didn’t mean to scare you, or make you sad. I’m sorry. I just wanted to help you.”

“What about Hyukjun’s glasses today? Did you knock those off?”

He rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly. “It was an accident… They were really close to the edge, I didn’t want them to fall off and break. So I tried to move them away from the edge, but there was this thunder, and I dropped them.”

You couldn’t help but burst into laughter at the mental image of a ghost getting spooked by thunder, slapping a hand over your mouth as you giggled. Jisung wasn’t laughing, but he did have a soft smile on his features as he looked at you.

“Sorry, sorry,” you were still chuckling as you tried to compose yourself.

“It’s okay…” He assured you. “I’m sorry for dropping them.”

“You didn’t break them, it’s fine.” You looked at him thoughtfully. He was wearing the same thing he was wearing when you met him at the wake, dark pants, dark shoes, a white button-up, and dark cardigan. You tilted your head curiously. “Are you sure my mom hasn’t seen you? She swears the house is haunted, you know.”

“I think she can tell that something is… off, sometimes. But no, she’s never seen me.”

“I’m guessing you have no clue why I can see you right now?” You surmised. “They don’t exactly give you a ghost handbook, do they?”

Jisung shook his head. “No, I don’t know.”

“Thank you again, by the way. For being so nice to me at the wake.”

“They really shouldn’t have been talking to you like that.” He frowned. “They have no clue… He loved you and your mom so much. You two are his family, too.”

You chuckled sadly. “So did you actually hear all of it, then?”

“I was already in there when they went in after you,” he confirmed. “I thought you might… I could create a distraction in another room if it got bad.”

“Do you do that a lot? Follow me around?”

His eyes widened as he clearly began to panic, shaking his head fervently. “N-Not like that! Only like, in normal places! I mean, like, there’s not a lot to do when you’re a ghost stuck in a house, and I think you’re cool—Oh god, I meant, uhm, I mostly stay on the first floor, promise!”

You couldn’t help but giggle again as he had missed the light teasing in your tone. “Mostly?”

Jisung visibly gulped. “I woke you up one time, when your mom was having a really bad time in the middle of the night and your stepdad couldn’t calm her down. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have—”

“Jisung, it’s okay,” you tried your best to be reassuring, even as you let out choked laughter. “I don’t expect you to sit in a corner for eternity. Thanks for staying in normal places.”

“Thanks for not being creeped out…” He muttered, rubbing the back of his neck.

You let out a yawn, covering your mouth with your hand. After it passed, you gave Jisung a sheepish smile. “If I go to sleep right now… will I still be able to see you in the morning?”

“You… want to?”

“Yeah.” You smiled and shrugged. “Better than just talking to my mother, Nayoung, and myself like I usually do every day.”

The corners of his lips twitched as he went to nod. “I’ll try to be here in the morning. You should go to sleep.”

“Alright. Goodnight, Jisung.”

“Goodnight, Y/N.”

Halfway up the stairs, you turned back around to see him still standing at the bottom, watching you. You threw back a teasing, “Promise you’ll stay on the first floor?”

“Cross my heart.” He made an X over the left side of his chest.

“Not sure how much that’s worth coming from a ghost,” you grinned. “But I guess it’s the thought that counts.”

In the morning, you sat with your feet dangling over the edge of your bed for an extra few seconds, very calmly contemplating your sanity. You had been spending the majority of your time in this house, talking to nobody else except your mother and Nayoung, who came five days a week for three hours at a time, your only other regular human interaction coming in the form of emails or the occasional phone calls with your co-workers. Was it really so unlikely that your brain was inventing someone new for you to talk to? How could you even determine if he was real or not? Did that even really matter?

With a sigh, you got to your feet and shuffled into your bathroom. Your mom had always been an early riser, something that hadn’t changed now, and you had to take care of your own morning routine before she woke up. While the shift in your schedule initially took some getting used to, the daily alone time that you got to devote to your own self-care was something you treasured, and helped you start your day in a good headspace.

Coming out of your bedroom refreshed and in clean clothes, you meandered down the stairs, listening for any signs of life in the rest of the house. If your mom was up, she would at least be moving around her room, if not elsewhere in the house. And then there was the possibility of seeing the ghost again.

Right as you reached the bottom of the stairs, your mom’s bedroom door opened, and she poked her head out. You smiled and walked over to her.

“Morning, Mom.”

“Hi, sweetie.” She took your arm, looking around the hallway.

“You okay?”

“Did he go out?”

You tilted your head, keeping your tone light as you asked, “…He?”

“Hyukjun,” she answered. “He usually leaves a note.”

You bit your lip and nodded. “Yeah, he had some errands, said he’ll be back soon. You can get on him about forgetting your note when he gets back.”

Her features relaxed, and she rubbed your back. “Thanks, Y/N. Don’t know what we’d do without you.”

There was a knock on the front door then, and you went to go open it up for Nayoung. As she helped your mom with the rest of her morning, you headed towards the kitchen to start on breakfast. A figure was already at the kitchen table, however, his back to you as he sat in the fourth chair that had always been empty for as long as you’d been in the house. Jisung turned around when he heard your footsteps, giving you a small wave.

“Morning,” you smiled and nodded, hoping you didn’t look too put-off. You weren’t sure if you would’ve been more surprised if he was here or not.

“Good morning.” His eyes followed you as you continued into the kitchen. From his seat, he could still see you over the kitchen counter. His hands were folded politely in his lap, and he watched you as you started pulling out ingredients for breakfast.

“So, what do you do all night?” You questioned. “Do you sleep?”

“Sometimes. Sometimes I read, or look at the moon, or think.”

“I think I’d hate being alone with my thoughts for eternity.” You shook your head, bringing down plates from the cabinet.

“It’s not so bad.” Jisung shrugged. “I wasn’t much of a talker before anyway.”

“An introvert?”

“Yes.” He tilted his head curiously. “You don’t normally cook for Nayoung.”

You looked down at the plates in your hand and realized that you had grabbed three instead of the normal two. Nayoung always ate breakfast before coming over, so you just had to make food for you and your mom. You’d done this before, accidentally making a serving for Hyukjun out of habit, but you knew that wasn’t what happened this time.

Putting the extra plate back, you said, “No, I was… I think I was about to make you a plate. Felt like I had a guest over.”

Surprisingly, this made Jisung crack a smile. “I appreciate it. Your food always looks good.”

“I don’t think it’s anything special.” You shrugged, turning on the stove. “I learned to cook from my mother, we just did it to survive. Hyukjun was a much better cook than either of us.”

“To survive?”

“After my dad passed…” You pursed your lips as you tried to think of how to phrase it, pushing around food in the pan. “She sort of closed up. My mom gave me a good life growing up, don’t get me wrong. But it’s hard being a single parent, and she never really made any friends, she spent all her time taking care of me or working. Then when I moved out, she closed up even more. I was kind of afraid she’d close all the way up, until she met Hyukjun.”

“I see…”

You heard footsteps coming from down the hall, and halted your conversation. Nayoung and your mom entered the kitchen dining area just a few moments later, paying Jisung no mind, clearly not seeing him at all.

“Y/N, were you on the phone?” Your mother asked as Nayoung guided her to her usual seat.

Nayoung took Hyukjun’s old place beside her.

“Oh, yeah, work call,” you fibbed. “Something urgent, couldn’t wait until I clocked in, I guess.”

“That’s inconsiderate.”

You chuckled, then looked to the aide. “Coffee, Nayoung?”

“If you’re making some, please.”

“Was just about to start a pot.”

Sitting down at the full table with your food and coffee in front of you, your mother to your left, Nayoung across from you, and Jisung to your right, you couldn’t help but smile, an odd sense of peace settling in your chest that hadn’t been there in quite some time.

That night, after your mother went to sleep, you traipsed into the kitchen, opening up the freezer. Turning to Jisung with the carton of ice cream in your hand, you said, “I don’t suppose you could help me with this?”

“Unfortunately not,” he chuckled.

“Figured I would ask,” you sighed, grabbing a spoon. “Come on, I’m thinking a movie?”

Curled up in the corner of the couch under a blanket, you had just opened the ice cream when you realized you left the remote on the coffee table out of your reach. Jisung was still standing, seeming unsure of where to sit.

“Can you pass me the remote?” You requested, stretching an arm out towards it but ultimately not reaching it.

“Oh, sure, sure.” He picked it up with ease just like you would, handing it off to you.

“Thanks.” You turned the TV on. He was still standing, so you gestured to the rest of the empty couch. “Sit, Jisung.”

“Right,” he mumbled, taking a seat next to you.

“You haven’t seriously been standing there like that this whole time, have you?”

“I… sit sometimes, yeah.”

“Good.” You patted his arm—or you tried to pat his arm, but instead your hand hit the back of the couch, a cold shiver running up your arm starting at your fingertips. You jerked your hand back in alarm, eyes going wide. “Shit! Sorry! Did I just like, smack your lung or something?”

Jisung laughed hard, his nose scrunching up and his hand flying up to cover his mouth as he giggled. “I’ve never thought of it like that. I don’t—I don’t think so, no.”

“It didn’t like, hurt, did it?”

“No. Feels a little weird, like… Ah, I don’t know how to describe it if you’re still corporeal. But it doesn’t hurt.”

“Okay good,” you breathed out. Looking down at the remote in your hand, you frowned thoughtfully. “How come you could grab this just fine, but I just go through you?”

“It used to happen with objects, too,” he informed you, reaching his hand out towards the coffee table. The ghost moved it down, his hand effortlessly gliding through the table just like yours had gone through him a few moments earlier. “I can control it now. But for some reason, people, I still can’t.”

“That sounds… lonely.”

Jisung shrugged, offering you a sort of sad smile. “Hey, I just spent a few decades not being seen or heard by anybody either. I’ll take what I can get.”

“Alright, what are we feeling?” You hummed as you pulled up the streaming service. “Ghost movie?”

He gave you a skeptical look. “You hate horror movies. You made Hyukjun turn all the lights in the house on when he put ‘Saw’ on.”

“Aw come on, no laugh? Not even a chuckle? Ironic scoff?” You wrinkled your nose at him.

“I’m laughing on the inside.”

“I was very brave for watching it all, though, wouldn’t you agree?” You grinned, grabbing a big spoonful of ice cream.

Jisung’s amused smile was apparent that time. “Very. If I had gold stars to give out, you’d get one.”

“Okay, what about ‘The Batman’? The one with Robert Pattinson, I literally don’t care about the other ones.”

“I’m not sure who that is, but sure.”

“Jisung, I’m about to change your afterlife. Possibly for the worse.”

From when you woke up to when you went to sleep, if you were at home, Jisung was usually around. You found that you didn’t mind his presence, if anything it was comforting, he made the house feel less empty than it would be with just you and your mother—and occasionally Nayoung. You had to catch yourself from talking to him when your mom or Nayoung were within earshot, or looking too obviously at where he was standing or sitting when they were in the room. Your evenings that you used to spend with Hyukjun were now spent with the ghost, watching shows or movies, showing him your favorite music, or just talking.

This morning, as your mom bathed herself and Nayoung waited for her in her bedroom, just in case, you had some extra time. Which you were glad for, as you knew you were moving slow, feeling more like a zombie than a functioning human being as you prepared breakfast. You yawned, covering your mouth with the back of your hand before gripping the tomato again and continuing your cuts.

“So what—”

“Y/N!” Jisung’s cry of warning came before you registered your tomato juice-slickened fingers slipping down the food and under the blade.

You looked down to see crimson red welling up and joining the tomato’s seeds at the same time you felt coldness on your hands. Jisung had tried to grab you, both too late, and in an ill-fated attempt even if he hadn’t been, as his hands went right through yours. You belatedly hissed as your sleep-slogged mind finally registered the pain, made extra by the sting of tomato juice in the cuts. Jisung swore under his breath as he grabbed a kitchen towel instead, wrapping it around your fingers and pressing hard as his other hand knocked the knife out of your uninjured fingers that were still lamely holding it. He reached over to turn the sink on, and pulled you over there by the grip he had on the towel. He couldn’t move your hand under the water once he took the towel off, though, staring at you pointedly.

“Right,” you mumbled, putting your fingers under the stream of the faucet to rinse the cuts clean of tomato guts. “Thanks, Jisung.”

“What—” He was cut off by the doorbell ringing.

You hurriedly ripped off a wad of paper towels to press to your cut, calling out to Nayoung, “I’ll get it!”

You knew Jisung was following you, not bothering to keep his sighs quiet as you peered through the peephole first—habit. A pit formed in your stomach when you recognized the man standing on your doorstep immediately.

Forcing your features into a pleasantly neutral expression, you opened the door just enough to greet your eldest stepbrother. “Good morning, Seohyuk.”

He fixed you with the same wide, dazzling grin that he always had, one that made you think he should be doing real estate instead of whatever his real job was—investment broker or something. He was in a suit, looking like he had stopped by on his way to work. You bit back the urge to look down at your own lounge clothes and hair still damp from your shower.

“Y/N! Good morning!” He was still beaming. “Looking beautiful as always.”

“Can I help you?” You asked politely, stepping onto the porch and forcing him to back up a step off the welcome mat, keeping one hand on the door handle.

He then seemed to have noticed your hand. “Are you alright? Did you hurt yourself?”

“Nicked myself with a knife in the kitchen just now. I’m fine,” you shrugged off his concerns. “Why are you here?”

“Oh my god! We should go in and get that washed out!” His hands fluttered over you with feigned worry, trying to usher you back into the house, put you stayed put, firmly shutting the front door behind you.

“I already washed it out,” you informed him flatly. “What do you want?”

The expressiveness immediately dropped off his face, and a cool, suave smirk overtook it as he sized you up. “Alright. Big girl can handle herself.”

“We’re both adults, Seohyuk, I’d appreciate it if you can act like one and get to your point.”

“Funny, my dad never seemed to think you were one,” he sneered. “You were the little princess he never got to have.”

“If this is all you came for, I’m going back inside,” you sighed, reaching for the handle again.

“I came to inspect the property.” He finally gave you his reason, holding his chin up. “As is my right, to make sure you’re not letting it go to ruins. So you have to let me in.”

Right, as if the house could’ve fallen to the wayside and become dilapidated in a week. You turned back to him, meeting his gaze head-on. It was easier like this, just one of them. Especially Seohyuk, he didn’t have a temper like his younger brothers, nor did his words cut as deep as his mom’s, he was just… a jerk. You could deal with a jerk.

“And, as I’m sure you saw when you continued reading the papers, you have to give me at least twenty-four hours’ notice before conducting any inspection of the property. So, I will see you in twenty-four hours.” You grabbed the door handle again. “Goodbye, Seohyuk.”

You didn’t wait for his response, rushing inside and slamming the door shut behind you. You locked it up as quick as you could, not wanting to take any chances.

“You’re not seriously going to let him come in here?!” Jisung blurted out, wide eyes focused on you. Of course he heard everything again.

As you opened your mouth to answer, Nayoung stepped out your mom’s room hesitantly, worried eyes focused on you. You turned to her instead, offering her a reassuring smile.

“Is there anything I can do, Y/N?” She asked quietly. You didn’t want to know how much she had heard.

“I’ll try to arrange it so the inspection is during your time. If she’s up for it tomorrow, could you take my mom on a walk? I need to be here, and she really shouldn’t be.”

The aide nodded quickly. “Of course, yes.”

Back in the kitchen, Jisung pulled the first aid kit down, and you applied your own bandages to the cuts on your fingers. You could feel his eyes boring holes into your hair as you bowed your head to pay extra close attention to your injuries.

“Y/N—”

“What did you want me to do, Jisung?” You hissed, not meaning for it to come out as venomous as it did. “They’re entitled to inspect the premises, it’s technically also kind of their house. I would’ve been in bigger shit if I told him no!”

The ghost was quiet, and when you finally looked up, you saw the hurt on his own face. You sighed, throwing away the bloody paper towels and bandage wrappers. Rolling out your shoulders and your neck to relieve the tension that had built up there, you loosely wrapped your arms around yourself.

“I’m sorry,” you said quietly. “I’m not mad at you, none of this is your fault. I’m just… stressed, and I slept like shit last night. I shouldn’t have taken it out on you.”

“It’s okay, Y/N,” he reassured you. “I just… hate the idea of you and that guy being in this house by yourselves, you know? I don’t trust him.”

“Oh, we won’t be alone.”

“I know I’ll be here, but that’s not the same as having someone who could actually do something.”

“I know you’ll be here, and that’s reassuring,” you replied, an amused smile playing at your lips. “But that’s not entirely what I meant.”

“Mr. Shin, thank you for coming on such short notice,” you greeted the attorney with a polite bow, welcoming him into the house.

Mr. Shin was an older man, around Hyukjun’s age, with salt and pepper hair, who hastily returned the bow. He wore a simple black suit, white dress shirt, and black tie, thick-framed glasses perched on his nose, and he held his black briefcase tightly to his side. He was exactly as you pictured him from speaking to him on the phone yesterday—when you picked up Hyukjun’s papers, you’d only dealt with his secretary.

“Of course, Ms. Y/L/N, it’s my duty,” he replied briskly. “Your stepbrother has not arrived yet, has he?”

“No, I’m expecting Seohyuk in a few minutes.”

“Good, good.”

“Would you like some coffee? Or tea?”

“No, thank you, I couldn’t intrude.” He shook his head fervently. “Your mother isn’t home, is she?”

“She stepped out for a walk just before you arrived. She doesn’t need to be here, does she?”

“No, no, not at all.” He seemed relieved at this news, if anything.

The doorbell rang then, and you smiled at the lawyer. “That should be him.”

Looking out the peephole first, it was in fact Seohyuk. You opened the door wider than yesterday, offering him a polite smile. “Good morning, Seohyuk.”

“Alright, Y/N, it’s been twenty-four hours, let me in.” He skipped pleasantries entirely, a glare already on his features.

“Of course.” You obliged gracefully, opening the door all the way for him.

He obviously hadn’t seen anybody else, as he faltered upon stepping inside and spotting Mr. Shin in the entryway. It was as if a magic spell had been cast on him, Seohyuk straightened up, adjusting his own tie and throwing on his charming smile, offering a hand out to him. “Kim Seohyuk, nice to meet you.”

Mr. Shin once again bowed formally, ignoring the hand in front of him. “Attorney Shin. I’m the lawyer in charge of your father’s estate, and I’ll be overseeing this inspection.”

“Great. Yeah, I’m glad Y/N remembered to call you like we talked about,” Seohyuk lied through his teeth, keeping his voice casual. “She’s been a little all over the place with taking care of her mom by herself since Dad passed, so I offered to, but she insisted she would do it since she only works part-time now.”

You clenched your jaw to not call him a piss-poor liar to his face. Or punch him in the face. His ‘she’s a mess, but we love her’ tone really irked you. Jisung had been lurking in the corner the whole time with his arms crossed over his chest and chose now to mimic choking Seohyuk—it took everything in you not to burst out laughing, but it successfully dissolved the anger that had been bubbling in your veins.

Mr. Shin either didn’t believe him or didn’t care, as he simply nodded and then looked to the both of you. “If there are no questions, we will begin in the kitchen.”

The inspection was uneventful—you passed with flying colors, of course—and at the end, you got to see both Mr. Shin and Seohyuk out at the front door simultaneously.

“I will be making note of this in the estate’s file, of course,” Mr. Shin said in closing. “So as to not intrude on Ms. Y/L/N and her mother too much, inspections are limited to once per year, as you know.”

“What?!” Seohyuk’s jaw dropped. “Th-That’s per person, right? Like, if my brothers wanted an inspection—”

“I’m afraid not, Mr. Kim. One inspection of the property per year. Unless good cause is shown.”

“Good cause? Like what?”

“If there is some damage externally that would lead you to believe Ms. Y/L/N has caused similar damage internally, or if she posted pictures to her social media of the inside that showed some damage. Something like that.”

You had to cover your mouth to keep from laughing in Seohyuk’s face as his jaw gaped open like a dead fish. After composing yourself, you gave the both of them a cheerful wave. “So I guess I’ll see you two next year.”

“And hopefully not any sooner!” Mr. Shin confirmed, bowing deeply once more.

You closed the door with a satisfying click. Turning back around to Jisung, you finally burst into laughter with him. He pumped his fist victoriously. “Gone until next year!”

Holding your hand up, you cheered, “Whoo! Come on, ghost five!”

Jisung whooshed his hand through yours, and the chill zipping up your arm only served to make you more excited. Finally, a win in all this.

3:16 a.m.

You glared at your bedside clock like it was doing this to you personally. Rolling onto your other side, you let out a disgruntled sigh. No matter how comfortable you were, how exhausted your bones and your brain were, you couldn’t fucking sleep. Sitting up, you threw your covers off of you and padded out of your room.

In the kitchen, you drank a glass of water, but couldn’t bring yourself to go back upstairs to your room. You wandered into the living room, plopping into your usual corner of the couch and pulling your knees to your chest. Turning your phone on, you once again glared at the time like it was invented to hurt you in particular.

3:20 a.m.

You could be doing something better right now, reading a book, laying very still with your eyes closed, meditating, anything but scrolling on your phone.

3:49 a.m.

Had you ever gotten a good night’s sleep in your life? You couldn’t remember in that moment. Your eyes stung looking at the screen, they stung when you closed them, but you blinked it away.

4:17 a.m.

“Y/N?” Jisung stepped into the living room. “Why are you still up?”

“Mm, Jisung, hey,” you greeted him dully, setting your phone aside on the arm of the couch. “I’m surprised it took you this long to find me.”

“I figured you were just getting a glass of water or something. I didn’t want to bother you. But you’ve been out here for almost an hour now.”

You sighed, resting your chin on your knees. “Can’t sleep.”

“Is something wrong?”

“I slept for a couple hours, but then I woke up and I just... couldn’t go back to sleep,” you sighed.

“Staring at that screen isn’t going to help you get back to sleep.” He frowned.

That made you chuckle. “And how do you know that?”

“Your mom used to get on your stepdad about using screens too close to bedtime,” he confessed. “Something about the light keeping your brain awake.”

You smiled as you could imagine that perfectly. “Yeah, that sounds like her.”

“Can I do anything to help? Do you want like, hot chocolate? Or…” He trailed off as he was clearly wracking his brain for another option.

“You want to keep me off my phone?”

He nodded.

You stood up, your fingers tapping over the spines on the bookcases before you grabbed one. You offered it out to Jisung. “Read to me.”

Jisung gently took the book from you, then nodded to the couch. “Sure. Lay down.”

“I’m not sleeping on the couch,” you snorted, taking your phone back off the arm and heading for the stairs. Tilting your head indicatively, you said, “Come on, you get to go to the second floor.”

His footsteps were quiet behind you, squeaking some of the same steps that you did as he followed you up the stairs. You opened the door to your bedroom, stepping in first and holding it open to gesture him in as he had stopped uncertainly by the threshold. Closing the door behind him, you then sat down on your bed again.

“Here.” You patted the empty side of the bed for him.

Jisung shuffled over, sitting up against the headboard with his long legs stretched out on top of your sheets. With amusement, you noted that he was no longer wearing his dark shoes, only black socks. You laid back down under your covers again, pulling your blankets up to your chin.

He clicked the lamp on his side of the bed on, and seemed to have read the title for the first time then. “Poems?”

“My mom used to read to me every night, way past the normal age that you stop doing that stuff I’m pretty sure. And whenever I got nightmares, or couldn’t sleep, I’d climb into her bed. It didn’t matter if I woke her up at two in the morning, she’d grab one of the five or ten books that were always on her nightstand and start reading to me until I fell asleep,” you explained, readjusting your pillow under your head. “That was one of my favorites. I figured it was worth a shot.”

Jisung opened the book to the first poem and began reading. His voice was soft and steady, deep and soothing. Despite your want to keep watching him and the focused look on his face as he read, his dark eyes following the words on the page, your own eventually fluttered shut against your will.

When you woke up, Jisung was no longer in your room. The book was resting on the nightstand on that side of the bed, and the lamp was off. Upon entering the kitchen, you saw Jisung standing at the humming microwave. He perked up when you walked in, despite the confused look on your face.

“Good morning!” He said brightly, then gestured to the microwave. “I’m making you hot chocolate. I heard the shower.”

“And if my mother had walked in and saw the hot chocolate making itself?” You asked dryly, still rubbing sleep out of your eyes. Your shower didn’t do much to wake you up this morning.

Jisung visually deflated, looking around guiltily. “Oh. Right…”

“It’s sweet, Jisung, thank you,” you added with a smile, watching his shoulders relax. “You’re very sweet. I just don’t want to give my mom a heart attack.”

“Of course.” He was smiling again too. “Sorry.”

Sitting halfway down the stairs with Jisung, you stared blankly at the front door. Dinner had been difficult for your mom tonight, and with no Nayoung at that meal, you had to do it all on your own. She was asleep now, and you held your head in your hands. Jisung was quietly sitting beside you, resting his elbows on his knees as his laced and unlaced his fingers in front of him. This was probably one of the best parts about having Jisung around. Despite being practically omnipresent at this point, if you didn’t want to talk, he didn’t talk. If you wanted to chat, he would talk to you about anything, but if you wanted utter silence, he would let you sit in utter silence—he just wouldn’t let you do it alone.

You felt nearly suffocated by the house in that moment, but you couldn’t leave your mom alone.

“Can you go outside?” You lifted your head to ask Jisung.

“Not very far,” he answered as if you were asking any other piece of trivia about him and his predicament.

“The porch swing?”

“Yes, I can go there.”

“Do you want to? Now? With me?”

He chuckled softly. “When have I ever told you no?”

It was a warm night, which you were glad for as you were only in your sleep shorts and a t-shirt as you sat on the wooden porch swing with Jisung. Holding the chain next to your head with one hand, you peered out at the nighttime around you, glad to be out of those walls finally.

“Pretty moon,” you commented, looking up at the silver half-moon above you.

“Mhm,” Jisung hummed his agreement.

“And stars,” you added, taking in the twinkling dots all around the moon.

“Mhm.”

“Pretty stars,” you clarified.

“Mhm.”

Looking at Jisung out of the corner of your eye, you kept the same tone of voice as you said, “Pretty garbage can.”

“Mhm.”

“Jisung?”

“Mhm?”

“You’re not listening to me.”

“Huh?”

“What are you thinking about?”

“Uhm… nothing.” He coughed. “Pretty moon.”

“Mhm.” You hummed back in the same sing-songy tone that he had. “I wish I could touch you.”

“Huh?” He spluttered out.

“Just feels like a nice moment to rest my head in your lap, don’t you think?” You looked over at him, meeting his dark eyes.

He looked down at his legs, then around him in what you would almost call an attempt to avoid your gaze. “Well… we could put one of the pillows on the swing where my lap is, and you can rest your head there and pretend it’s me.”

“That won’t be uncomfortable for you?”

“No, I’ll be fine,” he promised. “Just make sure it’s not too far over here, I don’t want to make you cold.”

After you settled onto your back with your head on a pillow, right on the edge of where Jisung’s thigh started, you could see Jisung and the porch roof directly above you. The corner of his mouth twitched as he looked down at you, and you smiled back up at him.

“Can you push the porch swing?” You requested.

“Sure,” he agreed, and you felt the swing gently push off backwards then sail forward.

You rolled your head to the side to be able to look at the moon again.

“Can I ask…” You poked your tongue on the inside of your cheek. “How did you die? If you want to tell me, you don’t have to.”

Jisung sighed. “I don’t know. I went to sleep one night and when I woke up, I wasn’t in my body anymore.”

You felt your eyes widen involuntarily. “Seriously? You weren’t sick or anything?”

“I felt fine,” he confirmed. “I didn’t even realize until I couldn’t grab the handle to open my bedroom door and leave. My hand just went through it. When I turned back around to my bed, I saw myself lying there. I thought I was still dreaming.”

“God... I’m sorry, Jisung.”

He shrugged, his fingers messing with the edges of the pillow that your head was on. “It could’ve been worse. It didn’t hurt, I wasn’t dreading the end or anything.”

You reached for his face, despite knowing that it wouldn’t work, holding your hand up as if you were cupping his cheek, hovering right on the edge of where your skin passed through each other. “Does that... I always feel cold when I try to touch you. Is this warm? To you?”

“I never notice that I’m cold until I touch you.” He hesitantly put his hand over yours. “Like when you’ve been outside during winter for so long that you don’t even feel temperature anymore. And then you step inside again and you can suddenly feel just how cold you are because everything else is so warm.”

“Is it… I don’t know, nice?”

“It’s… a lot,” he admitted. “It’s not bad, but I can never warm up.”

“Oh.” You took your hand back, resting it on your stomach.

“It’s late,” he said quietly. “Are you tired?”

“No, but I should probably head to bed.” You sat up reluctantly.

Only a few minutes after saying your goodnights, you were at the bottom of the stairs again, searching for Jisung. You found him in the living room.

“Can you read to me?” You asked, fidgeting with the sleeves of your shirt.

He chose a book off the shelves and followed you upstairs wordlessly. Back under your covers again, you listened to the sound of his fingers running over the edges of the pages, folding back the cover of the book before he started reading. It wasn’t the same book of poems as last time, instead you fondly recognized it as one of your favorite books from when you started reading novels as a kid, about a young girl who went on a grand fantasy adventure with all sorts of magical creatures. In the back of your mind, you thought to yourself that you were a little disappointed that you’d be asleep before the end, when she finally came home to her mother in the real world. That had always been your favorite part.

“Do cameras work on you?” You asked Jisung as you kneeled by one of the flowerbeds at the front of the house. It was early in the morning, and you made sure to keep one headphone in your ear so that any passerby who did happen by on morning walks or jogs would hopefully just think that you were on a phone call.

“Don’t know,” he shrugged, sitting on the porch swing. “I think I would’ve found out if I was in the background of any Kim family photos over the years.”

Curious, you took out your phone, opening up the camera and pointing it at him. The sun hadn’t fully risen yet, but in the low light you could see the porch swing just fine, seemingly rocking along on its own on your screen. Taking just one picture, you paused your weeding to look at it from your camera roll. Again, you definitely couldn’t see Jisung sitting on the porch swing like you could with your own two eyes, but there was something going on in the picture this time. The air seemed to shimmer and distort in the vague shape of a person sitting in the photo, exactly where he was in real life. You zoomed in on the fuzzy edges that nearly turned into shadow, squinting as you tried to make out whether the distortion was in the image file itself or part of Jisung somehow.

“Well?” Jisung questioned, tilting his head.

“I got... something.” You stood up, walking over to show him. “It’s not what I see when I look at you. I see, like, a person.”

“Oh.” His face fell as he looked over the photo of the strange figure.

“I think it’s cool,” you tried to cheer him up. “Very mysterious, you know.”

He gave you a half-hearted smile. “Thanks, Y/N.”

“I get why you’re bummed, though. It’s probably been a while since you’ve seen yourself, right? I never see your shadow or your reflection. Can you?”

“No, I can’t.” He shook his head. “It’s… I have my dad’s nose, and my mom’s smile. I just thought that even if I couldn’t see them anymore, it’d be nice to see the parts of them that are in me.”

You blinked back the tears that were pricking at your eyes. “I know what you mean. My dad’s mom was alive when I was younger, and she always said I looked just like him. I used to sit on my bathroom counter in front of the mirror with an old picture of him from when he was a kid for hours to try to see it too.”

“Do you look like him?” He asked quietly.

“Don’t you see it? I look just like my mom,” you laughed and shook your head.

Jisung chuckled softly, rubbing the back of his neck. “Yeah, I know. I wasn’t going to spoil your connection to your dad for you.”

“It makes me happy to know that my grandmother saw my dad when she looked at me anyway.” You permanently deleted the photo you’d taken of Jisung. “I’m sure you have something else from your parents that you don’t need a mirror for, though. Like, for me, when I laugh really, really hard, I start wheezing—it’s honestly an awful sound—and clutch my sides and stomp my left foot. My dad would laugh with his whole body like that too. I didn’t even know until my mom pointed it out a few years ago out of the blue. I sneeze like Hyukjun now, too. Don’t even know how I picked that up in such a short time. I was dusting the other day and when I sneezed, I realized it sounded just like him.”

“Really?” He laughed, a real one this time.

“Yeah,” you smiled fondly at the memory. “I’m sure you’ve got lots of pieces of your family in you other than your nose and your eyes, Jisung.”

The ghost held your gaze, his dark eyes that you tried to imagine belonging to some ambiguous father of his that you could never recall, smiling up at you with a smile that matched a memory of his mother you didn’t have. Even if you would never know them, you remembered them in that moment for him.

You chewed on your bottom lip as you leafed through the large tome of local genealogies in front of you. At first you were worried that Mr. Shin would have questions for you as to why you wanted information on the deed of the house, primarily who had owned it before your stepdad bought it. But instead, he simply had his paralegal fetch the information from the previous title search they’d done when drafting the documents for Hyukjun. You took the list of names with you to the local library, where they kept an archive of all sorts of birth, death, and marriage records, including genealogies of local families.

Kim Hyukjun had purchased the home from a husband and wife, the Parks, decades before you were even born. The Parks were the first owners, and despite neither of their names being Jisung, you figured he must be related to them in some way to have lived there before Hyukjun bought it; their son, a nephew, grandson, something.

You finally found a married couple whose names matched, and eagerly read on for their children. They had one child, a son, Park Jisung—deceased.

“Found you,” you whispered to yourself, tapping the name in the book. Taking a picture of all the relevant information, you shut the book and returned it to its place before taking down another one, death certificates.

Finally landing on Jisung’s, you read with bated breath and a morbid curiosity. It started with all the normal stuff—name, age, date of birth, address—and you skimmed on, trying to find the thing that you really wanted to know. But as you got to the end, and desperately re-read again from the beginning, more carefully this time, you realized there was no cause of death listed. They must not have requested an autopsy. As your chest deflated, you shook your head at yourself. What would knowing even change now? You took a quick note of the cemetery listed before shutting the book.

The information—or lack thereof—that you’d gotten from the library was still on your mind when you returned to the house. Nayoung was sitting at the kitchen table, and looked up from her phone when you came in.

“Ah, Y/N, how were your errands?” She asked, clearly noticing your empty hands.

“Fine,” you gave a non-committal answer. “Where’s my mom?”

“She’s taking a nap in her room. She’s been asleep for about fifteen minutes or so.”

“Good.” You glanced at the time on the stove. “You can head out for the day. Thank you, Nayoung.”

“I’ll see you all tomorrow, then.” She stood up and flashed you one more bright smile before showing herself out.

A few moments later, you heard the sound of the front door locking after her, then Jisung entered the room from that direction. He stopped next to you.

“So where’d you go today?” He asked curiously. “You didn’t pick anything up…”

You sighed, taking a seat at the kitchen table. “Library. They didn’t have what I needed.”

“What book were you looking for?”

You grimaced at yourself, picking at your nails uncomfortably as you braced yourself to tell the truth. “I wasn’t checking out a book. I was… I was looking up stuff in the archives, about you.”

Jisung’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. “Me?”

“I’m sorry, I was nosy and shouldn’t have done that without talking to you first,” you apologized. “I’m sorry.”

“Y/N, you’ve got a ghost living in your house,” he reminded you frankly. “Normal personal boundaries aren’t really applicable here.”

“I… guess that’s one way to look at it.”

“And I mean, all you did was look in the archives, right?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s fine.” Jisung sat in his chair next to yours, leaning forward towards you eagerly. “What did you find out?”

You chewed your lip nervously. “Not much. I know your full name is Park Jisung. Your parents didn’t have an autopsy done, so we still don’t know why you… passed. I know where they buried… you, though.”

He kept looking at you expectantly, waiting for you to say more. But that was all you had. When he realized that you were done, his face fell, and he let out a breath, sitting back in his chair.

“Oh.” He nodded slowly.

“I’m sorry, Jisung.” You instinctively reached for his hand that was resting on the table. You did a double-take when your hand didn’t impact with the wooden tabletop under him, though, but with him.

Jisung’s hand was cool to the touch, but solid, yours didn’t just slip right through it like usual. You stared down at your hands as you readjusted your grip in disbelief.

Your ghost was similarly bewildered, eyes locked on your hands as he squeezed yours back. “Are you…”

“Yeah, I can actually touch you!” You laughed in amazement.

He looked up from your hand to your eyes, lifting his other hand towards your face. “Can I…?”

You nodded, not trusting yourself to speak, or even breathe, in that moment.

Jisung’s fingertips gently caressed your cheek, his eyes filled with wonder as he murmured, “You’re so warm…”

“Are you… you know, cold? Is it like before?”

“No, it’s-it’s nice,” he said, clasping your hand with both of his now. “Thank you. For letting me…”

“Oh, sure, yeah,” you cleared your throat awkwardly, looking around the kitchen.

“It’s funny, it’s one of those things you take for granted until you can’t do it anymore.”

“What?”

“Touch people.” He squeezed your hand softly. “I used to complain when my mom would kiss me, or my friends would give me hugs. Now… I can’t believe I’m holding someone’s hand again.”

You patted his arm, at a loss for words, but hoping that you could give him some kind of comfort in the moment. It sounded like a heartbreakingly lonely existence. You couldn’t imagine what you would do if you could never hug your mom again, or even bump into strangers on the train—small things that reminded you that you were real, that you took up space.

You felt your heart truly shatter when Jisung leaned over, pressing his forehead to your linked hands, and you saw his shoulders shake with quiet sobs.

“Oh, Jisung,” you whispered, scooting your chair closer to gently stroke his dark hair. “It’s okay…”

Tonight had been rough. This was the third night in a row that you had gone in circles trying to calm your mother down from a frightened state, afraid that every creak of the house settling, gust of the air conditioning rustling a curtain, or wind blowing a tree branch outside was a ghost. Despite being aware that your house was actually inhabited by a ghost, you knew it wasn’t Jisung doing any of those things.

You had finally gotten her back to sleep at almost one in the morning, and shut her bedroom door behind you with a sigh. Shuffling into the kitchen, you stopped in the middle of the room, rubbing a hand over your face as you just stared blankly at the countertop. You couldn’t even remember what you had come in here for.

“Hey,” Jisung called for your attention softly, his quiet footsteps approaching from behind you. “Did you want water? Hot chocolate?”

“Ugh, I don’t even know,” you groaned, turning around and burying your face in his shoulder. “I’m so fucking tired, Jisung.”

“Then let’s get you to bed,” he suggested, trying to usher you out of the kitchen, but you didn’t budge.

Looking up at him, you sniffled, “This is the third night this has happened… I don’t know if I can… What if I can’t—What if—What am I—What if I can’t do it by myself? What if I can’t take care of her like she needs on my own? She’s only going to get worse and I’m… Oh God, I’m tired.”

Tears streamed down your cheeks now as you felt an exhaustion from deep within. You felt it in every fiber of your being, in your bones, deep in your chest. You couldn’t remember a time when you didn’t feel worn out like this.

Jisung’s eyes widened as his hands frantically fluttered over your arms and shoulders, clearly unsure of where to settle as he went to try to comfort you. “Ah, Y/N, oh, no. Oh, God, I’m so sorry that you feel so tired. You’re doing so good.” He squeezed your shoulders. “You’re not alone. I know it can feel like that, but you’ve got Nayoung, too. Your stepdad left a fund to pay for your mom’s care, right? You can use that to have Nayoung here more if you need her to, can’t you? I’ve heard her ask if you want to adjust her schedule…”

“Yeah, she has,” you nodded, the admission only making you cry harder. “I just—I don’t want to think about needing more help, about needing Nayoung more, because that really means that she’s getting worse. But I can’t—She needs more than me.”

“I’m so sorry, Y/N,” Jisung said, his own eyes shining in the dim light. “I wish I could make everything better for you.”

You gave him a shaky smile, the best you could muster in the moment, patting one of his hands that were still holding you by the shoulders. “I know. Thank you, just having you here to listen to me means a lot.”

He wiped at your tears with his thumbs, his hands shaking slightly as he gently cradled your face. “Let me help you however I can—you know, without freaking your mom out. You can take care of your mom and I’ll take care of you. Please.”

It was all you could do to nod your head in his hands. He let out a breath of relief.

“Come on, let’s get you back to bed.” He wrapped an arm around your shoulders, guiding you out of the kitchen successfully this time.

At the top of the stairs, you stopped and grabbed his hand, pleading, “Don’t leave me, Jisung.”

He chuckled lightly, lacing his fingers with yours. “Where could I even go? I’m stuck here.”

“I mean, you always leave after I fall asleep,” you explained. “Don’t go this time.”

He nodded, using the index finger of the hand that was holding yours to trace an X over his heart, pulling your hand along with it. “I won’t leave you.”

You fell asleep curled up under your covers, Jisung reading a book of short stories to you, one of his hands resting on your head, fingers gently carding through your hair—a silent reminder of his promise that he would still be there in the morning.

When you woke up, you felt terrible. Not only because of how poorly you had slept lately, but all of your joints and muscles ached, your sinuses felt like they were stuffed up with concrete, your throat was scratchy and sore, and it felt like someone had turned the thermostat up to a million degrees. You winced as you rolled over and threw the covers off of you, already feeling that your sheets and clothes were damp with sweat. Groaning and clutching your head, you involuntarily coughed, having to prop yourself up on your elbow to avoid choking on your own mucus. Gross.

“You’re sick,” Jisung said from the other side of the bed, his voice sympathetic. You’d forgotten that he was even there, actually.

Sitting up, you tried to look as normal as possible, shaking your head. “No, just had something in my throat.”

You winced at the sound of your own voice; it sounded almost as bad as you felt.

“Y/N, you sound awful,” he pointed out. “And you were tossing and turning all night.”

“I’m fine—”

“Y/N.” He was giving you what could only be called a stern pout. “We just talked about this last night.”

You opened your mouth to argue again, but faltered at the intensity of his gaze. Letting the tension fall from your shoulders, you grabbed your phone off your nightstand. “I’ll see if Nayoung or another aide can stay all day.”

Jisung finally smiled at that, standing up and moving to leave the room. “I’ll make you breakfast before your mom wakes up.”

You watched him walk to your door, and instead of grabbing the handle to open it, walked right through it. That must be why you were never woken by the sound of the door when he would leave in the middle of the night before.

Once Nayoung arrived, you hauled yourself out of bed and to the doctor’s office. As soon as you got back, you trudged right back upstairs. From the living room, you could hear the sounds of your mother and the aide chatting. In your room, you shrugged off your jacket and had just grabbed the hem of your shirt when Jisung appeared through the door.

“So what did—”

“Ah!” You yelped, yanking your shirt back down and whirling around to stare at him incredulously.

“Sorry! Sorry!” Jisung sputtered out, covering his eyes.

“Knock! I know you can!” You yelled, gesturing at the door with exasperation. “What is wrong with you?!”

“I didn’t think—I’m sorry!” He fully backed up and out of your room through a solid wall, still covering his eyes.

A few moments later, you heard soft footsteps accompanied by creaks on the stairs. Nayoung’s voice came next, “Y/N? Are you okay?”

“Oh, yeah, Nayoung, I’m fine,” you called back. “Just stubbed my toe getting dressed.”

“Alright…” She didn’t sound like she believed you, but apparently wasn’t going to press the issue. “I have another visit to make today, so another aide from the service will be here in the afternoon to take over from me. Her name is Hyesoo.”

“Okay, thanks for letting me know.”

“I’ll say goodbye when I leave.”

“Thanks.”

You heard her retreat down the stairs, and finished getting changed in peace. Sitting down on your bed, you then heard a soft knock at your bedroom door.

“Come in,” you replied, crossing your arms over your chest.

Jisung stepped through the door, averting his eyes to his feet guiltily. “Sorry...”

“Forget about it, Jisung,” you sighed, flopping all the way under your covers. “I’m too sick to be mad at you.”

“What did the doctor say?” He asked, perching on the edge of your bed.

“It’s just a cold, but he said that all the stress I’m under isn’t helping,” you huffed, fluffing up your pillow under your head. “He gave me some meds, they’re in my bag.”

Jisung picked up your tote bag from where you’d dropped it by your nightstand, handing it to you. “I’ll get you some water to take them with.”

After he’d left the room, you set two of the bottles on your nightstand, and tucked the third in the drawer. Your ghost came back soon with a glass of water, and you eyed him suspiciously as he gave it to you.

“Nobody saw the floating glass of water?” You questioned, sitting up to be able to properly take a sip.

“Your mom and Nayoung were in the backyard,” he confirmed, watching you knock back the pills. “Are you hungry?”

You shook your head, shuffling back under the covers. “Sleepy. That doctor’s visit took a lot out of me.”

“Take a nap.”

“Will you wake me up before Nayoung goes?”

“Sure. But sleep right now.”

You were faintly aware of Jisung’s cool hand resting on your head as you let yourself get swept away by sleep.

Blinking your eyes open, you were greeted by the inky blackness of your ghost’s eyes first. Jisung was laying on top of the covers on the other half of your bed, cheek resting on his hand as he gazed at you. You rubbed the sleep out of your eyes as you rolled onto your back, suddenly feeling much warmer under the intensity of his eyes.

“The other aide just arrived, Nayoung is getting ready to leave,” he informed you quietly.

“Mm,” you grunted in acknowledgment. “Thanks.”

“How are you feeling?”

“Still feel like shit,” you admitted. “The doctor did say the meds wouldn’t start working until the second or third dose.”

You heard footsteps coming up the stairs, and both you and Jisung went quiet. There was a soft knock at your door.

“Y/N?” Nayoung said your name quietly.

“Yes, Nayoung?” You replied.

“I’m heading out. Hyesoo and your mom are in the living room. There’s an extra serving of lunch, would you like me to bring it up for you?”

You were hungry now, and against your instincts, agreed, “If you don’t mind.”

“Of course not. I’ll warm it up for you, give me a few minutes.”

You stared up at the ceiling bitterly, trying to swallow down the uncomfortable, shameful bile rising up in your body. You don’t have to do everything yourself, you can accept people’s kindness, you can let people help you. This was exactly what you were getting upset with Hyukjun for doing, putting others before himself at the detriment of his own health. If you didn’t take care of yourself, your mom wouldn’t have any family left to take care of her—only Hyukjun’s fund to pay for more aides.

“Y/N, I’m setting it down outside your room,” Nayoung’s voice was back outside your door, startling you. You hadn’t even heard the stairs this time. “I made you some tea, too. I hope you feel better. See you tomorrow.”

You were out of your bed and opening the door before Jisung could. Nayoung was still on the top step, and looked over her shoulder, clearly a little startled. You looked down at the plate of food and steaming mug of tea, recognizing it as Hyukjun’s favorite coffee cup. Tears suddenly filled your eyes, but you didn’t move to hug her, knowing that she’d be visiting more elderly and possibly immunocompromised patients today. Instead, you stayed put in the doorway, giving her a small smile.

“Thank you, Nayoung.” You couldn’t string together any more words than that, but she seemed to get it anyway.

She beamed back at you, her young features holding a gentle understanding and wisdom. “You’re welcome. Rest well, Y/N.”

After getting ready for sleep that evening, you were sitting with your feet hanging over the side of the bed, taking your next doses of medications. You took the two on the nightstand, then pulled open the drawer to fish out the one that you had put away earlier. The nap you’d taken earlier had thrown off your sleeping pattern, you weren’t near tired enough despite the time.

“Y/N?” Jisung lightly touched your shoulder. “Everything okay?”

You were staring at the orange pill bottle in your hands, gnawing on your bottom lip. “What if I can’t see you?”

“What?”

“He gave me stuff to help me sleep.” You looked up from the bottle to your ghost. “But what if I take it and I can’t see you anymore?”

Jisung sat down next to you, shoulder-to-shoulder, and took the bottle from you. He turned it over in his hands as he spoke, “You could see me before you started having problems sleeping, right?”

You thought about this for a moment, then slowly nodded, relieved.

“And even if you took these and couldn’t see me anymore for some reason—I would rather you be well than see me,” he said, pushing the bottle back into your hand and wrapping your fingers around it. He held your eye contact sincerely. “Okay?”

You swallowed the lump in your throat and nodded. “Okay…”

Jisung watched silently as you opened the bottle, shook one out into your palm, closed the bottle back up, and knocked the tablet back with some water. He stood up to move to his usual spot against the headboard, grabbing the book that was sitting on the nightstand. You crawled under the covers, watching him open the book to where he left off.

“Jisung?”

“Yes?” He turned his gaze from the pages to you.

“Will you—” You sniffled, rubbing at one of your eyes as you yawned. “Will you just lay with me?”

“Oh. Sure.” He closed the book back up and set it aside, then laid down on top of the covers facing you. “Do you want the lamp off?”

“Mhm… please…”

He reached behind him to turn the light off, plunging the room into darkness. You could barely make out the outline of him from a strip of moonlight filtering in from a gap between the curtains. Your eyes were getting heavier, and you desperately fought to keep them open, just in case this was the last time you could see him.

“Goodnight, Y/N,” Jisung murmured. He crossed his finger over his heart. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Goodnight, Jisung,” you managed to mumble back as your eyes fluttered shut.

When you woke up, you were face-to-face with Jisung, his eyes shut this time, eyelashes resting delicately on his cheeks. You would’ve almost felt bad for what you were about to do, but you didn’t think that ghosts actually needed sleep, so you threw your arms around his neck, burying your face in his chest.

“Y/N?!” Jisung squeaked, freezing up under you. “What’s—”

“I can see you!” You cheered victoriously, your voice muffled by his shirt.

He let out a sigh of relief, one of his hands tentatively patting your back. “And a good morning to you, too.”

It was a couple weeks later, and you were all better. Just in time for winter, too. You let out a huff as you heaved your groceries up the porch steps, your breath coming out as a puff in the cold air. Unlocking the front door, you grinned when it was immediately opened for you, Jisung on the other side. He closed it behind you, taking your hat off you and brushing stray snowflakes from your hair, his brow furrowed in concentration. You mouthed a ‘thank you’ to him, well aware of the sounds of your mother and her new evening aide, Hyesoo, in the kitchen already. He just smiled and murmured “You’re welcome” back.

“Oh, Y/N, back already, dear?” Hyesoo greeted you brightly as you walked into the kitchen. The two of them were playing cards at the kitchen table. Hyesoo was an older woman, closer to your mom and Hyukjun in age, but insisted on you calling her by her first name nevertheless.

“Yep, just had one stop to make today!” You informed them, putting your bags onto the kitchen counters. “I think the snow kept everyone away, too.”

“It was snowing?” Your mom questioned, the disapproval clear in her tone. “You didn’t walk all the way there, did you?”

“I wore all my layers, Mom, promise,” you chuckled, beginning to unpack the groceries. “And my snow boots!”

“I’ll put those away,” Hyesoo insisted, setting her cards down and standing up. “You go warm up, we’ve got a fire going in the living room.”

“Well, I do have some work to get done before dinner...” You said sheepishly. “Thanks, Hyesoo!”

You took the stairs two at a time up to your room to get your laptop, then ran back down to sit in front of the fire with it. Opening up your email first, you were unsurprised when a familiar figure sat down beside you, holding his hands out towards the flames. You hummed to yourself as you answered a couple emails, marking some under your to-do list to deal with later, getting the easier ones out of the way first.

“Ugh, not him again,” Jisung complained from next to you, having been reading them over your shoulder. “Decline!”

You elbowed him with an eyeroll, whispering under your breath, “He’s my boss, I can’t decline a meeting with him.”

“He’s not technically your boss.”

“Okay, supervisor. Still, I can’t decline a meeting with him.”

“They’re never about anything important.”

“Yeah, that’s every meeting ever.”

“He’s just doing it to talk to you. It’s an abuse of power.”

“We’re working on a project together and he’s actually in the office and I’m not. He gives me updates. It’s helpful.”

Jisung made a ‘hrrmph’ sound, pulling his knees to his chest as he opted to stare into the fire instead. You looked at him out of the corner of your eye, mild amusement on your features.

“What? Are you jealous or something?” You teased. “He’s like, married with three kids. Have I not mentioned that? He just doesn’t know how to use computers so he makes everything a video call meeting.”

“Oh.”

“Jealous, jealous...” You said in a sing-song voice. “I already spend almost 24/7 with you, what more could you want?”

You had meant it to be rhetorical, but you swore Jisung’s mouth opened, about to answer, when Hyesoo walked in.

“Hey, I’m going to start on dinner, unless you had something planned?” She pointed to the kitchen over her shoulder.

“No, no, go for it,” you waved her off. “I have to take a call anyway. If I’m late, start without me.”

“Weren’t you just on one?”

So you hadn’t been as quiet as you’d hoped.

“Yeah, different department,” you fibbed quickly, getting to your feet and bringing your laptop with you.

You could hear the soft footfalls of Jisung following you, and at the top of the stairs, you turned around to put a hand on his chest, satisfied that Hyesoo wouldn’t be able to see you here. Jisung pouted, looking down at the hand you had on his chest.

“Work call,” you whispered, gently pushing him back. “Wait downstairs. Please.”

He nodded, not looking very happy about it, but descended the stairs anyway. It’s not like there was anything that happened on your work calls that Jisung couldn’t hear, but you didn’t want to risk a floating object in the background, you looking over at Jisung, or otherwise reacting to him in any way during one of your work calls. It was just easier to concentrate without him there.

The call with your supervisor once again really could’ve been an email, but you didn’t mind catching up with him after you got through the two or three minutes of real work conversation that you had. He was a younger guy, and had been one of the people that you were friendlier with when you actually worked in the office full-time. He filled you in on how his three kids were doing, as well as his wife, who you would always chat with at office social events. He asked about how your mom was doing, and you did inform him that she needed aides in two shifts now, to which he reminded you that if you needed to adjust your schedule or workload, that could be discussed. You appreciated that, but if your workload was any lighter, you wouldn’t be employed, and you needed money. The fund from Hyukjun paid for your mother’s medical care, but you still needed to cover the rest of your living expenses like food, utility bills, incidentals, and yourself.

“And you know those staff dinners that get put on your calendar aren’t just to say we invited everyone,” your supervisor added. “You really are wanted there. We know it’s difficult with your mom, but everyone still talks about you.”

You smiled to yourself. “Thanks. Her evening aide is going to be staying the night a few days a week now, so I might be able to make it out one of these days.”

“No pressure, Y/N. Just wanted to let you know,” he leaned back in his own office chair, and seemed to take a glance at the time for the first time in a while. “Sorry, I’ve kept you for a while.”

“It’s fine, Mr. Choi,” you reassured him. “I always enjoy our chats. Give your family my best, will you?”

“Oh! I’m late for dinner!” He suddenly shot up straight in his chair. “Thanks, Y/N. I’ll talk to you soon!”

“Goodbye, Mr. Choi,” you chuckled, hanging up the call.

Closing your laptop, you went back downstairs to the kitchen to see your mom sat at the table, reading a book. Jisung was sitting in his chair across from her, and turned around expectantly at the sound of your feet. You poked your head into the kitchen to check on Hyesoo, who looked like she was still cooking.

“Hi, Mom,” you announced your presence to your mother, coming around the table to her seat.

She looked up at you with a smile, her eyes clearly focusing on you. You wrapped your arms around her shoulders from behind, resting your cheek on the top of her head. She held onto your arms with one of her hands, squeezing gently.

“What are you reading?” You asked, trying to glean any information from the pages that were opened in front of you.

“Oh, this was Hyukjun’s favorite book,” she explained, closing it on her finger to let you see the cover. “I was thinking about him today…”

“I think I read that in a Lit class I took in undergrad,” you commented. “I never knew it was his favorite.”

“Funny enough, it was your father’s favorite too.”

“Here I spent my whole life thinking ‘Goodnight, Moon’ was Dad’s favorite book,” you snickered, referencing the answer he had given you when you were a kid, one of the many children’s books you had at the time.

“Well, he didn’t really want to tell you about this sort of book when you were that little, I think.”

“Can you let me know when you’re done with that book?” You requested. “I think I’d like to reread it.”

“Of course.”

Hyesoo came into the dining area then with three plates, and you let your mom go to take your seat. Your mother set her book aside as dinner was set in front of her.

“Did you look at the mail today, Y/N?” Your mom asked.

“I skimmed it, threw out the junk,” you shrugged, taking a bite of your food. “Why? Did you?”

Your mom must’ve had a very good day today. She usually didn’t bother with things like the mail at all.

“Did you see that Seohyuk’s getting married?”

“Yeah, again,” you snorted. This was marriage number three, if you were up to date on your stepbrother lore. “I’m surprised we even got an invite.”

“Y/N.” Your mother said your name sternly.

“Sorry,” you mumbled. Clearing your throat, you kept your tone more neutral as you said, “Yeah, I saw. Good for them.”

“What do you think?”

“About what? I just said good for them?”

“Going.”

You looked at her incredulously. “Like, to the wedding?”

“He’s family, Y/N.”

“Hyukjun was family,” you didn’t mean to snap at your mom like you did, your voice filling with vitriol. “They’re just three assholes that Hyukjun had the misfortune of being related to. We don’t owe them shit.”

“Y/N!” Your mother gaped at you.

Hyesoo and Jisung had both been silently watching the two of you go back and forth, and you suddenly became aware of the presence of two others in the room again. You took a deep breath in, looking over at the aide.

“Sorry,” you muttered, pushing your chair back from the table. “Good food. I’m not hungry anymore.”

“Y/N, sweetie, can we—”

You ignored your mom’s pleas to talk, scraping off your plate into the garbage and putting your dishes in the dishwasher before storming upstairs. Flopping onto your back on your bed, you stared up at your ceiling fan.

When you heard a knock on your door some time later, you rolled your eyes, but called out to Jisung anyway, “Come in!”

Your door handle turned and opened, revealing not Jisung, and not even your mother, but Hyesoo. She paused at the doorway, obviously aware that you hadn’t been expecting her.

“May I come in?” She requested.

You sat up straight on your bed, nodding. “Sure.”

Hyesoo came and sat beside you, leaving a polite distance between the two of you. “I don’t want to overstep, Y/N… But I imagine there’s some stuff that has happened between you and your stepbrothers that your mom doesn’t know about?”

“Yeah, lots,” you scoffed. “They hate us. They’ve always been rude to me, but ever since Hyukjun left us the house… it’s just gotten worse.”

“When’s the last time you saw or talked to one of them?”

You breathed out. “Uh… probably when Seohyuk came to inspect the property a few months ago now. Mom didn’t even know it happened, Nayoung took her for a walk.”

“Hyukjun was family to you, right? That’s what you just said.”

“Doesn’t meant his shithead sons have to be my family,” you retorted. “They said to me, at his wake, that my mom and I weren’t his family. Like, how awful do you have to be?”

“Hyukjun saw you as his family. His wife’s daughter,” she said slowly. “Do you think, your mom might see Hyukjun’s sons the same way? I’m not saying you have to. But consider your mom’s feelings for a moment.”

You took a deep inhale, trying to separate your thoughts from your own swirling emotions in that moment. “I… I didn’t think of that.”

It was then that you saw she had something in her hands, and she held out two small pictures to you. One was the wedding invite, a picture of Seohyuk and his fiancée smiling on the front. The other was of a young man around Seohyuk’s age, the image grainy, as it was clearly older and taken on film. It was undeniable who this was, though—Hyukjun.

“Your mom was showing me some photo albums earlier, when she saw the wedding invite,” Hyesoo explained. “She didn’t say it, but don’t you think he looks so much like his dad?”

You swallowed the anger in your throat, eyes tracing over the two photos, the similar smiles, the way their crow’s feet crinkled, their noses, cheekbones, and jawlines. It was hard not to see Hyukjun in his eldest son now.

“Yeah, he does,” you agreed.

“Nobody is saying you have to go to the wedding and be best friends with your stepbrothers,” she said. “Or at least, I'm not saying that. But it might be a good idea to think about why your mom would want to go. Those ‘assholes’ are living, breathing pieces of Hyukjun that are still walking around. They’re his sons, and maybe she wants to feel connected to him by connecting with them.”

“He was such a good guy,” you reached for the picture of Hyukjun, holding it between your fingers. “How did he raise three absolute fucking jerks?”

“A mystery we’ll never be able to solve.” Hyesoo clicked her tongue. “I’m about to help your mom get ready for bed, do you want to talk to her before?”

You sighed and nodded. “Yeah, let me do that.”

She handed you the wedding invite as well, standing up from your bed. “She’s in her room. Let me know when you’re done.”

Steeling your nerves, you knocked lightly on your mom’s bedroom door. “Mom? It’s Y/N.”

“Come in, sweetie.”

You opened the door quietly, immediately spotting her sitting on the corner of her bed, as if she had been waiting for you. Sitting down next to her, you took her hand, squeezing it.

“I’m sorry, Mom,” you started. “I should’ve listened to you instead of being rude and talking to you like that. I was only thinking about my feelings about Seohyuk and them, and not yours. Can you tell me more about why you want to go to the wedding?”

“I-I know you and your stepbrothers haven’t gotten along, sweetie,” she prefaced her reasoning. “But… When I think about the fact that Hyukjun won’t get to see this… Even if he did see the first two, you know.”

The both of you snickered a little at that, bumping your shoulders together affectionately. You held the two pictures out to her just like Hyesoo had done to you.

“I get what you’re saying, Mom,” you leaned your head against hers, looking at the nearly identical visages of Seohyuk and Hyukjun. “I miss him too. If this will make you feel closer to him, or that you’re honoring him or something like that, then we should go. I’ll support you.”

“Thank you, Y/N.” She ran a thumb over the picture of Hyukjun.

“What do you want to do for your birthday?” You asked Jisung, searching the table for your next puzzle piece. Your mom had gone to sleep and the two of you were putting together a jigsaw puzzle in your relaxing time before your own bedtime.

Jisung dropped his own puzzle piece that he had been trying to place, staring at you from across the coffee table. “My what?!”

“Your birthday. It’s next week.” You finally fished an edge piece out. “When I looked up the genealogy stuff, it had your birthday on there.”

“I mean, I figured that’s how you knew, but I didn’t think you’d actually—I don’t know, I’m surprised.”

“What? It’s probably been a while since you’ve celebrated it, right?” You put your puzzle piece down. “We don’t have to do anything if you don’t want to, I just figured it might be nice.”

“No, I-I’d like that,” he smiled softly. “Just don’t get me a cake with an accurate number of candles in it, please.”

“I think that’d get more candle wax on it than frosting.” You wrinkled your nose, making him roll his eyes. “Are you telling me I have to plan it? I asked you what you want to do.”

“Just you remembering is enough to make my birthday feel special this year, Y/N.” Jisung reached across the table to grab your hand. “I don’t really care what else happens. But I’ll think of something, promise.”

One week later, and Jisung’s birthday lined up with a night that Hyesoo was staying over, so you couldn’t use the living room, as she slept on the couch whenever she stayed. So the two of you retreated to your bedroom after dinner. Closing the door behind you, you turned to Jisung with your arms crossed, narrowing your eyes at him.

“You still haven’t told me what you want to do for your birthday,” you reminded him, tapping your foot. “And your birthday’s almost over.”

“I know what I want,” he reassured you. “But you need to change into your pajamas first, so—”

And with that, he stepped back and through the wall, out of your room. You begrudgingly changed from your casual daywear into your pajamas, then called for him to come back in. Your ghost popped back in immediately, heading towards his side of the bed. You watched him suspiciously as he sat down and grabbed the book on the nightstand. Instead of turning on his lamp as he would usually do, though, he reached over to the lamp on your side of the bed and clicked it on, then offered the book out towards you.

“I want you to read to me tonight,” he requested.

“That’s it?” You frowned.

“That’s it,” he confirmed. “You can sing me ‘Happy Birthday’ too, if it’ll make you feel better.”

You took the book from him and sat down against the headboard, pulling your covers over your lap. Jisung laid down on top of the blankets, looking up at you, waiting. You sighed and shook your head, fondly brushing some of his hair out of his face.

“Happy Birthday, Jisung,” you said, opening the book to where he had left off when he’d been reading to you.

“I can’t believe you’re actually going,” Jisung grumbled, handing you a lid to the plastic container.

“Me neither,” you sighed your agreement, snapping the container shut.

Today was finally the day of Seohyuk’s wedding. You, your mom, and Nayoung had just finished up lunch, and the aide would be helping her get ready while you got yourself dressed. Your ghost had made his distaste of the situation plenty clear.

“You couldn’t just send money and a card?”

“My mom wanted to go, and she doesn’t have another daughter to go with her,” you put the leftovers into the fridge. “I would’ve looked like a bitch sending her with an aide while I stayed home. And felt like a bitch.”

“Can’t believe that guy has even found three people who wanted to marry him.”

You laughed heartily at that. “Me neither. It’s got to be the money. Investment brokers make good money, right?”

“To fuck if I know,” your ghost snorted.

“Anyway, stay here while I get ready.”

Jisung saluted you, making you chuckle a little as you left the kitchen. The dress code was cocktail, unfortunately for you, meaning that you had to dress in the nicest outfit you’d worn since Hyukjun’s funeral. Most of your day-to-day wear was lounge clothes lately. After putting on your outfit, and doing your hair and makeup as well, you did a final once-over in the mirror, honestly a bit surprised at yourself.

Walking back downstairs, you could tell that Nayoung was still helping your mom in her room, so you looked around instead for Jisung. You saw his dark head of hair sitting on the couch in the living room, and started that way. He turned upon hearing your footsteps, jaw actually dropping when he spotted you.

“You’re going to catch flies like that,” you teased, pushing his chin back up as you stopped in front of him.

He looked up at you with wide eyes instead. “Woah…”

“Good woah?”

Jisung nodded, standing up and offering you a hand. You gently placed yours atop it, and he lifted it to twirl you around, making a giggle bubble out of you.

“Great woah,” he confirmed. “So not fair you look like this for that asshole’s wedding.”

“It’s not for him,” you scoffed. “It’s for me.”

“Still… I think the bride is going to get jealous.”

“Oh my God.” You rolled your eyes, putting your hand over his mouth insistently, despite you being the only person in the house that could hear him. “You’re awful, you know that?”

He was obviously grinning behind your hand, eyes crinkling up with a mischievous twinkle. You sighed and dropped your hand from his mouth.

“So not fair to be that cute when I’m trying to be mad at you,” you huffed, pinching one of his cheeks.

“Ow,” he pouted, covering the reddened skin once you’d let go.

You heard your mom’s bedroom door open, and her and Nayoung came out a moment later. You walked over to give her a hug.

“Mom, that dress is so pretty,” you complimented her.

“Oh, Y/N,” she cupped your cheek. “You look so beautiful, sweetie.”

“You’re really beautiful, Y/N,” Nayoung added quietly.

“Oh, thank you,” you brushed down your outfit. “Thank you for your help, Nayoung. We should be good to go, I think.”

“Yes, yes, we need to get going!” Your mom clapped her hands together. “Don’t want to be late!”

After putting your mom to bed following the reception, you crept out of her room with your heels in hand. Jisung was at the bottom of the stairs, clearly waiting for you. He held his hands out to take your shoes from you, following you upstairs.

“So how was the wedding?” He asked, stopping outside your door to let you get changed inside in peace.

“Oh, it wasn’t bad, actually,” you answered him as you got undressed. “I think everyone was on their best behavior because it was a wedding, you know?”

“That’s good.”

“Seohyuk’s wife is actually really nice,” you informed him, chuckling in disbelief. “I hope he treats her right. And if not, I hope she’s got a good pre-nup.”

“Did your mom have a good time?”

“Oh yeah, she tore up the dance floor.”

“Really?”

“Yup.” Finally in your pajamas, you called out, “You can come in.”

Jisung materialized through the door, and went to put your shoes away for you that he was still holding. “I’m glad you two had a good time.”

“Me too.” You plopped into bed, feeling the exhaustion of the night hitting you all at once. “I’m almost glad that I went.”

“Almost?”

“I’m still thinking about how I could’ve spent all night in my pajamas instead of getting hit on by Seohyuk’s best man.”

“Seriously?”

“Mhm…” You yawned and pulled your blankets up over you as Jisung sat down against the headboard and robotically grabbed the book on the nightstand.

“Was ‘fuck off’ not clear enough for him?”

“Didn’t tell him to fuck off,” you shrugged.

“What?!”

You winced and rubbed your ear. “Loud…”

“Sorry, sorry,” he quieted his voice down again.

“I was bored, and he wasn’t a jerk about it or anything,” you explained simply, closing your eyes and pushing your cheek against your pillow. “Still would’ve rather been here in my pajamas with you, though.”

“Oh. Okay…” Jisung took a deep breath, opening the book up to pick up where he’d left off in the story.

You were putting leftovers from dinner away some nights later as Hyesoo dispensed your mom’s medications for the upcoming week. You knew your worry was written all over your face. Your mom had been having so many good days—so many lucid days—lately, but today was bad. She asked you why you weren’t at school multiple times, refused to eat, and had another fit over the house being haunted. You were putting her plate of food away right now, entirely untouched.

“It was stupid,” you sighed. “For me to think she was getting better. I know her diagnosis—she’s only going to get worse.”

“There will be ups and downs, Y/N,” the aide reminded you gently. “The important thing is to not blame yourself for any of it.”

You sighed. “You’re right. Thanks, Hyesoo.”

“You don’t have work to do after this, do you?”

“A little bit. You’re staying the night, right?”

“Yes, I am.”

“Good, good.”

“You know, I’ve been doing this for a while, dear,” she said kindly, shaking out a few pills. “And while I don’t know everything, I do know you can’t run yourself into the ground trying to take care of them. Or else there will be nothing left of you, and then how will you take care of her?”

“I know, it was hard to focus on work today, that’s all.”

“I mean—I’ve been with you all for some time now, and when was the last time you hung out with your own friends? Or went on a date? You’re a beautiful young lady, you’re doing the world a disservice staying cooped up in here all the time.”

You laughed and shook your head. “Really—”

“I’m being serious! Just think about it, dear. I promise, taking some time to keep living your life now won’t be the end of the world. This way, you’ll have a support system when you need it.”

You nodded in understanding, putting the leftovers away with robotic movements as your brain continued turning over her words.

Just about a week after that conversation with Hyesoo and you were fixing your hair in the mirror when a gentle knock came at your bedroom door. You called out to the person as you continued messing with your hair. “Come in!”

Jisung phased through your door. “Dinner’s ready, are you—”

He stopped his words as he seemed to take in what you were wearing, tilting his head with a curious frown. “You got changed?”

“I’m going out for dinner,” you told him, leaning over to focus on putting your earrings in.

“Out? Like, a work thing?”

“No, I’ve got a date.”

“What? With who?” He sputtered, then collected himself a little. “I mean—This is the first I’ve heard of it. How did you meet them?”

“His name’s Dongmin. I met him at the wedding last week.”

“Wait, don’t tell me he’s the best man you were talking about?”

“He gave me his number.” You shrugged. “So?”

“I thought you didn’t even like him?”

“What does it matter to you?” You crossed your arms.

“What do you—? Of course I care if you’re going on a date with some creepy guy who you don’t like.” Jisung ran a hand through his hair.

“I reached out to him, Jisung.” You didn’t know why you were getting so defensive, why you felt so on edge at the moment.

He crossed his arms. “Why did you hide it from me?”

“I didn’t hide it from you,” you scoffed. “I don’t have to tell you everything.”

“Yeah, but this is—”

“What? This is what?”

He held his hands up in surrender, looking away from you. “Never mind. Hope you have fun.”

“Yeah, that wasn’t passive aggressive,” you snorted, grabbing your phone. “You’re just pissed because I’m the only person you can talk to all day but I get to actually leave this stupid house and hang out with people other than you.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Jisung glared back at you, raising his voice to match yours. It was quite possibly the most venomous you’d heard the normally soft-spoken ghost be towards you. “You leave the house all the time, you always talk to your mom or her aides. I don’t give a shit.”

You checked the time on your phone, setting your jaw. “I need to go. I don’t have time for you to keep avoiding what you’re actually trying to say.”

“Oh, right, I’m the only one avoiding,” he retorted sarcastically.

“Lalala! Not listening! Too busy avoiding!” You said in a purposefully childish, loud, and sing-songy voice, plugging one ear as you threw your door open and slammed it shut behind you.

The lights in the house were dark when you got back. Good, you didn’t want to face Hyesoo like this. It was already going to be bad enough risking running into Jisung. Hopefully he was still pissed at you and would stay scarce. Taking a deep breath to dampen your sobs for a few moments, you unlocked the front door and opened it as quietly as you could. No paranormal force on the other side opened it for you this time. Hyesoo’s light snores could be heard from the living room, but other than the sleeping aide, the house was eerily silent. You locked up behind you and started up the stairs, but couldn’t even bring yourself to make it all the way to your room. You all but collapsed at the top step, letting your tears stream freely again as you cried quietly into your hands, hunched over your knees.

That was a fucking disaster.

“Y/N?”

You opened your eyes back up at the soft, familiar voice. Jisung was at the bottom of the stairs, hands in the pockets of his cardigan.

“Oh, Jisung, hey.” You didn’t bother wiping your tears this time as you greeted him. He hesitantly shifted his weight from one foot to another. You patted the spot next to you for him. “Déjà vu, huh?”

He sat down next to you on the top step, deep frown on his features. “What happened?”

“Ugh, guy was an asshole,” you sniffed. “Like, I thought he was really nice and everything, but as soon as he realized I wasn’t going home with him, he turned into a jerk.”

“He didn’t…”

“No, he just said a bunch of rude stuff. Called me a bitch, a whore who was just using him for his money or whatever.”

“Y/N—”

“All that, I didn’t really care about,” you admitted, curling your hands into fists and digging your nails into your palms as his words came back to you. “It was what he said about my mom that really pissed me off. Essentially said I should just put her up in a home and get on with my life. I about threw a punch in the middle of the restaurant.”

Jisung let out a light chuckle at that, but the humor in his features didn’t last long. He scooted closer to you, tentatively wrapping an arm around your shoulders. “I’m sorry it didn’t go well for you.”

You shrugged, leaning against him and resting your head on his shoulder. “I don’t know what I expected, really. He was Seohyuk’s friend, of course he was going to be an asshole.”

Jisung wasn’t warm, but you found his cool embrace comforting enough, the steady pressure of his arm encircling you, his sturdy body supporting you as he let you lean against him.

“I’m sorry, for getting upset at you earlier,” he apologized quietly. “You didn’t have to tell me where you were going, and I shouldn’t have reacted like that.”

“I wasn’t being very fair either,” you replied. “I’m sorry too.”

“But… Why did you go out with that guy? I mean, if he had been nice, would you have… Would he…” Jisung stopped, apparently frustrated at not knowing how to phrase what he wanted to ask. “Why not me? I know that sounds so pathetic, but that’s all I wanted to ask you before.”

You squeezed your eyes shut tighter, biting your bottom lip against the emotions rushing up in your chest at his words. “Jisung…”

“I’m not… imagining all this, right? I mean, there’s something here, Y/N. A-A connection.”

“What kind of relationship can you even have with a ghost?” You asked sadly.

“Maybe the kind you need now.” He grabbed one of your hands, holding it tightly in your laps between you.

“I’m going to get older, Jisung,” you reminded him calmly, despite each word piercing your chest like a knife. “Not to mention—I won’t be here forever. Like, in this house. I don’t own it. I’ll have to leave once she… I’ll have to go. I can’t stay here.”

“Does everything worthwhile in life have to last forever?” He murmured, his voice practically begging now. “Tell me you didn’t think about me while you were on that date…”

Your breath hitched in your throat. “I can’t…”

“You did? Think about me?”

“The whole time,” you admitted. “Even when it was going okay, I was thinking about you.”

“Y/N…”

You looked up from your entwined hands, realizing that you were gripping onto him maybe even harder than he was you. Meeting his dark gaze, you blinked away a few more stray tears.

You finally let out a shaky breath and nodded. “Until it’s over, you and me.”

A smile overtook his features as he rested his forehead against yours. Readjusting your hand to cover the back of his, you moved his index finger to his chest, tracing an X over his heart. Your ghost watched your movements fondly, echoing, “Until it’s over, you and me.”

“Do you have anything left here that’s yours? Hair in a locket under a floorboard or something?” You questioned, looking around your room.

“What? No,” Jisung scoffed.

“Figured I’d ask.”

The two of you were brainstorming. Jisung really wanted to be able to go somewhere out of the house with you, but the best ideas you had of course came from popular ghost media.

“Your stepdad kept a lot of the original house fixtures when he bought it. Maybe one of those,” your ghost suggested.

“I’m not carrying a faucet around in my purse,” you replied frankly. “Not to mention, I’m not allowed to damage the house while I live here. My stepbrothers could sue me for anything that’s not exactly how it was when Hyukjun left it.”

“What about…” Jisung walked through the closed door, and you could hear the squeak of the stairs as he went down them. A few moments later, he went back up them, then came through the door again. He held out something in his closed fist towards you.

You stretched out your hand palm-up, and he opened up his fingers to drop a small piece of metal into it. It had some weight to it, and you turned it over in your hand to get a better look at it. It looked like a knob to a cabinet or drawer, in the shape of an eight-pointed starburst. It wasn’t familiar to you at all, it didn’t look like he had taken it off any place in the house that you could tell.

You looked up at him with a furrowed brow. “Where…?”

“It’s one of the original knobs that was on the cabinets in the kitchen,” he explained. “Your stepdad’s first wife wanted them all replaced when she moved in. He put them in a box in the laundry room closet and they haven’t been touched since. I doubt your stepbrothers even know about them. She probably thought he got rid of them.”

“These were on the cabinets when you lived here?”

“Yep.”

You pocketed the cabinet knob. “Can’t hurt to try.”

Once you’d given your mom and Nayoung your goodbyes, you headed for the front door. Jisung was right behind you, looking positively giddy as he watched you put your shoes on.

Patting your pocket again to reassure yourself that the cabinet knob was in there, you stepped down from the porch and onto the walkway. After nodding politely to a jogger going by, you looked around hesitantly at the empty space on either side of you.

“Jisung?” You said quietly.

“I’m here.” He appeared next to you, beaming down at you. “I’m here.”

The two of you had never gone past the porch swing, not even down to the flowerbeds you had continued to tend to. You grabbed his arm to pull him down with you as you squatted in front of the snapdragons that had just come back into bloom. Pride and bittersweet nostalgia welled up in your chest as you looked at the flowers that used to be Hyukjun’s hobby.

“Do you know the secret with these?” You asked Jisung.

“No?” He replied, tilting his head.

You reached out to gently squeeze the sides of a pink flower, making the dragon’s “mouth” open and close. “You can make their mouths open and shut.”

Jisung watched you fondly, then tried it on another bloom. He giggled. “That’s kind of fun, actually.”

Standing back up, you continued to the end of the house’s short walkway, stopping on the sidewalk.

“This is the furthest I’ve been in… a while,” he said, eyes shining.

“We’re still in the lay lines of the property…” You kept your hopes guarded. “I don’t want to call it a success yet.”

Walking down the sidewalk, you kept your eye on Jisung the further you got from the house, waiting for him to hit some invisible barrier and disappear entirely, or at least flicker or something else to indicate that he was losing his connection to the house. But he looked… normal. Fine.

When you were a full three blocks away from the house, Jisung grabbed your hand, lacing his fingers with yours.

“Would you stop looking at me like I’m going to die again?” He joked.

“Sorry, sorry,” you sighed. “I just… can’t believe it. How do you feel?”

“Fine. Great!” He grinned.

You'd never seen Jisung in direct sunlight before, only ever the lights of the house, sunbeams that filtered in through curtains and windows, or moonlight at night. You were surprised at how… normal he looked. His skin had a lifelike rosy tint to it in places, his hair shone and reflected a dark brown at some angles, and he didn’t have any sort of ghostly pallor to him. The only thing that didn’t change were his eyes, still as dark and enrapturing as ever, his pupils melting into his irises.

“So where are we going?” He asked, swinging your linked hands.

“You’ll see.” You squeezed his hand before letting it go, hearing the sounds of other people around the corner that you were about to turn.

The destination you had in mind wasn’t very far, which was good, because your shoulder was getting tired carrying your tote bag. Veering off the sidewalk at a seemingly random place, you walked through a gap between two bushes. Jisung followed you diligently, keeping whatever questions he had to himself. The path underfoot was overgrown with grass and clover, only a path to a keen observer, or those who already knew it was there.

Finally, you ducked around a large tree and emerged at a clearing in front of a small pond. Jisung looked around in wonder as you proudly put your hands on your hips.

“Hyukjun and I came out here a couple times, when he and my mom first got together,” you explained. “Bonding stuff. I’m happy I remembered where it was.”

“I think…” Jisung slowly turned around in a circle, still taking it all in. “I think my friends and I used to swim here in the summer. And when the pond would freeze in the winter, we’d skate…”

He walked over to the largest tree nearby, fingers tracing over the bark that had endless initials carved in it, until he squatted down by the base. “Yeah. I didn’t recognize the streets when we were walking over here, but…”

You joined him by the tree, watching as he pointed out a cluster of initials, seven in total, ending on PJS. “There you all are,” you said quietly. “I didn’t even know this was here.”

“They’re probably all old men now,” Jisung chuckled, a laugh that you could tell was forced.

You reached for his hand, holding it with both of yours. “It’s okay to be sad that you didn’t get to grow old with your best friends, Jisung. I know you’re the one that passed away, but have you mourned them yet? All your friends and family that you didn’t get to see grow old?”

“Damn it.” He shook his head. “I didn’t want to make you all sad on our first real date.”

“I’m dating a ghost,” you pointed out, running your thumb over the back of his hand. “I think a little doom and gloom comes with the territory.”

“To answer your question, I haven’t thought about it like that,” he sighed. “I always felt bad that I left them, that they had to mourn me. But I never… grieved the fact that I lost them too.”

“I don’t want to make you sad on our date, either,” you panicked a little at the shadow that had fallen over his features, moving to wrap an arm around his shoulders and hug him. “I’m sorry!”

Jisung laughed a real laugh this time, hugging you back. “It’s okay, Y/N. It’s better than feeling guilty for something I had no control over.”

“Well, that’s true.”

“I honestly hadn’t even thought about coming here with them in so long… Really, it’s nice to remember them all again.”

You let go of him to reach into your tote, pulling out the large picnic blanket you’d brought with you. “How about instead of the both of us making each other sad, you tell me a bunch of fun stories about your friends while I enjoy the picnic food I packed?”

He pecked your forehead, taking the blanket from your hand. “Deal.”

The pond had become one of yours and Jisung’s favorite spots to go when you could find time between work and your mom. The two of you could get out of the house together without risking you getting some very strange looks in public. Sometimes you brought a picnic, sometimes books or a crossword puzzle or deck of cards or just laid on your blanket and tried to find shapes in the clouds. Every so often, you’d get someone coming by walking their dog, or a gaggle of kids cutting through from one of their backyards to another, but nobody ever paid you much more attention past a ‘hello’ or ‘lovely afternoon, isn’t it?’

After submitting a big project at work, you finally had some free time again. As long as your mom was having a good day today. She’d been more sensitive to you leaving the house lately on her bad days, and while the aides promised that she always calmed down eventually, you hated causing her so much stress if it was avoidable—errands were one thing, but a date with your ghost boyfriend that already haunted your residence could take a raincheck.

You looked in the living room first, then the dining area and kitchen, and frowned thoughtfully when you couldn’t find your mother and Nayoung. Turning around, you were greeted by Jisung, who pointed to the backyard knowingly.

“They’re in the back drinking lemonade,” he informed you. “She’s having a good day.”

“Oh, good. Thanks, Jisung,” you let out a breath of relief, giving him a kiss on the cheek as you passed by on your way back into the living room.

Opening up the door that led onto the back porch, you immediately spotted your mom and Nayoung sitting beside each other on two rocking chairs, a pitcher of lemonade between them as they overlooked the small backyard. Their conversation stopped when they heard the door open, both of them turning to look at you over their sunglasses.

You held your hands up defensively. “Woah, I feel like I just interrupted something…”

“Yes, you can go, sweetie,” your mom said knowingly.

“What?”

“You finished your work and are checking on me to see if you can go out.” She took a sip of her lemonade, pushing her sunglasses back up and settling back into her chair again. “I’m telling you I’m fine, and you can go.”

“Nayoung?” You turned to the aide. “Everything okay—?”

“We’re fine, Y/N!” Nayoung waved you off with a smile. “Really!”

“Alright, alright.” You surrendered, backing up towards the door again. “I’ll be back before Hyesoo gets here.”

“What day is it, Nayoung?” Your mom asked.

“Wednesday.”

“You know, my memory isn’t the best, remind me, when does Hyesoo stay the night?”

“Mondays and Wednesdays.”

“Hm.” Your mom tsked. “Interesting…”

Nayoung didn’t add anything further, but giggled as she took another sip of her lemonade.

“You two are nuisances,” you scoffed and shook your head, finally heading back inside.

You beelined for your bedroom, finding your ghost already sitting on your bed clearly waiting for you.

“Oh yeah, she’s having a great day,” you snorted in lieu of a greeting, grabbing your usual tote bag. “That new medication her doctor put her on is doing wonders. I might have to have him cut her off.”

“I think she’s a lot of fun,” Jisung snickered. “Earlier, when you were on that work call, she was telling Nayoung about your third-grade science fair—”

“Ahh!” You cut him off by planting two hands over his mouth, eyes going wide with mortification. “Of all the things she remembers, that’s what sticks around?! Are you kidding?”

His shoulders were shaking as he let out muffled laughter behind your hands, and he eventually collapsed backwards onto your bed. Your hands dropped from his face as you stayed upright, allowing his laughs to echo freely in your room.

“If you’re going to keep making fun of me, we’re not going out.” You crossed your arms. “I’ll bury your cabinet knobs in the backyard, and your soul will really be stuck here forever.”

“You’ve got to stop being so cute when you pout, and I’ll stop teasing you.” He was still chuckling as he sat up and reached for you with two hands. With an eyeroll, you let him pull you into his lap and wrap his arms around your waist.

“This isn’t fair, I can’t find out embarrassing stuff about you unless you tell me,” you huffed, well aware you that you were still pouting.

“I always answer your questions. You just don’t ask me that stuff.”

“Well now I will.”

“Anything else you need to pout about?”

You let out a deep breath, your face relaxing a little bit. “No. Done for now I think.”

He cupped your cheek, leaning in to press his mouth to yours. Like everything else, Jisung’s lips were cool as they meshed with yours. Not uncomfortably so, he wasn’t quite an icicle, just unlike any human you’d kissed before. You put your hand over his on your cheek, remembering when even that used to be a far-away impossibility.

You left him with one more kiss on the tip of his nose before asking, “Are you ready to go? Mom and Nayoung gave me the okay.”

He started playing with your fingers, eyes focused downwards as he spoke. “I actually wanted to ask if we could maybe go somewhere else today?”

“Sure. Where were you thinking?”

“I don’t want to be a bummer or anything but…”

“What is it?”

His throat bobbed up and down as he swallowed. “You wrote down the cemetery, right? When you went to library and looked up the genealogies and stuff about me. You said you wrote down where my parents buried me?”

“Yeah, I still have it,” you confirmed, cradling the back of his head as you patiently waited for him to finish asking what you knew he wanted to ask you.

It took him a few inhales and exhales to ask, “Can we go?”

“Of course.”

This was officially the furthest you and Jisung had gone from the house together. He’d gone with you on errands a couple times before—the post office, library, things within walking distance—but you had to get on a train for this. You were a little nervous that he might not be able to go this far, even with the cabinet knob safely tied onto a leather cord and tucked under your shirt. So far, the only limit you’d discovered to his leaving the house was time—six hours or so seemed to be the magic number. You’d found that out on a particularly lazy day, when you were looking up at clouds together and suddenly his lap disappeared from beneath your head. He’d apparently popped back up in the foyer with the first headache he’d experienced in decades. Since then, you’d been more careful to keep an eye on the time when you brought him with you.

But he sat comfortably through the whole ten-minute train ride at your side as if he were any other passenger. The car that you were in wasn’t full, meaning that you had a row to yourself, leaving an empty seat next to you for Jisung. After arriving at your stop, you had another five-minute walk until you finally arrived at the cemetery.

“This is where my parents are from,” Jisung stated as you passed under the metal archway at the entrance. “That’s probably why they didn’t choose somewhere back in town.”

A winding path went through the center of the land, smaller pathways breaking off into other areas. It was a big cemetery, gently rolling hills dotted with headstones, grave markers, elegantly carved statues, all sorts of tributes to loved ones. The two of you took a meandering pace, eyes scanning all the names for just one. You looked around the property warily, now extra aware of being a public nuisance somewhere so sacred. You especially didn’t want to risk disturbing any mourners who might be here. But you couldn’t spot anybody except yourself and Jisung, maybe because it was the middle of the day in the middle of the work week.

“There,” Jisung announced, his gaze locked on something in the distance, while you had been looking at markers much closer. He grabbed your hand and pulled you with him as he rushed across the cemetery.

You stopped in front of a simply shaped granite headstone with a carved border. The name at the top read ‘PARK JISUNG’ and under it, a birthdate and death date that were familiar to you. It was the epitaph that was new to you, however.

‘THERE WILL ALWAYS BE LOVE

CROSS OUR HEARTS’

Jisung reached a finger out, tracing over each letter in ‘LOVE.’ He said, “I always wanted to know what they wrote. What they said about me. How they wanted to remember me forever.”

“It’s lovely. They love you a lot,” you replied quietly, resting a hand on his back.

He looked over at you hopefully. “You’re talking in present tense. Are they…?”

“The records I looked at didn’t list them as deceased when I was looking for information about you, but I don’t know how often it’s updated,” you informed him. “I didn’t look any further into them, I was only trying to find out what happened to you.”

“Do you think two more headstones could fit there?” He gestured to the empty space beside his own.

You took the seemingly random question in stride, genuinely contemplating it. “Probably, yeah. Or one big one would fit better, like the couples that get buried together.”

Jisung had a satisfied smile on his face as he nodded. “Yeah, one big one. That’s it.”

It dawned on you then what he was thinking—his parents had most likely reserved the plot next to his for themselves once they passed, and since it was still empty, they were still alive.

“Thank you.” He took your hand, lacing your fingers together. “For coming out here with me. This must be the weirdest date you’ve been on.”

“Visiting my boyfriend’s own grave with him?” You tilted your head back and forth contemplatively, a teasing lilt in your tone. “Mm, yeah, definitely up there. But I’m glad that you wanted to do this with me, Jisung. I can’t imagine what this feels like for you.”

“I’m ready to go,” he declared, looking up at the blue sky above you. “It’s such a nice day, isn’t it?”

“It is,” you agreed, fondly admiring his little one-eyed squint against the sunlight.

Back home that night, you shook one of your sleeping meds from the bottle, setting it down on your nightstand as you went about getting ready for bed. Your ghost was already sat against the headboard, his legs covered by your blankets, hands folded over the book in his lap as he waited for you. Finally ready, you knocked back the tablet with a gulp of water and climbed under your covers. Jisung rested one hand on your head, thumb stroking over your forehead, but after an abnormally long period of silence, you opened one eye to peer up at him.

He was just gazing down at you tenderly, and you fought the instinct to cover your face, instead reaching over to tap the cover of his closed book.

“Aren’t you supposed to be doing something?” You complained in jest.

“Sorry, I was just thinking,” he responded, still not moving to open the book.

“What about?”

“My epitaph. ‘There will always be love.’”

“It’s nice.” You bit back a yawn.

“Yeah. I was thinking about how they probably meant it like their love for me will persist, and proof that I was here and was loved and loved others when I was alive will persist.”

“I like that, Jisung. I think that’s what they meant.”

“And… there was no way they could’ve known this when they picked it, but I was thinking…” Your ghost paused, dark eyes enrapturing you in that moment that you didn’t even think about breathing. “About how even after I died, you somehow found me.”

You grabbed the book from his lap, reaching behind you to blindly put it on your nightstand. Jisung immediately understood, turning his lamp off and leaving the room in darkness as he slipped the rest of the way under the covers. You buried your face in his neck, tangling your fingers in the hair at the back of his head as you simultaneously pressed yourself into him and pulled him as close as possible. He wrapped his arms around you tightly, digging his fingers into you hard enough to make you feel real, which you were glad for.

“I’m going to bring you with me,” you choked out past the tears rising in your eyes. “When it’s time for me to leave. I’ll bring all the cabinet knobs, a chunk of the foundation, whatever will make it work. Fuck my stepbrothers—I’ll pay whatever damages. If you want—”

“Of course I do.” He didn’t even let you finish that thought, and you could hear the tremble in his voice. “But we’ve never been able to get around the time…”

“I’ll figure it out for us, Jisung.” You pulled back just enough to show him as you drew an X over the left side of your chest. “Cross my heart.”

He took your hand from your heart, kissing the back of your fingers tenderly. “We knew it was going to be like this. We promised.”

“We said ‘until it’s over,’” you argued. “I don’t want it to be over yet.”

“It’s not,” he agreed. “But I don’t think it’ll be our choice when it is. Not everything worthwhile has to last forever.”

“Jisung—”

“We’ll try everything,” he assured you, squeezing your hand. “I’m not giving up on you, Y/N. You and me, until you hand the keys over and close the front door behind you.”

“You’ll be coming with me when I do that, Park Jisung,” you declared, your voice cracking over his name.

He wrapped both arms around you again, tucking you under his chin. “Of course.”

⤷ sequel | masterlist

[your-unfriendlyghost]

I have two things to ask:

1.-Can we be friends?

2.-Do you have any Outsiders headcanons (or any that you haven't submitted yet)?

I mean sure?? Idk who you are since you’re on anon, so not REALLY, but I’m always down to talk!

2. Yeah lol- tons. Too many. Here’s a few (okay like 25 oops) off the top of my head lol, some serious/angsty and some lighthearted/kinda stupid without any real order. (Lotta ‘em are about Steve tbh -there’s so little to him in canon that I have the freedom to hc pretty much whatever I want)

Steve Randle’s nearsighted and has no idea, which is why he’s literally always squinting. (I’ve had that one for like months but only recently mentioned it on here lol.) Steve thinks his vision is completely normal

Dally and Sylvia genuinely cared for each other, but they were both so horrible at having healthy emotions that they just made each other worse. In a bad way, not a fun way.

When Steve gets kicked out, sometimes he hangs with Johnny in the lot. They don’t really talk about anything important like their shared experiences of having lousy parents. Instead they talk about cars, girls, music, school…lighthearted stuff. Sometimes Johnny will find Steve crying, which he never mentions- he’ll just sit down as per usual, which Steve appreciates. Steve almost never finds Johnny crying though. Johnny doesn’t cry much.

Okay tangent- I love how Steve and Johnny are low-key foils. Like Steve always seems tough but then cries when pushed to his limit, while Johnny always seems skittish until he’s under a bunch of pressure- in which case he suddenly is confident. (Not necessarily thriving obviously, but confident yk? Like grinning while saving those kids in the fire.) I know SE Hinton probably didn’t intend that at all, but it’s just such an interesting detail to me. One of these days I’ll put it into words better

Johnny’s jeans-jacket is a hand-me-down from either Steve or Two-Bit. (I can’t decide which lol) (obviously Dally would make sense too, but honestly I think it’d add more depth to flesh out Johnny’s relationships with the other members of the gang)

After the events of the book, Two-Bit starts hanging around the Curtis’s place even more. At first the gang assumes he’s trying to lighten the mood. It’s only after he gets sent to the cooler for a month due to drunk driving that they realize he was actually hanging around so much because he was trying to keep his kid sister from seeing him so drunk…

Two-Bit likes to joke that he keeps failing junior year so that him and his sister can graduate together. Which is a very bad idea since his sister is a year younger than Ponyboy.

Sodapop often feels like he’s only good for looking pretty and not all that useful or interesting otherwise. He likes himself, but when he stops to think about it too much, he starts to wonder if he really has anything going for him at all

My H/C for Steve’s home life is that his Mom is sick w/ like cancer or something. Before she got sick, Steve’s life was pretty alright for an eastsider- he and his dad fought, but they always made up for the most part. They weren’t perfect, but they loved each other. But after she got sick, she wasn’t there to mediate between Steve and his Dad anymore, and the fighting got worse and worse. And then Steve’s dad started drinking more and it was pretty downhill from there. Steve’s Dad still loves him, but sometimes Steve wishes that he didn’t. If he didn’t, then he could hate him. But his dad does love him, so he can’t get himself to.

Steve and Dally taught Johnny to drive when they were all like fourteen-fifteen-ish. Johnny is a very reckless driver. He loves speeding.

Johnny also loves fast roller coasters and stuff.

Dally doesn't ‘cuz he’s low-key scared of heights- he likes riding broncos and rodeos, but put him at the top of a roller coaster and he’s convinced that it’s gonna break and he’s gonna die. He pretends he doesn’t mind. The only people who know he’s scared of them are Johnny, and before she died, Mrs. Curtis.

Steve has a napoleon complex. Johnny, who is shorter than him by a few inches, likes to bully him for it sometimes

Ponyboy and Cherry don’t interact much in the school year after the book, but in the summer after, they start to hang out. Eventually they become pretty close. They fangirl over Paul Newman together

Ponyboy still doesn’t let Cherry read his theme though until years later

Marcia and Two-Bit re-meet a few months after the book. (Two-Bit is really scared that she’s embarrassed to be dating him, and Marcia is really scared that he’s embarrassed to be dating her. Neither of them are embarrassed. They both adore each other.)

Two-Bit likes to watch Marcia barrel racing. One time while he’s there, he runs into Ponyboy watching Cherry barrel race and immediately tells everyone much to Pony’s chagrin

Evie knows a little bit about cars, and she sometimes helps out at the DX during summers. Steve is so whipped for her lol (and Soda too Steve has two hands)

Evie and Sylvia are besties, but Steve and Sylvia hate each other. They act civil in front of Evie, but as soon as her back is turned they’re growling at each other like dogs. (Well Steve is. Sylvia just acts condescending as hell. Sometimes it goes over his head, so Steve knows she’s insulting him but isn’t sure what the insult is/means. Which makes Steve kinda want to kill her.)

Steve and Soda are low-key co-dependent. (Steve more so- Soda has his family at least, while to Steve, Soda and Evie are his whole world pretty much) It’s probably not super healthy, and both of them are vaguely aware of that, but are trying not to think about it too hard rn

Ponyboy’s friend group in high school consists of Curly Shepard, Mark Jennings, Scout Jenkins (from the tv show), and eventually, in her senior year, Cherry Valance. (There’s others too but those are the main ones.)

Pony dates Cathy Carlson for a while too, idk if they’re good for each other or not- I kinda like the idea of them being a sweet couple tbh, but no one else on here seems to care about them so I haven’t really explored the idea much lol

In a Dally lives au, Mark Jennings and Dally end up spending a bit of time together through Pony, and at some point they realize that they’re half-brothers lol. Mark is a deeply obnoxious little brother to have, and he drives Dally nuts on purpose. Weirdly I think Dally’s a relatively good influence on him, as much as someone like Dally can be. And Dally does care for Mark, though not as much as he cares for Johnny- Mark is, in his head, not exactly his responsibility.

Well I have (so many) more, but I think that’s enough for now lol. Point is, even though I haven’t drawn in a minute, I love these characters and their romanticized version of 1960s Tulsa so much and I think about them way too often lol

(dw once i get more into the swing of school I’ll be doin more art!)

[14buddy22]

Okay, so remember when Aaron’s hot young brother came to visit? What if he tried to hit on Aaron’s wife because Aaron is soo secretive and hasn’t told anyone he’s married.

In this.... Haley and Jack DONT exist.

Aaron Hotchner doesn't wear his wedding ring at work. He'll wear it when he's with you, but never at work. It was something he felt like he could do to protect you and his family from a potential unsub.

While he never wore it at work, he always had a small picture of you and the kids in his wallet. He also had a small tattoo of your children's initials over his heart. When he went for a pool day at Rossi's he always made sure to cover it up.

He wasn't ashamed he was married to you, he also wasn't ashamed to be a father to his two children, but he wanted to protect him. So, when you and Aaron started dating, he vowed he'd keep you and your twins a secret in his work life.

You were a single mom to twins when you met Aaron, your twins just a year old at the time. You were trying to get your daughter to stop crying at the restaurant and then your son was making a mess. Just as your daughter had stopped crying, your son had some how hit the table hard enough to spill the water near you, causing you to become soaked and a stranger sitting at the table across from you coming over to help get you napkins.

You swore it was love at first sight. He introduced himself and then proceeded to tell you that he was an FBI agent when you questioned how he was so good with kids as he quickly was trying to make your daughter laugh while you were cleaning up your son and the mess.

When the mess was cleaned up, you profusely thanked him, saying something along the lines of how hard it is as a single mom trying to entertain one kid, the other does something up to no good.

He knew it had to take his shot. This could be his future family if he played his cards right. You were gorgeous and your kids were adorable.

As he asked for your number, you blushed giving it to him. He made a promise he'd call you when he got back to work so that you'd have his number.

A few dates after that phone call solidified your love for Aaron. You know it was quick, but he was so good, so understanding. You had a sitter cancel on your 3rd date and he dropped all the plans he had and came over to your apartment, opting for a movie night and a home cooked meal instead.

When you two got married, it was just a small wedding. Your parents and siblings, your kids, and your best friend. He had talked about keeping you and your kids a secret, not wanting an unsub to know you exist in his life and could be used against Aaron.

Your kids were almost 4 now, 3 years of knowing Aaron was the best 3 years of your life. He was the perfect husband, the perfect father.

After getting a call from the preschool that your twins attended saying they were sick, you picked them up, trying to call Aaron. When he didn't answer, you knew you had to go to the bureau.

Your twins were not angels when they were sick and you knew it was hard when your daughter was attached to Aaron. It's why they called Aaron first at preschool because your daughter kept asking, but they had to call you when he didn't answer.

As you made your way to his unit, you saw someone sitting outside the doors. As you sat down next to him, you heard him say, "Your kids are cute."

"Thank you."

"Makes sense when they get their looks from you."

You knew you weren't wearing your wedding ring in visible sight, so you knew that the unsolicited flirting was going to happen.

"Is this the waiting line?"

"Yeah, my brother is a very popular person apparently."

"I understand."

You chuckled and you began to run your hands through your son's hair, getting him to lie down next to you on the bench.

"Being a single mom must be tough, I'm good with kids, my little cousins love me."

Just before you had time to respond, you saw Aaron appear. Your kids yelling, "Daddy!"

The man looked at you and said, "You're married to him?"

Aaron said, "Sean, this is my wife, Y/n. Our kids y/d/n and y/s/n. Y/n, this is my little brother, Sean."

"Wife?"

Except it wasn't just Sean's voice. It was a group of people that you assumed to be Aaron's team. Everyone who he always talks about at work, that you've seen pictures and videos of, but never could meet them because you talked about the nature of his job and wanting to keep you and the kids safe.

"Sir, how long have you been holding out on us?"

Aaron looked at you and said, "Almost 3 years."

You wanted to laugh at the looks of the people's faces surrounding you, then you heard the comment from your husband.

"Sean, can you please assume someone isn't a single mom before you begin flirting with them."

You chuckled at that. It was harmless flirting, but still funny. It's also good to know that you could still pull men if something were to ever happen to you and Aaron.

You spoke up, "We owe you all a dinner and an explanation, but, we have two sick kids that we have to get home. I'll have Aaron set up a time and date for when you can come over and ask all the questions you want."

Someone came up and hugged you and said, "I can't believe you're real. We knew he had to be dating someone, but married to someone hot like you! It's like our wildest dreams. Sir! She's a good one."

"Y/n, that would be Penelope."

"I've heard a lot about you. Thanks for brightening up my husband's office."

She hugged you tighter at that.

While you waited for your husband to finish talking with his brother, you made your way to a desk chair and talked with his coworkers for a few minutes.

After leaving the office, you knew that you had a new family who would protect you with everything they had. Aaron wouldn’t be mad. He was more mad that his younger brother was hitting on you, especially since he was already so insecure of himself.

However, when you got home and got the kids down for a nap, you made sure to show Aaron how much he really means to you and how he doesn’t need to be so insecure. He was the only guy you had eyes for.

[strangersteddierthings]

Daily Ficlet 7

I’m challenging myself to write a little ficlet every day, using the prompts from this list. Today’s prompt is recipe book.

-

Steve finds Wayne in the hallway, pulling what items he can from the closet there.

"Need some help?" Steve asks as Wayne struggles with a bigger box that seems wedged in pretty good.

"Sure. Just get yer hands up here and ready to catch," Wayne answers, shimmying the box to and fro while Steve moves to follow his instructions. The box isn't by any means light when it falls into his hands, but it's not the heaviest thing Steve's had to catch -don't think about it, don't think about Eddie's limp body awkwardly shoved through a gate. Don't-

"Thanks, son," Wayne climbs back down the stepladder he was on and takes the box from Steve' hands, walking down the hall to place it on the counter. The front half of the trailer is missing, the gate took it, but a decent amount of of the trailer remains (Eddie's room remains) and the government has finally allowed Wayne to return to pack up what he can.

It's better than starting over completely.

"What's in the box?" Steve asks, because it's the only item Wayne hasn't just demanded he load into the moving truck outside.

"It was supposed to be Eddie's graduation gift," Wayne says softly. "'Suppose it'll have to be a 'glad you woke up from yer coma' gift instead."

"Yeah," Steve says, even if he doesn't believe it. Eddie's been asleep months now. They saved the world, killed Vecna, closed the gates, Max woke up, and the kids have started Sophomore year; Eddie remains comatose. "Can I get a sneak peak at the present?"

"It's not much, and ain't nothin' new," Wayne says, opening the box and beginning the process of pulling things out. It looks a bit like the contents of a hope chest. Things to start living on your own with. Robin's mom has one for her that Steve's seen, and even contributed to. There's an envelope of $500 tucked along the side of Robin's chest.

"This was his grandpa's. My dad's," Wayne says, pulling out a belt buckle. "And my ma made this, not for anyone in particular, mind you, but just because she liked to keep herself busy." It's a blanket, thick and a little scratchy when Steve touches it. "And this. This is the most important." Wayne pulls out a binder from the bottom of the box, handing it over to Steve for inspection.

He takes it carefully even though it looks sturdy. Holding it in one hand, he flips it open. He was thinking maybe it would be a photo album or something but it's not. It looks like a recipe book. All the recipes are hand written on looseleaf paper, with post it notes sticking out randomly. "What makes this special?"

"That's his mom's handwriting," Wayne smiles but he sounds sad. "Eddie lost her when he was five. She got real sick, y'know, and never got better. But she wrote out all them recipes. I'm amazed Al kept the thing, but I guess I shouldn't be. No real value in a binder of recipes 'cept to the people close to the author."

Steve looks back down at the binder. He still has both his parents, however distant they might be, so he doesn't know if he'll ever fully understand the significance of getting this piece of someone back. "Does he not have anything else with her writing on it?"

"No, not writing. We got plenty of things they used to own. Eddie's caseworker let us go through the whole house, after Al'd been shipped off to the penitentiary, to gather anything Eddie might want or need. Was supposed to just be his stuff, mind you, legally speakin', but I think that lady knew if we didn't take other stuff, Eddie'd never see it again.

"So, Eddie's got things that were hers. But nothing that's uniquely hers. There's jewelry, and a coupla blankets, but all that stuff is replaceable and not... Well, I dunno what I'm tryin' to say, but that's just stuff that was hers. But this. This was her. Y'understand?"

And Steve does. There's a difference between having something that belonged to someone once, and something that really feels like them when you hold it. Steve doesn't have anything like that, personally, but he knows there will come a time when the difference matters. When everyone grows up and scatters into the future. He imagines a hand written letter from Dustin will mean much more for him to find after a long time of no contact than it would to find his old Roast Beef t-shirt in the back of a drawer or something, moth bitten and musty.

"I can't wait to find out if Eddie's an angry emotional, or a sad one."

Wayne laughs. "He can be both."

[billlydear]

SUPERNOVA - BILLY HARGROVE X READER (PART ONE)

word count: 3135 // masterlist | inbox (please request) | WIP list

Summary: max's english tutor has a black eye and a shitty alibi. billy sees right through it.

Contents/Warnings: fem!reader, angst, hurt/comfort, eventual happy ending, mentions of abuse, injuries mentioned (black eye), reader is abused by her mother just like billy is by his father

A/N: thank you for 300 followers!!! have this as a little gift from me to you <3 basic biology part three is in the works, don't worry! i just wrote this in a fit of sleep deprived passion the other night after thinking about it for a week or so and i wanted to share :) i hope you enjoy! the ending of this is pretty straightforward and, though i plan to write more parts, this can be read on its own for now.

reblogs and comments are greatly appreciated! your feedback motivates me to write more, so thank you for your support :-)

There’s never a good reason for Max to stomp into Billy’s room. It’s always either her demanding a ride somewhere, asking for money, or shouting at him to turn his music down. This time, though, there’s no music playing, and it’s nearing 11:00 PM, so he’s not sure why she’d need money or a ride.

He glances up at her, really more of a glare, through his eyelashes, reclined against the wall as he lounges on his bed. He’s got a magazine in hand and the pages are as boring as the cover was, but he’d rather stare at faded jet ski advertisements than read the book he’s supposed to be working on for English.

She stops just inside the doorway, jacket on and shoes laced. He narrows his eyes at her, something of a question, and she sounds just as venomous as he looks when she replies.

“I need to borrow your window.” She mutters, piercing eyes set on him.

He’s heard her say a lot of weird things since they started living together. Mom, I can’t find my left rollerskate, Why is my bra in the freezer?, and We’re not going in the theater, we’re going to sit outside and talk, have previously topped the list but this is off the charts.

“Sure, Max,” He drawls, fingers tightening against the waxy magazine paper, “Just haul it back in here when you’re done, okay?”

“You know what I mean,” She huffs, already lunging for his bed. She practically topples him in her overzealous attempt to reach the window, and he shoots a hand out to steady himself as the mattress rocks. He has half a mind to kick her onto the floor but he watches her click a flashlight open from her jacket pocket, and stares with suspicious intrigue instead.

“Come on, come on,” She huffs, clicking the light on, off, on, off, “Where is she?”

“Who?” Billy leans forwards, peering out the window into the blackened neighborhood, “Jesus, Max, don’t go shining lights into people’s windows at night, they’ll think you’re some creep trying to watch them change.”

“Yeah, I’m sure you know that from experience,” She grumbles, shoving his hand away when he tries grabbing the light.

“I’m not kidding,” Billy seethes, muscled arm coming to combat her defenses, nearly shoving her off of the end of the bed, “What are you even trying to do, anyways?”

“I’m trying to talk to my tutor,” She snaps, landing a sharp slap to his thigh that reddens the skin there, “Butt out, butthead.”

“Assface,” Billy grumbles, rubbing at the tender spot on his leg with half a mind to whack her upside the head. She ignores him completely, desperately flicking the light at a ground floor window.

“Do you really need tutoring help now?” Billy groans, the incessant clicking preventing him from what was supposed to be his before-bed relaxation.

“She wasn’t at school today,” Max explains in a huff, “Or- like, she didn’t show up at my school. She called this morning to say she was sick, but she sounded fine, and I heard someone in the parking lot say that they saw her outside her house, just sitting there, like, really late last night.”

“So she was getting some fresh air,” Billy deadpans, “Now get out of my room.”

“Would it kill you to cooperate?” Max turns to him with such a judgemental stare that Billy’s surprised he doesn’t wither away right on the spot. Hell hath no fury like a teenage girl scorned, he thinks, annoyance bubbling in his chest.

“She’s obviously not coming,” Billy reasons, his patience wearing thin after almost two minutes of flashlight nonsense, “She’s probably sleeping. She’s got the flu or something, and you’re gonna wake her up and make her even more sick. Just leave her alone, and leave me alone.”

“I’m not asking you to be a part of this!” She gushes, jaw set in a hard frown and eyes rolling when he props his elbow up on the windowsill, cheek smushed into a bored expression against his palm.

“I just want to see if she’s okay, because she doesn’t normally get sick, and I haven’t seen her window open all day, and I really think that something might be wrong, so-”

After a staggering two minutes and forty-six seconds of morse code from hell, your curtains part. Max practically lights up at the sliver of light that appears between the drapes, but when your face pops between it, her breath hitches in a gasp.

Your eye is bruised. It’s swollen shut and purple, an ugly stain that blooms down your cheek, like a rose that sticks its thorns straight into Billy’s chest. His posture, previously saggy and bored, stiffens until he’s nearly pressed against the glass, brows furrowed in horror as his lips part ever-so-slightly.

“Oh my god,” Max breathes, and you regard them both with a weary gaze.

Max lifts the lower half of Billy’s window, slipping out the gap with such agility and speed that Billy doesn’t have a chance to try to stop her before she’s already outside. He rushes to follow her, cringing as his bare feet land in damp piles of leaves.

“What happened to you?” Max runs to your window, bracing her hands on the sill.

“Nothing,” You try to smile, and it pulls at the skin around your eye, finishing the expression off with a wince, “I just- it’s silly, okay? I slipped and fell on the ice out front and I hit the stair rail on the way down. I was too embarrassed to go to school, ‘cause I knew everyone would ask, so I just called out sick. I’m sorry, Max, I know today was our day, but I’ll do double time once this heals.”

The more you ramble, the quicker you spew your pre-determined speech, the more the thorns lodge themselves in Billy’s gut. It’s familiar behavior, having an outlandish excuse at your disposal, reciting it like poetry, blaming the bruises on a misstep down the stairs rather than a rage-fueled fist. He’s done the same to countless teachers, all staring down at him with a condescending sneer, assuming he’d instigated another fight.

Max might not be well acquainted with different types of bruises - and god he hopes she never has to be - but Billy certainly is. And your black eye is not from a stair railing, he knows that. It looks the same as his does whenever Neil decides he’s in a fighting mood, and it doesn’t seem like you have the frozen peas that Billy usually medicates his marks with.

“It’s okay!” Max promises, and thankfully she commands enough of your attention to where you don’t notice Billy’s grief-stricken stare, looking for all the world like he’d been punched in the gut.

‘It’s okay, we can just meet up some other time. Or- or I can come over to your house! So you don’t have to show your face anywhere. And I won’t tell,” She insists, hands dug snugly into the pockets of her jacket, “I’m good at keeping secrets.”

So are you, Billy notes, just not to the people with the same ones.

“I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” You frown slightly, biting the inside of your cheek, “This really hurts, and it’s kind of giving me a headache, so… might be best to just meet when it’s healed.”

“That’s fine,” Max nods, reaching up and through the window to sling her arms around your neck in a rushed hug, “Just- call me when it’s better, okay? My teacher set us this new essay, and it’s got some stupidly complicated prompt, so I need your help figuring out-”

Billy watches as your head ticks up, eyes widening slightly as you tune into the sounds of your house. He knows the look all too well, you’ve heard someone coming.

“That’s great Max,” You stammer, reaching for the window pane to close it, "I’ve gotta go!”

“-how to… write it.” She finishes, face wrinkling in confusion when you slam the window shut, yanking the curtains closed, “Feel better…”

“Go,” Billy jumps to action, hearing a raised voice from within your room, not your own, “Max, move!”

He pushes her along the side of their house, shoving her around the back until they’re out of the line of sight from your window. He peers around the corner from behind an overgrown trellis, one that lets him see you without you seeing him. He waits with bated breath, ignoring Max’s indignant protests and slamming a hand over her mouth.

She licks his palm, but he manages to stay calm and keep it there. He will smear it on her cheek later, though.

Sure enough, Billy watches your curtains fly open. There’s a woman in the window now, and you’re standing behind her, expression unreadable. Then you speak, and Billy can’t hear it. Your voice must be soft, gentle, calming. The woman barrely reacts, eyes scanning wildly for whoever you’d been talking to. But Billy keeps Max quiet, pinching her hard when she tries escaping his grip.

Billy watches the woman in your window with a hatred he’s only ever felt towards Neil. She acts the same, menacing glares and a puffed-up chest. You react just as he does, a personified tension-diffuser as you shrink in on yourself and give steady, slow answers. She’s shouting, you’re mumbling. She’s advancing, you’re backing away. She’s grabbing your wrist, forcing you close to her, and you’re squeezing your eyes shut.

Billy’s stomach churns; he can’t watch this any longer.

He herds Max to the other side of the house, keeps her restrained with one hand and pries at her window with the other. It opens smooth and easy, no squeaking that would alert their parents to their escapade.

Once they’re both inside, she flips.

“You asshole,” She huffs, “You manhandled me! You really couldn’t just let me have one nice conversation with my friend? You had to yank me away like some psychopath?”

“She wasn’t going to come back,” Billy murmurs, a glint in his eyes urging her to lower her own voice, “And she didn’t fall down the stairs. Go to sleep, Max.”

He feels a pillow hit him in the back as he strides out of her room, and each step down the hallway towards his own feels like he’s numbing from the inside out. The role reversal of his own life had been so mind-shattering, watching a scene from his household happen in real time in front of him instead of a torturous memory in his nightmares.

By the time he reaches his room, his fingers are too numb to shut the door. He kicks it closed instead, staring out of the still-opened window to watch your own. The curtains are drawn again, shutting you off from the world.

He stands there staring for what feels like seconds, but is probably minutes with the way his brain is warping his thoughts. Abuse felt so lonely, it was a soundproof room with padded walls, but they stung like hot coals when his dad came stomping in to shove him up against them. His family, his safe space, his padded room, came with the irony of only existing alongside pain, fear, and anxiety. And knowing there was an identical room beside his for god knows how long, thick layers of insulation drowning out each of your cries and blocking out each other’s existence, makes him sick.

His eye stings with the residual image of your own, a feeling he knows all too well. His hand, on instinct, tingles with a cold sort of sensation, the same that he got from grabbing the ice-covered peas out of the freezer.

He’s off to the kitchen in a hurry, feet padding carefully across the floor so as not to alert anyone of his presence. The biggest challenge is opening the freezer door quietly, but he’s a pro at it by now. He takes the peas back to his room, but this time he doesn’t curl up in his bed with them pressed to his eye, he clutches them tightly and heads for the window.

Max’s flashlight is discarded on the sill, and he wraps it in his free fist. He clicks it on cautiously, testing the sound to see how it echoes in the empty space between your house and his. It’s not obnoxiously loud, hopefully no one can hear it.

He flashes it against your window, only for a second, then ducks beneath the sill. He waits, expecting an explosion of sound as your mother reaches out to grab him. But nothing happens, so he straightens up to his full height. The wind nips at his bare arms, goosebumps erupting over the skin not covered by his muscle tank. He waves the flashlight once more at your window, covering it with his thumb to flash it instead of clicking the button rapidly. 

He hears shuffling from inside, then silence. Then shuffling again, a little closer, and silence. Then more shuffling, and the routine continues until he hears your fingers scrape at the window pane.

You duck under the curtains this time, easier to slip back inside and shut the window instead of drawing the curtains, “Max, I can’t-”

Billy doesn’t know what to say when your eye catches him. He blinks, once, twice, three times, watching as your anxious eyes rove over him. Only then does he register the chill in his hand, the peas.

“Here,” He murmurs, voice soft and slightly raspy, as he holds the package out to you, “Ten minutes, then turn the package around, then ten more minutes. And if it’s still icy, do it over again.”

You take the peas because you have to, because he’s pressing the cold package into your hand. Your fingers wrap around it and you peer curiously at the image on the front, only glancing back up at him when he shifts in his stance, leaves crushed beneath his feet.

“The package rustles,” He warns you, “Be careful. Don’t get caught.”

“I won’t,” You finally murmur, breaking your stunned silence, “I- Uh, thank you. It’s.. Billy, right?”

“Yeah,” He breathes, nodding once. He’s half aware that his curls aren’t exactly perfect like they typically are, because nodding sends one of them tumbling into his eyesight over his forehead, “That’s me.”

“Y/N,” You mumble, and this time even Billy hears the heavy footfalls in your hallway. They set you on edge again, and he yanks his fingers back from the windowsill so that you can snap it shut, “I gotta go.”

“Bye,” He whispers, voice lost to the night as he stands outside your window. He ducks beneath the sill again, where your mom can’t see him if she decides to search the premises. He doesn’t hear anything from your room, though, and he takes it as a good sign when the footsteps retreat. Then he hears the soft crunch of the package of peas, muffled beneath what he assumes is your blanket as bed springs creak from within.

His eyes snap shut at the sound, envisioning you curled up beneath your comforter, hugging the bag of peas to your bruise. It’s a position that feels so natural to him he almost replicates it, back slumped against the siding of your house. The rustling stops; you got yourself settled.

Only then does he move, climbing back through his window and shutting it for the night. He can’t sleep, though, eyes drifting towards your window from his seat on his bed. He watches, he waits, he stares until his eyes sting, every second that passes a blessing for the lack of commotion it causes. When he does fall asleep it’s after the upstairs lights of your house have shut off, because only then is it over, only then is it safe. He sleeps in solidarity with you, knowing that the click of the lightswitch puts you at ease just like it does him; if there's someone else awake, it’s not safe to sleep. He’ll wake up tomorrow morning with a stiff neck from sleeping up against the wall, but his eyes will flutter open and the first thing he’ll see is your window, hopefully open to showcase peace inside.

Never in his life has he felt connected to someone his age. That’s what abuse does, that’s what Neil does. He isolates Billy, keeping him under his thumb so the boy can’t escape his clutches. But now there’s a glimmer of hope right next door. Hope, he supposes, isn’t the right word. A muddy black eye isn’t hopeful. It is, though, when it’s matching his own, when your scars and bruises line up with each other’s to map out constellations of torture. He wants to chart them, find out where the patterns are, spit out the stories behind them.

He’s spent enough time stargazing his own past, picking a new ball of fire each night to examine. To pick apart, to wish he’d have acted differently in, to regret. Now there’s a whole other sky mere feet away from him, and he yearns to chart it, to explore its patterns in the desperate hope of finding companionship. Oh, that cluster? A missed curfew. That bright one? Backtalk.

He’s always felt like a potential supernova. Like one day, all of the hurt, rage, and despair inside of him is going to burst forth in an explosion of color, blood and guts paired with anguish and heartache. 

And now, knowing there’s another ticking time bomb beside him, two panes of glass separating the two dying stars, he has hope. Maybe it’s morbid, to want to explode in tandem. To seek connection in even destruction. All Billy knows is that if he can’t get out, he’ll die.

He thinks about it for a moment; getting out. Shooting across the galaxy, hurtling over the inky black sky until the swirling black hole that is Neil Hargrove can’t suck him in anymore. Landing somewhere where he burns bright without the threat of explosion. 

And for the first time since that vision began, he sees two stars. One yours and one his, twin flames, both rocketing towards a safe corner of the universe, one where no one else can dim your glow. 

Billy knows right then and there, he has to get to know you. He’s never tried making real friends, never wants to get close enough to have to reveal that Daddy hits him and Mommy - New Mommy - doesn’t care. But you’re the same as him, a dimming star puttering along with the desperate hope of migrating instead of exploding. And if you can feed off of each other’s light, merge into one, he knows you’ll be strong enough to escape together, to go out without a bang.

reblogs and comments are greatly appreciated! your feedback motivates me to write more, so thank you for your support :-)

[marymary-diva17]

Broken vows (2)

Jake x reader + neteyam/ sully kids/ neytiri

Since the day neteyam had been shot my the recoms while saving his siblings and spider, so much had changed in your life. You are still thankful that your son is still alive and well, but your relationship with his father Jake still hadn't changed. It seems like you are staying turn to your words and keeping your distance from Jake and neytiri. Making sure to be civil towards them when the kids and everyone else was around, but there was never going back to what your relationship was like in the past.

Y/n " these sample will be perfect"

???? " mama"you soon heard someone calling for you making you turn around to see neteyam making his way towards you.

y/n " hello my son"

neteyam " hey mama I came to see you and see how everything going"

y/n " well I'm happy you are her my boy ... so where are your siblings" neteyam smiled and soon enough his siblings and spider had appeared, you knew they were all here today.

tuk " hey mama"

y/n " hey little one"

kiri " neyteyam said he was going to come see you today and we tagged along as well"

spider “ they came by the home to look for you but it told them, you were out and so we came to see you all together”

y/n " well I'm happy all my kids are here I was about to hand back to the base once everything was backed away"

lo'ak " here lets us help you"

y/n " thank you kids" The kids were helping your collect the rest of your sample and some other plants as well, to take home with you so you can study them later.

y/n " teyam be careful just because I said you were in the clear and good to move, doesn’t mean you can move around so fast”

neteyam “ yes mama”

tsireya “ hello everyone”

Loak “ hey you guys made it mama we asked tsireya and her brothers, if they wish to come with us”

y/n “ well it's good to have them”

Rotxo “ can we help please”

y/n “ sure one of you can help Tuk carry the stuff”

Tuk “ I got to mama in a big girl now”

y/n “ tuk even big kids and adults have to ask for help”

Rotox “Here Tuk I will take some of the stuff, and you can still carry the rest.”

Tuk “Okay” Tuk had allowed Rotxo to help her carry some of the stuff while Aonung and Tsireya had helped her older siblings and spider . Soon all the kids follwoed you back to the base, the kids had palced everything down outside.

aonung " so will more humans be coming here to stay with you and spider"

y/n " well I don't have a answer for that yet norm might come to stay her official, but he might stay in the forest a bit longer if other humans come I don't know yet"

aonung " wow I can't wait to see what else these sky people have"

y/n " you will be amazed young man"

tsireya " so you were a healer before you came here"

y/n " yes that was my life I was a healer back at home that was one of many moments, I had meant Jake and I might be one of the many ways I had ....yes I was a healer"

tuk " mama what was it like being a healer when you were younger"

y/n " there were good and sad moments little one but that happenes, when you heal the sick and injured"

kiri " well I'm happy you and spider are staying here it will be boring without any of you"

y/n " well I have stayed to help with you kids and Jake if anything bad happens, and to keep in contact with everyone else back at home"

spider " she even allowed me to have my own room as well"

y/n " yes a room he will make sure to maintain when under my watch"

spider " yes mom ... you dont mind me calling you mom"

y/n " no I don't mind at all spider I have raised you since you were young, along with my son and there other kids all of you have become my kids"

neteyam " hey it will be cool to have another brother and someone here with mom when we are at home"

tuk " yeah spider our big brother official now"

????? " y/n" you and the kids had heard someone speak and that was tsu'tey he saw the children and looked at them.

y/n " tsu'tey welcome"

tsu'tey " hello I came to bring you some of the items your asked for"

y/n " thank you I can show you where to put them" you soon walked off with tsu'tey leaving the kids alone. many thoughts were running through their heads, about this interaction between you and tsu'tey. The kids had watched you and tsu'tey talk and laugh as it seem like you two had a special bond.

later that night

neteyam " mom thank you for allow us to stay for dinner"

y/n " it was good to have you all here for dinner"

kiri " dinner was wonder I love your grilled fish and vegetables"

spider " yes they are amazing you always had an amazing cooking talent"

aonung " thank you for allow us to stay as well"

rotxo " yes thank you"

y/n " it was good to have my kids friends over for dinner"

neteyam " umm mom there is something I been wishing to ask you"

y/n " sure my son ask away"

neteyam " umm mom have you ever thought about dating again or finding a new mate or husband" you had looked at the kdis they were all looking at you.

neteyam " I knew that was a stupid question"

y/n " no it a good question my son ... yes for some time I have been think about open a new page on my love life"

tuk " a love life with who mama"

y/n " I don't know yet"

tsireya " we have some wonderful warriors and members here who will be perfect for you"

y/n " oh"

kiri " we also know some of as well"

tuk " yes like uncle norm he will be good"

lo'ak " not him silly"

y/n " norm has loved someone before and still love her, I rather not make him give her up yet"

tuk " oh okay"

spider " well some of the scientists males have said you are beautiful and have taking a liking to you ... but they didn't know it was appropriate with your relationship with Jake"

y/n " I and Jake will be friends for now on and be parents to you kids"

neteyam " then what about tsu'tey mom"

y/n " I and Tsu'tey are friends."

neteyam "Mama, don't lie I have seen the way you two look at each other and act around one other"

lo'ak "Uncle Tsu'tey acts like your husband heck, he might have been a better husband towards you than Dad."

y/n " kids ....."

Kiri "Mama, we've seen you be alone and turn down dates and offers of romance to take care of us or help around the clan. Most of it was thanked, and others not."

Spider "You have given it you all here you deserve some happiness"

y/n " kids it good to see you all care but I love someone once and he broken my heart, and left me for another without saying anything else"

neteyam " we know mama"

y/n " you know who told you"

spider " we ear dropped our norm and other conversation then of them have been happy with Jake lately, and either have mo'at as well"

tsireya " even our parents seem disgust by their actions as well"

y/n " children I wish to never drag any of you into this mess"

neteyam " mama we love you and we will do anything for you, mama I want you to be happy and if that with tsu'tey I will be happy for you as well"

y/n " okay I will give love a chance" the kids smiled it seem like it worked, the children left the night saying goodnight to you and spider. You had taken the kids words to heart and agreed to allow yourself to fall in love again, maybe finding love again won't be that bad. You had started soon get close to Tsu’tey. He would even be seen leaving your home during dusk times, start many gossip and rumors in the clan drawing the attention of many. The kids were soon help to learn you and Tsu’tey were official dating, so were all your friends as well one of them stating your official moved on from Jake sully and will find a proper and good husband this time around. You are happy in your relationship with Tsu’tey and with the family and friends you have here, giving up one your past romance and giving love a chance again. Now it was time to see where your life will lead now and how much happiness and sorrow will come as well.

[things-arent-what-they-seem66]

(Queen Adam AU Part 12)

*Lucifer paced nervously outside the bathroom door, it had been nearly a year since the Alastor situation and they hoped that Adam was pregnant again, just then Adam came out of the bathroom with the biggest smile on his face and a pregnancy test in his hand*

Adam: I’m pregnant, I am so happy.

*Lucifer picked up Adam and kissed him, downstairs the kids heard the celebration*

Jake: Are we getting a new brother or sister?

Luke: Looks like it, I was wondering when mom would be pregnant again.

*they were all very happy, they just liked to joke about how often Adam got pregnant*

Cain: You should have been around when dad was married to my mom. He pretty just had to look at her a certain way and she got pregnant.

Lydia: Yeah, but wasn’t that because mom was starting humanity. Mom is getting pregnant a lot because he wants to be.

Cain: True.

*Adam excitedly ran down the stairs with Lucifer following*

Adam: I am going to have a baby.

*the children celebrated with their parents not knowing what would happen because of this pregnancy*

Adam was now seven months pregnant and he was so happy, this was probably one of the smoothest pregnancies so far.

Lucifer: You are literally glowing my dear.

Adam: It's the baby, I haven't been sick, had cramps, or pain of any kind. If they were all like this I'd probably have babies more often.

Lucifer: There are still more chances to hehe

Adam: Yes there are.

[thatgirlstrawberry]

Sick Surprise pt. 7 - The Party Kid

In which it’s Eloise’s 4th birthday but someone unexpected shows up at the party…

Warnings: cursing, angst, fluff, death threat, low key dad!spencer, lmk if I missed anything!

Spencer Reid x fem!reader

“Spence? Is Eloisey’s hair done yet?” Y/N called as she rushed around her apartment. They were supposed to be at the park already but the birthday girl wanted really extravagant superhero pancakes.

In between Spencer’s teeth was a comb as he tried to wrestle the girl’s hair into pig tails. It wasn’t working out very well. Eloise was standing on the counter and Spencer stood behind her trying not to accidentally pull her hair too hard.

“Uh… yeah! It’s… um almost.” He called back. Eloise giggled as Spencer laughed quietly.

Another reason they were late was because Y/N thought that Spencer looked absolutely adorable in his little cargo shorts and polo shirt so she decided to make him feel as good as he looked before Eloise woke up.

She wore a long blue sundress and sunglasses perched on her head. “Okay, great! We have to leave soon.”

Spencer’s eyes widened a bit and he snapped the tiny rubber band into her hair. A minute later, Spencer sighed, proud of her work. The pig tails were a little lopsided but… hey who would notice.

Y/N walked into the bathroom and gasped with a big smile. “There’s my beautiful birthday girl!” She came up and attacked Eloise’s cheek with kisses. The girl squealed and giggled.

“Why don’t you get get a few cookies for the road?” She asked, scooping the girl up and setting her on the ground. The girl clapped and ran out of the bathroom.

Spencer smiled after her and Y/N turned to him. “So…”

He looked down at her and wrapped his arms around her waist. “So…?”

Y/N clicked her tongue. “My parents are coming to the party.” She nodded. “They said that they wanted to get to know Eloise.”

Spencer was calm on the outside but panicking on the inside.

“And I haven’t told them that I’m dating anyone. And I understand if you don’t want to meet them just yet but we’re gonna be showing up together so I mean-“

Spencer laughed. “Has anyone ever told you ramble a lot?” He asked, kissing her. “You’re such a nervous person.” He rubbed her cheekbones with his thumbs.

“I know.”

“I would love to meet your parents.” He sighed, kissing her again. She smiled into it before pulling away.

She buried her head in her chest. “You’re amazing and I love you.”

Spencer kissed the top of her head. “You’re amazing and I love you too.” He replied.

“And I love you for asking Penelope and Derek to get to the park early and set up.”

“Yeah?”

“Mhm. And I love you for inviting JJ and Hotch’s boys because I was too nervous.”

“Of course baby.”

They heard Eloise’s tiny feet patter through the house again and Y/N kissed his chest through his shirt and pulled away from him. “Okay! Time to go, Eloisey! Are your shoes on, baby?”

“Duh, mommy.”

.•.•.•.•.•.•.•.•.•.•.•.•.•.•.•.

Y/N watched Eloise and her friends from daycare and the BAU boys run around the playground. She was surrounded by a bunch of the daycare moms.

She never felt like she belonged with their group. All of them had husbands. All of them were at least 5 years older than her. None of them really liked her either and she could tell.

They judged her for not being married, for letting her kid cuss occasionally, letting her kid defend herself— Long story short, a boy had been pulling Eloise’s hair repeatedly and the next time he did it after she told her mom, she punched him in the nose and made him bleed.

Anyway, Y/N felt out of place standing with them, drinking wine in solo cups.

She got a text from her mother saying that her and her father were almost to the park. Y/N excused herself from the group of moms and walked over to Spencer who was running around chasing the kids and pretending that he was a monster or something.

She giggled and watched him. When he realized that she was standing there she waved him over. He pushed his hair out of his face and told the kids he’d be back in a little while and then walked over to Y/N.

“Hey, what’s up?” He asked.

She smiled. “You’re adorable.” She told him, glancing back at Eloise who climbed up on the rock thingy and shouted like she made it to the top of Everest. “And my mom said she and my dad are pulling in so…”

Spencer smiled, clearing his throat. “Should we get Eloise, too? I’m sure she’d like to see them.”

Y/N shook her head. “Oh, she wouldn’t remember them. They haven’t been around since she was just a few months old.” She saw how Spencer’s face fell and shook her head again. “No but it’s okay! It’s fine! We’re fine. Come on, we’ll get Eloise to talk to them during lunch.”

She grabbed his hand and pulled him towards the pavilion where a bunch of people stood talking and eating the fruit and chips Penelope and Derek had set out.

“Y/N!” She heard her father’s voice and she smiled. He and Y/N’s mother emerged from the crowd holding hands.

“Dad, hey! Hi, mom!” They hugged her and Spencer stood behind her awkwardly.

She pulled away and noticed Y/N’s mom giving Spencer a judgy once over. She inhaled deeply and bit her lip. “Uh… mom, dad. This is my boyfriend, Spencer.”

Her mother stepped forward and held her hand out. “I’m y/m/n. Good to meet you.”

Her father did the same. “Nice to meet you, Spencer.”

“You guys too.” He spoke, shaking their hands because he was too nervous to tell them that he didn’t like to do that.

Y/N cleared her throat after the moment of awkward silence. “Uh… okay. Well there’s wine and juice on those tables. Also, just some little snacks things. The pizza is on the way and Eloise will come see you guys when it’s here!” She kissed their cheeks and then grabbed Spencer’s wrist and tugging him away.

They stopped by the edge of the concrete where it met the mulch from the playground. Y/N took a deep breath and smiled at Eloise who waved at her from the top of the pirate ship thing.

JJ, Hotch, and Derek had joined them, talking amongst themselves. Y/N turned to Spencer. “I’m sorry that was so awkward.” She whispered.

“It’s okay, baby.” He assured her, nodding.

Y/N pressed her lips together. “I just— I don’t know why they’re here they never have been for any of her other birthdays—“ She stopped mid sentence when her eyes glided over the park. Her breath seemed to catch in her throat.

“Y/N?”

She pulled away from his side and began to walk quickly towards a man near the playground.

“Y/N!?” Spencer called. He began to walk after her. He looked back at Derek, JJ, and Hotch who furrowed their brows.

The man saw her and his eyes widened. “What the fuck!?” She shouted. She got to him and pushed him quickly. “What the fuck are you doing here!?”

The man started stuttering and backed away from her. “Y/N, wait—“

“No, you need to leave. Now.” She poked his chest.

Spencer caught up to her and grabbed her shoulders. “Y/N who is this? What’s wrong?” He asked, not looking away from the man.

“This asshole is Eloise’s father.”

Spencer’s eyes widened and he protectively stepped in front of her. Y/N grabbed the fabric of his shirt in her fists.

“You don’t get to be here.” She mumbled, moving from behind her boyfriend. She pushed the man back again. “You don’t get to fucking be here, Jake!”

“Listen—“ He held his hands out in front of him and stepped back. “I just— I heard about it on Facebook and I thought I’d stop by—“

Y/N scoffed and Spencer could hear the tears in her voice. “You left us and you thought you could just— just stop by!?” She shouted. “What the fuck is wrong with you!?”

“Y/N, listen. Please.” Spencer shook his head and stepped in front of her again.

“She doesn’t have to listen to anything you say. Get the hell out of here.” He told him. His voice was calm but his face was most definitely not.

Jake scoffed. “Who are you? Some guy playing like you’re my kid’s father?”

“Someone fucking had to.” Spencer said. “I’ll say it one more time, walk away.”

He looked at Y/N. “Come on, let me talk to her. Let me just see her, Y/N. Please.”

She bit her lip and looked up at him. “Why, Jake?”

“What?” He asked, his brows furrowing, a confused smile on his lips.

Y/N’s glare hardened. “Why do you want to see her so badly? Why, after four years?”

He rolled his eyes. “Because she’s mine too, Y/N.”

She shook her head, an angry smile appearing on her face. “No, you lost that the minute you left.” She nodded. “The minute you decided to pack your shit and move across the state? Yeah, she’s not yours and she never fucking will be. So, I swear to God, if you do not leave this park in 30 seconds, I’m going to fucking kill you.” Jake looked scared.

Derek and Hotch walked up behind Spencer and Y/N hearing the last of her threat. Spencer placed a hand on his girlfriend’s back as Jake turned around quickly and walking towards his car that was parked against the curb.

Y/N’s shoulders shook and she turned around, covering her face and walking into Spencer who wrapped his arms around her.

“Do we need to make sure that man leaves?” Hotch asked Spencer. He nodded and Hotch and Derek began to make their way towards the car that hadn’t started yet.

Spencer rubbed his girlfriend’s back. “I hate him!” She sobbed. “He ruined everything! And then he just gets to— to show up like he decided he wants to be a fucking father!?”

He rocked her back and forth as she cried and let out her very violent feelings about Jake, making sure to talk into his chest so no one else could hear it.

After Y/N calmed down, she pulled away from Spencer but looked up at him. “Am I a snotty mess?” She asked.

Spencer chuckled and nodded reluctantly. “Yes but it’s okay. We’ll fix it, okay?”

Y/N smiled but got serious for a second. “Spencer, if you’re planning to leave, I need you to tell me.” He almost spoke but he realized that she wasn’t done. “Because I can’t do this whole thing again. I need to know that you’re here and you’re staying. And if you’re not, I need you to tell me now.”

Spencer leaned down and kissed her deeply. “Y/N, I’ve said this before and I’ll say it as many times as you need me to.” He nodded. “I will never leave you and Eloise. You two are like— my entire world now and I can’t even remember what life was like before you.”

Y/N smiled and sighed in relief. “I am so in love with you and I can’t even explain how much.”

.•.•.•.•.•.•.•.•.•.��.•.•.•.•.•.

After the Jake incident, the party went by smoothly. They ate pizza and Eloise caught up with her grandma and grandpa.

Eloise absolutely loved present time. She got so many new toys and clothes that Y/N couldn’t even imagine where she’d put it all.

Even Spencer bought her a tiny kid keyboard that she knew she would love. She leaned over to Spencer when Eloise moved on to the next present. “I told you you didn’t have to get her anything.” She whispered.

Spencer tightened his arm around her waist. “I wanted to. Also Eloise deserves it.”

Y/N rolled her eyes. “I swear, I’m gonna sound proof her room ‘cause she’s gonna be playing that thing night and day.”

Spencer chuckled and winked at her. “You’re welcome.”

.•.•.•.•.•.•.•.•.•.•.•.•.•.•.•.

Now, the three of them sat on the balcony of Y/N’s apartment on the outdoor couch, eating ice cream. The sun was setting and Eloise was curled up between Y/N and Spencer.

“You have a good birthday, Eloisey?” Y/N asked, wiping ice cream off of the corner of the girl’s mouth.

She nodded rapidly. “I had a weally good birfday.” Y/N smiled, and looked up at Spencer.

Soon enough, Eloise had fallen asleep with her head in Y/N’s lap and her feet in Spencer’s.

Y/N knew that this is how she could see her future. Spencer was there, maybe another kid, a house with a dog or a cat, she wasn’t picky. She just knew that this is how it was supposed to be.

—————————————

YAYYYYYYYYYY

I loved this chapter!! Please comment your ideas or send in my ask box!!

Oop I also forgot to add the Taglist to os you already read tia just ignore it lol

Taglist:

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The next chapter of How To Lie To A Behavior Analyst is in the works still!!!

Love ya bunches ❤️❤️❤️

[little-bumblebeeee]

hey! would you mind doing dustin x fem!reader...? about anything really, i just need more fics of him because i love him and i barely ever see any

phew, sorry, life got my ass before I could start this lmao. I got sick again but luckily my new house doesn't have nasty shit in the walls so let's hope this gets better 👍

Anyways, have some awkward teenage flirting and confessions with 641 words ♡

You only said yes when you were asked by a teacher if you wanted to sign up for camp Know-Where because you thought she said camp Nowhere, but next thing you knew you were on a bus full of nerds. Like, textbook nerds. The kids behind you just kept going on and on about science stuff and it gave you a headache. And when you turned around to tell them to shut up, you met Dustin.

Now you can't seem to shake him away from you, even a year later.

"C'mon, just sit in on this session to see if you like it!" Dustin says, trying to convince you to get into d&d for what seems like the millionth time in the span of this short year in which you've known each other.

"For the last time, I have better things to do, Dustin. Speaking of, you have a book report that you can't afford to get an F on if you wanna keep a good grade." You remind him, sticking a finger into his shoulder, watching red bloom in his cheeks as he rolls his eyes and walks past you into the drama room where Hellfire is held. Unfortunately, even though you prefer being alone, you don't like going places by yourself, so you have to jog to catch up with him.

You've never seen him like this before, his eyes wide and lips parted just barely as he listens so intently to Eddie's theatrical speech, you think not even a tornado passing through would shake him. You sit away from the table, watching as he yells and cheers, going through the most colorful range of emotions you've ever seen.

And when they win, who does he go to? Straight to you, taking you in his arms and squeezing tight. "So!?" He says over the yelling of his fellow Hellfire Club members, a big smile on his face. You just shake your head, letting the boy drag you outside along with Mike and Erica, the promise of his mom paying for pizza being what lures the other two, but it's Dustin that seems to capture your focus. He always seems to do that for you, doesn't he? Even in summer camp.

You've been to Dustin's house countless times, but none where him and Mike are arguing over a pizza and character sheets. The phone has rung about 4 times, his mom calling because Mike has to pack for California to see Will and El for spring break, but the boy just refused to pack on time. When he finally does leave, it's just you and Dustin.

Just you and Dustin.

You'd be lying if you said you weren't scared. Not of him, but of yourself. You get this terrible horrible feeling in your chest that you might say something stupid and mess this all up, but it seems like Dustin is one step ahead of you.

"Hey. Hypothetically, what would you say if I.. asked you to the movies this weekend. As a date." He asks you with a slight tilt of his head and a nervous smile. You can't believe your own ears. It's not like you're some science nerd or d&d fanatic like he is, so why you? You don't bother to ask, just grateful this is happening in the first place.

"Hypothetically.. I'd say yes." You reply, your shaky hand finding his own. You hate all this awkward eye contact but you can't seem to look away, not when his eyes seem bluer than normal– god, when did they get so blue?

"Cool.. cool. So.." He starts, trailing off as you nod.

"Yeah. Uh– sure." You say a little too quickly. You're both just laughing a little now, this is just too awkward to take seriously.

But now you've got a date this weekend. And you feel pretty damn good about it.

[angelsanarchy]

Fever Dreams: Mike x Y/N One Shot Series PRT 14

Tagging: @icarus-star @chainsawgvtsfvck @romanroyapoligist @liquidsmoothdomme @madamemaximoff06 @drazenka @blacksoul-27 @444rockstargf @kappasbbgirl @luzclarita57 @tempt-ress @starry-eyed-wild-child

Mike stood outside waiting for Sicky to pull up so they could do drop offs but when Y/n's car came charging around the corner, he felt a bit of anxiety start to churn in his stomach.

"Get in." Y/n said keeping her eyes on the road.

"I think Sicky was doing drop off's today..." Mike said confused earning a look of annoyance.

"Do I look like Sicky? No. He's with your asshole uncle. If you don't want to get in put the bag in the car and I'll do it myself." Y/n was clearly still in a mood but Mike wasn't about to get bitched out by Leff for letting Y/n do drop off's alone. Mike gets in the car with the bag and barely gets the door shut when Y/n takes off. He doesn't usually wear a seat belt but the more erratic she drives, the more his heart jumps.

"Jesus-"

Mike grips the handle on the roof and Y/n lets out an annoyed snort. She makes a hard turn and Mike's head hits the window.

"Will you drive like we don't have a backpack full of fucking drugs please!? Jesus fucking Christ." Mike finally complained and Y/n hit the brakes.

"Stop being such a baby." She rolled her eyes at him.

"I'm not being a baby. I'm just trying not to go to jail because you've got a stick up your ass." Mike knew it would piss her off but he wasn't going to be a punching bag either.

"What did you just say?" Y/n asked.

"I don't know why I'm the one catching shit. I didn't do anything wrong. You want to be pissed off with Leff, that's fine but I'm not the one who did anything except give a shit about you. Sorry if that annoys you." Mike looked at her and she felt mildly guilt. He was right but she would never admit that to him

"Did you tell him-"

"I DIDN'T TELL HIM SHIT!" Mike yelled in frustration.

"Look I'm not trying to be a bitch to you but in his stupid fucked up way, Leff is right. You're just a kid." Y/n sighed.

"Oh fucking blow me, Y/n. I'm like three years younger than you." Mike waved his hand around in disgust.

"You can't just walk around here acting like a love sick puppy because we hooked up once. It's bad enough working with family, that makes you a huge target when it comes to Leff but if we're seeing each other-"

"Do you think I'm stupid? Genuinely." Mike asked turning his body towards her.

"No I don't think you're stupid." She answered honestly.

"I think you're young and naive. I think this is a dangerous city and we work in an even more dangerous line of work. This is a distraction that could get us killed." Y/n explained.

"You look at me like I didn't grow up with a drunk for a father and a junkie for a mother. I know danger and I know pain. I don't need you or Leff or anyone else trying to protect me like I'm some boarding school kid selling adderall for kicks." Mike snatched up the bag but Y/n stopped him.

"Hey, you need to stop and calm down before you go in there." Y/n didn't want Mike to walk into a biker club for a drop off and give someone the current face he was making.

He paused like she asked him. That was one thing she noticed most about Mike. When she spoke, he actually stopped and listened to her. He didn't just hear her talking, he acknowledged her. She felt more respected by someone she had only known for a short period of time than she did by both Leff and Sicky.

"Can I go now?" He asked sounding like a child who was annoyed in a kiss and ride line.

"I'm not trying to make you feel stupid or like a child. I'm just trying to look out for you Mike." Mike now looked into her eyes and could see she was being real.

"I never asked for you to look out for me." Mike sighed.

"You didn't have to. I was going to look out for you because-"

"Yeah I know, my mom blah blah blah. You can honestly save that shit. We have work to do." Mike opened the door to the car and she grabbed his arm.

"You're only saying that because you're embarrassed I shut you down in front of the boys. You would never be this butthurt otherwise." Y/n spat making him stop as he got out of the car.

"I'm sorry liking you is such an inconvenience for you. Lesson learned." Mike slammed the door shut and rested his arms on the open window.

"You know, if you didn't want to make me feel like a stupid child, you probably shouldn't have even bother talking to me in the first place. I'll do the drop offs, you try not to kill us on the road. I understand the concept perfectly. Co-workers. Nothing more." Mike snatched the bag up and started towards the door.

Y/n felt like a total bitch for that conversation. She knew Mike's feelings for her weren't one way but she also knew that they could never be a couple that did cute couple shit. As much as she would love to let herself feel all the things she wanted to, she knew she had already found herself thinking about him when they weren't together.

The rest of the drop offs were silent. Even when Y/n asked follow up questions, he answered them and went back to giving her the cold shoulder. When she pulled back up to the shop, he got out and shut the door before she could even say anything. She watched him light a cigarette and walked down the sidewalk in the rain.

She wanted to make a joke about him being emo and walking in the rain but she knew right now, she was in the doghouse.

[normal-internet-user]

BARRIER PT: 2

♡~~♡~~♡~~♡~~♡

Pt: 1 Pt: 3

Summary: Friday arrives, and Raph is more than happy to listen to you this time around.

Warnings: Swearing, smoking, dark humor and mentions of toxic family members.

Requested: Nope!

GN Reader!

.........................................

Friday couldn't have come fast enough.

You excitedly made your way up the stairs of your apartment complex, unlocking your front door.

You shed off your work clothes, changing into a much more comfortable pair of sweat pants and an old sweater. After grabbing a soda from your fridge, you shoved the sugary drink into your pocket, grabbing an extra one for Raph, you climbed up the fire escape outside your bedroom window.

Once you were on the roof, you set the soda you grabbed for your new friend ontop of the wall, sat on the ground, lit a cigarette, and so started the waiting game.

You looked out at the New York streets as you waited for Raph to arrive. You waited for around fifteen minutes, and began to grow anxious.

Was he actually gonna show up? I mean he wasn't obligated to, you were just someone he'd met once on a rooftop afterall. But he had said that he would show, and he didn't seem the type to back out of a promise...

You lit another cigarette, straining your ears for any sign of Raph. Hearing nothing, you cracked open your soda and took a sip, a dissapointed sigh escaping from inbetween your lips.

Just as you had finished your second cigarette, and were about to up and leave in dissapointment, you heard the soft thump signaling to your new friends arrival.

"You there, (Name)?"

You smiled to yourself, a sense of relief washing over you at the sound of his voice, "Yeah, I'm here Hotshot. what took you so long?"

You heard him sigh and the pop of a soda can, letting you know he had grabbed the one you had left for him, "My brothers wouldn't leave me alone. Had to wait a bit 'till fearless wasn't payin' attention to leave."

You hummed lowly, lighting another cancer stick, "Fearless is Leo, right?"

"Yeah. but, hey, enough about my family, we're talkin' about your old man today."

You took a drag of your cigarette with a dark chuckle, "Where do I even start." you muttered, "Let's see, my dad always was kind of a hardass, he's an ex-marine and he ran our house like a military operation. Mom left when I was 12, she was sick of Dad's shit. The bitch didn't even try to get split custody, just left. After that, Dad got worse."

You took another drag from your cigarette and continued, "He got real strict, I wasn't aloud to do anything. He had control of my whole life, my wardrobe, my friend group, my schedual. Everything."

"If something went wrong, it was always, always my fault. Even if I was at school when it happened. And I always believed him when he daid it was."

You snuffed out your cigarette, "I dropped out of highschool at 16, then moved in with a friend, anything to get out of there. Eventually I made enough money to move into my own apartment. I tried to go no contact with my old man, but somehow the bastard found my phone number and started calling me- I guess I just never had the balls to cut him off again."

You leaned your head against the wall, a low sigh sounding from inbetween your lips, and a lone tear falling down your face. You wiped your eyes with a chuckle.

"Damn." Raph muttered, "He doesn't know where you live, does he?"

"Why, you worried, Hotshot? But to answer your question, I don't think so. If he did he probably would have showed up before now."

Raph huffed, "Well that's good, if he ever shows up here, let me know, I'll take care of it."

You laughed, shaking your head, "Listen, Karate Kid, if he ever shows up here, I'll take care of it myself."

"Hey, if you ever need any help, I'm always in need of a new punching bag."

"Chill out, Raph." you said, giggling, "But if I ever need you to fight someone for me, I'll let ya know."

How long the two of you sat there and talked you had no idea, the only thing you knew was that you wanted it to last as long as possible.

You heard Raph sigh, "Listen, Shortstack, I gotta get goin' otherwise fearless'll have a heart attack."

You breathed out a laugh, "Shortstack? You don't even know how tall I am."

"Not many people are taller than me, call it an educated guess."

"Whatever, Hotshot. See you next Friday?"

"Yeah, next Friday."

You stood up and brushed yourself off. Picking up your empty soda can, you made your way back over to the fire escape, not knowing that a pair of candy green eyes were watching you go.

.........................................

Tag-list!

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[alwaysshallow]

coffee at midnight, part 6

John "Soap" MacTavish x f!reader

Pure domesticity with Soap, and meeting old friends. Your feelings are less clearer. (4,9k)

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5

READ ON AO3

A/N: i lied. i couldn't wait any longer lmao

Everything changes – you knew it too well, but when snow appeared on your apartment's balcony, for straight five minutes you were looking at it funny, like it was something unusual. It wasn't, you knew it was going to snow in the night from TV, yet, you couldn't stop looking.

Being on medical leave had you observing things around with your whole attention. Not even kidding; you couldn't somehow recall when you paid attention like this in the past. Field? Of course, but it was your job. You had to do it, and in your home, you usually just wanted some sleep, food, and you were onto another mission.

You were at home, though, so it had you paying attention to little details; how petals and leaves were no longer present, how green got more ashy, how days got shorter and nights longer. How dim lights around your apartment were light up quicker than usual, with orange light blinking on the street.

Most of it all, you even became friends with your neighbours. Not like you had any other way with Soap blabbing about your health and helping you, but you happened to visit some ladies to eat a pie with them. Most of them were simply lonely, so that's where the gesture was coming from, but so were you and Johnny, so discarding their proposition would be considered rude.

Besides, these pies were really, really good. Not to mention that they always packed some of it for you later, a win-win situation.

So yeah, everything was changing in a way.

What didn't change though? Soap being right by your side. Being on leave had a good influence on him apparently, even if he was addicted to military just like you were; he learned how to cook, it was wild waking up to not burned eggs one day. Maybe he wasn't the best in spices, giving too much or too little, but that was the gesture that counts. You definitely appreciated his tries to give you a healthy, non-ordered meal, especially when he didn't let you cook still.

You opened your balcony door slowly; you stepped right into the snow, barefoot, looking at the view outside. Whole city looked magical – unreal in the way because you swore that you haven't seen something like this for so long. Deployment, changing location every now and then, it was just... impossible to notice that little things that were constantly changing. Sometimes you didn't even were in your home for winter times.

Standing in snow though, on shorts and a simple t-shirt that was way too big for you, you realized that you like winter probably more than other season. It was so peaceful, so... simple, yet the simplicity of it all was warming enough; spending time under warm blankets, drinking cocoa, watching Christmas movies, baking. So many things to do, so many things to be happy about in winter. You could probably ramble about it on and on.

"Ain't ya cold? Thought I'm the stupid one" Johnny scoffed, taking your cold hand in his. Warm one, contrasting so much to yours; you looked at him with one brow raised. "Barefoot. On winter. In snow. You're askin' for a cold" he explained, pulling you inside.

He closed balcony door after him. "You talk exactly like my mom. Literally." you rolled your eyes, laughing, when he looked at you absolutely dazed with what you said. "Seriously! I hear her in your words. Rosalie, you're gonna be sick, come home, now."

"Okay, that's" he pointed at you "not what I thought 'm gonna hear. 'st taking care of you, aye? You need it."

"Need?"

"To be back in the field. Not taking chances with cold." he ruffled your hair, taking a few steps back, when you almost punched him in the arm.

"It wasn't even five minutes."

"Doesn't change a thing, bonnie." he shrugged, walking up to the door. "Coffee on the table, 'm gonna take a shower, just came from the run and..."

"...you were running?" you asked, your eyebrow a bit arched in question. "Willingly? On weather like this?"

"Yeah. Gotta keep myself in shape, eh? Next time, yer comin' with me." he winked, grinning even more when you shook your head. "What? Good for buildin' yer stamina!"

"Mmm, let's say, I will prefer a run in the gym, than on streets like this." you laughed, following him to the kitchen; a hot cup automatically warmed your hands, at which you sighed, relieved.

You automatically thought of Christmas market happening in your town, when you looked out of the window to see busy people and snow surrounding them so beautifully. Balconies decorated with trees, candycanes, snowmans, lights that were literally blinding you by their brightness.

Everything screamed winter, and when you looked around your apartament, it was a complete... well, a complete nothing. Nothing screamed Christmas, nor winter, it was just an apartment that had literally no spirit whatsoever.

"Hey, Johnny?" you called out, when the idea striked you. A quick "yeah?" coming from the bathroom, followed by him turning off the water, confirmed that he's listening, so you've decided to continue. "Thought about... well, buying something for Christmas, you know? Lights and shit like this."

"Oh. We can do somethin' like this, if ya want this badly. We need to do shopping anyway for our apartment, so."

"Badly, I need Christmas spirit here! Besides, you know it's my apartment, yeah? And you have yours?"

Not even a second after you said that, water turned on again in the bathroom; with higher pressure this time. "Can't hear ya, lass! Make us a breakfast!"

You let out a laugh, as you shook your head; he acted like he was there from the beggining and he didn't actually just stayed one day, deciding that he's gonna help you with everything. What was even funnier, but respectful in a way, he transferred money to your bank account, when you paid rent. It was hard to forget a smirk on his lips, when he handed you a cup of tea, telling you that now it's not one lady apartment, but two people apartment. When you asked him what does it mean, he just quickly said "you know", and he disappeared into the kitchen.

Most people, when they felt lonely in their space, adopted something. A cat, dog, perhaps something smaller, like a turtle or a fish, just to add something into their miserable lives; to make a difference.

You adopted Johnny.

What was even funnier, you didn't pay attention to his presence anymore – he wasn't a intruder when you felt bad and wanted to be alone again, he was like a monstera in your bedroom. Something that was just there, something that you wanted to be around, just because your vision of this apartment wouldn't be the same. You really couldn't imagine not watching a movie before sleeping, drinking coffee in the morning without him, nor gossiping with him about your neighbours dramas that happened way too often for your liking.

A certain routine, in your life. The domestic routine that you learned to like, but that routine had to include him – otherwise, you wouldn't be interested in it the same.

Hour later, you actually left your apartment with Soap, after a quick breakfast and after listing in your notes what exactly you need. Important as fuck, considering that your attention could be easily distracted in that environment; full of decorations for winter time, and you were just a sucker for them, it was embarrassing. You couldn't count how many times you bought something completely useless, just because a big, woody deer right in front of your door seemed like a good idea.

Spoiler, it wasn't a good idea. Mostly because that deer lived maybe a week or two, before some people completely destroyed him – and that was when you were deployed, so you didn't know who exactly.

The bitterness stayed, though.

"Bloody hell" MacTavish grunted; you were walking with him so peacefully around the Christmas market – with pavement that was covered practically with pure ice. He almost slipped a few times, and every time, you couldn't help but chuckle. "Whit's sae funny?"

"Nothing, Johnny" you grinned. "Just, you know. You could listen sometimes, I told you that sneakers aren't really for that weather."

He rolled his eyes. "See, I thought it wasn't that motherfuckin' bad. They could, like, get rid of it."

"Yeah, surely" you looked at him with amusement. "Just listen to me, sometimes."

"Mhm." he sneaked his arm around yours, bringing you closer. "For now, yer gonna be my support, aye?"

"And when you're gonna fall, I'm gonna fall with you. Not so smart, MacTavish."

"Oh, it is smart. You're gonna fall at me, so it's pretty rewarding after my fall."

"Won't stop teasing, hm?"

"Mmm, never."

The number of little shops around was enormous – lights, Christmas ornaments, snacks with weird combinations that you wanted to try, even if it was roasted beef and candy cane. You could swore that the amount of colorful lights would leave you completely blind with every step that you took; didn't stopped you from being adored by the view, though. Old ladies had all of your heart, and you just couldn't say no to them when they wanted to chit-chat with you for second or two.

Legend says that Soap had something against it – only a legend because he was even more of a sucker for them. They almost gave him every freebie from the food that they had, stuffing him with that stuff, while you just looked at your best friend, amused how adored everyone was. Good thing you had benefits too, with multiple discounts on their products, your fridge most certainly was gonna be full after this.

Old cute ladies weren't the only ones stopping you in your tracks; so were the men that talked with you, smiling widely. Market thing, you thought, it was bright as the sun they wanted to sell more, tactics worked like this, but Johnny was beyond disgusted with that, you noticed. Getting so touchy, wrapping his arm around you and being so close, when you were picking out things. Discussing about hanging things in "our home" – and he awfully tried to emphasize that every time. You got more time alone when he gone somewhere to get that cheese he wanted.

"No fucking way."

A voice you could never forget, and a voice that automatically got you grinning like idiot, when you walked closer to one of the little shops; with lights, this time.

"A way, I'm afraid." you said, glancing at your old friend behind the cash register. Cody went to highschool with you – worst and best times of your life, but your ways splitted after you decided to go for a military route.

You two were always close, though; your moms liked him enough to let him be around you, even joked a few times about you getting together. What they didn't know though, it was a few kisses between you and him, even more, but it wasn't the right time for starting something deeper. Not when you were so excited about your career.

"Gets tough at military, huh?" his gaze went to your arm for a second.

"Sometimes. Mostly, a job of my dreams."

He nodded, like he got exactly what you said. Probably he didn't even thought of things that you've done to get the mission done, but the less he knew, the better for him. "Looking for any specific lights?"

"Mm, no. I want to hang them on tree, so nothing too extreme. Maybe white?" you shrugged, giving him a little smile when he started looking. "I've picked white and blue ornaments, mostly. A bit of gold too, if that helps?"

Cody placed right in front of you lights in different shapes; classical ones, snowflakes, hearts, eve little trees. "If I were you, I'd pick white and blue ones. To make it more fancy." he winked, tilting his head.

"Fancy? You think I like fancy?" you raised an eyebrow, chuckling. "Or it's like, a marketing tactics on your old friend?"

"Does it work? The tactic?"

"To make me buy more lights than I need? Yeah, like, I'm literally gonna insane with those snowflakes ones and-"

"-well, not only that, but your number, perhaps? To catch up."

You coughed, a bit startled – guy was definitely not wasting any time. "See, after another month I'm probably back into the field, and time after that is... limited." you explained; tried doing that at least because catching up with Cody could mean one of two things in your mind.

"...Rosalie." Cody laughed, shaking his head. "Let's focus on today, yeah? You don't have to give me that, but..."

"Don't need to give him what, bonnie?" you didn't need to look behind you, when you felt a protective arm around. Not only that, Soap managed to sneak one of his hands in the front pocket of your jeans. His tensed muscles brought to you a lot of questions, but you've decided to ignore them for a while.

"Cody is old friend of mine." you swiftly avoided the question. "Cody, it's John. We know each other from military. Johnny, it's Cody, we went together to the same highschool."

Cody smiled awkwardly, extending his arm. "Nice to meet you, Johnny."

"John. Nice to meet you." he murmured, totally ignoring the proposition of handshake. The level of tension could be cut with a knife, and you just wished that Soap wouldn't interrupted you two. Hell, you wished that he wouldn't know that Cody existed in your life somehow, his tone wasn't pleasant at all.

That awkward silence had to be broken. "I'll take white snowflakes and blue classics." you said after a while; your eyes met with your best friend's, who hummed in agreement, giving you a little squeeze. "And as for phone number..."

"1-800-985-5990" Soap interrupted you, with fake smile on his lips; Cody almost dropped his pen while he was writing. It was definitely not your phone number, but you had no heart to tell him that and humiliate yourself like that.

"Thanks."

"'s alright. Gotta help a fellow brother, hm? We'll get goin' now." he waved to him, as you two walked.

"Hands to yourself, will you?" you murmured to him, right after that guy was out of sight. You honestly couldn't believe his behavior; the audacity, his snarkiness, sudden disapproval and tensing muscles. It wasn't a competition, yet, it felt like one.

"Cannot do, hen. Pricks are eatin' you up, none of them worth ya time, gotta protect you somehow" he shook his head, looking at you with shit-eating grin. "Besides. Thought you like when I'm a bit handsy, eh?"

"Pricks? Come on, they're not that bad." you rolled your eyes. His hand still caressed your waist, and you barely managed to keep yourself together – his touch always was comforting for you, calming, but in that moment... it was such a contrast. Such a contrast, because you could swore that his touch was burning something in you.

Something that you thought you're not gonna ever feel. Yet, here you were, conflicted.

"'st sayin'. You deserve someone worthy." his nose nuzzled against the top of your head, which caused your cheeks to heat up a bit; Soap acted like he was absolutely smitten. "Should we go to apartment? Drop these things off, or there's somethin' else you want to do?"

"We can go, I think. After we buy that jam, though, from that old lady in the beggining. I promised her."

"Yes, ma'am."

Oh, how you wished that wouldn't get you so much.

Three hours after you arrived to your apartment, pretty sure that you wouldn't go anywhere, you had to put your winter shoes and jacket again.

Why?

Well, there was this festival of lights Soap thought was a good idea to go to – and he couldn't tell you sooner, no, cause you were "romancing too much" with Cody-guy. You thought it would be better to remain silent on this topic, so you just coughed awkwardly, asking him details, which he happily told you.

It was supposed to be a light show on the building mostly, with releasing lanterns when it's gonna be a little bit darker outside. Releasing them had to be apparently with certain "intention" in mind; something like a wish, a dream that you wanted to come true, which was cute enough for you to agree on his idea.

"Gonna wish you a better arm" he joked, nudging your hip with his. A quick eyeroll from you caught his attention enough to trap you between his arms. "What? Am I wrong, lass? You need somethin' a bit better to put up with my arse."

"Alcohol will do good enough." you mumbled, which made him laugh – and it wasn't even your intention. Urge to give him another eyeroll was high.

"Like it would save ya." he winked, as he continued his walk to your couch, where he sat comfortably, patting the seat next to him. "C'mere. We can watch the end of the game, then go. Gaz won't be here for like... a hour top."

"Mm, right. I want him to take that lady he texts with" you sat beside Soap, opening up the chat with Garrick. "I have to remind him again."

Gaz also happened to be interested in that festival of lights, or whatever it was called; as he'd text you, "bonding with friends" were more important than ever, considering that the three of you were the only one on leave. It was only fair to take him with you two – he had to arrive first, right, but the feeling of having him by your side was warming enough. You missed your friend and texts weren't enough like a real conversation; hell, you even wanted at some point to meet with him eye to eye and get drunk, to talk with him about everything that happened over the days.

Maybe including how confused Soap made you over the days, but that's for maybe. Hard enough that he was also Johnny's best friend, wingman, and a partner in crime that everyone wished to have. Kyle was lovely, of course, but his tongue was a bit loose if it came to telling things to members of Task Force.

And you respected your privacy enough. Not like you didn't trust him, no, but you didn't need to complicate things more than they already had been.

"Told you I'm gonna always win, yeah?" you showed the screen of your phone to Soap, so he could easily read the conversation between you and Gaz, where he agreed to your plan of taking that "friend" of his.

Friend, which he talked to daily on base when he could – you teased him about it one time or two, to only meet with him being frustrated all over again. On morning run, before you got shot, he admitted that he indeed was flirting with someone; a civilian, and it caught your attention enough to be a bit of a matchmaker for him.

That boy deserved nothing but happiness. And if you could help your friend? You would do anything.

"We're goin' on real matchmaker mode, ain't we?" Johnny quipped; you rolled your eyes with a small smile, while you fastened your seatbelts.

"He needs a little help. Who knows, might be his love for life" tease coming from your mouth made your friend laugh a bit, while he was retreating his car, one hand on the wheel, another in the back of your seat. For the better view – you knew it, but you couldn't help to think that was something attractive to do.

"'s gonna be pure dead brilliant to see the moment they're not getting along."

"Soap!" you smacked him in his arm, giving him a bit scolding look because you were amused at this thought too – just a little, though.

"Ow! Seems like yer hand is pretty good right now, eh?"

"You have to support your friend." you pointed out, when his car left the parking under your apartment. He gave you amused look.

"Aye, but his taste is..." he took a minute to think "...questionable. You'll see what I'm talkin' about, Ros."

"Oh, like your taste isn't questionable" you rolled your eyes; a bit of snarkiness in your voice immediately drew Soap's attention to you, his eyes on you.

"Somethin' particular on your pretty mind?"

That blonde chick was on your mind, of course. But would you confess to something like that? Not in the million years, considering that not only he wouldn't let you live through it, you would also possibly give him a clue that you were jealous.

You weren't jealous. Slightly pissed off that he was flirty at work, but that was all, not really other reason, yeah? At least you liked to think that way, not dig deeper into this because it would cause something like snow avalanche, and for that you weren't ready.

Especially when you lived with Soap. If he would stay in his apartment, it'd be easier to be blunt because you could hide in your place and ignore him.

In this case... you had no other option that be silent and brush everything off, like it was nothing.

"Generally speaking" you lied swiftly, shrugging. It wasn't the place to tell him things like that; you weren't bold enough, too. Probably after alcohol you could brought it up easier.

"Uh-huh. You have advice for me, then? To be a bit better in my choices, eh? Yer a specialist, after all." his tone was challening; he knew what he was doing. Trying to lure you into telling him your thoughts.

You were best friends for over a year, you know these tricks a bit too well to fall in. "Don't think only with your dick, for starters?" you raised an eyebrow.

"Hen" he started, looking at you when he stopped at the red light "if I'd think only with my dick, trust me. It would'a been a bit different, things here."

And that single comment, even if you weren't hundred percent sure what he's thinking about, made you blush; you didn't answer this. Instead, you just switched the radio station and looked outside, paying attention to the snow that still was falling on the street, adding to the piles that were already there.

One point for Johnny, zero for you. Not a good score, but you eventually would manage.

It took you more than twenty minutes to go on that stupid festival, and more than ten minutes to find the right spot with Soap driving around like a madman. Apparently, finding somewhere to park was hard, people loved lights more than you've assumed – thank God for Gaz that appeared out of nowhere to lead you to right spot.

"Lookin' good, Ros." Kyle grinned, nudging your side, when you finally stepped out of the vehicle; he went automatically for a hug, and you did too.

"Everyone would look good after a break from Task Force."

Kyle theathrically put his hand on his chest, close to heart. "Very rude, considering you have Soap around."

"Hey!"

"Well, he's at least helpful. Sometimes." you poked out your tongue playfully, looking at almost offended Johnny, who walked with you side by side. His hands were close to your waist, but he wasn't touching it.

"Sometimes..."

"What about yer lass, eh? She's here, or she bailed already?" MacTavish asked immediately, which made your friend a bit confused. He scratched the back of his neck to say something, but a scoff from Scot got him off-guard. "Saw that comin'."

"She's gonna be here any minute now, quit it" he barked.

"Whatever ya say."

"Any minute" turned into an hour. Show was about to begin, you already ate some of the candies that local sellers offered, and you could just see the nervousness on Gaz's face, which was sad at some point. Your friend deserved so much, and yet the girl that he wanted to introduce to you two, finally admitting she's a real person, not some imagination of his (as boys claimed), wasn't even there.

Very upsetting turn of events to look at – at least for you because Soap was living his life with seeing Garrick like this, telling him some crap how people can't believe in love and how it's better to just drink and forget.

Apparently, it was suiting for him because he went to find warm wine that he read about before the festival.

"You really could quit on supporting his alcoholism" you chuckled, looking at the man next to you; even if it sounded like a joke, it was partially it. Everyone around knew that Gaz liked to drown his sadness into various beverages, and you liked to prevent something happening.

"It's not supporting alcoholism." he rolled his eyes with a little smile. "I know Gaz, trust me. It's not the lady he wants."

You raised an eyebrow, shivering a bit from the cold outside. "Not the lady he wants" was a statement that got you a bit shocked, considering that Soap didn't look like the one who talks about stuff like this. "You know what he wants? You don't even know what you want."

"Sometimes." he shrugged, casually. Noticing that you're cold, he wrapped his arms around you from the back. "And sometimes I do."

That gesture got you off-guard; arm around you so casually wrapped, like it was nothing for him; like he was doing it all the time.

You looked back at him, wanting to say something, but the words were stuck in your throat the moment your eyes crossed with his; sapphire ones, sparkling so beautifully in this dim, orange light. Snow was falling at his hair, and you couldn't help but notice that he looks even better with slightly wet, messy hairstyle – your stomach did a little flip when you realized how close you are. Your back, pressed to his chest, his arms around you, it felt...

It felt right, it felt like home.

"I told you to bring a hat" you whispered; not even fully understanding why are you whispering though, but it felt right in the moment, even if you were talking about something else before. Scot scoffed at that, shaking his head slowly.

"Not really thinkin' about that right now." he muttered, tugging a strand of hair behind your ear with such a gentleness to it.

You tilted your head a bit, letting the top of your head to rest against his shoulder; just to have a bit better look at him. "What occupies your mind, then?"

"Oh, wouldn't ya want to know." he chuckled; for a split second his eyes dropped to your lips. You didn't notice it since it was so quick; what you've noticed though, was Soap's muscles tensing a little bit. Probably he was thinking about it – if you're gonna call him out on that, and if so, what excuse would he give? Observing?

He wasn't even sure what made him look at your lips, but they looked pretty soft for him. Plump. Ideal to...

"I would, yeah. Tell me."

"Mostly, 'm pretty interested" he whispered right to your ear, causing your body to shiver at the feeling of his warm breath "in keeping you warm 'n cozy. Is it workin', bonnie?"

You swallowed the lump in your throat slowly; it was such a stupid question from him. Of course it was working – you were a mess when he was only touching you and despite many times that you tried to deny it, he had more impact than you liked it. "Yeah. Yeah, I'm warm. Since you know what you want, Soap" you bit your lip "what other things could you be..."

"Hey! Found that wine y'all were talkin' 'about. Not for you Soap since you're driving, but" Gaz waved to you two; probably interrupting the most intimate contact that you had with Johnny, and the contact that...

You didn't even want to think about it, it's not like you had time for it– instinct told you to back off before Garrick would notice how close you were. It could be more than awkward, so you tried to do the right thing and free yourself from that grasp that Soap had on you.

"Tried" was a really good word, though. His grasp became iron; if that was possible, his arms tightened around you even more, and he, with a smile on his face, nodded at Gaz with silent greeting. You tried to lure him into looking at you, so he would at least try to explain himself, why he wouldn't let you go, but it was unsuccessful. He wanted to prove something to you or what?

You could only wonder.

"Thanks, Gaz." you nodded too, smiling awkwardly when you got the cup, taking a bigger sip from it. You needed it, considering the situation and the look Garrick gave you two when he got closer, and you barely managed to hold that wine; thanks to Soap's arms that were snaked around you, like you were his precious prey, not an actual person.

Maybe something was in it, though; the way he held you, close to himself, like he was actually afraid to lose you, his earlier behavior...

Hell only knew with this man; he was driving you insane with this sudden mood changes, flirting, being possessive when you were taking your chances. In your mind, you tried to tell yourself it's because he cares, but that argument was faltering when he was closer, looking at you like you were his only treasure.

And it was like that – maybe you didn't know that, but you really were his treasure. No one else's.

[butterflyinthewell]

Behind a cut so people don’t have to see me rant about my disabled, emotionally abusive dad.

So my dad fell twice in the last five days due to not listening to me and mom. He has Parkinson’s and if you dig through my posts you’ll see me talk about it, so I won’t go into it.

I don’t hate disabled people, just him. I don’t hate him for having Parkinson’s, I hate him for the abuse he inflicted on me and still inflicts on me with his disability as a crutch to get away with it. And I call out ableism when the problems we have with him are caused by the medical care system, because sometimes it’s not his fault.

But THIS situation IS his fault.

SO ANYWAY…

Last Friday, he fell because he wouldn’t stop rocking sideways every time he got up. He gets up with help and uses a walker, but he throws his weight around when he knows me and mom are two tiny women compared to a hulking huge man.

And he fell.

We had to call my aunt and uncle over to get his ass off the damn floor and onto his toilet commode so he could take a shit. Then they got him into bed. He claimed he was fine, and then on Tuesday he started griping that his lower back and buttcheek hurt on the left side. But he could walk and didn’t complain much after the initial gripe.

Today, he was all scrunched up in bed in a way that guarantees his back will hurt and made his pain worse, like I told him it would (and he wouldn’t listen to me).

Mom took him out into the living room and he fell on the way, AGAIN, because he kept rocking his weight around.

Now get this, he doesn’t throw his weight like that when therapists would come over. Dad will be an angel for them, but a nightmare for me and mom. He cooperates for professionals, but not family. He does everything in his power to make life as hard as possible for me and mom. I’m not kidding when I say that.

He goes to the doctor on Monday to find out what the fuck he did to himself, but it’s going to be a nightmare.

My birthday is coming up and of COURSE he does this right before it, and ruins any excitement I had.

Before you attack me for that, keep in mind that he pulls shit like this all the time. He knows everyone will be sympathetic to him while looking at mom and me like we’re evil for being exhausted, angry and burnt out.

The fact that we can’t afford to put him anywhere or get help into this house means we have no lives outside of caregiving. Every waking moment until we sleep is him and all his emotionally abusive bullshit, every day with no breaks, forever. He has ruined holidays, birthdays and plans because his only joy in life is making everyone around him as miserable as he is.

I’ve managed to eke out a few moments of joy here and there, but for the most part my life is a slog that never ends.

I laugh at the people who acted like COVID lockdowns were depriving them of life. I won’t deny that it was a traumatic experience, and this is not aimed at people who got sick anyway and now have long covid. This ain’t you, don’t worry.

But the people who acted so inconvenienced that their social lives got interrupted? Fuck off.

I’ve lived something like the COVID lockdowns for over a decade. No life outside of my house, no life outside of being a caregiver for someone who is sucking away all my compassion and love.

I can’t leave because I’m disabled too and all the legal shit is inaccessible to me.

I’m trapped, mom is trapped, and we are eventually going to die from the stress while he sits there yelling at us for not jumping to his every whim.

My only escape is writing fanfics and staring dead-eyed at my ipad screen, interrupted constantly by him demanding things.

I have accumulated so much trauma from him, and COVID, and mom having medical crises that were resolved, and my needs not being met, that I’ll be surprised to see 45. I will be shocked if I wake up alive on my 45th birthday.

I turn 43 this July 29, 2023, so yeah.

If I don’t die, my mom is going to, and if she goes we’re all dead.

I just hope I go first. Either heart attack or stroke will probably do it, but I don’t want to outlive her and be alone with him.

No child should be trapped as a caregiver for a disabled abusive parent, but it happens and nobody talks about it.