#never saw this level of brain rot coming my dudes

[ivomartins]

thought i'd recovered but then i randomly saw wet haired dmitry again and realized. i very much have not recovered

[leosxrealm]

-ᴋɪꜱꜱ ʏᴏᴜ ꜱᴛᴜᴘɪᴅ-

pairings: M. Kaiser x male! reader

warning(s): Kaiser, a teensy bit of angst, fluff, enemies to lovers (kinda), a little bit of cursing

a/n: this is pretty much self indulgent. i thought of a tall reader when i was writing it, although i’m not as tall as Kaiser lol. the Kaiser brain rot is real T_T this looked way better in my head

wc: 2.4k

!not proofread!

nobody infuriated you more than Michael fucking Kaiser.

not only did he pretend to be superior to you; he looked down on every walking, talking, living creature. he never failed to make your blood boil, especially, when he spoke to you like you were nothing more than a peasant, born to serve him. you were a calm, level-headed person; but even you found it difficult not to punch that shitty smile off his face.

you felt like you had won the lottery at having the worst luck. you just so happened to live in the same building as him; just on different floors. you couldn't count the number of times you had taken the stairs to your apartment floor, just so you won't run into him at the elevator, or when you would parked your car far from your block, just so you wouldn't run into him in the morning when he was leaving for practice.

---

your hands were shaking, the rational part of your brain begging you to not throw a punch at the man standing before you. taking a deep breath in, you sighed. he deserves that punch, but you were better than this. better than him. swiftly turning away from him, you continued to search for your favorite cereal.

you had the misfortune of running into him during your monthly grocery shopping. and now he wouldn't leave you alone. why was he even here? it wasn't like he was buying anything. at least not anymore. he had left the shopping cart in the milk aisle when he spotted you. seriously? wasn't this dude some famous soccer player? shouldn't he be at, i don't know, practice or something?

"so? what do you say?" he asks with a charming smile plastered on his face. "no," you replied without looking his way. what was he asking you anyway? you really weren't listening to him. you missed the way his smile dropped a little, but he was determined to get you to come. if Michael Kaiser was anything, it was stubborn.

"why not? i'm even giving you the vip tickets," he said in a way that almost sounded like a whine. you turned around to face him and almost regretted it when you saw his smile widen a bit. you blinked at him, confused out of your mind. tickets? to what? a game? was he inviting you to watch his game?

"tickets to what?" you questioned him with a small tilt of your head. and the worst part? you looked genuinely confused. Kaiser visibly deflated when he realized you weren't paying attention to him. he regained his posture quickly before bobbing his head up and down in a form of a nod, "it's next week. saturday. and you have to come."

taking yet another deep breath, you turned around, dragging your cart with you. was this guy seriously ordering you to come to his game? even the slightest of a chance of you going to his game was just yeeted out of the top floor of the tallest building.

"hm? (name)?" and he had the audacity to follow you around like a puppy after all that. he put his hand on top of your shoulder, trying to turn you to look at him. your hand was gripping the cart like your life depended on it. well, technically a life did depend on it. not yours, but Kaiser's. you swear you were so close to killing him.

you swatted his hand away, quite harshly, leaving him behind. he watched your back, before you turned to a different aisle, completely disappearing from his sight. looking down at his hand, Kaiser could see the red mark left behind. it slowly was beginning to sting too. ignoring the pain, he stuffed his hands in his pants. he walked out of the grocery store, with a frown on his face. the things he came to buy were long forgotten. a single question lingering in his mind, did you really hate him that much?

---

days went by and it had been suspiciously quiet all week. it almost felt too good to be true. it was finally saturday. the weekend was here. phew, finally you can relax now. no more dealing with people. you came back from your morning run to see a white envelope tucked in your gate. gently tearing it, you looked at the contents inside of it. they were tickets to a soccer game. Bastard München vs PXG?

you searched your brain to figure out why that name sounded so familiar. ah-ha! you remembered it now. bastard münchen was the team your annoying neighbor played for. as for the other...? you had no idea who they were. 

looking around the corridor, you didn't see him there. he probably dropped this off when you went for your run. shrugging, you went inside your house. tossing it on your dining table, you went to take a long, and a very much-needed shower.

---

catching up on the sleep you missed during the week was probably your favorite way to spend your saturdays. looking at the time, you realized you had slept for longer than you intended to. it was already evening. you went to your kitchen to get yourself a drink when you noticed the tickets Kaiser so graciously dropped off this morning. you had honestly forgotten about it.

checking the time again, you realized that the game had already started a few minutes ago. it wasn't every day that you get vip tickets to a game. and it would honestly be a waste not to use those tickets. changing into something comfortable yet stylish, you drove off to where the game was being held. (you got your drink on the way.)

---

it took you longer than you had expected to get here. the traffic was loud and seemed to never end. you almost regretted leaving the comforts of your cozy home. now sitting comfortably in the chair, you were honestly impressed at the view you had of the field. these were some good ass seats.

it seemed like the second half had just started. the score was 3-2 in favor of PXG. a small frown unconsciously tugged at your features. was Kaiser losing? the match continued like usual. you watched the game like a hawk, your eyes never leaving the field. Kaiser had just scored a goal. you let out a whistle at that. honestly, you were impressed. he scored that goal faster than you could even comprehend what was happening.

as much as he didn't want to, Kaiser knew he had an image to keep up. so forcing himself to turn towards the stands, he plastered on a fake smile, even throwing a small wave toward the people watching him. his eyes drifted towards the vip section, more specifically, towards the seats he had booked for you.

he was really hoping you would come to his game. it would've meant a lot to him. but every time he looked that way, you weren't there. his mood continued to deplete the longer the game went on. he could barely focus on the game. even the coach had warned him that if he wasn't going to score soon, he'll be benched. and that's why he almost couldn't believe his eyes when he saw you, sitting in the seat he booked especially for you.

he didn't realize his smile switched from a fake to a genuine one. he continued to stare your way with a bashful smile stretched across his pretty features. his intense stare made you feel a bit awkward, as you tried to hide yourself from him by lowering yourself onto the seat a bit. reluctantly, you gave him a stiff wave, and that seemed to have brought him out of whatever dreamland he was stuck in. Kaiser doesn't think his cheeks have ever hurt from smiling so damn much.

---

the game had ended with Bastard München winning. you decided to wait for the stadium to clear a bit. because there was no way you were going to be smashed between so many people. like, be fucking for real; shouldn't they have made a separate exit for the vip's? 

after god knows how long you were able to see the other side of the exit. you dragged your feet all the way toward the exit. you were probably one of the last spectators remaining in the building.

"(NAME)!" turning around just in time to catch a flying body, you stumbled upon the contact, barely able to keep yourself from falling on the floor. looking down slightly, you could see Kaiser with an annoyingly cute smile plastered on his face, looking up at you. he looked a lot like a happy puppy to you. you were sure his tail would have been wagging aggressively, if he had one.

"you came!" he exclaimed in a cheerful voice, still clinging to you. it looked like he still had the excitement left in him from the game. "i was bored," you said in a tone that matched your words. still, Kaiser didn't seem to get disheartened by it. whatever the reason was, you still came to watch him.

"let go of me now," you grumbled. Kaiser gave you a closed eye smile. 13 seconds. that's how long you let him hug you. it was a new record!

---

ever since that day, you had been seeing more of him. he still annoys you, but it's been bearable. you would never admit it, to him or yourself, but his presence has grown on you, and you even liked hanging out with him sometimes. only when he wasn’t being a menace though.

you sipped on the last bits of your favorite drink before throwing it away in the trash bin you came across. you were walking around the park in your neighborhood with the Michael Kaiser himself. it was almost midnight. you don't even know why you’re out this late. but when Michael knocked on your door and practically begged you to go on a walk with him, you had no choice but to do so.

it was a comfortable silence between you two. you liked it. Michael was still sipping on his drink, looking around the lamp-lit streets surrounding the both of you.

there’s another thing you've grown to like; his eyes. they were the prettiest shade of blue and when light reflected off of them, you would be hypnotized, to say the least.

a hand holding yours caught your attention, and you were dragged towards your right. "come on! we're going this way," he said with a smile adorning his features. even after dragging you on the path he desired, he didn't let go of your hand. you didn't complain.

he was walking a few steps ahead of you; his hand, now intertwined with yours, dragging you along. he looked breathtaking. quite literally. your breath hitched for a second there, before you recollected your thoughts and continued to be dragged around by him.

"a penny for your thoughts?" his calm voice brought you out of your daze. your eyes met his and he gave you a smile. "don't worry about it," you dismissed it quickly, and continued walking, this time dragging him behind you. he smiled at your intertwined hands and gave them a small squeeze.

---

"it's getting late. we should get going," you said looking at the sky. even though there weren't as many stars, because of the city lights and pollution, you could still see some of the stars that managed to shine through. after hearing no response, you looked at Michael from the corner of your eyes. you raised a brow at him. why was he looking at you like that? did you have something on your face? 

"what are you thinking about?" you asked the blond man in front of you. 

"it's not fair (name)," he replied still looking at you. you let out a confused sound at his weird answer. he chuckled at your adorable expression, "i'm just saying, that it's not fair how good you look doing the simplest of things. it's kinda annoying." what he said was true, kind of. just now when you were gazing at the sky, he couldn't help but stare at you, the light from the surroundings made you look other-worldly, ethereal.

the tip of your ears burned at hearing the sudden compliment from him. did that even count as a compliment? you tried to scowl but couldn't help but laugh at the irony. you thought the same thing as him. yes, you used to despise him, dare you say, even hate him. but the more time you spent with him, the lesser you hated him. how does that even work? 

"what?" Michael asked with a confused expression. he was half expecting you to shut him out, walk away from him, anything but that. "you know what's actually annoying?" you asked with a small smile, amusement in your eyes. Michael loved all the attention you were giving him in that moment, that he didn't even register your question. "what?" he asks after realizing you were still waiting for his answer.

"you"

he pouted at your answer. way to ruin the moment (name), he thought. you let out another laugh seeing his pout, it wasn't every day that you would see the German pouting. holding his chin between your fingers, you turned his face towards yours. "wanna know why?" you asked the blond. your fingers were still grasping his chin, Michael noted. he gave a short nod. honestly, he didn't want to know. who would wanna know that the man you've grown to like thought you were annoying? get some common sense (name)! but the look in your eyes compelled him to agree.

"because i don't know what i wanna do when i’m with you," you sighed. Michael was utterly and completely confused. what did you even mean? your hand left his chin to cup his face. running your thumb over his cheekbones, you couldn't stop the smile that was threatening to break out. "you confuse me so much. i don't know if i wanna punch you in the face or kiss you stupid," you answered, observing his face for any signs of discomfort. 

you watched his eyes widen. his face felt warmer than before. the emperor looked at a loss of words; when was the last time that happened? you mused to yourself. 

"then do it." you looked at him, waiting to see if he was going to say anything else, "kiss me stupid (name)."

this was probably going to be the only time you would obey his orders. leaning towards him, you let your lips hover over his, "gladly." 

[rrxnjun]

this is yet again going to be a long one maybe but i'm not going to say sorry😎 AND I LOVE U FOR TEXTING ME!! and coming off anon just so i can add the screenie lmao so another liebestraum anon reveal

the first one i just screenshoted cuz what in the world about the cookies and cream‼️ and the second one is just so☹️ i just really love it spoke to me on a personal level☹️☹️

TO STAY ON BRAND LMAO no but fruity ice creams slap and not going to lie to u i dont like chocolate ice cream .-.

I LOVE FALL BUT IM SCARED OF SEPTEMBER SO IM CHILLING WITH SUMMER RN EVEN THOUGH ITS MY LEAST FAV SEASON ITS FALL WEATHER RN ANYWAYS HAHA and thank u thank u again ur fics kept me sane so couldn't have done it without u ily💘💖 I WILL NEVER STOP BEING SAPPY!!!

i finished reading it around 3-3:30 am lmao i looked at the clock at like one am and i jjst said okay one more part and i just kept doing that till i finished the fic💀 but it was worth it kept thinking about the whole day!! i went to the park with my neighbors and somehow we talked about learning to drive and the whole time my brain just went oh haechan of the fic oh it was amazing lmao

GOT A WHOLE SPREADSHEET READY FOR COUNTING I TOOK IT AS A SERIOUS MATTER!! and i can't believe i was right crazy i thought i definitely missed some THANK U FOR THE PRIZE I LOVE IT SO MUCH THAT SUNWOO PIC THO SCREAMING CRYING STILL !BEST PRIZE THANK U!

that happening irl some people have pretty interesting lives🫡 UR HAIR WONT GET MESSED UP IT WONT BE U DONT MANIFEST THE BAD VIBES DUDE!! i read hon and i just knew i had to mention it BUT I THOUGHT U USED IT INTENTIONALLY LMAO and can't argue with that it was deserved but can't let my man have false accusations going around even if he is crazy delusional and did what he did i have to protect his name🫡

OMG OMG WE GET A CSENKE REVEAL ON HERE AS WELL !!!! THE GROWTH !!!!!!! i was about to text u like hey girlie u forgot the anon button again but then i saw it was intentional and went :,)

i am with yn on this one cookies and cream needs to die like i HATE that flavor with a burning passion TT and the second one- ☹ see i wrote that for myself. u can see the jump from me being fine to being depressed to being fine again in that fic and HAHA and that part was just me reminding myself and assuring myself hhh i am glad it spoke to you <33

YOU DONT LIKE CJOCOLATE ICE CRWAM ???? BUT ITS A CLASSIC ???????!?!!! Our friendship might be ending right here and now ngl......

AAAH i get you !! especially since youre starting uni so it can get very scary but i promise u its gonna be all okay and exciting !! (Like if i ignore the homesickness and stress i felt last year, starting uni felt very new and exciting and i enjoyed it)). i cant wait for school to start ngl im so bored rn i need the routine 😭😭😭😭😭 also its so weird how this summer was summer for like.... a month....? and then it got cold again ??? like im not complaining since i like the colder weather but i didnt have a chance to go swimming this year so im ☹ and ily ily ily you keep me sane every day so im glad i was able to do the same

3??? AS IN THREEEEE AM ???? girl youre crazy no person should stay up so late to read my fic. but thats such an honor i- ☹☹ thank you <33 AHAHA i am glad u got reminded of my fic SHSJSJ but also same sometimes i drive and i get reminded of my own fic its crazy

A SPREADSHEET IM CRYING i kept a tally for each member. I lowkey forgot i mentioned them this much at the start i got surprised at seeing their names there 😭😭 but i am happy u enjoyed your prize ❤ special just for you

WE MANIFESTED WELL ALTHO NOT QUITE ENOUGH :((( i mean- it slipped out by itself THE PETNAME IS ROTTING MY BRAIN. its like sweetie? baby? babe? no. hon. why? my man uses it 🥰🥰🥰 also i cant believe u can still defend your man after all of that....unbelievable

[ekaterinatepes]

Forget me Too

Author’s notes: little toxic brain rot Drabble inspired by MGK and Halsey’s song Forget me too.

MINORS DNI

———————————————————————-

Warning: NSFW, hate fucking, unprotected sex, toxic relationship, possessive behavior (Gojo’s), cream pie, implied cheating.

|||

“I left before you woke up, why don’t I ever see you sober?”

|||

Gojo opened his eyes and pawed the bed looking for you. Your side was cold, his eyes shot open, “Y/N?” He called for you getting out of the bed completely naked as he roamed over his apartment looking for you.

You were gone.

“Fuck!” He punched the closest wall driving effectively a hole through the concrete. Gojo was certain he would have a broken hand if his infinity wasn’t protecting him.

You did this every time he got you back and ended up dragging you to his bed.

Things wouldn’t be so complicated if he hadn’t started cheating on you which in exchange made you move out of his apartment and start sleeping around as well. He had no fucking right to demand shit from you but when he saw you last night at that bar. Draped all over some dude’s lap while you kissed him the way you used to kiss Satoru before you left… he couldn’t stand it.

In a few long strides he was behind you, grabbing your arm and yanking you away from the confused long haired blonde fucker that had been touching what only belonged to Satoru.

He didn’t pay any mind to your screams as he dragged you out of there; a couple bystanders thought about interfering and helping you but he quickly covered you in his infinity as well making you completely inaccessible to anyone but him. He forced you out of the bar and towards the alley next to it “shut the fuck up!” He groaned before warping you both back to his apartment.

“Fuck you! I hate you!”

“Yeah.. I bet you do, doll” he answered before pulling you towards him, grabbing a handful of your h/c hair in his grasp, holding you in place while he assaulted your lips. His tongue forced its way inside your mouth to find yours. You bit him. Pulling back for a second Satoru chuckled, a drop of blood trailed down the corner of his lips “I’m gonna make you regret that princess” the dark promise was expelled before he dove in again for another kiss. This one much angrier and forceful than the last. Pushing you against the wall, making your spine connect painfully with the concrete; the hand that wasn’t holding you hair moved to your ass. Grabbing it under your skimpy short dress. Groaning his hand changed course and caressed its way to the front of your panties where he found the damp fabric between your tights. “You sure you don’t want this baby? You pussy says otherwise” you leveled him with a glare that only made him laugh.

You jumped holding onto his shoulders so you could wrap your legs around his waist, that positively shut him up. “Shut the fuck up” you spit his own words back at him before you started the next kiss.

Satoru moved you both to his bed where he threw you unceremoniously, rolling up your dress he didn’t even try to remove your panties yanking them to the side with so much force they ripped at the bottom. You gasped and slapped his arm letting him know you didn’t like that. He gave you a grin in return before lowering himself between your legs and start licking your outer labia. Passing his tongue from the bottom of your slit to the top, swirling his tongue around the bundle of nerves he loved so much. The pleasure that invaded your senses made you scream, your back trying to arch off the bed told him he was doing it right. “Stay still princess or I’ll have to tie you up” he warns making you moan softly and spread your legs wider. His tongue delves inside your dripping cunt making you scream for him. Pulling back just enough so he can replace his tongue with two fingers he returns to stimulate your clit with little kitten licks just to edge you enough.

You are a moaning mess by the time he decides he’s had enough himself. Unbuckling his belt, unzipping his pants Gojo pulls them down along with his boxers. His heavy cock springs free slapping his stomach. Your mouth dried at the sight, he was so big. Gojo grins following the direction of your eyes.

Cocky bastard, you think rolling your eyes. But that’s the last coherent thought you have for the night. Not long after, he grabs you by the ankles dragging you closer to him, spreading you open for him. The hot tip of his cock dripping cum, he teases you getting his member wet in your juices. “Look at me princess” he demands and you can’t help but do as he asks. The moment your eyes connect he thrusts with all his might until he is fully sheathed within you. With a scream your eyes roll back.

He made you feel so full. He stays still for a moment, enjoying the feeling of your walls contracting around him, squeezing his cock inside you as if you never wanted him to leave.

“Fuck…” groans the platinum haired sorcerer before his hips start rocking on their own accord. You felt so good, wrapped tightly around his dick, inviting him to plow your sweet pussy into submission “you are mine…” he growls on your ear, you moan louder “answer me princess… is this little cunt mine?” His movements never falter while he speaks his thumb finds your clit rubbing small circles on it. Your moans are louder “y…yes…” you choke out.

“Yes…what?! Doll?” He punctuates every word with a harsh thrust “yes it’s yours! My pussy belongs to you Satoru” you yell back; waves of pleasure ripple through his body when he hears you confirming his claim over you. Holding your hips tightly he lifts your butt from the bed to thrust at a deeper angle. Your tits jolting with every penetration driving him insane with lust. His mouth wraps around a perky bud sucking hard getting a squeal from you.

Satoru allows himself to lose control with you, fucking you hard and fast, driving his thick cock deeper and faster every time he went back in. The room was filled with his grunts, your screams, the sound of slapping skin and the rattling of the king size bed that was almost rocked off its frame with the brutality of his movements.

You contract deliciously around his cock and he knows you are close “come for me doll” coos on your ear. “Don’t… don’t come inside” you manage to beg him. To which Satoru responds by glaring at you and ramming his cock harder making it kiss the back of your cervix within, making you scream louder at the exquisite rhythm he is fucking you with “I’m gonna cum inside your pussy and fill you up to the brim with my seed princess, because this pussy belongs to me and I’m gonna mark it with my cum” you only moan as an answer.

Honestly as this point he has been thinking about fucking a baby in you just so you would stop running away from him. He wanted back what you two had before all of his spiraled out of control. He wanted you to be his and only his. He was done with sleeping around, no woman could ever compare to you.

When Gojo came he grunted your name while he spilled himself inside you. He refuses to move until he was certain you took all of his cum like a good girl.

Finally after sharing a kiss he pulled you to lay on his chest, covering your with the sheets he fell asleep.

Which is what took him to this morning, when he woke up alone on his bed.

You’ve told him so many times to forget you but he couldn’t do it, and neither could you.

At the end you both always went back to each other.

“You want me to forget you, Ok, forget me too”

[adhdeancas]

Sunset Sound: Stairway to Heaven

Special thanks to James @friedchickenangelwings for helping me out with this story. I can’t wait to write this. Read on AO3 here

Summary: Everything is the same up to the end of 15x20. Chuck has been “defeated,” but it was all a farce. When Jack absorbed Chuck, Chuck easily took over the 3 year old’s body and acted as if he were defeated. Chuck!Jack then had the Rusty Nail placed in the barn where Dean died, and with Cas gone, Dean didn’t fight it. Chuck did reimagine Heaven, but he’s fed the same lie to them all: that everything is perfect, they are free, they are in real paradise. Except it’s all an illusion insulated by blue skies and endless horizons. Because, just like the Good Place, people make Heaven into Hell for each other. And there’s nothing Chuck loves more than the natural order of tragedy. He “let it slip” to Bobby that he brought Cas back, when he really left him to rot in the Empty. Dean has to find his best friend before it’s too late, and he has to keep a happy face for everyone else, because Chuck is watching. Always watching.

Chapter One: Runnin’ on Empty

“Well, Cas helped.”

Dean’s heart flutters at that and he looks at Bobby. The damn old man raises his eyebrows; he knows he just buried the lead and he did it on purpose. A soft breath escapes him and he smiles. Maybe this is gonna be alright after all. Hell, maybe he can find that angel and…

“It’s a big new world out there. You’ll see.” 

Dean’s stomach twists at the idea. I don’t wanna see. His stupid brain insists. He takes a swig of the beer in his hand to try to quiet the voice. “Oh, wow.” He recoils a bit and looks at it. “This tastes like the first drink I ever shared with my dad.” He shares a wry smile with Bobby. Drinks with Dad weren’t exactly top-tier, and they both knew it.

“Quality stuff?” 

Dean’s smiling because he feels like he should be. “Nah, it’s crap.” He tries to shift that memory into a good thing, because his memory of his first beer is the crushing doubt and fear that swirled around his head. Finally, he’d done something right enough to earn a beer like a Man, but he still felt… broken. 

He feels the same now.

Maybe it’s because he’d really just wanted a hug.

But Bobby is waiting for him to say something. Dean focuses instead on the surface-level joy of that old mid-evening beer, the pride in his dad’s eyes, trying to drum up the feeling. “But it was fantastic.” 

“Just like this.”

“It’s almost perfect.” Dean manages. He wants Bobby to agree. He wants Bobby to say ‘Yeah, I know, something just ain’t right, can’t put my finger on it,’ but he doesn’t. He lets the silence drag on for a second longer before he fills it.

“He’ll be along.” Dean’s heart jumps, but then he realizes he’s talking about Sam. Not Cas. But he doesn’t want Sam up here anytime soon; he wants Sam to live a nice life with Eileen, like he promised. “Time up here, it’s different. You got everything you could ever want, or need, or dream. So I guess the question is, what are you gonna do now, Dean?”

It kinda feels like when Jack was born and Cas was dead and Sam wanted to go to strip clubs and listen to Zeppelin and eat at the greasiest holes-in-the-wall. Like he had everything he was supposed to want laid right out in front of him, but… none of it made Dean feel anything. He looks around, searching for inspiration, and his eyes land on home. Things always look clearer when he's looking out at ‘em through Baby’s windshield. “I think I’ll go for a drive.” 

“Have fun.” 

He leaves the acrid beer with Bobby and climbs into his car. Maybe he’s insane, but she feels.. different. He is insane. He is in heaven. “Get it together, Dean.” he mutters to himself as he pulls away. Bobby mentioned that his parents are nearby but… Dean doesn't want to face that yet. Nothing to fix your existential crisis about Heaven like a neat talk with your disappointed parents. 

He keeps to the main road instead. He drives for an hour, maybe two, at least that’s what it feels like. From what Bobby said, time isn’t so straightforward here. That only scares him a little bit. Eventually, his brain seems to calm down enough to think clearly. He’d chosen this. He’d accepted this. And he’d meant what he’d said in that barn; he was okay with dying. Of course, he didn’t realize that meant… He didn’t realize that meant more. 

A little voice inside him whispers something evil. He’d just wanted to see Cas again. Even in memories. Like it was before…

He takes a deep breath. “I’m not gonna fuck it up. It’s heaven. I can’t fuck it up in heaven, right?” He laughs out loud to himself, but it’s cut off by Baby groaning underneath him. She starts to slow. “Baby? What the hell?”

She’s out of gas.

Dean grumbles as he pulls over. “Sonuvvabitch, what the-” He almost said what the hell. He’s in heaven. Nothing in hell. Heh. She rolls to a stop and he kills the engine, letting the new silence and stillness wash over him. He sighs. Heaven, huh?

He scrubs a hand across his back and looks over to his right, to an onion field. Yellow and pokey and-

Cas is standing in the middle of it. 

Dean just about has a heart attack. He scrambles out of the car, honks Baby’s horn in the process, is all the way around the car by the time he really sees him.

Cas looks terrible. He’s standing stock-still in the middle of the field, arms down at his sides, crumpled trench coat speckled with the black sludge that haunts Dean’s nightmares. His hair is matted, his face gaunt, eyes sunken in with bags dark as bruises. But what scares Dean the most is the look in his eyes. His eyelids droop and hang and he stares straight ahead, straight at Dean, without seeing him, without any light in them at all. 

It doesn’t look like Cas. 

“Cas?” Dean approaches slowly, hands held out like he would to a wild animal. Cas shows no sign of moving, just stands there. “Cas, look at me, man,” There’s pleading in his voice, but he doesn’t care. He needs Cas to be okay. 

Castiel is not okay. 

As Dean gets closer, he starts to hear screams and crashes. He twists around to look for the source, but it just seemed to come from… around Cas. He looks closer, and Cas’s hands move to fend something off he can’t see. He’s still just staring ahead, but, looking closer at Cas’s face, he sees something he hadn’t noticed before. 

Cas is talking. Well, muttering really. Dean can barely hear him through the pauses in far-off yells. “d-Dea-Dean. Dean- de-Dean.” Dean stomach drops off a cliff. “Dean, just think of… D-du-Dean.” 

“I’m here, Cas.” Fuck the rasp in his voice. Fuck the tears in his eyes. Cas can’t hear him. He can tell by the look in his eyes. “FUCK!” 

He rubs his eyes with his fists furiously. This is so frustrating, this is so-

There is no one there. No sound. Cas is gone. 

Dean strides ahead, but it’s no use. The field is empty, and he is alone. Again. 

It takes Dean a few minutes before he can get himself under control. Cas isn’t there; he has to assume he never had been, not really. So, unless Dean has finally gone off the deep end, it was… what, a vision? A- god, it felt familiar. It felt like - it felt like after purgatory. The same haunted face, the same unseeing eyes. Gone in a blink.

Why am I seeing you again, man? 

But, as sure as he is that there is grass on the ground, he knows Cas can’t hear him.

Dean sits up against his fender and sighs. On the one hand, he is sitting on warm clear asphalt, feeling the afternoon sun bake his face, and on the other, he is miserable and seeing his dead-alive-again best friend. Except if Cas was around, he would come see him. Right? I mean, Dean died. So young. And Cas just told him- 

And Dean is praying to him. And he’s not here. It’s not right. None of it is. That he is sure about. If this was heaven, he didn’t want it.

Dean gets up. Will he ever get some motherfucking peace? He gets in his car, tries the ignition. She starts up again and - miracle of miracles - has gas. He thanks her with a pat and they're off, riding into the eerily-perfect sunset, back the way they came.

Night’s fallen by the time he pulls into the dirt pathway. He parks on the lawn and shivers a little bit in the chill of the night. Funny, he wouldn’t think Heaven got cold. But then again, he wouldn’t have thought Heaven would be shitty either. The roadhouse is inviting and homey, lights on inside. Dean snags a beer from the cooler left out front and kicks the door open softly. “Hello?” He doesn’t know who he’s expecting, but it definitely wasn’t who he gets. 

“Dean!” Charlie wraps him in a hug before he can say anything, and Dean gladly melts into it. God, it’s good to see her. He pulls away and pats her cheek, checking her out. She looks good, normal. Less… dead and bloody than he last saw her? Jesus his mind is a dark place. 

“Hey kid! How the hell are you?” 

Charlie rolls her eyes at the greeting, but she can’t stop grinning. “All things considering, y’know, being dead and all, I’m good!” 

Dean laughs. She’s already rambling, and he missed her. “Sorry about that one,” he winces, remembering his part in the circumstances around her death. 

Charlie chooses to take it as a condolences. “Yeah, you too, dude. But at least we died young and hot, right?” She tugs him over to the bar and leans around to yell at the scuffed doorway. “Ash! We got company?”

Dean’s eyes widen. “Ash? You guys know each other?” 

“Can’t keep geniuses like us apart, compadre,” Dr. BadAss comes out of his backroom, arms spread out in greeting. Dean can’t stop himself from greeting him with a hug. He hadn’t known who to expect here, but Ash and Charlie are just about best case scenario. “What’re you doing here?” 

Dean knows he means how he died, but he looks around anyway. The rest of the bar is quiet and still, and Dean can hear nothing outside the heavy doors either. “I think we gotta problem, Ash.” 

Ash’s face folds into a frown. “What kinda problem?” Dean feels Charlie press in and he glances at her suddenly-serious face. 

“A big one. A heaven sized one.” They all looked around skeptically, a little Scooby-Doo-like, taking in the lifeless room around them. Finally, Ash meets Dean’s eyes, and Dean withdraws a little. 

“Yeah, we know. Welcome to the team, Deano.” 

Tag list: @dochunterwitch  @justonecitizenoftheearth @gnbrules @purpe @castiel-is-a-cat

[border-spam]

Leech Lord - Eridians, Sirens, and the great Destroyer

The Eridian empire was vast, timeless, and completely insular. Their species had watched hundreds of others crawl out of backwater planets over the eons and race headfirst into extinction shortly after, so hairy little pink monkey bipeds that made irritating noises and had gross soft bodies didn’t exactly hold much interest for them. 

Their only real interactions with the system’s humans were with the Siren hosts who were drawn to Nekrotafeyo over time, women who’s energy hummed in the same melodic frequency the Eridians used to communicate, and they would have been more than happy to keep it that way.

Incredibly technologically advanced and so long lived that they would seem immortal to lesser species, they were completely unchallenged in their total dominance of the Galaxy... and still would be if they hadn’t fucked up so badly. 

Big ol’ lore post under the cut, baybeeee:

Siren Song = They just vibin, man. 

It's the constant, endless sound the great powers make. They are alone in that place of other, floating through the endless dark of eternity, so it's not a form of communication or an attempt to reach out - it just is. It just exists in the same way the Siren entities always have and always will.  Maybe they aren't even making noise and the song is just how human brains translate the information they are taking in? Who knows. Not really any of our business anyway.

It reverbs through everything linked to them, so eridium, Siren hosts, Eridian architecture and ruins? They all sing, it's just that most can't hear it.

Pandorans can over time because they live so close to the greatest reservoir of eridium that exists, and it is screaming under their feet. The problem is that once you start hearing it? Well, you can’t really go back.

All Siren hosts are drawn to Pandora not because of what their brain tells them, not cause they want riches, or to make a name for themselves, or to be a Vault Hunter, they are drawn there because it feels like home. Somewhere in the back of their minds, in a part of their brain they can’t access, the song is still singing.

Eridians = Ancient insectoid race of space farers. Cool guys. Really good at poker, terrible at charades.

Through a mix of technology and natural affinity to the great Sirens, developed premonition (future thread sight) and warp travel (colonised a huge amount of planets). Communicated through a chittering song on a frequency inaudible to humans. 

It was similar enough to the hum Siren host’s emanate that they tolerated the women’s confused pilgrimages to their home planet, drawn by the melodic lure of the eridium and the Eridians themselves.

Eridium = Crystallised Siren-Entity energy from their plane. Purple. Sings if you know how to listen to it, tastes like fried pickles.

The Eridians naturally as a species were able to tap into the great power's plane and siphon energy from it, which fueled their entire civilisation. The great Siren Entities did not give a shit about this, they don't about anything in general, it was infinitely replaceable and in no way harmful to them for the Eridians to extract. They wouldn't even notice, really. They don't exist on the same cosmic fuckin' reality anyway.

Eridium sings in resonance with the entities’ song, it's part of them in a very roundabout way, and that’s why Siren hosts can consume it to boost their Siren’s manifested powers.

Destroyer =  The great Eridian fuckup. Don’t blame it though, it would rather just go home.

When your species has developed premonition that’s almost entirely accurate bar when trying to predict Siren power touched outcomes, it’s easy to get overconfident. If everything always works out in your favor, risks feel less dangerous, and holy fuck did these giant cricket dudes take a stupid risk.

Time made them greedy, and ego made them dumb. As their civilisation spread and power needs grew exponentially, they developed machinery to siphon eridium into physical crystals instead of using their own innate abilities, and eventually decided to open a direct link into the Siren Power’s realm. An umbilical that was meant to allow a constant flow of power and increase harvesting, but instead released something terrible... 

For real though it's only a lil guy. The “Great Destroyer” is just a parasite, a bug. Another being like the Siren entities that’s native to their plane except minute in comparative size and power. It's a gnat, a tiny flicker of life that harmlessly swam through the Siren song and consumed energy, till a group of insectoid arseholes ripped it out of it's own reality and into a very shitty one. 

It's confused and pissed, so it does what anyone would do in its position.

It starts eating.

Great extinction = Eridians have fucked up so badly they decide the best plan is to just mass kill themselves out of pure cringe so they won’t have to deal with being laughed at by shitty little monkey bipeds. 

The umbilical was designed to siphon from the Siren power’s plane, never to push something back. The Eridians understandably brick themselves as a race once the problem with this becomes rapidly apparent. The Destroyer is running rampant, consuming everything in its path and growing in size exponentially. Their weapons only seem to feed it more, and it’s being attracted to what it knows - eridium and the song it hums. The energy that fills their cities and resonates through their bodies is now a death sentence.

Their planets have been decimated, and the monster’s sights are set on Nektrotafeyo next. Cue Nyriad and her huge, sexy brain.

Siren hosts have always been attracted to Eridian planets. Their bodies reverberate with the same song despite the huge differences between the two species, just like the eridium that fills their cities. It’s an involuntary lure across the dark of space for women who already feel isolated and removed from their own planets.

Nyriad had been on Nekro for some time before The Destroyer was released - enjoying a friendly if mildly frustrating relationship with beings that saw her as a shitty little monkey biped who was slightly better than all the others because she had rad tats and made a noise they like.

It was her that raised the idea to GLUT this thing into naptime by feeding it the energy it was being drawn so desperately to, and to surround it with eridium after.

...but it was the Eridians who raised that the greatest concentration of that energy was within them.

Billions sacrificed themselves to the beast’s hunger, Nyriad crumbled under the of weight of so many deaths she felt truly responsible for, and it slipped into a great slumber.

Pandora is not a cage, it's a cradle. The Destroyer sleeps surrounded by the sensation of being where it belongs, no longer lost or afraid as it dreams from within the Siren’s song.

Eridians leave = Goodbye bugs, thanks for pretty much nothing.

There were plenty left after the great sacrifice, but they left the system not long after it was completed. 

Whether it was a “Ah fuck, sorry” response or they saw something horrific coming in the future is up to debate, but they left a long, long, long time ago. 

If they had seen something terrible on the horizon, then it either ended up not happening or they left the system a HELL of a lot of time before it was due to. Then again, they couldn't see Siren touched futures, or The Destroyer would never have been accidentally fished out of the nether.

Maybe they will come back some day, but it’s likely the only contact humanity will ever have with Eridian civilisation is through the ruins of what they left behind, and the constructed guardians that defend it so viciously.

The maddening = The great psychosis that ripped across Pandora and whispered insanity into the minds of those abandoned by the corporate wars.

29 years before Borderlands 3 starts, The Leech Siren entity is freed after millennia of rotting alone in a cell. Removed from the song, torn from the others,  half in and half out of the plane it should exit in, it's lost. It’s frightened, it's desperately lonely, and in its panic to find a host ends up split into two, torn between seperated bodies it never wanted in the first place.

Its song joins the chorus, and the sound is horrific. Broken, distorted notes, sharp and flat in all the wrong places, a cacophony of screeching voices and sounds impossible for human brains to comprehend. 

It rips across Pandora's hum like a distortion, and its madness locks into the minds of all those poor, innocent people who'd been around eridium long enough that they could hear the melody without even realising yet.

Pandora goes mad, Bandits screech of the great maw, the all-seeing eye, and Leda Calypso soothes her broken twins.

Phew. 

So, nutshell?

In my Leech Lord AU, all eridium screams in confused song - half The Leech's distortion, half the rest of the entity's melody.

Sirens are drawn to Pandora, not because of whatever reason their logical mind tells them, but because it’s the only place in the Universe with such a concentration of the energy that’s part of them - part of the great powers themselves.

Each Siren host hums with their own sound, Troy and Tyreen differently, like 2 parts of the same broken voice overlapping and crackling. 

When together, they harmonise... and that's why their streams are so deadly. 

That's why they skyrocketed to the level of intergalactic fame they did.

Like, Follow, and Obey.

...it's not the Twins who are saying it.

[the-a-j-universe]

Alright, cool. I finally have a guaranteed length of time that should be long enough to go through all of these, so let’s do this. I know the plan was to have me address each ask one at a time but that didn’t work out lol so I’m just doing it all at once. I’m also turning it into a post so anyone who wants to can follow along with my journey.

I’m also gonna copy/paste the text of the other asks instead of screen capping them because copy/pasting is faster lol.

I’m gonna put a pic of each one here, give my thoughts, maybe a goofy rating (I dunno), and then pick my favorite. Just so y’all know.

* Tanawy's entry n.1 in the Dragon Quest monster showcase: the all-time classic Slime. When asked to design the Slime like the standard goop monster they usually were, Toriyama said "no" and a legend was born, now cute slimes are more popular than the disgusting goop depiction. Its cousins and variants are numerous and some are very different from one another so as a bonus here the criminally underutilized Mottle Slime and its evolution the Mottle King Slime.

See, I don’t even need to look this one up. Here it is:

But let’s be real, you guys didn’t need to see an image of this dude either. I love this thing. I never went through a period where I thought of the grosser oldschool slimes. This thing has always been what’s come to my mind when I here the word in an RPG context. Which, considering my zero experience with DQ, really speaks to this thing’s popularity. I am actually going to remove this one from consideration, though, for that reason. I just have too much of a bias towards it. I know it too well, and all variations seem to be equally great. It’s a 10/10, though. Truly iconic.

Get the rest after the cut!

* Tanawy's entry n.2: Originally a boss monster, here is the Golem. While not the sharpest tool in the shed, these brick-made guys can be quite loyal, with a child-like personality, downright adorable (I will never forget you Goldirox) but their strenght in battle must not be underestimated. And since St. Valentinus is around the corner here a Chocolate Golem variant as a gift. Friendship chocolate mind you, from a dude to another 😄

I like this guy. He reminds me of a couple oldschool Yugioh cards. They’re all bad cards, but I’m nostalgic for them so that help’s this guy’s chances. I don’t know that I buy him as a threatening boss, though. He seems more like he’d be your big stone pal.

The chocolate variant is absolutely adorable.

8.5/10 overall for both.

* Tanawy's entry n.3: Here are two members of the Machine Family, first the Killing Machine. These relentless hunters are merciless and they are constantly upgrading, so models with different modifications are plenty. They even come with garden sprinkles. Then there is the Mecha-mynah, who puts a different spin on the mechanical Cuckoo-bird motif. Careful these guys have razor-sharp wings and they selfdestruct when cornered.

Alright, not so much for the second one, but the Killing Machine also reminds me of, like, a half dozen Yugioh monsters. Did Kazuki Takahashi just like ripping this franchise off or something? Either way, these are both good designs, but they don’t really work for me that much. They’re a little...plain? I guess? I guess I like my machine creatures rougher and with more detail. 7/10.

* Tanawy's entry n.4: Next are my deepest fears (exaggeration) if they were real; the Waspion, half wasp half scorpion, and the Claw Hammer, Half hammerhead shark half metal scolopendra, all nightmare. Continuing with the caravan of creepiness, here is the Bona Constrictor, just get it away from me. This next one, when i saw it for the first time i yelled "WTF is That?!" here is the Ulcer, a walking awful pile of rotting flesh.

I am NOT a fan of the Ulcer. That thing’s ugly, and not even in a fun way. 0/10.

I like these other guys, though:

The Waspion is literally just Gligar from Pokemon, but aside from that I like animal/creature mash-ups. And the Claw Hammer is a pretty unique one. 9/10 for the whole lot.

* Tanawy's entry n.5: Beef or chicken? Why choose when you can have both? Here is a heavyweight of the Bird Family the taurine Bullfinch. But dont forget your vegetables, or else they might turn into these Plant family monsters, the eggplant Woebergine, the bellpeppers Capsichum and the cucumber Cruelcumber. Also, meet the Peahooter, these guys pelts their targets with arrows taking advantage of their higher ground.

Okay, we’ve got another mash-up creature here in the form of the Bullfinch, but I’m not feeling this one as much. It’s worth, like, a 6.5/10, maybe. The Woebergine and the Peahooter are both pretty interesting. The Peahooter is kinda cute in a weird way and the Woebergine is delightfully derpy. They both deserve approaching an 8/10. I’m not really feeling the Capsichum at all though. They get a 5 or a 6/10.

* Tanawy's entry n.6: Who doesn't like a good dog? Well maybe not these guys from the Beast family: the Chainine who will ensnare their preys with their collars, the Putrefido, who is no longer alive, the Abracadabrador, who will eat your bones, the Crocodog, a levitating (yes this thing floats in the air) dog-crocodile hybrid and finally the Jackal Ripper (long lost relative of Wolverine or just imitator? More at 11 on the news)

Hey now. That’s not really fair to the other entries. Every one of these dudes:

Is a very GOOD BOI. I think I like the Abracadabrador the least. He’s a little too un-dog-like compared to the others. 6.5/10. The Chainine and the Putrfido are both the perfect blend of cute and weird. I like them a lot. They get 7.5/10. Jackal Ripper is a badass 8/10. He’d be cooler if he was wearing jeans. I LOVE the Crocodog, though. 10/10. Perfect. He just looks like a friend, but he also looks like he could kill my enemies. Which is what I like in a monster.

* Tanawy's entry n.7: Here is a taste of Japan with the Boppin’ badger, the most Tanuki-like monster you will ever meet; Then these guys don't need consent to give everyone within their reach a smooch, here is the Lips. Also, beware of these horses of the underworld, the Equinox where they probably hangout with these other lovely fellows, the Hellspawn. Speaking of which here is the demon Teeny Sanguini. Cute eh? Not when it evolves in the Bloody Manguini. Thankfully not everyone of them does that.

Okay, you can’t fool me. That first one is just a regular animal.

Jokes aside, though, I’m not really feeling this bunch unfortunately. The Hellspawn just reminds me too much of mutant can Steven, the Lips is a little boring, and the Equinox, while I like the wordplay in its name, and while it’s cool in principal, is too busy. I’m just not feeling the designs of these guys overall. 4 or 5/10 for the whole lot. Though the Teeny Sanguini is closer to a 5 than a 4.

* Tanawy's entry n.8: There are two species of monsters, the Pips and their cousins the Conks, who constatly imitate the classic classes of the humans, like warriors or priests, but this time the little rascals have gone a little farther and here they are copying the DQ8 4 main heroes in the Trodainian Conklave, the DQ4 heroes in the Zenithian Conklave, the hero of DQ1 and the 3 heroes of DQ2 in the Alefgardian Conklave and the hero of DQ3 with 3 other companions in the Aliahanian Conklave. Cute.

Okay, I love the idea of these things. They’re cute, they fit right in with the general aesthetic of the franchise, and they have a ton of personality. I’m not gonna post pics of all of them because there’re so many, but they deserve ~9/10 collectively. They’re very good.

* Tanawy's entry n.9: Not enough dragons? So here's three: what do you get mixing a T-rex, a dragon and a vicious axeman? An Hacksaurus that's what! Then the Drakulard. Don't be fooled by their mole these portly fellows mean business. Another chubby dragon, the Jargon: dragonic masters of the clay containers, these guys URNed their right to use jar puns and they will make sure you remenber it, even if they have to crack your pot.

Okay now these are more what I was thinking when I heard the title Dragon Quest.

I like the Hacksaurus the best outta them. He just looks nice. They’re all good, though. They fit the art style perfectly, and resemble each other just enough that you buy them all being related creatures. 8/10 overall, though the Hacksaurus is a little above the others, with the Jargon being a barely at the bottom of the barrel. Or the jar I guess.

* Tanawy's entry n.10: The only story entry in this showcase, because just look at him, it's the only DQ big baddie (at least in english) to actually call themselves "the Demon Lord" It's Orgodemir, specifically it's true form which is the first photo you find in the gallery at almost end-page. Let me just tell you this, Orgodemir is a d*ck of the highest level. The brain it's actually an eyelid for a giant eye by the way. Happy Nightmares.

HAHAHAHA. I know there are other forms for this guy, and this is probably not the reaction that anyone who played the game would have, but I just can’t take this guy seriously. He looks like Edward Cullen with bat wings. HAHAHA. 8/10 ‘cause it made me laugh.

* Tanawy's entry n.11: And lastly, in a category i like to call "I can't belive these are real", its the Funky Ferret; yes he and his cousins do exactly what the image shows. And the almost copyright-infinging Owlbear, yes they did not even try to distance themself from D&D with this one (ok they have a variant but is not saying much). There were others in the last category, but since they REALLY did not age gracefully to the modern standards of "acceptable" i prefered not show them.

I love Owlbears, they’re just such iconic fantasy monsters at this point, so he gets a solid 8/10 rating by default. It’s a pretty original take, too, focusing on the cuteness potential of the creature over the badass potential. I like that.

The Funky Ferret, though...

With a name like that this guy coulda been so cool. But he’s just a pretty generic design blended with a fart joke. What a bummer. 3/10.

And there we have it. Probably not exactly what you were thinking but I hope you like it. I don’t hate any of these guys. Some are more boring than others, but there’s something neat about each of them. I like the ones that take badass ideas and make them cute while remaining intimidating best out of all of them, and I think the Crocodog does this best with the Hacksaurus as the runner up. Crocodog is definitely my favorite of these, though. He gets the Best Good Boi award of Bestness.

Orgodemir gets an award, too, though, the “made AJ spit out his rum and Coke laughing” award. It’s not the most coveted, but it’s something.

I know this is a long one, and y’all may not want to reblog, but what do any of my followers think of these funky dudes? Leave a comment on this post or reblog with your answer in the tags!

[ddaenggtan]

amae | jhs

amae - japanese. the way you act when you want to depend on another person. relying on someone’s goodwill and love to help you. frequently thought of as wanting to be loved and taken care of.

when someone new moves in next door, you don’t expect to become friends. everyone on your block was friendly, yes, but none of you gave more than a courteous wave when you spotted each other in passing. that changes with jung hoseok; a literature professor with sunlight gleaming out of every pore, who enjoys complex lectures, random coffee trips, and…sleeping in your hammock? curiosity gets the better of you as you befriend him, but just what could have this man sleeping in your garden hammock every night?

pairing | jung hoseok  x reader

genre/warnings | neighbor!hobi, writer!reader, pure cotton candy fluff, this may actually rot your teeth

word count | 6.7k | cross posted to ao3

a/n | ahaha this did end up shorter than give and take, bc it felt very right to end it where i did!!! there’s a lot of flower language used in this, bc i’m the ultimate slut for flower language, i think it’s the cutest shit i’ve ever seen. i also tried to make this MC different than g.a.t’s, pls tell me if i failed!!!! i want them all to be v distinguishable and independent and unique, and i love feedback!!!!

The moving van in front of the neighbor's house shocks you when you get up that morning. There had been a For Sale sign hanging in the yard for upwards of a year, and you've watched with mild amusement as the price continued to drop.

A favorite hobby of yours is coming up with creative reasons the realtor was more and more desperate to sell the house. Your favorite so far was that the adorable plump woman had to sell it soon, or her wife would run off with their girlfriend in the night, never to be seen again.  Until Minri did get it sold, that is, upon which her wife and girlfriend would return and they would live in bliss.

Minri was, in actuality, very nice, and you doubt you should be entertaining such thoughts about her. She'd sold you your own house, after all; a lovely little three-bedroom, with a wonderful yard for your garden and your friends' dogs. Minri had even managed it at a great price, though she had emphasized the cleanliness of the place and the nearby churches, which was a little odd. You owed her for it, no matter how peculiar she had been during the viewing. 

Well not really, she got a very nice commission from the sale, but it's the principle of the thing. 

You scavenge one of the dry erase markers from the drawer and make a note on your fridge to bake her cookies sometime soon. Your mother would have a fit if she saw you writing straight on your fridge, but it was erasable and easy and you are if nothing if not a simple girl. 

You pull yourself from your musings and make another note to call your mother before she could get huffy that you haven't in a while, and toss the marker back into the drawer when you're done. You direct your attention back at the moving van, unsurprised when a gaggle of young-looking boys emerges from the neighboring house to start unloading. Well, it wouldn't be extremely fair to call them a gaggle, as there are only three of them, but the point stands. They seem to be very close, judging by the way they tease and play, and it makes you smile a little. It was long past time the neighborhood got some life in it. The closest people to your age are the couple three doors down, in their 50s and always willing to talk about their seven children. It got tiring. 

With a soft sigh, you turn from the window at your sink and dismiss the flash of bright pink you see in the mirroring window from next door. None of the three you saw had pink hair, but you could have missed one. You slide your hand along the spine of your cat, Tuna, and smile as she wraps her tail around your wrist for a moment before chirping and jumping down from the counter. She follows as you make your way to your office, tucked into the smallest of the bedrooms because it gets the best light, and settle at your desk to return to your work. Novels don't write themselves, after all. 

You aren’t sure which of the boys lives next door, but it becomes quickly clear that it’s only one of them. Several are over at all hours of the day, but by the time the sun goes down, there’s usually only one or two there. A variety of vehicles come and go, but only one is there often enough to be the owner's. You might think it was a gay couple, had you not heard the complaints about an uncomfortable sofa on your way to get your morning paper.

They’re a very respectful bunch, whoever they are. They keep things quiet after sunset, and wait for a reasonable hour to start their backyard morning exercises. The music they play is pleasant, if a bit loud as it drifts over to where you kneel in the dirt. The fence that separates your yard from his reaches your shoulder. A white-picket thing that surrounds each of the yards in the neighborhood, you've never cared much for it, and it keeps you from seeing anything notable as you tend your garden. Still, you catch snippets of conversation, bits of stories that you never get a conclusion to, jokes with a punchline that’s carried off by the wind. 

For the most part, though, you catch names; Jungkook, Jimin, Seokjin, different variants of each, but the one you hear most often is Hobi. His name rings out constantly, gliding through the air on notes of both mirth and vitriol. It’s usually accompanied by a laugh that makes your heart warm in your chest, or some form of inhuman screech, though you’re not sure why. You’ve never seen enough to understand what happens at the house next door, nor have you actually met any of the people that come and go like leaves in the fall. 

Still, you can’t deny your curiosity, and you tell yourself that if the opportunity presents itself, you’ll introduce yourself. Despite that decision, the opportunity never does seem to present itself. Weeks pass, and you find that you feel nervous at the thought of going and introducing yourself now. The window has passed, it would be too strange now, he would think you odd. So you keep to your own house, tending your flowers and your trees, writing your novel, and doing your level best to keep Tuna off of the manuscripts and letters sitting around that you have yet to organize. You’ve resigned yourself to the sad truth that you simply won’t get to know your neighbor, won’t be able to have that adorable friendship you’ve dreamed of, won’t even know which one it is that lives there. 

The universe has always worked rather strangely for you, though, and it’s not long after your acceptance of this fact that you come out of your back door, gardening gloves in hand and already reaching for the misting hose, to find someone swaying in your hammock. 

You’re not really mad, you don’t use it very often anyway and someone should. Mostly you’re curious - you always have been, and always will be, most likely. Curious as to why someone is in your hammock when most everyone on the block has their own lawn furniture, who that someone is, how they got into your yard. The bolt on the gate is nearly impossible to unlatch from the outside; you know, from the many times that you’ve locked yourself out and had to James Bond your way into your own house through the back window.

You set your gloves on your patio table - a white bistro set your mother gave you when you moved out - and make your way over to the stranger. He’s good-looking; feather-soft brown hair and oddly clear skin, drowning in a sweatshirt that was at least two sizes too big, snoring lightly as the wind rocked him. 

“Hey,” You say. He doesn’t respond, and you frown. “Hey, dude, what are you doing?” Still no response. You huff and turn, eyeing the yard for something to help. You don’t want to shake him awake, that could prove dangerous if he swings out at you. Your eyes light up as they land on the hose, forgotten among the grass. You tromp over and pick it up, dragging it back over to where the hammock sways among the tree branches. 

“I’m gonna spray you awake,” You say. You receive no reaction, not that you expected any, and shrug. With one pulse, a fine mist of water settles on him. The guy does, indeed, flail, swinging wildly in a futile attempt to fight the water raining down him. He sputters and wipes at his face, and you watch as he does. 

“What the hell, who the fuck sprays someone with water when they're sleeping?” He asks, shaking out his now damp hair. 

“In my defense, I told you I was going to do it. You were the one that was asleep and didn’t hear.” The man freezes at the sound of your voice, looking around your yard as if seeing it for the first time. He gives you a hesitant and apologetic grin, and the sun seems to grow brighter on his face. 

“I’m so sorry, I did not mean to fall asleep in your yard, I swear. There was...it’s a long story, but it really was an accident.” He flips himself gracefully off the hammock, with practiced ease that makes you only a little jealous. You should learn to do that. 

“It’s fine, you can sleep in the hammock. I only want to know how you got in my yard.”

“I vaulted the fence,” He says as if it was obvious. You look from him to the fence, and back again. “What? It’s not difficult.” You turn back to the fence, measuring it with your eyes. If he was able to vault it without much difficulty, how fast would he have to be going? He would surely need a good deal of momentum, of course, to be able to launch himself five feet up in the air. The only thing in your brain is that ‘ten-foot vertical leap’ meme, and you curse your best friend for sending you every meme he ever thinks is remotely amusing. 

The sound of your name brings you back to the present, and you focus on the man once more. “That’s you, I’m assuming?” The man says. You nod and point to him, belatedly realizing that you still have the hose in your hand when he flinches. 

“Which one are you?” You ask him. He gives you a confused look. “There are several people next door most of the time, which one are you? Jungkook, Jimin, Seokjin, or Hobi?”

“Hobi,” He says after a second, beaming at you as he does. Something in your chest starts to unfurl itself, and the sensation is strangely comforting. “But my name is actually Hoseok, they just call me Hobi. You’re welcome to as well, most do.”

“Right.” You watch him for a few more seconds as he shakes out his sweatshirt, water dusting the grass below him. “I have gardening to do. Please let me know the next time you want to sleep in the hammock.” You turn back to the flowers closest the fence, satisfied now that you’ve answered so many of your questions about your neighbor. 

“You aren’t going to ask why I’m here?” His voice calls from behind you. You shrug, kneeling beside your white camellias and checking their soil and sprouts. They were starting to bloom and you needed to be careful to make sure they weren’t soaking up too much water. “So I can seriously sleep here whenever. I just have to tell you first?”

“That’s what I said,” You reply. You pause, thinking for a second, and turn to look at him. “Does this make us friends?” The beaming smile he wears is nearly blinding, and you find it very endearing that he is so wildly happy at such a small thing. 

“It absolutely makes us friends,” He tells you. You return the smile, albeit yours is much less sunshine-y than his. He starts to walk toward the fence and you laugh under your breath. 

“Hoseok, you can use the gate,” You tell him. He stops and looks between the gate and the fence for a second before laughing embarrassedly at himself. “Please refrain from vaulting the fence in the future, as well. I'll leave the gate unlatched for you from now on.”

Hoseok grins and waves as he jogs out the gate and to his own home. You don’t relax until you hear the click of his door shut. A soft mrow from your left has you moving to pet Tuna once more, and you beam at her. 

“It’s been a long time since I had a friend, hasn’t it?”

You don't expect to see or hear much from Hoseok after your brief interaction. You've had friends before, of course, but they all tend to fade away as they have their own lives and you have deadlines. Even your closest friends, three boys you met in college and somehow kept around, don't message you as often when you're close to finishing your work; they know better than to expect a response when you have an editor breathing down your neck. You're used to it, used to people becoming immersed in their own problems and not wanting to share them, so you never get upset about it anymore. There's no use in it, not when you do the same thing.

You're so used to this that it surprises you when Hoseok waves at you one morning as you're both getting mail. Another day he's playing football with a couple of friends and shouts a quick greeting over the fence as you dip down to do your gardening. One memorable evening, you turn from shooing a raccoon away from your trash with a feather duster to see Hoseok watching from his driveway. You give him a polite smile and he shoots you a proud, yet puzzled, grin, and the next day when he sees you putting out small feeders near the back part of your yard for the raccoon, he just chuckles. 

Not to mention that you still come outside most mornings to find him snoozing in your hammock, rocking in the gentle breeze and comfortable as can be. He's never given you any explanation, though to be fair, you also don't pry. 

It's a struggle; you want so much to know why he doesn't sleep in his house that sits not ten feet away from yours. You don't want to push him, though, too scared of breaking this tentative friendship you've built over something so small. 

Things only start to change the afternoon he knocks on your back door while you're getting lunch ready for Tuna. She yells as you set the food down in front of her - a special blend designed to help her hearing and her eyesight since she's predisposed to troubles with both - but she quiets soon enough. You step around her to open the door, and you're shocked at the expression on Hoseok's face. 

He wears a smile now, but for a second...for a second, he had looked afraid. 

Your name drops from his lips in a tone that tells you he didn't expect you to answer. "I was only wondering, do you, um…" He trails off and you wait patiently for him to finish the thought. "Do you want to get lunch? Coffee? Anything? I need to get out of the house for a while."

"Sure," You reply. "Let me get my wallet." You move to the entryway to grab the thing - old and falling apart but still useful - and when you return, Hoseok is standing exactly where you left him. You pat Tuna's head and exit, closing the door behind you before you turn to Hoseok with an expectant smile. "I'll drive?" You suggest, since he still seems somewhat jumpy, and he nods. 

He's not quiet on the drive, by any means, but it amazes you how he says so much but so little all at once. By the time you get to the cafe he directed you to, you've heard all about the antics of his friends - Jimin, Jungkook, and Seokjin, who helped him move that day - and you've heard plenty about their time at school and his days spent as a literature professor at the local university, and yet that's the most you know about him. Fun anecdotes and the off-hand comment about a student. Definitely not a word about why he sleeps in your hammock, or why he showed up at your door out of nowhere and asked you to lunch with a look in eyes that you thought you'd only see from a rabbit caught in a hunter's snare. 

Still, as curious as you are, you can't bring yourself to ask about it, because it's so obvious that he wants to talk about anything else. 

"So, what do you do? I never see you leave for work when everyone else does, so I assume you work from home?" You nod in response to Hoseok's question.

"I do. I'm an author, so I spend quite a bit of time in my office. That's why I started gardening, actually, so that I was forced to be outside in the sun at least a little bit every day. Otherwise, I tend to nest in my office for days without leaving."

"That makes a lot of sense," He says as he sips at his coffee. "What do you write?" 

"Horror." The shock on his face, like perhaps he heard you wrong, is one of your favorite things about telling people you write. He gazes at you, taking in the messy hair, overalls, daisy-covered shirt, and pink sandals. "Psychological horror, to be exact.”

"Seriously?"

"Seriously." You grin, much too amused with the entire conversation. You slide your phone out of your pocket and tap at it until you're at your official website. You slide it across for him to see, and he clicks through the pages. There are several - one for each series, one for your upcoming releases, an appearance schedule, and then a quick bio that features a picture of you and Tuna. When he slides the phone back across the table, he looks impressed, and it warms you. 

"I had no idea that was you," he says. You can't help the knowing grin. "You seem a little...bright for the genre."

"The mind is a fascinating place, Hoseok. The darker parts are so often either overlooked entirely or exaggerated for dramatic purposes. I want to tell real stories about real things that can happen. There's no need for embellishment when very real, very terrible things happen every single day. Besides, you don't need to dress in all black and carry around a leather-bound copy of Stephen King to prove you're interested in horror." He hums across the table, and his look has turned almost calculating. 

"I may have to read some of your work then."

"You might." You give him a serene smile and finish your coffee. 

He's somehow friendlier after that. He initiates small conversations almost every day, outside your mailbox or hanging over the fence while you garden. He appears all but every other day on your doorstep, looking terrified but grinning as he asks you to go to coffee. You start to wonder if there's something chasing him that only he can see, but brush the thought off the same second you have it. You've become too deep into your latest book. 

He does read your work, which surprised you; you'd never expected him to do so. You offer to lend him your copies, as you have one of each on a shelf in your office, but he steadfastly refuses. You talk about it over coffee, and though you shouldn't be surprised at the quick thinking and keen observations he makes, you are. As often as you interact with your readers at signings and readings and conventions, you've never been quite so invested in someone's thoughts before.

You're eager to know what he thinks of the most recent book he's read. You're curious as to what metaphors and symbolism he's picked up on, what foreshadowing has punched him in the gut with realization.  If he would criticize the heavy-handed allegory you've created, or if praise would fall from his lips to slide across and settle in your chest.

It's been a very long time since you cared for someone's opinion like this, you realize one morning as you stare out your kitchen window. Butterflies form in your stomach and you sigh, content in the knowledge that there would be no running from this. You watch as Hoseok runs around his own backyard, laughing at something Jimin says. He's sweaty from the game they're playing, but the sunlight seems to absorb into his skin in a way you've not seen before, and it looks like he's glowing. His smile lights up the sunset, and you can hear his laugh from here, and you want nothing more than to wrap yourself up in the sound. 

No, you decide, there would be no running from these feelings, only acceptance of the blossoming fondness inside your heart. You turn from the window as Hoseok laughs again, spotting an empty section of your garden as you do, right beside the eye-catching red tulips. It makes you frown, as you can't remember there being an empty section there before.

You make a note on your fridge to pick up some pink camellias next time you're at the garden center to fill it. Your reminder to call your mother stares back at you and frown at it for a solid minute before you pick up the phone. As it rings, you resign yourself to yet another conversation with your mother about why you're not married with a real career yet.

"Have you had dinner yet?"

You look up from the weeds in your grasp to see Hoseok leaning across your fence and beaming at you. 

"Have you had dinner yet?" Hoseok repeats at your obvious confusion. "I ordered delivery and saw you out here and I thought I should offer to share. Since you've been so kind in sharing your lovely hammock and free time, I want to repay the favor."

"Oh. No, I haven't eaten yet." You stand and dust the dirt off your gloves before sliding them off. Hoseok grins and hands two large bags over the fence to you. You take them, curious, and watch as he pulls himself up and over the fence. He’s careful not to step on your flowers, but he still gives an apologetic smile as you sigh. "The gate is right there, Hobi."

He winks as he rights himself and takes one of the bags. "It's faster like this." You laugh and slide your gloves off with care, not wanting to drop the food, and hang them on the fence beside you. Hoseok is already halfway to your back door and waves at Tuna where she waits on your dining table. 

"Oh, Hoseok, don't-" He's opened the door before you can finish your sentence, and a small black and tan fluff darts out. The dog circles him, yipping at his toes and running back and forth between the two of you. Hoseok looks startled, but a smile spreads across his face after a moment. "I'm sorry, I'm dogsitting for my friend while he's out of town."

Hoseok coos at the dog and leads him back inside, luring him along with a small bit of meat. You laugh as you follow, sliding a hand down Tuna's back as you shut the door behind you. 

"He's adorable, I love him!" Hoseok exclaims, laughing again as he sets the food on the counter. He looks at you and gestures to the piece of meat in his hand, and you nod to let him know it's fine. Yeontan takes it and follows Hobi around as he starts getting plates and utensils, the fact that he knows where they are is a testament to how often he's at your house.

The two of you eat in relative silence. Tuna bathes languidly atop her cat tower and Yeontan sits between you and Hoseok, his entire body shaking back and forth as his tail wags. Every so often, Hoseok will comment about his day, as he usually does when the two of you eat together, and he asks about yours. You tell him about the new flowers you've planted - some gorgeous white lilies that should bloom well. He tells you about his theories and opinions on the last book of yours he'd read. 

By the time you're finished eating, he has several new thoughts and notes jotted down in a hasty scrawl on a napkin. He's insightful with his questions, bringing up points you hadn't considered and opinions on continuity that you need to clarify in the future. Your heart flutters in your chest when he smiles, bouncing Yeontan in his lap. 

"I do think they're good, though," He says as he makes kissy faces at the dog. "Like, good good. If I ever teach a psychological horror class, I may use them. Students could learn a lot from the dedication to detail."

"Thanks, Hobi," You tell him, and you don't bother to hide the fond smile. The fluttering in your chest is familiar at this point, and it makes you sigh a little.

You're so smitten, you think as you watch him bounce Yeontan on his knee; you should, perhaps, feel more conflicted about your growing emotions. And yet, you've been accepting of it since you first met him. It was as if the second you met Hoseok, you knew you would fall for him. How could you not, with his charm and warmth and humor and the unbearable mystique he left in his wake each time you spoke to him? 

"Oh, that reminds me, I have something for you!" You stand and head outside for a mere moment, grabbing what you need in a flash. When you return, Yeontan is on his belly beside Hoseok, Tuna glaring at both of them with envy. You set the pot in front of him, and he blinks at it, bewildered. 

"Is this...?"

"Tulips!" You say with a grin. The yellow blossoms stand proud as he gapes, and you like to imagine that they're proud they look so good for him. "To brighten up your house. You always seem so interested them, and I had several extra seedlings this year, so I grew one for you."

The look on Hoseok's face is unreadable and he's silent for a long while as he looks at the flowers. You wait; you've seen the way he looks at your garden while the two of you talk over the fence, you've seen the way that he eyes the tulips as you weed them. You know it's a good gift, and you scream the reminder inside your chest to drown out the voice in the back of your head saying otherwise. It's worth the wait when his face splits into the biggest smile you've ever seen, radiant and bright. It almost seems to surround him, a halo of joy that feels like a summer sun. 

"I absolutely love it," He tells you. "It's gorgeous, I'm going to make sure everyone can see it." He stands, potted flowers cradled in both hands like a babe, and gives Yeontan one last kiss. "I should be going anyway, I have a class in the morning, but I need to make sure I find the perfect place for these." He beams at you again, and you return his grin. 

"It's nothing, Hobi," You say, walking him to the front door and opening it for him. "Consider it a housewarming gift." He beams as he makes his way across to his own house, and the way he's already cooing at the buds and talking to it have your emotions a mess.

It's been months since you first went to coffee with Hoseok. The two of you are, you would say, friends. You've definitely graduated from neighbors, and you spend more time together than acquaintances, but it feels strange to call him your friend when what you feel is so much more than that. 

Every time you see him, it only gets worse. More than once, you wished time would stand still if only to keep him with you a little longer. Being around him feels like standing in a meadow of daffodils in the noon sun, heat seeping into your skin and painting the world with its oranges and yellows while the breeze whispers a promise in your ear as it rolls through you. 

You wish you could bottle the feeling. 

You make a note on your fridge - 'bottling emotions for capitalistic gain - too obvious? trite? overused? must consider further' - and set out a treat for Tuna. She's grumpy, likely because you've yet again woken at four in the morning and disrupted her usual bed - your face - with your need for a bathroom and a snack.

You haven't slept much that week, too busy polishing the last few press releases and comments that had to be perfect before release. You'd finally done the last of the work and had checked the mail and done your gardening before you received Joy's email saying you were good to go back into hibernation until the next book was due. 

You took the hint and proceeded to pass out at around five that evening. You needed the sleep, clearly; you can't remember the last time you slept so long without even getting up to pee. Still, you muse as you munch on a week-old granola bar your mother left on her last visit, you're glad that you've gotten the book done. You're always relieved when you finish writing one, these days. In the beginning, you would wait anxiously until publication finished and the book was on the shelves. Joy had to pull you out of your rabbit hole several times, too consumed with what people were saying to even bother with anything else. 

That was before Tuna, of course, and the garden. 

Now, you were content seeing whatever happened your way. You didn't much care for professional reviews anymore; they were nice but they weren't as honest. The random people who stumbled onto Twitter in the early hours of the morning because they'd just turned the last page were much more genuine. There were always those that criticized you, of course, but you contented yourself with the knowledge that they never had to read your books if they didn't want to. Others enjoyed them, and that was what mattered. The ones who read them and then couldn't sleep, either for need to express their thoughts to someone before they could rest or because they were too on edge, too anxious, the ones who saw danger in every mundane shadow of their bedroom after putting your book down, those were the ones who mattered to you.

A bang startles you out of your thoughts, and you share a look with Tuna. Her fur is raised, tail straight up as she looks to your front door. You follow her gaze and see nothing, which isn't unusual. Tuna regularly communes with whatever shadow monsters exist in that parallel plane of existence only cats can see. It's not typical, however, for you to be able to hear said shadow monsters. 

You pad your way to the front door, sliding one of the hardcovers that had arrived the day before into your hand as you do, in case one of the shadow monsters tried something. Another bang echoes throughout your house, followed by a series of quick, desperate knocks. Deciding that no respectable shadow monster would knock before murdering you, you open the door to see Hoseok, panicked and sweating and panting. He looks as surprised as you feel. 

"Um…" is all he says for a minute, and you wait. "I didn't expect you to answer, honestly, I just. You weren't around earlier so I didn't want to use the hammock, and it's getting kind of chilly, and so I tried to sleep in the house, but it's gotten worse and I was doing alright but then it started making these noises? So I tried to get it to stop with some things I found online but that only made it all worse, and then it seemed like things were gonna shoot around the room, so I-"

"Hoseok," You interrupt. He stops, fixing wide eyes on you. "Context." "My house is being haunted by some kind of demon monster and I think it's going to try to kill me and I would really appreciate your help in exorcising it." You blink, but the grave expression on his face doesn't change. It takes a second for your brain to fit that particular frame around the puzzle that Hoseok has been - sleeping in the hammock, random coffee trips where he's jittery and on edge, the minute you go to leave the cafe, the terrified look in his eyes whenever he comes over or sparks a conversation out of nowhere. 

"Okay," You say, sliding the book under your arm and closing the door behind you. Hoseok looks taken aback at the idea that you're actually going to help him, but he hesitantly follows as you head across the front yard to his own front door. 

The house is quiet when you enter, the shadows of still-yet-to-be-unpacked boxes dancing on the walls as you turn the overhead light on. He's lived in the house for months and yet it seems only the bare necessities have been unpacked; it should surprise you more, but considering the fact that he's spent all that time believing there's a ghost haunting him, you aren't surprised.

Your first walk through the house doesn't seem to trigger anything. It's completely silent, eerily still, and yet Hoseok seems to jump at every creak of a floorboard, ready to run at every twisting shadow that shies away from the light. 

"Is there a ghost here?" You eventually call into the living room, and Hoseok curses at the soft thud that echoes. Your eyes narrow, darting around the space. "I asked a question. Don't be rude, it's very inconsiderate of you." There's a couple of other thuds eyes track them around the room. "If you don't stop, I'm going to start performing an exorcism, and then who's going to regret being impolite?" 

Hoseok hisses your name, but you ignore him, instead of focusing on the way the lamp in the corner wobbles ever so slightly. Hoseok clearly also notices this, inching towards the door once more. 

"Hoseok said you were talking to him. Am I not good enough?" There's a pause, and then a warbled voice reverberates through the room, eerie and lingering, which only cements your theory. You turn to Hoseok and lower your voice, barely even whispering. You're so close that your lips brush his ear as you ask him where the entrance to his attic is. He leads you to it, stepping softly and avoiding the creaky floorboards as you do.

It's harder to be quiet as he pulls the trapdoor down, stairs sliding along with it, but at this point, you don't need to be. You ascend first, Hoseok following close behind. He no longer looks afraid, merely curious, and you're glad for it. It's a pity that he's felt so alienated from his own house. 

There are several squeaking sounds as you turn on your phone flashlight and showing Hoseok exactly what has been haunting him: a pink-haired young man and his blonde friend, both scrambling for cover amidst the sleeping bag and snack wrappers that litter the floor of the attic. 

You stand aside as Hoseok chases them out, cursing about mice and sleep and ungrateful friends as he does. When Jungkook and Jimin are both gone, laughing so hard they can't run, you show Hoseok the boots they used to stomp around, the nearly-invisible fishing line threaded down and around various lamps and paintings, the radio hookup they used to change their voices.

"It's all stuff I've used in books before," You tell him as he pours a cups of coffee for you both. "Also, I could hear them laughing."

"I feel like an idiot for waking you up for this. And for sleeping in a hammock and getting chased out of my house for something so stupid." He runs a hand through his hair and the fondness in your chest grows. He doesn’t look at you, instead staring at the potted tulips sitting in his kitchen window. It mirrors your own, and you’ve caught yourself staring more than once from your own kitchen.

"There are worse things,” you say.

"Oh?"

"Mhm. I could've not had a hammock." The small grin he gives has you melting, and you want nothing more than to wrap him in a hug and kiss away the line between his brows. 

“You have a point," He says with a small laugh. "It is a really comfortable hammock. I almost don't want to go back to my bed."

"So don't," You say, voice steady despite the fluttering in your chest. The tone in his voice feels new, feels good, like perhaps he's standing in that meadow of daffodils with you, and it gives you hope. "You're always welcome to use the hammock. As I said, someone should, otherwise it's going to hang there, all sad and lonely."

He looks shocked to hear that, though you aren't sure why. It isn't like you've been very secretive of the way he makes you feel; but then, you haven't been outright vocal, either. And he did think he was being haunted for the better part of four months, without realizing it was two of his friends living in his attic.

"You're welcome to come over whenever, Hobi," You tell him. "You don't need to be chased out by a ghost to talk to me."

"I don't want to interrupt your work," He says. His voice is hesitant and sweet and it reminds you of the orange blossoms you used to plant with your grandmother. 

"I'm actually finished with my book," You tell him. He makes a questioning noise, and you remember the hardcover tucked under your arm and set it on the counter. "This is actually for you." He steps closer to look it over and flips it around to look at the back as well. 

"I can't take your only copy," He starts but you cut him off with a shake of your head. 

"I have one for me," You say. Your voice is firm, unaffected by the rolling of your stomach, but it's quieter than usual. "That's yours. I wanted your opinion on it if it lives up to the hype. We talked about the one right before this last week, and I'm curious if this one will answer any of your questions or if it leaves you with more. I've been trying some new things, and I'm not sure how well I executed them."

You choke the need to keep talking. Instead, you bite your tongue and return the look Hoseok is giving you; it's intense and full of something you can't place. But he's opened the book to the back, fingers resting lightly against the dedication bearing his name, thumb brushing the red carnation you'd pressed between the pages out of sheer impulse. 

"You don't have to read it, of course," You eventually say. 

"I'll need something to do while you garden, though," He says, stepping closer and letting the book fall closed. "I can't exactly lay in that hammock and watch you garden, can I?"

"If you wanted, you could." He's closer than he's ever been now, eyes focused on your lips even as he studies your face for any sign that you don't want him there. "I wouldn't mind."

When he finally presses his lips to yours, they're softer than you expected. Even his hands are soft as he slides them up to cup your jaw and press deeper, like gardenia blossoms against your skin, and everywhere he touches is warmed, as if the sun itself was dancing across you. It makes it hard to breathe, but god, at this point, you'd be fine with never breathing again so long as he kept kissing you. 

It feels like hours when he finally pulls away, a shy smile painted pink with the sunrise, and it's breathtaking. 

Later that day, you plant lilies, white and yellow intermixed in a pattern that your grandmother taught you, while Hoseok swings lazily in your hammock, one leg on the ground to rock himself. He spouts questions at you as he does, making little notes in the margins of each page as you respond, Tuna curled beside him and happily snoring. 

You should plant more daffodils, you decide as you watch them.

[aceyanaheim]

What are your Kaiba thoughts for the Send Me a Character ask?

hmm

I’m guessing you mean Seto Kaiba but..imma do all 3 because i can.

Seto Kaiba

First impression

What a BAMF!

( I was a child and very tiny and kinda fairly very bullied and Seto was...well he broke into his own house and jumped out a window. And he could fight. I was sold. I wanted to be like him.) I also sided with him over Yugi on most things...including friendship and speeches.

Impression now

Maaaaaaaaac freakin dork ass curt ass dramatic af  child with anger issues and trauma someone help him someone help him Now.

I also ( obviously) now side with Yugi over Seto on the whole friendship deal. (But I get Seto’s reaction on an almost instinctive level and still love him a lot.)

( Like..dont get it wrong. I poke fun at him because of how much he reminds of me as a kid but...I adore him and I’ll defend him from near anyone. Okay no I won’t because im a coward who goes into fight-or-flight at the mere thought of char-disc-0urse but like still 

I love the kid.  Him good child. Deserves all the happiness and good fortune. I want to see him grow up healthypng.)

Favorite moment

hmm. I haven’t seen him since the show was new so its foggy but..Imma say any time he either shares screen time with Mokuba or snarks at Joey. ( at Joey specifically because oh lord “Mokuba make sure Wheeler’s late” still sends me into a laughing spell. ( mind you I adore Joey too but  uh..yeah. Snarking Seto is best Seto)

Idea for a story

Right now the one I have is a crossover with xmen where Laura Kinney becomes his and Mokuba’s bodyguard. It has ended up becoming 3 separate verses because i couldn’t decide between comic!book Laura and Logan!Laura and also at what time in both their stories I wanted them because I am the opposite of competent and know no hubris.

It’s eking along kinda slow-like tho. Because writing Seto’s hard for me. I feel like a lot of people have done it better already. So I don’t know that it’ll get done.

Also I don’t know how to keep her from killing Pegasus.

I also had an idea for him and Tea becoming friends in like therapy or something but that never kicked off. Although it’s worth mentioning I’d like to explore the concept of what it would take for them to get along.

Unpopular opinion

He’s a good person I guess? I’ve heard that’s unpopular but haven’t seen it. He deserves a shot at a happy life. He’s a good person? He has never ( to my knowledge) been unkind to Mokuba and even if he was being angry in one moment in your life isn’t some kinda morality indicator especially when it comes to children. Especially traumatized to high heaven children who just keep getting traumatized so no Mokuba didn’t “deserve a better brother” or w/e both Seto and Mokuba deserved better period and can people just enjoy the show which is about forgiveness and friendship anyways good golly. 

I mean..yeah I guess I got a few.

 Another one that I think might be unpopular but I don’t know due to not really publicizing it is that Seto and Yugi....actually aren’t that different at the core? Like if you took Seto away from a lot of the Tragic Backstory stuff he might end up..not exactly like Yugi but not that different either. They’d have a lot in common.

Favorite relationship

Him and Mokuba. Hands down.

Favorite headcanon

Ohshoot do i even have one hm. This ask covers a lot of the headcanons I have for him..but I guess my favorite is him liking children followed by the one that he does math equations and formulas when he’s bored.

I also share a lot of the ones @iced-blood has posted due to most of my exposure to the character coming from his fic after I stopped watching the show so a lot of his headcanons are up there too.

Mokuba Kaiba

First impression

He’s adorable. Protect him.

Impression now

He’s adorable and tiny. Protect him.

Favorite moment

Either him in the beginning of the Noah arc since we get to see him know how to operate the computers in KC or when he’s telling Alistair off in Awaken The Dragons

Basically any time he’s not getting captured again for the plot tho.

Idea for a story

I have a couple drabbles based on @kintatsujo‘s age swap AU...and her In The Back Of My Brain AU, alot of her AUS give me ideas actually ( which of course id ask for permission before pursuing)  but nothing concrete.

Oh and the xmen crossover mentioned above.  Mokuba’s a fair share of that since in one of them Laura’s his bodyguard rather than Seto’s. ( in another Gozaburo gets Laura as protection for Seto while still being abusive and they both shake him off. Like I said it’s..it’s splintered into a lot)

Unpopular opinion

I..don’t think I have any? I don’t really know what opinions are popular tbqh. I guess if anything i saw here is then that.

Favorite relationship

Him and Seto. 

Favorite headcanon

His hair’s a liability I speak from experience.

I guess I’m a fan of the shared headcanon that Mokuba wears heelys. I like the idea that he’s not a genius like his brother and maybe he doesn’t get HIgh HIGH grades and maybe that’s okay ( as someone who has a complex relationship with academics I guess thats something I wish i saw more often yknow) because he’s smart in different ways.

I like the idea of Mokuba being athletically inclined like skate boarding or parkour or being involved in some sport at school I mean he roped climbed out a window in his intro episode so its not that outlandish.

I actually don’t have that many headcanons for this kid. I should fix that.

Noah Kaiba

First impression

Yikes. What  a freakin loon. ( first episode) Oh no..he’s lonely and abandoned. Oh no oh no oh no. ( later episodes in the arc) Okay but he’s still a mean dude ( when he turns ppl to stone) Oh no...he died...and he turned around at the last minute WHAT DO YOU MEAN I DONT GET TO SEE HIM AGAIN. ( at the end)

( yeah Noah took kid!Me through the freakin wringer)

Impression now

He was a child. And his father left him to rot. 

He deserved so much better. 

I love him. I cry and screech about him needing things monthly and sometimes weekly. 

Favorite moment

When he turned around to fight Gozaburo. Also the scenes where you see Mokuba getting to him.

Idea for a story

I guess-no I know a lot of people have done it better but I like the idea of a canondivergence where he’s spared and/or rescued by Seto.

I also like the idea of crossovers with shows like Digimon or Code Lyoko where you have digital worlds.

I just don’t want to be alone and i want him to have nice things okay. That’s..that’s all i want..from life.

Unpopular opinion

Probs that he was an actual smol child and got a raw deal and Deserved Better. ( tm) ( you’ll find thats..my beat with a lot of characters ^-^:) 

Favorite relationship

He...doesnt have any? In fics where he gets brought back like Paved With Good Intentions ( specifically Blue Eyes Violet Eyes) I like seeing his relationships with the other Kaibas. But as far as Canon goes...yeah there’s none.

Favorite headcanon

He’s very tactile. He liked running his hands through his dog’s fur and it always got to him that digitized it..wasn’t the same.

Following that he used to be very physically affectionate before Gozaburo started discouraging it.

Following that if he was to be brought out of the digital place/rescued I think he’d be pretty clingy. I mean because of the tactile thing and because..he’d need to reassure himself the world around him is real.  

If he had been allowed to live he’d probably think he didn’t deserve it/that he has to Atone for the stuff he’s done.

His whole world was his father and even when he hated him he loved him. He wanted nothing more than to be held by him again. That’s why the abandonment stung so much, there’s nothing like hating and being hurt by someone you love...and still having a part of you love them. A part of him still wonders what he did to get left behind. That’s a big part of what drove him to the deep end.

Character Asks Meme

[you-cant-remember]

am i seriously back to using a vent tumblr? just to release out a bunch of feelings that i build up all the time, never leaving and just sitting there rotting me from inside out? really? this shit’s pathetic for me but that’s okay, i guess its just because i don’t wanna use a journal or anything. i’m probably gonna be more personal with these (of course not saying anything directly like.. names, or whatever or any business like that) but less general and not gonna tag my posts anymore because what’s the point even? what am i trying to achieve here? an outlet for the sake of self - expression? it all seems pointless and worthless of what i’m trying to make of it, but i just really wanted to express an issue on my mind recently so,,, why do i let people speak for me ? when you fucking try and talk for me, saying how i FEEL and what i want done its so fucking annoying. don’t try and step in for me because i don’t want it. you governing what i do, even if i’m fucking self-destructing, i never asked for advice! or your surface level explanation of my problems when you know NOTHING! only i know what I’M feeling and honestly you don’t have to translate it back to me because i never asked or offered and i’m much happier figuring it out on my own and dealing with it on my own because of how people like you deal with it and react to it and honestly i just think keeping it to myself is the best i could do because at least then people like you wouldn’t be enticed to watch me fail more, watching it and observing it from the sidelines because OH NO!! you don’t know what to do!! like my life’s some romanticized tragedy for you to explain for me! do you know how many times i’ve tried saying i think i have something or something about me is NOT regular and everyone’s like lol nah its something else! 

like, i’ve come to so many conclusions and i’m sure i don’t need you to confirm or question what i’ve gone through. why does everyone need the longest explanations or the most tragic thing to happen just to prove you’re hurting? i don’t need to fucking kill myself for people to take me seriously, do i? honestly feels like it now because everytime i’ve spoken up or said anything it’s always the same wishes to get better or speak up whenever i’m feeling down when guess what genius? I ALWAYS FEEL AWFUL!!!! like, when’s the last time i’ve actually felt happy? being with people just feels numb and i feel like a geniune disappointment and really just wanna self-isolate. maybe it’s my grudges or automatic responses but god do i not wanna depend on anything for any sort of happiness. i’ve got myself, ykno? you know nothing about me but you pride yourself on it because of your stupid ass god complex that fools praise you for?? i mean, maybe its not that but regardless, people treating me like i’m some helpless little baby, incapable of fending for themselves is annoying as shit!

i guess me being indecisive shouldn’t be everybody’s problem to deal with and i’m a fucking sore to be around, but could you just like.. leave me alone and leave me be? i want you to listen, but you doing shit for me turns me away from reaching out when i’ve said the most to this group about only ONE specific issue. like. a generalization, maybe, admitting how much i just don’t wanna be here at all and they zoom in on it just feeling so bad for me and its like.. the events in my life don’t owe me an apology for essentially the inevitable. feeling constantly sorry for myself and drowning in my own pity has been so common for me and a habit i’ve sworn off on and its more just letting myself indulge in how i feel. but at least now i recognize there’s room for acceptance of whatever’s gone down and whatever i release late at night crying or whatever. i speak about my issues by even a simple statement and suddenly everyone’s feeling sorry for whatever’s went down and i don’t need your pity. i don’t need to feel more like i’m useless, someone who can do nothing. every time i wake up i sit here wondering what the fuck i’m actually doing and i feel like i’m just running without a cause, running aimlessly, running from myself and shit i’m tired. i’ve always been tired and just,, you don’t owe me your apologies for my loss. it’d be so GREAT if not every time my family meets up, its always a mention of the same death that keeps me up wondering what i could’ve done for help.

the spot i was born to fill -  i know i don’t live for anyone, but honestly it seems the fault and blame is all on what i failed to do. even if i’m a disappointment, letting it go seems unnecessary. maybe its a thing on my mindset, and so i live just ignoring it and doing silly ass shit, but it always creeps up on me doing random stuff and i have nothing to do but take it and know i’m not gonna say anything about it. it comes back in simple moments - just the despair of being known and around others. the fact that i’m being perceived and people know me and it feels so fake. everyone claims they know things about me but its always so false and just my pushover ass trying to make people recognize any appeal they see in me. i strive for it and it just seems like everything people complain about seems so,, inconsequential to what i’ve felt. sure, i know it’s been hard for you and you deserve so much credit but what’s it like just to feel terrorized every time you just.. exist? i don’t have to do shit and the thoughts just loom there always, and its just a part of me. a draining parasite - without it, who the fuck would i be? all i feel seems to be the same thing and getting “better” seems like such a betraying idea.. how do you trust that? the fact that you could feel actually valued hanging out with anyone? it’s not on them and i feel so bad they have to deal with me because everything i have is self-inflicted and such a battle in my head and honestly i just wish i could sleep and escape, but you gotta face shit, yknow? thing is, people try to make me face this shit in front of them like i’m a puppet in their show, like, the sudden confrontation and my reaction to it makes me feel like a deer in headlights. i can work it out fine on my own, but with everyone’s perception of me and that spotlight,, i don’t want people to think i’m helpless. who am i even trying to impress here? i wish i could be there with you without fucking disassociating so hard because my brain doesn’t know how to think with happiness or react. anything good i feel i just feel so undeserving and i suddenly get bad memories every time anyone treats me nice,, like, i don’t need your happiness and i guess i just really don’t like being around people. to be in darkness, just indulged in it - away from anyone. that seems so peaceful. you only really exist through the ideas you give others and i guess i just wish i wasn’t known because that has the opportunity for people to see how shitty i actually am and act and how i’m just so wasteful with my life. every waking moment is a reminder of things that happened and i just feel so hollow and filthy and like a husk of anything. i feel devoid of any type of emotion usually except for this deep, aching fear and panic, just some sadness that i face all the time and i guess its just so waring on me but this is how i’ve always been. probably since i was like, what, six or seven? first time i saw someone with a bloody face and truly acknowledged what was going on, or at least my first memory of it. little did i know then, and it was stripped away so quickly as i came to that awareness. to be unawarre is really just the bliss, isn’t it. i just don’t feel deserving here and i don’t think i ever will because i just feel so heavy all the time and ANGRY and raging and experiencing emotions so hard but nobody ever sees it and i’ve gotten so good at masking it that nothing of what i even feel feels real to me!! what if i’m just making it up like every other fucking thing i show to people?? to be lost in time and forgotten would be lovely and the experience of being here in retrospect sounds so nice, but i’m so lost in my own thoughts a lot of the time that i don’t have much i think i appreciate.

and if you tell that to anyone, they don’t get it. they think you don’t appreciate them or whatever, but the truth is i DO! i’m mad at myself for not being able to express this properly! my emotions are always such a mess and i have such a bad time at verbally expressing what i fucking feel and feelings are so HARD!!!!! I APPRECIATE YOU DUDE!!!!!!! I LOVE YOU!!!!! BUT I’M SO SCARED TO EVEN FEEL THIS????? MY BRAIN REACTS SO HARSHLY TO IT AND SO I COME OFF AS SO COLD OR ON AND OFF AND I’M SORRY BECAUSE I CAN’T CONTROL IT BUT I WANNA CONTROL IT FOR YOU AND I JUST AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA WHY AM I SO AWFUL. drops mic i don’t wanna write anymore and even this doesn’t feel adequate and it probably seems so much more different from what you see so. i really just don’t make sense huh

[thatweirdmod]

Windowless Moviemaker Chapter 6: Race

Windowless Moviemaker

Chapter 6: Race

Kidney turns and leaves me sitting against the wall-- speechless.

My eyes slowly move over to Mitchol, whose slouching form is now cast in darkness by Kidney's shadow. I think, hollowly, that the blood drying on his face probably itches a little. Mitchol manages a small squirm in his ropes.

"Well?" Kidney demands irritably.

Mitchol's swelling, battered face jerks up to attention at Kidney. "W-what?" He dares to ask.

"You're up. Give me a plan."

"Oh," Mitchol says. "Er, I just expected-"

"Is there something you don't understand about your situation?" Kidney interrupts. "You don't get to expect anything. Now, the plan."

"Uh, well, I guess we need to get to their computers somehow. They probably ripped DVDs too. Redhand's a little old fashioned. We might also have to look out for tapes..."

Kidney crosses his arms, scowling. "If I kill these guys, then wipe their houses, am I gonna have to worry that I missed a spot because you couldn't point me in the right direction?"

Mitchol attempts to splay his hands. "Look, I know where my stuff is, but how am I supposed to know exactly where their stuff is?"

Kidney chews at the inside of his cheek angrily and walks over to the table to grab a notebook and pen. "Let's just start with addresses," he says, poising to write. "Redhand."

"He lives up in Tindle in those stained up white apartments. Er, I think the number's 46."

"Costriel." Kidney demands, looking up from his scribbling.

"He lives in an apartment too, and he's actually rooming with Nethandre." Mitchol says. "316, in the Fortitude Apartments."

Kidney nods his head.

"So, er," Mitchol begins. "What are you planning to do now that you know where these guys are?"

"You remember how I said you don't get to expect anything?" Kidney says patronizingly. "The same applies to asking. I, the one who is allowed to expect and ask, do not expect you to open your mouth unless I ask you something."

Mitchol swallows and shifts in his blood-stained bindings.

Then Kidney turns to one of the concrete walls, as if it called his name. He stands, staring at it silently, before asking another question.

"Did you... Did you give those videos to my uncle too?"

Mitchol's mouth quivers. "H-he, uh... he was the one who suggested that, you know, we needed some extra insurance on you in the first place. So yeah."

Kidney stands still, unanswering and unmoving, but I can see his jaw working slightly.

"But please!" Mitchol sputters. "Dude, I-I.. I totally forgot about that earlier-- when you asked who had the videos." His arms press up against the ropes, trying to shield his body. Kidney walks in front of him. "I wasn't holdin' out on purpose or anyth-" Mitchol is cut off by Kidney smacking him over the head with a closed palm.

"Just out of curiosity, Mitchol," Kidney says. "If I hadn't asked about Uncle Stoulfer just now, would you ever have "remembered" to tell me?"

"We-w-w-well I don't know." Mitchol trembles with his hands splayed open and his eyes wide. "Guess it's a good thing you jogged my memory man, ha..."

Kidney turns and paces slowly, shaking his head. "I never liked the way that old, crusty loaf looked at Krin, even at me. But for my own selfish reasons, I ignored it all this time." He scoffs lightly. "Just one more reason to be glad I'm out." He turns back and looks Mitchol dead in the face. "The blinders are off."

"So you're aaalll alone," I say from the corner.

Kidney's eyes shoot to me, surprised.

"What? You thought I'd be totally traumatized just from that?"

His gaze narrows hatefully.

"So some weird shit happened and you saw my dream. It prompted you to get the jump on us, but that was mostly luck. And that's probably as far as your luck will go in regards to picking useful kernels of information outta piles of brain vomit." I snort. "Even my thing was more useful, because I saw you in real time."

Kidney smiles. "Where did I see your dream?"

"Huh?"

"It was inside your mind. It had to have been, 'cause that's where they're all cooked up." Kidney says, tapping the side of his head. "The moon is almost full again. That has to count for something." He breathes in. "I can go further with this. But I'll make sure you stay at your current level. You'll be underground here where you can't touch the moonlight."

"You don't even know what the hell 'this' is." I say.

"Pretty smug talk for a guy who's about to lose everything," Kidney says, with his mouth turned upwards in a smirk that doesn't reach his stony eyes.

"What better time to be smug than when you're about to lose everything?"

His face contorts with all the nasty feelings that must be roiling around inside of him. "I told you I'd take everything from you, and this bullshit positive nihilism of yours will be one of the things. I'll make you understand how bad playing as the loser really is, even if the game has the same black ending for everyone."

He takes Mitchol's phone out of his pocket, then says, "Mitchol, you told me you could set Redhand up."

Mitchol breathes in. "Redhand's looking for a new place to do his snuff movies, so I'm thinking maybe I can tell him I found a good place, and you can catch him there?"

"Hmm," Kidney says, folding his arms. "Why does he happen to need a new location now?"

Mitchol explains, "He's been under some suspicion lately. His neighbors've been complaining about a smell, like rotten something, coming from his apartment."

I don't need to wonder what that smell could be. I watched a video where Redhand Heriolt cut a girl open with a sharpened can top. It'd probably taken a fair amount of practice to learn how to do, but he'd managed to keep his subject awake and alive while he pulled out part of her intestines, smeared the pungent brown contents over both of them, and pleasured himself.

I had thought, while clicking through Redhand's contributions, that cleaning up set after filming that kinda stuff would be way too much of a pain. Looks like Redhand thought so too. That filth and gore in the background really had been as caked-on as it looked.

Mitchol continues, "He even got, you know, reported to the cops 'cause someone heard screams. Redhand laughed it off, sayin' it was slasher flicks playing on the TV. They left after he promised to turn the volume down, and they never got a search warrant or nothin'. Still, better not push it, right?"

I nearly snort. Well no shit someone heard screams if he was doing that stuff in an apartment.

Kidney asks, "Where do you plan on telling him to go?"

Mitchol swallows weirdly, with something about him quivering. "That ghost town 40 minutes southeast of Grishee, the neighborhood has a bunch of abandoned old houses. I know a little white one has a basement too. I think I could convince him it's ideal."

A frown of skepticism sends Kidney's lips pointing downwards, but then he walks closer to Mitchol and loosens some of the bindings so he can move one of his hands. Just as soon, however, Kidney slips a pocket knife out of his back pocket and pops the blade out against Mitchol's neck.

Mitchol gasps sharply, but Kidney just places the previously confiscated cell phone into his newly freed hand. "Text him," Kidney says into Mitchol's ear, adjusting the angle of the knife. "Make it sound natural, and make sure he goes to that little white one."

Mitchol's throat bobs, as much of a nod as there was going to be. He goes to work on the keys:

"sup dood. te ghosted out hood in Caplum has som gud spots. white house wit te green dor has a cool basement."

And "SEND".

Kidney's mouth quirks to the side. "I know I said to make it natural, but are you sure he'll get that?"

Mitchol chokes, "Yeah, I mean, I text him like that often enough."

"I see," Kidney says. Then, the phone buzzes.

"R U THERE NOW?"

"Eh, what should I say?" Mitchol asks.

"If this is a test, you might not be able to answer follow-up questions confirming that you're there. You're at home, got it?"

"nah im chillin in my plce. u out?"

"NO. HOME RUBING1 IN BEEFSLAB+blood I BAWT.CANT HUNT BUT NEed it bad."

"lol. tis Caplum spot wil fix u up. no 1 evr gos der. wnna chekit out togetrr?? jst gimme a time bro."

"nightS YUNG.TERES TIME TO CATCHA WOMAN I LEAVE RN. BETHERE 1HR???"

"frige lvl cool dood XD"

"I didn't say you were supposed to go too," Kidney purrs lowly over Mitchols shoulder. "But, I suppose you can just be 'late.'"

He takes the phone out of Mitchol's hand and re-tightens the ropes. "I can handle Redhand Heriolt from here."

With that, he turns on his heels, clops up the concrete stairs, and leaves me and Mitchol to rot in the bunker.

I look at Mitchol. "Please tell me you just tricked him somehow," I say.

"Shh," Mitchol replies quietly.

A couple of little sparks flare up in my chest and head. If I had the energy, I'd click my tongue. Don't you shush me, bitch. I whispered anyway.

Black silence begins settling down between us, and I close my eyes. The concrete is hard against my body, and I can feel us becoming one via temperature as my warmth seeps away into its cold. I move my lips, and a barely audible, hoarse series of whispers spills from them.

"Mother Earth, Mother Earth, once again to us give birth."

Suddenly, a violent roiling upheaves my stomach, like Poseidon's stormy fist punching the sea in wrath and sending the waters booming and swashing. I projectile vomit all over myself and the floor. The deja vu from my dream hits me first, and then the disgust and embarrassment of real life.

Mitchol jumps, as much as he can tied up anyway. His face is tense with that look of distubia, shock, fear, and concern that I hate directed

at me. "Wha.. are you okay man?"

A suck in a stinging, bile stained breath and respond to him in stench coated words. "No. Fuck... we just... we need to get the fuck out of here."

I lick my lips, and regret pools inside my mouth as my tongue pulls foul bits and cooling, sour fluid back into it.

There's a book of religion that says god will not be mocked and is not to be tested. I suppose I couldn't rightly be of the wombs and births of two different mothers at my own convenience. I never considered myself a man of faith, but this stuff I've been touching-- it seems to be some part of a sprawling realm beyond scientific knowledge.

I look down at myself. The sight of me must be making Mitchol sick, but since I'm already like this... I allow the muscles in my bowels to unfurl like a relaxing kitty, and warm liquid soon soaks my jeans and forms a pool around me.

Yep, this is one thing they don't tell you, at least not often, about being kidnapped. I was living freely up until however many hours ago I was taken, and that meant that I drank coffee and expected to be able to reach a toilet when it made its way through me.

I sigh, and lean over to inhale the merging smells that had all been inside my body. Amazing, how humans are all so disgusting inside, but we act as if we're clean until it comes out. I don't bother to look up at my roommate as I contemplate going number two.

But then I catch my reflection in the puddle of urine, and decide that I have to cancel my reservations with Mr. Brown, because the Train of Thought just arrived, and it only stops at the station for 3 seconds.

The first thing I thought, or perhaps, was told, about Mother Moon was that she was a relayer of the sun's message. And gods... gods... I was just thinking about them. But what do I do about them-- what do humans do about gods? They... sacrifice and serve. Blood, lives... offerings.

"Angel of The Great Star, to you, I unbar. Birth me into the spacial assemblage. Through me, relay the message," I say.

Mitchol again looks at me like I'm insane. Indeed, I've done it incorrectly. If her light cannot touch me, it is pointless. I take in a deep breath, and begin fighting against the ropes around my body harder than I ever fought before. Just a bit, perhaps they're loosening.

If I can just get out of these, I might be able to find a way to force the bunker door open and get outside. And if Mother Moon accepts me, I will be raised above Earth and the Earthlings. I will be 3rd, and they will all be 4th.

In the clearing outside the bunker, Kidney faces the moon and spreads out his arms, letting the glow bathe his body. This pale light can be so many things: ethereal, comforting, serene, eerie... He'd never questioned whose mood it really depended on until recently.

"Mother Moon, Mother Moon..." Kidney trails off, his eyes closed in concentration. But concentration isn't quite right. The chant... the feeling isn't coming over him.

"Mother Moon." He says, more of a plain address than a mystical prayer. "I can see you here tonight, as always. Does it not please you to commune with me right now?"

Gazing up at the white ball suspended in the infinite black cosmos, he ever so slightly feels her grow closer for a moment. However, she remains silent and far.

"On your own terms, Mother Moon." Kidney submits, inclining his head in reverence. Despite everything that has happened, he still feels a little crazy as he walks back to his rental car. He might fit the definition of "lunatic" now.

Kidney drives down the rural road to Caplum. Thousands of spindly, bent trees slash endless shadows through the yellow glow from his headlights. If he were taking the Passage to Hell of the South and met Satan at the end, it might not surprise him. Fitting though, that such a road would be irritatingly monotonous. Bored despite his mission, he flips the radio on.

Unintelligible words and tunes grate through static on most of the channels. Then there's the twang of guitar and a longing voice that reminds Kidney of grass fields swaying under a golden sunset in the middle of a heaven set in nowhere. He never did like country music, so he twists the knob one more click.

A bold, smooth, male voice butters the speakers. "The quiet neighborhood of Green Shade has been shaken by the story of a local housewife. According to her, she was drugged and kidnapped from her home by two masked men, who broke in late at night."

Kidney's heart lurches inside of his torso, along with the food in his stomach. He gags, swerving into the wrong lane for a second. After everything they-- Jeeto-- had told her, Mrs. Horatay was still talking?

The deep voice coming through the speakers crinkles with static. "...underground bunker. They then proceeded to film themselves sexually and physically assaulting her. The woman reports that at various points during the hours-long ordeal, both of her assailants lifted the masks away from their mouths and exposed the bottom portions of their faces."

Kidney's head swims with nausea. He never saw so much as a coin for getting that damnable spasm closeup. The footage of the actual stimulation was cut, he was sure. He'd been the one to edit Mrs. Horatay's movie. But somehow it had escaped his mind that Mrs. Horatay could be looking down, drawing a sketch in her mind for the cops.

"Both attackers appeared to be young males, in their late teens or early twenties. She describes them to be of average height, the shorter of the two having a round face and lightly tanned complexion, while the taller male's face was square shaped. She noted no hair or distinguishing blemishes on either of their faces, however..."

Kidney's hands tremble on the steering wheel, but he forces himself to focus on driving. "Relax. There's gotta be a hundred guys that fit those descriptions around here," he mutters to himself.

After a small eternity, Kidney spots a sign that humanity had come here ahead of him. "SPEED LIMIT 45" in faded black over rusted white. He slows down, guides his rental car into the overgrown brush on the side of the road, then takes the key out of the ignition.

With the engine dead, it's so quiet out here. Kidney pulls on his new black burglar's mask before getting out, just in case. He gently pushes the door closed behind himself, then goes around to the trunk.

A bag of supplies he packed from Jeeto's house is inside, and he unzips it and pockets from it a syringe of animal tranquilizer and a switchblade. The weapon he chooses to keep equipped in hand, however, is the 16-inch machete he brought himself.

Kidney begins his stalk up the road. Even in this dark place with the shadows of the bushes staring at his exposed back, he can feel Mother Moon's light clothing him and guiding his footsteps. Krin's innocently smiling face in the sunset of his room... such a distant memory kept so close to his heart. He clenches the hilt of his machete. He will not be afraid.

Mother Moon's warmth and comfort begins to seep all through him, and he senses her closer than before. The neighborhood comes into view. So he stays low and hidden as he makes his way to the west-most side where that white house is supposed to be. He sees the car before the house. It's a van that only breaks creep convention for its having a green paintjob instead of a white one.

Suddenly, a something like a living memory possesses his mind, only, something is not right. He finds himself looking at himself from behind, his black, hooded form crouching down behind bushes. One of his meaty arms is outstretched, and the hand is holding something, shiny, cold, and heavy. It's a gun-- pointing.

The head that he has an intimate awareness of, but not a oneness with, turns furthur downward without command. He sees white hairs in the bottom of his vision, and the stomach below protrudes too far forward. It is covered with a green Hawaiian shirt.

Kidney gasps, and seems to be sucked back into his own mind again. "Stoulfer," he breathes. Instinctively, Kidney whirls around on his ankles and spins up from the ground. The blast of the bullet rings the air, and Kidney feels it whip past his head and break through the dry shubbery behind him.

The moonlight makes depthless pits of the bags under Uncle Stoulfer's eyes, and carves darkness into every wrinkle and pockmark on his skin. The hairs of his white mustache and goatee twitch.

The old man's deep, raspy laugh mocks him. "I always knew you'd end up givin' me trouble."

Kidney runs for one of the houses. He can hear the many voices of his uncle's mind echoing. The thoughts are so muddled, though, and examined all at once, they're like a wild drove. Irritation. Lust. Smugness.

But the foremost thoughts-- those are the thoughts of action. That is where Kidney puts his focus. The gun fires again, but Kidney knows where it has made its path, and dashes out of its aim just as the trigger is being pulled.

"Shit! Pretty quick on his toes," Kidney hears.

"Got lucky there," Uncle Stoulfer hollers.

Kidney crashes through the rotting, wooden front door of a house, and runs into a bedroom in the back. He stands to the side of the doorway and listens to the floorboards at the entrance creak. Inside, Stoulfer's thoughts sound like mumbling, for only weak, pale streaks of moonlight penetrate the dark building through broken windows and cracked roofing.

Kidney can sense with the stronger rays of light touch the old man's balding head, because those are the moments he can hear more clearly.

Uncle Stoulfer plans to check behind the kitchen counters first, then... Kidney clenches the machete handle and raises the weapon. When Stoulfer comes here, he will strike.

[ddaenggtan]

amae | jhs | preview

amae - japanese. the way you act when you want to depend on another person. relying on someone’s goodwill and love to help you. frequently thought of as wanting to be loved and taken care of.

when someone new moves in next door, you don’t expect to become friends. everyone on your block was friendly, yes, but none of you gave more than a courteous wave when you spotted each other in passing. that changes with jung hoseok; a literature professor with sunlight gleaming out of every pore, who enjoys complex lectures, random coffee trips, and...sleeping in your hammock? curiosity gets the better of you as you befriend him, but just what could have this man sleeping in your garden hammock every night?

pairing | jung hoseok  x reader

genre/warnings | neighbor!hobi, writer!reader, pure cotton candy fluff, this may actually rot your teeth

word count | 2.7k | will be cross posted to ao3

a/n | this is still in its editing process, so it may change some from this vs the final version, but have a sneak peek!! i’m hoping it’s going to be as long as give and take was, but because there probably won’t be smut in this, it’ll probably be shorter (sorry hobi T_T) 

The moving van in front of the neighbor's house shocks you when you get up that morning. There had been a For Sale sign hanging in the yard for upwards of a year, and you've watched with mild amusement as the price dropped lower and lower, coming up with creative reasons the realtor was increasingly more desperate to sell the house. Your favorite so far was that the adorable plump woman had to sell it soon, or her wife would run off with their girlfriend in the night, not to be seen again until the realtor did sell the place, upon which her wife and girlfriend would return.

Minri was really very nice, and you probably shouldn't be entertaining such thoughts about her. She'd sold you your own house, a lovely little three-bedroom in a nice neighborhood, with a decent enough yard that you only really used when you dogsit for your friends. Minri had even helped you get the place at a great price, and though she had strangely emphasized the cleanliness of the place and the nearby churches, you really did owe her.

Well not really, she got a very nice commission from the sale, but it's the principle of the thing.

You scavenge one of the dry erase markers from the drawer and make a note on your fridge to bake her cookies sometime soon. Your mother would have a fit if she saw you writing straight on your fridge, but it was erasable and easy and you are if nothing if not a simple girl.

You pull yourself from your musings and make another note to call your mother before she could get huffy that you haven't in a while, tossing the marker back into the drawer when you're done. You direct your attention back at the moving van, unsurprised when a gaggle of young-looking boys emerges from the neighboring house to start unloading. Well, it wouldn't be extremely fair to call them a gaggle, as there are only three of them, but the point stands. They seem to be very close, judging by the way they tease and play, and it makes you smile a little. It was long past time the neighborhood got some life in it. The closest people to your age are the couple three doors down, in their 50s and always willing to talk about their seven children and four grandchildren. It got tiring.

With a soft sigh, you turn from the window at your sink and dismiss the flash of bright pink you see in the mirroring window from next door. None of the three you saw had pink hair, but you could have missed one. You slide your hand along the spine of your cat, Tuna, and smile as she wraps her tail around your wrist briefly before chirping and jumping down from the counter. She follows as you make your way to your office, tucked into the seat of the bedrooms because it gets the best light, and settle at your desk to return to your work. Novels don't write themselves, after all.

You aren’t sure which of the boys lives next door, but it becomes quickly apparent that it’s only one of them. Several are over at all hours of the day, but by the time the sun goes down, there’s usually only one or two there. You only know a single person lives there because of the way the complaints about an uncomfortable couch drift over to you as you pick up your morning paper.

They’re a very respectful bunch, keeping things quiet after the sun falls past the horizon, and waiting for a reasonable hour before doing whatever exercises they did in the backyard with their music floating through the air. The fence that separates your yard from his reaches your shoulder, a white-picket thing that surrounds each of the yards in the neighborhood, and it keeps you from seeing anything of import as you tend your garden. Still, you catch snippets of conversation, bits of stories that you never get a conclusion to, jokes with a punchline that’s carried off by the wind.

Mostly, though, you catch names; Jungkook, Jimin, Seokjin, different variants of each, but the one you hear most often is Hobi. His name rings out constantly, gliding through the air on notes of both mirth and vitriol. It’s usually accompanied by a laugh that makes your heart warm in your chest, or some form of inhuman screech, though you’re not really sure why. You’ve never seen enough to understand what happens at the house next door, nor have you actually met any of the people that come and go like leaves in the fall.

Still, you can’t deny your curiousity, and you tell yourself that if the opportunity presents itself, you’ll introduce yourself. Despite that decision, the opportunity never does seem to present itself. Weeks pass, and you find that you feel nervous at the thought of going and introducing yourself now. The windows has passed, it would be too strange now, he would think you odd. So you keep to your own house, tending your flowers and your trees, writing your novel, and doing your level best to keep Tuna off of the manuscripts and letters sitting around that you have yet to organize. You’ve resigned yourself to the sad truth that you simply won’t get to know your neighbor, won’t be able to have that adorable friendship you’ve dreamed of, won’t even know which one it is that lives there.

The universe has always worked rather strangely for you, though, and it’s not long after your acceptance of this face that you come out of your back door, gardening gloves in hand and already reaching for the misting hose, to find someone swaying in your hammock.

You’re not really mad, you don’t use it very often anyway and someone should. Mostly you’re curious - you always have been, and always will be, most likely. Curious as to why someone is in your hammock when most everyone on the block has their own lawn furniture, who that someone is, how they got into your yard. The bolt on the gate was nearly impossible to unlatch from the outside; you know, from the many times that you’ve locked yourself out and had to James Bond your way into your own house through the back window.

You set your gloves on your patio table - a white bistro set your mother gave you when you moved out - and make your way over to the stranger. He’s good-looking; feather-soft brown hair and oddly clear skin, drowning in a sweatshirt that was at least two sizes too big, snoring lightly as the wind rocked him.

“Hey,” You say. He doesn’t respond, and you frown. “Hey, dude, what are you doing?” Still no response. You huff and turn, eyeing the yard for something to help. You don’t want to just shake him awake, that could prove dangerous if he swings out at you. Your eyes light up as they land on the hose, forgotten amongst the grass. You tromp over and pick it up, dragging it back over to where the hammock sways among the tree branches.

“I’m gonna spray you awake,” You say. You receive no reaction, not that you expected any, and shrug. With one pulse, a fine mist of water settles on him. The guy does, indeed, flail, swinging wildly in a futile attempt to fight the water raining down him. He sputters and wipes at his face, and you watch as he does.

“What the hell, who the fuck just sprays someone with water?” He asks, shaking out his now damp hair.

“In my defense, I told you I was going to do it. You were the one that was asleep and didn’t hear.” The man freezes at the sound of your voice, looking around your yard as if seeing it for the first time. He gives you a hesitant and apologetic grin, and the sun seems to grow brighter on his face.

“I’m so sorry, I did not mean to fall asleep in your yard, I swear. There was just...it’s a long story, but it really was an accident.” He flips himself gracefully off the hammock, with practiced ease that makes you slightly jealous. You should learn to do that.

“It’s fine, you can sleep in the hammock. I just want to know how you got in my yard.”

“I vaulted the fence,” He says as if it was obvious. You look from him to the fence, and back again. “What? It’s not difficult.” You turn back to the fence, measuring it with your eyes. If he was able to vault it without much difficulty, how fast would he have to be going? He would surely need a good deal of momentum, of course, to be able to launch himself five feet up in the air. The only thing in your brain is that ‘ten foot vertical leap’ meme, and you curse your best friend for sending you every meme he ever thinks is remotely amusing.

The sound of your name brings you back to the present, and you focus on the man once more. “That’s you, I’m assuming?” The man says. You nod and point to him, belatedly realizing that you still have the hose in your hand when he flinches.

“Which one are you?” You ask him. He gives you a confused look. “There are a number of people next door most of the time, which one are you? Jungkook, Jimin, Taehyung, or Hobi?”

“Hobi,” He says after a second, beaming at you as he does. Something in your chest starts to unfurl itself, and the sensation is strangely comforting. “But my name is actually Hoseok, they just call me Hobi. You’re welcome to as well, most do.”

“Right.” You watch him for a few more seconds as he shakes out his sweatshirt, water dusting the grass below him. “I have gardening. Please let me know the next time you want to sleep in the hammock.” You turn back to the flowers closest the fence, satisfied now that you’ve answered so many of your questions about your neighbor.

“You aren’t going to ask why I’m here?” His voice calls from behind you. You shrug, kneeling beside your white camellias and checking their soil and sprouts. They were just beginning to bloom and you needed to be careful to make sure they weren’t soaking up too much water. “So I can seriously sleep here whenever. I just have to tell you first?”

“That’s what I said,” You reply. You pause, thinking for a second, and turn to look at him. “Does this make us friends?” The beaming smile he wears is nearly blinding, and you find it very endearing that he is so wildly happy at such a small thing.

“I think it absolutely makes us friends,” He tells you. You return the smile, albeit yours is much less sunshine-y than his. He starts to walk toward the fence and you laugh under your breath.

“Hoseok, you can just use the gate,” You tell him. He stops and looks between the gate and the fence for a second before laughing embarrassedly at himself. “Please refrain from vaulting the fence in the future, as well. You’re welcome to just use the gate from now on.”

Hoseok just grins and waves as he jogs out the gate and to his own home. You don’t relax until you hear the click of his door shut. A soft mrow from your left has you moving to pet Tuna once more, and you beam at her.

“It’s been a long time since I had a friend, hasn’t it?”

You don't expect to see or hear much from Hoseok after your brief interaction. You've met several people over the years who you're friendly with, and whom always reassure you that you are indeed friends, only to disappear the second things require an effort from their part. You're fairly accustomed to such things, and people have their own lives, so you really aren't that upset about it, either.

You're so used to being forgotten, however, that it surprises you when Hoseok waves at you one morning as you are both getting mail. Another day he's playing football with a couple friends and shouts a quick greeting over the fence as you dip down to do your gardening. One memorable evening, you turn from shooing a raccoon away from your trash with a feather duster and ladle to see Hoseok watching from his driveway. You give him a polite smile and he shoots you a proud, yet puzzled, grin, and the next day when he sees you putting out small feeders near the back part of your yard for the raccoon, he just chuckles softly.

Not to mention that you still come outside most mornings to find him snoozing in your hammock, rocking gently in the breeze and comfortable as can be. He's never given you any explanation, though to be fair, you also don't pry.

It's a struggle; you want, so badly to know why he doesn't just sleep in his house that sits not ten feet away from yours. You don't want to push him, though, too scared of breaking this tentative friendship you've built over something so small.

Things only start to change the afternoon he knocks on your back door while you're getting lunch ready for Tuna. She yells as you set the food down in front of her - a special blend designed to help her hearing and her eyesight, since she was predisposed to troubles with both - but she quiets soon enough. You step around her to open the door, and you're shocked at the expression on Hoseok's face.

For a second, he had looked afraid.

Your name drops from his lips in a tone that tells you he didn't expect you to answer. "I was just wondering, do you, um…" He trails off and you wait patiently for him to finish the thought. "Do you want to get lunch? Coffee? Anything? I just need to get out of the house for a while."

"Sure," You reply easily. "Let me get my wallet."