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mm2305 · 4 years ago

Text

All That Matters

Characters/pairings : Ethan Ramsey & Olivia Valentine

Words/Genre : 2.8 K / Angst , Romance

Warnings : mentions of death,injuries

Summary : Olivia gets seriously injured. How does Ethan react?

A/N : Hello again! This fic was written per @groovypalacehorselover ‘s request. This is the first time I’m attempting to write angst , so I hope this comes out good enough. A big THANK YOU to @romewritingshop for her help in editing this. Moodboard inspired by @potionsprefect 's ones.

Disclaimer : all characters and pictures belong to the rightful owners

My Masterlist

Enjoy!

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Ethan was frantically rushing through the hospital corridors. Dread and anxiety flooded his mind that he could barely breathe. There was no way he would allow it to stall him. Pushing himself to go as fast as he could to get to the farthest wing of the hospital, he slammed the double doors ahead open.A group of interns were nattering amongst themselves,oblivious to the frantic attending approaching them. A thundering voice broke them out of their trance.

"OUT OF MY WAY!", he boomed at them, as he was approaching closer.

The interns, startled by him, broke apart allowing him to pass through them. What made them wonder though, was the clear, unadulterated emotion in his eyes. He looked as though his world was slowly crumbling around him. And they weren't wrong.

2 Hours Earlier

Olivia was finishing up her rounds for the day. In a few hours she’d be home, snuggled with her favorite throw blanket, watching a movie on Netflix while Ethan would complain incessantly about her taste in movies. She had to visit her last patient, a sweet seven year old boy named Nathan.

His diagnosis was a difficult case to solve and this made young Nathan restless. His mom came to stay with him in the evening but she had to go to work early in the morning. The poor boy was often bored out of his mind, taking adventurous strolls through the hospital, without telling anyone. There were several instances that she and a few nurses had to track him down, but still Nathan continued doing that. She couldn’t really blame the poor kid. Today was just one of those days.

Olivia walked to the nurses' desk, to ask about Nathan.

"Hello Sarah, did you happen to see Nathan? I think he snuck out of his room again."

"Dr Valentine! No, I haven't. Maybe you should ask Mary. She might have an idea where Nathan is.", The nurse replied with a soft smile.

"Okay, thank you!"

She left the reception in search of Mary. Before long, she found her in one of the halls.

"Hi Mary, I was wondering if you've seen Nathan?", She inquired politely.

"Dr Valentine! I was just looking for you. I think I saw the kid heading towards the halls leading to the new wing."

"The new wing? Isn't that under construction?", Olivia asked, an audible tremor in her voice.

"Yes?"

"Oh God! Come on! We need to find him now!", she said, a feeling of worry and dread filling her. The new wing Bloom designed was essentially a plan to enlarge the facilities available for research. From what she heard, it wasn't safe to roam around the place without any safety gear. It was too dangerous to go there, especially for a young boy like Nathan, but she won’t let him fall to harm.

After a few minutes of darting around and asking everyone they encountered, Mary and Olivia got the same response. They saw a kid among these halls at some point. By the time they reached the site, Olivia and Mary began calling for him.

"Nathan? Are you here?"

"Nathan? Nathan come here, it's me, Dr Olivia"

No answer. Either he wasn't here or he just couldn't hear them clearly. The two women began to slow down their pacing steps as they carefully tread through the congested building site, all while calling for the young boy.

"Dr Oliv?", They heard a small shaky voice calling.

Olivia knew it was him and rushed towards the direction of the voice. Mary, hot on her heels, noticed him first.

"He's there!", She exclaimed, running to his side and checking over him for any injuries.

Olivia began walking towards them, relieved that Nathan was okay,when she heard a cracking noise. She quickly realized that the wall, they were close to, was about to collapse! With a sudden burst of adrenaline, she rushed towards them and pushed them away from the wall. She smiled softly at them before she heard a bigger *crack* and everything went black.

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MEANWHILE

Ethan was sitting at his computer, in his office, looking through files and updating the information onto his computer. Truth be told though, he was too distracted by a certain resident to concentrate on his current task.

Him and Olivia have been together for a little more than three months and he was happier than he had been in a long time. She really had the power to turn the worst of days better with just a smile.

She started coming to his house after work, in fact it’s almost like she had permanent residence in his heart and place. She spent most of the time there with him, just being together. Cooking, watching tv, playing ridiculous board games she always won. It was all very domestic and Ethan always felt his heart swell with love for her, at how at ease she felt being with him, in the place he now considered a home.

Glancing at the clock, he realised their shifts would end soon but he was too impatient. With a soft sigh, he turned off his computer and walked out of his office ,towards the front desk.

"Good afternoon, have you seen Dr. Valentine?", he asked a nurse he knew she frequently talked to.

"Dr. Ramsey! Yes, she was here a little while ago, she was looking for her young patient, Nathan. He has a habit of sneaking out of his room, you see - Wait a minute please!", she paused to answer the phone.

"Bloom Edenbrook Hospital how can I help you? Mary? What?! I’m sending the team right away!"

The woman, Sarah, turned to Ethan with a flurry of panic coursing in her eyes.

"Dr Ramsey, it was the nurse who was with Dr Valentine. They found the boy at the construction site! When they reached for him… a nearby wall collapsed on them!"

"What!? Oh my… No no no… Wh-What else did she tell you? Tell me!", he demanded, his eyes glossed with panic, the usual pink hue of his face drained as he turned as white as a sheet, his breathing in short stuttered gasps.

"Olivia ... was hit worst." Sarah whispered on the verge of tears.

"Page Mirani, Delarosa and the best nurses this damn hospital has! Understood! I'm going there now!"

Before she had a chance to reply, he was already off in search of his Olivia.

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PRESENT TIME

Ethan continued running through the maze of corridors, his eyes full of unshed tears.

"Not her, please not her! Don't take her from me! Please!", Ethan wasn't by any means a religious man, but the fear of losing the woman he loved made him pray to whoever could hear his agonized thoughts. The one person on this earth for whom he would give anything for, was again in grave danger. Memories from the last time she was at the brink of death flooded his mind, knocking the breath out of his lungs. How fragile she looked and to know he couldn't do anything to save her, other than watch her become progressively weaker and her radiant smile, the one that could lighten up a whole room, fade away. "No, don't do this right now Ethan. Focus on her. Only her.", he thought, nodding to himself while pushing the last hurdle of doors open. His eyes quickly scanned the room, trying to locate her.

He finally saw her.

She was lying on the floor pieces of rubble around her. She was unconscious, her eyes closed, her golden hair around her face. As he rushed to her side, whilst avoiding the scattered materials, he saw a small patch of blood on the side of her head.

He knelt beside her, being careful not to move her, in fear of causing more damage to her body. He took her small, still warm, hand in his and softly began to stroke her cheek and hair.

"Darling? Olivia? It's me, Ethan. Please Olivia, can you hear me?", his voice wavered at the sight of her blood on his fingers from stroking her hair and a few tears were finally breaking through.

Her eyes fluttered as a soft little gasp left her lips.

"E-Ethan?", she whispered, her voice hoarse and barely audible.

"Yes, Love it's me."

"I… it hurts.. I can't…", she croaked but it was too difficult for her to breathe properly, the dust hovering in the air wasn'tmaking this any easier. Ethan noticed this and pushed her head slightly back, to allow her to breathe better.

"Shh darling I know… I'm here love, I'm not going anywhere...Please sweetheart don't give up on me… please…I can't lose you", Ethan whispered, stroking her cheek softly, trying to be strong for her.

Olivia fell unconscious once again, her chest taking short ragged breaths. He pried his eyes away from her to look around the room. A woman was in the corner with a crying child in her arms, trying to comfort him.

" Hi… Are you okay? Did you get hurt?" he asked them as he approached them.

"Nothing too bad. Might just be a sprained wrist and a couple of scratches. Nathan’s fine too, just shocked. Dr. Valentine…. she … she got the worst of it.", she replied with tears in her eyes.

Ethan didn't have a chance to reply as the team arrived. They immediately got down to work, not even hesitating to lose a minute, paying Ethan no attention.

"Get her on the gurney carefully! One mistake and you're fired!" Zaid commanded, with a fiery stern voice at the team of nurses.

"Zaid, she's got a cut on the side of her head and she's bleeding. I don't see anything too serious but we should order a scan. Shortness of breath indicates one or two fractured ribs and her left ulna and radius might be broken, given the swelling.", Ines said with evident concern and fear thick in her voice.

"Let's get some scans and see exactly what's going on", Zaid replied, trying to be as calm as possible, in this case. Olivia was his colleague,but more importantly she was his friend and he wouldn't allow anything to happen to her. Not on his watch.

"I'm coming with you!", Ethan interrupted their conversation.

"You're not in the right state of mind to help her now!"

"Zaid’s right about this. She needs you to be calm and focused when she wakes up.", Ines told him resting a comforting hand on his shoulder.

Ethan had no choice but to reluctantly agree.

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Several hours later, Ethan was pacing anxiously in front of the room Olivia was checked into. The night doctors were there checking on her. As soon as they heard what happened, her friends joined Ethan in the waiting room, to hear news about her condition. Sienna when she saw her best friend in that state, immediately broke down, Aurora and Elijah trying to comfort her. Bryce, Rafael and Jackie, were mostly silent, their minds running through endless scenarios of what could happen to the most courageous woman they knew.

She had a broken hand, three broken ribs; one of which was pressing too close to her lung; causing her difficulty in breathing smoothly. This required a minor surgery, which was conducted by Harper herself. She wouldn't let anyone else touch the woman she had come to consider a friend. Her head injury, thankfully, wasn't too bad, but there was a possibility of a mild concussion. The whole hospital was there to help Olivia in whatever way she needed. From nurses to interns to anyone she had always been kind to.

Now, Ethan was waiting outside of her room alone, because her friends left a few minutes ago. She wouldn't wake up for a few hours and they made sure she would be completely okay before they left. Besides, they knew that Ethan wouldn't leave her side. That is, once he got to finally see her.

Thirty agonizing minutes later, he was finally allowed to go into her room. His eyes glided across her small form on the hospital bed. The side of her head was wrapped in white gauze, because of the injury there. Her left arm was in a cast and placed on a pillow to make her more comfortable. She was hooked to an IV, her body seeming too delicate on the hospital bed. Her face was in a serene slumber, her body was still under the influence of the drugs she was given during and after her surgery.

Ethan took her soft hand in his, kissing her knuckles and looking tearfully at her.

"My love… You scared me so so much… When that nurse told me you were hurt… I thought I was going to lose you. Again.", He started talking to her, even though she couldn't hear him, he was baring his heart to her. Letting the tears he was holding on to fall.

"Finding you there, lying unconscious… was unbearable. Knowing that you may be gone forever, never being able to touch you, or see your beautiful smile, hear your awful jokes again… I’ve never believed in a higher power, but if there is a being that saved you, then I am grateful. Because, without you, none of this matters. You're my whole world Oliv. And this world means nothing to me if you’re not here darling", he finished , laying a soft kiss on her lips.

He stayed with her for a few hours, having no intention of leaving her, but Naveen forced him to go get a coffee and something to eat. Of course, Naveen promised he would stay there with her while Ethan was away.

On his way back to her room, he encountered Leland Bloom. "Great, just who I wanted to see", Ethan thought, resisting the urge to roll his eyes.

"Ah Dr. Ramsey. I was just coming to find you. How is Dr. Valentine?", he asked with a facade of interest.

"She’s in her room resting. Still unconscious though, because of the anesthesia from her surgery. Now if you'll excuse me", Ethan curtly replied, walking past Leland, anxious to return to her room.

"I was hoping to come with you, actually. I wanted to ask you, will she make a full recovery?"

"Not that it's any of your business, but yes, in a couple months she will probably be alright.", Ethan gritted his teeth, retraining his seething anger at how intrusive this man could be.

"Probably? You're not certain? If her recovery takes so long, then she will be left behind in the hospital's advances. Pity… she was actually going to be one of the key assets to the progression of the hospital's success.", Leland said, not having noticed or probably caring about Ethan's expression.

Ethan couldn't believe what he was hearing. The way he spoke of Olivia. His Olivia. A human being, as though she was nothing but a tool to be used. He clenched his fists, blood coursing through his veins, ears ringing, face and neck flushed red with anger, trying to resist the immense urge to punch him square in his arrogant face.

"How DARE you talk that way about a human being who was seriously hurt? She could have been fucking killed and all you have to say is that she would be an asset to the success of the hospital? What kind of person are you, really? Do you see anything beyond your own selfish, moronic advancements?", Ethan turned to him abruptly, almost roaring, all the pent up emotions escaping him in this outburst towards this man.

Leland was stunned at his outburst, mouth gaping open for a second before he recollected himself. The two of them had become the center of attention as the nurses and doctors were forming a small circle, staring at the two men.

"I would best advise you against speaking to me like that Dr. Ramsey. I'm the one who is in charge here and I expect you to treat me with respect. Now, I understand you are under pressure right now since your partner was hurt, so I'm willing to look past this little tantrum. See you soon, Dr Ramsey." he replied, walking away from Ethan, who was stalking his way down the corridor to Olivia’s room, unbothered by Bloom’s words.

The only person in this world whose words mattered, laid in a hospital bed right now, and he vowed he would not spend any more precious time away from her. Because despite what life throws at them, all that matters is that his Rookie ... his Olivia ... his true love will be alright. They will be alright. Together.

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Thank you for reading !!!

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thekidultlife · 4 years ago

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THE RETURN OF SUPERMAN | Lee Jihoon

Author’s Note: In the last part of TROS Jeonghan, I had mistakenly labeled Yuna as Lee Jihoon’s daughter. Please forgive me! I already edited it to lessen confusion haha. Yuna will be coming out in the next story as another member’s child, as edited. Please watch out for it, and I hope you come to love Lee Jihoon’s family in this AU, too!

NEW SERIES ALERT! While reading this fic, you will have a clue as to what series is coming next on this blog. Please watch out for it and if you see the clue, you can comment it down! :D

HYERI YOU’D BETTER READ THIS ONE!

Genre: ABSOLUTE FLUFF with traces of good ol’ angst but this is definitely a happy story so go ahead and read it!

Word count: 5,896

Lee Jihoon always had a plan. It wasn’t always written on paper or formulated to the dot (you were the one responsible for that end), but it was always there. He felt a lot better if he had things under his control. And so when he decided to enter the Return of Superman show with his friends, he wasn’t going unprepared.

Because, as he stared across at the table (mind you, sudden shivers were coming up his spine as he looked at the young toddler who looked oh so innocent—for now)…

…One could never go unprepared with Lee Yeseung.

“I mapped it out carefully, love,” he told you over breakfast. “I mapped out every single activity I am going to do with him. He’s not an easy kid, but—“

“—Who isn’t easy?” you innocently asked, eyeing your son fondly. He had his father’s eyes and the gentleness of your facial features. His pale-white skin was also his father’s, but the color of his eyes, black with a hint of brown in them, were yours. “Yeseung is a good boy, aren’t you?”

Yeseung smiled sweetly at you and giggled his cute, toddler giggle.

“You know, this child doesn’t come from my side of the family,” Jihoon taunted you as he ate. “My Yeseung is too much like you. Like mother, like son.” Jihoon was laughing to himself, pleased at making you feel pissed off early in the morning. It was a ritual he was having a hard time to break, even after five years of marriage. But when Jihoon turned his eyes to you, he stopped mid-laughter.

“What?” he said, raising both hands. “It’s true!” He pointed at his son. “Look at him! He’s hyper!”

“You are uncharacteristically talkative today,” you replied to him, your eyes narrowing. “What are you up to?”

Yeseung stared up from his bowl at his father. He was holding the bowl to his face with his hands, doing his best to quietly finish his breakfast as you had sternly told him to do. He had understood your husband’s words, and now he dropped the bowl, cereal flying all over the place as he bawled.

You stabbed your fork at a hotdog and glared daggers at your husband. “Lee Jihoon!”

Jihoon turned back to his meal. “I love you both, and I’m…” he sighed, getting up on second thought and disappearing behind to the kitchen for a minute. “I’m going to get the dishcloth.”

“I wasn’t hyper this time,” Yeseung sobbed, rubbing his eyes and putting cereal on his face. “He called me hyper again. I wasn’t hyper this time.” He wailed louder. “Why does he always call me hyper?”

You sighed and scooped the child in your arms, forgetting your breakfast. You were hoping for a quiet morning, but Jihoon just had to upset your baby again. “No, appa was just joking.”

“Yeseung-ah!” Jihoon deftly scooped up Yeseung from your arms and began smothering him with kisses. “Appa was just joking! Like we always do!”

Yeseung looked up at his appa, with tearful eyes. “I’m not hyper, right? I’m a good boy, right?”

“Exactly. A very good boy who will help appa clean up the table!”

“What activity planning were you talking about?”

Jihoon smirked at you and peppered his son with kisses. “I’m nervous, Y/N,” he said quietly, as he looked straight into your eyes, his face going serious. “That’s why I was being talkative. I rarely do this with others, except you.”

You felt your whole face flush. “What activity planning were you talking about?” you repeated your question again.

Jihoon smiled nervously. “It’s for the Return of Superman show.”

INTERVIEW WITH LEE JIHOON, 30:

JIHOON: Hello everyone, my name is Lee Jihoon. I am known by many as SEVENTEEN’s Woozi. This—(he hoists little Yeseung up his lap)—is my three-year-old, Lee Yeseung. Say hi to the camera, Yeseung-ah!

YESEUNG: (Smiles at the camera shyly and then burrows into his father’s jacket.)

WOOZI: (Smiles at his son’s shyness.) Sorry, he’s still a bit camera-shy. But we’re really looking forward to enjoying ourselves on this show! And—(Laughs self-consciously and hugs his little boy close to him.)—I hope I learn more as a dad!

Q: This was asked to the other members as well: How does it feel to have a child of your own?

JIHOON: (Laughs nervously and pats Yeseung, who was squirming on his lap.) Actually, it’s nerve-wracking.

(Silence.)

JIHOON: (Looks down at his son.) You always have to brace yourself with little Yeseung here.

Boy, were we to find out.

NARRATOR: *We are now here at the Lee residence! (Cameras pan around the lavish but minimalistic penthouse of the Lee family.) And it is a beautiful morning, with no clouds in the sky to signal any rainfall. What will this day bring for Lee-appa and little Yeseung?*

6:50 A.M.

A flutter of what seemed like paper floated into Jihoon’s face. Startled, he opened his eyes and struggled to get up quickly out of bed.

Another piece of paper—no, poorly-made paper plane—floated into his face.

He closed his eyes. Took deep breaths. Tried to shake the feeling of sleepiness and called, as calmly as he could, “Yeseung-ah, where did you get all these papers?”

A giggle and a high-pitched squeal of delight was all the answer he could get.

“LEE YESEUNG!!!”

Lee Jihoon jumped out of bed the moment his eyes caught the paper. Groggily, and feeling a little bit off because it was still early, he reached out and snatched a paper plane zooming in toward him. When his eyes had adjusted enough, he looked at the paper. Oh, cool. His baby boy was making paper planes. What an artist! He smiled sleepily, and was about to say a word of praise to his little artist when he looked at the paper again.

Panic and stress, too early to be felt in the morning, seized his heart. He was suddenly wide awake.

Aishh, this kid!!!

Lee Yeseung, his son, was making paper planes out of his music sheets.

HIS LIFE’S WORK. HIS MUSIC SHEETS.

His mind going insane, he bounded across the room with uncharacteristic quickness (it was still early in the morning, mind you), and flung the door open. He was already beginning to panic internally. He was sure he had locked his office at the den when he went into bed at 3 a.m. He was very sure. He wouldn’t have forgotten. But he followed the paper trail—Breathe, bruh, breathe, he kept telling himself, not stopping to look at which song sheet got ripped by his little troll—and with utter disbelief, stared at his wide-open office door.

He distinctly remembered what folks kept telling him about this penthouse. “The doors, cupboards and the built-in closets are definitely (emphasis on DEFINITELY) childproof. You won’t have a problem, even if you get quintuplets running around and playing horse.”

Now, Lee Jihoon knew better. For his kid, even if he just has ONE Lee Yeseung, all the childproofing in the world would not be able to work.

“Yeseung-ah,” he gently chided, as he stared helplessly at the door and the little boy on the floor, surrounded by headsets, pens, papers, song sheets, and other stuff that he had religiously put into what he had considered “safe zones”. Now, he would be much more cautious when dealing with his boy. “What did you do?”

“Paper planes!” the kid squealed in delight, throwing another newly-made paper plane into the air. Jihoon forced himself to look away from the plane circling above them; he forced himself not to see that that was his FIRST finished lyric sheet for “Adore U”. This kid knew how to pull triggers to make his dad crazy, that’s for sure. Jihoon was doing his best not to freak out. He loved his little baby more than the song sheets. He kept telling himself that HE LOVED HIS KID MORE THAN THOSE SONG SHEETS THAT HE’D STAYED UP NIGHTS FOR. YEP. NOT FREAKING OUT.

“That…that was a piece with sentimental value…” the cameras caught Jihoon’s internally-freaking-out-I-don’t-know-how-to-handle-this-mess face, picking up the sheets that he could still salvage. The cameras also panned at the safety latches that were expertly unlatched (some were even unlatched with what looked to be like bite marks and SCISSORS), and the outlet caps that were—you guessed it—uncapped. Nothing closed remained closed. It was a good thing, though, that Jihoon’s treasure chest of other composing mementos was one with a padlock. Nothing beats a good, old padlock, he thought to himself with a sigh of relief. Not even childproof crap compared to it.

NARRATOR: *Oh, no! It looks like little Yeseung has made quite a mess! And with his dad’s most precious music sheets!*

“You won’t have a problem,” they said. “Childproof,” they said. Wow. Even with quintuplets, huh?

It took only one Lee Yeseung, Jihoon thought to himself, to unlatch three “safety” latches on his office door. Just one, bright, hyper, adorably troll-like little boy with an adorable giggle that was making his heart melt right now, wearing nothing but a T-shirt and his nappie, and holding a ripped-up song sheet entitled—OH NO.

“LEE YESEUNG!!!”

INTERVIEW WITH LEE JIHOON, 30:

JIHOON: (Holds his head in his hands for a few seconds before sighing deeply). He tore up my latest work. My little boy tore up my latest work. This is so…(groans and laughs at the same time) Seriously, I don’t know what to expect of my kid anymore. He just keeps doing whatever, and…it’s…(Laughs softly now.) I don’t know how my wife manages to keep him at bay. They’re together basically fifteen hours everyday, right after work, and she always manages to teach him how to do this and that without freaking out. Now I’M freaking out. That song sheet he’d ripped up had taken me hours to write, and I’ve only finished it right before I went to bed today. I don’t know if I’d still be able to salvage it. (Looks at the camera shyly and smirks.) But this is okay for the most part. Kids sometimes do this. (Laughs sheepishly at his excuse for Yeseung’s paper plane incident.) He’s probably doing payback because I called him a “hyper kid” yesterday.

Q: Will you still be able to write that song down because he ripped up that one? We know that you also have deadlines to meet.

JIHOON: (Nods confidently.) It’s a good thing that I always put files on backup. I never write without saving data, because accidents like this could happen. But still I have to tell Yeseung (Bites back a smile) not to mess with my work again. Even though my heart just bursts when I discipline him, I really have to do it so he learns that it’s not okay to rip up sheets and make paper planes out of them. (Nods again, as if still not quite believing what happened.) Paper planes. Wow. I didn’t teach him that, but he sure knows how to make one.

NARRATOR: *We are now entering the Lee playroom, where Jihoon-appa is going to talk to little Yeseung! What will happen here? Let’s find out!*

7:00 A.M.

A very repentant little Yeseung was escorted inside the playroom. His eyes, very much like his dad's, were now looking pleadingly at his father, who was having a very hard time keeping a stern face with his son. Because he felt like bailing out on this “scolding session”, as he liked to dub it, Jihoon avoided his son’s eyes, and the cute pleas that followed as he set two little chairs facing each other.

“Appa,” Yeseung called out to him, his baby voice quivering along with his lip as he spoke. “I’m really, really sorry for making a mess. Appa. Appa.”

“I know you’re sorry,” Jihoon answered, leaning down to pick Yeseung up and to set him on one chair. Then he tried to look inconspicuous and stern as he sat down on the other one, trying not to mind the cameras and the cameramen who were watching the scene with smiles on their faces. “But we still have to talk about what happened. Now, Lee Yeseung, what did you do? Why is Appa upset?”

There was silence for a while. Jihoon wondered for a few seconds if his kid even knew what was wrong about what he did.

Then, just as he was about to give up, Yeseung, whose eyes were by this time zooming in on his train set, was scratching his head. “Um…because I made a mess?” He whispered, his lisp making the question comical. He looked at his dad questioningly.

Jihoon, looking at Yeseung, found the expression so similar to yours whenever you would look up to him to ask a question. The similarity of the expression struck him that he couldn’t help but become benevolent towards this cute little tyke. “Exactly. What kind of mess?”

“I knew it.” Suddenly, Yeseung sniffled. His bottom lip was trembling, and Jihoon was panicking again. He was NOT allowed to cry. He had ripped up his dad’s song sheets, a vital part of his dad’s source of income! Jihoon was aghast as the little boy sobbed uncontrollably. “Did I make too many paper airplanes, Appa?” He began crying uncontrollably now. “I…I thought you would like them. Th-that w-w-was wh-why I…I made them.” Yeseung hiccupped between words, his tears streaming down his red cheeks, his eyes squeezed shut.

This kid is MISSING THE POINT! Who cares if he makes a thousand of those? I wouldn’t care. I’d love it even. But the material he used to make them…Jihoon took a deep breath. “Don’t cry, Lee Yeseung,” Jihoon warned, an edge to his voice, like he had heard you do whenever you would scold Yeseung. “You messed up Appa’s office. What did Eomma and Appa tell you about messing up Appa’s office?”

“You…” Yeseung looked at him with eyes that mirrored hurt. “You…” Hiccup. “Don’t…” Hiccup. “Like…” Hiccup. “My…” Hiccup. “PAPER PLANES!!!”

“No! I like them!”

At that point. Yeseung bawled like the baby he was. “I’m…” Hiccup. “Sorry!!!” He cried again.

“It’s true. I like them!”

You were supposed to be scolding him, Lee Jihoon, Jihoon could hear you chiding, NOT giving in the minute he cries like this.

Of course, Jihoon knew that. But he just sat there, speechless for a few seconds before coming down on his knees and consoling his baby. He really couldn’t be upset with this one for long, hard as he might try! “Hey, I liked your paper planes,” he whispered gently, rubbing his boy’s back and scooping him up into his arms, walking to and from one side of the room to the other. “You did great! I liked them.”

Yeseung looked up from Jihoon’s now-wet shirt where he had burrowed his face in to study his appa’s face. “Really? You…” Hiccup. “Really…” Hiccup. “Liked it…FOR REAL?”

Jihoon nodded, relieved to see that Yeseung had stopped sobbing his hurt little heart out. “I did. But what I didn’t like about them was that you made them out of my music sheets. What did Eomma and I tell you about that?”

“I…” he sniffled. “I wasn’t supposed to tear it up like I did.”

“But you did. Now, are you going to do that again?”

Yeseung, bless his heart, wiped his tears and shook his head. His eyes, now hopefully alight again, were looking at his father. “Not ever again.”

“You promise?” Jihoon looked at his little boy with a twinkle in his eye.

“I promise,” Yeseung solemnly replied.

“That’s my boy!” Jihoon kissed him on the cheek. “How about I get the ‘I Love You’ kiss to be sure that we’re friends again?”

Yeseung’s face lit up just like that. Using his hands wetted by tears, he held his father’s face on both and kissed Jihoon on the nose to start. He began to chant this unique family ritual in his irresistibly endearing, sing-song voice. “Appa, appa, I love you!” Left cheek kiss. “I love you!” Right cheek kiss. “I love you!” Nose kiss.

Jihoon laughed and did the same. “Yeseung, Yeseung, I love you!” Left cheek kiss. “I love you!” Right cheek kiss. “I love you!” Nose kiss.

“There!” Yeseung looked at him cheekily and patted his face, as if consoling him, as if his dad were the one who did something wrong. “We’re friends again now!” Then he burrowed his face into his dad’s shirt and said something that sounded like, “I wuv youuuu”.

Jihoon just stayed like that, as if time became suspended for him. Never had he felt these unexplainable emotions inside him right now. And, as was characteristic of him, he couldn’t say a word. This feeling, with his baby boy tucked into him so snugly, was too precious for words.

Soft laughs could be heard from the cameramen, breaking his awed reverie. He smiled shyly at one camera, and exited the room, still carrying his early-morning troublemaker.

And so father and son became reconciled after the paper plane incident, happily playing around with each other and laughing, the way they always do whenever they are together.

INTERVIEW WITH LEE JIHOON, 30:

JIHOON: (Smiles shyly.) I’m really happy that I got to be a part of this show. Being part of an idol group is amazing, and the companionship and the effort each of us put to make SEVENTEEN survive the challenges and achieve milestones cannot be compared to anything…but it’s true that we sometimes miss out on family life. The tours, the training, the endless engagements and other things that work requires us to do, are often at the expense of our time with our personal and family lives. I’m really thankful for shows like this, where the line between career and personal lives could be blurred for a few enjoyable days to show people that we, too, have families, and we want to spend time with them as much as we could. (Shows a picture of Yeseung.) This was taken during Yeseung’s second birthday party. He had just gotten his front teeth then, and you could see that there (points at Yeseung’s grinning mouth in the picture.)…he’s cute, isn’t he? (Laughs shyly again.) But the reason why I was showing this is because I would like to tell you that this was one of the times when I wasn’t able to make it for an important family event. It’s a good thing that my wife understands enough, loving enough, and patient enough to go on and do things even when I am not there. She has never resented me for having less time with them as I’d like. (Smiles briefly.) But here I am, and I promise myself that I will enjoy these moments with my baby.

9:00 A.M.

NARRATOR: *Little artist Yeseung is going to daycare today. Will he enjoy his day with friends today? Let’s find out!*

“THAT’S NOT A STAR!!!”

Yeseung’s eyes started to water with tears as he looked at Eunha, his girl crush since forever, glaring at him with her tiny arms crossed around her chest.

The daycare toddlers had been told by their teacher to draw shapes with different kinds of crayons and pencils, all neatly laid out on the tables. The kids, sitting patiently on their chairs and putting their creative minds to work, were seated three by three on each table. But the cameras were zoomed in on Lee Yeseung and Jeon Eunha’s table. They were supposed to have another classmate on their table, but a friend of theirs wasn’t able to come to daycare today. Cameramen smiled as they panned swiftly to Lee Yeseung, whose lower lip had started to tremble, a sure sign that he was about to cry. Again.

Beautiful Jeon Eunha, Jeon Wonwoo’s bright little baby girl, dressed in a white dress and baby blue cardigan, would not stop telling Yeseung that he had made an unusual drawing of a star. Therefore, it could not be a star.

A cameraman zoomed in on the artwork in question, and he had to agree. The huge yellow-and-orange blob in the middle of Lee Yeseung’s paper did not look like a star at first glance.

But how could we say that to such a cute little boy who looked even cuter in his navy trousers, cream-colored sweater and round-rimmed glasses? How?

“B-but it is a star,” he sobbed as he pointed at his artwork with a yellow crayon. “See? It--it even looks like it’s burning bright!”

“It’s not a star, Lee Yeseung,” Eunha insisted, her beautiful chin arched up imperiously. “Stars do not look like that!”

Yeseung cried. “Don’t fight with each other, Yeseung and Eunha,” Yoon Jae Eun wisely shouted from the other table where she was also drawing shapes with the Choi twins. “Don’t cry anymore, Lee Yeseung!”

Eunha saw that she had made Yeseung cry, and she stopped crossing her arms and sat down next to him. Embarrassed because he could not stop crying, she awkwardly patted his shoulder.

“Don’t cry,” she softly consoled, “don’t cry.”

“No I don’t wanna cry,” Choi Seungjae sang from the other table. Soft laughter emanated from the cameremen’s different perches. Seriously, Choi Seungjae?

NARRATOR: *Aww, the argument between Lee Yeseung and Jeon Eunha is now ending with a warm gesture from Eunha! How cute these two are!*

“I’m sorry for making you cry,” Eunha whispered, her braids swishing as she leaned close to Yeseung. Her pretty, almond-shaped eyes, which shone fiercely a few moments ago, now looked kind. And Yeseung, seeing that his friend was being nice to him again, gave Eunha a wobbly smile.

“I can show you how to make a better star. May I?”

Yeseung nods, his eyes filled with unashamed wonder again at Eunha.

Watching from a floor-to-ceiling window facing the tables, Jihoon and Wonwoo stood watching their kids.

Lee Jihoon groaned and put his hand to his face. “Wow.”

Wonwoo looked over at Jihoon and grinned. “I told you: let’s match them up.”

“Stop that! They’re so young!” But Jihoon laughed and pressed a hand to the windowpane, his watchful eyes never leaving his son, who was now coloring with Eunha. “You’re right, though. My Yeseung likes Eunha very much.”

Wonwoo nodded wisely, very much like his daughter. “I guess he liked her from the very moment he met Eunha.”

INTERVIEW WITH LEE JIHOON, 30:

JIHOON: (Rubs his chin thoughtfully.) When Yeseung was about two years old, my wife and I noticed that he was having a hard time trying to speak. I thought we were just both paranoid parents since he was our first baby, but when we relayed our concerns to our family doctor, he immediately referred us to a speech-language pathologist, who confirmed our fears. This pathologist told us that Yeseung had the beginning stages of a “speech sound disorder”. Yeseung checks the box on the symptoms that this disorder is known widely for: not using consonants when babbling, using mainly vowels or resorting to gestures to communicate even at age 2...we were really--how do I put this--distraught, that our little boy could have that kind of speech impediment. But the doctor told us not to worry, and said that because we found out about Yeseung’s speech disorder earlier, we could treat it with a higher chance of success.

(Short pause as Jihoon takes a drink.)

JIHOON: We took him to a lot of individual therapy sessions for the first few months, but there were no changes. We took less hours from work as much as we could to spend more time with him. Yeseung was a bright kid. He knew that there was something wrong and I could see that he wanted to help us make him better, but he could only do so much.

(Looks lost in thought for a while.)

JIHOON: I remember thinking during that time, “My baby boy is about to attend daycare and then preschool--if we don’t have success in therapeutic treatment, he may have a hard time at school.” (Looks at his hands.) I remember nights when I would carry him in my arms at night, rock him to sleep, and then go to my wife, who would be crying silently. I would hold her close, too. Where words sound empty, gestures fill. (Smiles sadly.) It was a very hard time for her because the both of us had demanding jobs, and there are particularly hard days at work, which adds to the pressure of making sure that our child gets the love, care and attention that he needs. Sometimes, as a parent, you feel so inadequate because even though you love your child with all of your being, it’s...it’s not enough. And you have to learn to accept that you aren’t enough, and that you have to learn harder to wait. I learned that as we helped Yeseung overcome his speech sound disorder.

JIHOON: (Pauses for a while, then suddenly smiles.) Things took a turn for the better when Wonwoo and his family visited on a Monday. My wife was at work and I was the one with Yeseung then, because it was my day off. Wonwoo brought Eunha to Yeseung, and I could still remember Yeseung’s face (Gestures wildly with his hands, eyes smiling.), all bright and cheerful and all smiles--he only had his four front teeth, then! I remember that they played together a lot, and Wonwoo and I talked all afternoon about...dad stuff. (Laughs lightly.) Who knew, right? Who knew that we’d get to this point. We got married at about the same time, we had kids that are separated only by months--it was an amazing conversation that I still recall fondly.

(The cameraman nods agreement at Jihoon’s comments about how fast time flies. Jihoon gives him a high-five.)

JIHOON: But what amazed me was when we ended the day and I was carrying Yeseung, as we waved goodbye to our visitors, Yeseung shouted out, “Jeon Eunha, bye-bye!” (Looks at the camera, smiling incredulously.) If anyone could have seen my face when he said those three words. He said it clearly, without any sign of the impediment he was being treated with. I tried to make him say it again, but he looked up at me and I knew that I had to wait a little longer for him to speak clearly on his own. I didn’t have to wait longer. During dinner later that night, my wife and I were surprised. He suddenly said, “Jeon Eunha. I like Jeon Eunha.”

(Wonderment from the background of the interview. Jihoon nods, smiling and then shakes his head in disbelief.)

JIHOON: (Looks at the camera again, smirking his FAMOUS SMIRK.) To everyone who is watching, yes, it’s true. Yeseung’s first clear sentence wasn’t about his parents. (Shakes his head again.) It was about how he liked Jeon Eunha.

12:00 P.M.

“LEE YESEUNG!!!”

Jihoon’s piercing cry of alarm could be heard all around the whole daycare center. Cameras panned at him quickly, standing, distraught and in shock, as he watched his toddler tumble down the supposedly safe slide at the playroom, head first.

As fast as his feet could carry him, Jihoon was beside his son at once. He cradled Yeseung’s head on his lap and he checked for bumps. His heart raced inside so fast he felt like he was about to faint. He recorded today in his mind: Lee Yeseung’s first slide accident. He wanted no more accidents in the future.

“Why did you slide down like that?” he chided worriedly. He kissed Yeseung’s head over and over again and hugged his boy close to him. “You’re not allowed to slide that way again, are we clear?” When he did not get a response from the little tyke, he repeated, more firmly, “Are we clear, Lee Yeseung?”

“Hehehe.”

The gurgling giggles that only four-year-old toddlers can produce vibrated in Lee Jihoon’s chest. Surprised, he looked down at Yeseung in his arms.

Lee Yeseung wasn’t crying.

Lee Yeseung was laughing.

As in bursting to the seams with laughter.

“Lee Yeseung, I didn’t hear you reply to me. Are we clear?” Jihoon intentionally made his voice sound sterner than usual. “Are. We. Clear? Or do I have to make you face the wall like your Eomma does?”

The little lip trembled again. Jihoon thought Yeseung was about to have another crying session, but something different happened.

The trembling lip was a moment’s hesitation, in a toddler’s language.

Yeseung reached up, cupped his father’s face in his small hands, and kissed him on the cheek.

“Lee Ye--”

--another kiss on the cheek. Followed by a giggle.

“You look funny when you’re mad, Appa,” Yeseung giggled again. “Funny, funny, funny!”

“Lee Yeseung,” Lee Jihoon groaned. Again, he received a kiss on the cheek.

“Don’t be mad at Yeseung anymore!”

“LEE YESEEEUNNGGGG!!!”

With that, Lee Yeseung bounded away, towards the direction where Choi Seungjae’s voice came from. His playmates were calling again.

And Lee Jihoon--while charmed and red-faced by his son’s “kiss-on-the-cheek diplomacy”--still watched worriedly. He had felt a huge bump that he knew would soon grow into a humongous one later. He knew that you would be furious the moment you see that bump on Yeseung’s forehead.

Sighing and completely resigned to his fate as a worried dad and soon-to-be-interrogated husband, he watched as Yeseung played tag with his hyper friends.

Oops. He had to remove that word from his vocabulary. He mentally slapped his head. Yeseung doesn’t like being called hyper. Yeseung won’t like it if Jihoon described his friends as hyper, too, he knew.

“I love my son,” he repeated over and over. “I love my son. I love my wife. This will be a great day.”

And of course it will be!

8:00 P.M.

NARRATOR: *We are back at the Lee Residence! Looks like little Lee Yeseung is telling his mom about his day while they are playing with his Legos. Let’s look at what they are doing!*

It was a rule in your house that Lee Yeseung will only be allowed to play with his iPad for a certain amount of hours, and with parental supervision. Nights were reserved for non-gadget games and quality time as a family.

Which is why, after dinner, cameras slowly zoomed in on Yeseung’s bedroom, where you, Jihoon and Yeseung were all sprawled on the padded floor, helping the little one play with his Lego blocks. You, of course, had your face blurred on the cameras for privacy purposes. On his small bed, tidily decorated and loud with Toy Story designs (Woody was Yeseung’s favorite cartoon character), were Yeseung’s pajamas and socks, folded neatly and waiting to be worn by their owner when bedtime approached.

You helped Lee Yeseung build a ship with his Lego blocks, and Lee Jihoon sat on one side, pen and paper in hand. He had been trying to salvage what he could still remember about his latest work, which had been torn apart and made into paper planes, now hanging on the ceiling above. Yeseung had insisted, and you had overruled Jihoon’s protestations. Jihoon had given in and helped you and Yeseung hang the paper planes onto the ceiling with different colored strings.

“Eunha and I had a fight,” Yeseung dutifully reported to you as he skilfully attached a Lego to complete the hull of the ship.

“Aww. Now that’s a story I haven’t heard about.” you said consolingly at your son before turning to Jihoon, whispering fiercely, “Was this before or after our baby got a bump on his head?”

Jihoon stopped writing. “Ouch. That hurts. I was watching him all the time when he slid the wrong way, love!”

You made faces at Jihoon and turned back to Yeseung. The ship was almost completed. “Why did you have a fight?”

“She told me that my star did not look like a star.” Yeseung’s face twisted again when he mentioned what happened, but he did not cry. “But it was a star, Eommai! I even made it burn brightly.”

You were taken by surprise at the reason for the fight and decided to be gentle. “Well...we learned about what stars look like, right? Remember? You and Eomma made stars together?”

Yeseung nodded and looked up at you with sad eyes. “I remember.”

“So…” you purse your lips. “What did your star look like?”

Yeseung immediately got up and skipped to his small drawing table, where he picked up a piece of paper. “Here, Eomma! And I promise you, it’s really a star!”

You looked at the blob of yellow on the paper and could not speak for a moment. Ah. Maybe they were learning about shapes earlier, and to everyone in the classroom, this did not look like a star shape. But you knew how Yeseung was thinking. You glanced at your son appreciatively, smiling at him.

“It is a star,” you confirmed, and Yeseung beamed at you.

By nine o’clock, after tucking Yeseung in to sleep, cameras were still trained on you and Jihoon, sitting next to your toddler’s bed.

Jihoon cleared his throat. “So...is it really a star?”

You looked at Jihoon quickly and laughed softly. Then you reached for Yeseung’s iPad on the bedside table where you were leaning.

“See for yourself.”

You opened the iPad and showed Jihoon a recent video that Yeseung had just watched. It was about the solar system and the stars.

No stars shown on the video looked five-pointed. All stars shown were balls of fire, burning brightly.

“Eunha was right when she showed Yeseung how to draw the star shape that we use in art,” you said softly, closing the iPad, “but Yeseung was thinking differently. He was picturing a real star. He knew what they really looked like and he wanted to draw it well.”

“Hence the blob.” Jihoon was holding Yeseung’s artwork. “He’s a genius.

You laughed again. “Yes. Hence the blob of burning yellow.”

You both laughed, and watched Yeseung’s deep breaths. Then you turned off the lamp. “Let’s go. He’s asleep.”

“Remind me to get padlocks for my office.”

You laughed again.

Cameras panned away from Yeseung’s room as you and Jihoon retreated to your bedroom. But, faintly, just before the scene was completed, Jihoon was heard speaking in low tones.

“Remember those thirty nights we spent together, love?”

“Shhhh! Lee Jihoon!”

Mercifully, the scene had already been completed. Lee Jihoon’s teasing laugh and your noises of protest went unrecorded and your bedroom door closed.

So there ended another night at the Lee residence.

3:04 A.M.

Or so we thought.

The soft patter of footsteps and a little figure in pajamas could be heard quietly sneaking into a forbidden part of the house.

Click.

“Let’s make boats for Eomma,” a voice sang in the dark.

An automatic light came on in the forbidden room, followed by the sound of paper being ripped. Rip, rip, rip. And singing! But you and Jihoon did not hear all the commotion happening. The cameras, though, recorded the sneaky action.

You better hope that ripping sound is not coming out of your books…

…because Lee Yeseung is about to make you a lot of boats.

EPISODES | Ep. 1 | Ep. 2 | after-party | Ep. 3 | only us | Ep. 4 | afterglow

- Admin Leanne

#seventeen #svtcreations #seventeen scenarios #seventeen imagines #seventeen fluff #seventeen woozi #lee jihoon #lee jihoon fluff

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horrorstoryfanfics · 4 years ago

Text

Summer To Remember: Part Four

So I haven’t updated in a while because I’ve been editing this part for the last week or so. I’m really embarrassed at my inability to write smut. So I kept erasing and rewriting and just doing that cycle. I hope you guys enjoy this though. Also sorry about the fact that my mind is FILTHY. I’m also sorry for making you guys wait so long !

WARNING: This chapter contains filthy, ungodly smut. And a slight daddy kink.

I woke up to the feeling of Montana shaking me awake, my eyes barely opening before I shot up. "Hey, we gotta go take our showers before morning prayer," She mocked with clapped hands as she grabbed her stuff.

I stretched as I got up and grabbed all my necessities, "Thanks for waking me, I thought I set and alarm."

She winked over at me, "Ain't a thing babe."

We all finished picking out our clothes and started walking over to the shower together.

"So what's going on with you and Xavier?" Montana wiggled her eyebrows while she set everything on the bench.

I grabbed my toiletries out of my bag and looked over, "Pretty much the same thing as you and Trevor except the sexual tension isn't cranked to a 12." I gently pushed her shoulder as I started stripping.

Brooke looked over at us anxiously, "Uhm guys...there's no privacy."

Montana smiled while rolling her eyes, "Brooke, you're acting like I haven't seen your bod before." She tossed her shirt over her head onto the ground.

I looked between them both about to say something before Brooke's beet red face said, "Yeah but that was at the gym!"

"And this is at Camp, Brooke take a chill pill. I'm not going to judge you or check you out or anything," I stated, attempting to make her feel a little bit better about the situation.

Eventually we all were showering and kept our eyes at eye length before Montana looked me up and down, "Xavier's in for a treat."

I splashed some water at her before laughing.

"And so are you," She paused, "His bod is rockin'."

I cocked an eyebrow questioningly. Wondering if they had been a thing before.

"We did it a couple of times when we first became friends," She waved her hand, "We both soon found out it was better for us to just be friends without the benefits."

I nodded, listening as she went on. "He's packed. Gives Trevor a run for his money."

Mine and Brooke's mouths dropped. Trevor was something, to say the least. So anyone coming close must be gifted as well.

"He'd kill me for telling you this but he has a major Daddy kink."

My eyes bulged, "Why are you telling me?" the heat rose to my face as my mind started to be really crafty.

Montana shrugged nonchalantly, "I see the way you've been eye-fucking," She came up beside me and rubbed her shoulders against mine, "I'm just trying to make it more fun for the both of you."

I wasn't expecting all this info but it definitely was going to be fun to use to mess with him.

After we showered, got dressed, and made ourselves look presentable we all met at the front of Camp in a giant circle.

I couldn't help but gawk at Xavier who was in some very short shorts. His toned thighs just out in the open. My mouth almost salivating at how good he looked.

"Alright, now that we're all here let's join hands." Mom said. I reached my hands out, grabbing Montana and Ray's. I bowed my head and drowned out her religious words as my mind raced to other things. I'll have to thank Montana later for the mental images.

When we were done we all dropped our hands and Trevor stepped into the middle. "Now, since I'm the activities director I've made a list of what everyone will be doing today." He clutched a clipboard tightly as he scanned over it, "Ray and Brooke you're cleaning the kids cabins, Y/n and Xavier you're helping Bertie in the kitchen, Chet you're helping Margaret, and Montana," He shot her a wink, "You're helping me check the canoes. Everyone got it?" We all nodded, "Alright good, let's go."

We all broke off into our pairs and made our way to our respected areas. Chet feeling like he got the short end of the stick again as he sulked away.

"How'd I get so lucky?" Xavier cooed beside me holding his hands behind his back as we walked.

I smirked, "I feel like you're going to be asking yourself that all summer."

He pursed his lips into an "Oh" and followed me into the kitchen. Bertie wasn't around at the moment so I sat down on a stool and waited, looking over to Xavier.

He put his hands on his hips and leaned on the counter top across from me, "Now I don't want you two fighting over me. Keep it civil." He tried to be serious but I could see the smirk creeping up in the corners of his mouth.

I rolled my eyes playfully, "No promises....daddy." I whispered the last word and Xavier jumped up quickly about to say something when Bertie came in.

"Ah," She dropped a box onto the table, "My favorite girl and my new boy toy." She sent Xavier a wicked grin.

I laughed lightly, "Hey Bertie, what do you want us to do?"

She chuckled deeply,"I know a lot of things he could do." She looked over to him, checking him out from head to toe, "But it ain't got to do with the kitchen."

Xavier's face twisted, you could see the regret of him ever making that joke. I decided to save him, knowing that she could go on all day.

"Ooohkay Bertie, let's stop before he passes out," I laughed lightly as I raised my hands, motioning for her to calm down. Even though it was funny to see him so embarrassed.

She just shrugged it off, "Well, you guys can sort through the pantry, clean the dining hall, and make sure that the appliances are clean."

"And what're you going to do?" His arms were crossed and his lip was turned into a sneer. He didn't know her like I did, she was best at giving orders. Only doing work when she was the last resort.

She threw her hands out and looked around, "I'm going to supervise." Xavier rolled his eyes. "But before I do I'm going to go smoke, you two get started." She pinched his elbow, causing him to flinch before she headed outside.

I sighed and went into the closet, pulling out all of the cleaning supplies we would need. I had a feeling Bertie's smoke break would last longer than it should. In one hand I held the broom and in the other I held up a rag, "Okay," I raised them into the air, "Pick your poison."

He huffed as he snatched the broom out of my hand, leaning down to pick up the dustpan. I started filling a bucket with soap and water as I let the rag soak in it, eventually carrying it out into the main part of the dining hall.

Plopping the bucket down on the bench as I started to ring out the cloth, bringing it over the table I looked up to see Xavier sweeping. He was sort of dancing while he moved with the broom. He looked so in his element. I couldn't stop the corners of my mouth from turning up as I let out a little giggle.

He stopped immediately and turned around, gripping the end of the broom and sticking his knee out, "I'll have you know I'm one of the best aerobics instructors in all of L.A. You shouldn't make fun of me." He huffed as he turned his nose up.

I rinsed out the rag into the bucket, "I wasn't making fun," I looked back up and met his eyes,"I was admiring." I took the bucket and moved onto the next table, accidentally sloshing some water onto the floor.

"So that's what you do when you're not being a counselor?" I raised an eyebrow, genuinely intrigued.

He continued to sweep around the table I was working on, "Yeah...but what I'm really trying to do is become an actor."He turned to the side showing his crisp jawline into the air. His eyes had a light twinkle at the mention of his dream. "I trained at Stella Adler," He said boastfully.

I thought about him on the big screen. It fit. He was destined for more than just a minimum wage instructor. His face and fashion screamed star.

I pursed my lips, impressed. "You could definitely do it, make it big. Thousands of girls fawning over you." I said as I finished another table and moved onto another.

He dragged the broom as he got closer only stopping to put his knee on the other side of the bench and leaned across the table, only centimeters away from me. "Yeah, but all that matters is the one girl that I want." Even though no one else was around it was said with a hushed tone, making sure that only I could hear it.

It made my heart flutter quickly, for the first time I was at a loss for words as I just dropped the damp cloth into the bucket and moved on. He smiled to himself as he ran his tongue quickly over his lips. He continued to move with me and sweep where I was.

"What about you? What do you do?" He wanted to know more, the mysteriousness of you almost swallowing him whole. You weren't anything like your mother so he wanted to know you, all of you.

"Well," I started, dragging the cloth over yet another table, "I work at Blockbuster for the time being, our love of movies is the same," He quirked an eyebrow at my comment, "Except I don't really have any dreams or a set plan of anything." I sighed and brought my eyes to watch the cloth glide across the table, "My whole life I was told to do something, to have a set career, doctor, lawyer, housewife. But none of those are me....so I'm just testing the waters, just enjoying being free." I nervously looked back up at him I felt like I shared too much and that maybe he would be turned off to the idea of me now since I don't have a set course.

Instead his eyes were glistening. "Righteous," He whispered. Little did you know he was amazed, amazed at how cool you were. He didn't know everything that you went through but he could tell there was some unknown pain in your eyes. He wanted to accept it, accept you, all of you. He was feeling things he didn't really think he could feel anymore.

The door creaked open as Bertie finally came back, "Well it ain't looking too bad in here." She walked around admiring what little we had done. "I'm gonna start in the pantry." She walked back to the backroom as I moved to another table.

Xavier came and sat where I was working he set the broom down and just lounged casually. "Hey!" I exclaimed, "If we don't finish we'll never get out of here."

His bright blue eyes looked up at me, piercing right into my heart. "Well that's not such a bad thing, I could be stuck with you anywhere baby." Elbow rested on the table as his hand held up his chin lazily.

I stopped and looked over at him with a grin I couldn't keep at bay, "Being with you is great but wouldn't you rather be somewhere more....comfortable?" I was throwing the bait out there, hoping he would bite.

His eyes widened just enough for me to see the change in them. His momentary loss of cool was gone as he leaned over and patted my hand as he stood up. "Then I'll just get back to work." He squeezed my hand before letting go and bending down to pick up the broom.

"Fuck!" He yelled, I shot up and ran around the table.

"What happened?!" he was holding his hand as he winced in pain, I carefully pulled it into my own. There was a tiny amount of blood coming from his finger.

"Splinter," He mumbled.

I pulled him along into the kitchen and patted the counter top, "Hop up." He did so as I started looking around the cabinets for the first aid kit, before finding it under the sink. I brought it beside his thigh and opened it quickly. I grabbed a couple of bandages and thankfully there was a pair of tweezers in there.

"This is gonna sting a bit," I held the tweezers in my hand as I moved between his thighs, reaching for him. He obliged and I took his finger carefully before looking at his face. His eyes were heavy and half lidded as he looked down as me, his lips pulled into a tight line.

I ignored his lustrous stare as I pinched his finger, bringing it close to my face. I brought the tweezers down and carefully pulled at the piece of wood that pierced his skin.

"Ow!!" He exclaimed. "Stop being a baby," I said as I reached over his left leg and grabbed a band-aid. I wrapped it around the little cut before bringing it up to my lips and kissing it lightly.

"There, you're all better." Without thinking I placed my hands on his thighs for support, not realizing what I had done until I saw the greedy smile plastered across his face.

I was about to pull my hands away when he cupped my face and roughly brought it to his. His lips were moving so quickly it was almost hard to keep up. My mind was reeling, not really processing that he was kissing me.

He tasted sweet and addictive. Especially when his tongue started to lick at my bottom lip. I gasped lightly as I parted my mouth, opening it up for our tongues to glide against each other. My hands moved from his thighs, up his chest, until they found their way at the end of his hair, tugging lightly at the roots. He moaned at the feeling, leaning back slightly to tilt his head to admire my puffy lips and glazed over eyes.

He smiled before he put his hands on my waist, yanking me into him. I started to impatiently grind into his hips as he moved once again to plant wet sloppy kisses all over my lips. Smiling into the kiss and gently biting his bottom lip. Eliciting another small moan as he opened his mouth, this time I fought for entrance as my tongue circled his.

He was squeezing my hips and rocking me into him. He leaned back and a string of saliva strung between the two of us. The silver strand only breaking when he began to talk. "Baby, you're playing a dangerous game. Once I start I won't be able to stop." His eyes were darker than before as his mouth parted again. I started kissing his jawline, then down his neck.

"Who says I want you to stop?" I whispered, tickling his skin with my breath before licking a thin stripe up to his ear, nibbling softly. His eyelids fluttered as I made my way back over to his lips.

We heard a shuffle behind us as we both pulled away and directed our eyes over to the noise.

Bertie was standing there drying off one of the plates, "Don't stop on my count." She smirked. "I'm enjoying the show." Shooting a taunting grin our way.

I laughed breathlessly as I buried my face into his neck, he gently caressed my head before pushing me back carefully and jumping down from the counter, "Come one," He intertwined my hand with his, "Let's go, I think we're done for the day." He started to lead me out of the doors, Bertie mumbling a "I don't think you guys did enough." Before we left.

Xavier was sprinting across the camp, dragging me behind him. "Come on," He laughed. I laughed with him, out of breath, as we stumbled our way up the steps to the boys cabin.

He pushed the door open while looking around making sure it was free of any of the other councilors. It was only a bit dim so he didn't even bother turning on the light. When the coast was clear he pulled me inside swiftly and closed the door, pinning me against it.

"I should've kissed you last night, I had no idea you tasted so good." He leapt back onto my lips with feverish sloppy kisses. My hands slid down his torso as I tugged at his shirt, eager to rip it off. He pulled away as I tugged the fabric over his head and threw it to the side. I took a moment to admire his chest as my hand grazed down his peck to the top of his shorts. I put my finger through the belt loop and yanked him back into me roughly.

He grunted as our lips connected, pulling me up in the air as I wrapped my legs around him. Not once breaking the heated kiss. He started to walk over to one of the beds as his grip tightened. Once we reached the bed he gently laid me on my back as he stood back.

"Are you ready?" His chest heaving from the intensity of our make out, his hands gripping the end of my shirt, waiting for my okay.

I bit my lip and nodded quickly. His infamous smirk appeared as he quickly yanked the shirt over my head. His eyes looking over me hungrily as his hands reached around to unclasp my bra and throw it to the side. Naturally I covered myself, my heart beating quickly.

He grabbed both of my wrists softly and pulled them away, leaving me exposed. "Baby," He whispered deeply as his eyes scanned my chest before stopping on my eyes, "Don't get shy on me now." He leaned down and gave me a slow passionate kiss before he started kissing down my neck. Stopping at my collar bone and licked a circle before sucking down harshly, no doubt leaving a mark.

I gasped and threw my head back locking my fingers in his hair. After he was satisfied with the mark he traveled down to my right nipple and flicked his tongue several times before wrapping his lips around it and sucking, eventually releasing it with an obscene pop. My teeth dug into my bottom lip as I muffled the load groan erupting in my throat. His mouth was glistening with spit as he looked up at me, "Don't hold back." He kneaded my other breast, "I want to hear how loud you can get."

He reached down and tugged my pants off, whipping them away with a swift yank. All that was left was my underwear. He ripped them off, a harsh tear heard through the room. My eyes widened but I was too lost in lust to care about them now.

His middle finger felt cold against my folds, moving it up and down harshly before shoving it into my hole. I moaned out as his finger came back out. "You're soaked," He chuckled darkly. He shoved his finger in again, this time pumping ferociously. A mixture of lewd squelches and my high pitched moans filled the room as he kept going. He added another finger, deliciously stretching me out as his palm slapped against me. His other finger rubbing my nipple.

My stomach knotted quickly as I thrust my hips up to feel him deeper. He suddenly stopped and pulled out. I sat up slightly, whining at the loss of stimulation.

He chuckled deeply. "Don't worry sweetheart, you'll cum. But when you do it'll be on my tongue." He shoved his fingers into my mouth and I began sucking on them, collecting all my juices with my tongue. Groaning against his fingers as our eyes were locked. His eyes were hooded with lust and his mouth agape, a grunt making it's way to his perfect pink lips.

"You seem to like your taste," he drew his hand back slowly trailing it down my body until it landed right above where I wanted him to be. He slowly backed up and leaned down, "Now it's my turn." Eyes never leaving mine as he became level with my core. My heart accelerating at the anticipation.

A cocky smirk adorned his face before he dove forward and licked a slow agonizing stripe up my slit, a loud moan escaping me. He put his hands on my thighs to spread them further to get a better angle.He started to move his tongue quicker, working it across. He was lapping at my folds like a starved man, moving his tongue to swirl around my clit before puckering his lips and sucking hard. "Fuck!" I screamed, I felt him smile against me before he shoved his tongue into my hole.

A pornographic moan elicited from my lips as I tried to thrust into him. He began tongue fucking me heatedly, his nose brushing against my clit as he worked. "Fuck daddy.."I groaned. This made him moan into me, sending vibrations all over my core as I moaned again. Moving back up to my bud he began to suck again as he shoved two fingers inside. "X-Xavier," I groaned out choppily. I felt the twisting build up start to form in my stomach as he kept working.

"I'm close," I reached down and intertwined my hands in his hair, tugging him closer to me as I rode his face. My core rutting into his mouth. His hands hoisted my legs over his shoulders as he dove even closer, moving quicker than before as his fingers shook against my clit. His tongue diving deeper into me.

I threw my head back and scrunched my eyes shut as I let my release wash over me. Screaming out as his tongue stilled, letting all my cum seep down onto his tongue. He lapped up all of it before pulling back up. Lips glistening with my release as he swiped his tongue across them.

"Can you go again?" He leaned over and pushed the hair out of my face, the intimate gesture making my heart swell. I tilted my head to the side as I hoisted myself up reaching over and grabbing the impressive bulge fighting against his pants. My hand rubbing back and forth, only stopping to circle my thumb around the tip.

"I need you to fuck me," I stated. His mouth was agape and his eyes were feigning to close. "Your wish is my command," His cocky smirk displayed as he leaned back on his knees and popped the button on his pants. He stood up and gripped the zipper throwing them down, underwear included. My eyes were bulging as how beautifully big his dick was. Montana wasn't lying.

I got on my hands and knees and crawled over to the edge of the bed, mouth watering at the thought of bringing him between my lips. I leaned down, about to put the tip in my mouth but before I could he gripped my hair bringing me back up to face him.

"I'd love to see you choke on my cock but I need to be inside of you. Now." He said the last word so sternly it made me shiver. He gave me a rough kiss before pushing me back down onto my back.

The bed squeaked as he sunk back onto it, crawling over top of me. He looked primal, ready to ravage me at any second. "Are you on the pill?" He asked.

"Yes," I said quickly, the thought of him fucking me raw had me clenching around nothing. "Xavier," I whined, "Please cum inside me."

He grunted lowly, grabbing the head of his cock and running it across my clit and down to the center, stopping it at my soaked entrance. My stomach tensed as he hovered there. "So worked up," He chuckled proudly, "Don't worry baby, I'm going to fuck you so good." Without warning he dove inside of me in one fluid motion, making us both cry out at the sensation of my walls clenching around him.

"S-Shit!" He yelled, "You're so fucking tight." He pulled back slowly before bottoming out entirely. Both of us moaning as he administered hard thrusts repeatedly. His hands gripping my hips so tight I expected them to snap. Mine made there way to his back as I scratched it, gripping tighter with each thrust. "Y/n..."

He lifted my hips up into the air as he roughly slammed me down onto him repeatedly, the new angle changing the feeling entirely.Our skin slapping together was echoing through the room as he dove deeper, balls deep.

He wasn't letting down as I shrieked, dropping me down roughly onto the bed and grabbing my ankles, bending my knees into my chest. This new angle was even better. He pushed my legs back as far as they could go as he spit raunchily down onto my clit, the warm liquid oozing down onto our connection sent me into a spiral. The familiar clenching in my stomach came back as I hissed, "I-I'm going to cum."

"Hold on baby, me too." His thrusts got rougher as he rammed into me, pushing my legs so far back I knew they'd be sore in the morning. "Please daddy, fill me up." I moaned again as my walls tightened against him, he hissed in pleasure as he began to get sloppy, his release finally coming. "Okay," his breathing was heavy, "cum."

I let go as I let out another lewd moan, throwing my head back into the pillows and lazily rutting into him. Nearly passing out from the intensity of my orgasm. He let out a godly grunt as he pulled me as close as possible into him. His liquid spilling inside of me.

After a couple seconds he pulled out and replaced his cock with his fingers, gathering some of the release. He smirked as he brought it up to my mouth. Without hesitation I wrapped my tongue around his digits before puckering my lips and sucking the rest off. He looked down and tsked playfully. "There's still so much." I opened my mouth to say something but was stopped by him ducking back down and slurping it up. My legs were twitching before he finally brought his head back up.

He licked his lips before leaning over my fucked out body and kissing me again. He slid his tongue across mine, the mixture of our two releases mixing to make an intoxicating formula that made me want more. Unfortunately he pulled back, dropping himself beside me on the bed.

His breath was heavy as his chest rose quickly. "Y/n...that was wicked."

We both looked over at each other just taking in the moment as we scanned over each others features. His forehead glistening with sweat and his lips parted heavenly. He scooted closer, placing his hand on my stomach as he drew light circles. "That wasn't your first time right?"

My brows furrowed, almost offended before I flipped the switch and decide to mess with him. I looked away, pretending to be nervous as I fiddled with my hands, "Actually..." I looked back over at him with big doe eyes, "It was."

His eyes popped as his head shot forward, "Oh my god really?!" He began to get nervous, "If I would've know I would've.." I brought my hand to his mouth, shutting him up as I laughed. His pretty brows scrunching together in confusion.

"No you dweeb, I've had sex before." I laughed again, moving so now we were face to face. I smiled from ear to ear, loving his expression.

"I just thought with Margaret and all.." He trailed off, looking at me with red cheeks.

I laughed, "If she had it her way then yeah, but I follow my own rules." I turned on my back and looked at the ceiling my breathing finally starting to become normal as I came down from my high.

He brought his arm to my side as he carefully brought me into him, against his chest. I could feel his heart beating. I closed my eyes and listened to the rhythm calmly. Feeling hands come up to stroke my hair gently. I felt so content and I didn't want this moment to end.

He opened his mouth to speak but was interrupted by the sound of loud footsteps coming closer.

We looked at each other wide eyed and afraid, quickly pulling the blanket to cover both of us as he squeezed me into him tightly.

The door opened and Trevor walked in, I gasped as I hugged Xavier tighter.

He flipped the switch on, turning around and looking directly at us. "Nicce." He hummed. "You guys better get dressed," He pointed over at me, "Your Mom's looking for you. And it's almost chow time." He smiled goofily before heading back out.

"Oh god," I mumbled, hoisting myself up. I scattered looking around the room for my clothes, grabbing my bra, shirt, pants, and picking up my torn underwear. I groaned as I crumbled them up and threw them at him. "Now I've got to go commando."

He leaned back and crossed his arms behind his head. "Hey, you won't hear me complaining." I squinted at him before getting dressed. His eyes burning into my skin as he watched me the entire time.

"Hey!" I swatted his leg, "You gotta get ready too!"

He jolted up and wrapped his arms around me, pulling me so I was straddling his waist. "You're distracting." Our noses were touching lightly as we smiled sweetly at each other. He plastered a kiss across my lips, one that was different than his previous lust filled smooches. This one was full of passion and was slower, savory. We both broke out into wide grins. "We gotta go handsome."

He groaned as I got up, snatching his clothes dramatically.

"Hey," I walked behind him, placing my head on his shoulder and wrapping my arms around his waist, giving his shoulders and neck light kisses. "We've got all summer."

Taglist: @felicityofbakerstreet

#American Horror Story #American Horror Story Smut #American Horror Story 1984 #AHS #AHS 1984 #AHS 1984 Xavier #AHS 1984 Fanfiction #Xavier Plympton #Xavier Plympton x Reader #Xavier Plympton Fanfiction #Xavier Plympton X Reader Smut #Camp Redwood #1984 #Smut #Self Insert #Horror Story #American Horror Story Fanfiction

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gleekto · 4 years ago

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Fic: Even Better Than the Real Thing (1/15)

Summary: College AU/Famous!Blaine and Fanboy!Kurt - Kurt POV

Kurt really doesn’t have time to figure out the dating world between being a freshman at prestigious theatre school, LAADA, and his active but secret blogging life in the Sing!Fandom. So what if Sing! ended last year? There are still fics to read and actors to follow. Especially the uber talented heartthrob lead, Blaine Anderson. He can act. He can sing. He can even dance. He’s gay. He’s out. And he’s only 24. Kurt is willing to twiddle his thumbs and click refresh until Blaine Anderson’s next project.

He just didn’t expect the next project to be on his roommate Rachel’s new TV show.

Even Better Than the Real Thing

“Disappointing my female fans hasn’t been a problem. My character’s straight, I’m gay, and they’re cool with that. And also remember that for every female fan who might be disappointed, maybe there’s a gay kid out there who realizes that there’s a place for him in Hollywood.” - Blaine Anderson, Actor on Sing!, age 22

Kurt puts the final edits on his blog post - “The privileges and pitfalls of playing straight for an out gay actor: Quotes from Blaine Anderson’s interviews”, before hitting post on his tumblr.

While Kurt appreciates Blaine Anderson’s idealism, he’s pretty sure that Blaine’s gay guy fans are just happy to have some intelligent eye candy that actually plays for their team. One of Kurt’s greatest fandom moments was attending the Comicon panel for the Sing! finale when a fan around his age got up to the mic, so nervous that he just blurted out “I just love you so much, Blaine. You’re so beautiful.” Without missing a beat, Blaine Anderson smiled that charming, warm smile and said, “You’re not so bad yourself. And thank you. Hey, who knows if we were meeting up at a friend’s party in a different time, instead of these circumstances, who knows what might’ve been,” - to the utter delight of the screaming crowd. Everyone knows it’s all tongue in cheek and Blaine’s a flirt, that he knows he’s a heartthrob, but it’s sure nice to have a crushworthy celebrity all out and proud.

The Sing! fandom for Kurt was a welcome escape from Lima, Ohio, right from the comfort of his own living room couch. For once he was being appreciated for his intelligence and sharp wit, rather than mocked for being the only out gay kid in his high school. He wasn’t going to change his sophisticated and maybe deliberately provocative fashion sense just to appease the football team hamhocks in baggy grey sweatpants. And when he occasionally posted a personal picture of his outfits on his blog, his fandom was always appropriately in awe. Kurt - well, Kurt as LimaBlaineFan that is - has his own little following thanks to his thoughtful, no bullshit analyses of all things Sing!. So of course when he moved to LA he wasn’t going to give all that up. Fandom is the most transportable social life in the world.

...

Now that he’s finally out of Nowheresville, Ohio, accepted to LAADA, his roommate and now new break out actress, Rachel, keeps encouraging him to finally get himself out there and meet an actual person whom he could really date - ”Come on, Kurt. I am telling you, those abs need to be appreciated!” to which he quips that she does sufficient appreciating for the entire city of LA. He really doesn’t have time, though, between all his school work and his active but secret fandom life - So what if Sing! ended last year? There are still fics to read and actors to follow. He’s never had a boyfriend, never had the option, he wouldn’t know where to start. He’s pretty content to learn musical theatre and bide his time until his celebrity crush’s next project. It’s much easier.

Kurt does a final read over his post, hits submit on his tumblr, and watches the likes and reblogs tick up. Within five minutes, the inevitable questions and comments start to roll in.

-Hi LimaBlaineFan - love your post! Don’t forget about the time Blaine said at the GLAAD event that he can’t wait to play a gay character.

-Lol you idiot. Blaine is straight. He’s queerbaiting for brownie points.

-OMG thank you for your post! It just reminds me how brave and amazing our Blaine is! Sending hugs!!!

-Do you think Blaine will ever work again? He took a risk by coming out and we haven’t heard anything since Sing! ended?

Kurt shuts his laptop, mostly amused and mildly irritated with the trolls and the worriers. He sits up, spotting Rachel’s latest script for episode 3 of her new TV show, That’s So Rachel, on the coffee table. Yes, she got a lead role in a show straight out of their high school in Lima, Ohio. Yes, it’s kind of infuriating. But Kurt got into LAADA, one of the most highly coveted theatre schools in the country, so he can’t really complain. He knows her scripts are super top secret on threat of death (or at least Rachel being fired) but she’s the one who left it out, and besides, he’s her roommate, and it’s right there. No harm in glancing over.

Episode 3: What’s Love Got to Do With It?

Rachel Cherry - Rachel Berry

Rachel’s moms - Patti Lupone and Barbra Streisand

Colin Red, Love Interest - Blaine Anderson

Mr. Cohen, Rachel’s teacher - Jesse St. James

Kurt freezes. He blinks and looks again. And again. Blaine Anderson. Has been cast in Rachel’s show.

“Rachel?!” Kurt can feel his heart racing as he calls out to his roommate, almost dropping her script on the floor. “Rachel?” He says more quietly, trying to sound reasonable. “Can I ask you something?”

Rachel pokes her head out of her bedroom. Kurt is standing by their green velvet couch in the centre of their apartment, hand on his hip, trying to look as regular as is humanly possible in this potentially crisis level situation. “What is it?” Kurt holds up the script.

“I know, right! Barbra and Patti! I mean the producers told me it would only be an all star cast. But to think they got my literal idols to play my moms- It is above and beyond. I haven’t met them yet, of course, but we’re just starting to film episode three on Tuesday and-”

“Your love interest?” Kurt interrupts as disinterested as possible.

“Oh. Oh yeah,” Rachel glances at the script in his hand. “Blaine Anderson, right? Supposed to be a good actor. He’s cute, too. I think he was on that Sing! show you loved.”

“Yeah,” Kurt nods casually. “I think he was.” Kurt knows that generally Rachel has no idea about his online fandom life. She knew he loved the show, watched it religiously each week, that he sometimes read an online “forum” with spoilers. Tumblr? What’s a tumblr? She had asked him once. But it is now confirmed just how limited her understanding is.

Kurt lets out a deep breath. Thank God.

“I’m meeting him Tuesday,” Rachel says as she checks her complexion in the mirror and turns back to Kurt with her usual exaggerated flare. “I’ll let you know if he’s a good kisser,” She winks before grabbing the script out of Kurt’s hand. “And no spoilers! That’s top secret intel.”

#gleekto writes #even better than the real thing #here we go #please and thank you to all the comments

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yoonguurt · 5 years ago

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For the grade

Genre: enemies to lovers

Warnings: smut; fingering

Word count: 5,506

Y/N and Jaebum hate each other. What happens when they''re forced to work together for a school project?

You liked to life with as little negativity as possible. Sure, you had bad days, but you went through those knowing that it was simply a bad day and the next would likely be better. You really didn't have anything to complain about.Your friends were great, supportive people, your family as well. You had just one rainy cloud in your sunshine life. Lim Jaebum.

It's not like you wanted to hate Jaebum, you didn't. In fact, you really wanted to like him, you had tried to like him. He just made that near impossible. He was rude and cold. When you first met him, you wondered how someone you had just met could already hate you so much. You had met last year at your best friend Mark's end of the year party. Mark had moved into an off campus apartment and he and his roommate had decided to through the party this year. You got there early to help Mark set everything up. When you knocked on the door, Jaebum answered, scowl on his face. He merely grunted at your presence and moved aside to let you in. Throughout the night, he either acted upset at your being around or ignored you completely.

So here you were, beginning of your senior year of college, still dealing with Jaebum's shitty attitude. You had long since given up on trying to be civil and treated him as he treated you. You were supposed to meet up with Mark for coffee today, but he texted you this morning saying he felt ill. Being the good friend you were, and not trusting him to take care of himself, you decided to head to his apartment with medicine, soup and juice to take care of your best friend. The fact that Jaebum had classes all day today, made your decision that much easier. Mark had given you a spare key for emergencies, so once you arrived, you just went ahead and let yourself in.

Setting your supplies on the counter, you turned to the cabinet and grabbed a bowl and a glass. You set those on the counter, and turned back around to grab the soup. Reaching for the can, you looked up when you heard a voice. "How did you get in here?" Standing before you, stood a shirtless Jaebum. Without even meaning to, your eyes scanned down his chiseled form. You had never realized just how cut the man was. You hated to admit it, but he looked good. "You gonna stare all day or are you gonna give me an answer?" his voice snapped you out of your thoughts. "Mark gave me a key" you replied, voice laced with annoyance, "and for Pete's sake go put some clothes on." You turned around to continue your tasks, not noticing the smirk on Jaebum's face as he walked away.

When you finished heating the soup, you knocked in Mark's bedroom door, only to be met with some form of groan. Taking that as permission, you opened the door only to see a Mark size lump on the bed. Yanking the blanket off of his head, he let out another whine before turning to face you. "What the hell, Y/N?" Why are you here?" his voice was rough, either from sleep or sickness. You chuckled lightly before replying "Well, I know you and I knew you wouldn't take care of yourself so here I am." He gave you a small smile and you made him sit up so he could eat.

"I'm just saying that he didn't have to act like I broke in or something. Why is he even here, doesn't he have classes all day? And does he always walk around half naked? I mean-" your rant was interrupted by an obviously annoyed Mark. "Y/N, don't take this the wrong way but I'm sick and I really don't want to hear about the crush denial you have for JB." You actually reeled back as if you had been slapped. You? Crush? Jaebum? Absolutely not. No way. Not if he was the last man on Earth. Turning to Mark, you narrowed your eyes. "I do not have a crush on him." You were met with Mark's stupid smirk, the one he gets when he thinks he's right. "I mean it. I hate him." you continued only to still see that smirk. "Sure, Y/N. Whatever you say".

For the next week, you were at Mark and Jaebum's every day taking care of Mark. By the fourth day, you were pretty sure he was faking so you'd keep taking care of him, but you did it anyway. What are best friends for, right? On day five, Jaebum was home all day and that was an annoyance. The day was filled with snide comments and looks of dislike from the both of you. Mark had tried to get you two to at least be civil to no avail. He had even yelled once, something about both of your actions being a sham, but neither of you paid attention. You both just told him to hush and go lie back down. Finally, your time playing nurse was over and you could focus on yourself and your classes.

As a photography major, you took your classes very seriously. You had always had an eye for pictures. You could look at the most mundane things and immediately find a way to make them look beautiful through a lens. You knew all the right angles to turn any random thing into art. Being in a college where you could learn better ways to use those talents, was something you considered a great honor. You even shared a class with some film majors, which you were excited about. Getting to learn about video editing was going to be really neat. Until you got to said class and saw a familiar face. Lim Jaebum. Was there any escaping this man?

Ignoring the empty seat next to the smirking man, you walked to the other side of the room and found a seat there. Sure, you couldn't see the board very well and this particular area smelled odd, but you were far enough away from the thorn in your side that was Jaebum. Your professor introduced himself and began the class as you took as many notes as you could. As the lecture ended, he announced that the class would be divided into pairs and work through the semester on a project. You would receive your partner in an email. The project itself was up to the two of you. The only requirement was it had to be a 5 minute video about something you were both equally passionate about. You were slightly thrown off at being assigned a project on the first day, but excited.

You had been checking your email religiously for two days. You wanted to know who you were partnered with. The thought of getting to know someone new was nice, but you really wanted to start brainstorming on ideas. There was also a little nervousness. What if you and your partner had no common interests? How were you going to complete your project then? Mark had gotten tired of you staying planted by your computer, so he forced you out to get lunch with him. He even took your phone, which you thoroughly protested. "Staring at your screen isn't going to make the email come any faster, Y/N. Take a break and enjoy lunch with me." Realizing he was right, you let the project drift to the back of your mind and just enjoyed yourself.

A couple of hours later, you were returned to your home. You grabbed your laptop, thinking you'd check one more time before you set off to do something else for a while. Clicking your email tab, you noticed the notification for a new email in your inbox. You quickly clicked it, seeing it was indeed from your professor. Taking a breath and calming your nerves, you opened it. Your mind fluttered through so many thoughts before you read through the message. You still really hoped you and your partner had at least one thing in common, but you were determined to make it work regardless. You eyes scanned through the words to find your partner's name. Shit. Fuck. This was not good. There at the bottom was the name of your partner. Lim Jaebum. This was bad. Very, very bad.

Grabbing your phone, you immediately hit Mark's name and pressed the phone to your ear. After a few rings, Mark's voice comes through the speaker. You don't even let him finish his sentence before you launch into your rant. "Mark, this is bad. I just got my email and my partner is Jaebum. What am I supposed to do? We have nothing in common! We hate each other. We have months to work on this and we aren't going to be able to get anywhere I'm gonna fail." When you stopped to take a breath, Mark took the opportunity to start speaking. "You need to stop being so dramatic, Y/N. I'm positive you guys have something in common, you just have to stop being assholes to each other long enough to figure out what that is." As much as you HATED to admit it, he was right. This was an issue you would have to set aside for your grade. With a huff, you prepared your reply "Tell him to meet me at the campus cafe in 20 minutes." You hung up and sighed again. This was going to be a long semester.

You arrived at the cafe 10 minutes early. You just wanted to get the concept down, get a plan together and get out. You ordered a coffee, sat down and scrolled through your phone until a figure slid into the seat across from you. Expecting it to be Jaebum, you looked up with a scowl already on your face. Instead, you found a man you didn't know facing you. "Sup. I'm BamBam. You looked lonely over here all by yourself." Oh crap. This was the exact opposite of what you wanted. You politely thanked him for the thought, but you were waiting for someone. "Aw come on, baby, don't be like that." he started before a hand roughly on his shoulder. "You heard her, kid. Beat it." Looking up to see who your savior was, you were a bit shocked. Jaebum had never done a nice thing for you before, but there's a first for everything.

After your unwanted guest had left, Jaebum sat in the chair across from you. You were briefly distracted by the way his hair fell in his face in such a beautiful way, you wouldn't even have to mess with the angle that much to make a wonderful picture. You quickly shook your head to rid yourself of such ridiculous thoughts and cleared your throat to get Jaebum's attention. "Look, I know neither of us are happy with this arrangement, but I don't plan on getting a failing grade so we need to try to work around our dislike for each other. As of now, I know nothing about you or your interests, so why don't you tell me a little bit about what you like?" He sat there for a brief moment before sliding you a small piece of paper with a number written on it. He looked at you as his lips parted to speak, "I'll go along with whatever you want. Just call me when you decide" then he stood up and left. Yepp. This was going to be a real shitty semester.

As you walked back to your apartment, you pulled out your phone, dialing Mark's number. He answered with sass, as he always did. "If you called to bitch about JB, save your breath. I'm not listening to it." Of course, that had been what you were going to do, points to Mark on that one. You raced through topics to talk about as quickly as possible before settling on a way to find out Jaebum's interests. "Actually, he didn't give me much information, but I still want to try to make this work, so I called you. What are some of the things he's really passionate about?" You felt silly asking Mark this, but you needed to figure out how to incorporate both of your interests, pride be damned. Mark was silent for a while before you finally asked if he was still there. "Yeah. Thinking. He likes, uh, his cats?" You instantly frowned. Cats? Really? You loved cats but is that the best he could come up with? "Oh! And music! He's really into making music." Music, huh? That's something you could work with.

You hung up with Mark as you walked through your apartment door. You set your phone down and sat down at your laptop, pulled up a word document and began to type an outline for your project. Your plan as of now was to have a music video of sorts. Jaebum could use one of his songs as the music and the video could have some beautiful shots from your photographer's eye. You would each have something you were passionate about in the video. In your mind, it was perfect. Now, you just had to run it by Jaebum. Despite what he said at the cafe, a big part of you felt like he would shoot it down just because it was your idea. Making up your mind that sooner was better than later, you sent him a text explaining your idea. Almost immediately, your phoned dinged with a new message telling you to meet him back at the cafe in 10 minutes. Sighing at having to go right back out, you grabbed your keys and walked out of the door.

Opening the cafe door, you scanned the room, finding Jaebum already there. That was a bit surprising, but you made your way over and took a seat. Before you had even fully sat, he spoke in a harsh tone, "How do you know about my music?" Really? You had to come back to the cafe just to answer a question he could have asked you in a message? "I wanted to make something that had both of our passions in it, not just mine. So, I called Mark and the options he gave me were music and cats. I love cats, but I don't really want to make this video about just cats" you replied with an emotionless tone. He sat and thought about your words for a moment. "Ok, but if we do this, we're doing it my way. You get say, it's your grade too, but this is my music and I want it done right." You agreed that as long as your input was taken into consideration and it wasn't all about him, that this could work.

One week later, you were on your way to Mark and Jaebum's place to give input on song options for the video. You didn't really like the thought of being in their apartment without Mark, but you were excited about starting on the project. Knocking on the door, you felt a sudden urge to run, and you weren't sure why. It was just Jaebum. Sure, you didn't like the guy, but you had no reason to be nervous around him. You pushed the nervous feeling away just in time for him to open the door. He stepped aside to let you in, and gestured to the kitchen counter where there was a whole buffet's worth of food. "I asked Mark what you liked and he gave me a big list so I just got it all" he said rubbing the back of his neck as if he were nervous or embarrassed. You just stood there for a moment, a little shocked, before thanking him. Was Jaebum being nice to you?

You grabbed a small plate of food and the two of you ate in silence. It wasn't as awkward as you had thought it would be, it was actually strangely comfortable. When you were finished, Jaebum led you to the spare bedroom. Well, what you thought was the spare bedroom. Once he opened the door, you realized that he had a small studio set up there. He went straight to his laptop as you sat on the couch. He informed you he had two songs he was thinking of for the video. The first was a more upbeat song, the second being a slower, love type song. As you listened to the latter, you felt your heart ache in the most beautiful way. It was about love not being reciprocated, and your mind was already flooded with ideas. When it was finished, you gave him a sincere compliment on how amazing it was and told him that you would really like that to be the video song. He gave you the first genuine smile you had seen from him, and your heart fluttered.

You very quickly dismissed that flutter, no way you were gonna take that seriously. After some discussion, you agreed to meet at a nearby park the next day to do some location scoping. The leaves would be starting to fall soon and you had an idea for a shot and you wanted to find the perfect place for it. Saying a small, polite goodbye, he followed you to the door saying he'd see you the next day, and sending you off with some of the food he'd ordered. Mark called a few hours later, asking if you wanted to grab some coffee, which you readily agreed to. Making your way to your usual cafe, your mind wandered through all the ideas you had for the project.

"So, how'd it go?" were Mark's first words to you as you sat across from him. "You know, not that bad. We decided on a song and we're going to the park tomorrow to scout and see if it fits what I have in mind." you replied with a small smile. Mark's stupid smirk was prominent on his face as he raised one eyebrow. "You and JB? Getting along? It's almost like someone knew this wouldn't be so bad." You threw the paper from your straw at him, telling him to shut up. "I still don't like him, Mark. This is just for the project. It's important." The smirk didn't leave his face, but he didn't push you anymore on it. And you sure as hell didn't tell him about the heart flutter.

You met Jaebum at around noon the next day. It was a weekday, so the park wasn't overly crowded and the temperature was near perfect. You had your camera handy so you could check lighting and he had brought a tripod and video camera, just in case. Walking along the sidewalk, you came across a group of trees, leaves falling from them. You grabbed a quick picture before setting the strap back across your shoulder and walking to the middle of the trees. You just stood there for a few moments, leaves falling all around you and just looked up at the branches, admiring the beauty of nature. By the time you had turned back around, Jaebum had set the camera up, facing you. "Thought it would be a good idea to get the leaves falling" he spoke quietly, rubbing his neck again. You quickly moved out of the shot so he could get it the way he wanted. You pulled your camera out to snap a few more photos, then noticed Jaebum looking over your shoulder at the screen of your camera. "Those are really good" he half whispered before going back to his own camera.

After the day at the park, you both decided the park would be your primary location. The idea of mostly nature shots coupled with the slow song sounded very appealing to you, and Jaebum agreed. Things went surprisingly well for about a week. You had gotten multiple shots of the leaves, and a few of some children playing in the leaves. You had even convinced Jaebum to have a leaf throwing war with you. Today was a completely different story, though. You had gone to the park and gotten a few nature shots, but in the midst of shooting, it began to rain. You were immediately struck with a desire to get some shots of the downpour. Rain had always been beautiful to you. Jaebum did not agree, however. Sure, your cameras could both withstand some water, but he simply did not want to stay. This led to a slightly heated argument.

"Come on, this could make a really great shot if you'd just LISTEN" your voice slightly louder than normal. He had been very cooperative up until now, but this was something you were not willing to back down on. "Excuse me for not wanting to stand in the rain and get sick!" his voice louder than your own. "Fine, then go! I'll get the shots on my phone and you can deal with the crappy quality!" this time you were actually yelling. He threw his hands up, and walked away to gather his equipment. Not wanting to let him ruin your mood, you did a twirl in the rain, enjoying how the drops felt on your face, before turning around to get a better shot of the park at a distance. You found Jaebum still standing there, camera still on the tripod. "I thought you were leaving?" You spoke with an eyebrow quirked up. "I am. Had one more shot I wanted to get." And with that he packed up and left.

After the rainy day at the park, things were back to being strained between you and Jaebum. You were having more and more arguments, often forgetting to turn the camera off during, which led to more arguments about the amount of footage that would have to be sorted through. You wanted to shoot from this angle, Jaebum wanted to shoot from the opposite angle. It was like he went out of his way to disagree with any suggestions you had. You had been working on the project for over a month, half of which you had spent arguing. You had finally had enough. You were going to confront him about this. Picking up your phone, you typed out a message giving him your address and telling him to meet you there.

An hour later, he was at your door, camera in hand, thinking you had something you wanted to shoot. You invited him in, and he set up his camera to get it out of his hands and not just placed on your table. You gestured for him to sit on the couch, and you sat next to him. Steeling yourself, you finally set into what was on your mind. "What is your problem? We've done nothing but fight for weeks. I say something, you immediately disagree. We were getting along great there for a while, and now we're back to where we started. Speaking of, why do you hate me so much? I tried to be nice to you, I tried to be your friend. You weren't having it. What did I ever do to you, Jaebum? You were a jerk to me the first time I met you and I just don't understan-" you were suddenly cut off by his lips on yours. And even more suddenly, you were kissing him back.

He pulled back after a moment, just for you to pull him back in. He eagerly chased your lips once more. His tongue swiped at your bottom lip, and you opened your mouth for him. Before you realized, he was leaning you back on the couch. He pulled back again, slightly out of breath. "Tell me to stop, and I will." You replied by pulling him to you again and a small "don't " against his lips. He moved his mouth to your neck as his hand traveled down your body, stopping to squeeze your breast. You let out a small moan, encouraging him and you felt a smirk against your neck. His hand continued to trail down your body until he reached the bottom of your shirt. Pausing, he lifted his head to give you a questioning look. You gave a simple nod, and his hand slipped under the cloth and traveled back up.

He moved under your bra, as he squeezed again. He took your nipple between his thumb and forefinger, enticing another moan from you as he nibbled at your neck. As your arousal grew, you began to buck your hips, a silent plea for more. With a throaty chuckle, he whispered against your neck. "Patience, baby." With a whine, you picked up the pace of your hips, needing some kind of relief. At an excruciating speed, his hand began to slide down your body. As he reached the button of your jeans, he gave you another questioning look. "Are you sure?" His face was serious, wanting to make sure you were absolutely certain this was what you wanted. Breathless, you muttered out, "Please."

He let out a small growl at your neediness, as he undid the button of your jeans. Sliding his hand further down, he kept his eyes on your face. When he finally reached your dripping heat, he gave you a smirk. "So wet already." As he guided a finger through your folds, you let out a moan slightly longer than before. He kept up his teasing, simply running his finger through your wetness. His dark eyes still glued to your face, he teased your entrance, before slowly pushing inside of you. He kept his movements slow, wanting to tease. All at once, he picked up the pace as he added a finger. The sudden addition caused you to cry out in pleasure, earning another growl from Jaebum. His thumb rose to find your sensitive bud, staring in slow circles before picking up speed. Your release was building up fast and he picked up the pace once again. Just as the knot in your stomach unraveled, he learned down to whisper in your ear, "Just let go.I've got you." He gave you one last nibble before leaning up to see your face. His words were all you needed for the knot to completely break, causing a cry of his name.

Jaebum helped you ride out your high before planting a kiss to your forehead. He buttoned your jeans for you before getting up to get you a glass of water. He sat back down, and you could see the obvious bulge in his jeans. "What about you?" you managed to get out between gulps of water. He just laughed and shook his head. "Another time if that's something you want. I have some things to say first." You heart stopped briefly. Did he already regret this? All kinds of negative thoughts ran through your mind. As if he could sense your thoughts, he shook his head again.

"It's nothing bad, and I definitely don't regret anything that just happened. You asked me why I hated you. I have never hated you. I'm not good with people, I can come off cold and distant for a while before warming up. After a while, we just got into the routine of arguing and being distant with each other and I just didn't know how to go about changing that. I always wanted to, always wanted to be your friend. As for why things took a turn recently, we were becoming friends and I realized something, " he paused a moment as if to think, "I realized I didn't want to be your friend. I wanted more, but you still hated me so I went back to what I knew. I'm sorry for making you think I hated you." He finished his thoughts and looked away from you.

You sat there trying to process all of the information you were just given. Jaebum had feelings for you. That was not something you expected to hear. He hadn't hated you, but you sure hadn't liked him. When did that change? When did you go from not wanting to be in the same room as him, to laying on your couch with his hand down your pants? Thinking back, you tried to find the moment it changed. Was it the smile? Or maybe him ordering everything he knew you liked to eat? That may have been the start, but you realized the big moment. The leaf fight.

It had taken you quite a while to convince him, but when you finally had, he gave you that beautiful smile again. You took off running into a pile of leaves, him closely behind you. You picked up a handle full of leaves and tossed them directly in his face, letting out a loud laugh. His smile never left his face as he picked up and even bigger handful and retaliated. You spent an hour together just throwing leaves. That was the moment. That was when everything changed.

Realizing you had been in thought for a while, you reached over and grabbed Jaebum's hand. "I'm not going to tell you that I didn't dislike you. I did. I thought you were an ass. But, I no longer feel that way. You can still be an ass, but it isn't all the time. Things changed for me, too. Even through all the arguing we've done lately, I didn't want to argue. I didn't want to go back to how we were. I wanted to move past that. So, " you took a deep breath, "Let's see where things go, yeah?"

Two months later, and it was time to turn in your project. Jaebum had done all the editing and he hadn't let you see it yet. The night before you were set to turn it in, he asked you to come by his apartment to see the final product. You knocked on the door and Mark answered. "Y/N! Are you here to see me today or are you here to see your b-" you cut him off with a shove. "Move, I get to see the video today." He laughed as you shoved by him and made your way to Jeabum's studio. You gave a slight knock before letting yourself in.

He was sitting at his laptop with his headphones on, taking them off when he noticed your presence. You sat in the chair beside him, practically bouncing. He let out a chuckle and turned to his computer, and handed you the headphones. Putting them on as he pressed play, you focused on the screen. You were expecting the familiar melody of his song, but were met with your voice instead. "Come on, this could make a really great shot if you'd just LISTEN" on the screen was a clip of you and Jaebum. It was the rainy day in the park where you argued about shooting in the rain. Confusion washed over you, why was he showing you outtakes of your fight? That clip was followed by more clips of the two of you fighting. After a moment, the music started. The screen was filled with clips you had never seen before. You staring at the leaves, you twirling in the rain, the leaf fight, all things you didn't realize had been captured.

The video played through more clips of you and Jaebum between shots. The music stopped and your voice played again, "Why do you hate me so much?" you winced at the words, not wanting to remember them. The screen transitioned to you and Jaebum on your couch as he grabbed your face and kissed you. As your voice faded out, Jaebum's replaced it. "Passion is different for every person. For most, it is taken as something they enjoy. For me, passion started as an argument, only to grow into something amazing. See, love and hate are two sides of the same coin. A very passionate coin, for you cannot have love or hate without passion." With that, the screen faded to black.

You sat there for a few beats looking at the blank screen. Jaebum carefully lifted the headphones from your head and wiped the tears you hadn't realized had begun to fall. "You hate it. Don't worry I made the original plan, we can still submit that." He moved to exit out of the video, and you grabbed his hand to stop him. "I don't hate it. It was just beautiful and I wasn't expecting it. He wiped more tears as they fell. "Do you want to see the other one?" You shook your head and pulled him in for a kiss. "No. This one is perfect." He gave you a deep kiss before barely pulling back. "I love you" he whispered against your lips. Smiling wide, you replied "I love you too, Lim Jaebum."

#got7 jaebum #jaebum angst #jaebum fluff #jaebum smut #got7 #got7 scenarios #got7 fluff #got7 angst #got7 smut #angst #smut #fluff #lim jaebum #jaebum #enemies to lovers

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purplesurveys · 4 years ago

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1003

survey by --rainboweyes--

When you think of this country, what first comes to your mind?

Argentina: We have a local brand of canned corned beef called Argentina, so instead of the country I immediately thought of that food. But if I really have to connect this to the country, I also remembered a wrestler called Giant Gonzales; he hailed from Argentina.

Brazil: Those “Come to Brazil” hashtags that used to trend all the time on Twitter. Brazil had some reallllly loud fanbases; I’m just not sure if they’re still as vocal now.

Canada: Bret Hart. Also @inchoate-surveys, heh.

Denmark: I don’t really know anything about Denmark. OH WAIT NO there’s Legos, so we’ll go with that.

England: I honestly thought of their dishes first since I find them rather unique and super different from the Asian dishes I’m used to. We don’t really use beans or make a lot of puddings and pies, but I think they’re all interesting.

France: Escargot and baguette lol. I’m constantly thinking of food, guys; what a shocker. Also the movie Funny Face since most of it was set in France.

Germany: Sauerkraut and long words.

Hungary: I always confuse Hungary with Germany, but the difference is I don’t know a single thing about Hungary. So I don’t actually know how to answer this haha oops, sorry.

Ireland: Niall Horan HEHE. Also the wrestlers Becky Lynch and Sheamus. Ireland’s got a lot of talented folks.

Italy: @justsurveys (:D), Lizzie McGuire, the movie Roman Holiday.

Jamaica: I also first thought of a wrestler. His name is Kofi Kingston and I remembered him because at one point in his career he was packaged to have a Jamaican gimmick even though he’s actually Ghanian, just because of his race and the fact that he had dreadlocks. Like seriously? Classic example of WWE being racist and stereotypical...ugh. It’s truly hard to vouch for them sometimes.

Japan: The brutally honest first thing I thought of wasssss how they took over my country for a few years and subjected thousands of women and children to various forms of torture before killing them.

Korea: Korean food :( Man I miss having jjajangmyeon.

Libya: Their old flag, which was just entirely green. No designs, no stripes, no other colors. Just a good ol’ green flag.

Morocco: I think of Marrakesh and how colorful the place is. I’d love to go someday.

Norway: Northern lights.

Poland: The current Pope. < OMG editing this answer. The Pope I was thinking of was John Paul II, the actual Pole. Pope Francis is from Argentina lmaooooo so sorry

Romania: I honestly can’t tell you a single thing. Slowly starting to realize that I’m not as good in geography as I thought I was, ha.

Russia: Onion domes, I think that’s what they’re called.

Spain: When I think of Spain I always immediately think of the unfinished church, Sagrada Familia is what I think it’s called, if I remember correctly. It’s in my bucket list of places to see, for sure. Then there’s also the 333 years of colonization, but I’m not feeling bitter enough tonight to rant about that.

Tunisia: Not a clue. I’m bringing my ass to read more about other countries after this.

Turkey: Gabie, because she has Turkish blood.

Uganda: That Joseph Kony documentary that blew up nearly a decade ago. I’m pretty sure that was based in Uganda.

United States of America: Trump, Target, cheeseburgers, elderly people on scooters, those machines at the store that count your coins for you, more cheeseburgers.

United Kingdom: The royal family, Black Mirror, accents that sound fancy.

Australia: Barbecue, kangaroos, deserts, Vegemite.

New Zealand: I thought of my relatives who live there. Also Lord of the Rings.

List 3 movies you like in each genre.

Action: Eugh, I hate this genre. Wonder Woman is probably the only action movie I ever really enjoyed.

Comedy: Can romcoms count? I like The Proposal, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, andddddd This Is Spinal Tap.

Drama: Room, Revolutionary Road, Requiem for a Dream.

Fantasy: Huge pass.

Horror: Midsommar, The Shining, (the original) Carrie.

Kids/Animated: Toy Story, Finding Nemo, Tangled.

Romance: Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Carol, Two for the Road.

Sci-Fi: 2001: A Space Odyssey(!!!), The Martian, Interstellar.

Thriller: Misery, Black Swan, Gone Girl.

Western: Not my cup of tea. The only thing I could think of is Breaking Bad, and that’s not even a movie.

Answer just in numbers.

Number of brothers you have: 1.

Number of sisters you have: Also 1.

Number of the house you live at: Eh.

Number of close friends you have: Off the top of my head, 3.

Number of pets you have: 2.

Number of times you shower a week: 6 or 7.

Number of concerts you've been to in your life: Too many to count if I include local gigs at schools. But if we’re only referring to bigger acts held in arenas or stadiums, 4.

Number of cars your household has: 3.

Number of serious relationships you've been in: 1, but we dated twice.

Number of movies you've seen at the cinema this year: Hahahaha

Number of people who live in your house: 5, including myself.

Number of plug sockets in the room you're in now: 4.

Some more randomer questions.

What food do you have cravings for the most? My cravings are always changing, though. Right now, it would be sushi and takoyaki. We actually just had both last night for dinner, but we devoured them SO fast and now I’m seeking them out again.

What TV shows do you hate to miss on TV? I’m not that attached to any show. I used to religiously follow WWE Raw and The Walking Dead and always wanted to watch both live as often as possible, but those days are long gone.

What do you tend to lose the most? My appetite. As for actual items...probably pens.

The last time someone shouted at you - why were they shouting? It’s been a while since that happened, so I don’t remember.

Would you rather have a cactus or a bonsai? Cactus. I heard taking care of bonsai trees is quite complicated, and I just know I’d kill it within a day or two, if not a lot shorter.

What scary story freaks you out the most? Not really in the mood to think of an answer to this considering it’s 1:07 AM and dark as fuck in my room D:

Are you better with gadgets or cooking? Probably gadgets, but just barely.

How would you rate your own looks? Personality? I hate deciding on things about me. I don’t want to hype myself up too much but I don’t want to drag myself down either lol

What accent is the most attractive? Some English accents are very pleasant to the ear.

Do you get annoyed when people spell your name wrong? Not for the most part since I have the more uncommon spelling anyway. But if someone is talking to me on like Messenger or Viber where my name is blatantly stated and spelled out and they still misspell it, then I get peeved.

#survey #surveys

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wo-wann-was-wer · 4 years ago

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WHAT I WAS THINKING: DARK SEASON 3 EDITION

EPISODE 1:

Who are these dudes with the harelip and what do they want

Why did she just take him to a cave and leave that’s kinda rude

So everything in this universe is just gonna be backwards. Love it

Ugh I’ve said this a million times but this show has such Fringe energy and I can’t wait to get a tattoo for this too

This is super freaking me out, i dont like that everyone’s in everyone else’s house.

Ooooh Katharina with glasses yes girl you better work.

I like Michael and this hat he’s rocking

Super into the fact that magnus and fransizka are involved in this universe too

There’s nothing cuter than sex before school. Ahhh the nostalgia

Ten bucks says that Hannah gets out of this bed and is pregnant

Fucking YEP

I am loving Martha in this Jonas journey

I know that all they did was flip the lens of the camera but my brain is breaking at this flipped Winden

Who the fuck is this random dude Martha is with

You know what he kind of looks like Jonas. I wonder if that's relevant or if I'm just grasping at straws

Bartosz looks like he's going to his first grade violin recital

I straight up just did not recognize Charlotte with makeup. She looks hot

There's got to be another person in that picture other than Ulrich because that's a lot of space to rip out for one person

okay hold up Woller looks so good and then when I saw that he was missing an arm I almost lost my fucking mind

Oh shit okay Hannah is living in Katharina's house.

Oh my God are Ulrich and Charlotte having an affair

Is it normal in Germany for kids to just walk into classes that aren't there’s and just sit down

follow up he has a clear noose mark on his neck

Aleksander looks so hot with this beard. universe B is the fucking glow up universe

It's weirding me out that the whole school is black and gray instead of light brown

The look of satisfaction on katharina's face

Wow honestly Louis just broke my heart with his facial expression when he realized his mom didn't know who he was

he looks so scared

Yes yes do it afffffffffair

Oh no you done got found out!!!

Oh the theme of the play here is red and set of gold

Fransizka looks so cute in this little outfit

Oh my God she's deaf!!!!

What the fuck. the fact that this actress can talk is blowing my mind

RIP to Regina a real queen

Peter's a fucking priest

All the fucking weird-ass freaky motherfucking trio is back

The dopplers have the same house That's cool

excuse me sir I think your child is broken

these guys are so creepy What the fuck

I definitely don't like the piano wire

oh this motherfucker is the one who gets lost

I feel like winden in this universe is just a little bit fancier

Well Charlotte and Ulrich just be fucking like crazy

Bartosz is the Jonas of this group and I love it

who was that??????

I cannot get over Aleksander in this beard

I like that things are opposite but they also have things that are different enough.

Like I'm so into the fact that they all went down into the bunker

who in the unholy fuck is that. who is that

Oh shit old Martha

What the fuck is this Tannhaus’ factory we're at

hold up Martha's in 1888

What the fuck. why is Jonas in 1888 and looking SO good

EPISODE 2:

casually sitting over your bed watching you sleep

he's look so good though

yo what the fuck everybody else is there too

Oh no things got really ugly at Mads’ wake

Not for nothing but Tronte is a dick

I kind of don't understand why Claudia would want Regina to live in such pain in this type of universe

Peter is such a good boy

lurking is the freaking national past time of this place

Oh shit we got some spin-off timeline stuff good

who is This is blind guy

I love Katharina so fucking much

I know what she's thinking and it's the same thing I'm thinking which is can I kill a child

why does this picture of Tronte make him look like Jimmy Smits

Katharina looks amazing in this jacket

Also I definitely did not just start yelling GO GET YOUR MAN KATHARINA

Regina just gets more and more badass as time goes on. Also all of the women of the tiedemann family are so fucking badass

I am so excited to watch this fucking relationship develop. they're both too cute

awwww he's using signs!

oh they're writing back and forth

DAMNIT PETER

I always feel like little Noah should do fuckboy sign offs when he leaves rooms because he's so smooth

yesterday Laurel said that this was back to the future but serious and just now Bartosz said it's not super easy to get nuclear fuel in 1888 and now I think that Laurel's right

I will never get over how good he looks JONAAAASSSSSSS

This guy feels like the OG inventor of sic mundus right

Katerina why are you even trying to check in at the front desk bitch Go and get your man

Is this Katarina's mom why does she just recognize that woman's name

everyone on the show is so talented.I spend the whole damn time being like oh my god the performances on the show and it's like yeah we know

Katerina get your man

I literally love them so much look at the look on her face She is a mama bear She is not going to let anybody take her man or her children and I love her

Not a huge fan of people who quote Shakespeare right before they kill other people or am I an enormous fan of people who use Shakespeare right before they kill other people

using a garotte to kill someone is ugly as fuck

I feel so bad for Jana

see this is one of the reasons why I'm like why would you bring Regina back to this world.

wowwwww TRONTE what's up dude

YO WHAT

Oh so how did Charlotte get back there but Elizabeth's still there too. didn't they switch places?

oh the head bump

Not excited for the mother daughter abuse stuff that's about to happen

I love these split sequences that they do at the end

anytime somebody stands and stairs for a lonely at a spot on the ground I assume to somebody died there

Oh shit that guy is a tannhausokkkk I see you

a religious images we love to see it.

This show is a whole series of pause that frame.

No I ruined something for myself!!!!

EPISODE 3

got to love those through and through Ariadne references

okay so Charlotte's great great grandfather has her watch?

who are these horrible traveler human beings

they look like less sexy Francis dolarhydes

I can't get over the fact that wollers missing an arm here I swear

we ARE the glitch BITCH

alternate universe Ulrich is a better person than standard Ulrich

what's this new like zoom-y thing they're doing

I was attracted to Magnus at this jump of the show but he looks better with dark hair

How did they not all die of fucking flu

eternally repeating deja vu

I looked at the production stills and I was like what the fuck is this hair do that Moritz has but he looks amazing

Also everyone on this show deserves an acting award

and Magnus is wearing a skeleton sweater

Hannah does that deep dive detective work any bitch knows the Nose doesn't lie

why doesn't anybody want to fuck wöller

omgggg eat the RICH

also he has that x tattoo on his hand that represents the no future thing

oh the light is rectangular and not circular ooooooh fancy

The show is also a lot of people catching each other's wrists as they walk away

I knew we couldn't trust this bitch

What did he give her

I love the parallels and characters behaviors between universe a and universe b

I want to know how Noah factored into all of this on this side

Martha has a type and her type is iconically Aryan

Oh Aleksander's back with that beard he's back

Hannah is such a snake

Omg that's her!!!!! I thought she was a trans actress.. hm. not super happy bout that :/

What is Helge talking about Ulrich did what??? omg

I would be like SIR DO WE NEED TO FIGHT STOP FOLLOWING ME

I stopped taking notes for the last half of that episode cuz I was really sucked in haha

EPISODE 4

FIRST OF ALL I'D LIKE TO GO ON RECORD THAT I DON'T CARE FOR THESE GENTLEMEN AT ALL

second of all why is this guy being like oh I took your name

why does he have Agnes's bracelet I don't like that

I don't like anything about this guy That's the end of the story

Also hold up a red hot second is Agnes dead cuz if so that's a hate crime

see what did I say

I knew that Hannah was going to get involved with Egon

from the second she walked in that office I was like that bitch has her eye on him and as she should he's handsome as fuck

Also he spoils her so much more than any other man she's ever been with AKA is Egon the only man she ever deserved

Is Hannah going to develop a heart cuz I'm not sure how I feel about that

Also what happens if Hannah gets pregnant

why is Ines a bitch I thought she was mad cool the beginning and now I feel fucking deceived

Also it's such a sweet gig that The kids who are playing kids can now play teenagers

poor Doris. Also he was shitty to her but he was far nicer than I would have been

Doris is so beautiful it's bullshit

older Magnus is so handsome

All I wanted was middle-aged Martha

bitch you have been having unprotected sex with him why do you think that pregnancy was not on the tabl

I'm like who's this guy in the church if it's not Noah I bet it's that little bitch

yeah I fucking knew it

Is this the dude that was married to Agnes I feel like this guy isn't real or something

I'm not surprised he let her go but I don't know why I'm not surprised. I feel like she's important to his timeline and I'm not sure why

look at these relationships forming between these sweet little bab

Hannah looks good in this red. Hannah looks good in all of these styles.

who is this child

I like that already as a child Bernd had his eye on Claudia as someone who was smart and had a ton of potential

I keep forgetting that I'm taking notes because I get so invested in episodes

Also I realize the zoomi thing which is going back and forth between the universes

Is Agnes Silja’s mom And if so with whom

he gave her Agnes’ bracelet that dope All right Tronte

Wow Claudia needs to back off her man

Claudia force him into a relationship with her

I fucking hate Hannah but sometimes she speaks so much sense

ooh I don't need anyone Yes girl that's true You don't need anyone You needing people was what made you act fucking crazy You don't need anybody

This was always my big problem with Hannah was that I initially identified with her because she was such a survivor but then she did such horrible reprehensible things I just couldn't let it go and I absolutely couldn't identify with her anymore

Oh here's my daddy Noah looking so good

I mean okay so I have been in this position before where I was cheating and then my man cheated on me and I was like how dare you but also you cannot be mad if your partner cheats on you when you cheated too. You both fucked up

Is Hannah going to have a redemption arc cuz that's a lot

Oh my God she's not going to get rid of this child is she

Oh my great God I cannot believe that she gave Helene that necklace.

I knew she was fucking connected to Katharina in the older generation I knew it

Louis and Lisa are a super cute couple and I know that they're not dating in real life but I think that they're very cute together

Oh everybody fucking

yeah they created the Apocalypse yeah

Oh no they have a child outside of worlds that's a mess How does that work so they had they gave birth to that ugly fuck

honestly I hate that he's their child for the most part just because he's ugly as fuck and neither of them are ugly as fuck so it makes me mad.

#episodes 1-4 #live reacts #dark season 3 #spoilers #spoilers dark season 3 #dark #dark network

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nightbloomsresorthotel · 4 years ago

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Etgar Keret’s Short Story “What, of this Goldfish, Would You Wish” got me crying like a baby. Taken from here.

Author and filmmaker Etgar Keret was born in Tel Aviv in 1967. Salman Rushdie has called him “the voice of the next generation” and his work has been translated into 29 languages. The following story is from his sixth collection, Suddenly a Knock on the Door, published on 23rd February by Chatto & Windus.

The idea for this story, translated by Nathan Englander, came to Keret after he read his five-year-old son Alexander Pushkin’s “The Fisherman and the Goldfish.” Keret says, “My son asked me what I would do if I had three wishes. He quickly rejected my ‘safe’ wishes for family health or world peace and insisted that I ask for something I really, really wanted. And that’s when my goldfish story began.”

Yonatan had a brilliant idea for a documentary. He’d knock on doors. Just him. No camera crew, no nonsense. Just Yonatan, on his own, a small camera in hand, asking, “If you found a talking goldfish that granted you three wishes, what would you wish for?”

People would give their answers, and Yoni would edit them down and make clips of the more surprising responses. Before every set of answers, you’d see the person standing stock-still in the entrance to his house. Onto this shot he’d superimpose the subject’s name, family situation, monthly income, and maybe even the party he’d voted for in the last election. All that, combined with the three wishes, and maybe he’d end up with a poignant piece of social commentary, a testament to the massive rift between our dreams and the often compromised reality in which we live.

It was genius, Yoni was sure. And, if not, at least it was cheap. All he needed was a door to knock on and a heart beating on the other side. With some decent footage, he was sure he’d be able to sell it to Channel 8 or Discovery in a flash, either as a film or as a collection of vignettes, little cinematic corners, each with that singular soul standing in a doorway, followed by three killer wishes, precious, every one.

Even better, maybe he’d sell out, package it with a slogan and flog it to a bank or mobile phone company. Maybe tag it with something like, “Different dreams, different wishes, one bank.” Or, “The bank that makes dreams come true.”

No prep, no plotting, natural as can be, Yoni grabbed his camera and went out knocking on doors. In the first neighbourhood he went to, the nice people that took part generally requested the obvious things: health, money, bigger flats, to shave off either a couple of years or a couple of pounds. But there were also powerful moments. One drawn, wizened old lady asked simply for a child. A Holocaust survivor with a number on his arm asked very slowly, in a quiet voice—as if he’d been waiting for Yoni to come, as if it wasn’t an exercise at all—he’d been wondering (if this fish didn’t mind), would it be possible for all the Nazis left living in the world to be held accountable for their crimes? A cocky, broad-shouldered ladykiller put out his cigarette and, as if the camera wasn’t there, wished he were a girl. “Just for a night,” he added, holding a single finger right up to the lens.

And these were wishes from just one short block in one small, sleepy suburb of Tel Aviv. Yonatan could hardly imagine what people were dreaming of in the development towns and the collectives along the northern border, in the West Bank settlements and Arab villages, the immigrant absorption centres full of broken trailers and tired people left to fry out in the desert sun.

Yonatan knew that if the project was going to have any weight, he’d have to get to everyone, to the unemployed, to the ultra-religious, to the Arabs and Ethiopians and American expats. He began to plan a shooting schedule for the coming days: Yaffo, Dimona, Ashdod, Sderot, Taibe, Talpiot. Maybe Hebron even. If he could sneak past the wall, Hebron would be great. Maybe somewhere in that city some beleaguered Arab man would stand in his doorway and, looking through Yonatan and his camera, looking out into nothingness, just pause for a minute, nod his head and wish for peace—that would be something to see.

***

Sergei Goralick doesn’t much like strangers banging on his door. Especially when those strangers are asking him questions. In Russia, when Sergei was young, it happened a lot. The KGB felt right at home knocking on his door. His father had been a Zionist, which was pretty much an invitation for them to pop over any old time.

When Sergei got to Israel and then moved to Yaffo, his family couldn’t get their heads round it. They’d ask him, “What are you hoping to find in a place like that? There’s no one there but addicts and Arabs and pensioners.” But what is most excellent about addicts and Arabs and pensioners is that they don’t come round knocking on Sergei’s door. That way Sergei can get his sleep, and get up when it’s still dark. He can take his little boat out into the sea and fish until he’s finished fishing. By himself. In silence. The way it should be. The way it was.

Until one day some kid with a ring in his ear, looking a little bit homosexual, comes knocking. Hard like that—rapping at his door. Just the way Sergei doesn’t like. And he says, this kid, that he has some questions he wants to put on the TV.

Sergei tells the boy, tells him in what he thinks is a straightforward manner, that he doesn’t want it. Not interested. Sergei gives the camera a shove, to help make it clear. But the earring boy is stubborn. He says all kinds of things, fast things. And it’s hard for Sergei to follow; his Hebrew isn’t great.

The boy slows down, tells Sergei he has a strong face, a nice face, and that he simply has to have him for this film. Sergei can also slow down, he can also make it clear. He tells the boy to fuck off. But the boy is slippery and somehow between saying no and pushing the door closed, Sergei finds that the boy is in his house. He’s already making his film, running his camera without any permission, and from behind the camera he’s still telling Sergei about his face, that it’s full of feeling, that it’s tender. Suddenly the boy spots Sergei’s goldfish flitting around in its big glass jar in his kitchen.

The kid with the earring starts screaming, “Goldfish, goldfish,” he’s so excited. And this, this really pressures Sergei, who tells the boy, it’s nothing, just a normal goldfish, stop filming it. Just a goldfish, Sergei tells him, just something he found flapping around in the net, a deep-sea goldfish. But the boy isn’t listening. He’s still filming and getting closer and saying something about talking and fish and a magic wish.

Sergei doesn’t like this, doesn’t like that the boy is almost at it, already reaching for the jar. In this instant Sergei understands the boy hasn’t come for television, what he’s come for, specifically, is to snatch Sergei’s fish, to steal it away. Before the mind of Sergei Goralick really understands what it is his body has done, he seems to have taken the pan off the stove and hit the boy on the head. The boy falls. The camera falls with him. The camera breaks open on the floor, along with the boy’s skull. There’s a lot of blood coming out of the head, and Sergei really doesn’t know what to do.

That is, he knows exactly what to do, but it really would complicate things. Because if he takes this kid to the hospital, people are going to ask what happened, and it would take things in a direction Sergei doesn’t want to go.

“No reason to take him to the hospital anyway,” says the goldfish, in Russian. “That one’s already dead.”

“He can’t be dead,” Sergei says, with a moan. “I barely touched him. It’s only a pan. Only a little thing.” Sergei holds it up to the fish, taps it against his own skull to prove it. “It’s not even that hard.”

“Maybe not,” says the fish. “But, apparently, it’s harder than that kid’s head.”

“He wanted to take you from me,” Sergei says, almost crying.

“Nonsense,” the fish says. “He was only here to make a little thing for TV.”

“But he said—”

“He said,” says the fish, interrupting, “exactly what he was doing. But you didn’t get it. Honestly, your Hebrew, it’s terrible.”

“And yours is better?” Sergei says. “Yours is so great?”

“Yes. Mine’s super-great,” the goldfish says, sounding impatient. “I’m a magic fish. I’m fluent in everything.” All the while the puddle of blood from the earring boy’s head is getting bigger and bigger and Sergei is on his toes, up against the kitchen wall, desperate not to step in it, not to get blood on his feet.

“You do have one wish left,” the fish reminds Sergei. He says it simply like that, as if Sergei doesn’t know—as if either of them ever loses count.

“No,” Sergei says. He’s shaking his head from side to side. “I can’t,” he says. “I’ve been saving it. Saving it for something.”

“For what?” the fish says.

But Sergei won’t answer.

That first wish, Sergei used up when they discovered a cancer in his sister. A lung cancer, the kind you don’t get better from. The fish undid it in an instant—the words barely out of Sergei’s mouth. The second wish Sergei used up five years ago, on Sveta’s boy. The kid was still small then, barely three, but the doctors already knew. Something in her son’s head wasn’t right. He was going to grow big but not in the brain. Three was about as clever as he’d get. Sveta cried to Sergei in bed all night. Sergei walked home along the beach when the sun came up, and he called to the fish, asked the goldfish to fix it as soon as he’d crossed through the door. He never told Sveta. And a few months later she left him for some policeman, a Moroccan with a shiny Honda. In his heart, Sergei kept telling himself it wasn’t for Sveta that he’d done it, that he’d wished his wish purely for the boy. In his mind, he was less sure, and all kinds of thoughts about other things he could have done with that wish continued to gnaw at him, driving him half mad. The third wish, Sergei hadn’t yet wished for.

“I can restore him,” says the goldfish. “I can bring him back to life.”

“No one’s asking,” Sergei says.

“I can bring him back to the moment before,” the goldfish says. “To before he knocks on your door. I can put him back to right there. I can do it. All you need to do is ask.”

“To wish my wish,” Sergei says. “My last.”

The fish swishes his fish tail back and forth in the water, the way he does, Sergei knows, when he’s truly excited. The goldfish can already taste freedom. Sergei can see it in him.

After the last wish, Sergei won’t have a choice. He’ll have to let the goldfish go. His magic goldfish. His friend.

“Fixable,” Sergei says. “I’ll just mop up the blood. A good sponge and it’ll be like it never happened.”

That tail just goes back and forth, the fish’s head steady.

Sergei takes a deep breath. He steps out into the middle of the kitchen, out into the puddle. “When I’m fishing, while it’s dark and the world’s asleep,” he says, half to himself and half to the fish, “I’ll tie the kid to a rock and dump him in the sea. Not a chance, not in a million years, of anyone ever finding him.”

“You killed him, Sergei,” the goldfish says. “You murdered someone—but you’re not a murderer.” The goldfish stops swishing his tail. “If, on this, you won’t waste a wish, then tell me, Sergei, what is it good for?”

***

It was in Bethlehem, actually, that Yonatan found his Arab, a handsome man who used his first wish to ask for peace. His name was Munir; he was fat with a big white moustache. Really photogenic. It was moving, the way he said it. Perfect, the way in which Munir wished his wish. Yoni just knew even as he was filming that this man would be his promo.

Either him or that Russian. The one with the faded tattoos that Yoni had met in Yaffo. The one that looked straight into the camera and said, if he ever found a talking goldfish he wouldn’t ask of it a single thing. He’d just stick it on a shelf in a big glass jar and talk to him all day, it didn’t matter about what. Maybe sports, maybe politics, whatever a goldfish was interested in chatting about.

Anything, the Russian said, not to be alone.

#ugh #good story #what of this goldfish would you wish #goldfish #short stories #short fiction #literature #wishes #etgar keret

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lyouna · 5 years ago

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The story of Josh Dun

Joshua William “Josh” Dun is an American musician. Best known for being the drummer for the band Twenty One Pilots. He was born in Columbus, Ohio, on June 18, 1988. His star sign is Gemini. He has two sisters named Ashley and Abigail and a brother named Jordan.

Since his childhood, he was always terrified by talking in front of people even if it was a small group of it. However, when he is playing drums he does not feel that way, he is not as vulnerable as that when it comes to talking.

He self-taught when he was around 12 how to play drums, and worked at the Guitar Center for 3 years. He also worked with former Twenty One Pilots drummer Chris Salih, through whom he would eventually meet Tyler Joseph.

Dun's first foray into the music industry was with an alternative/Christian rock band House of Heroes. He joined the band through their drummer, Colin Rigsby, who was taking a break to spend time with his family. Dun played alongside the band on tour from March to October 2010 when Rigsby returned to his role.

"I would lay in my bed every night with sticks and hit my knees trying to figure out what they were doing, like, 'Okay, now they're hitting the ride cymbal, and now it's the snare and now the crash.' I would dissect everything that I watched or listened to. Every day I would walk to the local music store and play their electronic drums until one of the workers would be like, 'Hey, we have people in here that actually want to buy stuff so you've gotta go.' I did that for about a year and that's essentially how I learned to play some basic beats."

Throughout both middle school and high school, he didn't have a lot of money and it helps him to be more creative. He even thought about finding pieces of wood and figure it out how to make them in a drum. Figure out how they would sound with different holes in it, with different types of wood... Nevertheless, at this end, he said that the best drum set he had was one of SJC Drums.

He likes nothing more to do than to play drums; in fact, he plays the exact same way when he is in a dark room by himself and when he is in front of thousands of people. He said that he wants to be creative and just to get outside of the box even if that sounds weird.

He said that although his inspiration comes from some drummers, his greatest inspiration is his parents. Indeed, he starts playing drums in a sort of rebellious state again them and that turns into them being more than supportive.

In 2011, upon the invite of co-worker and the band's drummer Chris Salih, Dun attended a Twenty One Pilots show after listening to their original demo CD. Josh first saw Twenty One Pilots at a club on the Ohio State campus. “I loved everything about the show except for one thing: I wasn’t onstage playing also,” he says. After the show, he met lead singer and future bandmate Tyler Joseph, and a couple of days later began to build a friendship with him. It would be another year before Joseph’s original drummer quit and Dun got the job, but they had become best friends in the meantime.

By 2012, Joseph had grown into a ferocious performer, climbing the scaffolding and diving into audiences. The duo became the biggest band in central Ohio, putting every spare penny into the band and focusing intensely on their local fans. They filmed much of the “Stressed Out” video at Dun’s childhood home, so it has become a destination for Twenty One Pilots fans.

The highest point of his sort of musical journey was (according to his words) when he played for a college show at Ohio University. It was full of drunken kids, one of them even tried to pee on his drums and then on their merch. They eventually played one song and after it, the police shut them down. However, he said that it was the first show that he played with Tyler Joseph. He realized during this one song that he was playing with his best friend and he will never forget that.

The duo then released the band’s second studio album, Regional at Best. It was self-released on July 8, 2011. Regional at Best is a discontinued album. It is the last album released by the band prior to signing a record deal with Fueled by Ramen, and it is the first album to feature the talents of Josh Dun.

Josh Dun was raised in conservative, religious households. Video games and most rocks or hip-hop albums were banned. "I’d hide albums like Green Day’s Dookie under my bed," Dun says. "Sometimes they’d find them and get real mad. They’d find a Christian alternative, like Relient K, and make me listen to that."

For a while, the only movies allowed in the house came from CleanFlicks, a Christian company that took Hollywood movies and edited out all the profanity, sexuality and violence. For a young Dun, it made watching movies like The Terminator quite confusing. "Some scenes they’d remove entirely," he says. "Watching those movies was an absolutely awful experience."

By the time he was a teenager, Josh was rebelling hard. "I just had this aggression," he says, noting that his parents nearly kicked him out when he was 14. "They almost sent me to a military school. They did not know what to do with me, and I was always in detention. I never got into drugs or alcohol, but I would yell at my parents and just treat them terribly. Everything was an argument. Looking back, they were trying their best."

When his parents fell asleep, he would break out his punk-pop CDs; eventually, they softened up on rock music, allowing him to assemble a drum kit in his basement piece by piece with his own money. After he said this to some interviewers, he called his parents to explain himself.

"I actually called my parents after some articles came out – I never wanted for them to be painted in a bad light.

‘I’m so thankful for the way that I was raised. Ultimately, the idea of parents being strict or having rules, looking back, I did have a really rebellious phase and did whatever I could to do the opposite of what they wanted.

‘That’s all on me. For them, I think they were trying to do their best to raise me as best they could. They were trying to make the best decisions for me, and looking back, I can see they were the right decisions.

‘As I look at the rules I had, I wasn’t allowed to play video games or watch TV, so I went outside and made up games with my neighbourhood friends or built dirt ramps and rode our bikes over them.

‘I would be out from morning to night. I look at that, and I can’t imagine it if my parents had let me sit in and watch TV all day – I’d be a different person to who I am today, it’s thanks to them saying ‘‘get out and go do something"

He did not go to college, moving in with a bunch of buddies instead and playing in local bands while scraping by working in the drum department of Guitar Center. "I was going nowhere," he says. "One day I said to my dad, ‘Are you disappointed that I’m working a minimum-wage job and I didn’t go to college?’ I’ll never forget his response. He said, ‘It’s not about how much money you make or what your job is, but it’s more about your character. For that, I’m proud of you.’ It gave me motivation."

During an interview, Josh said “We’re always questioning things,” he says, “but I guess it’s safe to say that we’re both Christians.”

Although Columbus is still very much the Pilots’ base, Josh actually moved out to L.A a couple of years ago in pursuit of more sunshine while Tyler remained there. However, he says it has not made them working together any more difficult. “I’m equally in Columbus as much as I am there. We discussed this a lot before I moved out there. I always feared talking about us being in different places because I think that can be confusing to people from an outside standpoint - like are you guys still friends? Are you still in the band? We had so many conversations about logistics, but first of all, we’re together more than we’re not together over the course of a year. We’re on the phone every day and with technology, it’s so easy to get things done.”

On January 8, 2013, Vessel was born, it was their first album after signing with Fueled By Ramen and it received mainstream exposure. On May 17, 2015, Blurryface was released and the band received international success.

In July 2017, Twenty One Pilots went on hiatus for a year whilst they worked on their next album. On October 5, 2018, Trench was released, it was also a commercial success, reaching number one in six countries, including Australia, New Zealand, Spain, and the Netherlands and number two in several countries, notably the United Kingdom and the United States, as well as selling more than a million copies worldwide.

Therefore, he needed to learn how to deals with notoriety, he had the help of Tyler Joseph (of course), his family, and Debby Ryan. Indeed, from May 2013 to September 2014, he had a relationship with her. They got back together a few years later and in December 2018, Josh posted on Instagram his engagement to Debby in New Zealand during the second leg of The Bandito Tour. He wrote, «I found a tree house in the woods in New Zealand and proposed to my girl. She my dude for life. I love you Debby".

She also posts about it «My dude asked me on a date. I said yeah because I always want to go on dates with him. Then he asked me to be his forever dude. He does things well, and right. His timing has pressed us and never failed us. He's sincere and fun and disciplined and strong as heck and a nerd and a rockstar and a good midwestern man and a silly shirtless boy, and his family is endlessly warm and delightful and are such champions. I have two parents and a brother; they're superheroes and they're my home. They've been the only thing that moves my needle with the fierceness of deep empathy. I have never that out in the world. I guess I figured it wasn't a connection you could stumble upon, only something you could only be born into. Falling in love with joshua was discovering it in the wild. Building it with him, building in certainty, infinite in wonder. Our own lil family. Feels like growing up and moving through life is just evolving through different types of complicated. He is where all the voices narrow into one sound. My only simplicity, where the important things are clear and the other things aren't that important. He's my heart outside my body. He's a cold water awakening a warm bed; he's the place I can rest. Dudes for life. It was a really good date."

Josh has many tattoos and every single one have a strong signification. Firstly, John Graefe tattooed his right arm and then tell the story of it. “I was tattooing in Hollywood and he came in with bandmate, Tyler. They weren’t half as big as they are today and I had no idea at first. I just asked him the whole meaning behind his tattoo and he asked me to come up with the vision.”

The tattoo on his right arm had a blue geometric-like image or something that looks like a galaxy. Below is the image of nature. The musician mentioned that he would share this if it’s personally asked, but he did not want it spreading all over the Internet.

Both he and Tyler have an "X" tattoo on their body symbolizing their dedication to their hometown fans in Columbus, Ohio. They received it on stage during their hometown show at the Lifestyle Communities Pavilion on April 26, 2013. Dun's is located on his neck behind his right ear.

In October 2015, Tyler and Josh asked their fans to choose one of them among themselves via a vote on Twitter. The winner should have his name on the loser on stage. For 24 hours, the two boys shot several videos parodying the presidential debates on topics such as Christmas music or their favorite drink, the Red bull. The results of the vote were equal. Therefore, Dun sports the name "Tyler" above his left knee.

Josh has a tattoo on the inside of his left arm dedicated to his mom. A heart with "mom" written inside of it. Which she answers on Instagram by “These past few months have been exciting seeing how far Josh and Tyler have gone. But it’s been a little hard for me as a mother to feel like I have to share my son with the world. Josh, you getting this tattoo means so much to me. I love you and now your stuck with Mom forever! <3”

He has a drum tattoo on his left arm.

Chantelle Thong made his last tattoo during the Bandito Tour, on December 2018. It represents an astronaut/spaceman flipping, while simultaneously being abducted or levitating into a spaceship. It might be a reference to March to the sea. Fans assumed that the spaceman is Josh Dun.

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gamerwoo · 6 years ago

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Chan: Promises

Anonymous asked: hi rocket, I saw your requests were open so I was wondering if you would consider writing a seventeen story (I don’t care what member/s) which is a demon/angel au? or perhaps fallen angels?

Characters: Chan x female reader (featuring Seventeen)

Genre/warnings: demon au, angel au, angst, some fluff religious stuff

Word count: 4,996

Summary: “You have to promise me that you will never follow me. I don’t care if you ever miss me or want to see me, you don’t say anything that gets you in trouble. Do you understand? You promise me that you’ll do as you’re told. You don’t belong anywhere else but here where nothing could ever hurt you.”

“I promise.”

a/n: I know I said I was making a fallen angel au for Yanan and I still am but I got distracted by this request that’s been in my inbox forever and it gave me inspiration (and yes, there will be a spinoff with Jeonghan and Seungcheol)

**EDIT: here’s the spinoff for JeongCheol!!!

Hansol tugged on your hand, his classic gummy smile on his face as he brought you to the place you were supposed to have been ten minutes ago -- as always, Hansol made you late. But with the giggle that passed his lips, how could you be mad about it?

The two of you were face-to-face with Seungcheol, who didn’t really look too pleased, but you knew it was your own fault. You let Hansol distract you on the way here (”No, we don’t need to teleport! Let’s walk and look at the flowers!”) so Seungcheol was stuck waiting around for you.

“I have good news, and bad news,” Seungcheol stated, his hands clasped together in front of him.

“Good news first!” Hansol chirped.

“You’ll get to visit the mortals today.”

Both of your faces brightened. It had been a while since you got to go run around among the humans, and you kind of missed it. Despite the bad that came with humanity, you liked to try to find the good -- you did that with most anything.

“Wait,” your smile faltered slightly, “what’s the bad news?”

Seungcheol sighed, “The uncleaned souls have escaped, and you need to find them in the mortal world.”

Hansol frowned, “How did they get out?”

“We’re looking into it. For now, they’ll need to be caught and brought back.”

“There’s so many,” you said quietly. “How do we get them all?”

“There will be multiple groups of angels and demons going out to--”

“Demons?!” Hansol gasped. “Why demons?”

“Some of those souls belong to them, too,” Seungcheol stated. “Besides, there’s way too many for us to handle on our own. We need the help.”

“I’m not working with demons, am I?”

“Everybody has to.”

Hansol groaned, but you didn’t care either way. You were more worried about getting the souls back. Besides, you already knew not to do anything a demon told you to do. You’d seen other angels get tricked, and it never ended well for them. You weren’t going to end up like that.

Unfortunately, you weren’t put in a group with any of your friends. Actually, you weren’t working with any angels at all. It would just be you and a small handful of demons, which you didn’t care, you were just a bit shy. However, you were sure that you’d still get the job done no matter what, so you went down to earth to meet them.

Already waiting were four demons. One had cat-like eyes with pink hair, another had sharp features and a bright smile that he greeted you with, another was tall and thin with dark hair that hung in his face, and the fourth looked like he belonged up in Heaven with you with his perfectly styled blond hair, and beautiful face. It was the first one that stood up from the table they sat at in the cafe to greet you.

“You must be the-- the...one...working for...Him,” he said, choosing his words carefully since you were in public. He let out a chuckle before holding out his hand to shake. “I’m Joshua. Nice to meet you.”

Despite having a completely harmless smile on his face, just the way his eyes glinted showed a hint of mischief that intrigued you. Nevertheless, you took his hand and shook it politely, “I’m _____.”

Joshua introduced you to the other three: Seokmin, Minghao, and Jeonghan. They all seemed nice enough, looking like they were just here to get things done without any sort of quarrel. However, there did seem to be one problem before you got started.

“If Channie would just show up on time, we could go,” Jeonghan sighed, his chin resting in his hand that was propped up on the table by his elbow.

“Oh, there’s another one?” you asked as Minghao gestured for you to sit between him and Seokmin.

Joshua nodded with a dry laugh, “Yeah, and he’s always late. Guess we should’ve expected this.”

“It’s okay,” you shrugged, “I have lots of friends who are never on time. It doesn’t bother me at all.”

You weren’t even on time to see Seungcheol that morning. You had Hansol who was always late because he was never paying attention -- or paying too much attention to other things -- Mingyu who was easily distracted, and even Junhui who was too busy enjoying other things to ever be on time for anything.

There was one person who had always made you late without fail because you were always with him -- and you were the reason he made the two of you late. However, despite still missing him, you chose not to think about him. It hurt too much.

But in that same second that the thought crossed your mind and was gone, it was brought back to the forefront. Before you was standing that very person you wanted to forget because remembering him hurt too much. He looked the same as ever, just with different clothes and a harder expression on his face. That expression softened, though, as soon as his eyes -- that you remembered to be blue but were now dark -- landed on you.

“_____?” he asked, looking just as innocent as you remembered him.

“Chan,” you breathed out. “Hi...”

“Hey,” he let out an airy chuckle. “It’s been a while.”

The four other demons looked between the two of you as you just stared at each other. You weren’t paying any attention to their faces, but you were sure that they were completely dumbfounded.

“You two know each other?” Jeonghan asked.

Chan’s expression shifted from innocent and surprised, to a mischievous smirk as his eyes shifted to his friends, “Remember when you asked me what I was banished for? She’s the reason.”

You felt a pang in your heart hearing it even though you already knew. You still remembered that day vividly in your mind even though you tried your best not to think about it. But seeing Chan in front of you, all your mind did was fill with thoughts of him and how things used to be before he was banished -- not even to become a fallen angel, but banished straight to Hell.

“As much as I would love to reminisce on your angel days,” Minghao began, standing up from his chair, “we have a job to get done, and I’d rather do it sooner rather than later. Humans freak me out.”

“Right,” Jeonghan nodded, taking one final sip from his coffee before standing up as well. “Let’s get going, kids.”

“We’re not kids,” Seokmin whined, getting up with everyone else to follow.

But you hung back because Chan’s stare was keeping you in place. Seeing his face after so long almost made you want to cry, but it definitely made your heart flutter.

“I missed you,” he told you softly.

But because of your promise, all you could do was nod before following him out of the cafe.

After not seeing Chan for two years, you thought things would be awkward. You thought you would’ve seen him in a different light or that he would’ve changed, but it was like nothing was different. You seemed to pick up where you left off, laughing and enjoying each other’s company. It made your heart hurt knowing that after all the souls were caught, you’d never see him again. That was another thought you tried to lock at the back of your mind, though.

“How’ve you been?” you asked one day while you were taking a break.

The six of you were at a park, sitting in the grass. Joshua, Joenghan, Minghao, and Seokmin seemed a bit uneasy being around humans, so they kept themselves invisible to them, keeping their distance. You and Chan, however, didn’t care. Your wings were tucked away into your shoulders, and your halo was hidden to blend in. Chan had never seen you looking so normal before, and it made him feel almost sad. It was like looking at you if you were stripped of your angel status, and that was a thought he didn’t want to have.

At your question, Chan shrugged, “Pretty good, actually. Haven’t really been doing much lately, though. It’s kinda boring, but I’ve had a lot of free time to do whatever I feel like. What about you? Is He still enforcing a shit ton of rules?”

“You know those rules will always be in place,” you told him with a soft laugh, tucking some hair behind your ear.

“They’re so fucking dumb,” he said under his breath, shaking his head. He let out a harsh laugh, sitting back against his hands as he stretched his legs out in front of him. “I can’t believe I went along for it as long as I did. Seriously, he thinks that He should be held above everybody else? Forbid somebody falls in love and tries to be happy, right?”

“Chan, I’m not comfortable with--”

“I know, I know,” he sighed, looking over at you with soft eyes, “I’m sorry. I’m just...still angry with Him. I think I’m always going to hate Him.”

“I’m sorry,” you said just above a whisper.

He licked his lips, his brows furrowing slightly like he was unsure if he should say what he wanted to. But who cared? There wouldn’t be any consequences if he said it, and he wanted you to know it anyway.

“You know I still love you, right?” he asked, his voice soft, and his eyes still full of that fondness that he used to always look at you with.

Your heart swelled, “You do?”

“I do,” he smiled, taking in every detail of your face -- you hadn’t changed at all. “I always will, _____.”

You opened your mouth to speak, but he quickly placed a hand over it, giving you a stern look, “Don’t. Don’t say anything. You promised.”

So you kept your mouth closed, but you wanted so badly to scream out how you felt, too.

“Do you ever wonder why we have these rules?” Chan asked one day as the two of you sat together. His wings were relaxed at his sides, the white feathers brushing against your arm. “I mean, I know He made them, so that’s why they’re there, but why did He make them?”

“Why do you ask?” you wondered, looking away from the mortal world the two of you were looking down upon to study your best friend’s face.

“Look at them,” he said with a soft smile, nodding down to the humans. “All of those couples. Despite some of their situations not being great, they’re still happy because they’re with the one they love. They can freely express that love, too.”

You already knew where this was going. Even you could tell Chan had feelings for you, and he knew you felt the same way. You could never say it or show it in ways the humans could, but you both just knew. It was the connection the two of you had.

“Chan--”

He looked up from the world below him, his blue eyes serious, “_____, I’m tired of keeping this in. I shouldn’t have to.”

“And what about me?”

Chan suddenly gripped your upper arms tightly, his eyes piercing into yours as his face was only inches away, “You have to promise me that you will never follow me. I don’t care if you ever miss me or want to see me, you don’t say anything that gets you in trouble. Do you understand? You promise me that you’ll do as you’re told. You don’t belong anywhere else but here where nothing could ever hurt you.”

After lots of thinking, Chan had realized that the rule to never love anybody other than God was a stupid rule. The more he dwelled on the rules put in place for the angels, the more angry he was with God for making them. He also realized that he loved you too much to keep it in anymore. He refused to abide by a rule that kept him from loving you, so he wouldn’t go along with it anymore.

He knew what that meant. He would have his halo removed, his wings ripped from him, and he would fall to earth where he would stay. He would be away from you, but he could be free. But he refused to take you with him. Heaven was safe, and the mortal world had things that could hurt you. He knew the process would be painful, too, and he refused to see you go through that. You deserved to be up here, even if he couldn’t be with you.

With a quivering lip, realizing that Chan really was going to do this, you nodded, whispering, “I promise.”

With that, Chan leaned in, pressing his soft, warm lips to yours. You felt electricity and warmth spread through you, and despite your body wanting to so desperately, you didn’t hold onto him. He cupped your cheek and held you close to him, but you kept your arms at your sides, your hands balled into fists.

When he pulled away, his forehead rested against yours, “I love you, _____. I love you more than I’ve ever loved anything or anyone. That will never change, no matter what.”

You felt him being pulled away from you, and you knew why. He had broken a rule, and he was going to get punished for it.

“Chan--”

“No,” he cut you off as he started to slip away from you, “don’t say anything. You promised.”

And then he was gone.

He knelt down, surrounded by witnesses. He was held in place by two other angels who you recognized as Seungcheol and Wonwoo. Hansol sat by your side, holding your hand to comfort you as silent tears slipped down your face.

“You’ve broken a rule, Chan,” God’s voice boomed, though you couldn’t see him. “You’ve fallen in love, proclaiming that you love them more than anything and anyone.”

“I have,” Chan admitted, staring across the white floor beneath him. “I’ll even say it again: I love _____; I love her more than anybody here, and I love her more than the asshole who made the rule saying I can’t tell her that I love her.”

You heard a soft collective gasp from the language he used. Nobody had ever spoken to or about God in such a way, and it was alarming to them. God, however, seemed unfazed when he spoke again.

“You also kissed her,” He recalled.

“I did,” he nodded, “but she didn’t do anything. It was all me.”

“I’m well aware. However, she is here to witness this.”

Chan glared up at the white, sparkling clouds above him, “That’s fucked up and you know it. We’re best friends, and you’re making her watch this?! Fuck you!”

“Chan--”

“No, I’m done listening to you! You’re pretty fucking full of yourself if you think people should hold you above all else, y’know. Why can’t we love who we want and be happy, huh? Why do you have to make up some dumb fucking rules and--”

“Silence!” God ordered, causing the benches to shake, and silence to fill the room. Even Chan dropped his head at the booming voice. “If you’re going to talk like a demon, then maybe you should be one.”

“What?” you gasped softly.

Hansol held you tighter, afraid you’d stand up and say or do something that would get you in trouble, too.

“I hereby sentence Lee Chan to be banished to Hell, where he will become a demon to suffer in the Underworld for all eternity. Please remove his halo and his wings.”

“No,” you whimpered, clinging to Hansol like your soul depended on it.

You had to watch as Seungcheol took the softly glowing halo from Chan’s head, letting it smash onto the ground into small shards. But you refused to watch as the two boys grabbed onto Chan’s white wings and pulled, using large, regal-looking swords to assist in getting the wings off.

You buried your face in Hansol’s shoulder, sobbing silently into his pristine white shirt as Chan’s screams of pain filled your ears. Chan’s white clothes stained blood red, as well as everything around him -- including Seungcheol and Wonwoo.

The two boys took him under his arms and began dragging him over to where they’d send him off to Hell. As he was dragged across the floor, he called you your name, making you look up. Although you could hardly see through your tears, you still watched him until the three boys were in the elevator and out of your sight.

“_____!” Chan called. “I love you! Please don’t do anything stupid! Keep your promise for me!”

They descended, and soon, Chan’s cries were no longer heard.

You only had another day left with Chan before all of the souls were supposed to be completely collected. There were only a few left, and you were clearly upset because you would never see Chan again after this. Seungcheol had found out that you were in a group with Chan, and so when he saw that you had been acting off lately, he knew why.

“_____.”

His voice startled you, making you jump a bit as you sat on a bench. Your “shift” to collect souls had ended half an hour ago, but you weren’t ready to go back home yet. For some reason, you felt closer to Chan when you were on earth. Maybe it was because it meant you were closer to the place he had to go back to. Either way, when you didn’t return, Seungcheol decided to go look for you.

“I’m sorry,” your immediate instinct was to apologize for being late -- you were always late now that you were with Chan again because the two of you tended to draw out the task everyday to spend more time together. “I know I should’ve been back already, I just needed to think.”

“I know what’s going on with you,” Seungcheol nodded, putting an arm around your shoulders, “and I understand.”

“No you don’t,” you sighed, running a hand through your hair.

“I do,” he stated, looking down at you seriously. You looked up into his clear blue eyes, and he patted your knee. “You don’t have to tell me if you really do love him or not, but I think you should stop listening to what Chan tells you to do. I think you should do what you think is right; what you feel in your heart.”

You shook your head, “Not to sound rude, Seungcheol, but how can you give me advice when you’ve never been in a situation like this before?”

“You don’t know everything about me, _____,” Seungcheol smiled softly. “Just think about what I said, okay? Really think about it. Don’t stress over anything that you’ll regret not doing later.”

Seungcheol got up, saying he would give you some space while you thought. But before he disappeared, he stopped and turned around, “Oh, and _____?”

“Hmm?” you looked up from your lap.

“Tell Jeonghan I said hi,” he winked before he disappeared.

It was the last day, meaning it was the last time that you’d ever see Chan again. You couldn’t even enjoy it, though, because you had thought long and hard about the advice Seungcheol had given you, and that was still all you could focus on. Your palms were clammy, your body was full of nervousness, and you hardly even said anything to anybody all day.

While most of the demons minded their business, Chan noticed the quietness. You had also seemed to be distancing yourself from him that day, and it made him upset. Was it because you’d have to say goodbye that afternoon? Was it because you realized that a demon and an angel just couldn’t be near each other? Had he done something wrong? Or was it because you still did love him, and you were just upset that he’d have to leave again? He wanted to ask, but he figured it was better that he didn’t know. He also knew that even if it was the latter, you’d never tell him -- you promised.

Despite keeping to yourself, the day seemed to fly by as if you had talked to Chan the whole time -- talking to him always made time feel like it went by faster than it did. Soon enough, the sun was setting, and you were being called back to go home, never to see the demons again.

“It was nice meeting you,” Joshua told you, sounding sincere as he shook your hand. “Thank you for the help.”

“Thank you, too,” you mustered up a smile, nodding to him.

“You were actually pretty fun to be around,” Seokmin grinned, taking his turn to say goodbye.

“Yeah, I get why Chan likes you so much,” Minghao smirked, nudging the shorter boy with his shoulder.

Jeonghan stepped up to you, placing a hand on your shoulder. Despite always having a devilish smirk on his face, and a playful glint in his eyes, he gave you a serious look.

“Seeing you again has made Chan happier than I’ve ever seen him,” he told you, his voice low. “I don’t know if you feel the same toward him, but if you do...don’t let him go.”

You nodded slowly as Jeonghan dropped his hand. Before he stepped away, though, you spoke up.

“Jeonghan?”

“Hmm?”

“Seungcheol says hi.”

The smirk was back on his face again, but this time, it was warmer. He shook his head, “He really didn’t forget.”

As Jeonghan walked away, he shooed the other three demons away as well, leaving you and Chan alone. He hesitated before he approached you, his hands shoved deep in his pockets.

After a beat of silence, Chan took a breath, kicking the leaves beneath his feet lightly, “I wish this day never came.”

You stayed silent.

At your silence, he looked up from the ground to you, a soft smile on his face, “You don’t know how happy I am that you kept your promise. It’s really great knowing that you’re still safe and happy where you are. What happened to me... _____, I’d never want you to feel that kind of pain. I don’t know what I’d do.”

You stayed silent.

“I just--” Chan sighed, taking his hands out of his pockets, unable to keep himself from reaching out to you. He took both of your hands in his, looking into your eyes. “I want you to remember that I’ll always love you. Even if we never see each other again, you’re the only person I’ll love like this for all eternity.”

‘This is it,’ you thought to yourself, ‘It’s the last time I’ll ever see him again. It’s now or never.’

You opened your mouth, but Chan quickly put a hand over your mouth. His expression was pained because as much as he wanted to be selfish and have you go with him, he knew this was what was best for you.

“_____, don’t...”

You nodded slowly, speaking as his hand fell from your lips, “I know, I promised not to say anything.”

“Good,” Chan nodded, his hands falling back down to his sides again. “Good... Then...I guess this is it.”

You took in a deep breath, “I guess so.”

“Goodbye, _____.”

You let it out.

In an instant, you closed all distance between you and Chan, your bodies pressed together. Your arms were around his neck as your lips pressed to his in a kiss that you’d been wanting to give him since before he was even banished from Heaven.

Chan froze, his eyes wide. While he wanted this more than anything, he was absolutely terrified for you now. You’d just ruined everything for yourself, and it frightened him. He wouldn’t even be there to help you when you were confronted.

A few yards away, the four other demons were watching. Minghao, Seokmin, and Joshua were shocked. Jeonghan smiled to himself.

Above, Seungcheol was watching it all -- he’d been watching you all day. Like Jeonghan, he was smiling.

You pulled away from Chan, keeping your arms around him. You looked up into his fear-stricken eyes, but you couldn’t help but smile even though you knew what was coming next.

“I never promised not to do anything,” you told him quietly. “I’m not losing you a second time. I love you too much to be away from you anymore.”

“_____,” his voice was panicked as he saw the white, sparkly dust appear around you. His engulfed you tightly, hoping that somehow he could just keep you with him instead of having you go off to endure the worst pain of your life. But there was nothing he could do to go against God, even now. “_____, no!”

You disappeared in his arms, leaving him falling to his knees and staring up at the sky, shouting every profanity in the book.

“_____,” His voice resonated through the large room, “do you love the demon known as Lee Chan?”

“Yes,” you replied plainly, “I do.”

You expected all of this since you saw it all happen with Chan. You expected the large gathering, the questions, and the two angels standing on either side of you. You’d seen and heard it all before, so you were at least slightly less scared. But you knew that when your wings were removed, and you were tossed down to earth, that all of that would be excruciatingly painful.

As the trial went on, you didn’t look at anybody. You knew there were some friends of yours that were watching with sad eyes -- Hansol who was there to comfort you after Chan was banished, Mingyu who was always there for warm hugs and loud laughs, and Junhui who was possibly one of the kindest people you’d ever known -- but you didn’t want to have those looks on their faces be your last memories of them. Your last memory of Chan for two years was the trial, and you didn’t want to ruin your last memories of your other friends.

After what felt like an eternity, you heard that sentence that would make everything final.

“I hereby sentence _____ _____ to be banished to earth to be a fallen angel for all eternity. Please remove her halo and wings.”

You heard your halo smash on the floor beside you, but you kept your eyes trained on the floor. It wasn’t until you felt the tugging that you braced yourself for the pain to come.

The swords plunged into your shoulder blades as the tugging got harder. You let out a blood curdling scream, drowning out the noise of your wings being torn from the root. Every muscle in your back felt like it was on fire, and the air that hit the open wounds stung like salt being dumped in continuously.

As you were dragged over to the hatch you’d be dropped through, you were already starting to sleep out of consciousness -- you weren’t sure if it was from blood loss or the pain. Red trailed along the floor as you were dragged, your eyes keeping on the stained floor as your eyelids began to drop.

As the hatch was opened, the last thing you heard was God calling Seungcheol’s name.

The voices you heard sounded muffled and far away, but you could at least feel yourself slowly coming to. You were aware that there were people around you, and that you were warm. You were aware of a dull ache in your back, and of somebody gripping your hand in their’s.

“...come to soon,” you could make out somebody saying.

“What about Seungcheol?” another voice asked.

Seungcheol? What about Seungcheol? Wait, you had heard God calling for him, so had Seungcheol gotten in trouble for something too? But he was one of God’s favorites, there’s no way Seungcheol could’ve done anything wrong.

“I cleaned his out already,” a voice said. “_____’s lucky that she landed the way she did. Cheol was crying and yelling. I felt bad because he was begging me to stop, but it would get infected if I didn’t clean it.”

“Well, duh,” another voice scoffed. “Cleaning out a wound that deep is gonna hurt like a bitch.”

Finally, you had control over your eyes. You fluttered them a few times before you managed to blink them open, being greeted by a warm, dim light. Then somebody leaned over you, and your eyes adjusted to make out the features of Chan’s beautiful face above you.

He brought you back to the Underworld with him after him and the others stumbled across you and Seungcheol -- he was banished with you because God had caught onto him and Jeonghan, though nobody really knew the story behind that one other than the two of them. You were laying down on a towel on the floor, the blood from your back soaking into it until your new black wings would come in. But all that mattered to you was that you were finally with Chan.

“_____,” he sighed in relief, his hand that wasn’t in yours stroking your cheek. “Fuck, you’re awake. If you weren’t bleeding so much, I’d yell at you so much. I can’t believe you did this to yourself!”

Despite how groggy you felt, you smiled faintly, mumbling, “You were worth it.”

He chuckled, tears brimming his eyes. He hadn’t seen you for two years, and now, you were beside him like old times. But this time, he could kiss you and hold you and tell you how much he loved you. Finally, you were his, and he could be yours.

“You’re a giant idiot, you know that?” he told you, leaning down to press his lips to your forehead. “But you’re my idiot now; all mine, and I’m never letting you go.”

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akahana21 · 5 years ago

Text

I played the elevator game again

I’ve decided to post about the elevator game on reddit again. Why not? There are lots of plotholes, I only made this because I was in a state of ‘overthinking’ so I tried to occupy myself into writing. Anddd I felt a sense of relief when I finished writing it.

Hello, Reddit. Yes, you read it right. I played the elevator game again. This time, it HAPPENED. My first post is about playing this game yet I failed. It's already 2019. June 12th. I'm in the mood to be real "independent". I've lost the people that I thought were my friends and the person who said he'll never get tired of me, they're all gone. To hell with that!

Before attempting to play this game again, I looked for several blogs and websites which contained the steps. Maybe there's a whole different "setup" for the individual to enter the other world. I failed playing it the first time, and I admit that I gave up. But that was months ago! Here I am. No entity nor human being could ever interfere with the ritual being successful again.

Anyway, I never found a website or blog that gives different steps. I'll be using the steps that I've memorized many months ago. My brain has saved it for future use. LMAO. You see, it's our summer vacation, I'm busy with my summer job in the hotel, that 5-star-hotel after the failed attempt. Seems weird, but there are only a few people checked in here. People are supposed to be enjoying their stay on a hotel while it's summer and today's a holiday. I swear, there are only a few people here, some of the staffs went out to eat since it's lunch break. This is the perfect timing to play the elevator game. There are only a few people here, which means that I can be alone, no one will be interrupting the ritual and no one will get on inside and mess up the process for about 50%. LOL, who am I kidding? It's always crowded here, real crowded. When I went here to play the ritual for the first time, the hotel was full of people. And as far as I can remember, these people were giving me weird looks and all. To be honest, the seats in the hotel's restaurant are mostly vacant, every seat anywhere are vacant, the rooms are vacant. Is the universe telling me something? Does this mean that this is now the time to do the ritual, to play the elevator game? Let's see.

I still know the steps. I know how I can go back if I get off the elevator on the 10th floor and if I didn't get off. Wearing the hotel staff uniform, I used the stairs to go down from the 2nd floor. Good thing, this uniform has multiple pockets. Inside my left pocket is my cellphone, despite the fact that I have no plans in using it in another world because it is said that electronic devices won't work, in my right pocket is my wooden rosary (I always bring my rosary everywhere since I'm a religious person. Wait, what? A religious person playing a ritual? Are you insane, self?) Maybe I really am though. I was told by my family that I needed to go on a mental health expert to "check" my sanity. Multitude of thoughts came over me. I have decided. I'll do the ritual, no more second thoughts anymore. Life's been miserable, people hating me, and I'll make it worse.

I headed inside the first floor's elevator beside or most likely near the restaurant door. The restaurant door's huge enough to recognize and I wouldn't have a hard time later on. This elevator is the one from the right side and the very last one, the end, with no elevator on its right side but four elevators on its left side, you know what I'm saying? I'm having difficulties explaining this one, you see. English is not my first language, as what I've mentioned earlier with my first post here (which was deleted, think I'm going to edit it and repost). Also at the tenth floor, it's also beside a huge glass door. So I'm confident enough that I won't be entering the wrong elevator later.

Lunch break is one hour, I wonder if how many hours I'm going to spend in another world, and hope I won't get into trouble once I'm back here. Still wearing the vibrant red hotel staff uniform with multiple pockets (and these pockets have my cellphone, rosary, inhaler, handkerchief, pocket-sized notebook, and ballpen), I pressed the button for the fourth floor and focused. I pressed the second, sixth, second again, and tenth floors respectively. The atmosphere is getting heavy or is it just me?

Getting ready to get killed or whatnot, I pressed the button for the fifth floor. Luckily, the elevator's not reflective, so I can just stare at the buttons and at my left side (the buttons are in the left side). Finally, the elevator has arrived at the fifth floor. I heard the door open and footsteps coming near me, coming inside the elevator with me. Is this the woman? She's not uttering anything, she must stay that way until I become successful with the ritual. She might make me nervous and unfocused and I don't want that. I never even looked at her. Never knew how she looked like. And I wouldn't dare to look at her. I forgot telling this, but the atmosphere started getting heavy when I have arrived at the second floor at the second time, someone's calling me, I didn't answer in any way and ignored it. Who could it be? Is lunch break over? No, just my head messing with me or the ritual, maybe. I'm in the middle of the ritual. I must stay focused.

"Goodbye, world." I told myself but I didn't really speak that, okay? I never spoke. I'm quiet. Just my mind telling goodbye, you may never know if I return safe and mentally unstable. I pressed the first floor's button and said a quick prayer inside my head. I felt the elevator ascending to the tenth floor instead the first floor. The real journey begins. The elevator arrived at the tenth floor and the door opened. I don't want to be the stubborn traveller who peeks at the woman for a second to see if she's really there. Because she is.

As I begin to move my feet towards the door to get outside, the woman spoke which caused a mini-heart-attack. What a nightmare.

"Where are you going?" Her voice is so sweet but I won't respond. Never. She sounded like a nice person and I would want to be friends with her since I don't have a single friend anymore and I would like to sing with her...I want to hear her voice some more. But then I remembered- she's not a person.

"Is there anything wrong?" She asked again, her voice full of curiosity.

As I took one step again, "I said, where are you going? You're not answering me. How rude." And now her sweet voice sounded sad and made me look like evil. She's the evil one!

I have to get out quickly, she may shriek later as I cross the door. I hate anyone shrieking, I become violent when I hear those sounds. I'm afraid I won't make it. And so I stepped faster and got outside the elevator. As expected, she shrieked as fuck. I wanted to punch that bitch so much to shut her up. But I can't and shouldn't.

It's dark outta here, the lights are off, but atleast I can still see because of the red light passing through the windows. I checked my cellphone, it's working! Why the heck is it working? Do I have to take a picture of my surroundings or maybe take a selfie? No. I can cry out of...happiness? I'm finally alone. But something's wrong, I can tell you something's wrong. I feel kind of tipsy, but I never drank liquor before the ritual. So scratch that. I have to make sure to keep my wits about before and during the ritual. I swear, there's something wrong.

I walked near a wall, this still looks like the tenth floor of the hotel I'm working at. I know the hotel all too well, and I'll never lose my way. While touching the wall for support, I just walked until I reach the gigantic windows showing the crimson red sky without clouds, without the sun, there's emptiness in the sky except the even crimson red color. From a distance, I can see a cross-like structure standing all alone. At this point on, I am confirmed very dizzy. I immediately got seated on the floor out of dizziness, staying vigilant. I feel like I'm losing some oxygen to breathe, and I started coughing and gasping for air. I'm sure I brought an inhaler with me, I touched my pockets one by one to feel the inhaler. And there, I found it and of course, used it. Now I don't feel dizzy anymore and not even gasping for air. I recommend to bring an inhaler or two if you're that fearless enough to play the elevator game. Approved and recommended! Works for me, but if it doesn't work, for you then, I'm sorry.

Once I feel better, I again walked towards the windows, now touching it. I tried to glance what's down there, like a soil or whatever I can walk on to discover what's more with this world that other travelers didn't see. I want to be the first one to see and reveal what we can do in this world.

I want to go outside the hotel. But I don't want to use an elevator to go down. No elevators for now. I went to the nearby staircase and walked down the stairs, patient enough to go down the first floor. Unfortunately, as I approached the next stairs to the fifth floor, it was barricaded, I think? Sort of someone or something put a gigantic wall on purpose or whatever. To stop me from going down the stairs. To stop me from knowing what's down there that we haven't yet discovered.

As a sign of defeat, I walked up the stairs again to the tenth floor. As I reach the ninth floor , I feel dizzy again. I've stayed too long in this world. People aren't meant to live in this "netherworld". Now I have to believe that "no man is an island". We can't always be alone. Especially in a world where there's only you who exist. We cannot live alone. I guess I've learned a lesson.

Still dizzy and a headache is starting, I hurriedly ran up the stairs. It's like running for my life, as if a horse is chasing me. I successfully reached the tenth floor, gasping for air again, walked to the elevator cautiously where I got off. I feel alive. Take note, I carefully went inside the elevator, only looking at the floor, afraid to look at the woman, fearing that I might disobey the rules.

With a sigh of relief, I clicked the button for the second floor. For short, I repeated the ritual. Now here it goes. As the elevator is ascending again to the tenth floor, I calmly pressed another floor's button lower than ten. Que horror, the elevator's still ascending. Fast. I began shaking. I pressed and pressed the first floor's button and hoped it'll work. I went past the eighth floor, before the elevator to step and reach the tenth floor, it began descending down the first floor. I'm still shaking. I looked at my rosary bracelet that I'm wearing and got the wooden rosary from my pocket and started praying. Prayers can do wonders...if you could only have faith.

The elevator stopped at the second floor. The door opened. I didn't get out. I looked at my surroundings. Looks normal and home-y. But then, the elevator's door closed on its own and went down the first floor. The door of course did open again. I observed everything outside. Once I realized that everything's where they were supposed to be, I went outside without looking back and without breaking the rules. I'm home.

It was still lunch break when I got back. As usual, I worked like nothing happened. But deep inside, there are things that troubled me. Especially this one. Why did it open at the second floor? I haven't read it somewhere. Everything's normal. Everything's alright. While working, a co-worker called me and said that I have a visitor. I went to the office and waited. I heard the door opened, someone hugged me from the back. Look who it is.

"Baby, I'm very sorry. I brought you a pizza."

#elevator game #elevator ritual #reddit #nosleep #reddit nosleep

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debbstepps · 6 years ago

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Oof

I’m drowning in so many story ideas!!!!! I DONT KNOW WHICH ONE TO STAR AS MOST IMPORTANT AAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!

so anyway, since I haven't posted anything in a while, I’ll deviate from “Globalization”, and post a few shorts about my other stories I have barely worked on.

Enjoy, I guess. \../

Ps: sorry for any spelling mistakes and choppy writing, wrote this when I was in high school and did only minimal editing.

Once upon a time there was a very handsome adolescent.

And this handsome, stupid adolescent, lived in a palace, for he was a prince.

In this palace, where the handsome, stupid, lazy, adolescent lived, there was his mother, the Queen, the father, the King, and his younger brother and sister, which were twins, which were the prince and princess.

There were also the servants, maids, hand maids, butlers, kitchen staff, knights, guards, cleaning staff, stable staff for the horses, and the royal pets.

There were many other kingdoms that this narrator barely knows of. Which the prince, barely thinks about. The kingdom, which the handsome, stupid, lazy, unkept, adolescent dwells in, is the center (somewhat) and the most productive out of all the other kingdoms round about it. Very agricultural, conservative, religious, with every person looking out for the other.

There were forests, swamps, rivers, lakes, and ponds, a variety of wild animals which rarely attack the commoners, and other stuff which this narrator knows a lot about, but is too lazy to explain.

More details of the kingdom will come later, when the handsome, stupid, lazy, unkept, ridiculous, adolescent, does the unthinkable.

But back to the story…..

This adolescent was the next heir to the throne, but he could care less.

Sometimes this adolescent would pull pranks on the royal subjects for the sake of it because he was “sooo” bored. I mean, how could his parents subject him to such boredom? Math, physics, chemistry, English, biology, sociology, hieroglyphics, the list can go on! He couldn’t even play and have fun like the rest of his mates. Not like he had any.

“It just wasn’t fair” the snotty prince yelled to his butler.

“Why can’t I have a normal life like everyone else!?” he yells some more.

I internally sigh. Can he get even more spoiled? Anymore annoying? I mean, royalty and all, but really? If he really wanted to get back at his parents for breathing riches into his nostrils, he could give all he had to the poor. But then he’ll just say that it isn’t worth it. OKAY THEN, is what I would’ve said.

“How about this?” I suggest to him, earning his interest.

“How about I take you into the city to explore? Of course, I’ll have to accompany you because I don’t think you know how to brush your teeth by yourself” I say as a joke. The prince took it in another way.

“REALLY!!??” he exclaimed, “So I’ll get to visit my friends and meet new people- OH, I’ll even get to meet the priest and tell him how I really feel about his teachings instead of lying to his face- heck, I’ll get to lie in everyone’s faces.. HAHAHA”, he begins laughing more to the room than to himself, and I begin counting down the days of my death.

“Before we set off, prince, we’ll need to carry some luggage. Money, clothes, more money, soap, sponges, toothbrush….. more money, some garments for when it gets cold at night, and a hat to block the sun from your eyes….. and even more money” I start counting off the things on my fingers. I sneak a quick glance at the prince and behold, he’s staring out the balcony like a Disney princess, wondering when will his life begin.

I sigh, heavily.

Surely this wasn’t in the job description when I applied to this post. I mean, a butler was meant to attend to his master's needs, but this!? I feel like I’m babysitting a grown five your old.

“Butler, we mustn’t tell Father or Mother, or they’ll kill me gracefully, and murder you brutally” he whispers in a sing-song voice. Why does he sound happy?

“Of course your highness, I will make sure all the other staff, which you have taunted, will exercise self-control, and will try not to tell the king and queen that you have momentarily run away to seek vain freedom”.

The prince grins widely like he had not sensed the sarcasm dripping from my every word. I worry about his social skills in the outside world.

I check the time on my watch and tell the prince to start packing so we can have an early start in the morning. He nods his head before skipping to his closet. I watch him take out a feathery hat with weird designs and see him throw it in the pile of clothes he might consider taking with him on the trip. My worries intensify.

I steadily close the doors to his room and begin walking down the hallway. I look at all the paintings that are on the wall. Paintings of the royal family and their lineage, others of famous men who fought bravely in battles and wars, of woman who, when they had life and death in palms of their hands, decided to let most of the soldiers live, and many more.

My mind wanders. I begin reminiscing those days before I became the royal prince’s personal butler. It’s remarkable what can happen to you within 6 months of work. 6 months ago, I was on a job hunt, trying to find whoever can hire a scrawny teenager like myself. Although I knew that not many citizens in this kingdom can rely, or even trust on a teenager, let alone a black teenager, they should have at least considered.

Well, that’s what I would’ve said if I was still looking for a job, but now I’m glad that all those useless people turned me down. I have a job in the palace now. One they can never have, even if they tried hard enough.

I enter the staff resting room, where most of the maids and servants have come to relax, dreading the moment their masters will call them up. I bow slightly to them. They are my elders, even if I am in a higher position than them. They nod their heads in return.

The resting room is, surprisingly, spacious. A rectangular, stainless-steel table, is in the center of the room. Wooden chairs with cushions are stabled on either side of it. There is a gas cooker on the far end of the room, with tea and other personal refreshments. Brought in by the servants themselves. The floor is made of marble, one a commoner could hardly afford. I still find myself tip-toeing across it when I enter, careful not to leave marks or dirt. Sometimes, the Queen stumbles down here (and I say stumble because it’s once in a green moon that she does) to bring in some biscuits and teas from expensive stores. She thinks we are cut off from the outside world and such and have no idea what she does.

Silly Queen. Isn’t it from the outside world that you brought us from?

“Oh, are you on your mini break?” Shianne, one of the maids ask me. She has a caramel skin color, with bright brown eyes and curly eyelashes. Her hair was put into a big bun, quite messy looking too. She’s only two years older than me, but is married and has two kids. I’m still wondering why she married so young. Or how she does it.

“Well, after I saw my master pick out a horrendous hat to take with him on a trip, I’ve exiled myself, so I can still be called his butler” a hint of amusement evident in my voice.

The staff snicker at my remark, and I smile inside. I go and sit down near one of the dishwashing boys.

“Good day,” I greet.

“Good evening to you too,” one of them says smiling, “What is this trip the young highness is going to?” he whispers. The vents must carry a lot of noise, or, the highness is disgracefully loud.

“Well, this trip is to destroy his ego and get him off his high-horse, I presume. In reality, he says he’s bored and wants to do things that commoners do” I whisper smugly. By this time, all the boys are huddled around me, like I’m telling them the prince’s newest nightmare. Which, by the way, is what I do often when I have time to spare at the end of the day.

“Do the King and Queen know?” one asks.

“And what about the rest of the staff? The guards especially” another says.

“And who’s gonna cover for you? Certainly not I” a haughty voice jeers. I turn to the owner of it. Nelipot. Short cropped hair with an olive complexion. His caramel eyes hinted disdain. He had an overpowering aura surrounding him and we didn’t really get off on the right foot. I gave him a shrug.

“That isn’t my proble-“

“Oh yes it is!” he shout-whispers, if that makes sense.

“What happens if you two get caught wonderin’ in the middle of the night, and the king and queen ask where you’ve been goin’ to?” He pauses, wanting to let his words sink in before continuing (I made sure his words did not sink in),

“Sure, you might say the prince suggested it, oh- but wait- YOU suggested it did you not!? Then they’ll ask if something is wrong with your head. Why you kept it all hushed and such,” his bulgy arms cross over his chest as he stares down at me like I’ve been warned.

I have been warned.

I cannot care less.

I stand up from my spot on the bench when someone tugs at the hem of my suit jacket. I turn to see who is tugging on me, and I peer down at the dark-skinned, blonde haired boy. He’s one of the younger dishwashers. Caring to the breakfast, lunch, and dinner plates of the palace, and cleaning up after formal gatherings held in the ballroom. He’s only been here for two months but has already become the princess’s favorite. Probably because of his appearance.

His big green eyes stare up at me. Warning me, cautioning me about the trip the prince and I have unofficially planned. I bend a little, making sure our eyes are leveled, smile gently, and take his hands in mine.

“Don’t worry Chip, we will arrive at the village safely, even if the prince might make a show of it, and we’ll come back to the palace in one piece, though with a few scratches and bruises” I assure him. He smiles slightly at my intended humor.

“Well, I know. But with everythin’ Neli kept yapperin’ about, can’t help but worry… yah know?” his voice barely audible. I am sure going to miss his sanity when I’m away.

He wasn’t one for yelling or shouting, but when you do catch him doing such, just know its not for the better.

“Yeah, just ignore him. He thinks he’s boss, working in the palace earlier than all of us, but his words will mean nothing if he dares speak to the prince in such manner. Besides, I’m the royal Highness’s’ butler, anything he says or does, I have to follow, no matter how stupid it may be” I place my hand on his shoulder as a gesture of comfort, “Don’t worry, his plan will go up in flames and will be nothing but ruins” I don’t say in a matter-of-fact tone because everyone knows the prince always got his way. This won’t be any different.

He nods his head in understanding and stands up to attend other duties, probably to keep himself from worrying.

I stand to my full height and see the rest of the young men staring at me. Nelipot glares before retreating to wherever. I hope it’s the underworld.

Having realized that my break is over (wasted over people who worry too much), I go back the way I came, taking a different route this time because I don’t want to see the hopeless prince just yet.

Heaven must know what he’s doing, or packing.

I walk up the stone stairwell and enter a long corridor. Glass windows reflect the setting sun on the horizon. I begin to walk slowly, taking in the view.

The world looks so peaceful when viewed from big, glassy, windows.

“Indeed it does”, a voice says.

I stop in my tracks and turn my head to where the voice came from.

The King.

Did I say that out loud!!!?

Oh heavens above. Oh Marry, mother of Jesus. Oh good Lucifer, sent from hell. Oh mount Zion. Oh-

(When in troubles, you could always count on the bible)

“Your Majesty” I bow.

“Oh, don’t do that, it could result in back failure”, he raises me from my bowing stance and stands next to me.

I dare not look him in the eye.

“the sunset looks lovely this evening, almost giving us a last farewell, before something devastating happens”, the king mentions.

I flinch. I feel ants crawling all over me.

The damn vents must’ve carried the prince’s obnoxiously loud voice, all over the bloody palace.

“Jonathan,” the king says.

I finally look him in the eyes. His ocean blue irises never ceased to amaze me. He looks very young, acts very mature (with a playful side), and talks like one of the elders. No one can compare the first-born prince, heir to the throne, to his father. At least that’s what I think.

“Yes, your majesty?” I try not to show fear.

“Promise me that you’ll take care of my son, won't you? I know he can be a handful, a mouthful, and two-hands-full, but he is someone to admire, when he doesn’t speak like a spoiled dog” the King addresses.

My mouth hangs agape. He begins to laugh.

Maybe it was my shocked expression plastered all over my face. Maybe it was the-

No, it was just that.

“Jonathan, you act as if my choice of words against my son could’ve killed him. But you, you’ve been holding back so many gruesome words you would’ve used against him. I applaud your self-control.” He pats me on the shoulder before walking towards the way I had come from.

I stand there, flabbergasted, shocked, dumbfounded. Paralyzed would befit my posture.

Had I been an open book? Were my expressions so easily read? Does the prince know about my speech towards him? Oh hell, I’m in a nutcracker.

I begin to head to the prince’s room, hastily.

I wonder if he knew all along? Why hadn’t he dismissed me yet? Is he looking down on me?

I am standing near the prince’s bedside. He is currently in the bathroom, cleaning himself.

I stand aloof, thoughts holding races in my head. I stare down at my feet, feeling my eyesight becoming hazy and my mind losing consciousness.

Well, that’s what it feels like anyways.

Two fingers snap in front of my face, and I jump. Well, more like take a step back.

“Your Highness, I was just… uh just” I start tripping over my own words.

“Butler, whatever is the matter? Oh, did you have a run in with my father? You do realize that he is human right? No matter the status or role he is playing,” he shakes his head lightly, “all you servants and maids and such should always remember that”, he pats my shoulder before dragging himself to his bed.

I don’t do much, except internally scream.

Watching the young highness climb into bed to sleep, well, try to sleep, puts my thought at ease. I don’t have to see his face.

“Butler?” he calls out from underneath the covers.

“Yes?” I respond in a hushed voice. The silence in the room Is deafening. You’d think I would be used to this by now, having worked here for 6 months, but no.

“Tell me, when are we going to vacate this dreaded room and explore the unknown?” his voice muffled by the duvets.

“Hmm, all in due time, I suppose. Or whenever you feel like it”

“This is not fair. Shouldn’t you say yes to everything I say and ask of you?”

“Well, if everything you say and ask of me is stupid, I wouldn’t really say yes”

“Did you just call me stupid?”

“I called you numbness of mind and knowledge”

“That’s the same thing”

“I suppose”

The room goes quiet again. I can feel the prince’s eyes on me, staring.

I look to where the prince is, and lo and behold, he is staring at me.

His eyes are like his fathers. Ocean blue. Crystal blue. Piercing blue. Looking at me.

Boring holes into me. I stare back at him. My own, forest green eyes. They hold contempt, while the prince, mischievousness.

We hold this gaze for what seems to be like eternity.

“What are you staring at butler?”

“Someone who might make my hair turn gray faster than my age can manage” I retort.

The prince burst into laughter. I grin and take a bow.

The rest of the night resembles a baby smiling in its sleep, for no apparent reason.

#orphic #wip #shorts #dont know if ill continue this book #help

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crashdevlin · 6 years ago

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Holidays, not Holy-Days

Red Queen Chronicles Masterlist

Author’s Note: Originally posted to ao3 (This is an edited and improved version) Part Two of the Red Queen Chronicles!

Summary: Cassie Campbell brings her teammates and friends together for her first ever Christmas dinner. 2 aliens, an atheist, her boyfriend's ex-wife, her ex-boyfriend and an all-American lab rat worried about her mental health. What could go wrong?

Word Count: 8148

Pairing(s): Phil Coulson x OFC (Past), Clint Barton x OFC,

Story Warnings: 18+, HERE BE SEX!!! DON’T READ IF YOU’RE A YOUNG’UN!!!, kitchen sex, protected vaginal sex, oral sex (fem rec), identity issues, panic attack,

"Because, Clint, I know that at least two of us, probably three, have never had a Christmas dinner and Wanda hasn't had one since she was orphaned. You guys are my family and I really want everyone here. I've got this big old house to myself and I don't want that on Christmas. I know Nat's not busy. You're retired. You can't say 'no'."

"What about Laur-"

"I asked Laura. She wanted nothing to do with it. Apparently, she and the kids don't leave the house much around Christmas just in case Barney comes home. I think that's probably a real depressing place to be if he doesn't show, so come to Washington. Spend Christmas with your girlfriend and your friends."

Static came through the phone as Clint sighed. "Who is gonna be there?"

"Well, Pepper confirmed for her and Tony, but I'm gonna double check with him. I think I've caught Thor's attention, or at least Heimdall's, so I'll hear from him soon. I sent Steve a paper invite via snail mail a week ago, so I'm gonna call to see if he got it. Wanda and Vision both confirmed and Sam said he has to see what's going on with his family, but he would probably stop by. I'm gonna call Phil after I get off with you, invite him and his people."

"You gonna have enough food for all those people?"

"I'm making a goose, a turkey, and a ham, three kinds of potatoes, four casseroles, homemade rolls, store-bought rolls, cranberry sauce from scratch and 6 different kinds of pie. I have a chart to make sure everything is ready at the same time. I got this. Now, I just need you."

"Oh, tug at my heartstrings. Fine. I confirm for me and Nat. See you on the 22nd, babe."

"Love you, Hawkeye." She hung up and wiped her hand down her face. "Visit or call? Visit or call?"

Cassie sighed and hit the buttons on her landline to call Coulson. "Cassie. How's Seattle?"

"Rainy, but beautiful. Exactly what I expected. So... how's the... lack of hand?" She grabbed a mug and filled it with coffee.

"It's... bad. I'm having issues. My robotics guy is behind on making a prosthetic because our biologist disappeared and they were joined at the hip, but... is that why you called, Cass?"

"No, actually. Well, kinda. I know that the last several months have sucked for pretty much everybody and I'm thinking that we all need a bit of happy. I am hosting a Yule feast on the 22nd, and I'd like you and your A-Team to come."

"Yule Feast?"

"Yeah. I'm inviting a Viking God and a couple atheists, so I didn't want to go too religious on it. That's why I'm doing it early and calling it 'Yule'. It's gonna be great and I'd really like you and yours to be there."

"Even Bobbi?"

"Uh, yeah. Actually, I have a gift specially for her."

"Really? Aren't you dating Barton?"

"I am. Since before Sokovia, actually, since I know you wanna know. No, I developed a thing in my Stark Tech lab that I think screams 'Mockingbird'. I got Tony to agree let me give the prototype to her. If she has any complaints, it'll help me tweak it before any sort of production."

"So... you're calling to invite me and mine to Yule dinner?" There was silence for a few seconds, then Coulson asked, "Are you making sweet potatoes?"

"And sweet potato pie. Mac and Cheese casserole, mashed potatoes and those rolls I made on your birthday."

"What can I bring?"

"Just you and some presents."

"We'll be there."

"Great. See you in a few days." She turned off the house phone and took a drink of her coffee. "Call Tony," she demanded of her cell phone.

"You know who you called. Leave a message."

"The Boss is unavailable. Would you like to leave a message?" The Irish accent of FRIDAY came through the speaker.

"Oh, come on! FRIDAY, tell the man to answer his phone. Tell him I burned down StarkTech Olympia and the insurance guys are gonna be calling next."

"That's not funny." Tony's voice came through the speaker next.

"But effective, wasn't it, Boss?" Cassie asked, with a smile.

"What do you need, Campbell?"

"A vacation and a raise, but beyond that... Pepper RSVP'd for the two of you and I just wanted to make sure she even mentioned it to you before she did that."

"RSVP'd... to your little Christmas thing?"

"Right."

"Yeah. I told her to. We're good."

"Awesome. Everyone's gonna be here. Well, not everyone. Still can't seem to get a bead on Banner and he doesn't really seem like the Christmas type, but... Clint, Nat, Vision, Wanda, Sam, Phil and his crew and you and Pepper are definitely coming. I have a raven to Asgard-don't ask- and an invitation traveling USPS to New York for Steve. It's an actual paper Christmas card. Hallmark just says some things better than me."

"No. You just wanted to make Rogers feel at home. All those words you throw around, no one could say it better than you."

Cassie chuckled. "I got a blank snowman card and wrote inside it. You know me so well, Tony."

"Do you need me to bring anything? I mean, do you need me to tell Pepper we need to bring something?"

"If you want liquor, you have to bring it. I've been keeping a dry house. And... I know how you are about the holidays, so... that's what you should bring."

"All right. Next week. And StarkTech Olympia better be standing and ready for a walk-through when I get there."

"You're gonna make me give you a tour of the lab on Christmas?"

"The 22nd isn't Christmas. I don't even think it's Yule this year."

"Actually, it is. I looked it up."

"Uh-oh. You aren't getting into all that occultist weird stuff that Hitler got your daddy into, are you?"

"I'm insulted, Tony. Even as a joke, that's insulting. I was trying to be more accommodating for the aliens and agnostics on our team, all right? I'm still a Christian and I will be celebrating my savior's birth, likely alone, a few days later. This isn't about the Holy-day, this is about family."

"Yule isn't about family. It's about the God of the Sun dying and being reborn. It's kinda like Easter, without the fertility symbols."

"Oi, don't shit on my religion, Stark. Easter is not about the bunny or eggs, it's about Jesus becoming the Walking Dead. Just be here on Yule and bring booze. I have the feeling we're gonna need it." She hung up before he could and stretched her neck to relieve some of the stress.

****************************

Clint showed up the night of the 21st, calling forth a squeal from the superheroine. She wrapped her arms around him and kissed his cheek. "House smells like pie," Clint said.

"That's 'cause there's three pies in the oven."

"Three? Thought you were doing six?"

"Apple, pumpkin and sweet potato are in now. I've got a no-bake chocolate and a lemon meringue in the fridge setting and I did a pumpkin cheesecake yesterday. Bonus, I wanted to know if I was any good at pecan, so I made an extra pie."

"Wow. You got really into this, didn't you?" Clint asked, flicking a sprig of mistletoe hanging in the doorjamb between the foyer and the living room.

"I didn't have Christmas for twenty years and then, Phil was usually working on Christmas. This is the first time I've ever had a chance to do Christmas. I bought a whole bunch of ornaments and stuff. I've got a real freakin' pine tree in my living room. Real mistletoe that I had to buy through a florist. The dinner. I'm excited."

"How excited?" Clint asked, wagging his eyebrows at her.

"Are you asking for Christmas sex, because I am severely behind on my mise en place?"

"Your what?"

"Food prep. You know, giant meal tomorrow."

"And if I help you with your preparazione del cibo, you can come take a break and show me what you've done with your bedroom since I helped you move in."

"It's been months, Clint. You think we'll even make it up those stairs?" she asked.

"Love it when you turn the modesty off for me," he said, wrapping an arm around her and pulling her into a deep kiss.

She moaned into his mouth and tried not get pulled into the feeling of having Clint's hands on her hips again. She put her hands on his shoulders and pushed back from him firmly. "No. I... Clint. There's a lot to do still."

"And sixteen hours 'til the other guests come through that door. You said it, babe, it's been months." Clint brought his fingers up and began to unbutton her green cardigan. "This is adorable on you, by the way. Can we take it off for a sex... I mean, sec."

"Clint. What if the pies burn?"

He pulled the sweater down her arms and tossed it toward the counter. It landed perfectly, hanging from the corner of a slightly open drawer. "We don't even have to leave the kitchen."

"That's not very... sanitary," Cassie breathed out as Clint pulled her camisole top over her head and threw it over to hang with her sweater.

"You have seen my apartment in Bed-Stuy, haven't you?" Clint asked, turning her around and pushing her so that she was leaning over the counter. "How much do you think I care about sanitary? Thank you for wearing a skirt." He kissed the back of her neck as his hands glided down her legs to pull her skirt up around her hips and hooked his fingers in the band of her panties.

"There's really only one thing in this kitchen I've been dying to eat, Cass, and it's not in the oven."

"Oh. Don't be vulgar."

He pulled her panties to her feet and kissed his way up the back of her thigh. "You love it when I'm vulgar." He picked her left foot up and pushed it to rest on the counter. His tongue delved quickly into her as his left hand came around to rub her clit. His right hand dug into his back pocket and tossed a condom onto the counter. It landed perfectly on the back of Cassie's hand, as Clint continued his assault.

She ripped the foil open and handed it backward to Clint, who stood, pulling his jeans down and rolling the condom over his mostly-hard length. "Wasting no time, huh?"

"Hey, you're the one that's worried about pies. And I've been thinking about this since before I got on that plane. I'm more than ready enough. You need more foreplay?"

"God, no. Just fuck me, we can do this the right way after the guests leave."

"My thoughts, exactly." He lined himself up with her, putting his left hand on her shoulder and his right on her hip. He pushed the head of him into her, both of them closing their eyes at the sensation. He swiveled his hips forward until he was completely sheathed in her. "Did I mention how much I've missed you?"

"Missed me or missed this?"

"It can't be both?" He asked.

"Such a charmer," she whispered as he pulled back until he was just barely inside her. She bit her lip in anticipation and let her head fall forward as he began a fast-paced piston motion. "Fuck, Clint."

"Gotta visit more." Clint groaned as he attached his mouth to the junction where her shoulder and neck met.

"Oh, yes. Please. I need more of this in my life." She whimpered as Clint brought his left hand around to rub furiously at her clit.

"I'm gonna cum. You gonna cum with me?"

"Harder, Clint."

"Bossy," he breathed in her ear, but his next several pumps were harder and he pressed his fingers into her clit with much more pressure. As the muscles inside of her began to clench, Clint grunted his approval and emptied into the condom.

Cassie reached forward and grabbed several paper towels, as Clint pulled the condom off and tossed it into the trash. She handed the paper towels to him and reached down to pull up her panties. "I love you and that was great, but... I have to wash my hands and check on pies. Why don't you go put your bag in the bedroom?"

"I love you and that was great." He kissed her cheek and walked out of the kitchen, fattening his jeans.

*******************

Thor's arrival brought rain down on the house, harder than the normal Seattle drizzle, and made slush of the December snow. "Thor! A-and Sif!" Cassie said, pulling the door open. "I wasn't expecting you to bring Lady Sif."

Thor gave a huge smile as he passed through the doorway to greet Pepper, Clint and Tony. Lady Sif stopped in front of her and smiled. "I've heard much about you, Lady Cassie. Thor has regaled us of your warrior personality and your great intelligence. You'd do well on Asgard."

"Regaled you? Wha-"

"Yes, the Allfather and I both greatly appreciate the tale where Loki came to you disguised as one of your advisors and you caved in his chest with one great kick."

Cassie blinked at the giant woman. *The Allfather. Thor still doesn't know. Shit.* "The Allfather... that doesn't seem like something he'd care about."

"On the contrary," Thor said, placing a long, poorly-wrapped pole against the wall next to the tree. "Father enjoys hearing about you. He especially loves to hear about Ulysses Klaue's ship."

"Ah, yes! How you were able to redirect the witch's influence and break out of her hold while Thor and his companions were all stuck inside their minds. That you, a small Midgardian woman, had to carry the mighty Odinson to safety never ceases to amuse."

"It doesn't strike any of you as odd that Odin would care, at all, about what some Midgardian woman's doing?"

Thor clapped a hand on her back and smiled. "You are more than just a Midgardian woman. You are my friend and teammate and, though your marriage to my brother was short and involuntary, I consider you my sister."

"I believe it is your connection with Loki, his obsession with you, that spurred Odin's interest. He's ordered Heimdall report your actions weekly."

"And the ravens are watching me. That's how I got the message to you."

"Just Huginn," Thor answered.

"Yeah, I'm just gonna say it: you ever think Odin might be Loki in disguise?"

Sif and Thor looked at each other, seriously, for a moment before filling the foyer with loud laughter. "You did not tell me she was so adept at the art of jest, Thor!"

Cassie smiled, awkwardly, as Thor put his hands on her shoulders and walked her into the living room. "What's funny?" Clint asked.

"The absurdity that my brother might've gone back to Asgard, where he is a wanted man set to be imprisoned for the rest of his existence for crimes against the Nine Realms, and somehow took over Odin's life and position as King."

"That is funny. Even Loki isn't crazy enough to go back to Asgard," Tony said, a glass of suspiciously thin eggnog in his hand.

"What if he did it when you thought he was dead; before he even came back for me?" Cassie whispered.

Everyone in the room looked around as they realized she was serious. "Kid, where's this coming from?" Tony asked.

"Odin has taken an interest in her. My tales of her mightiness have made her an interest for him. She thinks this odd." Thor responded.

"You guys are right. It's absurd. Loki would never have made it to the throne room. Heimdall would've seen. He doesn't ever miss anything, right?"

"Exactly," Thor said, with a smile.

Cassie nodded and walked toward the door as the chime rang through the house. *Planted the seed. Nothing else I can do. Except admit that I've known since I was Joanna and I should've told them when I got back from Austria and Thor needs to go depose Loki from the Allfather's throne. Which will stall their trust in me, and rightfully so. Erg. Just not on Christmas, Cassie.* "Phil!" she said, with a smile as she opened the door. She wrapped her arms around him, then turned to the tall blond. "Bobbi, nice to see you up and about. How's the knee?"

"Better than the lung. Leg only hurts when I move."

"Lung hurts when you breathe. Gotcha. Well, I don't have any medical personnel here, but I've got several scientists and Nat and Clint might have some of those SHIELD un-approved pain killers that Phil's supposed to act like he's never taken because he's Director now."

"Uh-oh, Coulson. You sure you wanna introduce us to your (super young, by the way) ex? Might learn some stuff about you." A woman with wavy brunette hair and a black leather jacket said.

"'Skye', right? Wait, 'Daisy' now. Nice to meet you. Cassie. And yeah, young, but strong and awesome and mature for my age."

"You mean, 'our age', right? I mean, if we aren't the same age, then you can't be much older," Daisy started.

"That's not- our relationsh- She's young, but-"

Bobbi laughed. "Let's get inside before Coulson pulls out the whole 'Age ain't nothin' but a number' spiel."

"Ooh, or the 'she seduced me' argument," Daisy replied, as the women walked past the hostess into the foyer where they took off their jackets.

"More likely, the 'You know how hard it is to find someone who understands the job'," Bobbi said, disappearing into the living room.

"We didn't bring any presents. Except Coulson," a sad Scottish accent said as the skinny man who owned it stepped forward.

"That's okay. Got food for you, anyway, Fitz."

"How do you know us all?" Fitz asked, stopping at the doorway.

"I have cultivated an unusual and unexpected friendship with Nick Fury. He put your team together so he told me about you."

"You're friends with Fury?" Coulson asked, surprised.

"Yeah. I showed a little due respect and he showed it back." She pushed the men toward the living room and shut the door. "You know, Fury doesn't have a problem with me dating Clint."

"Probably because Barton isn't old enough to be your father," Natasha called out as they walked into the living room.

"Nat! When did you get here?"

"She walked down the stairs a few minutes ago," Pepper answered.

"Clint left the window unlocked, didn't he?"

Natasha gave her signature smirk. "You shouldn't keep pizza in your bedroom. You'll get bugs."

Cassie turned her gaze to Clint. "There's pizza in my bedroom?"

"I got hungry after you went to sleep. Amazing Nick's is open until 3 am."

"But why is the pizza in the bedroom?"

"The real question is, how'd you miss that when you woke up?" Daisy asked.

"I fell asleep on the couch 'cause I was still cooking. So, he got a pizza at 2 am and took it up to my room to eat."

"I like to be comfy when I'm overloading on carbohydrates and cheese."

"There better not be grease on my comforter."

"Hey, calm down! It's Christmas!" Clint said, with a smile.

"Oh, you got jokes, Barton, but we all know I can kick your well-toned ass, so go get the pizza out of my damn bedroom."

Clint chuckled. "Yes, ma'am."

Daisy and Bobbi watched as he bounced up the stairs, two at a time. "Wow. It's weird that you're the grown-up in your relationship. Was it like that with Coulson, too?" Daisy asked.

"Um... Phil and I were both, kinda, the grown-up when we were together. I was grown-up about the domestic stuff and he was grown about everything else."

"Which wasn't much. He wasn't around often," Natasha said, casting her eyes on the Director.

"Fury had me running all over the world, chasing dangerous tech, people and aliens. New York for Stark, New Mexico for Thor and Dr. Selvig. Hong Kong. Portland." Cassie gave a tight smile to the room at the mention of Portland, sitting down next to Pepper. Stark patted her hand as Phil continued. "I was busy, and Cassie knew that I was going to be away a lot. She knew what she was getting into."

"At, what, twenty? She knew what she was getting into?" Pepper chided.

"All right, back off of Phil a little. This isn't the season of shaming. It's the season of giving. And I have presents for most of you, food for everyone. Speaking of, I have to go check the turkey," Cassie said, standing up and heading for the kitchen.

"Need any help in there?" Bobbi shouted.

"No, no. I'm good for now. Might need help in a while but... ooh, actually, if you wanted, I have a crudité platter in here. You could come grab it." Cassie pulled the platter from the fridge and handed it to the gigantic blond woman. "Hummus, ranch, veggies. Nothing that should be offensive to anyone... except maybe the carnivore Asgardians. I don't know if they even eat vegetables."

"I'm sure it's fine. Hey, you know we're just taking the piss out of Coulson for the hell of it, right? It's nothing against you or your relationship. I'm sure it wasn't anything sordid."

"It was true love... for a few years. And then it wasn't." Cassie sighed, pulling open the oven.

"But you've got Clint now. He's a good man. And if you can deal with the infantile way he deals with life, you'll be fine."

"I know. And I can." She stood, baster in hand, and shut the oven door. She looked at Bobbi. "You ever get that feeling, where something is great... it's amazing and awesome and you love it, but something isn't quite right? It's just askew."

"Yeah. Sometimes."

"My whole life is like that. Everything is just a little off center. And I don't know why, so I question everything now... even good men."

Bobbi opened her mouth to say something, but the bell rang again, prompting Cassie to nod at her and walk toward the foyer. "Steve! Wanda and Vision! Hey! Welcome, welcome, and happy holidays!" She stepped out of the way to let the Avengers into the house.

"Happy Christmas!" Wanda said, hugging her.

"Fröhliche Weihnachten, meine Freundin." She gave the brunette a squeeze and turned to Vision with a smile. "Great to see you. I was afraid you'd think this Christmas, or Yule, stuff would be silly."

"Wanda explained the importance. I'd never detract from your rituals. I was, admittedly, a bit lost about what to bring."

"We didn't have much money, but we think you'll be happy with zem," Wanda said.

"I'm just happy you're here. Living room is straight through there. Everybody's already here."

"Sam said he'll be here for dessert," Steve said, closing the door. He looked around the hallway, decked out in reds and greens. "The lights out there are nothing compared to this. You went big on the decorations."

Cassie shrugged. "First Christmas."

"Really?"

"Does it surprise you that Hydra didn't feel the need to tell me about Christmas?" she asked as Steve took his blue coat off and hung it neatly by the door. "I learned about it while I was in the Fridge, through books and stuff."

"You've been out for almost five years, now, right?"

"No one to celebrate with. Fury always made sure Phil was out during the holidays... and after I moved to New York... no one to celebrate with," she repeated.

"I'm sure Nick didn't do it on purpose."

Cassie smiled. "Yeah... he did. He wanted Phil out and away from me as much as possible. Nick and I have discussed this. Anyway, Merry Christmas, Steve."

"Merry Christmas, Cassie," Steve responded, eyeing the mistletoe above her head. He leaned down and pressed his lips to her cheek. "Come on."

"All right, that's everybody except Sam, who won't be here before pie." Cassie walked into the living room and stood next to the tree, Steve leaning against the doorjamb. "So, we can do presents before or after the feast. I'd recommend before, though, 'cause who wants to open presents when they're fighting a tryptophan nap?"

"Break out the presents. That big one, there, that's for me, right?" Tony asked, pointing to a large flat present.

"Actually, yes. Were you shaking gifts while I was out of the room?" she asked, handing the gift to him. He ripped the paper off to reveal a mosaic picture of Iron Man made of thousands of pictures of Tony. "I had a little time while waiting for things to finish at work, so I came up with this. Do you like it?"

"This is... amazing. Look, it's me.... made out of me," Tony said, turning the frame so everyone could see it.

"You had to play to his ego, didn't you?" Pepper joked.

"I knew what he'd like. Okay, so.... Pepper, here you go. Clint, babe. Natasha," Cassie said, handing wrapped boxes to everyone as she said their names. "Now, open them one at a time. I wanna see your faces as you open them. Pepper, you first."

Pepper smiled and tore into the box. "Oh, my. Did you make this?" she asked, pulling up a teal knit scarf.

"Yeah. I tried to make as many of the gifts as I could."

"Where did you find time to learn to knit?" Phil asked.

"Um... I learned to knit a few years ago. I was working on socks... and a blanket." She looked down, then back up with a big smile. "I was gonna do a sweater for Vision, but I decided against it. Natasha, yours next."

Natasha looked down at the long box in her lap, then ran her finger along the end of the paper and slid the box out. Inside was a knife, almost a foot long from end to end. The Russian smiled slightly as she pulled it from it's sheath. "Fallkniven A1 survival blade. 6.375 inch blade, 11 inches because it's full tang. Beautiful, perfectly balanced... this is amazing. Thank you."

"You don't already have one, do you?"

Natasha shook her head. "No. I don't. Thank you."

"Clint." Clint's box was long and when he opened it, a shiny, purple leather quiver greeted him. "I mean, it's obviously not for Tactical work, but... I like it."

"She knows your favorite color? We were married for two years before I knew your dirty secret." Bobbi seemed offended.

"Hey, there's nothing wrong with a man liking purple. I just don't tell anyone because some people disagree with me about that."

"That might be my fault. His first suit was all purple and blue, with a big mask. I told him he looked like a big, gay circus freak," Natasha responded.

"Mostly right," Bobbi responded.

"Seriously?!" Clint glared at the gymnast and the ballerina, before leaning forward to kiss Cassie. "I love it. I'm gonna use it at the farm everyday."

Cassie smiled, a blush creeping across her cheeks. She cleared her throat and walked to the tree, grabbing another object that definitely looked like a picture frame, albeit much smaller than Tony's, and handing it to Wanda. Wanda smiled and pulled open the wrapping paper. Her face dropped into a sad look as tears began to form in her eyes. Vision put a hand on her shoulder as she hugged the small canvass to her.

"Okay, knitting, I get, but when did you learn to paint?" Phil asked, deeply impressed by the detail in her painting of Pietro.

"I got the basic lessons from this little old lady in Hohenheims. She was painting a mural of the Nativity on the wall of Father Nathan's office and I just watched and learned for a while. I work on it when I have time."

"How do you have so much time? You work sixty hours a week at the lab and you go to school. When are you painting and knitting and making mosaics of Tony?" Steve asked, crossing the living room and picking up the painting to examine it as Wanda set it on the couch and hugged the artist.

Cassie smiled. "I make time for my family." She grabbed a small box and handed it across to Coulson, who shook it.

Phil pulled the wrapping off, revealing a small plastic box. He flipped the top off and gasped, "Are these-"

"Mint and vintage. The guy tried to sell me reproductions, but I could tell the difference. I've seen the real thing. I heard what Fury did to yours and I knew it must've broken your heart once you got back from TAHITI."

"These must've cost a fortune!" Phil whispered, flipping carefully through the cards.

"Well, after I caught the guy trying to cheat me, I pulled up some footage of Sokovia on my phone and showed him that I, you know, could put the hurting on him, he gave me a good deal." She smirked as she handed a box to Bobbi.

"Are you sure you wanna give me a present?"

"I'm sure. Go on."

Bobbi tore the package open and pulled out two batons and two bracelets. "Do these... go together?"

"Yeah. The, uh, the bracelets snap on and activate and that way, you can throw your batons and the magnetic pull between the bracelets and batons will bring them right back to your hands."

"That's amazing!" Bobbi exclaimed, testing out the balance of the batons. "These... if they can do what you say... when I get back in the field..."

"If," Coulson responded, still looking at his cards, mesmerized.

"It does! And you will get out in the field again. Okay, who's left? Steve! That box," she said pointing to a big box next to the tree.

He leaned down and ripped open the box, pulling out a stack of albums. "'Music Through the Decades'."

"Starts on the ‘50s and goes on through now. I also added a few albums that I really like. Green Day is real good and Nirvana."

"If there's not any Sabbath in there, then what's the point?"

Cassie smirked at Tony. "No 'Iron Man' but I'm pretty sure 'Crazy Train' is on one of those vinyls."

"This is great, Cassie. Thank you. And thank you for... picking vinyls."

"Of course. They're coming back into vogue, so it's easier to find them."

"Everything old is new again," Clint mumbled.

Cassie giggled before turning to Thor. "I'm still working on yours. It was a tall order and I thought I could get it done before now but I... just haven't had time. I'm working on a communication device that will work between Midgard and Asgard, so you can call Jane or we could call you. Not everyone on the team has Heimdall and Huginn watching them."

"A tall order? I assume this means a difficult thing and yes, that would be a 'tall order'. Even Asgard doesn't have such a device."

"If anyone can do it-" Clint started.

"I can. But if I don't care to try, Cassie's got you," Tony said, taking a drink of his nog.

"I'll figure it out. Promise."

"Wow. She's an amazing gift-giver," Daisy mused, taking one of Bobby's batons and tossing it in the air.

"Yeah. Now it's her turn. Grab a gift." Natasha pointed at the tree.

"Allow me." Thor volunteered, grabbing the poorly-wrapped pole as Sif handed her a pair of gloves.

Cassie looked between the Asgardians in confusion. "I need gloves to open my present?" she asked. They just nodded, smiling, as the SHIELD agents looked up, nervously. She pulled the gloves on and looked down.

"That's not..." Phil set down the cards and stood, looking to Thor as he handed the pole to Cassie.

Cassie ripped the paper down and gasped as she was met with a bright silver staff, etched with Asgardian runes. "Oh, my. This is beautiful."

"That's a Berserker Staff. Nobody touch it," Daisy warned.

"Are you sure that's a good gift for-" Phil started, looking worried.

"She is mighty. She can handle the Berserk." Sif answered.

"Okay, somebody explain this one to me. Berserker Staff?"

"Cass, it's, uh, an Asgardian weapon. It gives you a massive dose of adrenaline and then, it pulls on all of your worst memories to give you a rage like you've never felt before. It's supposed to be really good in battle, but you can ask May... it's pretty horrible."

"She is mighty, son of Coul. She pulled herself from the dream this witch created when even Thor could not. If there were ever a mortal strong enough to handle the Berserker staff, it is she," Sif responded.

Cassie looked down at the staff on her lap in wonder. "Horrible but really good in battle. It's the Hulk of alien weaponry. Thank you, Thor, so much. I know this must be a huge deal, to give a Midgardian one of these."

Thor smiled his bright white smile again. "You are not just a Midgardian. You are my sister. It is no huge deal, Lady Cassie."

"I don't know if she can handle-" Bobbi started.

"On the May-to-Ward scale of handling shit, where would you place her, Coulson?" Daisy asked.

"Well, I... think that's a question for Barton. 'Cause she didn't really have any rage when I was with her, so I don't know how she deals with it."

Cassie stood as Clint opened his mouth to answer. "How about that's a question for me. I deal with my considerable rage just fine. I became a superhero with it. I don't dwell on it, but I use it, every time I fight. If that's what this thing does, then good. And don't ask my ex-boyfriend if I can handle something, Daisy." She set the staff against the wall and smiled at Clint. "Your turn, babe."

Clint grabbed a box from under the tree and a Christmas card from the mantel over the fireplace. "Box is from me; card is from Katie."

"Ooh, the other Hawkeye sent me a gift? She's never even met me."

"She insisted."

"When do I get to meet Miss Bishop?" Cassie asked, opening the card.

"Uh... sometime when Bobbi and Nat aren't around. Too many of my important women in one place... three of you makes me nervous, four would kill me."

"'I know how stressful working with Barton can be, I can only imagine how dating him must kill. De-stress on me. Merry Christmas.' Holy shit. This is a wristband for Aphrodite Day Spa. This is the most amazing spa in central Washington. It's several thousand dollars for an all-inclusive wristband. I feel bad, now. I didn't get anything for her."

"Don't worry. I've told you her daddy is rich, right? What do you get the hero who has everything?"

"Wow." She set the card down and opened the box. "Oh, my. Is this a real Henkel?"

"Euroline. That's the one you wanted, right?" Clint asked.

"I... barely mentioned that I liked it. This is... awesome."

"He got you a kitchen knife? Lame," Tony muttered.

"A ZWILLING J.A. Henkel chef knife. This is, like, the filet minon of chef's knives." She defended. "Thank you, Clint. You are amazing."

"I think we should probably go next. 'Worst for last' is not the way, you know?" Wanda said, grabbing Vision's hand and each grabbing their gifts. Cassie smiled and opened the box Wanda handed over. "I know you spent a bit of time in Austria. Thought you might want to have a bit of Europe to eat."

"Hey! Mozartkugel!"

"What the hell is Mozartkugel?" Tony asked.

"It's pistachio marzipan and nougat covered in dark chocolate. It's amazing. Helga got me addicted before I could even pronounce 'Mozartkugel'. Thank you! How'd you know?" Wanda looked down, sheepishly. "You took it from my head. That's okay. Thank you."

Vision handed her a small box, which she quickly opened, pulling out a small ceramic Santa figurine. "Aww. It's cute! Thank you, Vision." He nodded at her.

"In the vein of 'let us not leave worst for last', me next," Pepper said, pushing a card into her hands. "It's just a gift card."

"To... Sephora? High-end make up. You rock, Pepper. I was just telling Clint that I need to learn how to do my makeup."

"And I was telling her she doesn't need it."

"Well, that's a thing Barton does well," Bobbi said to Natasha, who just nodded.

Cassie smiled at Barton and thanked Pepper. Steve looked sheepishly at the group. "I, uh, feel pretty horrible about my gift. All these great gifts and... I went practical with mine."

"An umbrella is very practical," Vision said, causing everyone to cast their eyes down.

"An umbrella. For Seattle. I get it. Cute, practical. Just like you, Steve," Cassie said, with a big smile.

"All right. My turn," Tony said, handing her a large jewelry box. "It was my mother's."

Cassie was breathless as she looked down at an Art Deco necklace with an opal and two large diamonds set into a platinum pendant. "Tony... you can't... I can't."

"Pepper doesn't do opal," Tony said, pulling the necklace from the box and holding it up to her neck. "It's gonna look great on you."

"But this was your mom's."

"My mom would have loved you. She was a strong woman, too, you know. Had to be, to put up with my father's bull. Look, I'm not wearing it and I've got two important women in my life and one of them doesn't do opal."

"He really wants you to have it," Pepper whispered, encouragingly.

"But, this is..."

"You always argue when I try to give you stuff. You should know it's futile, by now," Tony said, clasping the necklace together behind her neck and stepping back to marvel at how it looked on her. "Yup. I was right. Hangs just right."

"Here," Natasha said, pulling a bow out from behind the couch and handing it to Cassie. "It's a compound, not a longbow, but compounds are easier to learn on. Or so the guy at the shop told me."

"Wow, thanks so much." Cassie looked around and smiled. "Well, if that's everything, turkey should be-"

"That's not everything. Coulson brought something," Fitz said, walking out of the room.

Phil nodded and walked away, grabbing Cassie's hand and pulling her out of her house and into her front yard. "So, I remember how much you liked LOLA and how much you enjoyed that motorcycle run we did from Malibu to San Fran, so I had Mack and Fitz put together this..." He opened up the back of the black van they'd arrived in, revealing a Harley Sportster. "It's an '03 XL 1200. Still got the endorsement on your license?"

"You... motorcycle?" She was dumbfounded.

"Not just a motorcycle. You think he'd have us work on a regular motorcycle?" Fitz asked as Coulson rolled the bike out of the van. "Well, Mack, maybe, but not me."

"Fitz is the guy who made our stealth tech work," Coulson said, proudly. "And he made quick work of the science that makes LOLA hover. Meet HARLEE. Hover Aircraft Requiring a Little Extra Effort."

"That's a horrible name," Clint commented.

"It's better than his first idea. Wanted me to figure out a way to make the acronym PHIL," Fitz responded.

"Oh, like LOLA was named after his first love," Daisy said with smile.

"This is amazing, Fitz. Did you do the whole thing?"

"Well, Mack did a lot of the work on the... the normal motorcycle parts, but the... additional bits were all me," Fitz replied, leaning down to examine his work on the HARLEE.

"This is amazing," Cassie repeated, hugging the Scotsman, who stiffened. "Thank you, Fitz."

"Thank him? Where's my thanks?" Coulson asked.

"How much help did you give the poor overworked Leopold Fitz?" Cassie asked, releasing the man and turning to the SHIELD director.

Coulson lifted his prosthetic hand. "I couldn't help much with this."

"Oh, has he been using that as an excuse since Mack cut it off?" Natasha asked.

Bobbi, Daisy and Fitz all nodded. Cassie laughed. "Thank you for thinking of it, Phil. I love it! Now, let's get inside, it's freezing out here. Let's go eat some turkey!"

Steve smirked. "I'm fine in the cold. Mind if I stay back, appreciate your present?"

"All right, but don't go becoming a Cap-cicle again." Cassie smirked as she ushered everyone else into the house.

Steve grabbed Clint's arm and pulled him away from the door, close to the Harley and forced him to bend to look at the bike. "She's not sleeping."

"Yeah? How'd I sneak a large 3-cheese past her at 2 am, then?"

"There's no way she had time to do everything and still get sleep, Clint. She was either exhausted from her insomnia, or she took something to make herself sleep."

"Drugs?"

"Lorazepam. That's what Banner gave her when she came back from Austria."

Clint pulled back, standing. "How do you know that?"

"Because I was worried." Steve stood, too. "When she came back from Austria, she should've been rested. Happy. But she wasn't. She was exhausted, I could see it when you walked in, so I went to Banner after you and Natasha debriefed me and she was passed out in his lab. Bruce told me that he'd given her anxiety meds that let her sleep. He told me that she'd been having nightmares, terrors that persisted until she saw Dr. Garner."

"So, what, you think she's dreaming of Loki again?"

"I don't think she was dreaming of Loki before, Clint. What did she learn from that first session with Doc Garner?"

"That she wasn't evil like she thought."

"And the nightmares stopped. It wasn't Loki that caused her insomnia in Austria. Heck, she dealt with a Loki dream in enough time to pick me up and carry me off that ship in Africa. So, what could possibly be causing her insomnia now?"

Clint looked down, thinking of the plane ride to Sokovia. Wanda had gotten her to admit that she was afraid of whatever pieces of her were leaking. If anything was keeping her awake at night, that would be it. "She's fine, Cap. Don't worry about her," he lied as he turned away.

Steve watched as Clint walked into the house. "Fine. I'll talk to her about it."

As he walked into the dining room, Cassie held up a postcard. "So, I got this a few days ago, wanted to share it with you. Postcard, no return address, it looks like it's just blank, but... run a black light over it... Bam! QR code." She pulled her phone out and scanned the invisible code. "When scanned, it brings us to a far corner of the Dark Web housing just one video."

"Merry Christmas, guys," a familiar voice called out from her cell. "From scenic all-points nowhere. As you can see, but not enough to determine my location, I'm back doing what I should always be doing. I'm helping people, I'm not hurting anyone. I haven't had an incident since Sokovia and I'm gonna keep it that way."

Cassie paused the video as Steve sat down in the empty seat next to Natasha. "Despite the next part... I've analyzed it, of course, but I'm sure some of you will want to try it yourself."

"Please, stop looking for me. I can't be an Avenger, anymore. I can't come back because then I'd have to be Him and... I can't lose control again. Please, let me be. Merry Christmas, Avengers, and have a great New Year."

Natasha reached across Clint and snatched the card away from Cassie. "Did you analyze the paper stock?"

"I wanted to leave something for you to do, Natasha. Merry Christmas," Cassie said, walking away from the table to the kitchen. She returned with the turkey platter on one arm and the ham platter on the other. Steve stood and followed her into the kitchen as she grabbed the dishes carrying the sides. He stacked what was left onto his arms and carried them to the table behind her. "Thank you, Steve. Such a gentleman."

She walked to the head of the table and smiled at everyone. "I really wanna thank you guys for coming. You know, this is first Christmas... for a couple of us, and I..." She cleared her throat as tears started to sting her eyes. "I am so blessed to have you all. I've never had a family. Phil was the closest thing... And now, I have a... feast full of people who wanted to spend the holiday with me. I finally have people to share my life with and I could not be happier."

Clint reached out and took her hand in his, stroking his thumb across the back of it, reassuringly. "Anyway, thanks. Um, let's eat," she said, picking up a carving knife and a fork and leaning forward to cut into the ham.

"What, no Grace?" Tony smirked.

"Religious dinner shall be had at a later date." As she sliced into the meat, a flash of memory hit her. A man tied to a chair as a knife sliced through his thigh. His eyes clenched tightly in pain as he ground out 'Patrick Mackenzie, SHIELD level 5'. Cassie dropped the fork to the platter, her fingers tightening around the knife handle.

"You okay?" several guests chorused.

She blinked and cleared her throat. "Yeah. Yeah, I'm fine. Just emotional. Somebody wanna- Wanda, stay out of my head," she instructed as she set the knife down and slipped away from the table.

Phil took over cutting the ham and Clint pulled the turkey into arm's reach, as Steve excused himself and followed the hostess. He knocked, lightly, at the bathroom door. "Hey. You all right?"

"I'm fine," she croaked.

"You're crying." It was a guess, but not a particularly hard one.

"Well, it's an emotional day."

"Are you sure it's that? Are you sure this isn't more of whatever's keeping you up at night?"

"You know, I told Wanda to stay out of my head, I figured it went without saying for the rest of you."

"Come on, Cassie. Talk to me." The lock clicked and Steve pushed in, locking it back behind him. She was sitting on the sink, eyes already red and puffy. "What's wrong?"

"Me. I'm wrong." Steve stood silently and waited for her confession. "I... I'm remembering."

"And that's not a good thing?"

She shook her head. "I'm remembering Hydra. I'm remembering being Vierhundert Zweiundfünfzig. I'm remembering who I was with them. I think I hurt people, Steve, maybe even killed."

Steve placed his hand firmly on her shoulder. "Cassie, it's-"

"Don't patronize me, Steve. Don't tell me it's okay because it's not okay," she snapped.

"It's not okay. But mostly, it's not okay because of how it's affecting you." Steve reached his free hand into his pocket and pulled out a handkerchief, sweeping it across her cheeks. "Whatever you did when Hydra had you, that wasn't you."

"You don't understand. If... if I remember that, if I remember who I was... doesn't that make me her?"

Steve sighed, pulling her down from the sink. "I think that's a question for Doctor Garner. Have you talked to him about this?"

She shook her head. "He was on vacation and... he hasn't answered my calls since he got back. He's busy helping Phil with the whole... Inhumans thing."

"And Fury? He must know who you were when he grabbed you from Hydra. Did you try him?"

"He told me not to ask. Said I wouldn't like the answers."

"Nick's never been big on questions. Look." Steve pressed the handkerchief into her palm. "You have people, you know. What you were saying about having family... you should talk to them. If there is a group of people who knows how to deal with... bad pasts and fuzzy memories, it's us. You aren't wrong. You're perfect the way you are."

Cassie nodded and smiled, slightly. "Thanks. Let's go eat."

***********************************

As they watched everyone get into their cars, Cassie leaned her head on Clint's shoulder. She could tell by his protective and comforting stance that he knew something was wrong, but he wouldn't ask. He was great that way. "Merry Christmas, Cassie."

"Merry Christmas, Clint. You gonna stay for a couple days?"

"Of course. Long as you want me here."

"I love you. Wanna go in and call Laura, see if Barney ever showed?"

"Yeah. Come on." Clint turned and pushed her through the door.

KITCHEN SINK TAGS @heyitscam99 @wonderlandfandomkingdom @unlikelysamwinchesteronahunt @mrs-meghan-winchester @henrymorganme @lonely-skys @allykat2108

#cassie writes stuff #avengers fanfiction #red queen chronicles #clint/ofc #ofc #christmas fic

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astorytellerforthatgirl · 6 years ago

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Who is Maine Mendoza for this Storyteller?

Maine is just a simple celebrity for me as I watched her first in July of 2015. Few months after that, I started venturing in my inconsistent freelance career. I’m a home-based content writer submitting my outputs through email or uploading in a Wordpress admin account. I’ll make sure at 12:00, I have to watch Eat Bulaga to have a glimpse of her. As the days passed by, I just find myself laughing and smiling at the slapstick comedy and funny antics of her silent character relying on Dubsmash.

I did not know it was a point of no return of my fangirling on Maine.

Being in a fandom is not new to me. I was an active UAAP vball fan before to the point I would even watch highschool vball games to know who are the prized bluechip recruits all UAAP teams want to have in their program. I made my Twitter account almost a decade ago to follow the Gosiengfiao sisters (Alodia and Ashley) to interact with them via tweets. Also, through Twitter and other socmed sites, I got to be in a fangroup of Pinay American Idol finalist Thia Megia and saw her in person. Through social media too, I met other fans of our Olympian Yan Lariba and met her in a friendly encounter.

I know the good side and also the bad side of fangirling. I’ve been into useless arguments with online trolls and I admit their words get to me…until I just learned to be indifferent and not mind it at all. Then here comes Maine. I was hesitant to be a vocal fan because of her immense popularity but again she just have that “something” in her that I want to root for.

I started profiling Maine like how I used to in the other celebrities I look up to her public accounts like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Ask.fm and lastly her blog….

MAY BLOG SI MAINE!!!

MGA KAPITBAHAY MAY BLOG SI MAINE!!!

Yes, I was surprised to know she has a blog!! My writer heart is leaping with joy!! That was the conviction I told myself it would be easier to fangirl for her since writing is my core and passion.

I started following her and knowing more about her like how she is close to her family, the rumors she went to PBB Auditions, and her other past Youtube uploaded videos. But I was still a silent fan back then since I am clueless how to handle a barrage of comments from other fans once I begin to be vocal. I am happy as a silent fan until the inevitable thing happened…

Maine released her Open Letter in November 26, 2017.

Yes, I won’t forget how I cried after reading it and not enjoying the ice cream I am eating on a Sunday afternoon. I began to connect the dots. I wanted to hate some people and wish them to have double, triple the pains of whatever Maine felt. I do want to start expressing my support for her to prove there are still like me…”isa sa sampu” fans of Maine.

The problem though is I am still at a down moment by that time. I failed to handle the pressure of a teaching career. I love the kids inside the classroom but the paperworks overwhelmed me. Attendance, quizzes, understanding the lesson plan, submitting other requirement, etc---those did not fare good for me. I just realized I only want to be with the kids even if I am with them 6-7 hours straight, I don’t get tired at all. I found out I like to be a public speaker but I cannot cope up with the tremendous responsibilities of the teacher.

Being an overthinker, I felt I failed again not myself but my family and everyone who believed in me. I was down for months and clueless what to do next. I even think if there would still be a company or business owner who would take risk with me seeing my resume with months of no work as I rested after resigning from the teaching post.

I thought of how I am a burden again and have no direction in my career, whereas my batchmates might already be settling down with their partners, finishing their master’s degree, or exploring more of what they can do abroad. There I was, clueless and do not know again where to start. I am just thankful I have a supportive family and set of friends who waited until I got tired of being afraid and overthinking.

There were even days I wish I can just sleep forever and not wake up to those clueless and empty days again. I was also telling God that time I wish I was the one He took instead of my papa who passed away in 2007 due to an illness. Because my papa would be able to help my family instead of my inconsistency, fears, and overthinking. I was in that bargaining stage and I am too blinded, hurt, and tired to see my own worth and potential.

In those dark times, I would pray for a direction…for an enlightenment. Angels in the form of my friends and my family gave me words to fight back. It was enough to hold on….until I saw an excerpt from Maine’s book through an online article of cosmo.ph promoting her book:

“Things may go from bad to worse and you might feel like it’s never going to change, but believe me when I say it will get better. Everything will be all right, I promise you. We may have our own different battles, but remember there is only one God. He is always looking down on us wherever we go and whatever obstacle we face. You may currently be in a lot of pain, but you never know what God has in store for your future.

Marami pang magagandang bagay ang mangyayari sa buhay mo. Magtiwala ka. Kapit lang, laban lang.

P.S. If you are looking for a sign on whether you should still hold on or give up, this is it. Hold on tight, my dear. Don't you ever give up; never ever give up. “

I cried and smiled after reading it. “Ikaw talaga Lord ha, si Maine pa pinadala Mo rin para sabihin kaya ko pa.” The darker those moments are for me, the brighter are all the Bearers of Light shone in my life. I begin to see more how my mama is patient with me, how my brothers would ask what do I want to eat or where do I want to go, friends who would tell me they will meet me anywhere I wish to be…and that excerpt from Maine’s book.

So I told myself: May laban pa ako. Isang subok pa.

It took me until January to gather all my guts. I started editing my resume. I came back to my freelancing career by looking for homebased jobs. It was also the time I just thought of blogging for Maine. I was still doubting if I am ready to be a vocal fan…but I know in my heart if God is telling me to do something even if I am still scared or doubtful of it.

I posted my first entry about Maine on this tumblr account. What comes next are series of unexpected blessings coming in my way…I did not look for them but the opportunities found me instead. Here are some of them:

(a) Got a DM asking if I can write for Clairedelfinmedia.com after they read my blog about Maine and Nadine parallelisms

(b) Got invited twice to Maine’s bday party by generous fans. First is when I told her she is a Bearer of Light and we are her 10th heartbeat in the #EnchantressMaine23. Second is when I co-host in the #DearMaine bday event.

(c) An anonymous fan who works abroad gifted me a Microsoft Surface Tablet just because she is thankful for my support for Maine.

(d) Meeting some fans who are as level-headed and as classy like Maine I felt I attended a business conference instead of a fan event.

(e) Getting back on my feet again to find the direction in my career.

Also, I am grateful my mama is a silent fan of Maine. You see, I am already in my late 20s but she treats me like a pre-teen kid and I find it difficult to ask permission to go to different places and stay late. Kung pwede 6pm sa bahay na ako at may number si mama ng lahat ng kasama ko para mapanatag siya. So I was surprised it was easy for me to ask permission going to Maine’s bday event even if I come home late at evening. As my mama said, “May swerteng dala sayo si Maine, puntahan mo lang pag meron.”

Of course, going back to my freelance career is not as smooth as what I expected. Rejections and no follow-up interviews came, some would even ask me to stop writing for them and they would just pay me for the weeks I wrote, or I have already written an article then suddenly my contact person said the client forgot to ask for the specific writer and that isn’t me.

It was still difficult but I am grateful to find this new courage, thanks to God’s constant faithfulness in my life and to all my Bearers of Light. In 2018 too, I found CCF, a Christian church whom I am comfortable with in sharing my flaws and mistakes. They focus more on God’s grace, justice, and mercy for everyone than other close-minded religious people or groups who condemn sinners.

Thanks to Maine too, I started to try new things which I still hesitated before. I remembered reading her IG post on her skydiving experience. She encouraged us to try things out even if we are still scared. In 2018, I tried acting workshop and auditioned in a production house for a voice-over artist. I even tried if I could be a female reporter in an FM station. Although these things haven’t yet prospered for me, I am happy to try it out and see what else I can try aside from writing.

At present, I invested in a copywriting module and joined an uplifting and supportive Filipino community of freelance copywriters in a Facebook group. I am determined to venture into copywriting because it is parallel to my passion in storytelling and writing. The process of improving myself excites me. I am a homebased content writer (as of this time) who still have a lowpay rate but I am enjoying the flexibility of my time. Plus, the company I work for recently gave me incentives and gift certificates.

Going back to one of the dark times in my life and just want to give up, God sent His angels in different forms to remind me I still have to fulfill His purpose, His story, and His plans in my life. He intended to break my heart and dreams so He can form it with a new one. In those times, God chose Maine too to tell me I can and I will be able to do it with God’s help.

This is just a fraction of what Maine did for me. I am more than thankful and will always support her even in the future that she is a private citizen and enjoys that under-the-radar life away from the fame and attention of public.

Salamat talaga Maine sa lahat lahat!

Bearer of Light, please keep on radiating!

God rewarded your sacrifices and good heart.

Embrace the genuine happiness you have now.

#Maine #maine mendoza

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