#or befriended both of them for double meals each day

[clumsiestgiantess]

Chapter 16 of the Other-world Universe. Girls kissing? More likely than you think. Girls having a hard time moving on in life after traumatic events? Even more likely then that.

All chapters linked here

(A little bit of spicy stuff in this one; just some more passionate kissing now that they’re together and all)

[The smallest sensations]

Unfortunately, I didn't get much sleep even with Erica off my shoulder.  I just couldn't.  Every time I got close to dozing off, I'd get a pang of fear that somehow she had been taken again.  Then I'd get up and double check the cliffside.  Erica was always there, but I still checked every time.  Sleep did get the better of me eventually, and I was out like a light.  However, the moment the sun shone over the horizon, I was woken by the rapidly brightening sky.  All in all, I probably got two or three hours of sleep if I combined all the little naps I managed to snatch between anxious surveillance.

As the new day dawned, I continued my watch over the ruins.  There wasn't a soul in sight.  I wasn’t sure wether to be sad or relieved about that.  Once my morning scouting duties were complete, I made myself breakfast with the new box.  A plate of freshly made waffles and still sizzling bacon appeared at my very thought of them.  Wow, I really could’ve had this the whole time.  A few minutes later, Erica awoke, no doubt aroused by the wafting smell of my conjured breakfast.

Sleepily, she wandered over to the cliffside next to me.  "Can I have some of that?  It smells delicious."  I nodded, using one box to create the food and another to shrink it.  Balancing the tiny plate on my fingertips, I handed it off to Erica.  "Mmm.  No offense, Alexis, but I think the box makes better food than you do."  I chuckled and finished off my first decent meal in the other-world.  "I would take that into offence, but I have to agree with you."  As she smiled up at me, I couldn't help but wonder what was running through her head.  Surely anyone from her world would call her insane for even so much as befriending me, and yet, she'd had the courage to try the first kiss.  I was still baffled by the fact that she would rather live out in the ruins with me than in the secret little town I'd discovered.

After breakfast, we dug through the remains of the mansion.  Erica insisted there wasn't anything left worth keeping, but I proved her wrong after digging up her old dresser.  Most of her clothes had been mangled in the collapsed walk-in closet.  However, there were a few older pieces still laying clean in the drawers.  "Finally!  I can wear my own clothes!" Erica cried as she yanked open the first drawer.  "Ok, I take back what I said.  Maybe there are some useful things in there."  She ducked behind one of the larger portions of the house that was still standing, and returned wearing a pair of ripped jeans and a graphic tee with a logo I didn't recognize.  It was probably some random brand from the other-world.  "Damn, I haven't worn this in forever," Erica noted, looking herself over.  "Probably because I stashed it in there," she gestured to the dresser.  

We spent hours sorting through the leftover junk in the mansion.  Now, Erica was convinced we'd find more useful items somewhere in the wreckage.  Of course, I helped her search through everything.  Most of the ruins were too big for Erica to lift herself, but with my help, she managed to get to every last inch of space.  

"Hey!  I found something else that isn't completely destroyed!" she called, "Come get this piece of wall off it, will you?"  I happily obliged, easily pushing the three inch long piece of debris out of the way.  "Oh, it's.. that."  Erica's voice fell as she recognized what she'd found.  The infinite money box sat in the midst of the ruins almost mockingly — a relic of the time before I recognized the awful backlash behind what I was doing.  We both glanced at each other simultaneously, briefly making eye contact before quickly turning away.  "I.. should get rid of it," I stated nervously, reaching for the small object.  Erica watched in silence as I picked it up and pocketed it.  

"You seemed so horrible back then," Erica said quietly, unmoving from the spot where she stood.  "I used to think you were some invisible being from another dimension, playing god with creatures beneath yourself, using me like a character in a game to interact with my world.  Seems silly, huh?" a bitter laugh escaped her lips.  "I really believed I'd never have control over my own body again."  

Erica shuddered, then turned to me.  Her stony expression softened when she saw how distraught I looked.  Silently, she motioned for me to come closer.  I timidly knelt in front of her, resting my chin on the lawn where Erica stood.  "You were not the first person to make me feel so helpless like that.  However," she added, stepping closer to me, "you were the first to apologize for it."

I stilled as Erica walked the final few inches between us.  She closed her eyes and leaned into me slightly; her forehead came to rest on my brow.  "Thank you," she whispered, "for letting me rely on you.  Stay with me, please. Y- You probably want to go home by now, but I’m not ready for you to leave yet."  My throat began to burn with oncoming tears, but I swallowed the feeling back.  Pulling away from her embrace the slightest bit, I delicately kissed her cheek.  Being so big, my lips covered half her face.  It was so enthralling yet so nerve-wracking at the same time.

"I wouldn't trade your company for the world, Erica,” I promised her, “I’m not going anywhere."  Her eyes fluttered open as she stepped back in shock, hand raising to touch the place where my lips brushed her skin.  She gave me a thankful smile and pulled a few of my fingers into a small hug.  I folded the rest around her, trying to reciprocate it the best I could.

After a brief moment, Erica let go of me and moved away slightly to wipe her misty eyes on the back of her hand.  Once she’d composed herself, she nodded at the pile of various items we’d pulled from the ruined mansion.  “I’ll finish sorting this out, but once I’m done I’d like to practice balancing myself on your shoulder.”  Before I could utter one syllable towards talking her out of it, Erica held a hand up to silence me.  “Don’t ruin the mood,” she said with an air of authority, “Last night you promised me I could try it again.  How am I going to get better if I don’t practice?”  

I sighed; with Erica staying with me, her demeanor became fearless.  A little too fearless for her own good.  Now that I’d vowed to protect her, she’d been a lot less concerned with protecting herself — leaving that job for me.  On the one hand, it was gratifying to see Erica so unbothered for a change.  She needed time to de-stress and do whatever she wanted after so long being unable to.  On the other hand, it was tiring and slightly stressful for me to take care of both of us.  Then again, I was used to taking care of her.

In the mess that was once the mansion, we'd managed to find a few more outfits Erica had stashed away, as well as various other household items, though most were useless without electricity.  Erica's phone had long since been taken from her, but, much to her annoyance, her phone charger was found completely intact.  She was far too distracted by the promise of a ride on my shoulder to bother with many of her newfound items, however.  Soon, she stood close to the cliff's edge, waiting expectantly for me to give her my hand.  I was hesitant, but eventually I let it rest on the lawn so Erica could climb on.  "Hold on tighter this time, alright?" I asked as I lifted her up to my shoulder, "I don't want you to fall over backwards like you did yesterday."  "I know, I will," Erica responded absentmindedly as she settled into a good position.

I started by walking slowly over the empty suburbs, then swapped into a more normal gait after Erica practically begged me to go faster.  It took a day or two of walking aimlessly through the other-world with Erica before she could properly balance herself without a single mistake.  Unfortunately, her record didn’t remain spotless for very long.  

On our last day of training, Erica fell forwards by leaning too far out after I'd pointed to something in the distance.  Thankfully I'd managed to save her from falling very far.  However, I reflexively pinned her to my chest in order to catch her.  I held her there for a heartstopping moment, my brain still processing the fact that she hadn't actually fallen very far, until I felt Erica squirm under my grasp.  Carefully, I released my grip and let her fall into my open palm.  Her face was flushed as she sat stunned for a moment.  "Yeah, that's what happens when you don't pay attention to what you're doing," I commented, thinking her nearly deadly mistake must have been the reason she'd froze.  

Slowly, Erica lifted a hand and placed it back onto my chest, eyes widening with amazement.  Suddenly, I doubted she'd even cared that she'd fallen.  "Your heart's beating really fast.  I can feel it; it..  sounds.. nice," she added awkwardly, drawing back slightly in my hand.  Clearing her throat, she waved a hand nonchalantly and gestured to the cliff where we'd set our camp.  "I'm ready to go back now.  I- I think that's enough practice for today."  I gave her a curious look, but nodded in agreement and headed towards camp.  

The strange tension dissipated shortly after we returned to the ruined mansion.  Erica and I started planning a return trip to the house with the generator so we could use the small bit of power to get laundry done.  I’d have to leave for a while to wash my own clothes, or at least change into something different, but Erica let me go, understanding — at least somewhat — that some things I just couldn’t do in her world.

After dinner, Erica sat near the cliffside, watching me do my nightly check for the scientists or survivors.  The moment I sat back down, she shifted closer to me.  Noticing how she drew herself closer, I turned so my head rested on the cliffside.  Erica glanced at me.  Recognizing my silent invitation, she stood up, walked over, and leaned against my cheek, happily stretching herself out over its soft surface.  We hadn’t bothered making a fire that night.  It was warmer than usual, and we didn’t really need the light, so I was the only heat source available.  I closed my eyes on the darkness, focusing on the small yet wonderfully overwhelming feeling of Erica’s form pressed lightly against mine.  She gasped, and my eyes flew open, heart racing.  My concern was thankfully cut short as I watched Erica point at the lawn behind me.

The grass was dotted with tiny lights that lazily drifted between one place to another.  You could never tell exactly where they went, though; their presence could only be noticed in second-long bursts of yellow light.  For someone as big as myself, they would be impossible to catch.  I instinctively reached out anyway, shifting on the rocky slope.  All the lights disappeared the moment I moved, my hand quickly diminishing the amount of space they had to roam.  It took a minute after I brought my hand back for them to reappear.  I sighed, “They’re always so.. enchanting, aren’t they?  When I was younger, I would sneak outside past my bedtime just to catch them.  I’d always release them the next day, of course, but that night I’d have a little sparkling jar beside my bed.  I would stare at it for hours.”

Erica sat up and scrutinized me curiously for a moment.  A small smile drifted onto her lips as she stepped out into the field.  I watched in lovestruck awe as she paced around in the dark, clasping her hands over the minuscule floating lights in the air.  Stepping back over to me, Erica offered me her cupped hands.

“I got you something.”  “What is it?” I asked, playing dumb.  Her smile grew wider, “Hold out your hand and find out.”  Smirking, I slid my hand beneath her arms, gently brushing them with the very tips of my fingers.  A small gasp echoed in the night, and I could feel Erica flinch at my touch before leaning into it.  She gently opened her hands, releasing two or three little fireflies to float around my palm for a moment before darting off into the sky.  I watched them go without sorrow, my gaze drifting back to the small woman in front of me, who, instead of watching the lights, had been watching me.

With a gentle touch, I eased her open hands into the palm of my own, nudging them between my fingers.  “Thank you,” I whispered gently, guiding her closer.  “I have something for you, too.”  Easing my head down beside Erica, I pressed my lips against her cheek, breathing in the distinct unmistakable scent of her.  She stood frozen for a moment, pulse pounding in her neck — thrumming against my lips like life.  Moments later, it softened, and she turned to me.  

Gently, Erica pressed her lips to the bottom of mine, but after what seemed like the briefest moment in existence, she pulled away.  “I- I don’t want to sound greedy, but can I have a bit more?  It’s so.. big.  But I can tell you’re holding back.”  “I don’t want to hurt you…” I mumbled.  Erica shook her head slightly, reaching for me.  “You won’t.”

I exhaled slightly, my breath ruffling her hair.  “It’ll cost you extra.”  Erica rolled her eyes, but they widened in an instant when I caught her chin on the side of my finger, tilting it up ever so slightly.  We locked eyes briefly, and I was shocked by the hope I saw in them.  She was so small, yet she wanted more of me.  I thought anything stronger would scare her off, but looking at her — she wanted it so badly.  Leaning down, my lips drifted over hers, leaving a slight gap between them that was immediately filled with the smallest sensations.

Erica groaned slightly as my tongue brushed against her lips.  She stepped closer, her body pressed against mine for the second time that night.  I just barely let my tongue slide into her mouth, scared that anything more would be too much for her.  Erica didn’t seem to mind; in fact, she opened it wider and pulled me close.   I could feel her tiny tongue slide over mine as we locked strangely together.  Erica exhaled as I leaned in and filled her mouth easily.

At last, I fell away from the cliff’s edge to take a proper breath, and Erica stumbled back, nearly falling over before quickly righting herself.  Her whole face was wet with saliva.  “That was..” she paused with a breathy laugh, wiping some of it away.  “That was a really good gift.  Mine kinda sucks in comparison.”  I shook my head, gently reaching out to caress her arm.  With a bit of my shirt, I carefully cleaned off her face.  That look of hopeful longing came over her again once I let her go.  Suddenly, her eyes lit up with an idea.  

Quickly dragging over her sleeping bag, Erica caught my receding fingers and held one to her chest, sliding into bed with it tucked close.  I inhaled softly at the feeling.  I could feel her shifting around beneath the covers, twining my finger between her arms and legs as her head came to rest on the top of it.  Snuggling the digit closely, Erica glanced up at me, searching for my reaction.  “I- I know it’s not normal, but I uhh.. don’t think anything between us will be.  Not that that’s a bad thing!” she added quickly.  “You can have your hand back if you want-”  I shook my head quickly, “Keep it.  At least until you fall asleep.”

Carefully keeping my hand steady, I curled up beside the edge of the cliff, sliding her little sleeping bag over until it was nearly pressed against me.  “I don’t care what we have, as long as we have it together,” I told her quietly.  “I’m so glad you confessed, though I know it was probably hard for you.  I don’t think I ever would’ve said anything if it weren’t for that.”  “Why?  Were you scared of me?”  I laughed slightly and she frowned.  “Don’t take that the wrong way, but it was the opposite; I was worried you would be afraid of me.  I didn’t want to end up forcing you into something you weren’t ready for or didn’t want… again.  I do love you, Erica.  I never want you to feel helpless against me.  Not ever.”  My voice steadily grew out of a whisper, rising with meaning.  “If you ever feel like that, tell me, ok?  I’ll stop whatever I’m doing.  I promise.”

Erica jumped out of bed so suddenly she startled me.  I barely had time to react before she ran up to me, grabbing fistfuls of my shirt and pulling herself close — her face buried in its fabric.  “Thank you,” she said so softly I could barely hear her, “God, it’s nice to have someone I can trust again.”  Cautiously and gently, I hoisted her up into my hand, pressing the backs of her legs ever so slightly to get her to sit down.  

Turning over, I settled in with her tucked to my chest.  I felt Erica sigh and stretch, readjusting herself so she was curled up in my cupped fingers.  At once she seemed so much smaller and fragile.  No, not fragile, delicate maybe?  With my fingers pressed warmly around her, I could feel her chest slowly pulsing with miniscule rhythms — the rise and fall of her lungs and breath, the steady rhythmic beat of her heart thrumming so close to mine.  I could even feel the tiny twitches of her moving just slightly, getting comfortable in my soft grasp.

There were so many nights where I dreamed of this.  So many nights I spent wondering what it would be like if she loved me as deeply as I loved her.  With her resting comfortably against me, I finally got to feel what that was like.  And I didn’t doubt for a second that she was playing along just to keep me happy.  She wanted to be as close to me as I wanted to be close to her.  My heart stung, but not from longing.  I wasn’t sure what it was, but it filled me up warmly until I was grinning from ear to ear.

After a moment, Erica stifled a laugh.  “You look so happy for once,” she told me, straightening out until she was laying down.  “I am happy.  Are you?”  Erica nodded enthusiastically, “Never been happier.  You think we can make things work this time?  I’m feeling really good about all this, which.. isn’t actually normal for me.”  A soft throb eased away the stinging of my heart, replacing it with something tender.  I lifted her up to kiss her, but she stopped me, holding my face at an arm’s distance.  “Just.. stay like this,” Erica told me, resting her body on my lips.  She whispered something even softer that I couldn’t hear, eyelids sinking heavily.

I let her sit like that a long time, even after she’d fallen asleep.  Eventually, I guided her unconscious body back into my palm, thumb pressed gently in the space where my lips used to be.  Erica had been trusting me with her little unconscious self more and more lately — that alone was intimacy in itself.  I tucked her back in, making sure I moved her back away from the cliff’s edge before finally getting to bed myself.

Honestly, I don’t think I’d been happier in my life than I was over those few days after we learned we loved one another.  Apparently, Erica felt the same way I did.  The moment I got up, even before I could say or do a single thing but lean over the cliffside, she leapt up and hugged one of my fingers snugly to herself.  “Oh!  Erica!  Good morning.”  “Good morning, Alexis.  I.. missed you last night.”  Oh.  It’s one of those again.  

While we hung around the cliff as she recuperated from her time in the city, Erica had gotten into the habit of saying that phrase to me as her way of telling me she’d had one of those awful nightmare-memories.  It had started with her accidentally saying that phrase to me the first time.  After a bit of confusion, she’d had to explain her whole dream to me to get me to understand.  Not wanting to go through that again, she stuck to simply telling me that, and I’d understand.

“Are you alright now?” I asked, gently sliding a few more fingers around her in a strange-looking hug.  “Yeah…  It’s.. something that won’t happen to me anymore.”  I lowered myself down until my chin rested on the ground beside her.  Erica stepped back just slightly to make room.  “I’m here, Erica.  And they’re long dead.  So will everyone who tries to hurt you like that.  I won’t let them.”  She smiled, eyes quickly glazing over with tears.  Her expression crumbled into an awful grimace as I brought my hand behind her and gently pulled her into it.  I watched with deep concern as she tried to tell me something, but couldn’t make it past the tears choking her throat.

With her head buried in the pad of my pointer finger, she let out a shaking breath.  “I just want it to be over,” Erica whimpered, “It’s been over a month of nothing but you treating me kindly, but I-  The nightmares haven’t stopped!  They- They’re further in between now, but never gone.  Just when I think I’ve gotten rid of them, bam!  One hits me just as I’m starting to feel better for once.”  I sat and listened to her, stretching my thumb up to rub delicately over her back as she spoke.  Honestly, I wasn’t sure her nightmares would ever have a definite end — certainly not anytime soon.  Though I’d been trying my hardest to ensure she felt safe again, the events were still horribly recent.  It had been a month or so since I’d found her.  That was all.

“That must be so frightening,” I mused, coaxing her to take her face out of my skin before I could accidentally hurt her.  “I- It is.”  “I’m sorry those memories keep coming back.  I don’t really know how to stop you from having them, but I do know how to keep you from making more of them.”  Erica took a few deep breaths, then smiled softly up at me.  “For that, I can never thank you enough.”

The rest of that day was spent drawing up plans on what to do next.  I didn’t have to worry about food with the new box, so Erica eagerly began brainstorming ways we could hide away and live together.  Despite wanting to be with her in every single one of her little fantasies, I began to get melancholy over the whole thing.  Was I permanently going to stay in the other-world?  I don’t want to, though.  I just want to stay with Erica.  Her world is becoming too messed up with the weird scientists.  What about the weird scientists?!  What can I do about them?  How do I keep them from destroying everything?

All these questions refused to leave my head even long after the conversation on what to do ended.  By that evening, my thoughts were so jumbled that I found myself longing for my own world.  There were still plenty of things for me to worry about there, too.  However, they were normal, non-apocalyptic and life-altering things.  One crucial part of me would still be missing, though — a tiny part who would grow into an utter mess if I left her behind.  There she was, laying in her sleeping bag with my finger tucked beside her.

Desperately, I wanted to fall asleep like that.  No, desperately I wanted to fall asleep like that.  I wanted to be beside her, not just a single finger.  But it couldn’t happen, so after a moment, I cautiously slid my hand away from her until I was freed from her grasp.  A wave of heartache stung my chest as I watched Erica frown subconsciously — her arms grasping the empty covers beside her.  For a while, everything was blissfully simple and perfect, but I knew it wouldn’t last.  I’d have to return to my own world eventually.  I’ve already been gone for over a month.  

[travelersrhapsody]

Cruise for a first vacation as a couple

Going on a cruise together is an amazing opportunity for a romantic getaway. There are plenty of fun activities on board of the ship as well as opportunities for a quiet, romantic time together. Going on a cruise is a perfect opportunity to get away from your normal lives and focus on each other. Looking at the endless ocean, having romantic dinners, and spending time together on fun activities is the best way to spend your vacation and create beautiful memories for the future.

There are many cruise providers that specialize in activities for couples. Some even offer special packages and deals for couples who want to get on a cruise. In this guide, we will discuss how to have the best time at sea as a couple.

Keep it romantic

Imagine waking up with your partner and going out on a deck to watch a beautiful sunrise, holding hands and sipping a nice cocktail. You can do that on a cruise, and spend evenings on a romantic dinner with your partner. Cruise ships offer a variety of opportunities for a romantic getaway, as well as the opportunity to visit many beautiful places in short amount of time. If you’re the type of person who likes to explore different cultures, you will definitely enjoy going on a cruise. You can opt for a cultural tour, or cruises that take you from one beautiful beach to another, where you can swim in beautiful blue waters. You can go anywhere �� in the Caribbean, or in the Mediterranean for a more cultural experience.

Best thing about being on a cruise as a couple is the pacing. You are not on a hurry to do anything – especially when you are on the sea. You can wake up and go to sleep whenever you want, and take part in the activities as much or as little as you want. Once docked, you can visit some of the best tourist destinations and enjoy local culture and cuisine.

Make new friends

Between your time on board from one destination to another, you can socialize with like-minded people on board. Cruises present a perfect opportunity to meet new people. There are people from all over the world who want to experience the same cultural destinations as you. Maybe you and your partner can make new friends from different parts of the world, so you can visit them, or they will visit you. You might even meet and befriend other couples and go on double dates together.

Some cruises even allow you to meet the captain.

If you're going with children, you can wear cruise shirts for family, which can be a great conversation starter and help you make friends easily.

Availability of Food and Drinks

When on a cruise, you don’t have to find a place to have a dinner or order drinks. Cruises offer drink packages and full dinner experiences you can enjoy with your significant other. Make sure to explore food and drink options you can order before actually going on a cruise. This is especially important if you have allergies or medical conditions that prevent you from eating certain foods. Many cruise companies will accommodate your special needs and prepare a beautiful meal for you.

Imagine this – on a cruise, you can get out of bed and have a delicious breakfast straight away. In best case scenario, breakfast will be made of local and fresh ingredients. You can relax and eat wherever and as much as you want. In the evenings, both of you can get dressed and enjoy a romantic dinner. Once you dock in the destination port, you can even get on land and enjoy romantic dinners in local cuisine. Some cruises even give you an options to order exotic foods from local cuisines on board.

You can also wear couples' cruise t-shirts and hit the dance floor or engage in other fun activities on board.

Take excursions from ports

Depending on your destinations, you might get the chance to take day trips from the ports where your cruise will be docked. Once you know what you and your partner want to do, you can proceed to book tours from the city. You could be zip-lining through dense forests or taking a romantic walks on the beach. You will make great memories that you will remember forever.

If you need guidance for exploring local cultures, get help from your cruise destination. Cruise providers have great offers on day excursions. Depending on where you’re going, you can surely find something you and your partner will enjoy. Safety as guaranteed, as you will be accompanied by tour guide provided by cruise company. You will get to see the best of local cultures – from dances to unique landmarks and cuisine. If you’re lucky, you might even get to skip the line.

Spend time together

Partaking in activities is the best way to strengthen bond between you and your partner. When on a cruise, you and your partner can focus on each other and spend leisurely time together. You can focus on having a good time – without worrying about work and other everyday concerns.

Whether you want to stay active or partake in basic pleasures, you can surely find something for you. Some cruise ships have rock climbing walls, or you can visit crowded dance floors for an active form of entertainment. Or something more passive like spa treatment or simply relaxing on a dock.

Opportunity to do things separately

Sometimes spending time alone can be as beneficial for your relationship as spending it with your partner. You may have individual hobbies or interests that don’t necessarily overlap with those of your partner. Cruise ships offer plenty of activities you can do alone, or with your friends if they are on cruise with you.

Taking time apart can help you avoid stress and conflict in a relationship, and make it even more special when you do go back to spending time together.

[breynekai-tfc]

Jailbreak

A scene from a longer project called “The Ice King”.  It takes place after “Great One” in my oneshot collection, “Our Son, the Halfa”.  

The story so far:  Maddie has discovered that Danny has ice powers but that's the extent of her knowledge. In this scene, Maddie and Danny have been captured by Walker and are in the middle of breaking out of his prison...

Read on FF.net or continue reading below.

 (･ᗜ･)ﾉ♡

The alarm was a low, continuous wail, like a ghoul moaning through a loudspeaker. At first, Maddie was certain it was about their escape. She grabbed the door's handle – forgetting that she could have run straight through the door – flung it open, and sprinted down the hallway, one hand wrapped around her son's wrist and dragging him along.

The halls were empty. The cells were empty. There was not a ghost in sight. After a few seconds of running, Maddie and Danny both slowed down and came to a stop.

"Where is everyone?" she murmured. "The other prisoners? The guards?"

"Uh, cafeteria? Out in the yard? Does it matter?" He sounded worried; obviously it did matter. "We need to find the Speeder and get out of here." This time it was Danny who snatched Maddie's wrist, and he led her down the hallways at a steady jog.

They turned several corners and stuck their heads, literally, through several promising doors along the way but found nothing and no one.

"He'll have put it with the other Real World contraband," said Danny as they moved, "if only we could find where that is. We just need to make it to the main hall…"

"I thought you've been here before?"

"Yeah, once!" said Danny, poking his head through another door, taking it out again, and shaking it. Negative. "I'm actually not in the habit of getting arrested, thank you. Besides, it would help if I knew where we even are right now. This place is a freaking maze!"

Upon realizing that Danny had no idea of their direction, Maddie started keeping a map in her head. It wouldn't do them any good to be running around in circles.

She was becoming increasingly anxious about the guards, or lack thereof. She tried to remember – had there been guards in their cell block before they broke through the bars? The angle had been bad; it had been impossible to see.

A few more minutes of fruitless searching brought them to the largest hallway yet, possibly the heart of the prison.

"Finally!" Danny exclaimed. "I know where we are – that way's the gate, that way's Walker's office-"

"Shh!" said Maddie.

Her son's eyes widened and he clamped his mouth shut. It didn't take him long to hear it, too. Somewhere nearby was the distinctive sound of a large, unruly crowd and ectoblasts. Lots of ectoblasts.

They looked at each other. Danny seemed to have the same question in his mind as was in hers. Should we check it out or steer clear?

"We need to find the Speeder," Maddie said firmly. "Whatever's happening, we don't have any weapons, and we're not prepared to deal with it."

Danny hesitated and finally nodded. "You're right." His hands twitched, and briefly Maddie watched her son clench and unclench his fists.

She placed a hand on his shoulder and smiled reassuringly at him. "We'll be fine. We're going to make it out of here."

He nodded. "Yeah. I know." His gaze lingered on the hallway from which the sound was echoing. "I just hope whatever's happening isn't happening where I think it's happening… Because the room we need is on the other side of that."

"Where is that?"

He grimaced. "The cafeteria."

Danny continued warily toward one end of the hall, footsteps calculated and silent. Maddie followed at his side. Every step brought them closer to sounds of mayhem. Gradually, they began to hear Walker's booming voice, the exact words muffled under shouting, thuds, crashes and explosions.

Soon they were approaching two purple double-doors with a character that was distinctly 'institutional meal hall'. The sounds were almost deafening, and shadows mixed with flashes of green and blue light through the window panes on the doors.

"Great," Danny groaned.

"Isn't there another way around?"

"Not exactly. This part of the prison is on a cliff. The only thing outside the cafeteria walls is a plummet into the abyss."

"Why is the Real World Objects room on the other side of the cafeteria in the first place?" Maddie couldn't help but wonder aloud.

"Heard it used to be a gymnasium. Only place big enough to keep all that junk, I guess."

A second later, something slammed into and through the double doors. Maddie pulled Danny aside in time for the shape to fly past them and skid against the floor down the hall. The doors quickly swung shut again, cutting them off from the mayhem on the other side.

The ghost that had been thrown through the doors groaned and rose to its feet, giving Maddie a clear view of the monster. She was surprised to recognize it; then again, it's hard to forget an eight-foot-tall wolfman. The last time they had met, this particular ghost had been working with Phantom to attack Amity Park's mayor, Mr. Montez. Disoriented, the ghost shook its head, snorting, its black fur standing on end.

"Wulf?" gasped Danny. Instinctively, like a soccer mom in a minivan, Maddie put an arm across her son's chest.

"This is a powerful and extremely dangerous ghost, Danny."

What Danny did next completely shocked her. He grabbed her arm, simultaneously throwing it aside and ducking underneath it, to run straight for the ghost.

"No," said Danny over his shoulder, "he's a friend!"

"Danny!" Armed with nothing but her fists and her wits, Maddie Fenton ran after him.

The ghost noticed Danny, who was completely dwarfed by the giant beast, and grinned. "Danny!" it growled, before grabbing the boy and pulling Danny tightly against its chest. "Friend!"

This was unpleasantly similar to their meeting with Frostbite the day before. Did her son have a penchant for befriending ghosts that looked like Bigfoot's cousins?

"Oof!" Danny squirmed out of the wolfman's arms, and his prison shirt was almost pulled over his head in the process. Patting down his clothes, he grinned blatantly at the monster. "Good to see you, too, big guy. What are you doing here?"

"Walker," growled the ghost. Its snout curled in a snarl.

"How do you keep getting arrested? We talked about this!"

The wolfman looked positively repentant as it lowered its head. It mumbled "Sorry" and some other words in a foreign language.

A crash reverberated in the cafeteria behind them. "More importantly," said Danny, and he jerked a thumb behind him. "What's going on in there?"

The ghost proceeded to give an explanation in that second language, accented by a wide array of hand gestures. Danny listened, nodding, and his expression grew concerned. When the ghost had finished talking, Danny translated for his mom: "According to Wulf, there have been natural portals opening around the prison all week. Not very many prisoners have escaped, but Walker didn't want to take chances. He ordered his guards to stick to the remaining prisoners like glue. So, when a portal opened in the cafeteria today in the middle of lunch, all the guards and all the prisoners were there, and, well… this happened. Prisoners are trying to escape, and the guards are blasting them to bits." Frowning, he turned back to the ghost called 'Wulf'. "You haven't been opening these portals, have you?"

"No!" said the ghost, waving his hands. "No me!" Pointing to his neck, where there was a thick electronic band, he added, "Collar!"

"Wulf," said Danny, "my mom and I need to get to the other side of the cafeteria – to the Real World Objects room. Think you can help us out?"

The wolf monster grinned menacingly, flexing his arms. Glowing claws like blades sprouted from his fingertips. Bloodlust made his green eyes glow brighter. "Wulf help friend. Like to fight Walker goons, too."

"Awesome," said Danny, patting the ghost on one of his bulging, furry arms. Looking at his mom, he added, "Wulf is one of the good guys."

"We're going to have a long talk about this later, young man."

"Later!" said Wulf. "Now is fight!" On his own cue, the giant wolfman lumbered forward and burst back through the doors.

Maddie traded looks with Danny, and they both ran after him.

The cafeteria – if it could still be called such – was in total disarray. At the opposite end of the room, clustered around the edges of a portal in the floor that was at least ten feet in diameter, a battle was raging. Identical ghosts in riot gear with shields and batons were defending the hole against several dozen ghosts of all shapes, sizes, and species. A few were familiar to Maddie, such as Technus and Ember, but most were new faces. These prisoner ghosts were fighting a war on two fronts, because on their other side, the one nearest to Maddie and her son, there was another line of guards headed by the ghost warden himself. Most of the cafeteria furniture had been overturned, incinerated, or adapted into creative weaponry. Lumps of food, or possibly some ghosts' spilled guts, were splattered over the floor, walls, and ceiling.

Wulf's bulk shielded them from sight, although Maddie and Danny were both short enough to duck under his arms to get a good view. He pointed across the room, at a door, and turned to Danny. "There. Room."

The door was precisely on the other side of the portal.

"You've got to be kidding me," said Danny.

"No. No is joke."

"It's an expression," breathed the boy weakly. "How are we…?"

Maddie frowned, squinting thoughtfully at the scene. "We don't need to go through the door. If we make it to the opposite wall, we can phase through it, correct? We just need to skirt the edges."

"Great. We still have to get through a seven-layer ghost dip. Great." At his mom's incredulous expression, he said, "Food jokes. Cafeteria. Couldn't help it."

"Wulf," said Maddie. The ghost seemed a little shocked to be addressed by her. "You keep Walker busy while we make our way to the wall."

Wulf looked at Danny, expectant. "Uh, yeah," said Danny. "Do what she said."

"Kun plezuro," growled Wulf. Then he roared and tackled the warden like a giant, hairy linebacker, sending several smaller guards flying in the process.

"Let's go!" Maddie yelled. She scooped up a couple of broken table legs, tossed one to her son, and darted to the right-hand side of the mob.

A guard immediately intercepted her. Unfortunately, several of the guards had turned at the sound of Walker being attacked, and they were ready to head off the escaping humans. Maddie swung her improvised weapon right into one ghost's head, and the whole thing disintegrated in a cloud of mist.

The others weren't so easy. Before she had completed her swing, another was bearing down on her with its baton, and sidestepping the attack, her back slammed into another's shield. The ghost with the baton raised its club for another hit, so Maddie ducked and tumbled out to the side, landing in a crouch. The two ghosts were surprisingly slow; she had a free shot at the shield-wielder's head, and threw her table leg, sharp-end first.

Like its companion, it vanished into smoke.

But Maddie's weapon was gone.

Danny suddenly appeared at her back, sparring with another guard, exchanging blow for blow. Maddie, who had failed for years to teach her son any lessons in combat, was both impressed and bewildered. She didn't have time to think much more about it, not then.

"Be careful about their batons!" Danny shouted. "They don't just hit, they also shoot-"

Her son was blasted away by a bolt of hot green ectoplasm.

"Danny!" Maddie yelled. It was her mistake to let her attention drop. Her last opponent had aimed his baton, and the next second he fired.

Maddie slammed into the surface of an overturned table. She and the table both skidded back a few feet, and her head knocked against the surface, causing stars to dance in her vision. On her left side, her shirt smoked, smoldering with green fire; the skin underneath was scorched black, and a nasty smell filled her nose.

Danny appeared crouching next to her. "Mom!" he said. His clothes were also smoking, but otherwise, he seemed unharmed, to Maddie's relief.

Four guards were flying toward them, already taking aim. "Danny," she said, nodding her head toward them.

Danny spun and straightened. He stepped forward until he stood at the end of Maddie's feet and adopted a wide stance.

"Alright," he said. Goosebumps rose on Maddie's skin. Danny's voice was completely level, but there was an edge to it, a menace, that she had never expected to hear in her son. "Which one of you hurt my mom?" He looked at them, waiting for an answer. The other ghosts faltered, but not for long.

"No one's gonna fess up? Well then." Danny cracked his knuckles, and spread his hands to either side. "I'll have to beat up all of you."

The temperature plummeted, an icy wind blasting outward with Danny at its center. Danny's whole body began to glow white, and blue energy gathered in his hands while the floor under his feet frosted over. Maddie watched as the frost slithered toward the ghostly prison guards, who only realized what was under them when it was too late. Three of them started to advance, one tried to flee, and Danny ripped his hands upward. Shards of ice splintered out of the floor. Two of the ghosts were frozen solid on the spot, while the other two were ripped into smoky shreds.

The fighting in the room stopped, all eyes turned toward them. Then Technus's nasally voice cried, "It is the ghost boy! The battle is ours!" All of the prisoners cried out and began to fight more ferociously. Several of the guards were knocked backward into the portal, and a few prisoners poured along after them.

Danny turned toward Maddie, who immediately paled. His eyes glowed solid cold blue; she could not see his pupils, his irises, the whites of his eyes. Frost still danced at his fingertips.

For one horrible second, Maddie wanted to run away from him. Her fingers wanted a gun so she could shoot him.

Snowdrift's words returned to her: You obviously don't know what your son is capable of.

He frowned down at her, expression changing from severe to puzzled. Then a massive white shape loomed up behind him, and he was forced to turn and face Walker.

Wulf sprinted to Danny's side. He no longer seemed so huge.

"I should have known," growled the warden, his voice echoing even above the sounds of battle. "Who else would have the gall to start a prison riot in my cafeteria? No one but a lawless, disrespectful, impudent punk like you."

"Look, I get you're still sore about the last time. But I swear, Walker, I didn't do this."

Walker's eyes narrowed. "How did you get out of your cell?"

"Yeah, I'd ask for your money back," Danny retorted. "Ghost-proof, human-proof, but apparently not ice-proof."

The warden's expression was murderous, which was a neat trick for a skull face. The entire cafeteria seemed to darken around him.

Danny shifted slightly, and a wall of ice sprang up in front of Wulf, Maddie, and him just in time to deflect a massive ectoblast from the warden.

"Wulf," Danny said hurriedly. "Get my mom to the Specter Speeder. Now!"

The wolfman nodded before leaping toward Maddie, scooping her into its arms, and bolting away across the room, easily jumping over and on top of heads as he moved. The guards, the few who were left, were too preoccupied with the escapees to do anything. Danny disappeared from Maddie's sight until all she could see was a writhing crowd of ghosts and Walker's towering back.

She knew she should protest. She was afraid, though, that Wulf would actually turn around and go back.

They neared the wall, and Maddie wondered how Wulf planned on getting through it, if ghosts couldn't use intangibility in the Ghost Zone.

It wasn't a problem. With one set of his fearsome claws, he ripped a hole right through the cement bricks.

They landed among the rubble of their entrance and piles upon piles of human junk. There were items anywhere from rubber bath ducks to piano fortes, all covered in a hefty layer of softly glowing dust. Near the door, like they had been dumped there to save time, were the Specter Speeder, Maddie's weapons, and all of their clothes.

Gingerly, Wulf placed Maddie on her feet next to the Speeder. The ghost bent down and looked into her eyes; it took all of Maddie's nerve not to flinch. "Vi estas lia panjo?"

She shook her head. "I don't understand."

Wulf worked his jaw, then said, "You… Danny… mom?"

"Yes," Maddie breathed, still thinking about his eyes, the power that had radiated from him.

The ghostly wolfman engulfed Maddie in his arms, squeezing her tight against him. Her wound screamed, but she didn't dare protest. When Wulf released her, he held her by her shoulders and said, "Good son. Thank you."

Wulf looked back through the hole, glanced at her, and leaped away, stirring the ectoplasmic dust in his wake.

A victorious cheer erupted in the next room, followed soon by Walker's furious cry of "No!" Then all was quiet.

"I'm going to kill you, ghost boy," said Walker, his voice echoing through the room. There was a flash of green, and the floor buckled under an explosion.

Fear clenched Maddie's heart, but a fear different to the one she felt earlier. It was only relieved when the light from the other room changed to blue, and her son's voice called out, "I'd like to see you try!"

Maddie opened the door of the Speeder and threw all of their belongings into the backseat before climbing onto the driver's bench. A glance in the glove box confirmed that Walker had not found the Infi-Map; she slammed the box shut again and fired up the engines.

Despite having designed and built the vehicle with her husband, it was her first time to drive it. The Speeder rose unevenly into the air, and when she urged it forward, first went too slowly and at once shot ahead. It was only due to Maddie remembering, at the last second, that the wall wasn't really solid that saved her from crashing full-speed into it.

She emerged into the next room, and yanked back on the controls to bring the Speeder to a mid-air stop. The scene was havoc. In the middle of the room, a Walker that was twenty-feet tall, shimmering into green smoke at his edges, was stooped over, firing blasts and throwing punches at the ground. Under him, using blasts of frosty wind to propel himself over pathways of ice, her son was simultaneously dodging the attacks and shooting ice at the warden's legs. Maddie realized that Walker's feet were now frozen to the floor. Wulf was darting around the edges of the battle, slashing Walker at times and at others throwing sharp debris into the warden's face.

The natural portal sparkled green. There were no ghosts around it, only helmets, shields, and batons scattered about its edges.

Walker roared. Green fire exploded around his shoulders.

"It looks like someone lost their cool!" said Danny. He slid sideways to avoid another blast of ectofire and unleashed a volley of ice. "I can help with that!"

Banter? Why did that seem…?

Maddie shook her head. They needed to get out of there. Maddie threw the Speeder forward and pulled up at the edges of the battle, opening the passenger-side door and yelling, "Get in!"

Danny glanced at her over his shoulder and then threw a barrage of ice shards at the Warden's face – they weren't necessarily destructive, but the sharp ice made Walker jerk backward and throw up his hands to shield his eyes. It was enough of a distraction. Danny had time to sprint for the vehicle and throw himself through the open door.

He landed heavily on his side. "Go!"

"What about your friend?"

"He'll be fine!" said Danny. As if the wolfman could hear them, he turned and grinned, briefly and fiercely, before leaping at Walker's throat with his extended claws.

Maddie nodded, and the Specter Speeder rocketed across the room. Danny scrambled to sit up, but when he was able to see through the windshield, he yelled.

"Where are you-?!"

"Nearest exit," said Maddie, and they dove through the natural portal in the floor.

------------

“The Ice King” is a wip I started writing back in 2016/2017.  There are about 50,000 words so far, but I’m not sure if I’ll ever finish it.  I’m still in love with the concept, however, and will probably post more scenes from it in the future.  

[kooktaebear]

If Only I Knew

Status: ONGOING (this is my first AU AHHH I’m excited to write the next couple of parts, but I hope this story gets a lot of love :~>)

Pairing: Jungkook x Reader

Summary: Y/N abruptly moved to Seoul after spending 21 years living alone in her hometown, Busan after the death of her parents. She now discovers through her best friends that drama can be a lot to handle, but as she starts to meet new people, she discovers that she had completely forgotten an important part of her past.

Warnings: mention of guns, blood and violence,

Genre: angst, WHOLE LOT OF FLUFF, slow burn

Word Count: 3.2k

Part One:

I step out of the bus and a gust of cold wind hits my face as I board the train. Why did I think of not wearing enough layers in the middle of winter? I take my seat and look out the window to see the number of people who are about to board the train. I grab my phone and start listening to ILYSB. I like LANY, their music is perfect for travel.

I know this isn't such an interesting event in my life since I know that many other people have flown to see Seoul, capital of Korea but hey, give me a break. I’m finally going to meet my best friends after living alone for 4 years. This is what pays to be travelling, a provincial girl like me? I doubt I would ever survive the city life.

As a 2 hours pass, I wake up to hear the advisory that I’m about to reach Seoul.

I look out the window, close my eyes, and whisper.  

"Mom, Dad, I made it to Seoul."

I lost both my parents during a hostage that happened in our own home. My mom happened to answer the door and was shot first. The culprit saw me and asked me to go get my dad. At first I was confused, but it so happened that there was an issue with the family business and this guy was after the money. I was 13 at that time but I still couldn't figure out why something like this had to happen to our family. However, as soon as my dad had agreed to the terms of the killer, he pointed his gun at me and pulled the trigger. I closed my eyes to prepare myself for the pain that comes next but instead, I felt warm liquid on my hands and felt something heavy fall on me, it was my dad. I screamed at the sight of both my parents suddenly vanishing from this world, a sudden pain struck my chest and I couldn't breathe. I fall to the ground slowly losing my vision as I see the blue and red lights of police cars approaching my house.

"Miss? Are you okay miss?" the person right next to me calls my attention and brings me back to reality, "Oh, yes I'm fine. Have we arrived?" I look around to see almost everyone out of the train. "Would you need any help getting off? Are you new to the city?" the lady asks me. I shake my head and give her a smile as I head down the aisle to the exit.

I follow the rest of the passengers to exit the station as I turn my phone on to contact Jennie and Lisa, my two best friends. Their parents had offered to get us three an apartment we could all share just so that they could both keep me company. Lisa and Jennie aren't sisters if you were wondering, they just had agreed to live under one roof with me and I'm eternally grateful for that. Not to mention they’re idol trainees.

"Y/N?" I turn my head to see Lisa's straight black hair, "Lisa!!!" We both jump around and giggle, "Wait but where's Jennie?" "Oh, she's getting us another cab because your arrival got delayed." She helps grab my luggage and we both start catching up with each other, as if we’ve never spoken in weeks. This was the first time I had ever seen both Lisa and Jennie in person, all our moms were best friends when they were younger too but since we couldn't visit them often, we met and talked through video calls.

"Well if it isn't our beautiful foreign friend Y/N." I turn around and meet Jennie’s eyes, "JENNIE!!!" I run to hug her and Lisa joins in and I finally don't feel alone anymore. "Girls, the cab is waiting outside, we better hurry." On our way to our new apartment we were all catching up with each other as if we really didn't talk as much already. "Oh hey, Y/N you have to make sure that you're ready to go to school by 7am okay?" Jennie cheerfully said. I was so confused, school started at 8am so why would I have to be ready an hour before school when our place was literally like 10 minutes away. "Wait why do we have to be ready an hour before school? I know our place is like 15 minutes away from school. It's not like you guys take that long to fix yourselves up right?" Lisa and Jennie smiled at me suspiciously, "Well....Y/N you know, you may not know everything about us yet..." "What's there not to know? I've known you guys since the moment I was able to talk." Lisa elbowed me softly, "We’ve got new friends! Like actual men type of friends." My eyes opened wide despite the tiredness I've been experiencing,

How could these two end up befriending guys and just suddenly "forgetting" to tell me about it when they know and are fully aware that we all don’t normally interact with the opposite gender?  

"Fine, I'll be ready by 7am on Monday." I say as I roll my eyes, "YAYYY I'M SO EXCITEDDD!!!" both of them scream.

Ugh, 30 minutes have just passed since I arrived in Seoul and I'm already experiencing stress.

As soon as we got off the cab, both my friends had rushed to bring down all my belongings so that I could finally take a look at the place we rented out. Jennie reaches her hand out to me and in her palm, my key to our place. "Hey, have you guys figured out how we'll be getting to school on Monday?" Jennie giggles, "Y/N, you’re lucky we attend the same school. But the guys will pick us up! Plus..they promised to bring Jungkook." Jennie winks at me and flashes me her brightest smile.

Jungkook? I know I've heard that name somewhere, but I just can't remember where.

"We're here!!" The elevator door opens, "Apartment 735" I mutter to myself. I walk along the brightly lit corridor. "732....733...734..." I continue counting, "735!!" The girls rush to my side, "Y/N, this is your first time in our apartment, so you'll have the honor of opening the door with your key" Lisa says with a smile. I reach out for my keys, close my eyes and take a deep breath before turning the key to unlock the door. I hear the light switch turn on and I open my eyes. The apartment was beautiful. I walk in to see the kitchen, it has a small island where I could serve meals to my friends. I honestly enjoy cooking to relieve myself from whatever stresses me out, whether it be school, people or something about football. I’ve loved sports for as long as I can remember but it gets frustrating since I could be quite competitive.

I walked into the next room and I saw our living room, there was a large L-shaped sofa sitting in front of a huge television. In between the sofa and TV, I saw a small wooden table that is most probably multipurpose as being both a study desk and a place to put our snacks when we binge on shows during our free days. Beside the sofa I see a balcony that showcases a beautiful scenery of the city. I walk out and feel the cold breeze on my cheeks, I look up to the sky and I see that the sky had a welcoming gift for me as well. The stars greeted me as they shined brightly upon the night sky and I just can't help but admire the night sky. To my right, I see a bean bag that fits 2 people. I plop down to the bean bag and stargaze for a while.

Mom? Dad? I know you can hear me, I promise I'll make you proud, I'll succeed here in Seoul and become a great doctor.

"Y/N?" I snap back to reality and see Jennie’s head appear, "You haven't even seen your room yet! Come onnnnn!!" I stand back up and follow the girls in another small hallway, there I see 3 doors. "So basically, it's not that we don't want you to have your own room but we wanted one room to be our sort of walk-in closet because I mean who has not dreamed of having one?" I open the first door I see and the place is indeed full of clothes. There were 3 closets in the room, each of the closet doors have our first name initials on it to indicate who owns which closet. I laugh at my best friends, we all enjoy watching all those Barbie movies where they have spectacular closets and I guess you can say that this is the closest we can get to our childhood dreams.

I walk out of the room and take a few steps into the hallway. Lisa rushes to get past me and hold the doorknob, "Okay Y/N, this room is a little different. I know it's not really our style whatsoever but we created a study room." I scrunch my eyebrows, "A study room? Really now? For all of us or for me?" Lisa tucks a stray hair into her ear, "Well, more for you than for us since we know how hard you work and how much more you'll be working to get into med school. But it's a double purpose for a practice room for us too!" I take a step back to look at both my best friends and their grinning faces,

What did I do to deserve these two psychos in my life?

I call them in for a group hug, "You guys, I know you want to make me feel like there's nothing missing anymore in my life and I love you guys for that. I hope you all still remember I'm not a robot though and even if I'll be working hard to get into med school, I'll still be around to party and experience what any normal teenager should be experiencing." I hear Jennie sniffling at my right, "Aw Jen" I rub her back soothingly, "We know that Y/N, we just want the best for you too. We'll always be here rooting for you any time." We all take a step back, "Okay!" Lisa says, "Guys, it's our first night in our own apartment and we're already crying." Everybody laughs, "So I guess this last room is our room?" "It sure is." Jennie opens the door and I see three twin beds side by side. Just like our "walk-in closet" our first name initials are hanging above our head, brightly lit to recognize who owns which bed. I see my initial on top of the bed that lies in between both Lisa and Jennie's.

I drop my luggage off at our closet area and plop back down into the bean bag on the balcony. I take a deep breath in and close my eyes.

This is the start of my new life.

------------------------------------------------------------------

"Take my hands now, you are the cause of my euphoria"

I woke up to the sound of Euphoria, my favorite song in the whole wide-

"WHEN I’M WITH YOU I'M IN UTOPIA"

And of course, the voices of my two best friends singing their hearts out and getting the lyrics messed up.

"Y/N!!! Come on!! It's your first day of school. Did you forget about our breakfast plan?"

Right. Their so-called "breakfast plan" before school. I stand up from my bed and stretch a little before I start making my bed. I stop by the closet first and pick my outfit for today, I pick out a tied crop top, white sneakers, and jeans. I grab my bathrobe and head to the bathroom. I step into the shower and play some music that would help wake me up and get ready for the day. As I continue to wash my hair, I hear a knock on my door, 

"Y/N! Are you done?!!" 

I roll my eyes. Jeez, they finally got themselves guy friends and now they're going crazy about finishing on time. I wrap a towel around my head to dry my hair. I head back to our dressing room and open my luggage. As I look for my blow dryer and straightener, Lisa barges into the room, 

"Y/N Y/L/N, you seem to be too relaxed this morning. You have 30 minutes left to get ready and if you're not ready by then I'm going to drag you to the car." "Don't worry Jen, I'll be done on time. Now can you please stop bothering me so that I can start dressing up?"

I quickly blow dry my hair and put it up in a messy bun. With the remaining time left, this is the best I can do to tame my natural curls. I look at myself in the mirror and check to see if something is missing. I reach out to get my makeup bag and I put on a little blush and add a little lip tint. I search through my accessory bag and look for my small stud earrings. I get my glasses from the table and look at myself in the mirror once more. I'm ready for my first day of school. I leave the dressing room and meet my best friends in our kitchen. 

"Oh my goodness Y/N, let's go! We're already 5 minutes late." I grab the schoolbag I prepared last night before heading to bed and leave the apartment. We head to the basement by elevator since Lisa got her license just recently. "Wait Lisa, if you had your license already by the time you picked me up, why did you guys use a taxi to pick me up?" "Oh, uh..I was too lazy to drive that late at night so I just got us a taxi." She starts the car and we head to the exit.

It was my first time ever seeing Seoul in the morning light, the sun hit the skyscrapers so beautifully that it was as if the city was welcoming me as their new citizen. Numerous cars were already out by the time we hit the road because of the rush hour most of them were experiencing. Our school, Seoul National University was just 10 minutes away, our apartment was located a couple blocks away As I was looking out the window, I saw some sort of diner come into view. It looked huge for my definition of a diner since I always saw diners as small joints made for meals, but this diner was different. As Lisa pulled up in the parking area I could see a little bit of the inside, students like us were dining in there as well and there seemed to be a game room on the other side of the dining area.  It's around mid-February so the breeze was still cool, Busan was a little warmer during the winter so I had to find a way to adjust to the cooler weather in the city. As my friends and I make our way to the entrance, I notice three heads that turn our way. As we enter the diner however, the smell of freshly made bread, waffles, and eggs hits me and I feel my mouth water. I've been starving and I couldn't wait to try whatever the diner had been serving.

I see three boys in a booth and I make eye contact with one of them, the weird thing is...I felt butterflies in my tummy. I've seen those eyes somewhere, he feels familiar which is of course impossible because I've never met these people in my entire life.

I've never had any guy friends at all. I've always thought about making my parents proud and everything so I focused on getting good scores on all my tests so that I could get into med school. This is all so new to me...having friends of the opposite species. I mean okay, I've watched rom-coms and movies that revolve around love, seeing your friends being treated the way I see couples act in the movies is something I never thought I would be interacting with boys at this point of my life.

"Y/N? Earth to Y/N!" I snap back to reality as Jennie calls my attention. "This is Jimin, Taehyung and the guy still sitting in the booth is Jungkook." Jungkook? I think I know a Jungkook from back home but it's still pretty hard to remember a lot of things. "Sorry, I'm being rude." Jungkook stood up and walked to me, "Jungkook." He held out a hand for me to shake, "Y/N." I say in reply. As our hands touch, there's a familiar warmth that gives me goosebumps. I quickly try to mask the reddness in my cheeks. We all take a seat in the booth and based on the impression of these boys, they seem like athletes. "Hey Y/N," Jimin says, "You should try their Bacon and Waffles here. They sell out like crazy in the mornings." I take a quick glance on the menu and scan quickly for the meal Jimin was talking about. I raise my hand excitedly to call in the waitress to take our orders, "1 Bacon and Waffles, 2 Pancakes and, 3 orders of the Waffles and Chicken all with Orange Juice on the side." The waitress says, "Thanks." I give her a smile in return.

I glance back at my friends after giving the waitress the menu I was holding, Jungkook and I make direct eye contact, his big brown doe eyes, another flood of goosebumps crawl on my skin as he turns away to talk to Taehyung. Why is it that Jungkook looks at me as if he’s seen me before?

The waitress returns with the orders and I start to take a bite off my first meal of the day.

“So Y/N, how was your first night in the city?” Taehyung asked as he picked a strawberry off one of the pancakes, “I stayed up in the balcony just looking at the city lights, the stars were very bright last night. I couldn’t stay up for so long though, it got really cold.” “Y/N loves gazing at stars, she used to try to make Jen and I see the stars in Busan every time we video called.” Lisa says giggling, Jimin gasps and turns to point at Jungkook while eating his waffle, “Jungkook used to drag us out of our homes just to meet at a park to stargaze!” Jungkook shyly looks away and takes a sip of his juice, “Yah” he finally speaks, “You make me sound like a really weird kid Hyung” I laugh at his statement, “Don’t be too embarrassed Kook, looking at the stars are my favorite past time” He tenses up with the nickname as he looks at me, I realize I just gave this guy a nickname on the first day we met. Shit. “Uh, is it okay that I call you Kook?” He nods in return as a smile crept onto his face.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[shannygoatgruff]

Engendered

Genre: Pain and grief

Story Type: One-shot

Rating: M+18

Summary: Lagertha’s grief causes her to make a decision that may change things forever.

A/N:  I know it’s been a minute since I’ve posted anything. Truth is, I’ve hated everything I’ve done lately. But, I had a dream about this and just decided to write it. For some reason, I find writing internal conflict to be so much easier than fluff. 

As always thanks to @xbellaxcarolinax​ for being my beta reader. 

Engendered 

en·gen·dered / ənˈjendər·ed /  - verb; (of a father) beget (offspring).

“Be careful, Shieldmaiden Lagertha, Once Queen of Kattegat. Wishes granted by the gods are not always what we, in Midgard, seek.”

When the Seer had spoken those words all those many years ago, she had thought the old man crazy. Truth be told, the entire village thought him crazy, but none would admit it. He, with his blackened lips, fleshed-out eyes, and collection of potions and poultices that cluttered the small hut in the side of the hill that could scarcely be called a home. This hovel, with its animal bones hanging from the scaffolding like ornaments was hardly a dwelling fit for a pig, yet they had always flocked there to see him. 

She was no different from the rest of those who sought his visions. She needed him to tell her what the gods had in store, no matter the cost. The Seer’s readings were often so cryptic, they hardly could pass as law. Other than pondering the true meaning behind his words the price to pay for his company was relatively small.

What harm could come from licking his palm? Possibly the same harm that could come from enacting a ritual for the goddess many years past? 

Lagertha should have known better than to be so trusting, especially when galdr was involved. Nothing good had ever come from witchcraft, even if it was blessed by Freya, herself. She hadn’t been in her right mind. She was hurting and she needed him to hurt just as much.

When the new Queen of Kattegat had her first child, a son called Ubbe, Ragnar was overjoyed, and it crushed her even more.

She remembered seeing that sparkle in his eyes when their children were born. At Bjorn’s birth, the women of Frigga who had assisted with his delivery commented how beautiful he was and was destined to be a great warrior. When Gyda arrived, Ragnar announced that the goddess, herself, would be jealous of their daughter’s beauty. 

How proud both she and Ragnar had been.

Both times Lagertha had seen Ragnar’s eyes shine like the stars in Asgard. How she had looked forward to seeing that twinkle in those crystal blue eyes again with the birth of their third child. 

Their son, the boy that she would call Eluf, though he would never live to hear himself be called that name, looked so much like Bjorn. 

Eluf came too early. 

He proved to be the one thing their union could not overcome. His death would not make Ragnar stay. 

That is why she called him Eluf, if only in the confines of her heart. For he would always be her eternal heir, even if his father had forgotten the promises he  made to his family.

She tried to keep their family together. Oh, how she tried. The queen of Kattegat tried to save her marriage, much like she tried to save her stillborn son. She prayed to Freya and Frigga for strength and protection. She held onto everything she loved as tightly as she possibly could, suffocating Ragnar with her love with the same strength she used to clench her thighs together to ensure her precious Eluf stayed inside of her. 

But her grasp weakened and as he drew closer to Midgard, he tore her apart from the inside out. 

How much like his father the boy had been. 

Just as her precious son had pulled away from her, so had his father. Ragnar’s growing obsession with England made the promises of returning to the simple farm life they once shared a fantasy. How could a homestead with children ever again be enough for a man with such ambitions? 

Lagertha would swear that she could feel pieces of him tearing away from her every day. It was that tenacity that forbade him from being by her side when she needed him most. 

Secretly, she hated him for it.

Ragnar’s prophecy was told to him at their marriage that he would have many great sons. It was the idea of building such a home that kept them so in love and happy in their lives past. Lagertha had always assumed that she would be the bearer of those sons; the gods already blessing them with Bjorn. 

Never once did she imagine that she would have to endure the heartache of seeing Ragnar’s eyes dance with such pride over his sons born to another woman.  

Witnessing the birth of his first son born to a new wife was devastating, but then came another and another. With every healthy birth of Queen Aslaug, more of her died inside.

Why should this interloper take everything that was rightfully hers? 

This woman, this völva, had traveled to the former queen’s home and prospered from her pain. Lagertha had loved Ragnar from the very beginning, when they had nothing, were nothing. She had encouraged him, fought with him through his rise to power - buried two of his children, all to be replaced by this ... despot?

What right did they have to be happy? What right did Aslaug’s sons have to live when her beloved Eluf did not? The gods could not possibly be this cruel. 

It was her grief that made her do it - always going to the mound of earth in which her beloved Gyda and Eluf lay, desperately trying to make soft flowers grow in the frozen earth that covered their bones. No matter the strength of the frozen wind that whipped through the valley in the winter, or the smell of rotting wood from docked ships that rose from the lake in the spring, she was there, knelt at their marker whispering to her children. 

Lagertha just wanted a sign - some signal that the Valkyrie had taken their souls to Odin and been permitted to enter Valhalla on the merits of their ancestors. 

That’s how she knew that Freya had answered her prayers when the sedir had come to her at dusk that day. The rain had finally slowed, producing only a light drizzle and the smell of the earth was fresh. The soil that she had been running her hands over for hours, weeping and speaking to her children was soft in her hands. 

The hand on her shoulder was gentle and the voice in her ear was almost a whisper. She sounded like Freya, herself. The woman told her that Gyda was safe and was now enlisted as a Valkyrie. 

The witch with the voice of a goddess also told Lagertha of a way to see her son again and get revenge on those who scorned her. For so many years she had prayed for this. She had asked, no begged the gods for help in mending her broken heart and here Freya was answering her prayers. 

All she had to do was open the earth and remove the blood-stained rag of Eluf’s.

She also needed to retrieve a strand of hair of Aslaug, who was again with a child, sure to be Ragnar’s fourth son with this trespasser. Once she had those items, she was to burn them in an open flame and the goddess would do the rest. 

It could not have been more simple. The ground was already soft enough for digging and though it would break her heart to disturb the resting places of her babies, she would do it. If it would make the pain stop, she would do anything. Including being cordial with the queen and wishing her well on her fourth child. Sitting at the table with her and enjoying a meal, getting close enough to her to hug her and take a hair, would be easy. It would please Ragnar to see his two loves befriending each other. Lagertha could play that part.

And as the open flames grew hotter and the items were dropped inside, Lagertha closed her eyes and begged Freya to heed her prayers. 

That is when Queen Aslaug doubled over in pain, knowing that this pregnancy was unlike any other she had experienced.

********

“I understand everything perfectly. I want revenge.”

She had thought she saw glimpses of familiarity in his eyes before, but it was so fleeting that she dismissed it. Since the ritual in the woods, Lagertha hardly ever thought about Ragnar and his queen or his tribe of boys. Her son, Bjorn Ironside, had proven himself a mighty warrior, and she too had grown in reputation. She had taken over Hedeby. With so much to celebrate, she hardly had time to ponder on the absent Ragnar or his drunkard wife. 

Admittedly, there was a tiny bit of guilt when the youngest boy, Ivar, was born with twisted limbs. Lagertha knew how disappointed Ragnar had been knowing that he could never truly be Viking. The shame that must have put on his head. The same type of shame he should have felt for abandoning his first family. 

And the pain the queen had to deal with having a child that needed so much. Lagertha was sure it hardly matched the pain that she felt at losing not one but two children by the same man that she now called husband. Let alone not having that same husband not be there for the death of either of them.

The goddess had fulfilled her promise, no matter what the Seer warned.

Yet, there was something not quite right about the fourth boy. He had a dark presence - a brooding about him. Always sheltered, but always in pain. Not just physical pain, there was a pain behind his eyes. Lagertha saw it in the few interactions she’d had with him. 

It was not until that day that he slid across the floor of the Great Hall with all in attendance, while Queen Lagertha addressed her subjects, did she fully understand. 

Each time his knives stabbed into the wooden floor and he slid closer to her, his eyes became clearer. She had seen those eyes before. Not Ivar’s eyes, or even Ragnar’s, but someone else’s - an acquaintanceship with something behind them.

The boy, Ivar, perched himself on a stool and glared at her with such hatred. 

Eluf?

She stepped down.

Eluf?

She stepped down from her throne.

Eluf?

She stepped down from her throne and tried to speak calmly. 

Eluf?

She stepped down from her throne and tried to speak calmly, placing her hand on Ivar’s shoulder as if to touch her son through him. 

How was it that her son inhabited this boy’s body? Why was he speaking to her in such hateful tones? The words seeking revenge for the death of Aslaug were not Ivar’s, they were Eluf’s. She could tell by the cold, dead tone behind his eyes. 

She had seen it before. The quick flashes she thought she recognized between the vibrant deep blue of Ivar’s, to the murky pools buried deep within. Had those been the eyes of Eluf staring at her all that time? 

Surely, her baby boy wasn’t telling her that he wanted to kill her?

But he was. He did all the time. 

Eluf, her sweet baby, who never drew his own breath, breathed deeply through Ivar Ragnarsson. He wreaked havoc wherever he went. He was masterful and spiteful. He was brilliant and cruel. He was beautiful and destructive. 

Eluf brought about pain and death. 

This was not what the goddess promised. This was not what was supposed to happen. Ragnar was supposed to suffer the way that she suffered, she had not meant to suffer the whole world. Never did Lagertha mean to raise her boy from his peaceful death and reanimate him into the destroyer of Kattegat. 

Watching the flames lick the rooftops of the home just outside of the center of Kattegat, Lagertha could smell the rotting stench of the dead lying in the street, mixed with the burning tar and charred remains of her fellow countrymen. She thought back to how the Seer had warned her. 

Was that truly Freya that had spoken to her years ago, or Loki? What right did she have to ask the gods for revenge? She should have not interfered; just let them do their work with Ragnar’s fate.

All of this was her fault. All of this death was her fault. 

And to know that she would meet her death at the hands of one of his sons. But which one: Bjorn, Ubbe, Hvitserk, Ivar or Eluf? 

Oh Odin, what had she done?

******

“You are a god.” 

Legs dangling off of the back of the cart, Ivar watched as Kattegat grew smaller in the distance. 

The inexplicable anger in him had been sated for now. That inner voice, the one that made his heart pump faster and his jaw clench seemed to be at peace. He could rest; if only for a moment, he could rest. 

He knew this would not be the last time he saw his home, just like he knew no one would ever doubt him again.

Maybe this time, with the voice silenced he could find happiness. He thought he had found it with Freydis, but the voice grew louder than her most days. In the end, the voice was right. She was just like the rest, an obstacle in his way to greatness. She needed to be quieted. 

She had been right about one thing, he was a god. Not in the traditional sense, he now understood that. He had been engendered by the gods. Created by the seed of his father, in the womb of his mother and fused with Hel’s knowledge provided by his brother. 

He would go on to do many great things. Kattegat was just the beginning. 

The world would never forget Ivar the Boneless. 

His brother would always ensure that he would be ruthless. 

Fin.

@xbellaxcarolinax @youbloodymadgenius @zuxiezendler @peaceisadirtyword @peachyboneless @ivarthebloodyking @a-mess-of-fandoms @didiintheblog @we-are-only-halfway-home93 @conaionaru @flowers-in-your-hayr  @geekandbooknerd @inforapound @nukyster-blog​

[hollenka99]

Whenever and Wherever

This is ridiculously late because I didn’t have much time to work on it thanks to irl stuff so sorry about that but happy (belated) birthday @bupine. Have some bench trio.

1.

2.

The first time their paths cross, it's in the tailor shop run by Tommy's family. Tommy seems to be manning the counter while his brothers and father are supposedly in the back. The customer is clearly an enderman hybrid if his facial features are anything to go off of. He's just here to order a suit for a new job as a stenographer for the mayor apparently. Ranboo lingers longer than he likely expected to when he walked in as the three of them make conversation together. Before their latest acquaintance heads off, they decide to meet up again outside of work hours.

Talking to Ranboo comes easy. Before too long, you could tell Ranboo's work schedule based on where he was found lingering. At the tailor's shop? Well, it was likely one of his days off and he wanted to keep Tommy company for a while as the owner's son worked. At the bakery? That usually meant Ranboo was on his lunch break and hoped to sneak something sweet into his midday meal. He occasionally buys a few flowers for Tommy with the excuse of 'livening up his workspace' and offers Tubbo his attempts at baking. Whenever possible, the three of them either made time during lunch or in the evening to hang out together.

Then Ranboo seems to realise he gets off work around about the same time the bakery owned by Tubbo's family closes for the night. That mixed with the fact he really isn't the best with anything kitchen related... Listen, Tubbo was simply being a good friend by helping him out. Plus, who wouldn't want to take advantage of an excuse to spend more time with one of their best friends? It becomes a... thing, their evening practice sessions. Tommy once comments on it during a lunchtime meet-up, only to tease them but it kind of hits Tubbo how often Ranboo swings by so they can bake together.

It becomes blatantly clear everyone knows what's going on between the two of them when they hang around at the back of the tailor's one afternoon.

"If one of you doesn't ask the other out, I will break into your homes, steal your clothes and alter them so they're unwearable. Then I will make you pay to have them fixed."

"We... We uh, aren't-" Ranboo begins defending.

Tommy glances up from his sewing machine as he switches it off. "Fucking hell, just kiss or something, I don't know. But please stop forcing me to watch the two of you make eyes at each other whenever we hang out. We haven't been 16 for years. Sort yourselves out or whatever."

So they clumsily arrange a 'date' and let things go from there. It goes... well. A second attempt to make sure the first wasn't a fluke wouldn't hurt, nor would a third. It soon gets to the point where this new dynamic feels entirely natural. Tubbo's only worry is that Tommy might feel like a third wheel. Their mutual friend assures them he doesn't care about that. Besides, they know him, if he was actually bothered by it, he would have complained a ton by now.

Getting engaged isn't a big affair. In fact, it is a complete mess that occurs on Ranboo's sofa following a lull in conversation. He trips over his words, segues into various rambley detours and eventually manages to get to the point where he asks the all important question. Tubbo knew his answer the moment he realised where his boyfriend was headed with the conversation.

"So Tommy," Tubbo leans over the counter. The way he very blatantly holds Ranboo's hand only causes his attempt at acting nonchalant to come close to failing. "How much for a couple of wedding suits?"

"You're not getting a friend discount. In fact, I think I'll double the typical asking price purely because you are my friends."

"I hate you, you know that, right?"

"Hmm, might even make it triple."

"I will personally uninvite you."

Tommy and Tubbo maintain straight-faced eye contact for all of five seconds before the taller of the two breaks into a grin. Before the new fiancees can react, Tommy has his arms around both of them, drawing them in closer.

"How could neither of you tell me you were looking at rings? Absolute crime, that, if you ask me. Especially since I'm obviously the bestest man around. Disgraceful, the both of you. How can you sleep at night knowing you left me out of the loop? Gonna have to quadruple the price as punishment."

An elbow to the ribs leads to a slightly pained inhale before the three of them descend into snickers.

3.

Is it bad that he forgot land-dwellers need air?

Tubbo had been watched the two of them from afar. The one with sand-coloured hair makes himself round as he falls a significant distance towards the water. After a few repeats of this odd practice, he decides he will greet the human when he next appears in his domain. Tubbo grabs him by the arms with a friendly smile but it doesn't seem the human is so keen to befriend any merfolk. In the struggle, he gets a weird appendage to the face. Not one to be easily put off, Tubbo swims to the surface in time to see the boy communicating angrily with one whose hair colour resembled those of a beast he's been warned about. He thinks he'll dub them Sand and Orca for simplicity.

Orca spots him watching their conversation and walks over, positioning himself close enough to include Tubbo in any discussions they may want to have with him but far enough that Tubbo couldn't physically reach either of the boys with his arms. Sand greatly disapproves of this supposed fraternising with the enemy. Orca keeps attempting to communicate but their languages are vastly different so all it amounts to are gestures. When they leave, Tubbo finds it funny how the one named after a deadly predator is the most willing to be friendly while the one whose namesake he loves lounging upon occasionally had a tendency to come off as hostile.

The pair of humans don't visit him everyday and even on the days they do, the position of the sun isn't always the same when they arrive. Nevertheless, they continue to come as often as they are able and Tubbo appreciates that. He can't replicate any of their human vocalisations and though they try, neither of the human boys are particularly great at whistling and chirping properly. The constant gesturing seems to be the only way for them to communicate but they somehow manage to become firm friends despite it all.

One thing Tubbo definitely understands is fish. He is perfectly capable of getting his own food and honestly prefers catching it live anyway but if they want to offer him a snack as a sign of friendship, he's hardly going to say no. There's always the option to share the food with his family later. He brings Sand his namesake as a way of thanking them. Even if he knew a good place to observe orcas so he could extend a similar gesture to his other friend, Orca apparently can't swim. At least, that's how Tubbo interpreted it when his friend once pointed to himself, motioned as if he was pulling himself forward in water and shook his head afterwards. So Sand is the only one who sometimes joins him in the shallower water. And Tubbo has learned from his mistakes now, he makes no attempts to keep Sand below the surface longer than the human boy can manage.

One day not long after they meet, Sand tries to tell him something he can sense is important. He gestures between himself and Orca, points to the sun and makes a wide circular motion with his finger, extends his arm so it rises above their heads then ends the message by pointing to the shore. It takes another round of reiterating before Tubbo begins to potentially understand. They will get big with the sun and be here? It sounds odd but he supposes he can't physically stop them from leaving.

The sea grows warmer and cooler then back again over and over. He visits their spot each time the temperature rises. They never come. Or maybe he just keeps missing them when they do show up. He's not sure. Either way, he gets older and grows into young adulthood as the years continue to pass. He hopes the same is happening to them. They did promise to return once they got bigger too, after all. Although, the thought he might have wildly misunderstood Sand's parting message isn't always easy to not dwell on.

His waiting finally pays off and he couldn't be more ecstatic. They've both grown weird shells on their backs that he feels would be ineffective at defending them, their feet are disproportionately longer and their faces are practically unrecognisable with protective shells around their eyes and mouths. They are much larger than the last time they all saw each other too. But it's them, it's really them! Not to mention them seem to have developed the ability to breathe underwater somehow. Unsure how to greet them properly after all this time, he rushes off to the seabed with a grin and presents them with a fish as well as a fistful of sand. They look between themselves before accepting the gifts gratefully.

As the sunlight wanes on the surface, the humans sit on their familiar secluded spot of a caved area while Tubbo lets the water lap around him. The human duo have suddenly lost their strange shells now, both on their backs and faces, as well as returned to having better proportioned feet. Orca offers his own reunion gift. If Tubbo were human, he might have made use of non-existent tear ducts to inadvertently express how moved he was by the object. Because oh wow, he was never able to communicate Orca's

4.

Tubbo knows what it is like to be displaced by war. He'd been born in a time of technical peacetime, though everyone knew this would change sooner rather than later with all the tension.

He's 9 when the war seems to decide it's time to directly come for him as the son of the president, more than the resource shortages or street violence ever could. An attempt to assassinate his father that he'd been too close to lands him in hospital. It's officially too dangerous for him to remain a symbol of how safe their country was. All those not old enough to potentially enlist get evacuated, Tubbo especially.

Snowchester is... alright. It's isolated and out of the way, which is probably for the best in the general scheme of things. But at his age, all he really cares about is making the most of the snow before the novelty wears off and questioning how long it will be before he can go home to his family again. The answer was less than a month and 'we don't know so you'll just have to sit tight. Okay?'. So he reluctantly settles into his new life. He makes an effort to get to know the handful of other kids from the village in the hopes of gaining at least one friend to help him through this, he wanders around the marketplace on Tuesdays to find the sweet highlight of his week and for the hell of it, he challenges himself to become a master snow sculptor. Tubbo also writes to home to let his family know how he's doing but it feels like it has to go through 50 hands just to reach them for the sake of maintaining his secrecy which really sucks. By the time he celebrates his first birthday without them there, he had given up on arguing about the risk of just ringing them.

Then when he's 11, men posing as sea merchants arrive on their frozen shores during the night. Before he's even fully woken up, he's on a horse in his goddamn pyjamas and clutching a pitiful bag filled with whatever he and foster father had managed to stuff into it in 2 seconds. He doesn't get to bid Snowchester a proper goodbye. They're already on a rowboat they'd kind of stolen after racing through the trees when reality finally begins dawning on him. The man who'd looked after him explains they were headed to a new place that would hopefully prove to be safer than his old home.

He's used to the cold of a tundra by now. This place is more landlocked than Snowchester but not everything can be on the coast. He guesses the isolation and lack of enemy reinforcements arriving directly at a village is a good way to decrease the risk of attack. He hates it here. Snowchester might have been a fair distance from other places but at least there had been a bunch of people around. This was literally one guy looking after two kids, now three, in the middle of actual nowhere.

Phil does his best to be accommodating, he will give him that. And the other boys he's living with aren't too bad half the time. But it's too much. He decides he'd rather keep to himself. Ranboo, like Phil, is a bit more patient with him than Tommy is. Ranboo is willing to play a chess game he has no chance of winning or solve the same jigsaw for the 5th time that week. Tommy, on the other hand, will talk at him or encourage him to go outside.

"If nothing dangerous happens, you have to... make me a hot chocolate. Yeah, that seems like a decent payment."

"Payment for what?"

"For getting you to stop sulking and enjoy the snow obviously."

He humours him but he makes sure his reluctance is unmistakeably evident. It turns out Tommy has excellent aim when it comes to throwing snowballs. When Tubbo complains about this, Tommy simply shrugs and reveals his brother is the commander of the army so what did he expect? It doesn't matter whether you're hunting for food or stopping the enemy from getting you first, precision and accuracy are important for survival. That's part of the wisdom Wilbur had bestowed upon him before going off to lead their side to victory anyway. Tommy then ends his speech by standing next to Tubbo in order to cram a previously concealed handful of snow down his back in a surprise attack. Tubbo swears he is going to work out how to dislodge half the roof's worth of snow on Tommy's head tomorrow for that. When they finally head back inside, Tommy lets him know he'd like his drink to include whipped cream and those tiny marshmallows if they still have some lying around.

In time, he learns Tommy had been sent far from home the same as he had. Logsted had been 'a tiny shithole with nothing on offer to do' that eventually fell prey to the same exploitable feature that Snowchester had. Phil had been an old contact of General Soot's so when the initial relocation efforts fell through, Tommy was sent to Phil. No big deal. Well... listen, Tommy can act like a prat at the best of times but he supposes it is nice knowing he's not the only one paranoid this will abruptly end terribly one night.

The days, weeks, months roll by swiftly. The three of them have snowball fights at least onc

5.

Technically, it's Tommy's fault they nearly die. He'd been so insistent on fighting the dragon like his father once had that Tubbo had lost the will to try dissuade him. To be fair, he was all for it. It was only that Tommy was eager to jump right into the challenge while Tubbo… would prefer to actually survive.

They agree it will be an 'in and out' affair. They'll sneak down to the nearby portal at night, kill the dragon and hop back to the Overworld before their absences are noticed. If their families are unaware, they will never get in trouble for this. It can be an epic tale to impress future acquaintances but one to keep to themselves within earshot of those who'd scold them for it.

So that's what they do. With diamond armour and arrows they 'borrowed', the pair of 15 year olds face the dragon. They've already assigned themselves roles with Tubbo being in charge of destroying the crystals and Tommy tackling the dragon as a distraction. The plan is to take on the beast together once Tubbo's initial objective is complete.

It goes to shit when Tubbo barely makes a water clutch after being pushed off a tower by the force of an exploding ender crystal. Tommy had tried to get closer to him to provide support but ended up getting caught in the dragon's toxic breath. And then one of them must have accidentally triggered hostile attention from the surrounding endermen. A perfect example of sod's law, everything that could go wrong seemingly does. They tire themselves out too much by trying to return to more neutral odds. It doesn't happen. The cherry on top was the dragon knocking Tubbo into a pillar with her wing.

He's definitely had enough of this bullshit by the time he lets the developing concussion steal his consciousness. Let them just respawn in the bed they'd set up right outside the stronghold's portal room so they can be done with this. He really doesn't want to lose a life, especially not to a stupid stunt like this. But by this point? Fuck it.

When he wakes, it is not on the ground. It seems to be in a building on some sort. Has someone taken him home to work through his injuries? Tommy couldn't have since the next time Tubbo sees him, he has a haphazardly constructed splint on his leg. They bicker about their disastrous exploits until Tommy grouchily alerts them to the presence of their host, a young looking enderman.

It passes them a written message and Tommy, being the son of someone who is pretty much a jack of all trades when it comes to learning about other cultures, has a go at reading it. It's nothing too elaborate, just a summary of what happened while Tubbo was unconscious. The End native had spotted their plight as Tommy continued to get bombarded by aggressive endermen and toxic fumes courtesy of the dragon. All it had done was bring them home and attempt to give them medical assistance. Now here they were. At the bottom is a word Tommy's never seen before.

"Dunno what the fuck a Ranboo is."

"Maybe it's his name, idiot. Look at where it is, it's a signature."

"Oh, yeah maybe. What kind of stupid name is Ranboo though?"

They can't go back without the dragon dying and neither of them are in a position to make a second attempt, especially at the start when they are still both recovering. With no way home, they resign themselves to their new reality of living permanently in the End. The least they can do, in Tubbo's opinion, is try their best to communicate with their host by learning enderspeak. That goes... very slowly. Even with Ranboo helping out and Tommy's head start, it's not the easiest thing for them to learn. The humans share some of their language with the enderman in return.

Either way, they start living in their new home as Ranboo's guests. Their diet becomes saturated with chorus fruit and the first time either of them accidentally teleports during a meal, it's a shock. Their new friend waits until Tommy's broken leg heals before occasionally showing them around the islands that make up this dimension. They visit an end city that happens to have a ship nearby at some point and Tubbo resists the urge to lightly smack Tommy at the back of the head for acting like he's not impressed. They may possibly never be able to go home but come on. there is a literal massive ship floating in the sky.

Phil comes for them as soon as it feels like they might finally be getting used to their new way of life. They get the scolding of a lifetime mixed in with Phil making his relief and worry painfully obvious. They introduce Phil to Ranboo and of course the guy is conversational in enderspeak. At one point, Tubbo catches Tommy making a jabbing motion towards his father with his thumb incredibly subtly before rolling his eyes. As deeply in trouble as they are, as much as they were settling into what they believed to be a more permanent life change, the promise of home fills Tubbo with anticipation. He can't wait for the four of them to return to the Overworld.

Because you're coming too,

+1.

He's never been so eager to go to an airport in his life. His mum half listens while concentrating on the road as he rambles about all the plans the three of them had started making for the upcoming two weeks. There were so many games on their list for them to try. And yes, he knows they won't be able to get around to them all but they'll be damned if don't make an effort to dent it. Oh and then also all the stuff that got picked on the spinning wheel from Ranboo's stream a while ago.

Tubbo is beside himself as they wait in the arrival meeting area. There's no word of delays so come on, get here already. Then there he is, wearing his signature sunglasses and mask in the midst of the emerging crowd. Once the pair are close enough to do so, Tubbo throws his arms around his friend. And god, he knew Ranboo was much taller but he doesn't feel he'll hear the end of this, especially not once Tommy shows up.

They've already established this in preparatory voice calls but as they head towards the car, Tubbo explains that Tommy isn't due until tomorrow. So maybe they could watch one of those Starkid shows tonight since Ranboo's internal sense of time will be screwed by the long journey and Tubbo's hardly the best at maintaining a circadian rhythm as it is. His parents and sisters will go to bed and that's when the party can really start. Ranboo suggests The Trail to Oregon purely because the scene where Slippery When Wet threatens to murder god lives rent free in his head. But it would ultimately be up to Tubbo when the time came tonight.

Just outside the car with Ranboo's luggage in the boot, he asks his mum to take a picture of the two of them. He dms it to the missing member of their trio with a smirk.

Tubbo: Bet you're so jealous right now

Tommy: No because he's going to hang out with me more after I get there

Tubbo: As if

Tubbo: Can't wait for this week

Tommy: Same

Tubbo: Ranboo says hi btw

Tommy: Wow cringe

Tommy: Can't go on call rn but I say hi too

Tubbo: Whos cringe now?

Tommy: Shut up

He and Ranboo spend the entire journey home chatting about everything and nothing. Oh, these next two weeks were going to be amazing. Tubbo can't wait.

Tubbo wakes slowly. He doesn't tend to be startled by Ranboo's lack of eyelids as often nowadays. They may not share a bed that frequently, separate homes and all that, but he's seen his husband crash on his sofa after an exhausting day enough times to gradually get used to it. Michael had managed to snuggle up between them at some point in the night too. The little zombie piglin boy is fast asleep as well. Tubbo readjusts his arm so it encompasses their adoptive son, drawing him closer slightly.

Distantly, he recalls he's planned to meet up with Tommy later and it makes him think. A husband who cares about him enough to make Tubbo one of people whose side he'd stand by if necessary, a son whom they both love and would defend with their lives and a best friend who still stuck by him despite how much they've changed in the several months since they first met. He'd like to think that regardless of the timeline or universe, he'd always have them or close enough copies.

Content with his situation, he lets his eyes slip close once more and drifts back to sleep.

[baepop]

PRIVATE // 1

You meet a captivating stranger whose sudden appearance stirs the unrequited feelings of your best friend.

Word Count: 7.5k

Pairing: Jungkook x You x Jennie

Genre: Slight angst/fluff, slight smut (aka: the buildup)

A/N: Happy pride month bitches! Bisexual fic coming your way!

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12

Everything about Jennie was as proper as could be. Her shoes never seemed to scuff, not even the pair with the studs that she loved so much; her pleated skirts never dared utter a single wrinkle and if you ever thought to see a hair out of place, even after a session of hot yoga, well…you’d thought wrong. When Jennie first started coming around, you swore she was some park avenue princess with the way she insisted on paying for meals and buying you things without having known each other long. You two had met through a friend of a friend at a mellow house party but never exchanged social media or anything. You just couldn’t see yourself befriending her, preferring instead to focus on your studies for your senior year of college. Making it to these parties occasionally and chatting up strangers for a while was all you really had time for. So it was much to your surprise running into Jennie at a café on campus that you frequented weekday afternoons whenever you didn’t have class or work. She had tapped you on your shoulder then embraced your figure once you turned around to see who was invading your personal space. That day she had on a canary yellow peacoat and her hair smelled of coconut, two things you’d noticed as her arms lingered around your frame for a beat too long. The next day she wore a mauve peacoat that perfectly complimented the blush on her cheeks. Next was periwinkle and then taupe before you finally asked her why she was suddenly such a fan of the coffee on your campus seeing as how she wasn’t a student at the university.

“Well, I…I’m not actually. The coffee here is subpar and don’t even get me started on the tea selection.” You stared at her with a blank expression until she defeatedly sighed and placed her mug on the table. “You didn’t give me your number before you left Yoongi’s party. And when I asked him for it, he refused to give it to me and instead told me I could probably find you here.” You both sat there staring at each other for what seemed like minutes before you gave up, breaking eye contact to sip on your coffee and turn to the next page in your psychology book. At that point you didn’t care why she wanted to befriend you so bad, but you also didn’t care enough to push her away, so you two sat there in comfortable silence as you went over this week’s cognitive dissonance chapter. You figured you had made a good impression at the party and she probably didn’t have much going on to keep herself busy.

It didn’t take long for Jennie to weasel her way into being your best friend despite your callous indifference of her incessant presence in the coffee house. It also wasn’t a coveted title to obtain as you hadn’t been a social butterfly lately. It took a good amount of begging before she convinced you to sign up for yoga classes with her, held on the evenings 4 floors below her penthouse, only a month after she began visiting you on campus. At that point, you hadn’t minded her company so much anymore as you got to know the goofy yet intelligent aspects of her personality that vibed well with your own. If you were being truthful with yourself, you were happy Jennie had managed to become a good friend of yours because things had gotten stale and lonely having only your schoolwork and job to focus on. Still, however, Jennie remained an enigma to you as generally people of her stature didn’t go out of their way to befriend someone like you, especially when you’ve made them work for it. One night, you agreed to go up to her place for a glass of wine after yoga and that’s when all the walls finally came down. The façade of her perfect image came tumbling down as she admitted to feeling immense pressure to be who everyone else thought she was. She also admitted to finally feeling seen that night you two met at Yoongi’s party when you complimented the song she played on the stereo. Everyone was complaining about her music choices being too mellow to dance to but once you had arrived at the party you loved the strum of the guitar you heard as you sipped on your drink and decided to compliment whoever it was that was playing the song. The memory of her babbling into her glass for 45 minutes as her top knot loosened and drooped over her forehead was a warm one that never quite left you. And it was also the same night where you started to finally let her in.

***

“Let’s get pizza.” Jennie looked up from scrolling on her endless Instagram feed at the sound of her stomach rumbling.

Without looking up from your phone, you shook your head no and replied, “Nah, sorry I have to tutor that kid in a bit, remember?” Jennie sucked her teeth and solemnly went back to her phone screen.

“Why did you agree to do that anyway?” she whined childishly.

“You know I could really use the money Jen. A girls got bills.” You sighed as you scrolled past a beautiful pair of boots advertised on your timeline.

“I will literally buy you whatever you want, you know that.” Jennie rolled her eyes as her face settled into a pout while leaning her head into her palm.

“I know, and that’s the problem.” You chuckled bitterly. “I’ve got way too many family members born next month so I need to save up some money for presents. You can come shopping with me if you want.”

“Ugh okay, but I’m not letting you drag me into another thrift shop! Those places give me the heebie-jeebies! Who knows what ---”

The alarm on your phone signaling the tutoring session approaching interrupted Jennie mid-sentence. You shot her an apologetic look as her pout became even more pronounced. “We can get pizza when I’m done. Gotta go for now though! Text ya later.” You swung your bookbag across your shoulder and swiftly entered the elevator that would take you to the main floor. As you descended through all 21 floors, you recalled how uncomfortable it was to hang out at her place in the beginning stages of your budding friendship. Now you’ve gotten so used to the obscure paintings on the walls and expensive decorations that you wondered if it was you who was making space for her eccentricity in your life or if it was her lavish lifestyle that was making way for boring old you. Just then the doors swung open into the hustle and bustle of the lobby, effectively interrupting your train of thought as you blended into the chaos of busy people.

 ***

“Jeon Jungkook?” You bent over to peer at the brown-haired boy who was huddled over his laptop’s screen. This café on campus was one of the less popular ones, which made it easier to assume this boy was your tutee as he was the only one at the café apart from a girl hunched over a table lightly snoring. He peered up at you in a double-take then settled on the screen of his laptop as he ferociously jabbed on the directional keys of the keyboard.

“Yeah, that’s me…are you the…tutor?” His distractedness during your introduction confused you before you glanced at his computer and realized he was in the middle of an online SMITE match. Normally you would be content in waiting for him to finish before you could start the session but the idea of missing out on pizza annoyed you. You decided to close his laptop shut and keep your finger on top of it until he was forced to give you his undivided attention.

“Hi! I’m (Y/N), your English tutor. If you don’t mind, I have plans later so I’d like to get started as soon as possible.” You plastered a wide smile on your face. The boy, too stunned to respond, sat there frozen as you dropped your book bag onto the chair and began taking out a notebook and a pencil.

“Sorry.” You heard him mumble under his breath but pretended not to hear it to avoid an awkward moment. Instead, you smiled at him again and asked exactly what he needed help with. “We’re reading this book in class right now and there’s a book report due next week. The language is really obscure, and I don’t even know how to begin analyzing the context.” You picked up his copy of the book and fanned the worn out pages.

“Well, lucky for you this is one of my favorite books! So I can actually help you a lot with your report.” You handed the book back to him with a smile and wink. Jungkook instantly blushed and chuckled while rubbing the back of his neck.

“Thanks in advance, I have a feeling I’ll be needing a lot of your help.” Jungkook’s quick sweep of your body didn’t go unnoticed but nonetheless, you decided to dive into the tutoring session. It was hard to ignore the butterflies in your stomach throughout as you noticed more and more how boyishly handsome he was and what a nice smile he had. The possibility of him being into you made it harder to concentrate and made you blush when you accidentally had skin to skin contact while taking a paper from his hands. Being flustered was extremely unlike you, but you credited your sudden lameness to your year-long lack of sex. Taking a deep breath gave you a moment of clarity and the resolve to finish the session as professionally as possible.

“So…when can I see you again? For tutoring I mean?” Jungkook tried hard to stay as nonchalant as possible but his crooked smile directed downwards as he packed up his belongings gave it away. During the session you realized he didn’t need much help at all and would most likely only need the one day of tutoring. Nonetheless, you decided to take the bait, but not without making him work for it.

“If you feel the need for more tutoring sessions you can schedule an appointment on the school’s website.” With that, you swiftly zipped up your book bag and headed out of the coffee shop.

***

It only took a couple days to receive Jungkook’s request for a follow-up tutoring session set for Thursday of next week. You chuckled in the bright glow of your computer’s screen that shown brightly in your dark room. When you clicked on the notification to expand the details of his request, you noticed the location preference was set to his dorm room. Your light chuckle turned into a breathy laugh. This kid had balls, you had to admit. You kept waiting for his cheekiness to rub you the wrong way sober you up but the more signs he showed of interest the more you were inclined to entertain them. It wasn’t like you to let the other person take charge in your relationship, preferring instead to be completely transparent from the beginning and taking joy in asking the other out. You didn’t care much for games and titles but the one of “dominant” given to you by your freshman year friends was not lost on you. You, instead, chose to embrace it and accept that your ‘take charge’ attitude would turn off undesirable suitors and attract the kind of people you could actually be with. You leaned back in your chair and sipped on your tea before hitting the “accept” button and shutting off your computer.

That night you tried to fall asleep but too many thoughts of your upcoming graduation, approaching due dates for schoolwork and a very cute brunette junior kept you up until dusk. Just when you finally started to drift off to sleep, you felt a soft dip in the bed that instantly woke you.

“Sorry, sorry...” Jennie whispered as she got under the covers. You looked at her incredulously before she responded again, “I couldn’t sleep and your bed is comfy. Also, you left your keys attached to the door again. You should really be more careful (Y/N).” You hummed in agreement, too tired to address her forced entry into your apartment and settling to be big spoon for the night.

The obnoxious sounds of your phone’s alarm awoke both of you with a start. Jennie grumbled and pressed a pillow to her ears. “It is an ungodly hour to be awake! Turn it off!” You immediately grabbed your phone and hopped out of bed to start getting ready for work. “What are you doing?” Jennie rubbed her eyes and squinted at you through the golden morning rays shining through the discombobulated shutters on your bedroom window.

“I have work in an hour. We can’t all be sleeping princesses until noon.” You stuck your tongue out at her before beginning to brush your teeth. Jennie rolled her eyes and went back to bed. She was already long used to your poking fun at her lazy and rich lifestyle, choosing to simply ignore your quips.

You managed to get ready at a record-breaking speed of 20 minutes. As you slipped the last shoe on, you peered at Jennie whose body lay impossibly still under the covers with her shiny black hair spilling out onto your pillow like plant roots. You decided to tip toe over to check if she was already sleeping. You didn’t want to wake her, so you settled for moving her bangs out of her eyes and whispering “I’ll see you after work” before heading out for the day. You could’ve sworn you noticed her blushing but figured it was all in your imagination.

 ***

Working at the boutique wasn’t your favorite thing in the world but the pay was decent. You had started working there your sophomore year after seeing a “help wanted” ad in the window of a small men’s formal suiting shop. You were at the downtown fashion district with your usual group of freshman year friends killing time and decided there wasn’t any harm in filling out an application at the counter. The job had looked easy enough, but after getting hired you soon learned differently. You realized just how difficult it was to take charge of older men in conversations about men’s suiting, and even more so dressing them. It took a lot of guts and studying men’s fashion before you grew into your own at the shop. The effort you started putting into your job along with increasingly difficult classes had you falling out of contact with those same friends. You had to admit that the thought of growing apart from your friends was much less painful than you thought it might be freshman year. Your likes and goals were entirely different by now, but most importantly, you were becoming someone you liked and respected.

That afternoon after leaving Jennie in your bed, you found yourself focusing on steaming the leg on a pair of gray linen pants when suddenly you heard the bell at the top of the entrance ring signaling a customer entering the store. You immediately turned off the steamer and rushed to the counter to greet them only to be dumbstruck at the sight in front of you. Jungkook and an older man entered the store amidst conversation. Your utter confusion rendered you speechless as they looked around the store for help.

“Ah, young lady, do you work here?” The older man addressed you kindly across the store.

You looked between him and Jungkook for a moment before your professionalism kicked in. “Yes! Hi, sorry! I was busy steaming and didn’t see you guys. Welcome to Suits 4 U, how can I assist you guys today?” You kept your eyes trained on the older gentleman but didn’t miss how Jungkook’s mouth hung open the entire time. Did he know you worked there before showing up or was it just a mere coincidence? Either way, the excitement of seeing him unexpectedly before your tutoring session gave you a tiny thrill masked under your polite smile.

“Well, I’m here with my son to get him fitted for his first suit. He has an internship coming up this summer at a finance company and we need him to look his best.” The man chuckled while patting Jungkook’s shoulder. His eyes formed crescent moons while smiling which instantly disarmed you. “Is Raphael here? I’ve been coming to him for years; this shop is just great.”

You laughed and tucked some hair behind your ear. “Thank you so much! He’s not in right now but, I can help you out myself if that’s okay. Your son looks to be about a 32 waist and 34 inseams?” The older man nodded in astonishment and looked towards Jungkook to confirm.

“Uh…yeah that’s exactly right.” Jungkook rubbed his neck in embarrassment.

“Don’t be shy, kook! You let the nice lady fit you for a good suit and I’ll be right here if you need me.” You and the man exchanged smiles before walking around the counter to show Jungkook to the fitting area behind the curtains. You helped him up onto the platform in front of 3 adjacent mirrors before busying yourself looking for a style of suit in his sizes that would flatter him.

Jungkook cleared his throat before speaking, “So…I didn’t know you had two jobs. Must be rough during your senior year.”

Without missing a beat, you responded, “How did you know I was a senior?”

“You mentioned it in your Facebook status.” Jungkook quickly replied with a straight face.

“So, you stalked me?” You laughed incredulously.

“More like researched. You’re a pretty private person so I didn’t find much if that makes you feel better.” Jungkook smiled widely which made you instinctively blush. Too flustered to respond you simply handed him a white button-down shirt. He immediately removed his plain black t-shirt and began buttoning the white one at an incredibly slow pace. You caught his eyes in the center mirror and realized he saw you ogling at his pecks. You immediately turned around as he continued watching you through the mirror with a shit-eating grin.

“Here, put these on.” You handed him a matching black chino suit with a European tailoring finish. Jungkook hadn’t stopped staring at you as he removed his pants and dressed himself. You were determined not to swoon at his gorgeous physique in front of him, choosing instead to jut your hip out and cross your arms while tapping your foot. “You take forever to get dressed.”

“I could use your help.”

“With?”

“Tucking my shirt in, I don’t want to wrinkle it.”

You scoffed and proceeded to gingerly tuck his shirt around his waist. You didn’t miss the way his abs reflexively twitched as your hands got to the front of his pants. He put the blazer on at once then adjusted his cuffs in the mirror. You had to admit that the way the pants tapered in on his ankles and how the blazer did the same around his waist was very flattering. You absent-mindedly brushed lint off his shoulder and brushed out the wrinkles on the arms while admiring your work in the mirror. As your eyes made their way up his frame you caught his cocky ass grin again which only made you roll your eyes. “What now, Jeon? What is so funny to you?”

“Just admit you’re into me.” You froze for a second before responding.

“Excuse me?”

“Oh, you heard me pretty well. I think that you’re into me and the way you act all tough in front of me really turns me on, so I’d like to take you out on a date sometime.”

Before you could reply, Jungkook’s dad appeared from behind the curtains and whistled at the sight of his son in a tailored suit. “Wow, that looks really good. If you’re okay with it Kook I think we’ll take it!”

“I don’t know dad, what do you think (Y/N)? Does this look good on me?” Jungkook bit his bottom lip, looking you in the eyes and daring you to confirm his beliefs. The audacity this guy had to call you out had you at a loss for words for the second time tonight. You settled for nodding and smiling.

You decided to wait behind the counter for Jungkook to undress, making small talk with his dad to pass the time. His love for his son was evident in the way he spoke so highly of him to a mere stranger. The thought warmed your heart. In a matter of 5 minutes, you were waving them both out of the door with Jungkook’s new suit in a garment bag. The remainder of your shift went by painfully slow without the silky haired boy entertaining you. You briefly considered canceling your upcoming tutoring session since it was evident the professionalism between you two was shot after this afternoon. But who were you kidding? There was no way you were going to let him get the better of you, it just wasn’t in you to submit.

 ***

You snapped out of your reverie at the feeling of a piece of popcorn bouncing off your cheek. As you turned your head to look at Jennie, several popcorn pieces fell out of your hair and onto the shaggy white rug you were sitting Indian style on. It was movie night at Jennie’s apartment, but the foreign film wasn’t captivating your interest, not when you had Jeon’s abs on your mind.

“Hey what gives?!” You started to flick pieces of popcorn back at Jennie as you found them in the carpet. She giggled while swatting them away from her face.

“Watching this movie was YOUR idea and you’re not even paying attention! You’ve been all daydreamy lately. Are you going to tell me what’s up or not?” Jennie set her bowl of popcorn aside and crossed her arms, giving you a pointed look. When it comes to Jennie, there is no escape once the interrogation starts. This wouldn’t be the first time you were under fire for withholding information from her. Despite preferring to be a private person, you never minded being completely transparent with Jennie. With time, you came to understand how loyal and trustworthy she was. Being left in the dark was just something that always bothered her, which you could understand. You sighed as you turned away from the television to face her.

“You know that guy I tutored the other day?”

“Yea?”

“I kinda want to fuck him.” Jennie froze for a second as she searched for something in your eyes.

“Okay…um…well, does he reciprocate your feelings?’

“I think he’s made it pretty obvious yeah. I just don’t know though, I’ve never been into younger guys but he’s…really hot.” You laughed as a blush overtook your cheeks. Your admission embarrassed you, even in front of your best friend. Jennie bit her lip as she laid horizontally on the couch staring at the ceiling.

“Do you have a picture of him?”

“Hmm…I can show you his Instagram.” Admitting you already perused his social media made you further embarrassed. “Before you judge me, it’s been a really long time, okay?” You scrolled on his page for a bit before finding a good enough picture of him to show her then reluctantly handed your phone over. After analyzing the selfie of him on his bed, Jennie went back to his page and started looking at other pictures of him: ones of him in his baseball uniform, laughing on a couch with a few of his friends, dancing in a goofy manner to some pop song and the list goes on. After a minute, she rolled her eyes and handed the phone back to you. Her reaction had you quirking an eyebrow as you grabbed it from her hands. “…What?”

“Oh, nothing.” Jennie closed her eyes and intertwined her hands over here stomach, intent on not giving anything away. You lunged at her sides to unleash a flurry of tickles.

“Tell me, wench!” Your consistent tickling had her hollering at the top of her lungs and squirming to escape your grip.

“I’ll never say, peasant!” You decided to straddle her midsection and pin her flailing legs down,  holding her wrists to do the same.

“Jennie Ruby Jane. Tell me, NOW!” Your long brown hair fell over your shoulder and tickled her cheek. She turned her head to the side as a final act of rebellion which only spurred your torturing on further. You began to hock a loogie dramatically which earned a valley of squeals from the pale girl.

“Okay! Okay!” You chuckled at the sign of her defeat and sat back on her hips, letting her wrists go. She sat up on her forearms pouting up at you. “You’re so extra!” the girl shouted with amusement in her eyes. After a moment of silence, she spoke, “I just think he looks like a fuck boy. It’s not going to go anywhere between you guys.” You let out a breathy laugh at her admission.

“No shit, I just want some dick!”

“Then why are you getting blushy and daydreamy if he’s only a dick to you?” She challenged you.

“Ummmm, maybe because it’s been a while and it’s nice to get some male attention during these barren times?” You rolled your eyes and climbed off of her.

“Yeah, whatever (Y/N). Keep telling yourself that.” Jennie returned your eye roll with her own and fully sat up on the couch.

“Are we going to watch this movie or not!? You’re making it hard to focus!” You continued on with your dramatic act but failed as a smiled tugged at your lips.

“OMG, you are unbelievable!” Both of you laughed and resumed your movie, only one of you being content to put that conversation behind.

***

Your Thursday afternoon shift at work dragged on because of how much you were looking forward to the tutoring session with Jungkook set for right after. Your finger drumming on the front counter and persistent glances at the clock earned some questions from the shop owner which you easily shrugged off as some trip you were looking forward to after work. As soon as the clock struck six you grabbed your jean jacket off of the coat rack and caught the shuttle back to campus. The junior dorms were just a stop before the coffee shop stop, so you already knew where you were going. You decided to just wear your work clothes paired with a denim jacket since the tight-fitting black dresses you wore as a work uniform were nice anyway. Just before you arrived at the lobby of the dorms, you caught your reflection in a car window and decided to check how you looked. Nothing unusual stood out. Your long curly hair swung just above your behind and your mascara and eyebrow gel still held on strong, the only two things you allowed on your face since the number of times you rubbed your face during class made it virtually unrealistic to wear a full face of makeup. Because of that, you settled for wearing shorter clothing that would show off your long legs. Feeling sexy in your own skin without putting way too much effort into your image was something you learned was the perfect combination to feeling happy with yourself, which was hard to do as you were generally always the tallest woman in the room. It took a long time to build self-confidence, but you were happy with where you currently were in your life. With a deep breath to calm your excitement, you headed into the lobby where Jungkook was already waiting for you. He looked up from his phone and immediately spotted you entering the building. His eyes lingered on your legs covered in sheer black tights before meeting your eyes with his own dark orbs. You felt butterflies at the instant your gazes locked and held for a few seconds. You decided to breakaway first, looking down with a small smile and waving.

“Hey, Jungkook. You ready to study?” Jungkook simpered as he looked down towards his feet with his hands in his pockets.

“Yeah I am, but it looks like you aren’t. Where’s your book bag and why are you dressed like that?” He gestured towards your subtle cleavage. You crossed your arms and gaped at him, confused as to why he was questioning you instead of complimenting you. Jungkook watched your mouth open and close before he chuckled and began heading towards his room. Luckily his room was on the first floor so there wouldn’t be an awkward elevator ride. As you walked behind him you pressed your cold hands onto your hot blushing cheeks wondering if you misread this whole situation. “Thanks for agreeing to come to the dorms this time. This was the only time I was free to get tutored, but I couldn’t leave the dorms tonight. I hope it didn’t make you uncomfortable.” His words made you all the more confused. Surely he didn’t feel the need to pretend this was anything other than a hookup, especially since he had already gotten you to come without much of a chase? You didn’t understand what he meant until he unlocked the door to his suite and a small child bombarded his legs, clinging on for dear life.

“Kookie! Kookie! You took forever!” Jungkook smiled and patted the child’s head before picking him up so you could enter into the suite.

“I was only gone a few minutes! Anyways, what do you say to a pretty lady?” Jungkook laughed as the small boy buried his head into the crook of his neck with shyness.

“…Hewwo…” You smiled at the child and greeted him back before looking up at Jungkook in utter confusion.

“I’m babysitting for my parents tonight while they celebrate their 20th anniversary. This is my little brother, Sammy. He’s a real good kid and agreed to quietly color in his coloring book while I study, right bud?” The young boy nodded without looking up at him, clearly displeased to have a stranger take his big brother’s attention away. You smiled sweetly at Jungkook to show him everything was okay with you. It was only after he placed his brother on the floor in front of his crayons that crippling embarrassment settled red and hot behind your face and prickled at your scalp. You had misread the situation after all, and even worse, assumed Jungkook was just some fuck boy looking to fake being serious about his studies in order to fuck tutor girls. He wouldn’t have been the first one you ran into, but it was now clear that you shouldn’t have lumped him into the same category. Swallowing your pride and shame, you placed your jacket on the back of his chair and pulled another one up to the desk to start the session. For about an hour, you helped Jungkook finalize his book report and put the finishing touches on his powerpoint presentation about his report. Once you both looked out of the window and saw how late it was getting, you decided to wrap things up. Turning to Sammy who was busy passionately coloring an orange elephant, you smiled and squatted near the page.

“Ready to spend some time with Kookie, Sammy? You looked up at Jungkook and winked, appreciating the way that the nickname coming from you flustered Jungkook. The young boy looked up from his art and nodded.

“Bye-bye! Um…”

“(Y/N), how do you do.” You talked in a funny voice that made Sammy giggle. Standing up and stretching your arms once more, you looked towards Jungkook who held your jacket for you to take. “Thanks. So…good luck with your presentation.” You kicked yourself at the lame way you chose to say goodbye but decided it was best to cut your losses and avoid further embarrassment.

“Thanks, I’ll walk you out.” Both of you headed out into the hallway and walked slowly towards the lobby in silence. After a few long moments, Jungkook finally broke the quiet, “So about that date…. What do you say?” You turned to him in disbelief before looking back down at your shoes. You had thought when he asked you on a date back at the shop that it was his way of getting you into bed. Once again you felt shame for being such a pessimistic pervert.

“I didn’t know you were serious about that.” You admitted.

“Yeah, I figured with the way you showed up to our study session.” Jungkook laughed as he playfully pulled on the hem of your dress so that it slapped your thigh when he let go. You pouted and stared straight ahead, unable to defend yourself. “Don’t get me wrong, I’d have loved to show you a good time tonight, but that’s not really my style. Especially with intellectual women. I want to show you a different kind of good time, at least at first. You turned toward his face in time to catch him biting his bottom lip. It was as if his mouth had a direct connection to your lower abdomen, feeling that magnetic pull between you two that you couldn’t shake. Part of you felt relieved to know it wasn’t all in your head, and the other part of you was determined to redeem yourself.

As you opened the door to the outside, you paused and swung your hair over your shoulder to look at him briefly. “Pick me up this weekend. I want to go see that new DC movie, you can take me to the movies and then we’ll get ice cream. DM me on Instagram so we can agree on a time.” With that, you closed the door behind you and headed towards the shuttle stop, content with yourself for not sneaking a peak behind you. When did you become so lame in front of guys? You idly wondered about the effects that lack of sex could have on the psyche of woman the entire shuttle ride towards your apartment.

***

You woke up to the thin rays of sunlight peering through the drawn blinds of your bedroom window. They illuminated Jennie’s face with a healthy golden glow, showcasing the subtle rhythmic movement of her chest as she slept. You felt a wave of affection at the thought of her being extra careful last night getting into your bed so as not to wake you. You idly wondered why she preferred to share this bed with you when she had a big beautiful canopy bed at her even more beautiful apartment. Then again, you remembered how lonely she must have felt when moving here without friends or family. You cuddled closer to her as the big spoon, wrapping your right arm around her torso and pulling her into your chest. The slight movement woke Jennie for a few seconds before she hugged your arm tightly and went back to sleep, taking you into unconsciousness with her.

You awoke a few hours later, well into the afternoon in the same position you had fallen asleep in only this time, Jennie’s snoring was loud enough to quake the glass of water on your nightstand. Your raspy chuckle was barely audible as you stared at her mouth that hung open while she violently slept. Careful so as not to wake her, you gingerly slid your arm out of her grasp and pulled the covers off of your bodies since the heat was making you a little sweaty. Your eyes bulged while taking in the view south of the bed. Jennie had taken her pants off before climbing into bed and was only sporting a bright red G-string. You forced yourself to look anywhere other than her perfect bottom until your heart stopped beating as fast as it was. What the hell, Jennie? You cursed yourself for giving her a key to your apartment after her initial forced entry. The lack of sex is really getting to you, you thought as you carefully covered her back up and climbed out of bed. Suddenly, you heard the snoring stop and a few light moans coming from the bed.

“Where’d you go?”, Jennie softly called out as she rubbed her eyes.

“In the bathroom!” You reply as best you can while brushing your teeth. Jennie groans then rolls over, pulling the covers on her further.

“Come back…”

“Sorry, I overslept enough as it is. I have some stuff I need to get done before my date tonight!” You replied in a sing-song voice before spitting the foam out of your mouth and rinsing your toothbrush in the sink.

“Your WHAT!?”, Jennie immediately sat up and ripped the covers off of her.

“Yeah, sorry I totally forgot to update you. I didn’t end up fucking that guy. Instead, he asked me out on a date! I’m actually excited to go, I feel like such a freshman.” Your giddy mood seemed to frustrate Jennie even more. She quietly got out of bed, pulled her pants on, grabbed her purse from your nightstand and left your apartment.

“Jennie?!” You called after her but the only thing you got in response was your door slamming loudly. You sucked your teeth and continued washing your face. You didn’t know why she was in such a bad mood. Sure, you didn’t tell her about how things progressed with Jungkook but it wasn’t exactly her business. This is why I haven’t dated any girls on campus recently, girls can be so moody sometimes. You took a deep breath and headed into your room to get changed, determined not to let Jennie’s childishness ruin your day.

***

Your date with Jungkook had been going well so far. He picked you up from your apartment 5 minutes early on foot. You two walked to the shuttle stop in silence since there really wasn’t much to talk about. You two had only just met and didn’t know much about each other or shared any experiences yet. You hated first dates for this reason, preferring instead to just hook up without the need to feign a relationship or only date someone you’re already friends with. You had gotten good at small talk since working at the suit shop had you conversing with all kinds of people regularly. But it still wasn’t thrilling nor any less awkward. Once you both had exhausted all the commonplace questions like “How was your day” and “What’s your favorite color”, you both sat on the shuttle on the way to the campus’ cinema in silence. Why had you agreed to this? You were really off your game at this point in time. You looked over at Jungkook and noticed him staring off into the distance looking quite alarmed. His pensive face made you giggle which snapped him out of his reverie.

“What?” He looked at you with a half-smile confused.

“Your face…you looked so…shook!” You let out in between laughs. His cheeks became tinted pink with an exasperated gasp.

“Not you too! My teammates make fun of me for it all the time! Ugh!” Jungkook complained with exaggerated exclamation. His eyes sparkled with amusement as he began tickling your sides for not taking him seriously. The guffaw that followed was obnoxious enough to catch the attention of surrounding students riding the shuttle. It was at that moment that Jungkook realized how ticklish you were, to his elation and your immediate embarrassment. You both settled into your seats immediately after meeting the eyes of annoyed riders but couldn’t contain your giggles and light shoving for the rest of the ride. Eventually, after sufficient physical contact, you two ended up walking off of the shuttle holding hands.

***

Jungkook’s lips ravaged your neck as you struggled to open the door to your apartment, fumbling your key on the lock. You eventually did open it and the door slammed backward into the adjacent wall as Jungkook reached your lips and leaned into you, holding you by the hips. Your hunger to taste him had been contagious as you had taken the opportunity that the light ‘goodnight’ peck he gave you on the lips in front of your apartment presented to start a make-out session. There was no way you would let it end that way after wanting him the entire date. He had been a perfect gentleman, waiting in line to get you a bunch of snacks at the concession stand while you held your seats, draping his jacket over your shoulders once the chill of the night set in, and bringing you all the way to your apartment even though it was past the junior dorms. And now, as he tugged on your bottom lip with his teeth while his hands held both sides of your face in the middle of your apartment, you were absolutely sure you wanted to go all the way with Jeon Jungkook. You slowly lead Jungkook to your bedroom without detaching your lips. Once his legs made contact with your bed you pushed him back onto it and climbed on top of him. You began kissing down his neck as your arms made a cage around his head. With his eyes closed and sporting a cocky smile, “Woah there (Y/N), aren’t we taking things a bit too fast?” A throaty chuckle escaped his lips as you reached his Adam's apple.

“Shut up, Jeon.” You moved back up to his lips and stuck your tongue into his mouth which he welcomed, swirling his tongue around yours in equal fervor. His fingers slid up into your hair and tightened their grip on your strands, pulling lightly but firmly so that your head moved backward, giving him access to your neck. As he sucked on your neck, you could feel a bulge forming in his pants. You decided to rub your clothed mound on his growing bulge while he kissed behind your ear.

“Don’t do that.” Jungkook let out a breathy whisper into your ear which made tingles run down your spine and had you heavily convulsing. You decided to rub even harder down onto his clothed member which was now rock hard. However, you couldn’t keep it up for too long as Jungkook was suddenly on top of you in one swift motion.

“You don’t like to listen, do you?” He stared at your lips as he interlocked your fingers together, holding your hands above your head on the bed.

“Not really, no” Your breathy reply brought back that crooked smile you were starting to love so much. In response, Jungkook lowered himself onto you and began rubbing the head of his bulge right around where your clit would be under your pants. You couldn’t help but writhe under him, struggling against his ironclad grip on your hands.

“You’ll get this…”, Jungkook bucked his hips roughly onto your mound, “…when I say you can.” You took his attempt to dominate you as a challenge, wrapping your legs around his waist to bring his member back onto you while biting your lip. Jungkook’s eyes rolled backward in brief pleasure before attacking your lips again with renewed passion. After a while, you were both breathless with puffy lips. Jungkook cleared his throat and moved back to look into your eyes. You both let out laughs as your chests heaved in unison. Jungkook looked down at your swollen lips and ran his thumbs across them before rolling over and climbing off of you. “I should go.” Too stunned to say anything, you watched him straighten his clothing and wipe his mouth.

“Ummm…did I do something wrong?” You asked as you sat up to look at him properly. Jungkook smiled and walked back over to the bed, bending over to place a brief kiss on your pink lips.

“Of course not, just practicing a little restraint. I want to do things right.” He smiled with crescent moon eyes before turning and exiting your apartment.

Do things, right?

You let out an exasperated sigh and sagged back onto the bed with one arm covering your eyes in frustration. Suddenly you heard something shift in your room which made you sit back up in alarm.

“Jungkook?” You searched your room for the source of the noise before your eyes locked with another pair of eyes peering through the slits of your closet door. You froze in utter fear as you realized someone was in your closet. Suddenly, the door opened and you screamed, chucking a pillow at the intruder because it was the closest thing to you. Jennie caught the pillow and held it to her chest, watching you warily.

“Hey (Y/N)…”

“Jennie!?”

“I can explain.”

“YOU PERVERT!!!!!!”

[seancekitsch]

Richie Tozier x Reader: 27 Years Later... Revamped!

You heard it here folks! I’ve updated my big Richie x Reader post to be more inclusive! The reader is now gender neutral instead of female, and I’ve mixed elements from the book and the new movie IT chapter 2! warning, i am a book purist so there are some plot elements from the book that do not occur in the movie! Enjoy!

-Growing up, you had always been Stan’s. You’d be each other’s go-to people, sometimes even closer than Richie and Eddie. He had been your perfect Boy Scout crush growing up, and after the first encounter with IT, he decided he couldn’t dance around his feelings any longer and asked you out.

-You always felt like the loser on the “outside”, you were at all group hang outs and meetings but you didn’t really hang out with anyone but Stan besides the occasional sleepover with Bev, but after Stan’s bar mitzvah that changed. Richie was the only loser to attend (besides you) and that meant a great deal to you. Despite how Stan used to get annoyed at Richie’s jokes, you always made sure to go out of your way to include him and befriend him after that day.

-Even though the losers drifted during high school, you remained Stan’s partner and Richie’s best friend besides Eddie. You had a lot more in common with Richie than you had originally thought because both of you essentially had to raise yourselves. Stan found a new found respect for the fellow loser over this connection you had.

-Stan was your first everything, from kisses to heartbreak. Yes, heartbreak. You broke up the summer before college. You were going out to California for school on an honours program and he was going to a university in Georgia with his twin sister. It was practical but it didn’t mean it didn’t sting either of you. You had promised to remain on good terms, however.

-Despite him moving on in Georgia, you never really did. He after college quickly married a woman named Patricia and settled in Atlanta. You met back up with Richie after graduation, and moved into a townhouse with him in Beverly Hills. Despite dating around, you never had much luck, probably thanks to your loud tall housemate.

-You and Richie actually flew out to Stan’s wedding, and while your first love was gone, there were no ill feelings from either of you. You shared a dance with him at the reception and told him how much you approved of his new wife. It meant a lot to him.

-After the wedding, you start to drift from Stan. Soon you don’t hear from each other at all. Richie was the only loser left for you.

-As much as he hated to say it, Richie saw this as his opportunity. You see, he had cared about you since the bar mitzvah. He knew there was someone he loved, but he couldn’t remember who. He guessed because he remembered you so vividly and nothing else, it had to be you. He was respectful of Stan and you, so he had never said anything and kept his distance. With Stan married, and Richie as your roommate (and secretly ruining most of your dates, whether he meant to or not) you were free, and he could hope you’d somehow feel the same.

-You and Richie live it up in Beverly Hills, networking and working side by side; going to celebrity parties and drinking with the big wigs.

-You’ve been tipsy and kissed at these parties, always to fend off unwanted company. It became the perfect cover and a casual display of affection for your closest friend. Despite it being a defence, you once kissed in a taxi after leaving one of these parties. It was a deep and long kiss, and there was no audience for it to be necessary, but it was never spoke of again.

-You became a writer on a semi popular TV series and Richie became a stand up comedian. While you hadn’t gone to school for writing, Richie had encouraged you to go for the job. You had always been good at writing, even minoring in it during college. He helped you prepare and edit scripts. He would even act out scenes in his famous impressions.

-Things were going so well, until one day Mike Hanlon calls. At first, you don’t even remember him until he calls you your old childhood nickname. You have to go back to Derry. IT is back.

-The plane ride is long, and both you and Richie decide to knock a few back in the airport bar and sleep it off on the flight. When you wake up at landing, your head is in the hollow of where his neck and shoulder meet and his arm is around you. Your hands are interlaced. Sure, the two of you had shared beds on road trips and when you’d travel for job auditions, but you had never really snuggled like this. You’re both blushing messes when you get to baggage claim.

-When you finally get back in town, you head straight to the Chinese restaurant in town in the car Richie rents. You recognise everyone immediately, embracing each of them with warmth and love... except for Stan who is nowhere to be seen. Mike assures you that he had contacted him.

-Despite his absence, you all enjoy dinner. You notice Bev and Bill still carry torches for one another after all these years. Ben looks amazing and seems very successful. Mike is even wiser than he was when you were all young. Eddie is still just as hyper and fun to talk to.

-After the meal, you all head off from the restaurant to talk strategy. On the walk out of the building, Bev pulls you back to walk and talk with her. It’s as if nothing has changed and you’re having a sleepover again. She specifically asks if you and Richie are a couple. When you deny this, she laughs and says that’s insane because of how you seem so in love with one another.

-You’d never say it, but you had imagined a life with Richie before. You can’t really be roommates with someone you have such a bond with without thinking of these things. But late at night when you can’t sleep you think about how nice it would be to have his arms around you, pressed into his lean and warm chest. There have been times when he’s brought people back, and he has a type in the people he brings home. A lot of them either share your name, or Eddie’s. You realize this isn’t a coincidence that you’d hear him calling out these names. Tozier sounded like a nice title to gain. It would be fun to see his last name, even hyphenated, on yours in any of your writing credits. But you’re snapped out of your thoughts the second Bev gets through on the line she’s trying to reach Stan at.

-Patricia was on the line; she said Stan had slit his wrists in the bathtub just an hour earlier. IT had been written on the wall in his blood. This makes your blood run cold. You can’t even react for a good five minutes even though everyone is watching you very carefully.

-The day you had all made that blood pact, Stan had made an off handed joke about slitting your wrists instead of just your hands. It had made you uncomfortable then, but scares the shit out of you now.

-When you finally do react, it’s like your whole world crumbles. You think you might be screaming, you know you’re definitely crying. You don’t even realize you’ve fled past all of the other losers cars until Richie’s arms are around you and he’s pressing you close to him on the curb.

-He let’s you scream it out, let’s you dig your nails into his skin until he bleeds, let’s you soak his nice dress shirt with tears and spit. Anything to comfort you and be close to you. This is the most thankful you’ve ever been for Richard Tozier.

-When you’ve stopped crying, there’s a newfound hate in your heart. You’re going to kill IT and it’s never going to hurt anyone ever again. You vow to avenge Stanley Uris. The group can’t disagree, even though half of them want to run. You all vow that before tomorrow is over, the clown will die.

-Richie and Eddie tell you how much they want to leave, and they try to get you to leave as well. But between your need for vengeance and Bill and Mike’s ranting about a strategy to kill IT, they don’t end up leaving town. That night, you can’t sleep. You aren’t sure how, maybe it’s a trick of IT’s illusions, but somehow you end up in Richie’s bed. It’s restless and you’re both terrified, but you cling together in solidarity and something stronger than lifelong friendship. But by the time he wakes you’re gone already, looking for your token to burn.

-You find it in the clubhouse, hidden behind one of the wooden boards nailed to the floor. It’s the little paper program from Stan’s bar mitzvah. An important day that quite literally changed your whole life.

-Upon returning to the townhouse, you find It nearly empty, with Eddie patching up a hole in his face. He’s mumbling something about the library while he’s finishing sanitizing his wound, so that’s where the two of you head when he’s done.

-Richie is shaken after killing Bowers, and now it’s your turn to comfort him. He shakes as you slip your arm around his, guiding him as he walks. Your other hand squeezes his bicep every few minutes to remind him to breathe. You’re here, and you’ve got him. It helps.

-Returning to Neibolt fills you with all of the memories you’d struggled to remember the day before. All of the fear and isolation of your childhood filled you so completely that you thought you could be sick. But you enter anyway, nausea and all.

-seeing IT take the form of Stan’s body is what does it for you though. You’re doubled over vomiting and crying, your hands sting against the broken glass and splinters on the floor. You’re only half aware of the chaos going around you until Richie kicks what you can only describe as a spider with Stan’s head and razor sharp teeth away from you. And then everything is so horrifyingly clear. This is only the beginning; it will get worse. When the head spider attacks Richie, you try to pull it off of him, but you aren’t strong enough. It’s up to Eddie, but Eddie is frozen.

-Down in the sewers is even worse. The fight takes a larger toll on all of you than expected. Eddie finally abandons all of the fear he cling to his entire life and charged head first into the fight, only to be stabbed through the torso and not get back up. You’re bloodied by one of IT’s claws, your wrist probably broken and one of your legs is in agony, so much so that you have to fight to stand while dodging the giant spider monster in it’s true form. All of you are injured in some way but team work weakens the creature.

-ripping out IT’s heart and destroying it should have been the end of all of the horror, and at first you think it is. You’re all relieved, until you notice Eddie hasn’t gotten up. Eddie and Richie had always had a special bond. You knew this better than anyone. He was the first one to Eddie’s side and held him as he tried to get him to respond.

-Eddie Kaspbrak is dead, and you can feel Richie’s heart breaking beside you. You hold his hand as he goes, and the rest of the losers hold each other. Richie presses a long kiss to his face, finally allowing tears to fall for the first time in the lifetime you’ve known him. It hurts even more knowing you can’t carry his body out of this place.

-As you leave the sewers, something changes. It’s as if the curse on you all has finally been lifted. You know you all have to go back to real life and finally live without fear, but fear is all any of you have ever known. The water of the quarry is healing to all of you, in the physical case of soothing aching muscles, and spiritually. It’s a rebirth.

-Richie cries again in the water, and you all come together to hold him. Under the water you feel a hand grasp yours, and you don’t even have to open your eyes to know that it’s Richies hand.

-Much to yours, and i think everyone’s surprise, Bev leaves with Ben. You could have sworn you heard her going at it with Bill the other night. Bill stays in town another week to recover before leaving and starting to work on his next novel. Mike resumes his life without the burden of watching Derry for ITs return, even more wise than he ever had been. You and Richie were another story.

-The second he saw you bleed in the sewer, he had gone berserk. Nothing else had mattered in that moment but destroying the thing that hurt you and Eddie. He knew after that he couldn’t ignore his feelings any longer. If his past love was gone, he had to pursue his future.

-He is uncharacteristically quiet on the way to the airport, and without speaking you know why. You’re all each other has now.

-He parks, gets out, walks around and opens the car door for you. Before you can reach for your suitcase, he reaches for you. The kiss is sobering yet intoxicating all at the same time. His hands rake through your hair and your arms rise up and wrap around his neck. The only reason to stop is the lack of oxygen that leaves you both dizzy. For once in your life, neither of you need to talk to be heard.

-The flight home feels weightless. You’re joking and lighthearted and giddy. If you weren’t as clear minded you could have sworn there was music in the air.

-When you arrive home, you decide to convert one of your bedrooms into a guest room. Stan’s letter to you both is framed in the living room. For once, you fall asleep peacefully. You fall asleep next to your best friend, your soulmate.

——————

Request anything you’d like to see! My ask box is open!

[jancmalandra]

Moominpapa Steps Up

On the benefits of being in a family of storytellers

As Moominpapa had predicted Saturday was a bright, clear, sunny day. It was a perfect day to do the laundry in the morning and spend the afternoon tending the garden. Moominpapa brought the washtub out into the yard and Moomintroll set up the clothesline. Tayberry took care of supplying the hot water with supervision from her grandfather. Moomin was really looking forward to their turn at storytelling. They wore a light yellow Spring dress that contrasted nicely with their light blue fur and a straw sun hat with a rose from Moominmama's rosebush stuck in it. It was their favorite regular outfit for when they spent their days with Moominmama, helping her and their mother around the house. Snufkin lounged nearby in the hammock playing a slow, sweet, soft tune on his harmonica to accompany Moomin's story.

Moomintroll brought out the sheets from all the beds in Moominhouse in a laundry basket and as he and Moomin began scrubbing them on the washboard, Moomin began their story.

"Grandma, Mom, and Little My reached the Hobgoblin's Hotel with ease. After they checked in, Little My made straight for the dining hall.

" 'The first thing I'm going to do,' she said, 'Is stuff myself with food until I can't move!' "

"The Hobgoblin found this very amusing, and turned to grandma and Mom, asking, 'Will you be joining her?' "

" 'Perhaps you can point us to somewhere where we can eat a lighter meal?', asked grandma delicately."

" 'We have just the thing!', said The Hobgoblin enthusiastically, and he lead them up the stairs just past the reception desk to a luxurious tea room on the second floor. It had several small tables with comfortable easy chairs around them. There was a long table along the back of the room with a solid brass cappuccino machine, several teapots filled with aromatic teas, and tall cake displays with slices of cake, brownies, and biscotti on pretty desert plates. There was also a platter of cookies and a platter with a variety of sandwiches cut into triangles. Along the other walls there were cabinets with a selection of beautiful teacups and saucers from all over the world, each with a special teaspoon that belonged to the set. Every table had a sugar bowl filled with sugar cubes and a small pair of tongs to go with it and a small pitcher of fresh cream."

"Grandma and Mom made themselves a wonderful lunch, and were just sitting down to enjoy it when they noticed another guest having tea at a table in the far corner of the room and observing them with curiosity. She was a tall older woman with long brown hair and pale skin. She wore a flowing gown that was covered with an abstract multicolored design that seemed to move constantly like a kaleidoscope."

" 'Oh! Forgive me for not having seen you earlier. Won't you join us for lunch? My name is Moominmama and this is Snork Maiden.', said Moominmama.

" 'Thank you very much. I think I shall.', said the woman as she brought her tea and cake over to their table and got comfortable in one of the other two armchairs around it, 'My name is Gwendolyn. Did you say your names were Moominmama and Snork Maiden? You wouldn't happen to come from Moominvalley, would you?' "

" 'Why yes, we do!', said grandma, who was a little surprised at the question."

" 'Why, then you must be the mother of the family of Moomins my daughter Alicia has been writing about to me for years!', said Gwendolyn delightedly, " 'I can't thank you all enough for befriending her the way you have!' "

" 'It was our pleasure!', said grandma, 'Alicia is a delightful young woman and we're all very glad that she's the Witch of Moominvalley! She's been doing a marvelous job of it!' "

" 'That's very kind of you to say!', said Gwendolyn, 'I have been hoping to meet you for a very long time so that we could get to know each other properly and become good friends! It may sound strange for me to say this, but I was hoping you could help me get reacquainted with Alicia. She may be a fully mature Witch, but she will still find me quite a bit intimidating.' "

" 'But, why would that be?', asked grandma, " 'You're her mother, after all. She certainly proved herself a match for your mother from the start. I think Alicia wound up changing her for the better more than she had ever intended.' "

"At this Gwendolyn laughed heartily. 'Yes that turned out exactly as I had hoped! I am very proud of Alicia for the change she brought about in my mother. I could have forced her to change against her will, but Alicia's kind ways turned out to work much better.', she said, 'You see, Moominmama, I am the Supreme Witch. I always did my best to let Alicia grow up to be her own person, but it was inevitable that she would find out about my position in the worldwide Witching community sooner rather than later. I'm afraid she's lived in awe of me for a very long time, and we haven't been as close as I would have liked. Perhaps I could come back with you to Moominvalley when you return. I feel sure that you could help me get closer to her.' "

" 'But of course you can come back with us! We can put you up in Moominhouse for as long you would like! But, we were planning on staying at the Hotel for the whole week. I really DO need a proper vacation right now.', said grandma."

" 'But, that's perfect!', said Gwendolyn, 'You can stay with me in my penthouse suite, and we can really get to know each other! I'm sure that your companions won't mind. They can explore the Hotel on their own and enjoy themselves without being worried about you!' "

"Mom nodded 'yes' eagerly and left the tearoom quickly before grandma could raise any objections. She went towards the dining hall. She was trying to quickly formulate a plan to keep Little My distracted to allow grandma and Gwendolyn comeplete freedom."

"Mom found Little My fast asleep in a chair in the hotel's dining room. She was groaning softly with satisfaction. Mom picked her up and stood in the middle of the dining room wondering what to do next for a minute or two. Suddenly, she was struck with inspiration. The Hobgoblin's Hotel was practically a living thing, dedicated to serving The Hobgoblin's friends. Perhaps addressing it directly would help her find the best place to take Little My."

" 'Uhmm, what's the most relaxing place in the hotel?', asked Mom aloud to the room. A door suddenly opened up in the right hand back side of the dining room. Mom went out into the hallway, where only one of the hovering overhead lights was lit. As she walked down the hallway, this light led her way just ahead of her. It stopped in front of a set of double doors which opened for them. Over the doors there was a sign that read, "Hot Spring". There were two small doors in the room that they led to, one with a sign over it saying 'Men', the other with a sign saying 'Women'. Mom entered the Women's room and found a dressing room with two rows of lockers. She thought it would be better not to undress Little My without her permission and walked into the next room, which was a luxuriously outfitted hot spring, just as the sign had promised. She slowly lowered herself and Little My into the shallow end of the hot spring and Little My began to wake up."

At this point in Moomin's story, the laundry had been entirely finished and hung out to dry and the entire family decided to move straight to the gardening so as not to interrupt Moomin's train of thought. Moomintroll brought out the harvesting baskets from the cellar and a large pitcher of lemonade for everyone to drink, Moominpapa started to take care of the weeding, and the children and Moomintroll began to harvest the ripest vegetables for a big dinner they decided to have once Moomin had finished their story. Snufkin sat down and leaned up against the garden fence and continued to play his harmonica for all of them.

Moomin drank a glass of lemonade and then began harvesting the tomatoes as they resumed their story: "Little My was still groggy, and reacted to being immersed in the hot water with suspicion at first; 'Where are we? What are you doing to me?!', she shouted."

" 'Take it easy Little My!', said Mom, 'I asked the hotel to show me a place where we could both relax, and it brought me here. Don't you find the water soothing?' "

" 'Well, yes.', admitted Little My reluctantly, 'But, why isn't Mama with us?' "

" 'I thought she should have this week entirely to herself. None of us will be able to enjoy this vacation if we're all worrying about her all the time. I talked it out with her, and she agreed.', said Mom, 'We'll have more freedom to have fun on our own, especially with the hotel itself guiding us.' "

" 'Well, you're not wrong.', said Little My, 'But, this all sounds very fishy. You're definitely up to something. I'm willing to wait to find out what it is, as long as I'm kept entertained.' "

"After they had dinner, the hotel lead them to a suite of rooms. Every morning for the rest of the week they awoke and the hotel provided their breakfast in their room and then lead them to different areas in it that would provide welcome diversions for the two of them, like a game room with a selection of table games and board games for them to play. They would return to their room in the evening to find a sumptuous meal set out for them. They never ran into grandma and Gwendolyn until the following Friday, when it was time to sail The Adventure back to Moominvalley. Grandma introduced Gwendolyn at the place where the boat was docked and they were all immediately looking forward to introducing her to the rest of the Moomin family and helping her get closer to Alicia."

" 'So that's what you were hiding from me.', whispered Little My to Mom with a sly smile on her face as they set sail, 'I wouldn't have thought that you were so devious. I'll just have to be more careful around you from now on.' "

"Mom laughed a little embarrassedly at this. She and Little My had gotten a lot closer than ever that week, so she was able to really appreciate this compliment from her. The end."

Everyone around Moomin applauded them for their story and brought the vegetables into the kitchen for that day's dinner. As Moomintroll prepared the fried vegetables and rice and Moominpapal and the children set the table, Moominpapa made a suggestion to his family.

"How about we spend all of Sunday camping in the big cave near the beach? We'll spend the day swimming and stay there overnight. We'll have roasted fish that we caught ourselves and I'll tell you some of the wilder stories of my youth that I've left out of my Memoirs until now."

Everyone enthusiastically agreed with Moominpapa's plan.

To Be Continued

[simmy-ships]

✎ Simmy’s Writing Desk ✎ 

It's been a long time since I posted something, and while I've been writing in my own time I just haven't posted my fics here. So let's change that! Let's start off with a favorite of mine with the ikevamp boys!

Warnings: None!

~~~

Sighing to himself for the millionth time in the last hour, Comte once again walked the familiar halls of the Louvre wistfully watching people stare at the various art forms⁠—that some of his residents have made, he thought to himself—in awe. Despite seeing so many faces come and go throughout his very long life, the pure raw expression of joy always made him smile.

Coming to a halt in front of a random stone bust in the mainroom, he glanced over to see a group of people laughing together and excitedly whispering to each other, speaking in what sounds like both English and French. Hearing them switch languages fluently made the blonde painfully reminiscence, closing his eyes as if to block the sight of something. Purposefully trying to push it away.

It's been 7 months since she left.

It's funny. Usually time moves too fast for his liking and yet here he was, still strung up on the woman that left his manor many weeks prior. He can still vividly remember her last night in the mansion and gentle farewell like it was yesterday, as much as he tried to come to terms with it.

- - -

They all were sitting in the dining room, eating one last full dinner together a little earlier than usual. The air was tense as everyone was acutely aware of what time it was, taking wary glances at Akilah as she quietly ate her meal. She was relieved of her duties and wore her modern time clothes, just like how she first arrived.

People like Vincent or Issac couldn't bother picking up their utensils, instead just wringing their hands together nervously or staring down at their laps. Even Theo and Arthur bit their tongues for the day, not wanting to disrupt her while she packed.

They all were waiting for her final goodbye. For her to just up and disappear right from the table.

She finished first, with Comte a close second, and cleared her throat softly. All of the men stiffened as she stood up, pushed in her chair and walked to the barren part of the room. All eyes were on her and she took a steadying deep breath.

"I'm sure you're all aware of what day it is, so I'll make this brief," She said with a warm smile before bowing, hair gracefully falling along with her. "Thank you, all of you...for everything. Getting the chance to meet and befriend you is something I never knew I needed. This past month has been such an amazing experience that I wouldn't trade it for the world...and would happily do again. Without hesitation. I truly appreciate what you've done for me."

The painter was the first to crack, quickly running up to her and crushing her in a hug, wailing that he's glad he met her too and that he'll miss her deeply. The woman wrapped her arms around him, petting his hair with a small heartfelt laugh.

Then one by one, each man approached her and said their piece, some more tight lipped than others, but she understood what they meant all the same. Even Jean was apprehensive when pulling away from her hug.

By the end, the only person left was Comte, who was silently watching from the back with a forlorn look on his face. Everyone must have figured he wanted to say his goodbye in private, as no one questioned him when he offered his hand to her with a sad grin. 

"Ready to go?" He murmured, trying to memorize the shape and warmth of her hand in his own. "I hope you don't mind me walking you to the door."

She shook her head, eyes glittering with unshed tears she tried to blink away. "Not at all."

With a final smile back at the residents, the two of them quietly left, walking together down the empty halls towards the double doors that started it all. The closer they got, the more lonely the place seemed to become. As if she was taking the light and warmth with her.

There sat her bag full of her clothes and other apparel and novelties she gained during her stay here, having to leave most of it behind since she simply couldn't take it all at once. The nobleman held both of her hands with the utmost care, looking down at the woman that not only ensnared his heart, but the other men as well.

"Akilah I…" The blonde never stumbled on his words, having been alive for so many centuries to master it and keep up an air of professionalism at all times, but with this, he was at a loss for words. "Please believe me when I say that you've changed us for the better. Having you here, laughing with you, getting to know you...it's been the most pleasant thing I've ever had the joy of experiencing."

The look of adoration and awe on her face nearly made him want to kiss the living daylights out of her but refrained himself, deciding to use his words instead. He hasn't felt this strongly about something like this in a long time.

"You...you are something very special, ma chérie. No one could befriend those men as easily as you. I'm honestly a little jealous that the people in your time will have you longer than us." Hearing her laugh at that last comment made his old heart warm.

"Thank you Comte, for housing me, protecting me, and helping me traverse the 19th century with ease. If I ever have the chance to come back here, I'd like to try and see all of you again." With that said, Akilah wrapped her arms around his neck and hugged him tightly, making him freeze before holding her with just as much tenacity. "I'll miss you."

Breathing in her scent, her familiar perfume deeply one last time with a final squeeze, he pulled away woefully. "We'll miss you too." A clock in a different room chimed the late hour, a dreadful reminder of her last moments here.

It made his heart clench watching her open the door and grab her bag off the floor, stepping a few feet into the dark hallway filled with unused art pieces before turning back to him with a bright smile.

"Goodbye, Comte."

"Farewell, Akilah."

Watching her silhouette fade into the darkness, he slowly shut the door and heard the quiet sound of time whisking her away.

- - -

Taking in a shuddered breath, the nobleman opened his eyes and looked around. The group has moved on to a different exhibit, people around him didn't seem bothered by how long he stood there for. Probably assumed he was deep in thought by the sculpture in front of him, when in reality, all he could see was her.

Pinching the bridge of his nose in self loathing, he didn't notice or care for the sudden influx of people coming into the museum and all of the mingling scents wafting in. He's grown used to these typical aromas and subconsciously blocked them out. 

But one caught him off guard. It stood out among the rest and had his heart hammering in his chest instantaneously.

Whipping around, he scanned the crowd. Looking for tan skin, violet eyes, brunette hair, her infectious smile. Was his mind playing tricks on him or is she seriously here? Did she come back…?

After a few more fruitless moments of eagerly searching the masses, he sighed in defeat before deciding to head back home. He already finished all of his errands here for the month, and tonight is when the door opens again. Maneuvering through the dense groups of people, he was accidentally bumped into and the poor kid apologized profusely for the action.

Putting on his best smile, the blonde waved the kid off and continued on his way, but not before he felt someone tap his shoulder. Exasperated, he was about to make a highly out of character comment until the person spoke up.

"Excuse me, monsieur?" The voice said and he felt as if time stopped for the first time in his long life.

Not wanting to believe it was true just yet, Comte quietly looked back and was met with Akilah's breathtaking smile. She wore a simple dress and was dragging a suitcase with her. How she managed to get it through security crossed his mind briefly before his eyes landed on the item in her palm. Emotions welled up inside him.

"I believe you dropped your tie clip, the kid knocked it off when you bumped into each other. May I put it back on for you?" She offered, eyes softening when seeing his normally aloof mask crumble a bit.

He nodded, remembering back to how they first met, with the same scenario. But this time instead of her earring, it's his custom tie clip. Oh, time was a funny little thing.

"Yes," Comte shakily said, pulling her into a much needed hug and breathing in her comforting scent again. His heart swelled when she nuzzled into his chest with a giggle, allowing himself to indulge just this once. "I'll always say yes to you, ma chérie."

[hopeaterart]

I’m gonna be there: Chapter 15

Alright, so for this chapter and the next: TW: Mentionned/Implied rape/non-con due to J.Geil being there. This one is also kind of short, and is happening at the same time as the previous one.

Earlier that day...

“Bye everyone! Stay safe!” Holly called out as everyone in the house beside her and Polnareff left the front yard waving them goodbye one last time. She then went back inside of the house, sighing and slumping against the door.

“Hello, Holly, good morning!” Polnareff cheerfully exclaimed as he came out of the dining room, standing in nothing but his pajama pants and with his hair down. He was holding a cup of coffee and had a big smile on his face. “How’s it going?”

“It’s going.” The blond woman answered, standing a little straighter as she made her way to the kitchen.

The white-haired man frowned. “Is there something I can help with?”

“Oh no, no. It’s not something to do, it’s more... how I’m feeling.” Holly started to explain. “This whole “Dio after us” thing is exhausting. Not even worrying, just... exhausting.”

Polnareff tilted his head. “Wanna talk about it?”

“I actually do. Let’s go back to the dining room.” Holly acquiesced with a small smile, the taller man following her and sitting down as she started cleaning up.

“So, what’s so exhausting?”

“Well, for starters, the fact that there’s so many people in the house is making both my husband and my son snappier than usual, and it’s making my workload bigger.” Holly started. “After that, seeing Jotaro in so much distress breaks my heart. I can’t bear to see him so grumpy...”

“Wait, so Jotaro’s default state isn’t constant frowning?”

“No, he smiles a lot when he’s comfortable.”

“... Uh.”

“Overall, it’s taking a toll on everyone, and having so many people gathered in one place is exhausting.” Holly summed up, sighing once more.

“I mean...” Started Polnareff. “Sadao’s nieces live close to here, right? Can’t they just stay home?”

“Sadao wants them until we find your sister’s killer.” Holly dully explained. “Since the Empress proved Dio hired idiots who can’t make the difference between my side of the family and his side of the family, he insisted they stay for a while. I mean, you saw Kakyoin give up his room.”

“Doesn’t explain why he helped him make himself comfortable in his house office while I’m stuck on the couch...” Polnareff bitterly muttered, pulling a giggle from Holly.

“If my husband is anything like I think he is- and he is-, it’s because Kakyoin-kun is a teenager in distress his son befriended, and you’re a grown man babying his wife.” She explained as Polnareff spluttered.

“I’m not babying you!”

“No, but you are constantly asking me if I need help around the house.”

“No one else is doing it.”

“Trust me, Sadao and Jotaro help when they can.” Holly started. “They both keep their living space clean, Jotaro always takes care of the laundry, Sadao’s the one who takes care of the bathrooms, and they both usually helps me with the dishes after each meal. If anything, my husband might be frustrated with you because you’re the one helping with the dishes now, and he wants to make every second he spends with us count.”

Polnareff tilted his head. “Your husband’s not here often?”

Holly shrugged. “That’s the musician life for you. And his group has the bad habits of not having agents that consider their feelings and families... granted, he’s gotten rid of every single one of them, but it’s still rotten luck.”

Polnareff acquiesced, getting up from the table and putting his cup of coffee in the sink. “I guess I’ll have to talk to Sadao. I don’t want him to hate me...”

“This said, I do appreciate you helping me around the house.” Holly reassured the white-haired man with a smile. “Both my son and husband are solitary people, and it’s nice to have someone to talk to during the day.”

Polnareff smiled, flashing a thumbs up and blushing. “Here to serve-”

Someone knocked at the door. Holly and Polnareff looked at each other, confused, before the blond woman got up and started walking toward the front door. Vines wrapped around her forearms and Polnareff was right behind her, his Silver Chariot floating behind him with a wary expression.

The blond woman slowly opened the door, confusion writing itself all over her face when she saw who had knocked at her door.

It was a cowboy. “Hey, s’this the Joestar’s house?”

“You’re with Dio, aren’t you?” Holly asked as she raised an eyebrow, deadpan.

“We’re not gonna go with you, so fuck off!” Polnareff hissed, Chariot pointing his sword at the stranger.

They didn’t expect a gun to appear in his hand in a small explosion, or for him to point the gun at Polnareff first. “Careful there. Dio wants the woman, not you. So step back, let the lady step outside, and I’ll take care of it real quick. She won’t feel a thing.”

“Okay, first: Holly would- and will- kick your ass.” Polnareff snapped at the cow-boy, putting his hands on his hips with a comically offended expression on his face.

“Second,” Holly stuck her leg out, kicking the strange man in the stomach and making him double over, before raising her leg and sending him flying with a kick under the chin. “If you’re gonna be talking about me while I’m right there, the least you can do is address me. I don’t even know who you are!”

The cowboy looked at Holly with confusion, before smiling and getting up. “Fair enough. The name’s Hol Horse, I’m a bounty hunter. Dio reached out to me, and offered me a frankly insane amount of money for the head of you and your son.”

“I see. My name is Holly Kujo, nee Joestar. I’m a stay-at-home mother. Dio is a megalomaniac vampire who hates my family for no good reasons, so I’m afraid that I do not wish to speak with you.” She then slammed the door in his face, Hol Horse throwing himself at it and banging.

“No, lady, believe me! I came with someone else, and I was supposed to distract you while he broke inside the house!”

“Thanks for the tip. Polnareff?” Holly turned toward Polnareff, who nodded just as Hol Horse started yelling.

“No, what I mean is: that guy is a creep! If I’m offering to kill you, it’s because he’s gonna do way worse! And he’s also after that Polnareff guy! He said something about they’ve got unfinished business with this guy.” He started explaining, slightly frantic. “I don’t like having to go after women, but in this case, a bullet in your head is the merciful option! So please, just come out!”

“As if!” Holly disdainfully said. “I’m not going to come out and let you shoot me! Right Polnareff?” She then spotted the look on Polnareff’s face, fear and anger written all over it. “Polnareff? Is everything alright?”

“What I think he’s trying to say...” Polnareff shakily started. “Is that the guy who killed Sherry is inside of the house.” Judging by Hol Horse starting to yell in agreement right outside, Holly suddenly realized the situation she was in.

Outside, a man with a gun is waiting for her to come out.

Inside, a deranged rapist is after her.

In both cases, they wanted her dead.

And the only person who could help her was arguably more shaken by the situation.

If I make it out of here alive, I’m rip Dio apart with my bare hands.

[chiseler]

Sinner’s Holiday: An Ode to Pre-Code

Once upon a time, Hollywood movies showed us Spencer Tracy skinny-dipping with Loretta Young, Barbara Stanwyck ducking into the ladies’ room with her boss in exchange for a promotion, and chorus girls warbling hosannas to marijuana.1 This, of course, was pre-Code: shorthand for the era of Hollywood movie-making between the advent of sound in 1929 and the ascendance of Hays Office censorship in 1934. The term is in fact a misnomer. The Production Code was written and officially adopted in 1930, but for the next four years, like Prohibition, it was flouted with near impunity. A look at a representative film of the time provides ample evidence of the Code’s impotence. Take Night Nurse (Wellman, 1931), starring Barbara Stanwyck: a fast, tough, sleazy and thoroughly enjoyable tale of a nurse who uncovers a plot to murder the children in her care for their trust funds.

The Code proclaimed that Undressing scenes should be avoided, and never used save where essential to the plot. Stanwyck and her roommate, played by Joan Blondell, often speak their lines while casually changing their clothes in front of the camera. An intern who walks in on Stanwyck in her scanties assures her, “You can’t show me a thing. I just came from the delivery room.” The Code said, The use of liquor in American life…shall not be shown. The mother of Stanwyck’s charges, who is never seen in any other state than blotto, boasts, “I’m a dipshomaniac—and I like it!” Stanwyck befriends an amiable bootlegger when she treats his bullet-wound and agrees not to report it, contrary to law. In gratitude, he sends her a bottle of rye. “But you’re not allowed to drink,” a square nurse objects. “No,” Blondell cracks, “But it’s swell for cleaning teeth.”  Adultery and profanity are both proscribed by the Code. The dipsomaniac is plainly carrying on a tawdry affair with her chauffeur, Nick (Clark Gable), and at one point Stanwyck, disgusted to find her passed out while her children are on the brink of death, rebukes her with, “You mother.” The Code said, Methods of crimes should not be explicitly presented. When sent out to get milk for the sick children, the amiable bootlegger breaks into a grocery store. As for Revenge in modern times shall not be shown, the movie ends with the bootlegger arranging for Nick to be “taken for a ride.” Did I forget to mention that Apparent cruelty to children or animals, the central trope of the plot, is also forbidden by the Code? Or that Gable socks Stanwyck on the jaw, or that Stanwyck gets her job by flashing her ankles at a doctor?

Code? What Code?

The appeal of pre-Code movies lies not in sex, violence or vulgarity (there’s more than enough of those in the infinitely more explicit cinema of the last forty years) but in their attitude, which conveyed the pessimism and irreverence of their time. Radical cultural changes in the wake of World War I, the farce of Prohibition, the 1929 stock-market crash and the Great Depression combined to create a pervasive disillusionment and loss of respect for authority and traditional values. With rapid changes in fashion and technology, violent upheavals in economic and political conditions, society was wide open, hectically elated in the twenties, confused and frightened in the thirties. For a few years the lack of rigorous censorship allowed movies to channel the mood of the country and to capture society warts and all. They depicted adultery, divorce, rape, prostitution and homosexuality; bluntly portrayed alcoholism and drug addiction, glorified gangsters, con artists and fallen women. With a distinctive blend of cynicism and exuberance, they offered escapist entertainment but also bitter and sometimes radical visions of a society on the verge of breakdown. Oscar Levant famously quipped that he he knew Doris Day before she was a virgin; Hollywood too was grown up before it was innocent.

The Con Man as Comic Hero: Blonde Crazy

During the silent era, censorship of films was piecemeal. Not only states but individual towns had boards of censors who screened movies and ordered cuts of shots or scenes they considered too racy. Projectionists simply snipped out the offending material, a practice that accounts in part for the incompleteness many surviving films from the twenties.2 In the early twenties, Hollywood was hit with a string of off-screen scandals, culminating in the trial of comedian Roscoe Arbuckle on charges of rape and manslaughter. The movie moguls, terrified that bad press would scare away audiences, invited Will Hays to become the guardian and public face of Hollywood’s morals. Hays, a Presbyterian elder and former postmaster general, became director of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors Association. He was an ideal choice to project a more wholesome image of Hollywood, but as a censor he proved ineffectual, and movies continued to be attacked for their evil influence on the country’s moral fiber.

Silent movies contained many elements that would not be seen during the Code era, including nudity, drug use and comic vulgarity. But the absence of sound gave film a degree of unreality that lent itself to fantasies like Valentino as an Arab sheik and Douglas Fairbanks riding a flying carpet, as well as to timeless moral fables like Sunrise: a Song of Two Humans, whose characters are called simply The Man and His Wife. From Mary Pickford as a spunky urchin to Harold Lloyd as a college freshman, actors frequently played much younger and more naive than they were in real life. Even the flapper films of Clara Bow and Joan Crawford, which purported to expose the shocking mores of modern youth, presented their heroines as pure though misunderstood. With the change to talkies, the silent era’s swashbuckling heroes, Great Lovers, ringleted sweethearts and carefree flappers suddenly seemed antiquated. Sound punctured fantasy and brought movies down to earth and up to date: never again would they soar to the heights of romance they had reached in silence.

The coming of sound involved a complete reinvention of movies, amounting to the development of a new medium. The fluid spectacles of the silent screen gave way to small-scale films confined by the technical limitations of early sound recording technology to interiors and studio sets. The bulk of films from 1929 and ’30 are clunky and static, with stilted dialogue and acting. When talkies hit their stride in the early thirties it was with urban settings that could be recreated on studio backlots and zingy vernacular dialogue delivered at machine-gun pace by Brooklyn-bred voices. As the old screen gods faded, snappy young urbanites like James Cagney and Joan Blondell entranced audiences with their unaffected style and wised-up attitude.3 This new earthiness brought the censorship issue to a crisis; everyone agreed that movies were going “from bad to voice.” In 1930, still hoping to render external censorship unnecessary through self-regulation, the studio moguls officially adopted the Production Code, written largely by a Jesuit priest named Daniel Lord (hence it should, aptly, be known as the Lord’s Code rather than the Hays Code.) But this effort coincided with the onset of the Depression, when the movie studios were struggling like other businesses. Desperate to lure audiences back to theaters they defied the Code to create daringly risqué entertainment, treating the list of “Don’ts and Be Carefuls” as a list of “Do’s.”

The kick in pre-Code movies comes from the awareness shared by the actors and filmmakers that they are pushing the limits, getting away with something.  Since today’s films must work so hard to raise an eyebrow, they can never recapture the harmless fizz of Maurice Chevalier taking Jeannette MacDonald’s measurements in Love Me Tonight, or Jean Harlow slipping a portrait of her boss into her garter in Red-Headed Woman, or Miriam Hopkins and Herbert Marshall in Trouble in Paradise picking each other’s pockets over the course of a romantic meal. (“I trust I may keep your garter?”)

There was a Code, after all, and movies were never completely uncensored. Because they couldn’t get away with explicitness or profanity, pre-Code movies specialized in innuendo. A line that would register with sophisticated adults but fly over the heads of children or more naïve viewers was considered ideal; it would protect the innocent while enticing the experienced. In The Half-naked Truth, a scheming promoter played by Lee Tracy checks into a fancy hotel with a Mexican carnival dancer he is passing off as a Turkish princess. Also with them is rotund Eugene Pallette, wearing a turban. The hotel clerk looks at the register Tracy has filled out and does a double take at Pallette. “Oh, they have them in all Turkish harems,” Tracy says, adding confidentially, “He’s very sensitive about it.” The joke is carried through the movie without a word being spoken that could bring a blush to the most prudish cheek. Pre-Code wasn’t always this artful—there’s nothing subtle about Dick Powell singing “I’m Young and Healthy” in a tunnel of chorus girls’ legs, or Tarzan and Jane romping around the jungle in loin cloths—but in general the naughtiness was low-key, not flaunted but there to be discovered by the alert viewer.

Movies offered vacations from reality in sleek art deco style: gleaming penthouses with twinkling views of Manhattan, shimmering bias-cut evening gowns and shiny top hats, buoyant jazz scores and intoxicated gaiety. Beyond mere escapism, there’s a loopy, zany, surreal streak in pre-Code that flourishes in the early Marx Brothers and W.C. Fields films, in Busby Berkeley musicals with their kaleidoscopes of semi-nude chorines and in the cartoons of the Fleischer Brothers, where Cab Calloway lends his voice to a ghostly dancing walrus singing “The St. James Infirmary Blues.” There’s a dizzy feeling, as if the whole of society, like Jack Lemmon in Some Like it Hot, had an empty stomach and it went to their heads.

Maybe it was the effect of hearing so often that prosperity was just around the corner while the country sank deeper and deeper into despair. Demented optimism was parodied—or endorsed; it’s hard to tell—in a bizarre cartoon short from Columbia Studios called Prosperity Blues. A world of wretched, baggy-eyed, trembling sufferers, of cobweb-infested banks and pitiful apple-peddlers, is transformed into a fascistic spectacle of crazed cheerfulness as the hero, to the tune of “Happy Days Are Here Again” slaps disembodied grins on people’s faces with the command “Smile, darn ya, smile!”

“The age of chivalry is over,” James Cagney declares in Blonde Crazy (Del Ruth, 1931). “This, honey, is the age of chiselry.” Tough yet ebullient, Cagney personifies the essential pre-Code flavor of hard-boiled high spirits, sarcastically knowing and gleefully amoral, but not sour or misanthropic. Like nightclub owner Texas Guinan who greeted her customers with a hearty, “Hello, suckers!” the con artist hero of Blonde Crazy seems high on his own cynicism. Or maybe punch-drunk: you need a score card to keep track of how many times Joan Blondell slaps him, and he keeps coming back for more.

The films of Hollywood’s classical period are tight, smooth, polished. The scripts, dialogue, acting, lighting and art direction all gleam with controlled craftsmanship. Blonde Crazy, by contrast, skates on the verge of chaos: the actors seem to be winging it, cutting loose, seeing how far they can go. Cagney revels in this freedom, indulging in outrageous vocal mannerisms, flaunting his virtuosic control of his body as he darts and weaves through the role like a boxer in the ring, going from crafty schemer to world-class chump, wise-cracking operator to heart-broken lover. The anarchic, free-wheeling atmosphere of pre-Code, mined with slapstick and doubles entendres, often leaves modern audiences incredulous. Did I really hear that? Did they really mean...?

Like Night Nurse, Blonde Crazy methodically defies the Code. Undressing scenes? Cagney walks in on Blondell in the tub and appreciatively examines her underwear, doing a little shimmy with her panties, playfully holding her bra over his eyes like a pair of goggles. Liquor in American life? In an early scene Cagney, a bell-hop in an anything-goes hotel, peddles bootleg booze to a traveling salesman (Guy Kibbee). Adultery? Cagney and Blondell’s first con involves setting up the same salesman: caught “parking” with Blondell and a bottle of hooch, he offers a hefty bribe to the “cop” who’s actually their accomplice. Methods of crimes? The depiction of the movie’s confidence tricks, including a daringly simple ploy by which Cagney lifts a diamond bracelet from a jewelry store, is so detailed the viewer could easily copy them. Revenge in modern times? The movie lovingly details the means by which Blondell succeeds in fleecing a fellow con man who previously fleeced Cagney.

One scene is set in an elegant hotel lobby where men discuss the races while women share their plans to blackmail men with love letters. Every single person here is on the make. “Everyone has larceny in his heart,” Bert (Cagney) explains to Ann (Blondell) when he asks her to join him in the rackets. She’s reluctant, but only because she’s afraid of getting caught and sent to jail. Still, as the movie’s only hint of a conscience, she objects to out-and-out thievery and feistily protects her virtue. Bert keeps making passes at her and she keeps slapping his face, without harming their affectionate partnership. But the pair’s toughness keeps them from admitting the depths of their feelings. “I’ve wanted you ever since I saw you,” he tells her earnestly, then shrugs dismissively, “But if I can’t have you I’ll have someone else.” Still, by the time Ann tells him she’s marrying another man, your heart bleeds for Bert, the chiseler with the wandering eye. The other man is Joe Reynolds (Ray Milland) who chivalrously takes a cinder out of her eye and sends her a book of Browning (the poet, not the automatic, as Philip Marlowe would say.) She tells Bert that she’s going to marry Reynolds because he and his family know “a better way to live.” They care for “music and art and that kind of thing.” Of course he turns out to be the biggest louse of all, stealing from his firm and exploiting Bert’s devotion to Ann to make him the patsy. Bert winds up in jail and shot full of holes, but at least Ann finally admits her love and promises to wait for him.

Joan Blondell was the best love interest Cagney ever had. More than able to stand up to him, she brings out an unexpectedly tender and sexy side of his cocky, wound-up persona. With her wide-eyed, appetizing looks, Blondell has a warm, open front but an inner reserve and caution. Like her fellow Brooklynite Barbara Stanwyck, she was born wised-up. Cagney too, for all his extroverted energy, has a core that is aloof, introverted, nervously intense. It is touching to see these two wary, skeptical souls embrace each other so openly. They have good reason to be wary; only suckers trust anyone in the world of Blonde Crazy. Con artists con fellow con artists, and “respectable” citizens lack basic decency. Near the end of the movie, another con man tries to interest Bert in a ploy that involves tricking the relatives of the recently deceased into paying for good luck charms that the dead supposedly ordered just before “kicking off.” Anyone stupid or trusting enough to be conned deserves to lose his money. Life is a continuous game of one-upmanship, a contest to see who can laugh last.

In Guys and Dolls, Sky Masterson explains that among his people, “to be marked as a chump is like losing your citizenship.” During the early thirties, audiences who felt like victims of an economic swindle reveled in the exploits of sharpies, shysters, smart guys who know all the angles and who outwit hypocritical representatives of wealth, authority, respectability. Cagney played more con men than gangsters: in Jimmy the Gent, as “the greatest chiseler since Michelangelo,” he asserts, “There’s only two kinds of guys in business, the ones that get caught and the ones that don’t get caught.” But for all his street smarts, Cagney has moments of child-like naivité. “The consummate urban provincial,” as Andrew Sarris called him, Cagney is irrepressible rather than unflappable. His driving energy, self-mocking humor, hot temper and sentimental streak expressed the pre-Code mood—fast-paced, excitable, hustling for a buck—as Bogart’s world-weary postwar cool expressed the mood of noir.

Later in the thirties, Frank Capra would glorify his own version of the sucker: in his films Gary Cooper and Jimmy Stewart embody the soul of America as innocent, optimistic, easily fooled. Smart cookies like Stanwyck and Jean Arthur would crumble in the face of such purity, renouncing their hardened attitude and determination to get ahead by any means necessary. Even pre-Code movies often bow, sometimes wistfully and sometimes perfunctorily, towards the old-fashioned virtues. Chivalry makes a come-back in the final scene of Blonde Crazy, one of the few genuinely romantic moments in Cagney’s career as he gazes up at Blondell with shining, worshipful eyes. Bert has demonstrated that love can turn a crooked guy into a knight in shining armor. But he’s got a prison stretch ahead of him, and then—what? Will he go straight, get a job? It’s hard to feel any great confidence in his future, since the lasting impression left by the film is that the cornerstone of American society is the confidence trick.

“The End of America”: Heroes for Sale

The pre-Code years corresponded to the nadir of the Great Depression, when disgust with Herbert Hoover’s government deepened the country’s black mood, when the homeless called their shanty-towns “Hoovervilles” and the newspapers they wrapped themselves in “Hoover blankets.” Law-abiding citizens made folk heroes out of bank robbers like Dillinger and Bonnie and Clyde, while hoboes sang of a utopia where “all the cops have wooden legs” and “the railroad bulls are blind.” The “bulls” were notorious for beating the hoboes they caught, shooting at them or forcing them to jump from speeding trains; even young teenagers weren’t spared. Being broke, jobless and homeless was treated not as a misfortune but as a crime. In the South, many towns used transients as slave labor: arrested on freight trains or in rail yards, they were put to work on chain gangs, and when their sentences were up, put back on the trains they’d been arrested for riding and told to get out of town. Communities posted signs, “Jobless men keep going—we can’t take care of our own.” Some towns denied medical care to travelers who fell ill or were injured, simply dumping them outside the city limits. Before the 1932 election of Franklin D. Roosevelt, many people felt the country was drifting towards anarchy or revolution.

Not all movies of the time were escapist fantasies; many pre-Code films were “ripped from the headlines.” Warner Brothers even confronted the Depression in a musical, Golddiggers of 1933. The opening number, “We’re In the Money,” is pure wish-fulfillment, as chorus girls wearing only strategically placed gold coins crow that “Old Man Depression” is through and that, “We never see a headline about a breadline today.” This giddy fantasy shatters when it is revealed to be a rehearsal for a show that has to close down because the producers can’t pay rent for the theater. Soon the chorus girls are staying in bed all day (three to a bed) because they have nothing to eat. The plot invites us to enjoy watching Joan Blondell earn money the easy way again, squeezing it out of a man who is rich, self-righteous and not very bright. Golddiggers is fluff, but it concludes with a musical number that makes a powerful if disconcerting stab at social realism.

This is social realism à la Busby Berkeley, so Blondell dons a black satin dress and stands under a lamppost, suggesting that unless the government helps jobless men their wives will be reduced to peddling themselves in the street. “Remember my forgotten man,” she sings, “You put a rifle in his hand / You sent him far away / You shouted hip hooray / But look at him today…”4 The song is taken up by a black woman sitting in an open window, surrounded by other women posed to look like F.S.A. portraits: a gaunt and worried farm wife, a starved and empty-eyed grandmother. Meanwhile endless lines of men are seen marching off to war, stumbling through the muddy trenches, then shuffling along in breadlines. This was torn from some very fresh headlines: in the summer of 1932 thousands of World War I veterans, known as the Bonus Army, had camped out on the Mall in Washington, D.C., asking the government to pay them the financial bonuses they were promised for their war service in advance, since many of them were unemployed and destitute. The army under Gen. Douglas MacArthur violently dispersed the men and their families, inspiring outrage. In this frivolous Hollywood musical, Blondell confronts a policeman who is rousting a bum out of a doorway, pointing to the military medal pinned to the inside of the man’s shabby lapel. Her eyes burn with pure hatred for the cop.

In these desperate times, both socialism and fascism were touted as viable alternatives to America’s problems. Several Hollywood movies offered glowing visions of benevolent totalitarianism: in Gabriel Over the White House, produced by William Randolph Hearst in 1932, Walter Huston plays a president who seizes dictatorial powers for the good of the country and proceeds to get rid of gangsters by trying them in military courts without constitutional protections. (Sound familiar?) In The Mayor of Hell, the boys in an ethnically diverse and racially integrated reform school are offered the chance to run the place as a children’s democracy, and when a tyrannical director tries to destroy this system, they try him in a kangaroo court complete with flaming torches.

The government’s helplessness or callousness in the face of economic crisis was not the only source of disenchantment with authority. The prohibition of alcohol, enacted in 1920, turned the vast majority of Americans into criminals, law enforcement into hypocrites, and bootlegging gangsters into society’s pets. Meanwhile, in the late 1920s the lingering wounds of the Great War, initially suppressed by a generation desperate to forget, resurfaced as people began to take stock of what they now viewed as a ghastly waste of life. Pacifism was widely embraced; in 1933 the hallowed Oxford University Student Union debated and passed the statement, “That this House will in no circumstances fight for its king and country.” Movies like All Quiet on the Western Front and The Last Flight expressed horror at the costs and pointlessness of the war, while others called attention to the plight of veterans struggling to survive in the country for which they had fought.

Heroes for Sale (Wellman, 1933) is one of the bleakest films to come out of Hollywood during the studio era. What the confidence trick is in Blonde Crazy, gross injustice is in Heroes for Sale: the basic building block of American society. Richard Barthelmess plays the American everyman as Job, afflicted not by mere bad luck but by unfairness, misunderstanding and the heartlessness of the powerful. In the teens and twenties, Barthelmess had played pure-hearted farm boys in silent melodramas like Way Down East and Tol’able David; he stood for integrity, trustworthiness and boyish optimism. By 1933, his fresh handsome face looked tired and worn, prematurely defeated even at the start of the movie, when he supposed to be just 25. The story begins in the trenches during the War, and the first thing we see is an officer issuing a command for a raid intended to gain prestige by capturing a German officer. When a subordinate objects that the plan will amount to suicide, he snaps, “Suicide or not, it’s orders,” and tells the other officer to take nine or ten men, because “that’s all I can afford to lose.” This kind of callous abuse of power will recur throughout the film, until the penultimate scene in which armed policemen drive homeless men from their shelter into the rain, ignoring the plea that they are not bums but veterans.

Tom Holmes (Barthelmess) is one of the nine or ten expendables chosen for the mission, and when his superior officer turns yellow and refuses to leave the shell-hole where they are hiding, he single-handedly knocks out a machine-gun nest and captures a German officer, only to be wounded and left for dead on his way back. His own officer, Roger, takes credit for the escapade and wins the Distinguished Service Cross, while Tom is taken to a German hospital where he is treated humanely but given morphine to ease the pain of shell-fragments in his spinal column, starting him on the road to addiction. Back home, he winds up working in the bank owned by Roger’s father, who self-righteously fires him when he learns of his drug problem. Roger is a weak, nervous, sweaty-palmed villain; he feels bad about stealing Tom’s glory and allowing him to suffer unfairly, just not bad enough to do anything about it.

For a while things look up for Tom. In Chicago he falls in with a friendly father and daughter who run a café, gets a good job at a laundry, and marries a beautiful young woman (Loretta Young). But as soon as he reaches higher he is shot down. He agrees to help promote a friend’s invention to mechanize the laundry, but when his benevolent boss dies, the new owners use the machine as an excuse to fire all their workers. The workers blame Tom and start a riot, in which his wife is accidentally killed. As if that weren’t enough, he is blamed for leading the riot he was trying to stop and sentenced to five years hard labor. When he gets out, he’s still marked as a “Red” and driven out of town by government agents. By now the country is in the grip of the Depression, and he joins the army of hoboes riding the rails. Achieving secular sainthood, Tom gives away the fortune he earned from the laundry machine to fund a soup kitchen. And when he finally encounters Roger again, also on the bum after serving jail time for embezzling, Tom counters Roger’s pessimism (“The country can’t go on this way. This is the end of America”) with a pat speech about how the country isn’t licked and will rise again, just like Roosevelt said in his inaugural speech. Angry and anguished throughout much of the film, by the end he has slipped into a kind of haloed masochism. Despite his clichéd words, what he embodies is not can-do optimism but the kind of enlightened detachment that comes from having nothing more to lose.

“The only thing that matters is money. Without it you are garbage. With it you are a king.” These words are spoken by Max, the German inventor who makes Tom rich and indirectly ruins his life. Max is a ludicrous stereotype, starting out as a ranting communist and abruptly turning into a greedy plutocrat (when someone points out that he used to hate capitalists he responds, “Of course—because I had no money then!”) In its one idyllic interlude, the film shows a workplace where capital and labor cooperate in smiling harmony and the boss is even willing to use mechanization to give employees more leisure and easier jobs without cutting the workforce or lowering salaries. This utopian fantasy, along with the café whose owners give to the poor even as they struggle to survive, suggest that the only solution to the country’s problems is selfless generosity. Unfortunately, the movie also implies that heartlessness and blinkered malice are far more common.

Heroes for Sale is not a lucid analysis of economic problems, and despite a gritty atmosphere it lacks the objectivity of neo-realism. At once bitter and sentimental, it portrays the whole of American society as a “you-must-pay-the-rent-I-can’t-pay-the-rent” melodrama, with villains as vile and heroes as pure as those in a D.W. Griffith tale of wronged innocence. Many pre-Code movies invite the viewer to identify with and root for people who cheat to get ahead: gangsters, con artists, gold-diggers. Heroes for Sale instead asks us to identify with an innocent and virtuous but hapless and often helpless hero. If people fantasized about being one of Cagney’s confident, cynical operators—predators rather than prey—they saw themselves as Tom Holmes: down on their luck, taking one hit after another, but struggling on and clinging to hope.

Wellman’s next film was Wild Boys of the Road, his famous portrait of teenage hoboes, which grinds through hardship and injustice only to veer into shining idealism in the last five minutes. Two middle-class high-school boys turn into ragged panhandlers, one a cripple, the other stooping occasionally to petty theft. A crowd of vagrants bands together to attack and kill a brakeman who has raped a teenage girl, and to fight off the “bulls” who try to put them off a freight train. It’s easy to imagine audiences cheering as the young bums pelt the cops with eggs and fruit, and booing when the cops use fire hoses to drive them from the shanty-town they have built in disused sewer pipes. The hobo community is painted as loyal, diverse and supportive (blacks and girls are treated as equals), but no one is having any fun. They’re not wild, just bone-weary. The protagonists wind up in New York, living in a garbage dump, and one is tricked into taking part in an attempted robbery. But when they are hauled before a judge, instead of coldly meting out injustice like the judge in Heroes for Sale, the kindly man lectures the youths on how things are going to be better now, they will get a fresh chance, as the camera pans up to the National Reconstruction Administration poster above his head (“We Do Our Part”). The ending looks like a cop-out now, but audiences of the time probably cheered it too.

The pre-Code era was vanquished not only by stricter censorship but by the mood swing following Roosevelt’s inauguration, when the desperate country embraced the promise of a “new deal for the American people.” Pictures of FDR went up next to icons of Jesus; at the end of Footlight Parade, another Warner Brothers musical, solders marching in formation create an American flag, the president’s face, and the NRA eagle. Roosevelt campaigned to the tune of “Happy Days are Here Again,” and one of his first actions in office was to repeal Prohibition. The New Deal failed to end the Depression but it did stop the free-fall of the country’s spirits, ending the sense that the people had been abandoned by their leaders. Hollywood diligently promoted the new tone of wholesome optimism, strictly punishing vice and rewarding virtue. But can you regain innocence once you’ve lost it?

The Age of Experience: Baby Face

Pre-Code movies finally went too far. The last straw may have been the lesbian “dance of the naked moon” in The Sign of the Cross, Miriam Hopkins getting raped in a barn in The Story of Temple Drake, or Mae West just being Mae West. America was divided then as now, and the backlash that ushered in the Code crackdown was driven in part by heartland resentment of movies pitched at sophisticated urban audiences. 5 Outraged by the increasingly salacious tone of Hollywood, in 1934 the Catholic Church formed the Legion of Decency and ordered its congregations to boycott the movies it condemned. In fact, box office receipts rose for movies that were banned by the Legion, but Hollywood’s producers panicked at the prospect of shrinking audiences; of being attacked as foreign corrupters of America’s youth, since most were Jewish immigrants; and of federal government intervention. They capitulated. After 1934, the studios could no longer flout the Production Code Administration and its viciously anti-Semitic head, Joe Breen; unless movies earned its seal of approval they would be blackballed. For a few years filmmakers fought hard against the Code6, but as ticket sales rose with the easing of the Depression, they settled into acceptance of its strictures. For the next twenty years married couples would sleep in twin beds and no couple would kiss for longer than three seconds. The most damaging aspect of the Code was not that it limited what could be shown, but that it forced movies to uphold conservative values, to show respect for authority and religion, and to present a simple dichotomy of good and evil, virtue and sin. The censors did not want controversial subjects like abortion, prostitution or racial tensions discussed from any angle, no matter how morally serious. Hollywood managed to produce great movies under the Code’s restrictions, but sometimes its stifling effect gave them a sterile, airless, homogenized quality.

Some of the pre-Code spirit survived in screwball comedy, a genre created by the Code—the sexes must battle lest they wind up in bed. Even at the height of the Code, Preston Sturges and Billy Wilder consistently subverted its precepts, probably because their dialogue was too clever or just too audaciously dirty for the censors to decipher. After World War II the hard-boiled, wised-up attitude went underground, flourishing in film noir, but what became of the pre-Code sensibility after the end of the noir cycle? Our own time may be rife with irony and black comedy, but sneaky innuendo can’t thrive without restrictions, and all-pervasive, indiscriminate irony becomes shallow and facile. The gritty, sassy tone of pre-Code flourished precisely because it still had the power to shock.

The proponents of censorship cited the overwhelming power and mass appeal of movies, which made them particularly dangerous to the young. And after all movies were not art, so they couldn’t claim first-amendment protection as books or plays might: one journalist wrote in 1934 that no “classic” movie had been created yet. Hollywood’s producers were all too ready to agree, viewing their creations only as commercial products. Even pre-Code films weren’t safe from retroactive censorship. Those that were re-released during the Code years or the early years of television had bits cut out: Myrna Loy trilling “Mimi” in a sheer nightgown in Love Me Tonight, Edward Woods tussling in bed with Joan Blondell in Public Enemy. Ironically, films that were considered too thoroughly offensive to be salvaged remained intact. In 2004 a complete, uncensored print of Baby Face, perhaps the crown jewel of pre-Code, was discovered at the Library of Congress. Baby Face (Green, 1933) was so sordid that it was rejected outright by state censorship boards and heavily altered before being released, but a copy of the original camera negative showed the film as only censors had ever seen it.

Sold-out crowds packed New York’s Film Forum on a snowy Monday in January 2005 to be the first audience ever to watch Barbara Stanwyck smash a beer bottle over the head of a man molesting her, then lie down in the straw with a brakeman in return for a free ride on a freight train; to hear a sinister German cobbler quote Nietszche to Stanwyck and advise her to stamp out all emotion and use her power over men to get the things she wants. A New York Times piece on the rediscovered print stated that “you couldn’t make this film today.” Baby Face’s heroine, Lily Powers, is sexy and heartless, with a hidden, wounded fury built up during a lifetime of mistreatment. Accompanied by a growling rendition of “The St. Louis Blues,” she climbs a ladder of weak and venal men from a dreary steel-town speakeasy to the inevitable Manhattan penthouse. With her all the way is the only person she really cares for, her black maid and best friend, played by the beautiful Teresa Harris. Baby Face has all the kick, the style, the shocking laughs and underlying bleakness that exemplify pre-Code.

During the Depression, with so many men unable to support families, women became responsible for their own and their children’s survival as they had rarely been before. Many pre-Code movies focus on the predicament of women looking for ways to support themselves outside of marriage. While the flappers of the 1920s were young girls sowing their wild oats, the women of pre-Code are looking for security, and they aren’t too scrupulous about how they get it. They are neither virtuous helpmeets nor destructive vamps; they are adults who have faced some cold, hard facts. Actresses like Constance Bennett and Miriam Hopkins played a new kind of woman who was hardened, experienced, far from spotless, but who instead of paying for her sins usually triumphed in the end.

World War I shattered the traditional manly and womanly ideals of the nineteenth century; World War II brought back the celebration of the he-man and the homemaker. Between the wars there was a blurring and mingling of the sexes. Women bobbed their hair, smoked and drove cars; men got manicures, sang falsetto and danced the Charleston. A novelty song of the time complained: “Masculine women, feminine men / Which is the rooster, which is the hen? / It’s hard to tell ‘em apart these days.” Homosexuality was an object of sniggering fascination, and caricatures of effeminate men and butch women show up regularly in pre-Code movies. In Ladies They Talk About, a new inmate in a women’s prison is warned about a hefty cigar-smoking lady in a monocle: “Watch out for her, she likes to wrestle.” In Wonder Bar, a fey young man cuts in on a dancing couple and dances off��with the man. “Boys will be boys!” Al Jolson comments with a swishy gesture.

In the Victorian era, Europe and America embraced the ideal of woman as untouched by experience, the “angel of the house.” One of the arguments against granting women the vote or allowing them to enter universities and the work-place was that if they left the domestic sphere they would lose their purity and moral authority. The working women of thirties Hollywood triumphantly backed this argument: they are hard-nosed, pragmatic, independent. The “double standard” for pre- and extra-marital sex was a common theme in films of the early thirties: why shouldn’t women act like men? The feisty yet vulnerable pre-Code woman was more compromised than the fast-talking dame of later screwball comedies, who usually worked as a reporter or secretary and relished her self-sufficiency. One aspect of pre-Code movies that might actually shock contemporary audiences is the ubiquitous equation of sex and money. It’s taken for granted that women will sell themselves for furs, jewels and apartments, as “kept women” or free-lance party girls. This reflects the Depression too, a time when—so the movies warned—the scarcity of honest jobs might tempt girls to take “the easiest way.” Men, meanwhile, might turn to crime, bootlegging, gangs: selling their souls for flashy suits, cars and women. Unlike their female counterparts, the fallen men always pay, dying in the gutter or going to the chair. Women who break commandments—even a hard-bitten ex-felon like Constance Bennett in Bed of Roses—can be redeemed through the love of an honest man, in this case the poor but hunky Joel McCrea.

The thirties were a golden age for women in Hollywood movies, the only decade when they were regularly allowed to be smart, competent, funny and sexy all at once, and seldom required to be tamed or put in their place by men (Female is a dispiriting exception.) Throughout the decade, women continued to embody the toughness and cynicism of the Depression years in romantic comedies, where they were habitually both more dazzling and more down-to-earth than their male counterparts. The experienced woman paired with a naïve, virginal man is partly a comic reversal of a more traditional trope, Little Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf. But while these women take economic advantage of their male prey, they are also seduced by male innocence. They yearn for what they themselves have lost.

The uncensored version of Baby Face makes it clear that Lily was forced into prostitution by her own father when she was fourteen. Hence the cruel irony of the title: while she poses as girlishly helpless (“Nothing like this has ever happened to me,” she pleads when she’s caught in the restroom with her boss) she has been, as the cliché goes, robbed of innocence. This is the festering wound behind her hard, defiant poise. No one could play the part better than Stanwyck, with her devastating ability to face the facts; her sudden lashing rages; and the enticing warmth that she could—chillingly—turn on or off at will. Douglas Sirk spoke later of how Stanwyck seemed to have been “deeply touched by life.” Her most arresting trait is her level, unwavering gaze, both bold and sad—what Sirk called her “amazing tragic stillness.” The simplicity of her style comes from a steely inner resolve, a hard-won self-mastery that allows her to look at the world without fear—but not without anger or sorrow. “My life has been hard, bitter,” Lily tells her husband. “I’m not like other women. All the gentleness and kindness in me has been killed.”

Movies of the early thirties revel in the victory of experience over innocence, but they mourn it too. James Cagney stumbles into the gutter in the rain muttering, “I ain’t so tough.” Ann Dvorak, as a drug addict whose sleazy lover has kidnapped her son, crashes through a window and plummets to the street below to save the boy’s life. Paul Muni, fugitive from a chain gang, fades into the darkness, answering his girlfriend’s question, “How do you survive?” with the despairing words, “I steal!”7 It is this sense of bitter knowledge, of deeply-felt experience, that makes the best pre-Code movies truly “adult.” W.H. Auden said that the purpose of art is to make self-deception more difficult: “by telling the truth, to disenchant and disintoxicate.” Enchantment and intoxication have always been Hollywood’s stock in trade, but occasionally—in Out of the Past, in The Lady Eve, in Blonde Crazy—the studios blended cocktails of fantasy and disillusionment, of disappointment and romance. Hollywood in the 1930s cast its lingering spell not with cynical magic, but with magical cynicism.

by Imogen Sara Smith

NOTES

1. In, respectively, Man’s Castle, Baby Face, Murder at the Vanities.

2. What happened to the cut footage? Most of it probably wound up in the wastebasket, though some found a home elsewhere. In his book The Silent Clowns Walter Kerr recounts how a boyhood friendship with his local projectionist enabled him to amass “what must unquestionably have been the most extensive collection of shots of Vilma Banky’s décolletage existing anywhere in America.”

3. Native New Yorkers Cagney and Blondell were appearing together in a play called “Penny Arcade” when they were both offered contracts by Warner Brothers, the studio that, with its Vitaphone process, had pushed the changeover to sound. “Penny Arcade” became the film Sinners’ Holiday; Cagney and Blondell made six more films together and formed a life-long friendship.

4. Harry Warren and Al Dubin wrote “Remember My Forgotten Man,” which echoes the great Depression anthem, “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?” in its complaint that the men who built the country and fought to defend it were now reduced to begging for bread. These two songs were exceptional; Tin Pan Alley churned out hundreds of “keep smiling” ditties during the Depression, leaving it to Woody Guthrie to express the nation’s bitter mood in songs like “I Ain’t Got No Home in this World Anymore.”

5. The pre-Code Two Kinds of Women opens with the governor of a western state rehearsing a passionate speech decrying the evil influence of New York City on the rest of the nation, leading America’s youth astray with the lure of glamour and fast living. The scene cuts to the next room where the governor’s daughter (Miriam Hopkins) lounges on a sofa in sexy pajamas, reading The New Yorker and listening to a radio program broadcasting jazz from a Manhattan nightclub. The movie makes no secret of which side it’s on. At the end the daughter says that she and her New York playboy husband will announce that they are moving to South Dakota for the fresh air and clean living—until her father is re-elected, after which, “We’ll come back and live on East 58th Street!”

6. Producers and filmmakers at Warner Brothers were particularly hostile to the new regime. Busby Berkeley’s Footlight Parade features a puritanical censor who keeps popping up to warn Cagney, a director of musical prologues, “You’ll have to put some bathing suits on those mermaids—you know Pennsylvania.” Ultimately, he’s revealed as worse than just a buffoon when he’s caught in flagrante delicto with the film’s floozy.

7. In, respectively, Public Enemy, Three on a Match, I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang.

[alkhale]

I wonder how Fuyumi and Natsu would react to Fuyu.

Fuyumi

- would instantly sense due to her older sister/motherly tendencies that Fuyu’s been through a lot and needs to be protected

- is at first curious about the way they interact and then smiles like a hopeful idiot because if Shouto can’t be happy at home maybe he can be happy somewhere else

- they get along well because they both work with kids

- Fuyumi would invite her to come and help out with the class she teaches

- is a bit concerned for how rough and rowdy Fuyu is, but she sees them together and it makes her smile in that sort of exasperatedly fond way

- she’d like to cook a meal for Fuyu one day

Natsuo

- can’t believe that his precious younger, aloof and too-cool for school bro has befriended someone as rowdy and rough as Fuyu

- wants to do a double date with a girl he’s been seeing at school

- is the guy who’d run into Fuyu on the streets before the two of them properly meet and they’d keep running into each other until they meet and they’re both like it’s you???

- Tells Shouto that he ought to hold tight

- secretly hopes Shouto will come to him for relationship device and is patiently waiting

All in all they’d love her for as long as she loved their younger brother. Lowkey mention in their own ways that if she hurts them she may die a painful death of ice. 

[angioponder]

futurebound

Fandom: VIXX Wonshik & Hongbin (Rabin) Genre/Warnings: fluff & crack Word count: 3808

author’s note: also on AO3 after like 6 months i can finally give this to you. accumulated with mothballs, dust and all, to bring the fluffiest of fluffs i could muster. this is for you. happy freakin' birthday. 

ps. here's the playlist for this if you're into that.

A prolonged squeak from a chip bag being stretched open followed by a series of loud crunching noises echoed throughout the vehicle.

“Wonshik, I swear to god if you leave one speck of trash in my car—”

“It’s a rental,” Wonshik replied mid-chew.

“I paid to have this vehicle for the next two weeks,” Hongbin retorted. "So technically, it's my car.”

“We split the cost,” Wonshik said around a mouthful of chips, “so technically,” he continued chewing, “it’s not.”

“You’re lucky I love you,” Hongbin muttered, his hands gripping the steering wheel a little as he cringed at the sound of another crunch.

“And I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t love you too.” Wonshik made a kissy face at his boyfriend, who returned a scowl at the sight of grease all over his lips.

Summer had just begun, which meant Hongbin’s exchange program at his university in California had come to an end. After six long months of being apart, Wonshik ran into his arms as soon as he could in the busy LAX airport. To celebrate being physically reunited around the same time of their 2nd year anniversary, they planned a roadtrip across the country together before returning home to South Korea.

About four days ago, they left Hongbin's college town at dawn. The trees swayed with the wind when they loaded the car with two full duffle bags in the trunk, warm woolen blankets, fluffy pillows, and just enough money in their pockets. Wonshik got into the driver’s seat, still fully awake from jet lag and looked over at a sleeping Hongbin who curled himself into the passenger’s seat. His soft bed hair was poking out of the overly large hoodie he was wearing, and the dslr camera hanging from his neck was nestled in his lap. Just moments ago, before they got in the car, Hongbin was smacking himself in the face before he pointed his camera towards the beautiful hues of orange, purple and magenta as they met in the sky, only to fall asleep in an instant as soon as he was done.

“What?” Hongbin said self-consciously when he was more awake. “We’re in a different place every time we wake up.”

Wonshik only chuckled in endearment. Hongbin’s passions still seeped into every little thing he did and Wonshik’s heart still swelled with pride every time he got to witness it.

Some things never do change.

It was near dusk by the time they pulled into a place they could stay overnight and set up camp. Hongbin lifted the back door up, folded the back seats down, and hung a string of lights inside the car, while Wonshik arranged their blankets and pillows for them to sleep on. When they both changed into more comfortable clothing, they climbed into the back to get cozy.

“What a day, huh?” Wonshik said, putting on one of the many playlists he made for their road trip. One that went with the deep green growing darker before them, the lake water standing still, sparse amounts of fireflies twinkling as the evening fell.

“Yeah,” Hongbin replied. To his side, he pulled out his camera and flicked through them. There were photos of his friends high-fiving Wonshik for the first time, their sandy feet touching the LA beach, their meals from the local off-campus diner he dragged Wonshik to, the scenic view by the long roads they’ve been passing, many of Wonshik’s side profile while driving, and the most recent ones of the woods. “You like it so far?”

“It’s good,” Wonshik said, tucking himself under the blankets and rubbing his socked feet against Hongbin’s for warmth. “I can see why you had a good time here. Your friends Jaehwan and Sanghyuk were nice, too, if they’re not being dumb asses, which apparently—”

“—is 90% of the time, yes,” Hongbin finished with a laugh. “I knew you’d get along. I was excited you guys finally got to meet.” He smiled and put away his camera. “It’s a pity you didn’t get to know each other longer.”

“It’s okay,” Wonshik stretched his arms out and then pillowed one behind his head. “I mean, they promised to see us when their family decides to travel back.” 

Hongbin nodded then gingerly laced his fingers with Wonshik’s thinking to himself about how nice it is to have his boyfriend to himself anyway. As much as he tried to involve Wonshik in all his new experiences, nothing beats finally having him here to see and experience everything he’d talked about, everything he’d shared photos of, everyone he had befriended and just, everything he grew to love.

“I really did um, miss you, that is.”

At Hongbin’s barely choked out confession, Wonshik smiled and tucked him in close, wrapping his arms around him. Hongbin buried himself in his chest, and after a moment peeked upwards to see the little glow of lights dancing behind Wonshik’s head.

It was soft and sweet when their lips met. Hongbin hoped he relayed how glad he was with their shared memories of the past, and promises of more to come.

Wonshik found driving in the early mornings peaceful, with the world still waking up and the streets empty before him. No sense of expectations, no sense of time, just the road, his music, his own thoughts, and Hongbin, who shifted in his seat and let out a yawn.

“Morning, sunshine,” Wonshik greeted. Hongbin didn’t say anything in return, but stretched his arms and arched his back with a groan.

“Ew,” Hongbin replied later, smacking his lips languidly and slowly blinking himself awake, while Wonshik only laughed in that deep, hoarse way that he did. “Can we stop for a bit?”

They were driving through a desert this time round, with nothing but the impending heat, sand, some green, and a few of neither of those things. Hongbin though, saw something else. Saw all the different layers of color on the boulders they passed, saw all the cactus flowers storing away water from the previous time it rained, and all the other animals that were out, trying to ensure another tomorrow.

The driver’s door opened when the car engine shut off and Wonshik was about to get out when he was pulled back into his seat. Hongbin sputtered out a laugh and reached over to unbuckle the seatbelt holding his embarrassed boyfriend down and got out of the car.

They went about separately, but not too far that they couldn’t see each other. About thirty minutes later, they traced their steps back. Hongbin with more photos to add, of an abandoned building and the near blue sky contrasting with the orange-ish terracotta landscape, and Wonshik with a few rocks in his pocket as well as photos he snuck of his boyfriend. Both of which he thought were pretty.

Just as they were about to get back into the car, Hongbin quickened his pace suddenly, tugging Wonshik past it, and dragging him towards the middle of the road.

“Wha—” Wonshik started, faintly alarmed, “there could be cars, Binnie!”

“There’s no one here, just—” he made him stand roughly on the double yellow line, and when he was sure Wonshik wasn’t going to move away, he walked backwards. “Maybe a little to the left.” Wonshik, still puzzled and alarmed, tipped his toes to check behind Hongbin and then behind himself before mechanically shuffling a little to his right. “Yeah, right there. Now, don’t move.”

After taking a couple of shots, Hongbin straightened back up with a furrow on his brow.

“Can you look—I don’t know—less worried? You’re too stiff and twitchy looking.”

“Really?” Wonshik squawked, “I’m in the middle of the fucking road and I—” Hongbin went back to snapping away, “—could get run over any minute!”

“Perfect,” Hongbin said walking away, already looking through the shots he took.

“Wait, where are you going?”

“You can move now. Let’s go.” Wonshik looked like he really wanted to, but stayed put for some reason. Hongbin looked at him questioningly. “C’mon, I got the shot already.”

“No, w-wait—”

It confused Hongbin how his usually worrisome and fearful boyfriend was enduring said fearful situation.

“I-I’m already here so…take one with me?”

“Oh.”

He didn’t normally like being in photos himself; would rather be taking them instead, but with the way Wonshik was looking at him nervously for more than one reason (the obvious one being in the middle of the road), Hongbin ran back to the car and came back with his tripod without another word.

“Let’s switch at the next gas station,” Hongbin suggested, setting his guitar on his lap to rest his hand on Wonshik’s thigh. It was late afternoon and they were getting close to the next major city, built on the edge of the desert they were driving through.

“Could we check out that fossil museum first?”

“Of course,” Hongbin’s lips quirked up. Throughout the entire trip, Wonshik had been reading a lot of the signs out loud, said he was practicing his pronunciation so that when he made his songs with English lyrics, it would flow and sound better. In the process, they passed multiple billboards with the same advertisement that caught his attention, not that he really needed it to be shown more than once for him to want to visit the place.

Animal bones greeted them upon walking in, and numerous types of rocks were on display. It wasn’t like the museum on Wonshik’s bucketlist (the one in Washington, D.C.), but it didn’t quell his excitement either way. He looked like how he would when December came around and the tree was put up in the living room, covered in all it’s tinsel glory.

They didn’t stay long, going on to tour the small place by themselves, with Wonshik roaming ahead and Hongbin following close behind, listening to him explain animatedly what the formations were, and how the fossilized animals might have looked like had they still existed. The highlight of their visit was when they reached the end of the exhibit. For a small fee, they could dig in a large sandbox for fossils and keep three of the ones they found. To say Wonshik was ecstatic was an understatement. Hongbin didn't even have the heart to throw sand at him for fear of ruining his experience.

With a few souvenirs in tow, they were ready to get back on the road. Hongbin picked his guitar back up and plucked on a couple of strings. Wonshik by his side mimicked the sounds of instrumental beats, blending with the melodies being strummed. Eventually Hongbin started making up lyrics to go with the song. Something silly and light hearted. Little inside jokes, both old and recent ones that were made on the trip, then Wonshik added sappy love confessions which earned him a light shove for “crashing” the mood. Hongbin didn’t fool anyone though, if the smile he failed to hide was of any indication.

“How do I look?” Wonshik was standing in the middle of a store selling souvenirs like common names engraved on sheriff star keychains, shot glasses decorated with longhorn cattle, and t-shirts that said someone who really loves me went to Texas and bought me this shirt. Hongbin stopped fiddling with one of the wooden slingshots to spare him a glance.

“You look like you,” Hongbin replied plainly, “but with a cowboy hat on.”

“Wow, yeah thanks,” his shoulders deflated as Hongbin burst out into laughter. “Great info.”

“Anytime, babe.” Hongbin sent him a cheeky wink.

Wonshik turned around to put the hat away and was checking out some postcards when he felt something graze his head.

“This one,” Hongbin said grinning wide, “looks better on you. Matches your handsome face.”  

Not a moment later, Wonshik disappeared under the hat to hide the pretty redness blooming on his face, but Hongbin pulled it off his head, kissed him on the cheek then left, hat in tow. A still blushing Wonshik was rooted to the spot, watching Hongbin giggle away as he walked over to the cashier to pay for it.

Live jazz music was playing throughout the low-lit restaurant. The food they ordered for dinner was sitting on the table untouched until Wonshik came back from the bathroom. Hongbin was taking a quick, sweeping video of some local band performing and the small crowd of people swaying their bodies to it when someone behind him cleared their throat.

“Hey there, gorgeous,” drawled a voice in English. “You come here often?”  

“I’m sor— Oh my fucking god, Wonshik.”

Wonshik stood there with his hands in his pockets, beads of yellow, purple and green around his neck, smugly grinning at Hongbin. The interaction earned him a playful smack on the arm and he snickered, breaking character, but he managed to continue his act.

“That the name of your boyfriend?” Another smack on the arm. “He’s a lucky guy.”

“I’m ignoring you,” Hongbin said turning in his seat so he could no longer see him in his peripheral vision.

“Aw, come on. I couldn’t resist.” Wonshik reached out to tuck a tuft of Hongbin’s hair behind his ear. “My boyfriend is so pretty.”

“Shut up,” he swatted at him, red in the face from the way Wonshik’s voice softened at the end of his last sentence. “You’re making a scene.”  

“You’re a great scene.” He dodged another incoming smack with a rambunctious laugh.

“Stop.”

“So uh,” Wonshik cleared his throat again then raised his eyebrows twice, “can I have your number?”

“Sit down and eat your goddamn crawfish, you goof!”

And sit down he did. He also made constant eye contact with Hongbin while he sucked on the crawfish head more than necessary.

They left the restaurant with remnants of corn in Wonshik’s hair that Hongbin threw at him.

“Never seen so much land in my life,” Hongbin remarked. “I mean we get parks, and patches of real grass if we’re lucky but, man, never this much.”  

“Hashtag city life,” Wonshik agreed, looking out through the passenger window. Driving through the southeastern part of the country surrounded them with miles and miles of corn, and a myriad of animals grazing the wide, green pastures littered with hay bales.

“The next restaurant I see is gonna be where we stop to get lunch,” Hongbin said around the steering wheel, “because I’m hungry, and we might not see another one for another hour at this rate.”

It took them more than an hour to find a place to eat that was still open for business. Mostly because Hongbin forgot his hunger upon wanting to take photos of all the abandoned restaurants, which he did, pulling over for each one, ignoring the rumbling of his stomach and Wonshik’s exasperated cries of ‘I’m hungry, my ass!’  

Eventually, they found a slightly run-down looking restaurant in the next town over. It must have been around for a while because there looked to be quite a few regulars getting their usuals. A lot of the red vinyl bar stools were torn in places and some of the neon signs didn’t work anymore, but it was nice. They even had a huge old jukebox in the corner. It made them think of old American movie sets where the main characters would go on a date to share a strawberry milkshake with lots of whipped cream and a bright red cherry on top.

“Can I get you boys somethin’ to drink?” A waitress of about middle age came to greet and hand them each a menu. They got coffee, which she poured into cups over saucers when she got back. Hongbin then ordered a simple eggs, bacon and toast with a side of hashbrowns for himself and a stack of pancakes for Wonshik, who was too flustered to reply when she called him honey.  

As they were eating their last few bites, she placed a small plate of apple pie on their chrome edged table with a smile. “I reckon you boys ain’t from ‘round here. So here’s a lil’ somethin’ for visitin’ us, on the house.” They happily gave her a generous tip and waved goodbye as they headed out to check out the rest of town.

Past the junkyard nearby, they saw a little store with all sorts of houseware items crowding the entire space out front. A bell rang when they opened the door to what looked like an antique shop. There was barely enough space for them to walk through, with a plethora of items covering every shelf, wall and path. Dusty as it was, there was a rustic charm to it. A simplicity that one would have difficulty finding in the heart of a city, unless purposely looked for, given that there’s no rush to be somewhere which was usually the case. Two weeks for a road trip might have been a bit of a stretch, but the couple intended to stop frequently and often, specifically for this reason.

Wonshik was looking through a small bucket of zip-locked buttons when Hongbin put a hand on his shoulder and hauled him over towards a large contraption of a sort. He plucked a quarter from his pocket of loose change and stuck it in the coin slot.

“Love Tester?” Wonshik read the words engraved on the wood. “How does it work?”

“I dunno~” Hongbin sang, inspecting the machine. He wrapped one hand on the metal handle and grabbed Wonshik’s to join his before squeezing it. It started to play some kind of song and the lights moved up and down the column of red-painted words. After a couple of minutes, the lights began to slow down, coming to a full stop.

“Clammy?” Wonshik raised his eyebrows at Hongbin.

“I’m sure we should’ve gotten ‘uncontrollable’ no problem, but the test probably picked up on how nervous you were instead of how hot we are together,” Hongbin poked him in the cheek and walked away to play with other little trinkets, some of which Wonshik bought. He hugged them close to his chest and dubbed them as his ‘lost treasures’ when Hongbin looked at him with playful judgment.

“It’s not possible for me to get lost,” Hongbin muttered, passing through the bookshelves on their way out.

“I mean yeah? Your sense of direction is pretty great,” Wonshik replied. By the time he realized what Hongbin meant (which was a while later), he grabbed him in the tightest hug he could muster. “I know you won’t, but I’d still keep you.”

“It’s almost over.” Hongbin was tracing the veins protruding from Wonshik’s wrists and forearms. They were laying together in their blankets while the rain was pouring, making little pitta-patta noises on the roof of their car. “I think I’m gonna be sad about it a little.” Wonshik hummed and rubbed Hongbin’s shoulder, prompting him to continue. “Is that weird? I mean like—” Hongbin lowered his hands, tucking them under the blankets before licking his lips. “It’s only been a few months.”

There was a long pause as Wonshik thought. “Time isn’t everything, I guess,” he said eventually. He stopped rubbing Hongbin’s shoulder in favor of grazing his fingers through Hongbin's fringe. “Do you remember how we were about three years ago?” Hongbin listened to the rumbling timbre of his voice, despite the overwhelming urge to hide in embarrassment. “Because I do. The first time I saw you , I didn’t think much, but then you opened your gigantic mouth—” Wonshik smiled at the smack he got from Hongbin who was now hiding, “— and I realized how much of a dweeb you actually were. It was pretty much over for me by the third month of knowing you. And you took how long?”

“Sometime… later?” Hongbin said peeking from under the blanket, knowing where this was going.

Wonshik snorted at his reply, pulling the blanket down so he could look at him. “A long time later. A year, in fact, which is totally fine because,” he leant over, kissing his temple, “now we’re here: two years of happiness later.” He smiled a little dopily at Hongbin, his eyes turning into half moons, pulling his nose into an adorable crinkle.

“My point is,” Wonshik continued, “that time doesn’t measure the acceptable amount of love you can have for something. Not necessarily. You just… love. And when you realize it, it would still feel like magic. No matter how much earlier or later you felt it.” Wonshik kissed his temple again for good measure then pulled away to face the ceiling so he could lie more comfortably.

“Magic, huh?” Hongbin echoed as he snuggled closer, chasing him. “I’m glad I got to love you when I did.”

“Oh wow.” Wonshik parked the car and took in the view.

Hongbin shifted in his seat, only one eye opened, already awake but still groggy. When he sat up to look, his other eye couldn’t stay closed if it wanted to and he smacked himself in the face before getting out, camera already pointing towards blue waves stretched wide across the horizon.

“Is this—Are we here?”

Hongbin lowered his camera to stare at him. He shook his head fondly before not-so-subtly pointing to the sign at the back of Wonshik’s head that read Welcome to Miami Beach.

“I can't believe it,” Wonshik whispered in awe. “I’m standing where Drake hyung-nim filmed God’s Plan.”

Hongbin snorted loudly as Wonshik tried to reconcile this fact in his head. He looked about 5 seconds away from kissing the ground they were standing on.

There were plenty of exciting activities they could do in a tourist city like this one, sure, but they really only planned to spend most of it by the water. Checking out the beachside bars along the boardwalk, trying some Cuban cuisine and seeing walls covered by the miles in graffiti murals were definitely on the list as well, but for them, the beach was it.

Despite it being eight in the morning, the summer sun was already high, making the idea of a dip in the water extremely appealing.

“C’mon Wonshik, let’s go! The water looks great!”

It only took them a short walk to get their feet on the warm sand. A glance around told them they had the place to themselves with barely any people around. The smell of saltwater filled their lungs as they took in the breeze. With there still a considerable distance from shore, he looked at Wonshik mischievously.

“I’ll race you!” Hongbin yelled, shoving him before booking it towards the water.

“Hey!” Wonshik regained his balance quickly and tried to grab Hongbin’s arm back to get even but missed. It didn’t matter anyway.

Whether it be back then, here and now, or in the future. Wherever they were in their lives. Wonshik was bound to catch up, and Hongbin would let him.

author’s note:

thanks everyone for reading! it's been forever since i've posted something and it's not perfect but IT FEELS GREAT. IT GETS TO LIVE AND BREATHE NOW AFTER BEING STRANDED IN MY DRAFT BASEMENT PRISON. i hope you enjoyed it! please do leave comments and likes and whatnots! i'd like to get to know you all sometime~

[theseviolentdelightss]

Counting Paths X

Series Summary: After a lifetime on the run from the Empire, Reader makes a move that could have drastic impacts for both friend and foe. A Reader insert/fanfic. Gifs belong to their respective owners.

Word Count: 6204

Author’s Note: I really enjoyed writing this newest chapter and I’m so happy that I’m finally getting over my writer’s block hence the massive word count. Thank you all for sticking around and showing your support with likes and reblogs. It is always much appreciated.

Part I Part II Part III Part IV Part V Part VI Part VII Part VIII Part IX

If there was one universal truth you knew, it was that fear is poison. If you allow, it will fester and spread to the furthermost corners of your life. In war it's even worse, it's contagious...

Years ago, shortly after being bumped up to sergeant you had been sent to hold the line during a two month skirmish on a cold forest planet. A small faction of the rebellion had been almost entirely encircled by Imperial troops. It was a battle that should have been won in a matter of hours but instead dragged on for days. The shift in the world's climate brought on sudden fierce blizzards making air cover and evacuation virtually impossible. Thankfully it also kept the Empire from reinforcing their troops. Leaving you and your comrades no choice but to dig in, suppress any Imperial offensives, and maintain your position.  

Whatever the Empire lacked in numbers they made up for in artillery. Every few hours they would barrage your positions with bombing raids. It was unlike anything you had ever experienced. One minute your dug in your ranger grave, drying out your socks and suddenly the sky is exploding above you. Splitting the tops of decades old trees into splinters in bright flashes. The colors bursting in the sky were terrifyingly beautiful yet whenever they ceased came the screams. The near endless sea of voices crying out as your fellow Rebels lay broken and in pieces around you. The sight before you wasn't beautiful, only terrifying. This was hell, and you were living in it.

You watched more of your comrades die in those few short days than you cared to think of. Losing a person you care about is always a shit situation. There is no debating that, but seeing someone you've shared meals with, someone you've laughed, fought, cried with, watching them die is something else entirely. To have to listen to them wail in agony for their mother as you struggle to ebb the flow of blood inside the mess of red and wood that once was their chest. To feel a body grow still in your hands. To witness the light fade from their eyes. Moments such as that stick with you.

Simply put, it fucks you up.

There may be a more poetic way of saying it but it's the harsh truth of the matter. You're never really the same after seeing it. The true ugly face of death. Each time it happens it chips away a bit more of the person you thought you were.

One night you found one of the greener solders in your squad trying to dig a ranger grave with his bare hands. He didn't even seem to notice that he had torn off his fingernails in the process. You got him out of there quickly, set him as far back from the line as possible and told him to find a hot meal. It wasn't just for his own good, it was for all of you. Morale in combat is a domino effect. One slips and the rest gradually follow. It was part of the reason why the Rebellion warned their recruits about the dangers of forming relationships while enlisted. Caring too deeply about a particular person was a liability. If something should happen to one the other would undoubtedly struggle moving forward. Hell, they might even question rather it was worth it to fight.

Sure, they wanted you all to care about each other but preferably in a platonic manner. Not that there weren't rebels in relationships with one another. In fact many were. It was simply best if those relationships didn't take place between team members. It created too large a chance for a conflict of interest. Consider this, if one had to chose between their team members and the person they love most in the world how many wouldn't choose the latter? That was why they didn't want anyone getting too close.

Comradery was what held you all together, love had the capability to tear you apart.

Two days later you read the same soldier's name on the list of casualties and felt next to nothing. The letters of his name scribbled in small text. The paper wrinkled and torn at the side from having been passed through too many hands. The further down the list you went the more the handwriting changed. Each person updating it before passing it along. It was such an archaic form of keeping up with the dead but it was the least you all could do. There wasn't any time to mourn. All you could do was read the names and hope that when their time came it was quick and painless, however unrealistic a hope that might be.

Among the names there were a handful you recognized but far more that you didn't. The vast majority were low ranking new recruits. That in itself was telling. You weren't losing fellow sergeants of other NCOs. You were losing replacements. Such a reason was partly to blame for why you had long ago given up on befriending new recruits. They all came in the same. All geared and ready for a fight. Half the time you didn't even bother to learn their names. There was too many of them, rushing in all piss and vinegar, replacing high ranking veteran officers that other dumb new recruits got killed. Couple days later and the're lying on the ground with their guts spread out, screaming for help, begging for their mothers.

They never seemed to realize they were already dead.

When the weather finally cleared enough for your troops to evacuate there was no choice but to leave the bodies behind. Rebels aren't often lucky enough to be afforded a funeral or even a grave for that matter. Be that as it may, upon returning to base you found yourself gathering the young man's belongings from his barracks and bringing them to his mother. His jacket, a stack of notebooks, a spare pair of boots, and a photo of home. All that was left for a mother to remember her son by.

That had been the first time you traveled to Nar Shaddaa.

“I'm not typically one to pass judgement but this seems incredibly sketchy.” You mused simply. Turning to your companion and ignoring the irritated look on his face. 

Roland had filled you in on only the minor details involving his mission on the off chance that things went badly and he had to make a sudden run for it. Bringing you back to Yavin IV safely was clearly not a high priority of his. He had provided a ride to Nar Shaddaa as he had promised. Being true to his word in the simplest of measures. If he had to leave without you he would. After all, Theodren never said anything about bringing you back.

Outside the ship's windshield the smuggler's moon grew larger with each passing second. Its lights shining as brightly as they had when you had passed through a second time, nearly a year before. After fleeing from the Empire you had decided to lie low. A densely populated moon in the outer rim seemed as good a place as any. It was easy to keep your head down, take odd jobs when you could, and never stay in the same place for too long.

It wasn't exactly ideal. Try as you may to deny it you knew that deep down some part of you wanted some semblance of a normal life. To survive pass the war and know what it feels like to truly live in peace. The rational part of you argued that such dreams were unrealistic. That they would make doing what was necessary to survive that much more difficult. Truth be told you had long ago come to terms with your own mortality. That the chances of you someday seeing thirty, or even your next birthday for that matter, were debatable at best. It was better to simply accept the worse rather than to merely expect it.  

“Well I didn't ask for your opinion did I little miss 'I like to point out the fucking obvious for no fucking reason' did I?” Roland practically barked. Taking the time to mimic you and even going so far as to add overly dramatic air quotes.

By this point you were used to it. The man was unspeakably crass but after a few hours it became obvious he was just a blow hard. All bark and no bite. He cursed rampantly which was perfectly fine by you but he was also easily irritated. Other than that he was merely another solider going through the motions. Doing whatever the Rebellion required of him. Yet without a doubt, better cut out for solo missions.

“I'm not calling bullshit!” You replied, matching the volume of your voice to Roland's. “I'm simply saying that it would appear as if the Rebellion has had very little contact with this arms dealer that your procuring this shipment from. Perhaps a bit of-”

“Hush it tutz!” He barked again. “You've got your own bullshit to worry about.”

Sighing you pushed yourself out of your seat and moved to gather your things. Knowing that you would be landing soon. Shuffling through your bag you double and triple checked your belongings. Blaster, extra ammo, first aid, and macro binoculars all exactly where they should be. The ship shook beneath your feet as it entered the moon's atmosphere. The speed quickly decreasing as it began its slow decent. Tossing your pack over your shoulder you holstered your blaster beneath your coat and tried to calm yourself with the few remaining moments you had left. Assuring yourself that despite your normally pessimistic nature you were not going to fail.

You were going to find Cassian. You didn't care if it seemed crazy. You were going to find him and you were going to bring him home.

“You've got six hours” Roland shouted as you exited the ship. He had decided to dock his ship on the furthest spaceport possible. Even so, it was still fairly packed with other ships and shuttles. 98 percent of the Nar Shaddaa's surface was consumed by its ever growing cities. You could hardly walk a half a foot without crossing paths with someone. Privacy in a place such as this was a luxury few could afford.

Though it made sense for Roland to dock his ship so far out considering what he was there for it certainly didn't help him look any less conspicuous. Not to mention it would take you over an hour just to make your way into Hutta Town. Still, it was better than being stuck on base doing nothing.

“I will fucking leave you!” Roland shouted, his voice echoing through the massive loading bay.

“Your loss!” You replied, waving over your shoulder at the grumpy pilot. Clearly not distraught over the thought of being left behind. Stepping into the nearest elevator you avoid eye contact with its other occupants as floors fly by rapidly above you. The spaceport was huge but there was little to no security.  Saving you some much needed time as you slid pass the oblivious guards and made your way through one of its exists. The crisp night air blew back your hair as you stepped outside the spaceport's thick walls. Carrying with it the sounds and smells of the city that lay ahead. Instinctively you began scanning the horizon and trying to memorize landmarks. Making your way towards the bustling city streets. Cold sweat clinging to your skin like wet clothing as you finally pushed into the minor thoroughfares.

Theodren's intel hadn't given you much to go on but it had suggested a small handful of locations that had been scouted for Cassian's mission. The only option you had was to bounce between each of them and hope the dark eyed Captain would show up in one. It was too risky to ask questions, if Cassian was still working it might blow his cover. When it came to his mission all you knew was that he had been sent to make contact with a Rebel informative that may be leaking information to the Empire and to determine the truth of the matter. If the rebel that Cassian sought had in fact turned coat than Cassian's mission would have become one of assassination. Not that it would have been the first time. Given the way people spoke of him, it would seem as if Captain Andor was well versed in the act of killing. It was one of the few things the two of you shared in common. For the most part he and you were as different from each other as the sun and the moon. 

If only there could have been more happy exceptions.

In a city as crowded as this you knew that simply making your way through the streets would eat through too much of your time and time was currently of limited supply. After a fair bit of searching you at last found a building tall enough to grant you a solid vantage point and piping strong enough to climb upon. Most of the outlying buildings were condemned at best but it would have to do. Finally reaching the top you pull yourself over the small wall that separates you between the roof and what would surely be a fatal fall. Positioning yourself safely against the cool stone you carefully retrieved your macro binoculars and began scanning the vast array of buildings and crowded streets beneath you. Finding Cassian would be like finding a needle in a haystack; yet, if you could at least pinpoint the specific locations that had been scouted out for him you'd have a place to start.

It took a fair amount of searching and manuvering to finally locate one of the named locations. The sign shone a bright shade of crimson in the distance. Arcadia had been listed as a smuggler's hideout in Cassian's mission dosier. Though, its owners had done one hell of a job disguising it as what could only be described as a high class dive bar. If such a thing even exists. The inside wasn't much to look at either. Weaving through the miss matched tables and various other patrons you made your way to the bar. Unable to shake the feeling that someone was watching you. Waving over the bartender you quickly ordered your drink. Making sure to tip him well. Knowing the importance of not offending the locals as you kept your time on the clock. Though Nar Shaddah was tidally locked there were still routine doc scans implemented to civilians every hour on the hour. Bars such as Arcadia were like beacons for the Empire. They practically screamed 'criminal activity' meaning they were the first ones they hit. As the minutes ticked on you knew you had to get moving. Glancing around the room a last time before making your way back into the congested street.

All of the other locations were more of the same. You stayed long enough to look for Cassian but never long enough to raise suspicion. More often than not people were happy to ignore you and you were happy to ignore them. Even so, you couldn't shake that sensation of being watched every where you went. Finishing off your third drink you slid your money across the bar and made your way towards the exit. Thanking whatever twist of fate had granted you the capability to hold your liquor. 

Occasional alcoholism seeming to strong a term.

Hurrying out the doorway you felt that unforgiving feeling of weightlessness that preludes a sudden fall. The tip of your boot had caught on the edge of an unevenly placed brick and sent you hurdling into the passing crowd. Closing your eyes tightly you braced for the coming impact.

“The hell!” A voice shouted loudly as your bodies collided and fell in a heap on the ground. It hadn't been intentional but you had inadvertently taken some poor stranger down with you. “Y/N?”

Your head snapped up so quickly it sent a bolt of white hot pain across the back of your neck. You had become unaccustomed to being called by your true name. There were so few people left alive that even knew it. Merely a handful. Perhaps that is why you recognized this particular one instantly. Some faces are harder to forget.

“Han?” Your voice was laced with muted excitement as you spoke. 

“Its Captain.” He boasted, that same unwavering charm about him still very much intact since you had last seen him.

“Pardon me for skipping the formalities Captain Solo. Would you mind helping a girl to her feet?” 

Han had always been fairly quick on his feet and had manged to keep the two of you upright long enough to lessen the impact of your fall. Still, you weren't particularly content being pinned beneath him atop the grimy sidewalk. Just as smoothly as he spoke Han lifted you up and set you right. His hands remaining atop your shoulders as you gained your balance.

“Nice of you to drop by.” He chuckled, watching as you dusted yourself off. Your braid having came loose, allowing your normally tame curls to fall about your face. Tentatively Han brushed them aside and helped tuck them behind you ears.

“Sorry about that.” You apologized, now dusting off his vest and the side of his arms.

“What is there to be sorry for?” He teased.  “You're welcome to fall into my arms anytime you like.”

You couldn't help but chuckle, giving up the tough facade you normally wore. Feeling that false exterior fade was a welcome change. It wasn't terribly often that you found someone you felt comfortable enough to be yourself around. Han; however, was one of the few. If you ever had to choose a small group of individuals you truly trusted Han would undoubtedly be one of them. Accompanied by his fury companion, Theodren and perhaps even Cassian. The list was small but it was more than enough by your standards. Though Han did a truly spectacular job of acting like he didn't care about anyone but himself and that Wookie;  truth be told, he was a good man. When you were on the run and in desperate need of work Han had taken a risk on you with nothing to gain.  

Perhaps that is why for a time you had allowed yourself to care so deeply for him.

“You working?” You asked quietly, moving in closer to allow the strangers passing by on their way.

“Always.” He replied, leaning down to your level as he spoke. Even with the considerable height difference between the two of you this move was totally unnecessary. It was an old habit he never seemed to break, particularly not after you made it clear how you felt about personal space. Han knew what he was doing, and he damn well knew the effect it had. No matter how aggravated or frustrated you were it always managed to make your heart skip a beat. Leaving behind an uneasy fluttering that lingered.  “And what brings a lovely girl like you to a dump like this?”

“I'm looking for someone.” Your voice was little more than a whisper as you spoke but you knew he heard. Immediately his eyes drifted from your own.

“A man?” He asked simply, seeming instantly distracted.

“Yes.”

“Tan skin, dark hair?” He continued, his inquiry taking you slightly off guard as his eyes wandered towards a spot in the distance.

“How'd you know?” You asked, trying to follow his line of sight and discover how his speculation was so spot on.

“Because that broody looking fella heading this way has been watching you since you came out that door. Looks pissed at one of us. I just assumed it was me.”

Sure enough, from out of the crowded streets appeared a fiery Cassian Andor. You may have ran up to him and pulled him tightly into a hug if it weren't for the look on his face. Han was right, Cassian looked pissed.

“What are you doing here?” He hissed under his breath, those deep brown eyes boring holes into you. Demanding an answer. If only you could remember any of the dozen you had prepared. In the few seconds it took for Cassian to reach you, your heart had swelled and melted. The relief pouring over you in waves. Cassian was alive and unhurt.

“Hi.” Was all you managed. Beside you Han straightened his back, bringing himself to his full height. One hand moved to rest atop his blaster as the other found its way to the small of your back. The smuggler in him always kept Han at the ready. Papered for a fight if ever it should break out. He had no way of knowing that Cassian was your ally. Which meant it was time to get the awkward introductions out of the way if you wanted to avoid violence.  “Cass, this is Han. Han, this is Cass, we work together.“

The two men eyed each other carefully, sizing the other up. Cassian's eyes darted between you and Han, brow furrowed in confusion. You could feel Han's arm slink its way around your waist, pulling you closer, and trying to nudge you to stand behind him. It never surprised you how quickly he could shift between his gruff smuggler self to that of a gentleman. That was just Han. Granted, it was totally unnecessary, you were perfectly capable of taking yourself. Not to mention, had proven yourself a better shot than Han on numerous occasions. A fact you knew drove him mad.

“Looks like a rebel to me.” Han said, treading carefully. Clearly aware of the rising shade of red that was beginning to overcome Cassian's face. If he was pissed off before now he was furious. Not only had you gone off world but you were here, on Nar Shaddaa of all places, with this stranger it appeared you knew very well.

“Han...” You warned, moving away from the smuggler and positioning yourself between the two men. “Please.”

“Thought you swore you'd never go back to that loss cause.” Han scoffed slightly, genuinely surprised by your apparent return to the Rebellion.

“You know me, I have weakness for causes once they're truly lost.” You smiled softly, comfortable admitting it.

All those nights Han and you had laid together. Speaking in soft voices about both of your past and the pain that came from it. So many times you had sworn you would never return to the Rebellion. To never put yourself within the Empire's grasp and yet here you were. The more the smuggler looked you over the more obvious it became. Something in you had shifted since the two of you had last seen each other. A readiness to make difficult choices. To do whatever was necessary to make things right. Judging by the unwelcome grimace on the face of the man who now stood beside you it was obvious that he was your partner of some sort. Though he couldn't pin point exactly what, Han couldn't deny there was obviously something unspoken that lingered between the two rebels that stood before him.

“I was beginning to wonder where you were!” You cheered, finally glancing the large Wookie pushing through to crowd towards the three of you.

Unfazed by the tension Chewie stepped in front of his Captain and spread his arms wide. Grinning from ear to ear you hurried forward and into the welcome hug. Burying your face into his fur and closing your eyes tightly. It had been months since anyone had shown you such open kindness. Chewie roared joyfully, lifting you off the ground and taking Cassian slightly by surprise.

“I missed you too big guy.” You patted Chewie kindly on the chest as he set you on your feet. Your cheeks flushed with joy. Out of all the people you had encountered in you life there weren’t many as kind and loving, as Chewbaca. At first you had just assumed that all Wookies were simply like that; yet as you spent weeks working along side him aboard the Millennium Falcon you came to realize that he was one of the purest souls you had met. His kindness was infectious to you and made it impossible not to smile. Cassian hadn't seen you this happy since the day he took you to Sky Gazer Hill. It was evident you had a past with these two strangers. Though one was purely platonic he didn't care for the way the other man's eyes lingered on you.

“I need to speak to you.” Cassian lent forward, taking a light hold of your arm and whispering into your ear. “In private.”

The combination of the feel of Cassian's breath on your neck and his tone caused the goosebumps to raise atop your skin while simultaneously forming knots in your stomach. He would no doubt have countless questions as to why, and how you had gotten here. This sudden meeting with Han would undoubtedly require some explaining as well. The idea of having to justify your actions to Cassian was daunting. Even so, he was alive which was more than you had been told to expect. Nodding you motion for Cassian to wait as you turned your attention back towards Han and Chewie.

“It was good seeing you again.“ You began, moving towards the tall smuggler.

“You too doll.” Han replied, stepping forward and pulling you tightly into a hug. Nuzzled against his chest you could tell he was still using the aftershave you had bought him while on a job in Courusant. One of your rare happy memories. As you began to pull away he bent forward and placed a firm kiss atop your forehead. His eyes on Cassian, and not at all surprised by his obvious look of disapproval.

“Take care of him Chewie.” You instructed as you lent forward and hugged the Wookie again.

Waving to your old friends a final time before you allow Cassian to begin pulling you through the crowd. Your heart in your throat as you trailed beside the dark haired rebel. His grip still firmly on your arm. The two of you hurried like alley cats through the busy streets. Weaving in an out of the endless crowd until Cassian finally spotted a small gap in between buildings and lead you into it.

“What the hell are you doing here?” Cassian hissed, his cheeks red with anger. Standing this close you could practically feel the heat radiating off him. He wasn't just mad, he was fuming. That didn't take long. Sighing you tried to compose yourself. It might have helped if you had a bit more space to yourself but the small gap between the crumbling bricks left little wiggle room.

“I was getting cooped up on base so Theodren pulled some strings-”

“Like our trip to Skygazer Hill?” He asked coolly.

“Yes.” You stammered.

“You do know Theodren told me you asked him, right?” Again Cassian's voice was icy as he spoke. The anger inside him threatening to boil over. You weren’t exactly doing yourself any favors. If anything your were confirming a pattern.

“I-I just needed to get off world for awhile. Theodren found a job I could assist on.”

Cassian rolled his eyes, angrily pushing the hair out of his face. You hated seeing him like this, so full of aggression and frustration. It all now directed at you. Suddenly, you felt like a child trying to lie for the first time. All of that confidence, that poise  you prided yourself on was stripped away. 

“On Nar Shaddaa of all places, and you expect me to not find that odd?” Cassian replied sarcastically, he clearly wasn't buying it.

“Yes!” You snapped, the pain at having been left in the dark causing your heart to thump angrily against your chest. “It's not like I could have known you were here. You didn't tell me anything, you just left!”

Sighing, you turned your attention towards the street beside you. Desperate to escape this moment. As bad as you felt about lying to Cassian you were equally hurt by what he had done. You would have never asked him to stay behind. You knew too well just how much the Rebellion meant to him. How important of an asset he was to them. You simply wished he trusted you enough to have told you he was leaving. A simple heads up would have been appreciated.

“Look I'm-” Cassian began, but as your eyes continued to gaze over the mass of faces passing by the sight in front of you caused you to cut him off.

“Fuck!” You gasped, your eyes glued to the polished white uniforms heading your way. “Troopers.”

Cassian's eyes widened with worry for a moment before he began searching for a possible escape. It was futile. The two of you were literally squeezed inside a 4 by 4 stone box with the only possible exit being the street. That was a definitive no. If Cassian and you suddenly took off it would raise even more suspicion. Granted the two of you were currently nuzzled into a small confine space, speaking in hushed voices, and looking rather out of place so your chances weren't terribly high to begin with. If you were found the troopers would undoubtedly ask to see papers.

“We're trapped.” Cassian said, his voice quite but definite. Once again carefully glancing into the street. Only this time he wasn't searching for a chance at escape, he was counting heads, weapons, searching for any possible way to high ground. Ignoring the odds and the high probability of death. He just needed to think of something quickly.

“We can't just stand here waiting to be caught.” You insisted, the sudden fear growing inside you like a cancer. Branching out from inside your chest. From the heels of your feet to the tips of your fingers it felt as if every muscle tensed. That instinctual reflex of bracing for a crash once you know it’s inevitable. This was why you had always detested the way fear effected you. It made you rash, on edge, never considering the long term consequences of your actions until it was too late. Until you had already dove head first into whatever foolish situation you had found yourself in.

“They’re checking scan docs.”

“How many are there?” You asked, trying to at least get an idea of what you were up against. 

“Too many. ” Cassian said even as he readied his blaster. Reaching forward you took a hold of his hands. Pulling the blaster from his grip you slid it beneath his jacket. Reaching around his waist to place it firmly in its holster. “What are you doing?”

“We can't fight our way out.” You muttered. “And we can't run.”

“Then what do you suggest we do?” Cassian demanded, he hadn't expected you to give up so easily. That wasn't the women he had come to know. Even now, you didn't look defeated, as if you had something up your sleeve. Knowing you, it would be something reckless and likely result in you getting yourself killed. As your hand began its slow crawl for your own blaster it became obvious that Cassian's assumptions had been correct.

“We can’t, but you can.” You stated firmly. Quickly pulling out your blaster and willing Cassian to do as you said. Praying that he would listen and resist the urge to be a hero. Instead he reached forward and gripped your wrist tightly.

“Don't!” He shouted. The volume of his voice was far louder than he had intended.

“We're not both getting out of here Cassian.” You insisted, trying to free your wrist from the Captain's grip but he wasn't letting up. The steady thump, thump, of the troopers synchronized footsteps moving closer. Sighing you tried again to free yourself but to no avail. You were already too late. The window of opportunity had passed. Even if you fired upon the troopers now they would still capture Cassian. The tightness grew and twisted inside your chest. “I can't let you die here.”

Cassian could see the panic washing over your face. That far away look of failure in your eyes. The  faint sound of your voice breaking as you spoke. For all the countless hours spent together he had never seen you express so much emotion. You were kind, funny, and even sarcastic at times; but, for the most part you kept your emotions to yourself. The only person he had ever seen you become worked up over was Theodren and the two of you had been friends for years. That made sense. This, however, took him by surprise. He had been so angry with you for following him here, and truthfully he likely still would be if you two somehow managed to survive this. Even so, for all his anger he couldn't deny the pang in his heart at the idea of you caring enough to do so.

“We aren't going to die here.” He uttered in a low whisper, the sound of the troopers radio conversation now near enough to hear. There was no more time for waiting. Leaning forward Cassian cradled your neck in his hand and kissed you firmly. You couldn't help but gasp as he pressed his body flush against yours. Now wrapping his other hand around your waist, leaning you against the wall as he deepened his kiss. Though the shock had yet to wear off as the troopers grew closer you began to understand the strategy at play here. This wasn't merely some outburst of emotions during a moment of desperation. It was a distraction. Typically, most people turn away from the sight of two strangers going at it. Troopers, for all their training, are no different.

That; however, didn't seem to stop Cassian from making this moment appear as authentic as possible. As his tongue grazed your bottom lip you did your best not to let it unsteady you. This was all an act after all and if you wanted those troopers to buy it than you needed it to be convincing. Playing the part you draped your arms over Cassian’s shoulders and returned his kiss. Weaving a single hand through his hair, admiring the softness off it as it slid gently through your fingers. Though you tried to fight it, the true reason for your current situation began to disappear into the far recesses of your mind. Instead you focused on the warmth of Cassian's hand pushing underneath the hem of your shirt and to flesh beneath. His rough fingers squeezing your hip as he pulled you even closer. 

Two dozen white suits passed by with hardly a glance in your direction. The coast was now clear. It had worked. If you had been thinking clearly you would have stopped then and there. Pulled apart from Cassian, and tried to laugh it up as a win. Ignoring the very unnerving truth of it.

You should have stopped, but you didn't. 

Something unspoken had passed between the two of you. Leaving each of you breathless and grasping for more. You weren't sure how long you may have continued if you hadn't felt an old familiar sting. That drop in your stomach that you always tried so hard to ignore.

Pulling away from Cassian the two of you stood breathlessly in front of each other. Hair and clothing out of place. Faces covered in cool sweat.  Neither of you had been expecting such a moment and now neither of you knew how to address it. Even with everything clamoring in your mind something told you that you had to leave. That something was wrong. That someone else needed you. It was an unnerving and unignoble feeling. That feeling of falling that capitulates you awake.

Something terrible was about to happen.

“I have to go.” You mumbled, squeezing out from between the wall and Cassian before hurrying down the busy street. Unable to catch your breath as you pushed through the endless stream of bodies, unsure of where it was you were even going. It was as if some invisible rope was pulling you forward, leading you down the alleyways and around corners. Taking you further away from the very real truth of what had just happened. Of what it meant. 

That's the thing about fear. We spend the majority of our lives afraid of what could happen, what might happen, what might not happen.  We fight wars because of it. With each other. With ourselves. Never truly realizing that fear is the real enemy.

[jinjikook]

House of Cards: An Ace (M)

word count: 4.8k

genre: super angst + references to smut; non-idol AU ; set in i need u + run mv universe, references to other mvs

pairing: ot7/reader (includes all pairings but enforced yoonseok, vhope, jikook, yoontaeseok, sugamon, yoonmin, jinkookmin)

summary: all eight of you were just trying to live life, go with the flow. unfortunately, fate had much more awful plans for you all.

warning(s): lots of angst, plenty of major character death, suicide, self-harm, depressing thoughts, cursing, sex (straight and gay), murder, violence, eating disorders, codependency, drugs, smoking, verbal, physical and mental abuse, sexual situations, use of the word slut and whore (both used only once), promiscuity, mentions of being arrested

a/n: this is suuuuper angsty so please read the warnings beforehand because it has a million things that could trigger someone. this was inspired by the song listed, along with a video edit that i’d love to link but unfortunately, the one link i had seen it from was a repost with no luck in finding it so if anyone recognizes the edit to go with the song, please let me know!

music: dynasty - miia

masterlist

There was no definition for you all.

Lost.

Distant.

Drifting.

Just following your hearts until it inevitably led you over the edge; into the unknown, the deep dark abyss of which you never thought you’d welcome so familiarly, like a distant cousin or old friend from kindergarten. Like someone you’d lost touch with and barely remembered their name but you still had shards and fragments of their memory, burned and etched into your mind in a million insignificant, nonspecific ways—from how the bitter taste of your coffee was like the candies from their mom’s purse or the hollow sound of your desk drawer reminded you of someone’s hollow eyes, empty smile full of promises you knew neither of you would keep.

You couldn’t say you all hadn’t tried to stay together, amongst it all.

When Taehyung’s dad would beat him to a pulp, you all vowed to make it the glue to hold you closer. When Yoongi’s music went nowhere, it just solidified your need to stay united. When Jimin’s love rejected him, it just made you all codependent on each other, saying how no one’s love could compare to the bond you all had.

Even when Hoseok swallowed a bottle of pills, you all realized that it made the group tighter, as you huddled around the too-stark-white hospital bed, stench of chemicals and medicine in the air; with the boy who used to breathe life in everything he did, his sunshine warm skin now pale in comparison to the milky sheets he was laden in. All your knuckles matching the empty color along the bars of the bed, gripped tight and the fabric below just darkened with tears as they soaked into them, only making Hoseok look that much more devoid of life.

But sometimes, life had its limits.

As much as your little ragtag gang liked to test them, push past them and tease Mother Nature by screaming in that bitch’s face with as much malice as you could muster, at the end of the day there were things that you all just weren’t capable of withstanding, holding up like a weak twig on an already bare tree, trying to weather the hurricane that came rushing at millions of miles an hour, determined to break you off and sweep you into the whirlwind until you’re forever forgotten, spread across acres as only bits and pieces of who you used to be.

Soon all would remain are those stale, empty, hollow memories.

Like how a strip of aluminum foil just made you think of the burrito joint Taehyung danced on a table at, how a candle’s gentle flicker would remind you of Jeongguk’s birthdays, his favorite thing to do being blowing out them out and waiting with his eyes scrunched shut and wish being plotted for his friends to smash his face with frosting and bits of cake.

The smell of fresh strawberries made you retch, only able to recall the sweet taste you used to savor, Seokjin’s chapstick melding with your own countless nights, only for you to be torn away and forced to mash lips with Yoongi right after, just because he was always the one to taste you last, to leave with your tongue on his.

Some called you a slut, a whore.

For what? Just letting things run their course?

You weren’t sure if you’d ever end up with any one of the guys, feeling like all it would ever be is whirlwind romances, quick fucks in closets and stairwells with palms muffling sounds until you reached your high, going lax in their grip and smiling contentedly at your inner beast being satiated, while whoever was with you finished quickly. It was never a chore but it was something done daily, just another aspect of humanity you all indulged in.

Sometimes it was with one of the guys, sometimes they did it with each other and sometimes you just took care of it yourselves.

Not that big of a deal you always told yourself, because it really wasn’t. You loved them, and you always hoped the feeling was mutual amongst them as well.

“Hey Y/N, wanna blow me?” Jeongguk asked one night and all you could do was shrug and tug his zipper down, wetting your lips because you knew he liked things sloppy. Not once did you doubt their intentions, fear that they’d speak ill of you or treat you like some object because your friendships ran deeper than that.

Hoseok and Yoongi were close, Taehyung somewhere sandwiched in the middle there. Jimin was fond of Jeongguk and the latter was protective of Jimin, Seokjin being the Taehyung in their pairing. Namjoon and yourselves just slotted in the cracks in-between, being something along the lines of rubber cement in the shredded wallpaper lining your friendships.

Somewhere along the line, the rain began to trickle in and soften your hold, the boys slipping from your grip one by one.

Taehyung was the first to go.

He had always been a rebellious guy, loved to go tagging with Namjoon and mock fast food workers for giving into society’s ploys. Never one to back down from a challenge, he’d participated in more orgies than you could count on your fingers and toes and you’re sure he’s never said no to a dare—having slept with a teacher, gone streaking past a police station and even slipping in a tab of ecstasy on his tongue, just for shits and giggles. You swore he’d be the one to go kicking and screaming if anyone even thought about threatening your groups bond.

But one day, it was just too much.

Too many bruises on his skin, too many harsh words spat at him and his sister, too many days where he wasn’t sure if the sun would rise and he’d be alive long enough to see it.

So he made sure one day he would see it, but his father wouldn’t.

He ran for days after it happened, after someone called about screams and wails of anguish; after his apartment was littered with cops, each inspecting the spatters of blood along the floor and window of the small room, swabs in clear cases turned purple to indeed confirm it was exactly that, blood. Tests were ran to show the fingerprints on the broken beer bottle indeed were the dead man’s son’s, the boy with a record for graffiti and public indecency. The boy with a boxy smile that charmed all the female officers whenever he’d be brought in, the boy who you felt inside you too many times to forget.

It wasn’t like any of you hadn’t tried to find him, countless days of searching and shouting and hoping he’d turn up like a lost dog, ears perked and stomach receded until you finally brought him in to have a big meal and a warm bath.

But he never came.

Someone spoke of a boy with pretty eyelashes and dead eyes standing by the ocean, muttering about how sorry he was, how he wished things could’ve been different but he wouldn’t have changed a damn thing because every small, seemingly insignificant detail in his life led him to you, to your friends. To his lovers and exes and all the in-between that you couldn’t name or define. That same someone said they watched as he took a deep breath and jumped over the railing, taking a plunge and never emerging from the dark waters of the stormy shores.

The hurricane powered on.

It took ages to even sort of recover, Yoongi went back to smoking and as many times as Jeongguk would blow out his fire to keep him alive a little longer, it only served to double his cigarette count. Namjoon always kept a journal on hand, writing the most obscure details of the days in it because he was worried one day, something else would happen to another one of them and he didn’t want anyone’s memories to die with them, for their days to be meaningless and forever lost in the wind. He had a black hair tie always on his right wrist, a running joke that he just wanted to give it to a pretty lady one day just to make her life easier but you knew what it was for. You at least commended him for taking the tamer route in hurting himself, unlike Jimin who—no matter how many sweaters he’d wear even on the hottest of days—couldn’t hide how he befriended a razor, the dotted lines of scabbing and scarring flesh being his only lifeline, as ironic as that was.

Hoseok lied and said the orange bottle in the trash wasn’t his and Seokjin would just keep dealing out cards on game nights, as if nothing happened, as if he wasn’t putting out stacks for eight players when there were only seven of you seated. As if Taehyung’s cologne wasn’t still sitting there in Jeongguk’s gym bag right where he forgot to grab it. As if the scratch marks from when Yoongi fucked him too hard on the table you were sitting at weren’t prominent still, the grooves dipping under where your dug your nails into, hoping to cover them up with your own tracks.

You want to say it was unexpected, that you all had no idea it was coming.

But really, it was just a matter of time before someone else came crumbling down, an unfortunate victim to the Domino Effect.

Jeongguk was covered in bruises, supposedly not from the car that carelessly drove straight into him. The medical examiner said he was in a fight, two different assailants with big fists and a drive to kill but the stake in his coffin, the final nail, were the headlights that he stared into before it barreled into him, splattering him onto the pavement.

It was poetic, how his blood looked so similar to Taehyung’s father’s, to Jimin’s when his wrists began to leak down his arm. It was just blood, it flowed in everyone and despite the fact that when you donate it, you have to be so specific when you scribble it down on paperwork, it all looked the same on the ground.

“Kiss me.” Yoongi looked at you with disgust, his lighter a constant flicker in his fidgety fingers.

“What is it with you people? Two of us are dead and we’re supposed to act like it never happened? Like we can all go through the motions without their presence around?” It was the first time someone had verbalized it, made it real by saying it out loud. The room was pin-drop quiet—not like it wasn’t already—but now everyone’s eyes were on Yoongi.

“We’re not forgetting about them, Yoongi,” Namjoon corrected. His pen already blindly scratching down the date and time of this incident to forever keep in his records.

“Just because you put a few things in your little dream diary doesn’t make them alive, Namjoon. They’re fucking dead, in the ground and lost at sea forever. At least with Jeongguk, we got some fucking closure but Taehyung… he’s still out there, floating like trash or sunken like…”

“Like treasure.” Hoseok finished.

Taehyung was always closest with Hoseok and Yoongi. Jeongguk also but…. he wasn’t around to speak his mind right now.

“Maybe we just need to be with them then. They’re waiting for us, probably. God knows Jeongguk can’t do anything without one of us to hold his hands anyways.” Jimin mumbled, fingers toying with what laid under his striped sleeves, his skin marred in a similar pattern. You don’t even know why he even bothers with the sweaters anymore, it was no secret what he did to himself.

“Jimin. Never say that.” Seokjin chastised, fingers wringing out excess water from the sponge he was using to clean up the drink Namjoon has spilled on the table. The table that still has sticky sweet liquor inside the grooves that Taehyung left behind.

“It’s not like we aren’t already headed that way anyways. Hobi has tried and so have I. Pretty sure Y/N attempted to too, after Jeonggukkie died.”

“Don’t call him that.” It was Yoongi’s turn to chastise the younger, eyes shutting as he tried to push the rotten, beautiful memories of Jeon Jeongguk in his prime, chasing after butterflies and having the stars in his eyes.

“So what if we’ve tried? Clearly, God doesn’t want us, that’s why we haven’t succeeded.” You picked at the stray tweed from the sofa, knowing you were not only unraveling the lining of the cushion but also in the patched layer of your friends. “He wants the good kids, it’s why he took Tae and Guk. God is a selfish prick, he can suck me.” You seethed.

“Or you could.” Yoongi looked at you with his dead eyes, and you knew he probably couldn’t get it up if he had swallowed as many Viagras as Hoseok took pretty white pills in unmarked bottles. But it didn’t stop you from getting up and tugging his belt off.

The calendar marked today as some off-brand holiday, something that a store somewhere would profit off of. It marked that it’d been a week since you choked on Yoongi’s limp dick in front the rest of your numb friends. The red circle on the date, however, was because today was yet another tragedy.

In your dreams, you pictured Jimin to die in the tub, the water murky with his blood and something poetic inscribed in his forearm, a picture or something of equal significance burned into scorched soot by the clawed feet of the porcelain bath.

You didn’t think it’d be Seokjin found like that instead.

Namjoon wrote in his journal, tore out the page and burned it the minute he finished with it. The hair tie on his wrist was replaced with something sturdier, more industrial. The colored rubber band snapped harder, louder and left a bigger welt. He tried to take pride in the fact that he still hadn’t resorted to pills or fire or the end of a blade but honestly, this was so much worse. He lived a lie, a façade that he was alright just because his choice of pain wasn’t that of vulgar taste. He lived among the common faces of the world, blurred in the crowds but nothing would make the bright green on his wrist blend into the bland, colorless world.

Jimin tried to cry, the tears burning at his retinas but nothing ever came to fruition, his fingers scratching at the scars he chose to keep visible to the world today.

Of-fucking-course Kim Seokjin would ask to be cremated, to be turned into soil for trees. It was such a “him” thing to do, something he probably read on FaceBook or saw on Pinterest. You honestly thought if he was to be reincarnated into anything, he’d ask to be a pressed into a diamond, so he could always be has beautiful as he said he was. As he really was. No one was as beautiful as Seokjin, both inside and out.

The screen of your phone was shattered and you couldn’t bring yourself to get it fixed, the constant swiping on the glass leaving shards in your thumbs and making you smile whenever another cut embedded itself into your skin. You were just as weak as Jimin, though you hoped that you looked a little more civil since at least you didn’t have to wear jackets in ninety degree weather.

“What are we ordering for takeout?” Hoseok flickered through the several menus in his hand, mind caught between Chinese and pizza. Namjoon just shrugged and Yoongi pointed his chin at the one in Hoseok’s right hand, the Chinese menu. He scanned the options and asked what meats and sides for everyone. When he reached dumplings, Seokjin’s favorite, Jimin ran to the bathroom and left the door wide open as he puked into the toilet.

It was a resounding no for dumplings that night.

“Do you ever think… we’re being punished?” Namjoon started one night, his journal long forgotten as he inhaled deep, passing the joint to Yoongi before puffing out a big cloud of dragon-like smoke.

“For what? Fucking a lot and tagging some abandoned buildings?” Yoongi bitterly spat, Jimin next to him flinching with every venomous syllable. His body was constantly trembling, fingers unable to stay steady unless they were gripping something, anything. This time, it was Yoongi’s own shaking hand.

Hoseok took his own inhale of the drug before giving you the rolled up papers, the joint looking more and more displeasing to you as you stared at it.

“Maybe this is why we get out every time we’re put in a cell, because our ultimate justice will come from a higher power.” Hoseok drawled; weed always made his tongue slow and his eyelids heavy. He’d probably pass out on your shoulder any minute now.

“I think we’re just bad people getting what’s coming to us.” Jimin whispered, eyes still stuck on the break in the floorboards where Jeongguk drunkenly fell, his ass breaking the wood but no one caring because Jimin was on top of him, making out heavily mid-party. You all cheered for the two of them, watching their sexual tension unfold and you yearned for those days back, when you’d skip school and come to this little shack of a home, broken and frayed at the edges but still home. Just like you and your friends; your family.

“Stop repeating what your deadbeat alcoholic of a mother says to you, Jimin. She’s more worthless than any one of us.” Yoongi tightened his grip on Jimin, his squeak of pain doing nothing to ease the tension in his fingers. He didn’t want to lose him too, to watch him slip through the cracks.

Hoseok began to sing, slightly off-key but still melodious, somber in the empty house with broken furniture and too many memories to stay sober near. Namjoon couldn’t sing to save his life but his voice joined, a low murmur along Hoseok’s. Soon, the scratch of Yoongi’s voice intertwined like the threads in Jimin’s crocheted sweater before he too, began to sing. He harmonized with them, a missing link tying the bridge to the chorus. When you finally gave in, it was when you’d all reached Jeongguk’s name, singing Happy Birthday to him one last time.

 “Did you know the Song dynasty ended in 1279 but it coincided with the Liao and Western Xia dynasties as well?”

“Who gives a fuck, Namjoon?” Yoongi pulled off Namjoon’s dick long enough to try and shut him up, hoping he’d just be quiet for once and take the damn blowjob without making a damn lesson out of it.

Hoseok was asleep on the couch, Jimin and you in a heated battle of black jack, currently you had 20 and you could chance it and hope you’d pull an ace and win all the graham crackers you’d put in the pool or you could play it safe and hope Jimin had less than you. He wasn’t a great card player but lately, all his expressions look the same so his bluffing was the same as his genuinely sad face, making you lose your cookies too many times in a row.

You used to use real money when you played, back when you had a reason to want to win. Back when you’d cheer for taking all of Taehyung’s money and you and Seokjin would go out to spend it on stupid shit that you’d regret a day later but in the moment, it just looked so useful and convenient.

When Jeongguk would win it back the next day just to see Taehyung smile again, to have him underneath him that night to repay him for his chivalry.

“Hobi, did you want me to suck you off too?”

Silence.

“Hobi?” You murmured, looking over in his direction. Jimin’s sad eyes followed.

Namjoon tucked himself back in, not zipping up the rusted metal in his tattered jeans.

You put down the card in your hand, moving from where you hovered over the deck to turn and watch as Yoongi crossed the room to shake Hoseok, his voice incomparable to the ringing in your ears as he screamed for Hoseok to wake up, to just wake the fuck up.

Jimin didn’t look away, Namjoon frozen in place as Yoongi continued to slap and shake his best friend, his lover, his confidant, hoping he’d wake up from some deep slumber. You turned back to your game, hand back on the deck as you decided it was time to give fate a chance. You pulled a card, the black butterfly in the middle telling you what you never hoped for.

An ace.

You won.

It used to be “us against the world” with you eight, a force not to be reckoned with whenever you all banded together. When you originally met, it was through friends of friends, mutual interests and one through a really interesting Tinder profile. You all had sworn fate brought you together for a reason, happiness meant to be share amongst the lot of you.

You wish you’d never met them, not a single one.

“Jimin? Could you let go?” You touched his shoulder, his body no longer jerky with anxiety. He was desensitized, no longer feeling anything. His eyes stayed on the cascading waves as he released the urn he had clutched against his chest, as if Hoseok still radiated his warmth through the pretty patterns and decorative top.

He wanted to be spread into the ocean, to find Taehyung. He didn’t want to leave him alone out there, knowing that Yoongi could be strong and handle him being gone. His note read:

“Just because I was weak, doesn’t mean you have to be. Let us live on in your hearts, let them beat for the rest of us. Taehyung was a tragedy, Jeongguk an accident, Seokjin an unfortunate chain of events and I, an outlier. Don’t make us into martyrs, something we’re not. We’re just kids, dealt a bad hand. But you all still have your game faces on, so come on Yoongi, pull an Ace for the rest of us.”

Yoongi set fire to his bedroom instead; with the lighter Jeongguk used to blow out, the very one Seokjin used to light his birthday candles, the one Taehyung bought at the gas station at the corner of where you lived. Namjoon threw the remainder of his journal pages in there, Jimin tossed his sweaters inside the flames. You stood by and warmed your hands by the fire, feeling your tears dry from the heat until the firetrucks came screaming and the hoses put out the fire that was in Yoongi’s heart. They killed him. Right before your eyes.

  And then there were three.

Jimin never ate, walking bones that creaked and cracked whenever he moved. Namjoon refused to give up his rubber band, switching to a thick red one that turned white when he stretched it beyond his limit, matching the color of Hoseok’s pills, the mayo that globbed out of Seokjin’s burger, the come that Jeongguk would get on the bed after round two, the boxy grin Taehyung used to get everyone in more trouble than it ever did help. The same color that burned when the ignited fire got to its hottest, right in the core. The color of Yoongi’s skin when he found his friends dead, one by one.

“Should I take up the flute?” Jimin shook his head and told Namjoon his fingers weren’t dexterous enough, that he’d never manage the fine skill it took to play such an instrument. You nodded, knowing the damn thing would break the minute it slipped between his grimy fingers.

“Taehyung liked the sax, maybe you should try that instead.” At the sound of his name passing your chapped lips—lip balm no longer appealing to you because every flavor reminded you of someone different, someone dead—Namjoon stiffened, Jimin motionless like always. You’re sure any sort of use of energy from the younger male would cause him to pass out, the hunger in him always there but food never enticing enough for him to give into the temptation and give his body the energy it so desperately needs.

“Yeah, maybe.”

Another tack on the wall as Namjoon robbed a music store and let the cops gun him down. You never thought Namjoon would be the kind to go out in a blaze of glory, let alone one to own a gun. He was a pacifist, but when the crime scene investigator told you that the initials M. Y. were on the handle, messily scratched with probably some house tool, you knew what he’d done.

  Jimin stopped holding hands, not having the nutrition in him to making his fingers tighten around yours, the bones probably seconds away from turning into dust. Your throat was dry, like the days you used to love. The days where the sun burned something serious and the boys only wanted to run around outside, despite your protests. Those were the days that everything seemed so simple, so cut and dry. So… easy.

You really hoped that Jimin would be stronger than you, that you’d finally give in and join the others so you wouldn’t have to deal with the pain of yet another piece of your soul, your very being, shot dead right in front of you. So you wouldn’t have to go to another funeral or service or spread another’s ashes or read another’s will; so you wouldn’t ever have to hear crying wails or heartfelt apologies, hushed murmurs about how tragic it all was and how you all slipped through the cracks, the school system and your parents all failing you. So you wouldn’t have to etch a seventh mark, as you found Jimin, strung up from the ceiling fan.

The bedsheets were Jeongguk’s, the bandana Taehyung’s, the dishtowel Seokjin’s, the rubber bands Namjoon’s, the shoelaces Yoongi’s, the scarf Hoseok’s, and the sweater Jimin’s.

All knotted together to create a perfect noose, just like you all were meant to come together as. Only good for bringing the worst, death hovering over you all like an ominous storm, threatening to rain on the parade you’d created for yourselves.

All that was missing from Jimin’s perfect noose was yourself.

So you made sure to remedy that.

Putting yourself next to him with the aid of a rickety dining table chair; your hands wrapped around his throat to create a vice, to wrench the last breaths from his body, knowing that his heart was weak but his eyes weren’t; finally there was a spark inside his irises, something more than fear and dismay. You felt his body go limp before you finally checked his pulse, confirming that he indeed, was gone.

You sat down on the ratty couch, the same one you’d had sex with each and every one of them on; the same one that hosted countless movie nights and had popcorn tossed all over it whenever Hoseok got scared or Taehyung too excited. The couch that cradled Jimin when he cried at night and when Jeongguk would hold him for hours, promising to never leave him. The same couch that Yoongi would always fall asleep on, Seokjin covering him because he knew he’d catch a cold if he wasn’t kept warm. The couch that sat Namjoon when he’d heard the news on the phone:

“Kim Taehyung has committed murder.”

It felt like weeks, months, years scrawled by before you heard the front door open, slowly and then suddenly. The creaking something similar to Jimin’s bones, his body still hanging from where he killed himself; where you killed him.

Taehyung walked in, eyes on Jimin then you.

“How’s Hell?” You murmured, knowing damn well he could hear you clear as day.

“I just got back.”

You smiled and let death sweep you up, leaving just one. The first, the domino that started this terrible chain of events. The butterfly on your card, the Ace you needed.

Taehyung took one small breath before taking your life, making sure he followed right after.

Maybe you’d all meet up again, in some maze of chain link fences and pristine white ribbons like the bedsheets of Hoseok’s hospital bed, the suds in the sink where Seokjin scrubbed, the wax of Jeongguk’s birthday candles, the hoodie Taehyung always wore, the blond of Yoongi’s hair, the pages in Namjoon’s journal, the nailbeds on Jimin’s small hands. The white on the back of your playing cards, the ones built to be a steady house but instead crumpled in on itself.

But for now, you just welcomed the white and hoped that no one else would follow in this Butterfly Effect.