#since they used to have terrible names i renamed all of them

[arctic-mizikio]

Some oc icons I made since I reworked their lore recently for a text rpg, really proud of them

[kivaember]

that idea i had for branch raven finding 621 post-FoR and forcibly kidnapping adopting him... a teaser below the cut...

-

The medium freighter ship, Tapio, was an old, beaten-up interstellar craft that had gone through at least three different Christenings since it had fallen into Branch’s control. When Chartreuse had liberated it from its original owner (some two-bit grey market smuggler who had bitten off more than he could chew), it had been named The Golden Fleece. Raven had let her rename it to Cheese Board, which lasted for only a few months before King changed it to the far more mundane Star Skimmer.

Chartreuse couldn’t really remember when they had changed it from Star Skimmer to Tapio, but it hadn’t been long after they made plans to run the PCA blockade over Rubicon-3. Even grey-market ships like these were aggressively tracked and logged whenever it so much as paused to take a fart in some piece of shit asteroid port, so scrubbing the identity was essential prep for big operations that would land you in some UEG gulag on Pluto.

They’d probably have to change it again, now that their business was concluded on Rubicon. It was Raven’s turn, and knowing them, they’d think of something either utterly boring, or thoroughly deranged. They called their pet cat Emergency Rations of all things, after all.

(To date, she still wasn’t sure if Raven was being tongue-in-cheek about that…)

Speaking of that cat, though…

Chartreuse grumbled as she shovelled soiled cat litter into its bin. The freighter was built with a crew of at least ten in mind, so Raven had dedicated an entire room to the little beast: cat trees, little platforms for Emergency Rations to parkour off of, toys that functioned as trip hazards for the unwary, and this monstrosity of a litter box that was huge and a massive pain to clean out.

Emergency Rations, as imperious as a queen overlooking her lowly subjects, stared down at her from one of its demonic cat trees. It was an ugly creature, in Chartreuse’s opinion: thin, scraggly fur with bald patches, one missing ear and crooked whiskers, with a broken meow that sounded like the strangled croak of a frog. Probably why Raven adopted it; they had a soft spot a mile wide for broken, ugly things.

“How do you shit so much?” Chartreuse sealed the bin shut and pushed it aside. “I swear you do it just to fuck with me.”

Emergency Rations just blinked its ugly goblin eyes at her.

Chartreuse finished up her daily task of tending to the beast’s comfort and slouched out of the ship’s cattery. After a brief detour to the ablutions to wash her hands, she went to the central mess hall that now functioned as a sort of communal area for Branch. The depressing steel benches and tables had been shoved against the walls and replaced with a battered sofa they’d rescued from a dump, and an old-world TV set with a video player and everything.

Chartreuse had no idea where Raven magicked up these relics, or why they had a taste for such useless antiques.

“The beast’s been dealt with,” Chartreuse declared when she walked into the living area.

King acknowledged her with a raised hand, not looking away from the TV screen. He was sprawled out on the sofa, so Chartreuse sat on the armchair. It was technically Raven’s armchair, but they weren’t here right now - too busy committing terrible life choices and all that.

“Is Raven still not back?” she asked. “We sure that rabid dog didn’t eat him?”

“Haven’t heard a thing since they left.” King picked up the remote and paused whatever was playing on the TV. He had a deep frown on his face, his expression troubled even if it didn’t show in his voice. “Their operator would’ve told us if things had gone sour, though.”

Chartreuse grunted.

It’d been only two days since the Second Fires had swept through the Rubicon system, an event they had only survived because they’d been in the process of leaving said system. They’d been mere moments away from engaging the C-Wave Drive to slip into subspace, only to perform an emergency leap to the nearest stellar body when a surge of volatile energy came exploding out of Rubicon-3. Thank god for that small planetoid they’d managed to shelter behind…

But instead of getting immediately out of dodge the second things settled down, Raven had all but commandeered the ship and started gunning back towards Rubicon-3 like a man possessed. When it came out that Raven was hunting down his successor… well, words were exchanged and Chartreuse may’ve thrown a chair at them, but Raven got their way, as always, and now they were here, twiddling their thumbs and waiting for Raven to come back with a potential rabid dog in tow.

“We might have to figure out a naming system if they do find him,” King said idly. “Raven Senior and Raven Junior, maybe?”

“Who’d be the senior and who’d be the junior?” Chartreuse drawled. “That Gen Four is probably a grizzled old man. Our Raven isn’t even thirty.”

“Guess they’d be junior then.” Somehow, King maintained a straight face as he said this. “We could always call the Gen Four after his designation. C4-621, if I remember rightly?”

“That’s…” Chartreuse wrinkled her nose. “So corporate.”

“Hound, then?” King shrugged. “It’s up to Raven, I guess. It’s their name they gave away.”

A name that the rabid dog had technically earned in the same way their Raven had. As sour as Chartreuse was about the whole thing, she grudgingly accepted and respected the dog’s hustle and fire. He’d trounced all three of them in a straight fight, and it was done purely through skill. The things he’d done with that laser dagger were obscene…

But Raven had always been Raven to her. She still called them that, hell, they all did, but if their successor was found and brought into the fold, then they’d have to bow their heads to proper tradition and accept the dog as Raven, and Raven as… Nightfall.

Ugh. She still hated that name. Nightfall. It was a name an edgy teenager would pick for their social media account.

[finnlongman]

All right, time to talk about the Maines. I apologise that this is so delayed -- I've had terrible pain-related brain fog lately, but today I can at least think, even if I'm typing this from bed because sitting up at a desk is Bad.

A couple of weeks back, a friend sent me this AskHistorians question:

This is very much my area of expertise, but I don't use Reddit, so I said I'd answer it here, for the benefit of @llwhn (and anyone else who is interested).

First of all, context: I published an article about the seven Maines in Cambrian Medieval Celtic Studies 83 last year, which is one of the only pieces of research published on the topic in recent years. Unfortunately, I can't share this article online due to the copyright restrictions of the journal, but it's my research there that I'm drawing on. The Maines are a complicated bunch -- although we're told there are seven of them, they actually number between six and eight in any given list, and their names vary noticeably.

To show how much they vary, let me show you the table I produced for my CMCS article:

As we can see here, there’s considerable variation in a) how many of them there are, b) what their names are, and c) what order the names are in. This last point might not seem important, but it’s going to come up later.

Now that we’ve had a chance to appreciate that the ‘seven’ Maines are a far more complicated bunch than they appear, let’s get down to the specifics of your question. You wanted to know whether Maine Cotagaib-Uile’s epithet is implying that he’s nonbinary (or perhaps intersex?), especially as it talks about inheriting traits from both parents. This is a really interesting question, and not one I’d thought about before – surprising, since I also work on queer readings of medieval Irish texts. Having thought about it for a while, I don’t think that’s what’s being suggested here, but let’s look at it in more depth.

‘Cotagaib-Uile’ is probably the epithet to have received the most attention of those in this list, although given how little has been published about the seven Maines, that isn’t saying too much. This is interesting, because as you can see, it’s not in all of the lists, and some of the omissions are significant.

Quick Maine backstory: in some traditions, we’re told that the Maines originally had different names, and were renamed because of a prophecy Medb was given that her son Maine would kill Conchobar. She had no sons called Maine, so she renamed all of them (and one of them ends up killing a Conchobar, but not the one she wanted dead). This story is found in Cath Boinde / Ferchuitred Medba, as well as in a couple of manuscript fragments by itself; the first four columns of the table above show the lists of names given there.

In fact, let’s have another table, this time showing the ‘original’ names of the Maines and the epithets they were given when renamed, according to these four manuscripts:

Yep. As we can see, these manuscripts can’t agree on anything, which is funny, since they’re all versions of the same text. It just goes to show what a complicated question the Maines’ epithets offer. The fact that Cotagaib-Uile isn’t in this list is interesting, though, because some scholars have attributed quite a lot of importance to this name.

Introducing: Sir John Rhys. John Rhys was the Jesus Professor of Celtic at Oxford in the 19th century, and yet despite this distinguished academic background, managed to write a lot of absolute nonsense. That’s the 19th century for you! Rhys has the dubious honour of at least being creative in his wildly unsupported arguments; I love the confidence with which he’ll assert “this undoubtedly means X” when there is definitely a great deal of doubt and in fact it almost definitely doesn’t mean X.

Rhys is, however, one of the only people apart from me to have spent much time looking at the names of the Maines, so I was forced to consider his arguments for a while when I was writing this article. As we’ve seen above, there are often more than seven Maines, and Rhys, who had a theory that the “secht Maine” represented the days of the week (“sechtmain”), was keen to understand why there might be eight of them. He said that the epithet ‘Condagaib-Uile’ should be read as suggesting that this Maine ‘contained or comprehended all the others’. In this way, he’s functioning as a ‘superlative eighth’ to the seven – all the others are contained within him, just as sometimes triads give three examples of something and then a fourth that’s better than all of them.

But that’s not what the explanation given in Táin Bó Cúailnge suggests it means, is it? Now, I’ll note that Faraday’s translation is pretty old, and I wouldn’t generally use it. However, I pulled out Cecile O’Rahilly’s translation of the same line, and it’s pretty similar:

‘Their names are Maine Máthramail, Maine Aithremail, Maine Mórgor, Maine Mingor, Maine Mo Epirt, who is also called Maine Milscothach, Maine Andóe and Maine Cotageib Uile—he it is who has inherited the appearance of his mother and his father and the dignity of them both’

Cóir Anmann, a treatise on names, gives an explanation that seems to encompass Rhys's interpretation while saying the same thing as TBC:

‘who includes them all’, ‘i.e. had the appearance of his mother and father. For he was like them both’ (trans. Sharon Arbuthnot)

It's clear that even when Cotagaib-Uile is referring to "them all", it's not quite in the manner that Rhys argued, so his interpretation isn't particularly convincing. (He also attributed a lot of important to Cotagaib-Uile being the last in the list, which we can see very clearly from the table above is not always or even mostly the case.)

Instead, it definitely seems to be the “appearance” of both mother and father that the text claims Maine has inherited. Let’s look closer at that, because we don’t want to be misled by translations. Faraday uses ‘form’ instead; the difference there is negligible, but it might be significant, if we’re trying to read into this regarding gender and bodies.

The Irish word in TBC is ‘cruth’ meaning form, shape, appearance; beauty of form, shapeliness. It does refer to physical appearance, but it doesn’t seem to be a particularly gendered term referring to physical traits. There is no evidence, for example, that this is implying an intersex body containing both male and female traits. The simplest way to read this is just “he looks like both his parents”, which is a normal thing to say about somebody.

Moreover, it’s worth considering this name in the context of two of the other Maines in the list:

Aithremail, ‘like his father’, ‘i.e. he was like his father, i.e. like Ailill son of Máta’ Máithremail, ‘like his mother’, ‘i.e. he was like his mother, i.e. like Medb daughter of Eochaid’ (again from Cóir Anmann, translated by Sharon Arbuthnot)

If one brother takes after their father, one takes after their mother, then suggesting that a third brother might take after both of them doesn’t seem like a particularly loaded statement.

Indeed, if it was a loaded statement, we would expect these Significantly Gendered Traits to show up somewhere else. After all, Maine Mingar and Maine Mórgar get a whole story in which the “duty” (gar) of their names is positioned as central – that’s Táin Bó Regamain. So we might think there was a story in which taking after Medb or Ailill was significant, but there’s certainly no surviving story in which that happens.

That doesn’t mean there never was a story in which that aspect of their epithets was emphasised, but although Maine Mathremail and Maine Athremail are present in every list (a rarity among the Maines), I’m not aware that they ever get to take a starring role in any text that survives today. Likewise, there isn't a story in which Cotagaib-Uile’s superlative or combinatory nature is foregrounded.

All of that is a very long winded way of saying that I don’t think they are implying anything about this Maine’s gender: I think they’re simply saying that he has inherited traits from both Medb and Ailill. Since Medb is notorious for behaving in an “unwomanly” manner by trying to lead armies into war and so on (something some medieval authors were not impressed by), this also probably isn’t suggesting any of those traits were especially feminine.

But. That doesn’t mean this epithet, and the textual explanation given for it, doesn’t create space for a nonbinary reading of Maine. I’m all in favour of exploring queer possibilities regardless of the authors’ intentions. I think it would be challenging to argue for a trans reading overall simply because Maine Cotagaib-Uile does nothing else in the text except be included in this list, and therefore has no personality or behaviours to draw on, but that doesn’t mean you couldn’t choose, in your own creative or exploratory works, to explore nonbinary possibilities.

Moreover, although I don’t think this Maine is being portrayed as ambiguously gendered on purpose, Táin Bó Cúailnge is not a text where gender binaries are neatly demarcated and always maintained. Crucially, Cú Chulainn himself is a deeply ambiguous figure whose masculinity is constantly questioned, undermined, and problematised by those around him, and his own behaviour challenges their assumptions and their definitions of 'man'.

As people who follow me here know, I have an article which will be available in the next month or two about the ambiguities of Cú Chulainn’s gender and what this says about TBC as a text. I tend towards a transmasculine reading, and suggest one in this article, but that’s certainly not the only possibility. The value of queer and gender theory is that once you start dismantling assumptions about gender in this story, you can have a lot of fun looking at how it’s actually being constructed, rather than just how we assume it’s being constructed.

So I definitely think there’s potential for exploring more facets of gender in TBC than the ones that have already been discussed (by me or by others). And perhaps looking at epithets like this and what they tell us about personalities, appearances, and gender would be a good place to start – because clearly, medieval authors didn’t think it remarkable that a son could inherit the appearance or nature of his mother, or neither Maine Mathremail nor Maine Cotagaib-Uile would have the epithets that they do.

tl;dr: This passage in Táin Bó Cúailnge is probably not implying that the character in question is nonbinary, but there is lots of space for queer readings of this text.

For further reading on the seven Maines and the meaning of their epithets, you might enjoy my CMCS article; there’s a link on my website, which is also where I will also upload the article about Cú Chulainn and gender as soon as it’s available.

I hope this has been useful/informative, and I’m sorry it took me so long to get to it!

[unhonestlymirror]

The scale of russian misinformation is so huge that I've even seen Lithuanians using "Illya Muromets" as a derogatory insult because that legendary warrior is considered to be russian... but Illya is Ukrainian, actually!😭 His real name was Illya Murovets but russia stole it and renamed after the russian city "Murom" which isn't even close to Kyiv, but it sounds so similar to "Murovets", no one would care enough to notice!

The same happens among Ukrainians. I've seen plenty of times how Ukrainians use "gusli" to make fun of russians... but it's not actually an instrument of a russian origin! It's Finno-Baltic, Lithuanians use "Baltijos psalteriumas" as a common term for all these sort of musical instruments because it has a lot of names: Kokles in Latvian, kūkles in Latgalian, Kandla in Livonian (Livs), Kanklės in Lithuanian, Kanele in Estonian, Kantele in Finnish/Karelian Finnish and Kusli in Volga Finnish!

N.B. If it was in the 6th century A.D., it's highly unlikely those people were "Baltic Slavs": here is the original text (allegedly, because it is translated from Greek to russian, and we all know how russians love misleading people):

"They replied that they were Slavs by tribe and lived at the end of the Western Ocean (Baltic sea); that the Khagan had sent ambassadors as far as the local [tribes] to gather military forces, and had tempted the elders with rich gifts. But they, having accepted the gifts, refused him an alliance, assuring him that the length of the journey was an obstacle for them, and sent them, captured [by the emperor], to the Khagan with apologies: after all, the journey takes fifteen months. But the Khagan, forgetting the law [protecting] ambassadors, began to create obstacles for their return. They, having heard that the tribe of the Romans, if one may say so, is very famous for its wealth and philanthropy, went to Thrace, deceiving [the Khagan] at an opportune moment. And they carry citharas, they say, because they are not trained to carry weapons on their bodies; for their country does not know iron, which makes their life peaceful and unperturbed; they play the lyre, not familiar with the singing of trumpets. For those who have never heard of war, it's naturally, as they said, to engage in simple musical exercises. Autocrat, [hearing] all that was said, admired their race and, having honored the barbarians themselves who came to him with hospitality and marveling at the size of their bodies and the enormity of their body parts, he transported them to Heraclia."

Either the author confused something because there could be only Baltic tribes living next to the Baltic sea in the 6th century (Western Europe could never care less about whatever the hell happens in Eastern Europe, even nowadays, with all the Internet sources, they dare to call us "Slavic" and "post-soviet"🙄) or those were ancient Belaruthians (Gudija) who are technically Baltic Slavs who had more or less nice relations with their neighbours, or... russia just made it up, and there was no "slavs" mentioned at all. In any case, the full description really suits Baltic tribes (and even reminds me of Lāčplēsis a bit).

In russia (since it was born somewhen between Ivan the Terrible and Peter the First times) this instrument which is now called "gusli", came through Baltics then Finnish tribes. In Baltic tribes, psalteriumai have a sacral meaning, people there have a lot of festivals with kankliai, and they don't associate this musical instrument with russia... so I don't think Ukrainians should, too.

We should fight back russia not because for its clothes or music, but for their awe in killing and raping people en masse. We should also educate ourselves better about our neighbours.

[scarlettaagni]

So in the future Psyphon takes over maintaining Vilgax's empire after he "died".

How did that happen?

Couldn't Psyphon no longer come back?

I thought Unaxx would take that responsibility.

I ask too many questions, I'm going to stop.

alright there's a lot of confusion here but luckily I can just copy-paste some stuff I wrote quite literally for context

About Vilgax, Chimera Alpha, and Unaxx:

He was once a high-ranking officer on Chimera Alpha, never its ruler

Everyone who knew him always describes Vilgax as something called “Antigenic” but they never explain what that means

Seeking to rise the ranks and expand the Chimeran empire, he overstepped the permissions of his job and was exiled

Completely giving up on Chimera Alpha, he rose his own empire to expand however he wished, far more effectively than Alpha ever allowed him

Vilgax is infamous throughout the galaxy and as a consequence, is the most well-known Chimera Sui Generis

Vilgax is completely done with Chimera Alpha, as they are with him. Every misdeed of his reflects poorly on them, and as such they hate him and will fire if he is in their sights. He doesn’t think about them at all and has never been back since his exile.

The current ruler (called a “royal elect”) of Chimera Alpha is Unaxx (you-nacks), an equivalent to a 60-something year old enby. No relation to Vilgax, but they were a commanding officer of his before his exile, and send occasional transmissions (usually threats and warning) after it.

Anytime the Chimeran Hammer drifts anywhere near Chimera Alpha, which is always by chance or accident and never his destination, Vilgax is sent a threat like they have a restraining order against him (they do)

They always insult one another. If they’re feeling nice that day, then they might do it subtly.

Something about Vilgax looking terrible (more frequently after his cybernetics) and Unaxx being old and supposed to be dead

The capital of Chimera Alpha is renamed for every new royal elect, so currently it is “Una” (you-na)

There are statues of every royal elect around Una (spread more thinly throughout the rest of the planet), and the most important ones are in a temple by the capital citadel, where the largest ones are showcased like a historical gallery

Newest one being Unaxx’s depiction, naturally

Vilgax does not talk about Chimera Alpha unless directly asked, and is vague even then. Getting him to elaborate is like pulling teeth.

Chimera Alpha tries to ignore his existence and scorn his mention, though everyone knows who he is.

There is even a ban/social stigma against use of his name. Anyone with the same name changed it when he started becoming infamous

Chimera Alpha is quite isolated, and “out of the way”, being in the Shadow Realm system, news from there does not travel far without enhanced communication

Yes, it’s still called the Shadow Realm system. It’s a name from antiquity the occupants have never been able to shake.

Light is also low on the planet. It’s usually at a constant twilight. Nights are also very long. The planet experiences lengths of darkness similar to the Earth’s polar circles

A lot of the plant life is bioluminescent because of this

There are no Space Plumbers on Chimera Alpha. There is occasional communication but the Chimera Sui Generi have not submitted to their jurisdiction.

Not to say there are no Chimeran Plumbers, they’re free to leave and join if they want. The planet and its government as a whole will occasionally speak with and less frequently cooperate with the Plumbers but generally want to be left alone

They’re a combat-oriented society and a militaristic empire. They don’t want to be told what to do or babysat by the galaxy’s goody-two-gumshoes, y’know?

If they don’t act rashly, then the Plumbers are fine them remaining adjacent and not actually being under their umbrella

It’s a delicate situation because while Chimeras love to fight and are well-prepared for it, the prospect of galactic war is um! not fun! for anyone involved! No one wants to light that specific powder keg so everyone minds their business.

But that does mean Chimera Alpha doesn’t have them on speed dial in case of emergency. They usually don’t need their help.

Everyone is just lucky that Unaxx is the most reasonable Chimera alive. Aside from the talking shit to Vilgax’s face. But he can’t do much about that when he’s right in their airspace and they automatically point their deflight guns at him.

He’s not even interested in conquering Chimera Alpha. That’s how little it means to Vilgax. They aren’t even worth the catharsis of showing them what they missed out on or being proven wrong.

[talenlee]

MTG: The New Mechanics of 2023

2023 saw a lot of new Magic product, and of it, a lot of it I disliked. Since I don’t like the Phyrexians as a villain type, and I don’t like the implementation of D&D in Magic: The Gathering and I don’t like Urza, and I don’t like Lord of the Rings and I don’t like Dr Who, that meant that the release of Wilds of Eldraine marked a point where I finally had seen a release I didn’t actively hate for over a year. After getting Kamigawa Neon Dynasty and Streets of New Capenna I was so happy for how Wizards were handling new and old places, so you can imagine how irritated I was to watch them drive the flavour bus into the ditch of ‘eugenics grandpa’s sad feels’ again and park there.

But that doesn’t mean these sets with their terrible stories and annoying characters and embarrassing fandom sycophancy are necessarily bad. After all, they have individual cards I can appreciate and they can also have mechanics that I can poach and play with like legos. Setting aside my personal antipathy though, what about those sets yielded toys for me?

Phyrexia All Will Be One

Mechanics: Oil Counters, Proliferate, Poison Counters, Rebels, Spheres, Corrupted, For Mirrodin, Toxic

Oil Counters is just bookkeeping stuff. Saying ‘we did a whole set without +1/+1 counters,’ like sure, yeah, you just used Oil Counters and had the cards say ‘they get +1/+1 for the Oil counters on them.’ Poison and Proliferate already existed, and Spheres is a footnote for one card. And like, I don’t mind that card, Monument To Perfection is a lovely riff on Journeyer’s Kite, a card I’ve liked for a long time (jesus, almost twenty years). Corrupted is fine, and it is worth considering that it does need a mechanic like Poison to work – and that Poison needs to work properly, where players can’t readily get rid of it and it’s something your opponents impose on you. And you know, Toxic works as a riff on Infect, but I don’t like it as much as I like Infect. When you’re clobbering an opponent for four to six damage, leaving behind a Poison counter isn’t nearly as interesting to me. It does work with the Proliferate ‘sit back and bleed’ vibes though so you know it’s not all bad.

For Mirrodin is the best mechanic of the set, but it’s flavour-locked to Mirrodin with like, the name. I’d definitely be okay with stealing it and renaming it, and it’s got some nice and obvious design space. It’s just a Good Boy version of Living Weapon after all.

Overall: Who cares.

March of the Machine + Aftermath

Mechanics: Backup, Convoke, Incubate, Battles

Convoke has always been awesome. It’s got to suck to be Selesnya sometimes, where your best mechanic was designed the first time you ever showed up and then they just gave it to everyone else. Still, no point complaining about near-perfection.

Incubate is a really good mechanic. It encourages board presence, it gives artifact removal something to do in limited, and it can relate to Transform effects and Proliferate effects. I like Incubate a lot. Shame it’s limited to the flavour of the Phyrexians, but at least it’s doing a bang-up job there. I like playing with Incubate cards and I like the unifying mechanical space for them. Can’t use them for my own designs without just straight up renaming everything, which feels very weak to me.

Backup on the other hand is an all-star mechanic. Just an incredible banger. I didn’t like it at first because I felt the ‘gains this ability’ had so many ways for people to intuitively confuse it. Like, does the original creature lose its abilities (no)? Does it gain everything in the text box after the backup (yes)? Can you make it so the Backup doesn’t give some of the creature’s abilities (yes)? It’s a different kind of mechanic to one we see. Buuut it encourages aggression, it puts bodies on the board and it relates to existing mechanics like +1/+1 counters. I like Backup a lot.

Battles also kick ass, but I feel very tired of them, because as soon as they were spoiled at first, I saw the custom subreddit lose their mind over how to make more Battles and it mostly showed me that a lot of people can make very bad cards and not understand the point of a mini-game in the game. I like the idea of them but part of the joy of Battles was that they had a deep well of flavour to draw from and a really fun effect. They need to be balanced so that they’re not dud draws late and not overwhelming early.

Lord Of The Rings I Guess

Mechanics: The Ring Tempts You, Amass update

For a set with exactly two meaningful mechanics it’s kind of impressive that one of them is so awful while the other is so good. The Ring Tempts You is a mechanic that ties into a specific flavour and then botches the execution on it. The ring is meant to tempt you to put it on, and this mechanic just encourages you to get more and more tempted so you can reap the entirely positive upside benefits of having this sick ring, then let you win the game with it.

 ‘Oh, but being more true to the flavour would be bad play patterns,’ then maybe you shouldn’t fucking use that flavour for a game mechanic.

Anyway, Amass was a mechanic I liked enough back when I first saw it but the update to allow Amass to pick up new creature types is a huge improvement, and opens up a lot more flavour. It’s still limited to mono-black Amassing, but I think ‘Amass Orcs’ is a much better line of rules text than ‘Amass Red and Black Orcs.’ I’m okay with compromising there.

Wilds of Eldraine

Mechanics: Adventures, Food, Roles, Bargain, Celebration

Celebration continues the ongoing problem of Wizards designing things in the Naya wedge and giving them ability words to compensate for how they very clearly have no idea what they can possibly do for those three colours that isn’t just, you know, ‘play creatures on to the board.’ Celebration lives in Boros colours, but it’s in the same space as Coven and Alliance: “Please don’t mind that you’re the footnote.”

I like Roles a lot. I also don’t feel like I’d do a lot with them unless I was making something in a space like Eldraine. I don’t like the idea of inventing more Roles – I think the six we have is very close to a  maximum, as indicated by the seventh one being kinda unnecessary, but whatever.

Bargain is another iteration on ‘why isn’t this kicker,’ but I get it, it’s fine, it doesn’t matter and kicker’s sins are infinite.

Wilds of Eldraine didn’t have to do much to be great, and if they had introduced no new mechanics and just done those obvious iterations on Adventures and Food, I probably would have been happy. Though shout out to the Menacing Food stuff, that was great.

Doctor Who

Mechanics: Cascade, Doctor’s Companion, Paradox, Suspend, Time Travel, Villainous Choice

Hrm.

So one of these things is a thing we’ve kind of wanted in the rules for a long time? Villainous Choices aren’t very deep, but having a standard mechanical rules space to reference for ‘and now something bad happens’ so they can be repeated or fed off. There isn’t that much depth to it, but it would have been nice if that was a more generic effect.

Suspend, Cascade, they’re old, familiar effects. Paradox is fine, I guess, because it’s an ability word and nothing references it, so those card effects can just be reprinted.

Doctor’s Companion is a variant on Partner and I don’t mind it, because I don’t mind most Partner variants. Mechanical opportunity missed here, by the way? Why weren’t the doctors planeswalkers? Anyway, Time Travel I might steal – its relationship to Vanishing and Suspend, and subsequently anything else that relates to ‘Time Counters’ is pretty useful and the name is pleasantly generic meaning I don’t have to tie it to Dr Who.

Lost Caverns of Ixalan

Mechanics: Craft, Descend, Discover, Explore, Maps

Thank you for the bangers, for these, they are nothing but bangers.

Discover is a Cascade variant with more controls on it and doable as an action. That means spells and creatures can have ‘Discover’ as an effect, which makes it more useful than just Cascade and can create an incentive to do things with Discover that aren’t just finding the best broken spell to work with. Like that. Explore is and has always been good, Maps are just an obvious mechanical way to relate to Explore, and Descend’s effects are all just ability-word variations on threshold. Same basic idea: Look at the graveyard, pass a number and if you pass that number, good job, you get the effect. I see complaints about it because it’s just another graveyard tracker like Undergrowth and Threshold and yeah it sure is.

Craft is the real gem of it. Craft is full of details like you can craft out of something’s remains, but you don’t have to have the thing in the bin to get started. It’s a dual faced card technology that gives room to make sorceries into artifacts. It’s got flavour options of cursed and haunted things, or technological things or carefully cultivated and grown things, and those three different forms of ‘craft’ all work for different flavour combinations.

Summary

I like Incubate and For Mirrodin but they’re both choked on their flavour, limiting them to basically this point in time. I like Time Travel as a generically useful term. In terms of stuff I’m likely to use, Backup and Amass are both absolutely top tier tools for designs, and Craft may not happen any time soon, but it is a great mechanic I want to work with in the future.

I treat Magic sets as airdrops of new mechanical bundles, little toys I can use to make my own littler toys. It wasn’t until November last year that I finally got onto Magic: The Gathering Arena and played a game of Magic against another person I didn’t know for something like seven years, but I still tune in for new sets, and still regularly look at sets and spoiler.

I have, for many years now, participated in Magic: The Gathering as a game the way a composer reading sheet music participates in that.

Check it out on PRESS.exe to see it with images and links!

[authorofemotion]

Why do you hate redeeming love (I've never heard of it but I love hearing why people like or dislike things)

you’ve come to the right place because i have Opinions!!! the premise of the book is that it’s a retelling of the Bible book Hosea and his unfaithful wife except done during gold rush America. but like take that and make it so so much worse.

cw for (*checks notes*) child prostitution, pedophilia, incest, trafficking, rape, toxic masculinity, victim blaming, screwed up mindsets, age gap relationships, lots and lots of abuse stuff

Okay, I’m just going to go through the plot of the book, pausing to dive into more detail in places where it’s necessary.

The book starts with a good hundred pages going over the main character’s childhood. She was born out of wedlock because her mom was her dad’s mistress, and he hated her for being born. Then her mom took her away from that abusive situation but her grandparents refused to take them in and her mom had to become a prostitute to support them. Then her mom freaking dies so her uncle(?) brings her to a rich guy looking to adopt a little girl. And the rich guy kills her uncle and is actually a pedophile and renames her Angel (she is like seven at this point.)

She grows up in this guy’s house literally just being a sex slave, and at one point he hosts a party and her dad is there but he doesn’t recognize her because he only saw her pre-puberty. So in order to get revenge on him she seduces him and only after sleeping with him does she reveal that she’s his daughter, and he’s so distraught that he kills himself.

All Angel wants is freedom so, just before the main events of the book, she runs away to a brothel where she can be a prostitute and save up her money since she doesn’t have anyone else to fall back on and doesn’t know a trade.

This is where the main plot starts. Indeed, none of ANY of that was the main plot. But dark subject matter doesn’t necessarily mean a book is bad. There are plenty of wonderful books with dark subject matter. And yet, this book does nothing to redeem itself throughout.

The love interest’s name is Michael Hosea. He’s just a humble farmer but also? He can talk to God. Just. He hears a voice that is God’s. And God tells him “you saw that really pretty prostitute out for a walk? that’s your wife.”

So Michael Hosea spends a crap ton of money to get to spend the night with her. And he asks her to marry him and tries to convince her that he doesn’t just want sex with her (although he also mentions that he does want sex with her eventually; all his statements that he’s not going to take advantage of her have a “not yet” caveat, where he says that at some point they will be married and he will have sex with her). Meanwhile she’s trying to seduce him because she did not ask for any of this. Essentially none of his “good guy” persona comes to anything because he still takes advantage of the power imbalance between them, even if it’s not in the same way that she’s used to. This happens several different times.

Angel ends up finding out that the lady who runs the brothel wasn’t *actually* setting aside her payments for her and was instead exploiting her, so she throws a fit and gets beat up to the point that she’s literally half dead. Michael finds out and bursts in and once again asks her to marry him so he can get her out of there (coercion). And while every time before she said no, this time she was barely conscious and delirious and said “why not”.

AND THE BOOK ACCEPTS THAT AS A FULLY CONSENTING ANSWER

I’m gonna speed up a bit because this book is like 500+ pages. He takes her home and she wants to leave and tries to leave twice. The first time he finds her on the road and is like “you won’t make it back to town before you collapse from starvation but it’s your choice whether to keep going or come back home.” The second time his brother in law, who is a terrible person, gives her a ride back into town bc he hates her and wants her away from Michael and then he rapes her as payment for the ride. She’s back in the brothel and Michael busts in on her while she’s seeing someone and punches him and drags her out. She’s so terrified of him that she jumps out of the wagon on their way back home. We get a snippet from his POV, where it says that he’s not going to hit her because he knows if he did, he wouldn’t be able to stop and he would kill her

Also he never comforts her or does anything to help her through her trauma. Every time she’s having a mental breakdown or something from the horrible horrible things she’s been through he’s just like “I’m making soup if you want to help me” and then reads her stuff from the Bible. She gets brainwashed into falling in love with him (all she had wanted was her own little cabin with a garden where she didn’t have to see men again ever)

Another thing is how explicit it is about the sex. We see Michael’s pov a lot where he’s just always so horny about her??? And she tries to seduce him a lot in the beginning even after they’re “married” because she’s like “I know what you really want” and every. single. time. he says “not yet. we will, but not yet” AND HE MAKES HER SLEEP IN THE SAME BED AS HIM???? I—

anyway more stuff happens and she runs away and becomes her own person for a bit and gets kidnapped by her childhood sex trafficker again and converts to christianity etc but she ends up coming back to him and also the rapist in law (who was a widower) marries a 16 year old who is also very horny.

many people view this book as a very romantic view of Christian marriage and the story of Hosea, which is very very inaccurate and very very bad. the misconception people have is that it’s a story of unconditional love pursuing a woman who’s been so hurt that she doesn’t know what love is, but the way it actually plays out is so bad and creepy

anyway ✨ ty for listening to my little rant! if you’ve read this far here is a picture of me and my sister going to see the movie in theaters last year for my birthday (i hated it this much then too)

[sarahreadsfic]

I saw your tags and figured I'd send an ask haha

All those names are really nice! I do think in future quests they'd end up using the name you gave him, so that's definitely something to consider. You do get one extra chance to rename him, so maybe try out Zihong for awhile and see what you think?

omg hello!! welcome, please don't mind the mess haha-- *hastily shoving posts and tags aside, attempting to look casual*

so the funny thing is i'm actually nowhere near that part of the quest yet lmao, like i haven’t even met him in-game yet. i'm just trying to get myself used to calling him a different name before i actually have to use it (and for writing purposes).

zihong is definitely in my top 5 names for sure, but the problem i’m having now is that there are just SO many names i’ve researched that would be good for him and i dunno which one he would like best lol.

i’m WAY overthinking this decision and taking it far too seriously, i know - from what i’ve seen, he seems pretty indifferent to whatever we call him either way, aside from his old names or other characters’ names. but still! i want him to feel satisfied with it. if he doesn’t feel so loved and warm inside whenever i call him by his new name i will have failed him >:(

apologies and you definitely did not sign up for this but i’m now using this ask to make a comprehensive list of all my other favorite names and their (supposed) meanings. wish i could just run them all past him for input hgjnfjhdj sORRY FOR THIS IT’S RLLY FOR ME ONLY U DO NOT HAVE TO READ ME WAXING ON ABOUT NAMES FOR WHO KNOWS HOW MANY PARAGRAPHS

First, all the Japanese names:

Matsuri - “Festival”, “enshrined”, “showing gratitude towards the rituals of nature”; has connections with Shinto and Buddhism. I don’t think this is commonly used as a name, necessarily, but the whole “gratitude towards nature” part struck me as a sort of nod to how Nahida helped him. And I like the idea of giving him a name that invokes joy, celebration, and life, because I want him to have those things and find happiness in his new self!

Soma - “A sudden sound of wind”, “true/real/genuine”. It’s simple and nice and what sells this one for me is the “sudden” part. Brings about a sense of movement and change and I really, really like it for that. Don’t know if the meaning is exact, though. It seems like Hayate has a similar meaning, which I also like!

Nataku - The Japanese name for Nezha, a Taoist deity. But also, this is just on the list because I was watching Saiyuki (ridiculous and very loose adaptation of Journey to the West, janky animation and terrible writing, fun to laugh at, highly recommend) with a friend last night and there was a character called Prince Nataku who is described as a “puppet assassin”. Immediate sirens started blaring in my head as my brain honed in on that as a possible name. Apparently Nezha is also known as the Third Lotus Prince, and I love the idea of associating lotus imagery with Wanderer.

Hansei - The cultural concept of “self-reflection”, acknowledging one’s mistakes and pledging improvement. I saw someone name him this and I like how it fits him. My concern is that it seems more like an admonishment and might hold him back from thinking of himself as more than his past wrongs.

Kazuki - "Hope of peace”, “serenity”, “peaceful tree”. I really liked that your name had a connection with Irminsul in the -ki suffix! Apparently -ki also means air, which suits him well, too. In this name, it comes from “hope” and kazu- is for peace. I do like the idea of giving him a name that could embody hope and I do want him to find peace within himself, but I worry he would find this condescending, particularly the idea of “peace” since that word just has so many connotations - he might take it as me wanting him to mellow himself out as if I wouldn’t accept him or am disappointed by him as he is.

Satoru - "Enlightenment” in the Zen Buddhism sense, “to know/understand”. Mostly I think that the way it sounds suits him. The only thing is that it’s a little bit unassuming and normal, I think? Which he might like, actually.

Anything with the prefix Shin-, because I like that it can be read as both “new” and “heart”. But I also feel like 1) it would always end up reminding me of another character because there are SO many that have this name and 2) he might take it as an insult or a mockery, like, “haha, how ironic is it that you don’t have a heart and I’m giving you a name with the word heart in it”. Probably unlikely at this point, but I don’t want his name to cause even the faintest sense of melancholy or sadness in the back of his mind, so I don’t want to chance it.

Other names that I like the sound of are Seijun (pure, innocent, clean/righteous), Kiryoku (inner strength/willpower), and Katsuya (victory). While I do like these, I’m a little apprehensive that naming him any of them would be akin to imposing certain expectations onto him or the type of person I want him to be? Especially Seijun. But I could also see him choosing Kiryoku or Katsuya for himself, so I don’t know! I’m conflicted.

There’s also Ren (lotus or love) and Shou (to soar/fly - add the suffix -yo and it turns into sunlight/sunshine). Simple and sweet, but after all of the long and multisyllabic names he’s taken in the past, I think he might find something like this refreshing. I really like these two aesthetically. I also cannot decide between them for my life.

And then there are names inspired by mythology or religion:

Fujin - Japanese; god of the wind in Japanese mythology who is often depicted alongside the thunder god, which, in Genshin’s case, would be Raiden. I know a lot of people pick this one, but I think it has too strong of a connection with the past he’s trying to leave behind, although I like the way it sounds.

Shu - Egyptian; god of wind/dry air. I like the similarity with Shou, and also that it potentially would be more connected to Sumeru than Inazuma.

Akasa - Sanskrit; the Bodhisattva of void/space in Buddhism. In Japanese, it’d be Kokuzo. I know these were mentioned in my tags, but after some more consideration I don’t think they’re a great fit for him thematically.

Vayu - Sanskrit; in Hinduism, the god of the wind. Literal name meaning is apparently “that which flows”, which I think is pretty. I also think I just like names that start with V. Vaira was another option (Indian; “flowing air”) - I like that it sounds like it could be short for Vairocana, who is the cosmic Buddha that embodies the concept of sunyata, but I couldn’t find a good source for it actually meaning “flowing air” and instead it seems to be more commonly interpreted as “diamond”.

And finally, the Greek mythology names: Icarus, Aeolus, Zephyrus. I’ve seen Icarus suggested by a few people and while I like the way it looks and sounds aesthetically, the literal meaning is also “follower” which I don’t think he would appreciate. Also, I don’t know if I want to name him a tragic reference to his past hubris that caused his downfall. Aeolus (nimble, quick-moving) was the “keeper of the winds”, and though I like how grandiose and regal it sounds, I’m not really into the way it looks? Same with Zephyrus (west wind), it feels a little too soft for him (and if I recall correctly, the west wind was the gentlest one of the four).

So. That’s where I am now. I like so many of these, and I think there are ones that he would like more but I can’t possibly know for sure, and the more I research the more I find other names I like...

ok i’m so sorry for this long writeup JHDGKJGH ZIHONG IS STILL REALLY HIGH UP THERE JUST BECAUSE I CAME UP WITH IT ON MY OWN SO IT FEELS CLOSEST TO ME?? AND I CAN PICTURE MYSELF EXPLAINING THE NAME TO HIM VERY VIVIDLY. AND THEN SITTING THERE TENSELY AWAITING HIS APPROVAL AND THEN HIM GIVING ME A NOD. BUT I DON’T KNOW WHAT HE’D ACTUALLY THINK OF IT.

wanderer why can’t you just pick a name for yourself. do u see what ur doing to me. i feel like that one image of the dude from always sunny connecting all the red lines on the board. WHY AM I LIKE THIS.

[nickgerlich]

Battle Of The Brands

I have long preached the importance of brand protection. A brand is one of those things that typically takes years to build, and once you have established yourself in the minds and memories of consumers, it behooves you to do everything it takes to keep it there.

Sometimes a company will do a rebrand, which can involve an entirely new look and feel to packaging and logos, as well as the product itself. How it is positioned, which is effectively the “fifth P,” is usually changed then as well. It’s like hitting the Reset button, getting a do-over because the market has changed.

But what about when a company ditches a branding effort that has been in place for 51 years, and is still working well? Now that’s something that raises eyebrows. Take a look at HBO now. That’s Home Box Office, the long-time king of cable services that has been trying to find its way during the streaming era. It recently announced its HBO Max streaming service will now simply be called Max.

The company thinks it is a better umbrella name for its growing array of options, which recently saw Discovery+ come along for the ride. Essentially, they want to reposition themselves such that they are not viewed as just adult content, but also kid-friendly.

The only problem is that HBO’s second-tier brand, Cinemax, has that nagging suffix. Cinemax was always where you went to watch older movies, those that had run their course and lost some luster. The fact that they even combined it with the name HBO for streaming was enough to make me wince, but now to completely ditch the name that made the company what it is? It’s terrible.

Imagine if Coca Cola Company decided to gather up all its many brands and flavors, and rechristen them all Sprite. Sprite Cola. Diet Sprite. Cherry Vanilla Diet Sprite. I could go on. Fortunately, Coca Cola is smart enough to know how valuable its main brand is, and they will protect it until the end of time.

I know. HBO execs think they know what they are doing. Acquiring Discovery+ was a great move, because it helped build out their portfolio. But Disney is likely to finish acquiring Hulu next year, and do you think they’ll rename their streaming bundle Hulu? Not a chance. Walt would be turning over in his grave.

And what about Facebook renaming itself Meta, and Google now being Alphabet? What’s up with that? We consumers haven’t stopped referring to them by their original names, just like for anyone raised in Chicago in the late-20th century, it will always be the Sears Tower. None of that Willis Tower stuff for us, thank you very little.

Apparently HBO thinks that all the time, money, and effort they put into building the HBO name since 1972 now has little or no value, that we will automatically think of them when we see Max, and then go on as if nothing happened. To be honest, they will probably survive, and maybe even thrive, but this is still not a text book example of good branding.



Of course, I felt the same way when Cingular renamed itself AT&T. I loved the wordplay with Cingular, and I knew the history well regarding the splitting of the legacy AT&T company—much like Standard Oil—in years prior. Hey, Verizon just left their name intact. Cingular was a good name, but in the end, AT&T has still worked. And, I might add, happily takes my money every month.

Still, HBO has provided a good example of a potentially very bad thing. You just don’t mess with what is working, even if you might get away with it. And when I tune in Season 3 of The Righteous Gemstones next week, I’ll still be telling everyone it’s on HBO. Not Max. Somebody’s gotta show these guys how it’s supposed to be done.

Dr “You Can’t Fix What’s Not Broken” Gerlich

Audio Blog

[awesomephd]

Watching Through My Collection: 18/36

Funeral Home (1980) aka Cries in the Night

Day 17 / Day 19

Here we've got a Canadian horror, released as Cries in the Night first, but then renamed Funeral Home for US distribution. So many movies get such boring titles for the US, it sucks! Cries in the Night slaps so hard as a title.

Fun fact: The house used for the funeral home is the same mansion used in the Goosebumps episode "Night of the Living Dummy III."

CW: Horror movie DID

Tonight's movie was fun, but nothing terribly creative. Almost immediately, it reminded me of Carrie (1976) and Psycho (1960) as the protagonist's grandmother, Mrs. Chalmers, has major Margaret White meets Norman Bates vibes.

Perhaps if I had been a bit less genre savvy, I would've been able to enjoy the mystery aspects a bit more. Though, I did still like it a lot.

The movie follows a girl named Heather, who we had trouble telling if she was 17 or 21 since she was only at her grandmother's for the summer anyway and sometimes really pulled off looking a lot younger, but other times didn't at all.

She gets to her grandmother's to find that her grandfather had gone missing, and because of that Mrs. Chalmers has had to turn the funeral home he used to run into a bed and breakfast to make ends meet.

Unfortunately, all her guests seems to be of the wrong sort, as they start disappearing and getting found dead.

I do like the touch they add with a land developer's car getting found too- making it really hit home that these things have been happening even before Heather showed up for the summer.

Since this movie isn't as easily accessible as some of the others I've found again on Tubi, (only being available on Prime for $2.99 right now,) I think I'll go ahead and spoil the ending entirely.

My initial assessments of Mrs. Chalmers were right! She did have a breakdown and go crazy, killing her husband. She even went so far as to preserve his corpse and hide it in a secret room and then developed him as a second personality to argue with in the cellar.

Apparently, rather than just disappearing outright and possibly getting eaten by the house like it sometimes implied, Mr. Chalmers had slept with another woman. So, naturally, both parties were killed and buried in the graveyard.

Then, the land developer would've wanted to buy the land and move the graveyard so can't let anyone find the bodies- goodbye he goes. Then, a man and his mistress show up, going completely against Mrs. Chalmers' staunch Christian values- so they must get pushed off a cliff in their car! Finally, when the man that had been married to Mr. Chalmers' mistress showed up too, Mrs. Chalmers' broke that last bit and even almost killed Heather before the cops took her away.

It was predictable and simple, but fun and I could see myself putting it on again for some MST3K style riffs with friends.

Oh, also Mrs. Chalmers makes fake flowers so of course her husband's corpse is surrounded by them.

[jimmycartersufo]

on Friday I happened to open Instagram and had a suggested post with a little cat with a grumpy cat face, the caption said he had a bonded brother so I happened to go and check then out. when I saw his brother was a cat that looked like two of my cats who have passed, I immediately called my parents whom I live with and my husband. that day we rushed after work before the shelter closed to meet them but they just got out of surgery so we aren't able to. they were in a free roam room with two other cats. I saw cream puff, the orange, first. he was smaller than I thought. then I saw purrseus, the name the shelter gave him. we had a cam in the Chicago museum of art moment just staring at each other. we went home, saying that it would be OK if they were adopted because it meant a home for them and we would get a cat regardless. I tried to figure out plans to get there and get them that didn't involved both of us calling out. but all night I had dreams of them being adopted a minute after the shelter opened, I cried all night, even in my sleep, and I woke up with a crying hangover. John also dreamt of them, so we got up, called the fuck out with excuses given to me by my mom, and went and got them. we were soooo anxious and nervous. I couldn't eat, had to force myself to eat a Wawa sizzli just so I wouldn't be sick. we were shaking for hours, just two bundles of nerves. we met them, knew it immediately, and started the paperwork. as John was handing in the paper work a couple that was just two folks behind us in line when they opened said they wanted to see those two cats. I was nervous during processing, that somehow we would be denied. I tried to focus on people adopting all morning, a lot of doggies from a recent hoarding case. then John got an email saying we were processed and waiting for the adoption class, where they give you a folder with info and coupons and walk you through stuff before you check out. we paid for two carriers and gave a donation and the woman who helped us there went and got them for us. she said they were the sweetest cats as she put them in their boxes. they didn't make a single peep in the car, they laid right down and went to sleep, even when I told them about the key bridge collapse (you can see it in the distance). we barely slept that night, cream puff is a yeller and I kept waking up to check on them. I was exhausted for work but on cloud nine, nothing could bother me all day. the boys are incredible sweet and cuddly. they have eaten their food well, peed, pooped, and played. we renamed purrseus to gurgi, the creature from the black cauldron, because they are one in the same. he loves to kiss and give tiny nibbles with his tiny little mouth. we have been taking turns sleeping and taking naps to make sure they're okay. cream puff is very skittish and scares easily but he does a little dance when he drinks water and he had the fluffiest tail I've seen on a short hair cat. they are precious and I love them terribly. we have cats already, but they aren't *ours*, they are my families cats. they are still wonderful cats that love us, but they aren't our cats truly. Toby was our first cat together, a cat John basically raised, and he became ours when I moved in. He died April 8th, 2022. there has been a void since. moving in with my parents and having cats again helped, but we wanted cats to call our own. it has been an amazing couple of days. gurgi's first birthday is June 15th. I am so tired but so full of love. I know I'm rambling now but it has been a good time in my life and I have something to get me through the hard shit. can krill myself because I have someone to take care of kinda shit.

[wizisbored]

I would love to hear your new rtc idea

ok i am back from my waltzer adventure feeling a little bit ill but i have more ghost content

the choir all become very familliar with all the rides. if any of them makes any sort of out-of-the-ordinary noise they all hate it.

im considering having it be that they can put on other clothes over their uniforms and remain invisible. constance snagged a 'i rode the cyclone and all i got was this lousy t-shirt' shirt before they were all binned. ocean does not find it funny. ricky has a bootleg pokemon shirt. they put kid-sided shirts (still way too big) on jane/savannah's doll sometimes

every time the carnival sets up somewhere new they pick a different ride to act as home base

any drama between the staff is like their own personal soap opera

thinking about them becoming visible on halloween and/or their deathday. they snag likely oversized and generally terrible shirts to wear so that nobody who knows the carnivals history thinks theyre wearing horrifically insensitive costumes, and have something almost apporaching a normal day at the fairground.

their phones still work to an extent. there are many arguments about music choices on travelling days.

names/nicknames for jane doe (some of which will also be used in choir incomplete) include savannah, sav, vanny, anna, ann, annie, janey, jenny, JD, jade, doey, stag, bambi. they never seem to be able to settle on one, but i will likely stick to mainly savannah and one or two others in the narration

they make a note of the date they decided to throw savannah an impromptu birthday party, so they know when to do it next year

on the subject of birthdays, theyre never really sure what birthday to label them as since they dont age. they end up resolving to keep going till they loose count

the carnival has been renamed, but i am yet to think of a new name for it.

[naruhearts]

I’m done keeping my composure.

Sorry, this will be a LOADED post! (And I’ll be repeating the points others have made)

for real, to everyone being nasty and telling heartbroken fans that “Dean was always supposed to die get a grip you’re just butthurt etcetera etcetera—” F you royally.

How dare you police the brutal feelings that’s been embroiling us since the Finale That Must Not Be Named aired. 

The show you think you all watched, the show you all believe was the same SPN from Season 1-4, changed at some point. Kripke wrote his original vision, put it to screen, saw it through in S5 as he intended, and closed the door on that era.

In 2008, Supernatural was adopted and inherited. As you know, there was a supreme paradigm shift post-Kripke era. The show FLOURISHED (we won’t talk about Gamble thanks). It evolved, transformed, grew beyond trauma-induced self-worthlessness and toxic masculinity and endless death and hegemonic social ideals and conservatism and repressive anti-revolutionary ideas. Castiel, the iconic favourite and beloved staple of the series portrayed by Misha Collins, was introduced in Season 4 as the core lead character, and he ushered in a brand new era of Christian mythos that SPN took advantage of. Longevity SKYROCKETED. Audiences were INTERESTED. SPN amassed an incredibly groundbreaking fanbase infused by non-nuclear principles. A massive subversive wave began, fighting the Status Quo of the times since 2008. It’s precisely why such an abysmal ending to a show of extensive Freud-Jungian metanarratively meta META complex stature and social POWER will render us totally and unbearably broken for years to come.

Point is, DEAN WINCHESTER NO LONGER WANTED TO DIE. HE WANTED TO LIVE. HE WANTED TO SIT ON THE BEACH, PLUNGE HIS TOES IN THE SAND, AND SIP UMBRELLA DRINKS WITH HIS BROTHER AND HIS BEST FRIEND. He said this in Season 13. And then, a season later, he told the ghost of his long-deceased father — the source of his deep-running trauma and the figure of self-reductive authoritarianism permeating his arc since Season 1 — after being questioned why he didn’t pursue the Nuclear Fam, that he already has his own: his brother Sam, his adopted child Jack, and Cas.

Dean’s best friend Cas. Oh god, Cas, who made his inevitably permanent mark on Dean’s soul beyond allyship. Castiel, renamed to Cas, God’s -iel removed by Dean. Dean, the human spark that lit the fire of pre-existing autonomy in the inherently rebellious angel who was, this entire time, the catalyst for free will in God The Writer’s puppet show. Their friendship set on goddamn fire. I can also write paragraph upon paragraph about my love for Cas while devastated tears stream down my face, but I digress—

Cas’ romantic love for Dean pushed our main Heart of SPN to love himself. Love is free will. Free will is also love. Of note, Cas’ love confession in 15x18 was supposed to offset something so vastly important and fundamental...to maybe (read: most likely) pull the trigger on SELF-TRUTHS in conjunction with free will. And The Great Anticipated Follow-Up to the episode penned by the passionate Berens should have included (read: seemed like it was going to be) Dean, closeted trauma survivor in love with his best friend, being given the opportunity to do it right: to SPEAK HIS TRUTH, and then that very singular opportunity was STOLEN so grossly. After poring over it for days, I refuse to believe we made their years-long story up out of thin air, spun it out of fantastical-delusional dream cotton candy, because we DIDN’T. IT WAS REAL.

As I said in another post: “I’ve just been feeling physically ill for the past >40 something hours with the terrible knowledge that 19/20 undid years of vital progression towards healthy interdependence, autonomy, and a positive endgame, where Sam, Dean and Cas close the ring of found family in final empowering self-fulfillment...where Dean, no longer repressed and set free, is able to use his words and speak his truth as a queercoded trauma survivor, henceforth confirming and self-affirming his own bisexuality since S1 by reciprocating — by telling Cas that he always loved him, too, loved him endlessly, which would have altogether divested Supernatural of its cult status and catapulted it into global worldwide significance as the longest running sci-fi genre show in American broadcasting history that actually dared to defy and, by proxy, empower LGBTQ2IA+ everywhere who found profound personal meaning in Destiel through VALIDATION,” — found themselves mirrored in Dean and Cas’ respective character journeys individually and as each other’s queer love interests.

THIS IS WHY DEAN WASN’T MEANT TO DIE.

THEY WERE SO ESSENTIAL, NOT JUST TO THE OVERARCHING STORY AND HEALTHY INTERPERSONAL THEMATICS OF MODERN SPN, BUT ALSO TO THE SOULS OF THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE ACROSS THE WORLD WHO FOLLOWED THEIR JOURNEYS, HOPED FOR THEM, ASPIRED TO BE LIKE THEM, TREASURED THEM, WEEPED FOR THEM, AND FOUGHT FOR THEM, LIKE YOU AND ME.

Heck, how could anyone think Sam Winchester had a well-deserved characteristic ending? He didn’t. Dean’s brother was shafted so badly. He stopped hunting when seasons ago, he had canonically accepted that he no longer wanted an apple pie life. He simply...turned the lights off in a resoundingly empty bunker and left — abandoning his dead brother’s room — never to return (he did return later to get the Impala, family photos etc, I mean this symbolically)...as if — dare I say it — Supernatural itself eerily told us, in the negative-spaced pitch blackness, that the organic show and the wonderfully complex, matured characters we’ve grown to love weren’t going to survive or be revisited...that it was all going to perish, and that they no longer gave a single shit about their own show, which, to me, is the worst cardinal sin, because how dare they throw Team Free Will, an immovable and indomitable and passionate found family they built from the ground up, a found family CHOCK FULL TO THE BRIM OF LOVE AND LIFE RAGING AGAINST THE AUTHORITARIAN MACHINE IN ORDER TO ACHIEVE FREE WILL, under the bus no matter who is to blame. Growth was stomped on.

Then Sam married a faceless wife who wasn’t his textually established (and deaf) love interest Eileen, named his son Dean Jr., and grew old miserably, still mourning the passing of his older brother, shaken and sombre. Back to square one. IT WAS ALL ANTITHETICAL, even OUTSIDE a shipping context, and I ripped my hair out at this point in sheer disbelief.

This 15x20 ending would have fit somewhere between S4-7. Now? IT DOESN’T FIT. IT’S A JAGGED PUZZLE PIECE THAT DOESN’T BELONG ANYWHERE. IT’S THE FOREBODING UNKNOWN STRANGER IN ITS OWN LAND, BOTH LITERALLY AND FIGURATIVELY. This kind of ending was basically an illogical, unsound cluster of metastasized cells that, to me, ruined the viability of previous seasons to sustain bold praise and respect and dignity and rewatches and classic nostalgia in such insidious ways.

Dean Humanity Winchester and Cas, after everything they’ve been through, were silenced and lost in death, ripped apart from each other, unable to love each other the way they deserved, because of disappointing, vile incompetency and homophobia. The greatest love story ever told, again obliterated in less than 60 hollow minutes.

You know what this tells your audience, CW SPN? Death without self-growth is the way to go, and no one is allowed to forge their own path to freedom.

HOW INSULTINGLY HARMFUL IS THAT?

I don’t think I’ll ever stop grieving.

We all deserve answers.

[gukyi]

into the wilderness | pjm

summary: alright, so last summer’s camp was... disastrous. from the murky green showers to the wasps nests, it was all-around a bad time. but none of those things could be quite as catastrophic as the end-of-camp counselor campfire, when you told park jimin that you were in love with him. and if telling him was terrible, then seeing him again this summer, one year after your fruitless confession, just might be the death of you.

{camp counselor!au, unrequited love!au, friends to lovers!au}

pairing: park jimin x female reader genre: angst, fluff, comedy word count: 27k warnings: unrequited love, camp shenanigans, awkwardness, secondhand embarrassment/hurt, ot7 cameos a/n: hello and welcome to the one thing that guyi has wanted to write for literal years now but never go around to! finally i can cross camp counselor au off my list. anyway, it’s been over a year since i wrote for jimin so i hope that this monster 27k fic can make up for that !!! i swear the ending is happy. i swear. i promise.

Something about last summer sucked. 

Maybe it was the record six wasps’ nests you found around the cabin, leaving you with more bee stings than mosquito bites by the end of camp. Maybe it was that weird murky green color of the water in the showers and the sinks that didn’t go away until three weeks in, when you were already positive you had contracted some sort of pond disease from brushing your teeth. Maybe it was the lack of Namjoon, who had an internship and couldn’t come, therefore removing all sense of order and leaving you and the rest of the counselors in a state of chaos.

Or maybe it was the fact that, on the very last night, at the very last counselor campfire, you told Jimin that you loved him. 

Truth be told, you weren’t sure how badly it would go. But telling him was so much easier than keeping it hidden, than letting it drag on and on, this boulder sitting on your chest for the rest of time. You had spent the whole eight weeks of camp rationalizing it to yourself, so much so that by the time the last counselor campfire rolled around, you were convinced that it wouldn’t be that disastrous. 

There was no part of you that thought Jimin would reciprocate your feelings. No part of you that secretly hoped that maybe he felt the same, and that you could end the summer with more money in your bank account and a boyfriend on your arm. You knew he didn’t. Jimin was sweet, and thoughtful, and gentle, which is exactly why you fell in love with him, but he was like that to everyone. You didn’t think that telling him would suddenly make him fall in love with you.

You told him because people like Jimin deserve to know that somebody loves them. 

You told him because you thought that nothing would change. 

What you didn’t really expect to happen was this:

Your marshmallow is burnt beyond recognition, poking off of the edge of a stick like a sad piece of coal rather than a sweet treat. At this point, it’s even darker than the chocolate sitting on the graham cracker in your lap, waiting to be smushed together into the sugar-fest known as a s’more, so eloquently named because you will apparently always want some more. 

“Uh, hello? Earth to Y/N?”

Taehyung’s hand waves furiously in front of your face as he leans forward to make eye contact with you.

“Huh?” You ask, shaking yourself out of your thoughts. Your mind has been awfully cloudy these days, overcast like the weather around here. It’s a wonder you’re able to make your way through. 

“Are you alright?” He asks, an eyebrow raised. “Your marshmallow looks like what happens when I try to make scrambled eggs.”

“Your scrambled eggs look like that?” Seokjin interrupts, pointing accusingly at your charred marshmallow. You’ve seen Taehyung in the kitchen. It’s not that bad, is it? “Next year you should sign up for some of Yoongi’s cooking classes. The six-year-olds can cook better than you.”

“You’d have to pay me way more than the shit they’re giving us to get me to teach Taehyung how to cook,” grumbles Yoongi. 

“I’m fine,” you promise Taehyung as Yoongi and Seokjin launch into a tirade about raising minimum wage. “I just—” You glance at your marshmallow. You don’t even think the fish monster at the bottom of the pond would eat it. And he apparently eats people whose hearts have turned to stone. Like Seokjin, who swears that it had eaten the tip of his pinky finger. “—like my marshmallows really cooked.”

Taehyung looks skeptical but drops the subject nonetheless, turning back around so he can find a different conversation to barge his way into. You’re willing to put money on him finding some way to annoy Jungkook. 

Insecure about your apparent lack of marshmallow-roasting skills, you pull your stick away from the campfire, blowing on it until you decide that you’re willing to risk burning the tips of your fingers. You pluck the marshmallow from the skewer, hissing to yourself as you quickly plop it onto the graham cracker, squishing the whole thing together. 

The marshmallow is so burnt that it barely gives underneath the press of your fingers, bouncing back up like rubber. You frown at your s’more, which clearly should be renamed to something else because nothing about the thing in your hands makes you want some more. 

Next to you, Jimin laughs at your pitiful attempt at a classic campfire treat. 

“You want mine?” He asks with a smile, holding out a flawless s’more, the kind that they make in movies to perpetuate the illusion of perfection. You look up at him and in the light of the fire he glows, like a spark from the flames had created him right then and there, like he had been born with light in his eyes, a halo surrounding his body. 

You wonder if Jimin knows how beautiful he is. How beautiful he has always been, radiating kindness and joy and laughter. He must know, right? It must be impossible for him to notice how everyone falls in love with him. You certainly aren’t an exception. 

He holds out the s’more in his hands, laughing as he looks at you because there must be something endearing about being a shitty s’more maker, and you think, what’s the worst that can happen?

“I’m in love with you.”

The s’more drops to the ground, hitting the grass with a thud. 

Jimin’s eyes meet yours, and for once, they are unreadable. This tragic sort of confusion, like he can’t believe the words you’re saying to him. Like his mind refuses to accept them as true. 

He opens his mouth, but you answer for him. 

“It’s okay,” you assure quickly, reaching a hand out to rest on his own. The touch makes him look away, like your fingers are the flames of the campfire, burning him where they touch his skin. “I—I know you don’t feel the same.”

It’s not a secret. Not to him, and not to you. Jimin purses his lips because he feels guilty for not loving you back. Because he is so good, so kind, that he feels as though he has wronged you because he doesn’t love you the way you love him. Like it’s his fault. 

“Y/N—” He starts, but he does not finish. 

“You…” you interrupt, looking down at your feet. You can’t look at Jimin because looking at him hurts, and you can’t look anywhere else because Jimin is all you think about. All you ever think about. “You don’t have to say anything.”

He speaks, and it’s as if the words don’t belong to him. Don’t belong to anyone. 

“What are we supposed to do?” He asks. 

You shrug, resigning yourself to this. You knew that he wouldn’t feel the same. You didn’t know how terrible he would feel because of it. “Nothing,” you tell him. “I just thought you should know.

He nods, because he knows, and he nods, because he can’t do anything else. 

The fire crackles beside you, s’mores forgotten on the ground as your friends laugh and cheer, distant sounds that echo in your head like white noise. Jimin is all you can think of and right now you’re thinking about what happens next.

“I’m sorry.”

Maybe telling him wasn’t such a good idea after all. 

“Me too.”

Your busted-up sedan revs angrily as you rally up the mountain, shaking your head in an attempt to rid the memories of the campfire from your mind. Unfortunately, the nasty thing about memories is that the more you try to forget them, the more you seem to remember.

You sigh. Something about last summer sucked. 

Nothing about this summer makes you feel like it’ll suck any less.

The good thing about being thirty minutes late is that you’re still thirty minutes earlier than Taehyung, who does not have a single punctual bone in his body. You can count on one hand the amount of instances where he’s actually been on time, all of which are because you and the other counselors conspire to tell him that events are an hour earlier than they actually are just to make sure he doesn’t stroll in an hour late and improperly dressed. 

The bad thing about being thirty minutes late is that everyone besides Taehyung is already here, waiting for you. 

Your sedan crawls to the clearing at the top of the mountain, fighting against gravity and itself as it chugs up the last few feet, coming to a rough stop in the dirt, sunken in from countless tires tracking across it. 

Through your windshield, you can make out two figures with two clipboards, only one of which has something genuinely useful on it. 

“Y/N!” Hoseok cries out excitedly, splaying his arms out as if to hug the entire front of your car only to reveal the near-blank clipboard in his hand. All that’s on it is a neon green Post-it note with a caricature drawing of who you assume to be Yoongi, if the grouchy expression and chef’s hat are anything to go by. There’s no signature or name, but Hoseok’s art skills are on par with those of the campers you work with and Jungkook has a fun and quirky habit of vandalizing all drawable surfaces with pencil sketches of the counselors, so you take a wild guess as to who the artist is. 

You pop the door of your car open and step out into the sticky weather, warm and muggy despite the clouds above. It’s the same as when you step into your bathroom after your two roommates have showered, using up all the hot water and leaving a layer of fog on the mirrors for you to all play hangman on. Only, this steam never goes away. 

“Hoseok!” You cheer, letting the man wrap you up in a sweltering hug, your hands gently patting the top of his back so as not to come in contact with the dampness soaking through his thin cotton t-shirt. You haven’t seen each other for nearly a year, though, so you give in more than you usually would and relax into his hold. “You look good, I like the hair,” you compliment, two fingers coming up to twirl at his bright red locks, deep and vibrant like the cherries you pick. 

“Dyed it just so I could tell the kids I’m a superhero!” Hoseok grins. He’s already heading over to the back of your car to pop the trunk and pull out your duffel bags so that he can park your car in the garage at the other end of the campsite.

“Then who’s the villain?” You call, tossing him your keys.

“I guess that would be me.”

You whip around to find a platinum-blonde Namjoon standing happily before you, looking at least a little bit resigned as he grins at you. His hair is longer this year, like growing it out would somehow compensate for frying it with layer after layer of bleach. And with his silver-white hair and the fact that he is the only counselor any of the kids are genuinely afraid of disobeying, you suppose he would be the antagonist after all. 

“Namjoon, nice to see you again.” You go in for a hug even though Namjoon clearly had no plans on instigating one himself, because someone as hardworking and patient as Namjoon deserves a little platonic affection every one in a while. What, with everyone else constantly conspiring with the campers to oust him every summer. 

The truth is that all of you know that without Namjoon, this camp would be nothing but chaos in its purest form, with the counselors unable to wrangle the kids and the kids using that knowledge to their fullest advantage. Take last year, where everything seemed to go wrong because Namjoon had his stupid internship with a business firm and spent the entire summer drilling finances into his head instead of losing brain cells watching kids eat sand.  

If you had any dignity left you’d blame your rotten confession to Jimin on Namjoon’s absence as well. 

“Nice to see you, too, Y/N,” Namjoon says when you part, checking your name off of the list on his clipboard. “I feel like it’s been ages since I was here.” You can see red marks all over the page, blank only where the name Taehyung is written. 

Some things never change, you suppose. 

“Well, we definitely missed you last year,” You say with a chuckle, trying not to immediately associate your personal misjudgements with the lack of Namjoon, who you can hopefully keep from ever finding out what happened at last year’s end-of-camp counselor campfire. The problem is that Namjoon picks up on social cues and body language like a sociologist, so your only hope is pretending that the campfire never even happened. “Camp was pretty much a mess without you.” In more ways than one.

“Namjoon!” Someone calls. You and him both jerk around to the source of the sound when you see a figure barreling towards the both of you, face obscured in shadow. 

You almost don’t recognize him, with his pitch black hair and thick voice, like he has somehow become a new person in the nine months you’ve gone without seeing him. But the moment he comes into view, you know, and you can’t even pretend to not know, not with the way your heart freezes in place, mid-beat, like the sight of him has turned you to stone. Not with the way that Namjoon is right beside you, and how you don’t think you can bear explaining to him why you and Jimin aren’t as close as you used to be. Not with the way that Jimin looks as beautiful as he always has and always will be, no matter how many summers pass, this timeless portrait, this piece of art that’s come to life. 

There’s a part of you that’s shocked still at seeing him, like you had almost thought that after last summer at least one of you would bail on this shitty summer job, filled with mosquitoes and mud and wifi that only works in the room that doubles as the gymnasium and the mess hall. It’s the same part of you that wants to go back to pretending that nothing ever happened last summer. 

But Jimin is here, in front of you, eyes wide and out of breath and gorgeous, and pretending that last summer never happened is the same as pretending that you never fell in love with him at all.

“The water in the boys’ cabins sinks is green,” he says with a tense smile, making Namjoon nearly smack his clipboard into his forehead. 

“Ugh, seriously?” He asks, and you can’t tell if you’re thankful or hurt that Jimin’s failed to acknowledge you. “Fine,” he scribbles something down on the clipboard, this handwriting scrawl that only he can read, “I’ll figure out what to do with that later. In the meantime, just don’t drink it.”

“Seokjin’s already made lemonade with it, though—”

“Great,” Namjoon says, exasperated as he takes off towards the main cabin, where Seokjin is sitting on the balcony with his feet up on the railing with a glass of suspiciously murky lemonade in his hand, one that he’s offering up to Yoongi with a devilish grin on his face. 

His disappearance leaves only you and Jimin left standing at the entrance, rocking back and forth on the balls of your feet in the hopes that one of you will either leave or spare the other the torture of a conversation. 

“Hey,” Jimin says quietly, trying to meet your eyes. 

You look away, pretending to smack an imaginary mosquito on your arm while an actual one bites your leg. “Hey, yourself.”

“It’s been a while.” The last time we saw each other you told me you loved me. 

“Yeah, it has.” I know.

“How are you doing?” Do you still love me, or was the distance and time enough?

“I’m alright. Same old, same old.” I never stopped. “How are you?” What about you? Did you stop seeing us as just friends?

“Doing well, thanks.” No. You’ll always be just a friend to me. Jimin sighs, looking up at the overcast sky with his hands shoved into the pockets of his shorts, taking in the scenery before him. He exhales, long and heavy, before turning to you with a soft little smile, the kind of grin that almost makes you feel like forgetting might not be the best thing to do after all. “I just feel like this summer is a fresh start, you know? Like, I feel like there’s something different about being here this year.”

Maybe this summer, you can learn to move on from me, too. Because something’s gotta give. 

“I hope you’re right about that,” you tell him, because being around him hurts and being away from him makes you replay that night over and over, wondering what would have happened if you had just kept your stupid mouth shut. You open your mouth to say something, anything else, anything to break the ice that didn’t used to be there before, cut between the tension that has settled between the two of you, but your tongue is dry and your heart is sore just looking at him. 

Defeated, you walk over to where Hoseok’s left your duffel bags, hiking them onto your shoulders and heading towards the girls’ cabins, ready to end this conversation before it tears you in two. 

Jimin seems to flounder, standing awkwardly for a few moments as he watches you walk towards the cabins, skirting around him a few feet away because brushing by his side seemed too close for comfort. But then he says, “Hey, Y/N?” 

And it makes you stop dead in your tracks, unable to deny him an answer. 

You turn around to look at him, and he offers you a grin. 

“Are we good?”

Your love for me, will it affect our friendship?

You swallow.

It already has. It always has. From the very beginning, loving you was part of our friendship. I don’t know how to be friends with you without it. Even when you didn’t know it, I loved you. In a way, it was easier back then. Telling you was the one thing I shouldn’t have done. 

“Yeah, Jimin,” you tell him. “We’re good.”

The trek to your cabin from the main buildings of the camp is nothing if not familiar. Familiar in the way that the ground curves beneath your feet, leading you up to the top of a small hill where the building sits, looking out over the rest of the clearing. Familiar in how the scent of the woods that surround you fills up your senses, this fresh, airy feeling, like the very oxygen is smothering you. Familiar in how this place reeks of the memories of summers gone by, summers spent beneath the stars and by the campfire. 

Summer memories that make your heart burst with fondness and summer memories that… don’t. 

The fact is that it has always started and ended here. 

When you kick open the door to the cabin, there is only one other occupied bed. It belongs to Hazel, a counselor in her sophomore year in college who joined the crew last year and assumed that the Namjoon-less pandemonium that was camp last summer was just the norm. Hopefully she can take a much-needed break this year now that Namjoon’s back and she’s not the only one fruitlessly trying to cajole the campers into behaving. 

You beeline towards the bunk bed that has been your summer home for the past three years, the one shoved right up against the back right corner, giving you a perfect view of the entire cabin. The downside is that it’s the same corner that spiders seem to prefer as their location of choice for their webs, but better you, a stone-cold college student, than a terrified six-year-old. 

Plopping your duffel bags on top of the mattress, you let out another sigh. You wonder what it is about this summer that is so damn tiring, so exhausting that you can’t help but outwardly exhale every ten seconds, like merely being here is wearing you out, bit by bit. 

You’re looking forward to when the campers arrive tomorrow. Sleeping alone (well, nearly alone) in a cabin feels uncomfortably empty. Plus, you’re hoping that they’ll provide you with some sort of distraction so you don’t have any free time left to spend dwelling on the what-ifs and the should-have-dones. When there’s only a dozen of you, it’s much easier to run into him. 

The moment you collapse on your bed, a messy brown head of hair comes bounding out from the shared bathrooms in the center of the cabin. 

“Y/N!” Hazel cries out, launching herself across the room and into your arms for the tightest hug you’ve had in a long while. 

“Hey, Haze,” you greet in return, offering her a squeeze back. You didn’t often mix in your camp activities, with Hazel in charge of the nature walks and animal conservation activities while you hide in your air-conditioned arts and crafts room, but living together brought upon you a closeness you otherwise don’t share with anyone else. Plus, Hazel keeps a family-sized pack of Oreos and a gigantic jar of smooth peanut butter by her bunk at all times for emergencies. 

“I feel like it’s been so long!” She laments when she finally releases you, looking positively thrilled to be here right now. 

Not long enough, you think to yourself, though you don’t suppose any more time apart from Jimin would make seeing him again any easier. “Yeah, but the year goes by so quickly,” you agree half-heartedly. Too quickly. 

“I’m so excited for this year.” Hazel grins, clapping her hands together. “I have so much planned for all the nature walks and everything. I spent all of last week reading up on edible plants and berries found in this part of the country. I’m gonna teach all of the kids what they can eat in case they get stranded in the forest!”

“Fun,” you say with a hesitant nod. It’s not that you don’t trust Hazel to have done her research, it’s more that, knowing the campers and knowing the counselors, someone’s going to try and get lost in the woods around the camp, eating everything they can. Not to mention the fact that Hazel’s so innocent she’d probably reveal to someone like Seokjin or Jungkook which plants were poisonous without even realizing it. 

Camp last year was a mess, but at least nobody died. 

“Hey, aren’t you excited, too?” She asks, a hand on your shoulder as she notices your reluctance. “Apparently Namjoon’s a great leader so this year isn’t going to be as bad as last year.”

“Last year wasn’t bad just because Namjoon wasn’t here,” you comment vaguely. Hazel doesn’t need to know about all of the drama that goes down between the counselors. Hopefully she can get out of here without being dragged into something by one of you. 

“Well, this year is supposed to be better!” She cheers you on, determined to get you to feel as enthusiastic as she is. “No matter what did or did not happen last summer. Plus, you know that if anything bad happens I always have my secret stash, counselors only.” She winks. 

“Thanks, Haze,” you say, sighing again like it’s your job to be worn out by life. “I think I just need a bit of time to get back into the swing of things.”

“That’s the spirit!” She rallies. “I’m gonna head back to the main camp and see if there’s anything good to drink. I’m thirsty.”

“Stick to soda,” you advise, eyes wide at the thought of her downing anything that Seokjin’s had a sneaky hand in making. 

She doesn’t seem to notice your worry, already bounding towards the door, light on her feet. “I was feeling a Fanta anyway. See you at the camp counselor meeting if I don’t see you around beforehand!” She pulls open the heavy wooden door, half outside when she stops to turn back at you, wagging a finger in the air. “Remember, Y/N, leaves of three, let them be!” 

The door slams shut behind her, creating a cloud of dust in its wake. You watch helplessly as the particles dissipate into the air, as the silence that was once so comforting begins to terrorize you once more. 

You collapse back onto your bunk. If only last summer’s murky green water had poisoned you. Then maybe you’d finally have a good enough excuse for your utter lapse in judgement, and you wouldn’t be sighing so much.

There were no camp counselor meetings last year. There were only haphazard caucuses, irregular get-togethers where no one knew quite what was going on and there were no real announcements to be said, no real orders to be given. You had almost forgotten what it was like to have someone with genuine leadership skills working here. 

The problem last year was not getting everyone into the same room for thirty minutes. It was keeping everyone focused in that same room for thirty minutes, which was essentially impossible because, at your age, submitting to someone of authority is the very last thing you want to do. Especially when the consequences pretty much only amount to having to drink Seokjin’s murky green lemonade.

But like with everything else, Namjoon has, somehow, made the impossible possible. 

“Guys, guys, can we stop drawing on the board, please? I need that,” Namjoon begs as he walks into the room to find Jungkook and Taehyung with chalk in their hands and a chalkboard at their disposal. What they’ve accomplished so far is an expert drawing of Spongebob and Patrick with their faces missing, waiting to be filled in by one of the unlucky people in this room. 

“Okay, so who’s Patrick?” Taehyung asks the audience. 

“Hoseok!” shouts Seokjin.

“You!” shouts Hoseok. 

“Seokjin!” shouts Hazel, too, just because she likes being involved in things. 

Jungkook lets out a cackle at that. “Are you kidding?” He asks. “If anything…” He does a quick sketch on the board, hand flying across it so quickly you’re actually a little bit impressed, “Seokjin would be Plankton.” 

He steps away from the board to reveal a scarily-realistic drawing of Seokjin’s angry face on Plankton’s tiny, antennaed body, making everyone—even Namjoon, who usually tries to keep the roasting between counselors to a minimum—laugh. 

Seokjin scowls, and normally you would feel bad for him always being the butt of Jungkook’s endless jokes, but you can see a half-empty glass of green lemonade by Jungkook’s side, and you decide that he can hold his own just fine. 

“I think you guys would be Spongebob and Patrick,” Jimin pipes up from the back. You freeze, turning your head slightly just to see him sitting on the table pushed up against the wall. You hadn’t even noticed him. Or maybe you had, and your brain just decided to pretend that you hadn’t. 

Nevertheless, hearing his voice doesn’t make it hurt any less.

“Jimin’s right,” Jungkook agrees, already beginning to fill in the blank space where Spongebob’s face would normally go with a caricature of his own. “I’d be Spongebob because I have a wider face than you, Tae.”

Taehyung doesn’t object, instead moving his hand to an empty spot on the board. “Yeah. Oh, and Namjoon’s Mr. Krabs, obviously,” Taehyung says, adding his own drawing of Mr. Krabs with Namjoon’s camp get-up on—cargo shorts, a short-sleeved flannel shirt, a baseball cap, and high-tops.

“I would not be—hey, give me that!” Namjoon shouts, indignant, before ripping the chalk from Jungkook’s hands as he cackles wickedly, clearly pleased with himself. Namjoon shoos the both of them away from the board before wiping it with the eraser, which has very obviously not been cleaned since last year, leaving a trail of pale yellow dust in its wake wherever Namjoon drags it across the chalkboard. “Chalkboard for official matters only.” He glares at Jungkook and Taehyung, who high-five each other. 

The chatter soon subsides as Namjoon writes down the meeting to-do list on the board in his same old scratchy handwriting. Namjoon’s one of those people that writes exclusively in capital letters, simply enlarging any letters that actually need to be capitalized. You’re almost one-hundred percent positive it’s to establish written dominance over the rest of the counselors. 

“Okay, first order of business,” Namjoon begins after coughing to get everyone’s attention. “It’s come to my attention that the entire cabin water system is green.”

“Hasn’t it always been—?” Hazel asks, innocent eyes wide in confusion. 

“I called the utilities people and they’re coming tomorrow to fix it, so in the meantime, do not drink the water. Showering and using the bathroom is fine. I would use water bottles for brushing your teeth, though,” Namjoon says, crossing off something on his clipboard as the rest of the counselors murmur in approval. 

“See, this is what happens when Namjoon’s here,” deadpans Yoongi, motioning up to him where he stands at the front of the room. “Shit gets done.”

“Okay, secondly, no swearing in front of the kids,” Namjoon says, adding that onto the board as a final reminder. “The fact that I have to tell you guys this multiple times every year is ridiculous.”

“Fuck you, I can do what I want!” Taehyung shouts, earning a chorus of fuck yeah’s. 

“You guys do know that I have the power to fire you, right?” Namjoon says pointedly, making Taehyung shut his trap. “Okay, moving on. Everyone’s been assigned to the same things that they were assigned to do last year, and if you weren’t here last year, then the year before that.” Namjoon receives some cheers and some groans in response to this, the former mostly from people who work indoors, and the latter mostly from people who don’t. 

“Seriously?” Seokjin whines. “I don’t think Yoongi has stepped foot out of the kitchens in literal years.”

“And I would like to keep it that way, thank you very much!” Yoongi counters. 

“Oh, shut up, at least you get to spend some time indoors teaching all of the kids how to play Hot Cross Buns on their guitars,” Taehyung counters. “I got more mosquito bites than freckles last summer.”

“My students have long advanced from Hot Cross Buns,” Seokjin says proudly and a little bit devilishly. “We’re working on something more technical now.”

“Like what?” Jungkook challenges.

“Okay, continuing…” Namjoon says loudly, eyeing Seokjin suspiciously. “If you’re new, you should have already received notification as to what activities you’re in charge of, but if you’re not sure, come and talk to me.”

“Oh, so Jimin’s still on first aid, then?” Taehyung asks, wiggling his eyebrows. “What do you think Y/N’s gonna do to get herself sent down to his tent? Glue her fingers together? Burn herself with a glue gun?”

“Shut up,” You mumble tensely, embarrassed that somehow you and Jimin’s relationship has turned into a counselor affair. 

Last summer, you had accidentally given yourself a palm full of splinters from the birdhouses that you had the campers paint to bring home with them, and the first aid tent is the only place that has bandages. Jimin was there, as he always is, and the two of you spent the evening plucking out all of the pieces of wood from your hand and patching it up with Band-aids that had Spiderman and Moana on them. Contrary to apparently popular belief, it was not on purpose, even though the hour of hand-holding was rather nice. 

“Or Jimin can just find some excuse to visit Y/N in the arts and crafts room,” Seokjin tacks on unhelpfully. “You know, last summer I don’t think I saw them eat lunch in the counselor room at all. They were always finding secret places in the woods.”

“Maybe we were just busy during lunch?” Jimin suggests, clearly equally uncomfortable. 

“Busy fucking, probably,” Taehyung mutters. 

“It’s none of your business,” you snap, because the last thing you want to be talking about right now is how wonderful your relationship with Jimin used to be, when all that’s left this summer are the burned remnants of it, the ashes of something that could have been. You don’t need a reminder of why you thought that you and Jimin would be alright, of why you thought that telling him wouldn’t be that bad. It was terrible, and now all you can do is pick up the pieces, patch together a friendship whose thread has come loose. 

“Alright, let’s keep going,” Namjoon says, picking up the weirdly tense atmosphere and doing his best to bring the attention back to him and the meeting at hand. “You guys should know that this year, Hoseok is thinking of adding in a counselor dance to the end-of-camp show…”

You look over at Jimin, who immediately turns away when he spots your gaze, making to pick at the rips in his jeans, doing anything and everything he can to avoid eye contact with you, and your shoulders sink. 

Jimin had asked you, “Are we good?”

And you had responded, “Yeah, Jimin, we are.”

And the two of you must have both known that was a lie. 

You turn back to face the front, focusing on how Hazel is rubbing your forearm and not asking questions, and you try to feel a little bit better. 

After the meeting, you and Hazel decide to spend the night holed up in your cabin eating from her Oreo stash instead of eating dinner with everyone else, half because it’s only the first day and already being around all of the other counselors is tiring, and half because you don’t think you can handle seeing Jimin any more today, but not before Namjoon stops you on the way out of the door. 

“Y/N,” he says, making you pause in your tracks. “Can we talk?”

“What about?” You ask, hoping to God that it’s not about everyone thinking you purposely injure yourself just so you can see Jimin at the first aid tent. 

“Just quickly, you and me,” Namjoon says casually, pulling you to the corner of the room, away from any windows so no one can see you two talking. “Did today’s meeting make you uncomfortable?”

“No,” you lie like a liar. “What are you talking about?”

Namjoon’s too observant for his own good, you decide, when he frowns at you, clearly not buying whatever it is you’re trying to sell him. “You don’t have to tell me everything,” he says quietly. “But I know that something happened between you and Jimin.”

You open your mouth to object and tell him that you and Jimin are fine, but Namjoon raises his eyebrows at you, like he’s challenging you to tell him another lie. 

“Well…” you begin, resigning yourself to the truth. “Yeah. Last summer.”

Namjoon purses his lips, nodding in understanding. “Do you wanna talk about it?”

“You’re not my mom, Namjoon,” you say with a smile, even though maybe telling someone about it might not be a half-bad idea after all. Plus, Namjoon’s your friend and the only one around here who’s any good at keeping secrets, so getting the words off of your chest could be good.

“You don’t have to tell me anything if you don’t want to,” he reminds you, because he’s wonderful like that. 

“No, it’s alright…” you sigh. “I guess someone else has to know.” You close your eyes, willing the words to come up from your throat, willing them to not hurt you as they leave your lips. “Last summer at the campfire I told Jimin that I loved him.”

Namjoon doesn’t say a word. 

“And he doesn’t love me back, which is not the problem because he shouldn’t change how he feels about me just to make me feel better. It’s not his fault, and I’m not angry at him or anything. I knew that he didn’t love me back when I told him,” the words come up like bile, slowly and carefully before spilling out in front of you. “But I was an idiot, and I thought telling him would make me feel better, or something. And it didn’t, because now Jimin and I don’t know how to act around each other anymore, and everything sucks.”

Namjoon offers you a careful, hesitant smile. 

“So yeah. That’s what happened.”

“Sounds like you and Jimin should talk about it,” Namjoon suggests, and maybe he’s smart, and a good leader, and attends a prestigious college along the coast, and studies business and sociology, but that is the worst idea he has ever had. 

“No,” you immediately say, shaking your head. “It’s no big deal. Jimin and I are still friends.”

“Are you, though?” Namjoon asks. 

You sigh, reaching up to rub at your forehead. “Yeah, we are,” you insist, perhaps more to yourself than to Namjoon. He looks skeptical, but doesn’t ask any questions. “It doesn’t even matter. I made a mistake and now I’m gonna deal with the consequences.”

“I can try to get the rest of the boys to stop teasing you and Jimin. I know it must be weird for you both right now,” Namjoon offers, always wanting to help. You scoff. Weird would be the biggest understatement of the century. 

“Jimin and I can handle it,” you say, not wanting to disrupt the rest of the counselor dynamic just because you and Jimin are dealing with things right now. Besides, the teasing has always been in good fun, and you know the boys well enough to know that they aren’t doing it out of malicious intent. “But I appreciate your concern.”

“Just doing my job,” Namjoon says proudly. You stand there in silence for a few more seconds until he coughs awkwardly to fill up the space. “You can go now, by the way, Y/N. I just wanted to make sure you were doing alright.”

“I’m fine,” you promise, silently hoping that one day, when you talk to Namjoon, you won’t have to lie to him anymore. “Thanks for checking in.”

“I’ll always be here for you,” he says in that comforting way, that warm way that wraps around you like a mug of hot cocoa on a cold winter night. 

You crack open the door to find Jimin, Taehyung, and Jungkook tossing around a frisbee on the open lawn as Seokjin and Yoongi watch from a picnic bench, soda cans sitting next to them. Someone must have mentioned the green lemonade. Jungkook purposely tosses the frisbee too high for Jimin to reach, making him jump wildly in a fruitless attempt to grab it. He falls backwards onto the soft grass, laughing alongside Taehyung and Jungkook as Taehyung pulls him back up to his feet. 

You smile to yourself, the longing and the pain and the love settling deep within your heart, finding a home amongst the wishes and the dreams. Seeing him there, the widest smile on his face as he tosses around a frisbee with some of his best friends, letting the rays from the setting sun fill him up with joy, it reminds you why you fell in love with him. It reminds you why you’re still in love with him.

Something seizes up at your heart, clenching it between its fingers. That used to be you, the thing whispers. You used to make him laugh like that. 

You did. From the moment you met him, you let his laughter fill your senses, burned the sound of it into your brain. You used to be so close. You used to think that maybe, just maybe, Jimin might love you back. 

You should have never told him, it murmurs, grip growing tighter. Look at where it got you.

If I could turn back time and redo that night, I would, you fight back. 

But you can’t.

The wicked thing releases your heart, lets it drop to the floor. You don’t pick it up. 

Every year, you and the other counselors keep a scorecard on the chalkboard in the meeting room to see how quickly someone gets sent to the first aid tent, whether it be from stumbling over a twig or contracting poison ivy or drinking the green water. Last year, it took two hours and thirteen minutes. 

This summer, it happens barely an hour after all of the campers have arrived. 

You make a mental note to write down the time on the scorecard as you run over to help the poor boy off of the ground after slamming into a spruce tree while playing an early game of tag with his friends. The side of his cheek is imprinted with the texture of the tree bark, and he has some scrapes on his hands and knees from the fall. 

“Whoa, hey, you alright?” You ask, leaning down to help him up. “You gotta watch where you’re looking, okay? Don’t want you to get hurt.” 

The beauty about young children is that very little actually causes them great pain. If it weren’t for all of the overprotective counselors, the kids would probably run themselves into the cabin walls and trees for the entire duration of camp.

“I’m not hurt,” the young boy says, standing up proudly. “I’m fine. My mom says I have thick skin.”

“What’s your name?”

“Eli,” the boy tells you matter-of-factly. “That’s my cabin.” He points to the one to the west of the camp that Taehyung and Jungkook are in charge of. Why Namjoon continuously assigns them to the same cabin year after year is beyond you. Once, they convinced everybody in their cabin that Seokjin and Yoongi’s cabin was haunted, and the only solution was to out-scare the ghosts by yelling and screaming right outside. 

“Is this your first year at camp?”

“Yup,” Eli says, rocking back and forth on his feet. He is not at all fazed by the blood and broken skin on his hands and knees, nor the pieces of wood and bark sticking out of the side of his face. 

“Alright, Eli, even though you have thick skin, I have to take you to the first aid tent. Really quickly, okay? Just to make sure you aren’t gonna get an infection. Then you can go and tell all of your friends how thick your skin,” you say, already beginning to usher Eli towards the first aid tent.  

“I think I have the thickest skin out of everyone here,” Eli says, as if goading you on. 

“You know what? I have to agree with you,” you say. “I get hurt really easily. My mom always says that I need to be extra careful here.”

“I’m sick of listening to my mom,” Eli pouts, stomping on the ground as you lead him towards the first-aid tent. 

“Me too,” you agree. No point in telling him that he needs to yield to his parents when he probably won’t even remember this conversation by the time he wakes up tomorrow. Besides, it’s never too early to begin teaching kids about rebelling against authority figures. “But you won’t have to listen to everything I say, okay? We’re just gonna be really good friends.”

“Like with my babysitter,” Eli says. 

“Exactly,” you say, stopping right outside of the first-aid tent. You’re not even positive that anyone’s inside, especially since it’s barely been an hour since camp officially started. Hopefully, Jimin’s somewhere else so you can just patch Eli up yourself. 

The first aid tent is not so much a tent as it is a shed with a fabric entrance, two curtains attached to a rod above the entryway to provide some semblance of privacy since nobody in the camp is handy enough to actually install a working door. But calling it the first aid tent is better than calling it the first aid shack, which, in the wise words of Yoongi, makes it sound like “a hospital where people go to die.”

When you push open the curtain, the first thing you notice is Jungkook and Seokjin in the far left corner, each with ice packs and suspiciously identical markings on them. They’re both making desperate attempts to patch each other up, fighting with the gauze and bandages that are laid out on the table beside them, as if in a competition to see who can better take care of the other. 

Besides that, Jimin is lounging along the wall, leaning back against it as he gazes into nothing, deeply lost in thought. His eyes trace the lines of the shed, foot tapping to an imaginary beat, brows furrowed. You wonder what the hell it is that Jimin could possibly be thinking about so intently, what it is that is making him not even pay attention to the two overgrown children in the corner of his tent, attacking each other with first-aid materials. 

Watching him, you almost don’t want to disturb him. Almost want to grab one of the kits on the shelf by the doorway and pull Eli outside, partly because you don’t think Jimin absolutely needs to be present for you to clean Eli’s wounds and give him some Spiderman Band-aids, and partly because you don’t think you can bear having to say hello to him. 

Eventually, and only because Eli would start thinking it was weird you weren’t talking to each other (and not because a part of you just wants to hear his voice again), you take another step forward, coughing. 

“Wha— oh, hi,” Jimin says, the sound of your arrival breaking him out of his trance. He rubs at the nape of his neck, clearly trying to brush off any awkwardness. “How can I help you guys?” His voice is unrecognizable. 

“Eli here crashed into a tree while playing tag,” you say tensely, doing your best to look around the room, anywhere else, literally anywhere else, just so you don’t have to look at him. “I just brought him here to make sure he’s alright.”

“I’m fine,” Eli insists. 

“Well, Eli, we just have to double check that,” Jimin says comfortingly, reaching down to bring Eli over to one of the benches. He sits him down and kneels so that he can be at eye-level with him, and says, “Sometimes our bodies say that they’re alright even when they really aren’t.” Out of the corner of his eye, Jimin meets your gaze, looking at you like there’s nothing left that you can do, looking at you like there is so much that he wants to say but no way to tell you. 

You open your mouth, willing for the words to come out, but your throat is dry and your heart is pounding in your ears, a painful thud with every breath that you take. He must have known that what you said was a lie. He must have known what you were going to say when he asked, but he asked anyway, not to get the truth but to see where your relationship stands. 

As it seems, your relationship doesn’t seem to be standing at all. 

It lies in front of you, shattered into a million pieces like a broken mirror, cursed but still doing its job, still showing you this fragmented reflection of yourself. Mixed together like this, you can’t see where your friendship ends and your love began. Mixed together like this, it is impossible to repair. 

“Y/N—” Jimin begins. 

“I should go,” you say at the same time, making the two of you stop in your tracks once again. “Thanks for, uh, patching Eli up. Just make sure he gets to the mess hall in time for dinner.”

“I will,” Jimin says with a nod. There is so much that he wants to say but you don’t think you can bear listening to another word come out of his mouth, to another apology for not loving you back when it wasn’t even his fault to begin with. 

You ruined your friendship but Jimin seems to think that he is the one to blame. 

“I’ll see you at dinner?” Jimin asks. 

You look back at him, wanting so desperately to say yes, to pretend that everything is back to normal, to act like this is the beginning of last summer instead of this one, where you loved him and he didn’t know and everything was alright. But you can’t, because it’s not last summer. It’s this one, and you still love him but he knows now. He fucking knows and just thinking about it makes your heart shake in its cage, holding itself together but unable to stop itself from cracking from within.

Jimin must have known you wouldn’t have agreed. Why did he ask?

“Wait, Y/N, hold up!” 

You’re already halfway out of the makeshift door when you turn around to see Jungkook barrelling after you, leaving Seokjin in the dust as he joins you outside, pulling you away from the entrance instinctively. No one has ever been particularly good at keeping secrets here. 

“Can I help you, Jungkook?” You ask, blinking at him, trying to act as normal as possible. 

“Are you alright?” He leans in close, looking into your eyes, concern washed over his features. 

“Everybody seems to be asking me this,” you say, acting like you don’t know why. “I’m fine.”

Jungkook, for all of his wide-eyed innocence, for the way that he views the world as perfectly imperfect, doesn’t buy it. “You don’t have to tell me anything,” he says. “I don’t know what went down between you and Jimin.”

“Nothing happened,” you say, forcing a laugh just so you don’t sound miserable. 

“Whatever it is, I just want you to know that it doesn’t always have to be like this,” he says, reaching out to take your hand in his own, his calloused thumb rubbing soothingly against your skin. “But you should be honest with your feelings, don’t you think?”

“You and Namjoon both think that I don’t have a handle on this, when I do.” You don’t. And being honest with your feelings is what got you into this mess in the first place. 

“Come on, Y/N, you don’t think we haven’t noticed, have you?” He asks, soft and sad and desperate to get through to you. 

“It’s no big deal,” you insist. “Jimin and I are alright. We’ve always been alright.”

“If you say so…” says Jungkook, no less skeptical than he was when he initiated this conversation. 

“Are we done here?” You ask, already pulling your hand from his grasp so you can go back to your cabin and pretend that the rest of the world doesn’t exist. 

“Yeah,” Jungkook says, resigned as he lets you go. “But you know I’ll always be here for you, right?”

“I know, Jungkook,” you promise, because he always has and he always will be. “Thanks for looking out for me.” You begin to scurry away from the first aid tent, praying that Jimin didn’t hear you and Jungkook and wishing that everything was the way that it used to be.

“Be honest!” Jungkook shouts when you’re a hundred feet away, rushing back towards your cabin. 

Jungkook wants you to be honest?

Telling Jimin that you love him ruined your life. It ruined camp, it ruined your friendship, and it ruined your future. Seeing him now makes your heart ache and your brain dizzy. Every night you replay that conversation in your head, over and over, wondering if there was something that you could have done differently, something that you could have changed so you wouldn’t have ended up like this. Jimin wants to be friends again but you don’t know how to do that without him feeling guilty for not loving you back. 

You want to be honest?

Jimin makes you feel like there is a fire beneath your skin that you can’t extinguish, the flames creeping towards your heart. 

The only solution, it seems, is to smother them. 

The worst part about being in love with Jimin is that he’s impossible to avoid. 

You peer into the mess hall to see if lunch that day is any good and you see him laughing at a table surrounded by elementary schoolers munching on hot dogs and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. You go hunting in the storage shed for some extra packs of popsicle sticks and find him cleaning out the old flower pots to use in the greenhouse. You lead your group of campers from the arts room to the lake and see him and Taehyung setting up the net for some friendly water polo, laughing as they try to tie each other up in the rope. 

It feels like you’re watching a movie unfold in real time, one where he is the star and you are nothing but a background character, the desperate loser who confessed to him in the beginning of the film just to develop his character arc, make him seem personable and relatable, then forgotten about until the end when you spot each other on the street and nod silently to each other, as if to say you’ve both inexplicably reached a peace between the two of you. 

Is that what the future holds for you? A wordless camp, an empty conversation? Will you simply go the rest of the summer without speaking, then nod to each other right before you leave? Will this be the last time you ever see each other?

The worst part about being in love with Jimin is knowing that just because you want things to be different doesn’t mean they will be. Just because you want Jimin to love you back doesn’t mean he will. Just because you want everything to go back to normal doesn’t mean they will. 

As it turns out, love confessions don’t always end in fireworks.

Park Jimin is impossible to avoid not only because he’s everywhere but also because he is everybody’s best friend, the campers’ favorite counselor and the counselors’ favorite companion. He is kind and thoughtful and electric. He is magnetic. He makes others laugh without even trying, he names the plants in the greenhouse after the people he loves, he stays behind after activities to clean up when no one else will. 

Falling in love with Jimin wasn’t you picking out your favorite traits of his, wasn’t you seeing him do one selfless thing and deciding that he could do no wrong. It was submerging yourself in the lake, little by little before you dive in headfirst. It was catching glimpses of his goodness until you were consumed by it. It was knowing that you prefer yourself when you’re around him.

Falling in love with Jimin was like the heat in summer—endless. 

If only falling out of love with him would be just as easy. 

The weather has been unusually nice today. There isn’t a cloud in the sky as the sun beats down on you, rays peeking through the tall branches and leaves of the spruce and oak trees that surround you, casting hazy shadows on the grass beneath your feet. It isn’t too muggy, isn’t too sticky and sweaty, this perfect medium between warm and hot, between dry and humid. It’s the sort of day that you romanticize every day of summer being, only to realize that summer actually consists of sweating through three different t-shirts and needing to eat your ice cream in ten seconds before it melts into a puddle on the concrete. 

Nonetheless, camp policy has always been that when it’s a beautiful day, the campers are going to spend every hour they’re awake outside, going on nature walks and playing capture the flag and eating watermelon on the splinter-y picnic benches. It’s nice, because it gives you a break from having to tell the kids not to touch the tips of the glue guns, but it also stinks, because it forces you to leave your sweet, air-conditioned paradise in favor of a mosquito-infested summer hell. 

Luckily, the kids have been washing off the summer heat in the cool water of the lake with the counselors that actually prefer being outside, playing volleyball in the shallows or canoeing out where it’s deeper. Sometimes, you wonder why Namjoon will let so few counselors supervise so many campers, and sometimes, you decide that it’s better them than you. 

You take a seat on the picnic bench by Yoongi, who is drinking notably clearer lemonade than in days past, so you assume that Namjoon got the water problem fixed like he promised. The two of you have never been outdoorsy people. Why you’ve been working at a summer camp for the last three years escapes you both. You and him lean back against the edge of the built-in table. From here, you have a perfect view of the lake, clear and blue and filled to the brim with rambunctious children, keeping at least somewhat of a watch over them so that Namjoon can’t shout at either of you for slacking off. 

“You know that Seokjin gave you murky water lemonade earlier, right?” You ask, just to make conversation. 

“I know,” Yoongi says, wholly unfazed. He takes another sip and sighs, feeling refreshed. Without batting an eyelash, he deadpans, “You know that you and Jimin aren’t going to get any better if you don’t talk to each other, right?”

“What are you talking about?” You scoff, playing dumb. 

“Just because all of those other idiots didn’t hear what went down between you and Jimin last summer doesn’t mean I didn’t,” Yoongi mutters monotonously. 

You jerk up, stick straight at his words, eyes wide as you glare at him. He heard you?

Yoongi laughs at your reaction, reclining back impossibly farther. “Relax, I haven’t told anyone. You know it’s none of my business.”

“Well,” you sputter out, “if it’s none of your business then why are you talking to me about it?”

Yoongi frowns. “Because you’re my friend, Y/N. And I hate seeing you like this,” he says, that soft lilt to his voice peeking through the rigid words spilling from his lips. “I feel like I don’t even know who you are anymore. A lot of the other counselors do.”

You purse your lips together, guilty. 

“Especially Jimin.”

“I just need time,” you say, trying to be honest for once in your life. Loving Jimin was never going to go away without a fight. 

“You need to talk to each other,” corrects Yoongi. 

“Talking is what got us into this mess,” you huff out, dejected. Yoongi heard it himself—your confession sent you and Jimin’s relationship down the garbage chute. 

“And talking is what’s going to get you out of it,” Yoongi tells you pointedly, truthfully, in that horrible way where you know that he’s right but refuse to accept it. “Promise me you’ll try?” He reaches out to place a hand atop yours, looking into your eyes with hopeful promise. “We want you back.”

“I’ll try,” you sigh out, because it’s never been worth fighting with Yoongi. Not when he cares so deeply. 

“Try what?”

You and Yoongi whip your heads around to find Jimin standing on the opposite side of the picnic bench, helping himself to a piece of sliced watermelon. 

“Try enjoying the outdoors more,” Yoongi covers for you instantly, making you breathe out a little sigh of relief. “We both hate when Namjoon makes it an outside day.”

“It’s not that bad,” Jimin says with a smile. The only reason Jimin doesn’t mind it is because he gets the best of both worlds—half the day spent inside the first-aid tent, the other spent inside the greenhouse by the woods. “There’s beauty in everything.”

Yoongi scrunches up his nose. “Like that?”

In the distance, you spot three things: Jungkook and Taehyung, laughing evilly as they run down along the rocky beach. The clothes clutched in their hands, crumpled up in their grasps while they hoot and holler. And Seokjin, hair sopping wet and half-naked, with nothing but a towel wrapped around his waist and ugly lime green water shoes on, chasing after them. 

“I’m out,” Yoongi says without missing a beat, grabbing his lemonade and dashing off to safety. Yoongi’s exit leaves you and Jimin standing there, stranded, frozen in place, as Jungkook and Taehyung rush by you, each grabbing a piece of watermelon on their way. Something falls from Jungkook’s hold as they pass you, and Jimin reaches down to pick it up. It’s one of Seokjin’s socks. 

“Give that back, Park Jimin!” Seokjin’s banshee screech rings in your ears. 

“Run,” Jimin says, and you don’t get another say in the matter before Jimin is grabbing your wrist and pulling you along with him, Seokjin’s angry caws echoing throughout the clearing. 

Even though Jimin didn’t even actually steal his clothes from the locker room by the lake, Seokjin has determined that anyone who runs from him is automatically guilty, thus lumping both you and him into a wild goose chase alongside Jungkook and Taehyung, who are almost always the guilty parties when it comes to practical jokes like this. For a few moments, it’s the four of you running across the open field with Seokjin hot on all of your heels, desperate to catch up to at least one of you despite being severely out-matched, both in athletic ability and footwear, and then suddenly Jimin is pulling you behind the shed as Jungkook and Taehyung make a sharp right, headed in the opposite direction. 

Crouched behind the shed, you and Jimin stop for a minute to catch your breath, chests heaving after doing more exercise in the last thirty seconds than you have in the last week alone. You’re pressed up against the back siding, and only after your heart rates finally slow down do you become faintly aware of Jimin’s hand still gripping your wrist, like he’s simply forgotten to let go. 

“You think we lost them?” He asks with a wicked grin, and it’s impossible to avoid his gaze when he’s so close like this, when there’s barely a foot of space between your bodies, when his fingertips still press against your skin. 

“I think so,” you heave out in response. 

“Better stay here for a bit longer just in case,” Jimin says, and it’s the flirty sort of thing that he would say if it were last year, the flirty sort of thing that he would say if you two were friends like you used to be, but you aren’t anymore, and now it feels like Jimin is trying too hard and you aren’t trying hard enough. 

“I… I mean,” you say, pulling your wrist out of his grasp, rubbing at where your skin sizzles from his touch. “We’re probably fine.”

“Are we?” He asks, and this is exactly why you shouldn’t try to talk to him, exactly why talking won’t erase the tension that has settled between you two, repair the cracks in what you are. You’re not fine, because everything changed when you told Jimin that you loved him, and you’ve never been good at adjusting. You’re not fine, because for the first time in your years-long relationship, loving him is getting in the way. 

“I hope we are,” you admit, more to yourself than anyone else. Oh, how you so desperately wish that things were back to normal. Oh, how it would be so easy if only things were just a little bit different. 

“Me too,” Jimin says, and he smiles and, oh, how it makes you feel real and true and whole. He stands back up and reaches an arm out to help you do the same. For once, it doesn’t feel like a Band-aid on top of a stab wound. It feels like a lifeline. 

You let Jimin help you back to your feet, and for some reason your heart feels just a little bit lighter. 

“You think we’re alright?” Jimin asks. 

“Yeah,” You respond with a nod. “I think we will be.”

One thing that Namjoon is big on is interdisciplinary recreation. This is half due to the fact that he attends a private liberal arts school on the east coast and half due to the fact that he doesn’t always trust some of the counselors when it comes to chaperoning a whole group of kids on their own. You aren’t going to name names, but they’re the same people that steal clothes for fun. 

He’s got a list up on one of those massive sheets of lined paper filled with suggestions for all sorts of things that combine two or more of the basic activities the camp offers, ranging from making handmade bird seed treats in the kitchen to put out on nature walks to dodgeball in canoes. Some of Namjoon’s ideas are a lot more feasible than others. 

Namjoon’s never been a pushy person. He’s repeatedly said that he purposely avoids telling people what to do within their activity sectors because he doesn’t want the counselors to think that he’s stepping all over them or doesn’t trust them to come up with their own entertainment. The list in the counselor meeting room is titled: ACTIVITY SUGGESTIONS, bolded and circled, just so everyone knows that he isn’t forcing you to do anything (if you’re being honest, the emphasis on suggestions somewhat works against his whole niche). But sometimes, especially for someone whose greatest fear is stripping away others’ creative freedom, he can be rather insistent. 

Take, for example, the two stacks of plain flower pots left anonymously inside the arts and crafts room when you walk in to set up the activity for the day. You were originally going to have the younger kids color in their own guitars to hang up in the music room—an activity that was not on the activity suggestions list—and give the older ones some clay and let them go to town, but you suppose that decorating flower pots will be just as entertaining. At least you didn’t have to go hunting for the materials. 

The only problem with decorating flower pots is that, once the campers have painted streaks and polka dots and glued charms all over them, the flower pots have a rather specific place to go. A place that is part of a notable Park Jimin’s domain. 

A sneaky little feeling beneath your skin suspects that someone may have let it slip to Namjoon that you and Jimin could do with a bit of relationship repair. And Namjoon and Yoongi have been bunking in the same cabin for as long as you can remember. 

Sighing to yourself as you begin to set up the flowerpots on old newspapers spread out on the wooden tables, you decide that spending an hour with Jimin in the greenhouse (maybe even less if you can find an excuse to get yourself out of there!) couldn’t be any worse than being crouched down behind that cobwebbed old shed with his hand on your wrist and his eyes gazing into yours. At least you’ll have thirty campers to maintain the distance between the two of you. 

You suppose that you do have the easier of the two jobs. Arts and crafts is a rather simple activity to oversee, barring the occasional papercut or glue gun burn. Luckily, painting flower pots means that you will really only have to worry about the campers mod-podging their fingers together, and even then, the bathroom is just down the hall. Jimin, with his having to wrangle the kids to garden neatly and not hit each other with the trowels, is going to have it much harder. 

There’s a part of you that knows you’ll stick around. Not just to lessen the load of campers for him, but just so you can spend a little more time in the same room, breathing the same air, pretending that things are the way that they used to be. 

When you leave the arts and crafts room to hike the ten minutes to the greenhouse, followed by all of the campers dutifully carrying their brand new flowerpots in their hands, you feel like a young bird leaving the nest. Taught to fly little by little, but one day forced to face the real world and exist without the safety net you’ve called home for so long. The arts and crafts room hasn’t always been your favorite place in the camp, but this year it’s felt like you’ve been holding on particularly tight.

Jimin is already waiting happily in the greenhouse for your arrival, this stupid old gardening apron tied around his waist with a faded picture of a cartoon cactus on the front that says free hugs. He watches fondly as all of the kids shuffle into the greenhouse, the whole room just barely big enough to fit all of you, wide eyes peeking out from behind seed packets and green leaves. 

You stay in the back corner as Jimin gets to work, having all of the campers place their pots on the tables in front of them, bright plastic buckets of soil at the ends of their tables, flower seeds waiting to be planted. 

As much as Jimin is fantastic at patching kids up inside the first aid tent, the greenhouse is where he really belongs. The harsh rays of the sun are softened by the glass walls as they beam down on him, surrounding him with this warm yellow halo, painting him into the scenery behind him. Here, amongst the lush vegetables and flowers and ferns, Jimin doesn’t look like an underpaid camp counselor carrying the weight of thirty children on his back. He looks like this fairy in the woods, this forest sprite that has grown up amongst the trees and the moss and the wildflowers, who has learned to tend to the world’s greatest garden. He looks like someone whose mere presence makes the plants smile a little wider. 

Jimin’s like that with everyone. It should come as no surprise to you that the plants feel better when they’re around him, too. 

Jimin has always been so good with kids. More so than any of the other counselors, really, though they all try their best to be fun and friendly and gentle and stern all at once. But there’s something in Jimin’s nature that just makes him the best at it, something about the way he cares for them so deeply, something about the soft lines of his face that earns him their trust the fastest. He’s good with everything that camp throws at him, from frisbees to murky water to lake monsters, but nothing has ever seemed quite as right for him as his connection with the campers. 

The children don’t know how lucky they are to know someone like Jimin. Someone who believes wholeheartedly in the goodness of others, someone who will stop at nothing to fix what has been broken. 

You think about how lucky you are to love someone like Jimin every day of your life.

“Mr. Jimin?” A squeaky little voice pipes up. It’s a young girl named Zoe, whose flower pot is decorated with a painting of her entire family, a group of four stick figures with red shirts and purple dresses holding hands together, loopy smiles drawn onto their faces. 

“Just Jimin, alright?” Jimin corrects. 

“Are you sure these seeds are going to turn into flowers?” Zoe asks, looking skeptically at the packets in front of her. 

Jimin laughs, and it is as warm as the rays of the sun that stream through the glass walls. “I can’t promise that they will, Zoe.”

“Then why are we doing this?” She pouts. 

“Because,” Jimin says, pointing to the packets in front of the campers, “the only way that I can promise that these seeds will turn into flowers is if you guys can promise to love them. Because no matter how much sun they get, no matter how much you water them, they will only bloom if you really, really love them.”

“How do they know?” Another girl pipes up. 

“Flowers are just like us,” Jimin tells her gently. “They can feel when they’re loved, and they love us back by blooming for us.” He shuffles around the back of the greenhouse where he stands, fishing through the shelves lining the walls until he emerges with a rather large pot in his hands, placing it down on the table beside him with a thud. “Take this hydrangea, for example.”

Your breath catches in your throat, the blue flowers flashing before your eyes. 

You planted those together. Last summer. You and Jimin snuck out to the greenhouse while everyone else was eating potato salad for lunch and spent the hour listening to pop songs from the eighties and planting a baby hydrangea. 

They will bloom every year, Jimin said. 

So they’ll always remind us of us, you responded. 

It’s the first time that you and Jimin have looked at each other since you entered the greenhouse. He catches you off-guard, eyes wide as you stare back at him, suddenly feeling this gut-wrenching ache from deep within your belly. And Jimin—

God, Jimin looks like he’s tried everything under the sun and moon to keep that damn hydrangea from wilting. 

“They were planted early last summer. And they bloomed, right? But they look so sad,” Jimin explains, rallying himself and turning his gaze away from you. “And I gave them new soil and watered them regularly, but I’m still missing something.”

“Love!” Zoe shouts. 

“Right,” Jimin says with a tense nod, eyes flickering to yours once more. Your shoulders slump. “But I have a lot of love to give, so hopefully they’ll be alright soon. You guys just have to remember that love is the most important thing that you can give to your flowers. Just like you and me, the flowers need to know that there is someone who loves them.”

But you do know, you want to shout out to him. You’ve known this whole summer and you knew back at the campfire and you probably knew even before that. You’ve known for so long and still the flowers that we planted together are fucking wilting. Like they can’t even bear that this is what we’ve come to. What do you mean, they need to know that there is someone who loves them? You do. And I love you. You must know that, don’t you?

You feel the vines of a thorny rose wrap around your heart, clenching it tight. It’s been in bloom for a year now, thick red petals filling up the empty spaces between your bones, nectar swimming within your veins. And when you picked it, cut it off at its stem to place in Jimin’s hand, it grew only stronger, bloomed only harder.

Oh, if only that hydrangea knew how much you loved him. 

Afterwards, you stay back to help clean up. There’s soil all over the floor, buckets knocked over in the campers’ frenzy to go play games in the gym with Jungkook, discarded paper seed packets and trowels left littered across the tables. 

Jimin doesn’t put on any eighties music. Instead, you stand there in silence, brushing the leftover soil into dust pans and buckets, placing the gardening tools on the rack by the entrance. 

Even though you know flowers don’t wilt that fast, it feels like with every second that passes, the hydrangea is a moment closer to death. The color seems to fade every time you look at them, going from its vibrant pale blue to a sallow green, no longer able to tolerate being in the same room as the two of you. 

Your love doesn’t seem like it’s going to fix it this time. 

“I didn’t know that it was doing so badly,” you say, and the words don’t even feel like they belong to you when you hear them back, making Jimin stop dead where he stands. 

“What?” He asks. 

“The hydrangea.”

Jimin looks over at the pot on the table, and he sighs, helpless. “I’ve tried everything. It just doesn’t seem to be working with me this year.”

It’s no secret to the both of you why. 

“Hopefully you can figure something out,” you offer alongside a half smile. “I would hate to see them die after only a year in bloom.”

“Me too,” Jimin sighs. 

“How have you been?” You ask him, because you never really did get a real answer when you asked him that very first day. And because no matter what you do, you’ll always be curious about him. 

“Alright,” Jimin says, and it’s not a lie. “I’m looking forward to graduating next year.”

“Yeah, me too,” you say, even though you’re only looking forward to the not-being-in-college part of graduating. Not so much the being-chucked-into-the-real-world part. “How’s the major coming along?”

“Well, physics never gets any easier,” Jimin jokes, and even though it’s a little bit forced it makes the two of you both laugh, desperate to get back to the way that things used to be, step by step. “What about you? Still going for English?”

“With a side of business so that I don’t end up a broke poet,” you remind him. “But yeah.”

“Maybe you can write me into one of your stories,” Jimin suggests. 

Oh, but doesn’t he know already? He’s the main character in every single one. All of your poems are about him. He is your inspiration and your muse. He fills up each blank page all on his own. Doesn’t he know? 

“Maybe,” you agree, even though there has never been a ‘maybe’ when it comes to him.

You nearly drop the plastic bucket of soil on your toe when you hear his next question. 

“Have you, uh, been seeing anyone lately?” Jimin scratches at the nape of his neck, clearly nervous. Your heart sinks. Out of all of the possible questions he could ask you to keep this relatively casual conversation going, he chooses that one? 

You look up at him, wondering why on earth he’s asking you this when your love has already been laid out bare in front of him, every corner unfolded so he can read across the lines like a map, memorize the splotches of color. You look up at him and you are helpless, desperate for him to realize that even with thousands of miles and hundreds of days between you, for you, it has always been him.

You wonder if the only reason he’s asking is to see if you were starting to move on. 

“No,” you mutter lifelessly. “I haven’t.” And then, like a devilish whisper in your ear, “Have you?”

You almost expect him to say yes. You almost expect to hear him recount all of the fantastic dates he’s been on, all of the loving relationships he’s been in, but instead, he says, “Me neither.”

And that? That makes your heart stop dead in its tracks. 

“I tried to, you know,” Jimin says, and each word is a puncture wound inside of you. “But I just couldn’t. Nothing really stuck.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” you tell him, because you are. Because Jimin deserves to love someone who will love him back. Someone that isn’t you, someone who hasn’t been hopelessly pining after him for a year. 

“No, it’s alright.” Jimin shrugs. “I’m kind of glad that nothing stuck.”

And if hearing the words “me neither,” leave his lips made your heart freeze up, then hearing these words set it aflame. You don’t respond, instead choosing to let the words etch themselves into your memory, carve themselves into your heart, give you hope, if only a droplet of it. Any is enough to have your heart beating a little faster.

“I miss this,” Jimin breathes out, and if you closed your eyes and pretended that you were somewhere else it would almost sound like a confession. You glance up at him, and he is so empty, clinging hopelessly onto the remnants of things past just like you, and you realize that being honest is really the only option you have left. “I miss doing stuff like this.” 

The with you goes unspoken, but it rings loud and clear in your ears anyway. 

“I miss it too,” you say, because Jimin must know already, doesn’t he? How if you could choose to go on loving him without him ever knowing, then you would do it in an instant? How loving him silently was painful but loving him like this, unbearable. “I feel like it’s been a long time.”

A long time since you both really spoke to each other. A long time since you were friends the way you used to be. A long time since you first began to love him.

“Can’t we go back?” Jimin asks, a foolish question. He should know better than to ask for something he already knows he can’t get. 

“You know we can’t,” you tell him. You’ve already tried.

“Then can we begin again?” He proposes, the two of you meeting in the middle of the greenhouse, right in front of the hydrangea. You hadn’t even realized you were barely three feet away from him until you were already there. “Please? I miss us, Y/N. Don’t you miss us, too?”

Gazing at Jimin, you feel your heart tremble. One thing that hasn’t changed is how weak you are to his touch, to his eyes, to the way that they make every part of you feel like jelly, feel like you’ll collapse without him to hold you up. You’ve never been able to say no to him. It’s one of the things you don’t think you’ll ever outgrow. 

“We can try,” you say, because being honest may be hard, and talking even harder, but now you would rather try to piece yourselves back together than spend the rest of the summer wondering what to do with the shattered remains on the floor, stepping around them instead of cleaning them up, repairing what has been broken. 

It’s like the words are music to Jimin’s ears, the way he lights up, grinning wide and real and true. He inhales and it feels like a breath of fresh air, like a brand new season has come to rest upon the two of you. It feels like relief. It feels like hope. It feels like new.

You hadn’t realized it before, but you’ve been dying to make him smile. 

Next to you, the hydrangea seems just a little bit brighter. 

It’s getting easier. 

No longer are you turning in the opposite direction whenever you see him hanging around the center of camp, praying that he hasn’t spotted you from where you stand. Nor are you making excuses about having to go help Namjoon with something or run back to your cabin whenever he shows up to spend time with you and the other counselors. 

And even though it’s still a little tense when you accidentally look up at the same time and meet eyes, even though it still feels like you two aren’t quite the same, it’s getting easier. 

You’ve even begun to eat lunch together again. 

It’s not exactly like it was before, not like when you would scurry off to the greenhouse or the shed or some other hidden place, spread out a picnic blanket and bask in each other’s company, laughing about anything and everything, but it’s better. It’s better than how it used to be, when you would always bring your lunch back to your cabin to eat in silence, drown yourself in your comforter and your thoughts, letting them pile on top of you, one by one. It’s better than how you used to pretend that you didn’t even know each other. 

Slowly, step by step, things have almost started to feel normal again. 

“You guys seem happier lately,” Taehyung commends mindlessly as he sits down across from you and Jimin, three pieces of meat lover’s pizza on the paper plate he sets on the tabletop. 

You and Jimin smile at each other. You suppose that you have been.

“Three, Tae?” The moment gone too soon, Jimin’s focus is immediately redirected to the behemoth meal in front of Taehyung. “Seriously? Aren’t you lactose intolerant?”

“The meat balances it out,” Taehyung says matter-of-factly, even though it definitely doesn’t. He takes an enormous bite out of one of the slices, eating nearly half the pizza in a single chomp. “But seriously, I mean it. You guys look a lot happier. Yoongi!”

Yoongi freezes in his tracks from where he’s walking by your table, spilling his open soda can all over his plate of pizza at Taehyung’s shout of his name. 

“Don’t you think that Jimin and Y/N seem happier?” Taehyung asks, motioning to the both of you. 

“I don’t know,” Yoongi says with a shrug, aloof as always. You chuckle to yourself, knowing fully well that it was him who got Namjoon to leave two stacks of flower pots in the arts and crafts room to give you an extra push towards talking with Jimin. Taehyung huffs, disappointed but not surprised that Yoongi contributed so little to the conversation, but he doesn’t notice how Yoongi gives you a smile and a thumbs up as he heads over to where Namjoon and Hoseok are sitting. 

“Well, I think you guys do,” Taehyung says pointedly. 

“Did we seem… unhappy to you?” Jimin asks, an eyebrow raised. 

“No,” says Taehyung. “I don’t know, you guys just seemed different. You know, I was talking with Jin and he and I were convinced that the two of you were dating last year and then broke up sometime before this summer because you guys were acting so weird earlier.”

“Really?” You ask, cracking an awkward smile just to keep the mood light because god, Taehyung really is a lot more observant than you give him credit for. “That’s so funny, honestly.” It’s not. “You know that we’re just friends, Tae.”

Next to you, Jimin is staring down his lunch like it’s insulted his family. Out of the corner of your eye, you watch as he opens his mouth to say something, anything, goddamnit, anything that will make you feel like you’re not the only one who wants you two to be friends again. Anything that will remind you that being friends is all you have left because he will never love you back. 

“You could have fooled me,” Taehyung acknowledges. “Seokjin was pretty convinced, too. We even had a bet going to see which one of you would admit it first.”

“You guys bet on us?” Jimin asks, a little horrified and a lot of something else, something that you can’t quite place. 

“Not with money!” Taehyung defends. “Marshmallows for the end-of-camp counselor campfire. But neither of you ever said anything so we ended up just dropping it and ate as many marshmallows as we wanted.”

Oh, if only Taehyung knew. Oh, if only he had heard you that night, heard you pour your heart out in front of that fire. Oh, if only he had noticed, noticed the warm yellow glow that made Jimin look like he had been bathed in candlelight, noticed those roasted marshmallows over the heat, noticed the words that replay in your head like a broken record. 

There’s a part of you that wants to know who Taehyung was betting on. A part of you that is wondering why on earth would either of them ever assume that Jimin would be the one to confess first when he has only ever seen you as a friend and you have always seen him as something more. Seen him as this dream come to life, seen him as the answer to all of your prayers. 

Jimin never would have confessed first. That hasn’t changed. 

“Thinking back, it was kind of stupid of us to bet on you guys when you hadn’t even confirmed anything,” Taehyung says with a sigh, pursing his lips together tightly. “I don’t know. I guess that Seokjin and I both really, really wanted you guys to get together.” He chuckles, but it isn’t funny anymore.

Believe me, Tae, you think to yourself. You guys weren’t the only ones.

“Eh,” Taehyung hums, shrugging to himself. He clearly isn’t as caught up about it as you and Jimin, who wonder every day how different things would be if you had just kept your damn mouth shut that night, if you had never loved him in the first place. “I guess I’m just glad to see you both smiling again.”

“Thanks, Tae,” you say, because even if Taehyung doesn’t know the whole story he’s still hit the nail on the head, and even if he can’t pick up the way that Jimin’s body has tensed up beside you, even if he doesn’t notice how normal feels like the furthest thing to describe the two of you right now, he has always wanted the both of you to be content.

“Makes me kinda sad to know you guys are just friends, even though I’m obviously not going to force you into anything.” Taehyung takes another bite of his pizza, the words just conversational to him even if they clearly aren’t to either of you.

Slowly, Jimin looks back up from his lunch, like he’s finally made up his mind. You meet Jimin’s eyes when he does, and for once you don’t dare jump into the swirling sea of his irises, for once you can hardly tell if the waves are calm or rough. For once, it feels like Jimin is looking at you the way you look at him—helplessly.

Taehyung smiles, looking fondly at the both of you. “You guys would have been cute together,” he says it because he means it. “You make each other so happy.”

He means that part, too.

The end-of-camp show is a longstanding tradition where all of the kids, divided by age group, celebrate the best part about summer and going to a sleepaway camp: being away from their parents. There are dance performances choreographed by the counselors (namely Hoseok, who has the most free time because his other job mainly consists of making sure Namjoon doesn’t lose his head), a guitar performance organized by Seokjin (who has promised not to rickroll everyone this year), and an art show setup by you to display all of the treasures that the campers have created. But your favorite part of the show is how, no matter how much time time is spent practicing and rehearsing, the performance will always end in chaos. The only predictable thing about it is its unpredictability. 

This year, as suggested by Hoseok and immediately implemented by Namjoon, the counselors are being roped into a performance of their own, one that is bound to be even more disastrous because even though you can all listen to directions, you are all also just as capable of purposely disobeying them. 

Part of you suspects that the only reason Hoseok even recommended that you all do this is because he enjoys watching the camp counselor collective crash and burn. Like there’s something cathartic about watching you go up in flames.

Nevertheless, you do it, because if not for yourselves then for Hoseok, and if not for him then for Namjoon, both of whom tirelessly to make sure that camp is a place where you and the other counselors can do the dumbest things without repercussions. If it weren’t for the two of them, camp would be a lot less fun.

Hoseok also just absolutely relishes in being in charge of something, something that involves dancing and singing and performing, which are his favorite things to do, and it would be cruel of all of you to deny Hoseok this opportunity, if only for a silly little camp performance. 

Hoseok manages to wrangle a time and space for rehearsal thanks to one of those magic scientists that perform cool things with chemicals, one that Namjoon has arranged to visit camp to give you and the other counselors a much-needed break from the endless excitement of children. 

And so, you all trickle into the empty counselor meeting room at three in the afternoon exactly, waiting to see what the hell Hoseok has come up with now. 

All of the tables, chairs, and other miscellaneous furniture has been pushed up against the walls, leaving just enough room for all of you to fit relatively comfortably, with Hoseok standing smack in the middle of the room, looking proud. 

“I’m scared,” Hazel admits to you as you pass by Hoseok to stand where the rest of the counselors have gathered. You sneak a peek at the clipboard in Hoseok’s hand, which isn’t empty this time, and is instead filled with sheets of paper that look like they belong in the hands of a sports coach, X’s and O’s and arrows littering the pages. 

“Don’t be,” you say, though the tremble of your voice is probably doing very little to calm her nerves. You end up grouped together with Jimin and Yoongi, who are both standing in silence, waiting for something to pull them out of their thoughts. “Hey,” you say softly, giving Jimin a nudge. 

“Hey,” Jimin responds, face lifting a little when he sees you. From behind him, Yoongi is eyeing the both of you, but he doesn’t seem very worried. Jimin laughs tensely. “I’m nervous about what Hoseok has in mind for us.”

You glance over to Hoseok as he talks animatedly with Namjoon, who looks a little bit in over his head. Namjoon must have known that Hoseok would spare no expense when it came to a counselor performance. 

“I’m sure it won’t be that bad,” you assure him with a squeeze to his wrist, making him smile weakly at you. 

“First Namjoon makes us sit outside, and then he makes us do exercise?” Yoongi huffs. “When will it end?”

“High time he got you out of the damn kitchens,” Jungkook mutters to himself, making all of the other counselors within earshot laugh. Yoongi turns around to give Jungkook half of a noogie before Hoseok claps to get everyone’s attention. 

“Alright, hi everyone!” Hoseok cheers. “Glad you all could make it.”

“Did we have a choice?” Seokjin asks. 

“Nope!” Hoseok grins. “Anyway, as you know, this year Namjoon and I have been thinking of doing a counselor performance at the end-of-camp show to show unity and entertain the kids, since they’re the ones who have been doing all of the work thus far to make the camp show a reality. And I, as your assistant head counselor and dance choreographer, get to set it up!”

“Oh, God,” Taehyung says. 

“It’s not going to be a super serious thing because this is camp and we’re literally performing for prepubescent children, so don’t worry!” He says, doing nothing to ease people’s worries. He turns around to face the chalkboard, and begins to magnet the pieces of paper from his clipboard onto it, page by page, as the rest of you stare on in horror. “But I have come up with a bit of a dance for us to perform…”

“Oh, God,” Seokjin repeats dramatically. 

“Anyway,” Hoseok says, clapping his hands together once more to redirect everyone’s attention from the mess on the board back to him. “It’ll be a bit of a partner dance for the first half, and then everyone gets about five seconds worth of a solo in the middle where you can do whatever you want—” when Hoseok spots Jungkook, Taehyung, and Seokjin already beginning to scheme, wicked smiles widening, he quickly adds, “—within reason, and then a big old group thing to finish it up. Does that sound good?”

“Whoop,” Yoongi deadpans.

“Great!” Hoseok says, fumbling for another piece of paper in the stack that he still has left on his clipboard. 

“God, a partner dance?” You ask awkwardly, feeling noticeably more worried than before. It’s not that you’re dreading having to dance, or even having to perform in front of a bunch of kids, it’s the idea of having to dance with someone else, a specific someone else in particular, that has your stomach doing flips. “Why did Hobi think that was a good idea?”

“It might be fun, don’t you think?” Jimin says, trying to keep the mood light. It’s clear he has no worries about the potential for being paired up with you, which might have been able to fly last year but this summer, you’re not so sure. You and Jimin just managed to start eating lunch together again without wanting to curl into a ball and hide. What’s going to happen if you have to dance with each other?

“I’m not a very good dancer,” you admit, a weak excuse for your real fear. 

“Then I’ll teach you,” Jimin says, and the words are hopeful and filled with light as he works so desperately to remind you that not all has been lost. That you can begin again. 

“Okay, partners,” Hoseok says, looking at his list. “Namjoon and Yoongi, Jungkook and Seokjin, Taehyung and Hazel, Maria and Ruby, Jia-yi and Quinn, and Jimin and Y/N.”

Shit. 

Yoongi, noticing your alarm, immediately interrupts, “Uh, is it possible for us to switch partners?”

“Why?” Hoseok asks innocently. 

And in that split second, that moment of pause, you look from the wide-eyed Yoongi to Jimin, who is gazing back at you like he’s finally got it right, like he’s finally been given an opportunity to fix what you had broken, to repair your relationship, brick by brick, if only for a stupid counselor performance. Jimin, who is smiling and smiling and smiling because you are finally eating lunch together and you are finally watering that damn hydrangea and you finally get to dance together, and everything in the world is slowly beginning to feel right, the dust is beginning to settle after a month’s worth of storms. 

You inhale, then you exhale, and you say, “I’m fine with my partner. I don’t think we need to switch, do we?”

And you swear, your heart feels lighter already. 

Jimin pops into the arts and crafts room more often these days. Sometimes he actually does it because he needs to drop something off, because a camper left something in the greenhouse or because Namjoon is making him, but most times, he does it just to say hi, just to charm all of the campers as they make collages out of old magazines or glue together fabric for no-sew pillows. 

And every time he does it, every time there is that familiar knock on the door, you nearly tumble over yourself from excitement. The best part about it is how normal it’s all beginning to feel, how familiar it is. You are almost back to where you used to be. 

Almost back to when you loved him, and he didn’t know, and everything was alright. 

Today, the kids are making cards for you to mail back home before the summer is done, before camp comes to a close and they return to their lives and you return to yours. Normally, you’d automatically send the letters back to the parents, but this time, you offer up an alternative. 

“These cards are going to be mailed back home to the people that you love,” you say, holding up your own as an example. It’s a basic one, yellow cardstock with daisies made out of construction paper glued onto it, but it serves as a good guideline for whatever the campers want to do with their own. “You just need to provide their address so that we can make sure it gets to the right person.”

“It doesn’t have to be our parents?” One boy asks.

“Nope,” you say with a smile, shaking your head. “You can send it to anyone you love. It’s just to let them know how you are, and that you miss them.”

“Who are you sending yours to?” A different girl, Rose, asks. 

“I’m not sure yet,” you say, because you don’t really need to let your parents know how you are when you text each other constantly, and all of your friends from back home can see all of the shenanigans you get up to on your social media, but a letter is no fun if only one person ever gets to read it. 

“You should send it to Jimin,” Rose suggests matter-of-factly, making you sputter out the water you were taking a sip of all over the table in front of you. 

“Jimin?” You repeat, forcing a smile. “I see Jimin all the time.”

“But you really like him, don’t you?” She asks, even though she obviously already knows the answer. Goddamn, kids pick up on everything. “I can tell.”

“Is that so?” You return, eyebrows raised. 

“Yeah, me too!” The boy chirps up. “You always look so nervous whenever he comes to say hello. Like you don’t know what to say. That’s what my mom looks like whenever she comes home from a new date with a boy she really likes.”

You do? That is news to you. 

“It’s okay, though,” Rose interrupts. “I think that he really likes you too. Otherwise he wouldn’t just be popping in every other day to say hello!”

“Maybe he really likes seeing you guys, instead!” You offer, feeling your cheeks heating up at the thought that you and Jimin have laid yourselves out bare like a board book for everyone to read. 

“I don’t think so. He looks too happy when he sees you.” The girl shakes her head. “You should send your card to him, so he knows that you love him.”

Oh, he knows, that’s for sure, you think to yourself. There’s no way that Jimin hasn’t already realized that you still love him. That you have always loved him. Even the campers have it figured out, and they’re still in elementary school. But you think that the worst part of this, the worst part of all of these freakishly observant children verbally beating you up with reminders of your relationship with Jimin, is how they seem to think that Jimin likes you back. That Jimin sees you as something more. 

Because he didn’t, last year. And he didn’t, earlier this summer. And there is no way things have changed that much. 

“You guys should keep working on your cards,” you say, desperate for the subject to drop, desperate to talk about anything, literally anything, besides Jimin. “We want to send them by the end of the week so that the people you love will get them before camp’s over.”

“So you do like him!” The boy exclaims. 

“Cards, Oliver!” You reprimand him, earning a chorus of giggles, though there is no mistaking the way your body has tensed, the way your words are shaking. No mistaking how your heart trembles at the thought of Jimin, sweet, wonderful, beautiful Jimin, actually liking you back. 

It can’t be. 

You and Jimin have always just been friends. That’s all you’ll ever be. You swear. 

You swear.

“The hydrangea looks better,” you comment as you enter the greenhouse, eyes immediately darting towards the pot on the table at the front. In it, the hydrangea has blossomed fully, its petals a vibrant sky blue, basking in the faint glow of the sun as it streams into the greenhouse, peeking between the misty gray clouds, painting everything with a hazy yellow warmth. 

“It does, doesn’t it?” Jimin asks from where he’s wrestling with an enormous packet of soil, pausing his battle to turn and look at the blossom, smiling to himself. “I think we must have worked some sort of magic.”

“Or maybe it’s just your expert gardening skills,” you tease, hauling in some plants by the door that Jimin has been meaning to bring inside the greenhouse for days now. “I’m not in here enough to make any sort of noticeable difference.”

Jimin scoffs disbelievingly. “You’re in here almost as much as I am nowadays.”

“Just to help out,” you defend weakly, pouting to yourself. It’s not like you’ve completely abandoned your air-conditioned arts and crafts room to fool around in the balmy greenhouse, soil underneath your fingernails and seeds stuck to your clothes. You just prefer to spend your free time here. Nothing criminal about that.

Plus, Jimin sure doesn’t seem to mind. 

“And for that, I thank you,” says Jimin with a grin, the bag of soil finally beginning to cooperate with him. He hauls it over his shoulder to bring into the back room, where he keeps all of the bigger tools and plants that are too advanced for the campers, and you pretend not to ogle the way his biceps bulge as he carries the soil away, the bag easily fifty pounds or more. 

What? You didn’t fall in love with Jimin just because of his electric personality. 

“Besides, you come into the arts room so often that all the kids are starting to think you work there instead of here,” you remind him pointedly. He laughs, and the sound bounces off of the glass walls, filling up the room. 

Jimin comes out of the back room, a little bit of soil smudged onto his cheek from his gloves, and he’s smiling. “Maybe I just like seeing you.”

“Next time we do a craft I’ll make sure to prepare an extra one so you can do it with us,” you joke, ignoring the way his words warm you from the inside out, convincing yourself that this is what it was like last year, too, so Jimin doesn’t mean anything by it. 

Convincing yourself that Jimin has never loved you the way that you love him. 

“Am I going to be allowed to sit next to you?” He asks as he walks up to where you’re working, that same flirty lilt to his voice, that teasing tone that he always used to use on you, especially whenever it came down to spending time together. 

“Only if you’re good,” you chide in response, leaning over to pick up a flower pot just so you don’t have to see his damn face, so you don’t have to see the way his eyes glint in the sun as he toys with you, as he presses all of your buttons with ease.

Obviously, you had seriously miscalculated how far away he was, because by the time you’re standing up straight he’s right behind you, playfully pinching at your waist, the sensation sending an electric jolt through your veins. You jump and gasp at the feeling, nearly dropping the goddamn flower pot, body suddenly turning to jelly. Behind you, Jimin is in stitches. 

“I could have dropped this!” You scold him as he doubles over in laughter, giggling and giggling and giggling, so much so that you can’t even pretend to be angry at him, too endeared by his happiness, by his pure joy, to shout at him any more. 

“You’ve always been so ticklish, Y/N,” Jimin says between puffs of air, trying to catch his breath.

“I am not! You just surprised me!” You defend, even though Jimin’s right and he knows it. Your outrage leaves him in hysterics still, amused by the way you so easily fall right into his trap.

“Whatever you say,” he singsongs, helping you haul in the last of the flowerpots. “I think that’s the last of them.”

“Next time I show up, a whole different part of the greenhouse will need work,” you say with a sigh, because no matter how much you do, no matter how much you clean and reorganize, there will always be something left. 

“The work is never done,” Jimin says with a smile, having already resigned himself to this fate. “But I think it looks pretty good.”

And looking at the greenhouse, looking at the vibrant hues that fill the room, from the rich golden marigolds to the bright pink lilies, from the rich green leaves to the soft blue hydrangea, you have to agree. It’s no wonder why Jimin loves this place so much, spends so much time in it despite its severe lack of circulation and the absence of reliable shade. It’s because everything in here he has had a hand in making. Everything in here is here because of him. 

This place will never not remind you of him. 

“It’s getting late,” Jimin says, checking his watch. “You think they have dinner ready for us?”

“God, I hope so,” you say with a sigh. “I’m starving.”

“Then shall we feast?” He asks, holding his arm out for you to take. 

You wrap your arm around his own, and you grin. “We shall.”

Then the thunder cracks, and the sky begins to sob. 

You’re barely three feet out the door before you feel the wet splotches on your shoulders, cold drops on your skin, made thicker by the leaves above your head, forcing you to retreat back into the greenhouse. Thanks to the glass, the raindrops that hit the rooftop ring like mallets on a drum, booming and loud, echoing throughout the room. 

“Damn,” Jimin says, staring out at the once sunny clearing, now shrouded in a grey haze. “It was sunny two minutes ago.”

“It’s just a summer storm,” you assure, arm still wrapped up tight in his own. “They never last long.”

“Think we should wait it out?” He asks. 

“Whatever you want to do.”

Jimin grins, squeezing you tight. “How about this? Five minutes, and if it doesn’t stop, we make a run for it?”

You nod. “Five minutes.”

Five minutes pass and the rain has no intention of letting up, seemingly getting heavier as you count down the seconds, the light grey fog that has blanketed the clearing turning to an angry deep blue, thick and endless. The alarm on Jimin’s watch goes off, signifying your wait’s end, and you open your mouth to suggest that maybe you should wait here a little longer, but barely get the first letter out before Jimin is flinging open the door to the greenhouse and pulling you out into the rain. 

You shriek as the drops hit you, little pellets of water striking you like beads, soaking your clothes and your skin everything in between. Jimin looks back from where he’s running in front of you, one hand still wrapped around your wrist, and his hair is in strands and his shirt is sticking to his torso, and you don’t think that, in your three years of knowing him, you’ve ever seen him happier. He pulls you out into the rain and he looks like a shot from a movie scene, looks like the hero in a coming-of-age film, letting the rain wash away his worries and his insecurities, letting himself be reborn beneath the crying sky. 

And he stops, and you stop, and you stand there in the pouring rain just looking at each other, picturesque frames, moments in time, letting the water soak into your skin, letting it trickle down your cheeks, decorating your eyelashes. You feel his hand sink down to your own, feel your fingers intertwine. And he is smiling, God, he is smiling so fucking wide, smiling at you like there is no place he would rather be, smiling at you like you smile at him when you think he isn’t looking, like you are the reason he is filled with light. Jimin stands there in the rain with his hand on your wrist and droplets of rain dotting his skin, and he is brand new. And you watch him, watch the way it rains down upon him, and you wonder what the hell he is thinking. 

You wonder what on earth he sees when he looks at you. 

(Is it the same as what you see when you look at him?)

“Aren’t you cold?” You ask him, feeling like your voice is a distant melody, feeling like it’s coming from somewhere else. 

He shakes his head, and you can see the rain spraying from the ends of his hair, soaked strands framing his face. “Isn’t this wonderful?” He asks up to the sky, tilting his head up to let it rain down upon him, let the droplets drizzle down his cheeks. “Don’t you love it?”

“It’s nice,” you admit, because there’s something refreshing about being here, about being caught in the midst of a summer storm, washing away the dirt and sweat and worries. 

“It’s perfect,” Jimin corrects, voice trampled by the rain, thick and heavy. “I feel like this is just what I needed.”

“Needed for what?”

He looks back at you, looks at the way your bodies are still connected, at the way you’re standing barely a foot apart in the pouring rain, and he grins and says, “Just what I needed to know.”

You don’t have time to ask him what he needs to know, what he has been so desperate to learn, before he’s pulling you back into him and up onto the deck, wet footsteps on the wooden porch as you heave yourselves out of the rain and into the counselor meeting room, drenched from head to toe. 

“Oh my God, what the hell happened to you guys?” Seokjin asks, shocked when he spots the two of you, still holding hands. 

“Got caught in the rain,” you say sheepishly, still feeling out of breath. 

“In the rain?” Taehyung asks. “For how long?”

“Long enough,” Jimin answers this time, finally letting you go to run towards the back of the room. You watch helplessly as he does, your hand clenching around nothing, missing his touch. When he returns, he’s got a dry windbreaker in his hand, crumpled up from being in his backpack for so long. “Here, use this,” he says, placing it over your shoulders, pulling the collar tight at your front. 

“Thanks,” you say breathlessly, wondering what the hell Jimin is going to use to dry himself off, clothing so soaked not even a day in the sun could dry it. 

“That was fun,” Jimin says, fixing the windbreaker over your shoulders to make sure it’s covering as much of you as possible. “Who knew, right?”

“Right,” your voice trails off, too focused on the way his brows are furrowed as he tries to dry you off with a jacket made of fabric meant to repel water rather than absorb it, mouth pressed into a pout as he shuffles it around, drying off whatever he can. 

“Maybe we can do it again sometime,” he says when he’s satisfied, gazing into your eyes, trying to get you to gaze back into his own. When you falter, he chuckles, this little huff of air dispelled from his lungs. “I’m gonna go bother Hoseok for something dry. Don’t stay in those clothes too long, or you’ll catch something.”

With that, he disappears into the other room, soggy footsteps leaving prints in his wake. You’re so busy watching his back disappear from view that you don’t even notice Namjoon coming up to you, a sage expression written all over his face. 

“What?” You challenge, not liking the way he looks so suspicious. 

“Nothing,” he says with a laugh and a shake of his head. “I just… don’t know if you really do have anything to worry about when it comes to him.” He nods his head in the direction of Jimin before vanishing, called over by Seokjin and Jungkook to complain to him about something, leaving you floundering in the doorway to the counselor’s room. 

Does Namjoon know something you don’t?

Are you missing something here?

Because as far as you’re concerned, you and Jimin are finally getting back to where you used to be. As far as you’re concerned, you and Jimin did these same things last year, worked in the greenhouse together, planted flowers together, ate lunch together (okay, maybe you didn’t stand in the pouring rain together), and you are positive Jimin didn’t love you back then. As far as you’re concerned, this isn’t different. This is normal. 

Outside, the rain has stopped, a rainbow hidden behind the trees the only reminder that it was ever there in the first place. 

Despite the fact that you will literally only be performing for a bunch of children, Jimin is insistent on teaching you how to dance. 

At least, that’s it looks like, when he asks you to meet him in the counselor’s room one day half an hour before the mandated practice that Hoseok’s arranged for the whole group of you while the all the campers are off on a nature hike with some of the local rangers from the reserve nearby. You don’t know why this couldn’t wait until during practice, when Hoseok puts on some upbeat dance music and lets everybody do what they want, which usually ends up in someone getting twirled (usually Seokjin), but you don’t really mind. Your other option was to lie around in your cabin waiting for the next social event. 

Jimin’s already inside by the time you arrive, this smooth, soft jazz playing from the little speaker that he brought with him, set up on a table at the front of the room. The furniture hasn’t been moved back to their original spots since the first practice, so anytime Namjoon calls a meeting everyone ends up sitting on the floor like a kindergarten class, but at least it makes dance practice easier. 

Even though he’s not really dancing, his body is still moving, absorbed in the music as it echoes around the room, hips swaying and head bobbing. He loses himself in the melody so easily, letting each and every note pluck along to the strings of his heart, this deep, mellow sound that fills him up like a wine glass, dulcet and sweet. 

“Hey,” you say softly from where you stand, watching him from the doorframe. 

Jimin jumps a little bit at the sound of your voice, almost embarrassed that he hadn’t spotted you sooner. “Hey,” he says in return, coming to a halt. “I didn’t, uh, see you there.”

“That was kind of the point,” you joke, walking into the room and joining him where he stands in the center. “Why did you want me down here?”

“You mean I need a reason to see you now?” Jimin teases in return, a little smirk playing along his lips. You frown, narrowing your eyes at him, unimpressed. He gives. “Alright, you got me. I promised you a dance lesson, didn’t I?”

“This isn’t the kind of music that Hoseok puts on, though,” you point out, even as Jimin intertwines his hand in your own and pulls you in close to him, the two of you stepping in time to the beat, not too slow but not too fast, either, this even, steady swing, the sort of thing an old bar would play during the evening rush. Jimin doesn’t pay your comment any attention, instead focusing on his hand on your side, your fingers laced together between your bodies. 

You have, admittedly, never been much of a musical person. You never go out to clubs because sweaty, drunk people just aren’t your style, you don’t ever dance, and you can barely keep a beat when you sing in the shower. Your body has always been stiff as stone despite your (and your friends’) best attempts to achieve otherwise, and as such, you had long resigned yourself to the fact that you do better with your mouth than with your feet. 

But still, Jimin rallies on, because you’re here, goddamnit, and even if you never dance again after this, at least you can say that you have. He moves you around the room in time with the honeyed melody, even daring to pull some advanced tactics like spinning you beneath his touch, hand held above your head as you twirl in place. And you try to let loose, try to lose yourself in the music like he does, but it’s hard when you have always been more of a wordsmith than a dancer.

What’s also not helping is how every bone in your body always seems to freeze up at his touch. 

“Relax, alright?” He says, guiding you across the old wooden floor, boards creaking beneath your feet. “It’s just me.”

That’s the problem, your brain supplies unhelpfully. 

“I told you that I wasn’t a very good dancer,” you say bashfully, unable to look Jimin in the eye when he is so close, when his body is practically pressed up against yours, when his fingertips leave burn marks where they press against his skin, sparks flying. 

It’s different than when it was raining, because when it was raining, even though you were close, there were other things for Jimin to look at besides you. He gazed up at the sky and thanked it for its tears, gazed around the clearing and surrounded himself in the navy blue haze, closed his eyes and felt the drops on his skin, felt them wash away his nightmares and replace them with dreams. 

It’s different now, because there is nothing impressive about the counselor room. Because the janky old tables and dirty windows aren’t something to be gazed at. Because Jimin’s focus is on you and only you, and it makes you feel like he’s staring right through you, like he’s gawking at your heart where it sits in its cage, trembling beneath his eyes. Jimin makes you want to board yourself up, wall yourself in, and reveal yourself bare all at once, like there is so much that he already knows but so much more that he could, if only things were just a little bit different. 

“You’re doing just fine,” Jimin promises, voice as soft as his steps, padding on the hardwood. You’ve lost track of the number of times you’ve circled the room, Jimin guiding you without reason or rhyme, just rhythm. He makes sure you’re always looking at him, reaches a hand out to tilt your chin back up if you dare glance away, keeping his steely gaze trained on you, determined to have you do the same. “Isn’t this nice?” He murmurs. 

“It is,” you agree. You don’t even have to think about your response, letting the words fall off your tongue, because even if you do feel tense, even if your bones are stiff, there is something about this that sets you at ease. 

And you stay like that, wrapped up in each other, swaying to the beat of this song, a beat that is strikingly similar to the drums of your hearts, and the moment feels as though it’s freezing. Feels as though the rest of the world is fading away, leaving only the two of you and the warm, rich tune that floats through the air, slowing down as time seems to come to a halt. 

“Do you still miss us?” You breathe, and you can see the words as they leave your lips, see them written out in puffs of smoke between you before they fade into nothingness. 

“No,” Jimin responds, equally as speechless. The word disappears quickly in front of you, replaced by his next ones, “because this is what I had been waiting for.”

The words stare down at you angrily, your eyes raking over them, line by line, letter by letter, hoping to imprint them into your skin and your brain and your heart, hoping to keep them locked up besides your love for you to replay, over and over, one of many memories that keep you up at night, that you flicker back to watch like an old film, reminiscing of who you used to be, what you used to do. 

They disappear far too quickly, and suddenly time begins again, and you get dizzy just from how much the rest of the world needs to catch up, whizzing by you in fast forward. Or maybe you’re just dizzy because Jimin has always made you feel this way, always left you gasping for air, weak in the knees, heart pounding. 

God, he makes your heart pound. He makes it drum in your ears like the Nutcracker, like thunder during a summer storm. 

“Don’t you want…” he asks, trailing off, eyes hazy and deep, absolutely unreadable. 

“Want what?” You respond, and you swear you aren’t doing it on purpose but you feel yourself leaning forward, closing the gap between you, inch by inch—

“Want to see me lift Seokjin up in the air?” Jungkook’s voice rings out into the room. “I can, you know, he weighs like two pou—whoa, alright.”

A hoard of people stop behind Jungkook as he stands in the doorway like a floundering fish, blinking at you and Jimin. His arrival does not give you enough time to part without things looking suspicious, without all of the damn counselors already making their assumptions, leaving the two of you separating awkwardly, smiling tensely. 

“What were you guys doing?” Taehyung asks, breaking the silence that has blanketed the room. 

“Practicing,” you say quickly, looking as far away from Jimin as possible. Not even you are buying into your excuse. 

“Sure thing,” Taehyung responds, eyebrows raised in understanding, already having formulated his own, likely more realistic answer. 

“Alright,” Hoseok says, appearing from behind the crowd with a clap of his hands. “I guess that means that Y/N and Jimin don’t need to be joining us today, off you guys go.” He gestures for the two of you to leave, but the only exit doubles as the entrance, which means the two of you are left to shuffle past a crowd of counselors, all of whom are staring at you as you pass them by. Jimin doesn’t reach out his hand, and you don’t make any attempts at changing that. 

You nearly suffocate on the way out, overwhelmed by the tension that has filled the atmosphere, leaving everyone helpless to it. 

Jimin goes in one direction and you go in the other, the both of you clearly too stupefied to say anything meaningful to each other, determined to spend the rest of the night apart in an effort to dispel the dozen rumors that you know have already begun to circle the camp. 

On your way back to your cabin, alone and lost in thought, you finish your conversation. 

“Do you want…” Jimin asks, voice trailing off. 

“Yes,” you say. “I want it all. I want you.”

You wonder if Jimin feels the same. 

There is something eerie about the camp late at night, when the only lights that shine are the dim yellow wall sconces outside of the cabin doors, when everyone is sound asleep in their bunks, when there is only the moon and its stars to keep you company, watch over you from their place in the universe. There’s something eerie about the quiet, not because you have a reason to feel unsettled but because you’re so used to camp being this lively, bustling place, filled with things to do and people to see. 

When you see it like this, empty and silent, it almost makes you think you aren’t even in the same place anymore. 

The one and only place that you go when you cannot sleep is the pier, extending out over the lake, the cool, clear lake, looking out into the midnight horizon, a perfect view of the stars and their reflections, cast over the water, twinkling endlessly. You take a seat on the edge, legs dangling over the water, and you stare out into the world, a cool breeze tickling your skin. 

You wonder what it is that’s keeping you awake tonight. What it is that is holding sleep just out of your grasp, your dreams suspended above your head. Camp ends in three days and for once you finally feel satisfied, feel as though you have done what you wanted and accomplished what you had hoped. The last few days of this summer are a far cry from those of last summer, where you were wearing yourself thin thinking about your confession, thinking about what you would say and when you would say it, and what you would do based on the fifteen thousand different things that Jimin could say in response, so hung up on telling him that you barely focused on anything else. 

But this summer, you and Jimin are finally starting to be alright again. And even though you don’t think you will ever move on from loving him, you have moved on from the fact that he will probably never love you back, moved on from your failed confession, and you are learning to be okay with what you have, even if it’s not what you want. 

The truth is that you and Jimin have never felt closer. Driven by your mutual desperation to be friends again, to return to the way that things were when you were together, when you were inseparable, you have been pulled together like moths to each other’s flames, like the thunder and the lightning. You can’t think of anything from this summer that you have wanted more than to be by his side again. But things are different from last summer, different because you and Jimin are not only friends but friends who have had to reckon with love, with its disastrous effects. 

So maybe that’s why you’re awake tonight. Because this summer feels inexplicably stranger than last summer, and you feel like you’re missing something. 

“I thought I’d be the only one still awake.”

You whip your head around at the voice to find Jimin standing at the other end of the pier, ink black hair hanging over his eyes, stars swimming in his irises. You can barely make out his face this late at night, when there is nothing to cast upon him a glow besides the moon and its lonely companions, but you will never mistake his soft, honeyed voice, never mistake the way his eyes sparkle and shine. He is grinning at you, warm and kind, as he slowly makes his way towards you, footsteps tapping along the worn wooden planks, until he sits down next to you, feet hovering above the water. 

“You and me both, I guess,” you feel yourself whisper, not daring to speak a decibel louder. 

“Lots on your mind?” He asks, looking out into the horizon. You sigh, too tired to respond. He understands anyway, just like he always does. “Mine too.”

You let the silence wash over you like a wave that bathes the shoreline, gazing out into a world that carries on no matter the time of day, no matter who watches over it. Like this, you and Jimin don’t need to explain yourselves to each other. Don’t need to force a conversation just for the sake of filling up the quiet night. Like this, your presence is enough, the knowledge that he is here beside you, staring out into the same sky, into the same moon and stars, is all that you need. 

Something has long gone unspoken between the two of you. Something that you can’t quite place. Jimin has had something to say for a long time but he lets his body do the talking, lets you fill in the gaps. But this time, it feels like the more you try to read between the lines the less you understand, and goddamnit you wish that he would just tell you, would just say it so you don’t have to keep wondering and wondering and wondering—

“I never did tell you,” Jimin says, breaking you out of your reverie.

“Tell me what?”

“Tell you what I was thinking, that night.”

He doesn’t need to elaborate any further for you to know what night he’s talking about. You stare down at the lake, at the way it seems to move into itself even though there is nothing to disturb it. 

“I guess I was just so shocked that you, you know, liked me like that, that I didn’t really focus on anything else. Didn’t think about why, or how, or when, or what to do. It existed separately from all of that,” he admits, breaths heavy. 

“You didn’t need to focus on that stuff,” you assure him softly. “It was my burden to hold. I was the one who chose to tell you. It wasn’t your fault.”

Does he know? Does he know that you never hated him for not loving you back? That you didn’t expect him to do anything about it? 

“I just felt so bad,” he says, and you hear the way the words prick at his tongue, leave burn marks along his lips. “Because I didn’t know what to do after that. I wanted to love you back so badly but I just couldn’t.”

And even though you already knew this, even though you were already well aware that Jimin has always only seen you as a friend, for some reason hearing him say it aloud still hurts, still pierces your heart, wounds that your love for him alone cannot fix. 

“It’s not your fault,” you promise him, because throughout all of this, no matter what, you have never, ever blamed him for not loving you back. “I didn’t expect anything. At all. You have nothing to be sorry for.”

“Don’t I, though?” Jimin asks, and God, he sounds so helpless, sounds like he’s tried everything under the sun to figure things out and still, nothing has felt right. “We had always been so close. I wondered why I couldn’t fall in love with you and the things that we did together when you could. I thought that I was doing something wrong. You deserved someone who would love you back, and I so desperately wanted to be that person.”

“You owed me nothing,” you declare. “You still don’t owe me a damn thing. All I wanted was for you to know.” And look where that got you.

“Knowing didn’t feel like enough,” Jimin divulges. “I wanted to do more for you than just acknowledge it. I replayed that night in my head, over and over, wondering what more I could have said to you.” He sighs, deep and slow and filled with weight, filled with a year’s worth of thoughts he never told anyone else. “You told me you loved me and it was all I could think about. Then and now.”

“You still think about it?” You wonder aloud, sad because Jimin doesn’t deserve to have this weight on his conscience when you are the one at fault, and hopeful because maybe, just maybe, your confession meant just as much to him as it did to you. 

“I can’t stop,” he confesses. And then he turns to you, turns to you in the glow of the moon, his eyes drowning in starlight, and he says, “Every time I look at you I think about how you love me.”

You don’t know what to say. You are too absorbed in the swirling sea of his irises, letting the warmth wash over you in waves, filling you up before emptying out again, shocks of cold before the heat races through you. Jimin is right there, right here, and he is gazing at you and you wonder. 

You wonder, what if. 

You wonder, what if he loved me back?

“Even when I was away from you I thought about it,” he chuckles to himself, amused at his own obsession. “I thought about you, that night, at the campfire. You were wearing this neon pink camp t-shirt and your marshmallow looked like coal and you had this warm orange glow on you, and I swear to God, that image is imprinted in my brain. I see it every time I close my eyes.”

You didn’t know that. 

“When I went on dates, I saw you instead. I would be sitting in a booth with some girl and she would be trying to talk to me about the menu and all I would see is you.” Jimin exhales, filling the pauses that he leaves between his sentences, eyes raking you up and down as if he’s trying to commit this scene to memory, as if this night on the pier is something worth remembering. “They knew, too. All of them told me that I should get over my ex before going on a brand new date.” 

Get over you? What about you was there to get over? Your love has always been one-sided. You have never known a world where it hasn’t.

“And I wouldn’t even try to explain to them that I didn’t have an ex to get over, and that you were the one who confessed to me, and that I didn’t love you like that,” he forces another laugh, like he doesn’t even believe the words he’s saying himself. “Then this summer rolled around, and I saw you arrive and I just can’t tell you in words how happy I was to see you. How looking at you just lifted my spirits.”

“I hardly recognized you at first,” you admit shyly. 

“I dyed my hair,” Jimin reminds you. That’s right. He had brown hair last summer. “And I wanted to talk to you, but I didn’t know how to without bringing up all the shit that happened last year, and things were awkward between us, and I guess…” he trails off, thinking for a moment. “I guess I just really, really wanted us to get back to the way things were, but I didn’t know how to. And I didn’t know what had changed.”

“Nothing changed,” you say, even though everything did. But loving Jimin has always been a constant in your life, a truth, and this summer was no different. “I wanted to go back to being friends with you, too.”

“I thought I wanted that, too.”

This time, you are the one who turns to look at him. What could he possibly mean by that? 

(Can it be?)

“At first, that’s all I wanted,” Jimin begins. “I wanted us to go back to being friends, I wanted us to eat lunch together and have it not be weird, I wanted us to spend time in the greenhouse and the arts and crafts room together, I wanted us to hang around the rest of the counselors without them noticing how different we were. But then I noticed that the hydrangea was wilting no matter what the fuck I did to keep it alive, and I realized that wanting our friendship back wasn’t enough for me anymore.”

You are frozen in place. You are locked into his gaze, body turning to stone, unable to even utter a single word. To breathe a single breath. And you look into his eyes, Jimin’s beautiful, ocean eyes, Jimin’s sparkling, ink eyes, and you pray. 

“And then Hobi partnered us up for the stupid camp counselor performance, and we got caught in the rain, and then we danced in the counselor meeting room and I just—” His chest heaves, words flounder. As if he has so much to say, as if the words are practically spilling off of his tongue, and yet they are still not enough. He closes his eyes. Pauses. Catches his breath. And then he asks, “If I asked you if you still loved me, would you say yes?”

“Yes,” you breathe out. 

“If I asked you if you wanted me to love you back, would you say yes?”

“Yes,” you whisper again. 

Jimin blinks.

“If I asked you if you wanted me to kiss you, would you say yes?”

You barely get out the first letter before Jimin is pulling you into him and pressing his fiery lips upon yours. His hand cradles your cheek, the other one splayed out on the wooden pier to keep his balance, dragging you into a messy, desperate kiss, one that sends sparks ricocheting throughout your body, turning your blood into liquid flames, that fills you up from the inside out. The feeling of his lips pressed upon yours makes your heart shake so wildly in its cage that it frees itself, growing a thousand times wider. The rose inside of you vanishes, finds itself replaced by a blooming, bright blue hydrangea, one that settles deeply within your soul. 

Your legs dangle off the pier as your arms wrap around Jimin’s body, curling around his torso in a futile effort to bring him closer than he already is, to feel the warmth of him press against you, sending jolts down your spine, into your bones. You feel yourself getting dizzy just at the feeling alone, kiss drunk, the rest of the world spinning like a goddamn teacup ride, but you cling onto him and you know that he will always be there to catch you if you fall. You know that he will always be there to steady you when you feel the world slipping out from beneath your feet. 

You have him, you have him, you have him. You have him, and he is right here, and he loves you like the sun loves the moon, and you love him like the waves love the shore.

When you part, you almost lose your balance and fall right off the damn pier. Jimin reaches out to grab you just in time, saving you from a watery grave (or just major embarrassment), and the two of you laugh, letting your voices fill the moonlit air, heads light, bodies blissed out. 

“Honestly, I was a little nervous you were going to say no,” he admits with a laugh. 

“Impossible,” you chide. “You know I’ve always loved you.”

No matter what, that will never change. 

“And now,” he says, pressing another kiss to your forehead, this one gentle and plush, “you know that I will always love you, too.”

It doesn’t feel like something long overdue. It doesn’t feel like something that you have been waiting and waiting and waiting for, something you have expected from the moment you told him. 

No. This feels like something new. 

This feels like your heart is in bloom. 

The end-of-camp show, no matter how much time and effort Namjoon puts into making it go smoothly, is a train wreck. But it is a train wreck in that wonderful way, in that way where you would be suspicious if things actually went according to plan, in that way where chaos and disarray reign supreme. Quite frankly, when it comes to the end-of-camp show, you never expect anything less. 

The truth is that the majority of the end-of-camp show performances are just for the counselor’s entertainment, an afternoon of fun to wrap up the end of camp, topped off by a fun meal (usually pizza) and a night around a bonfire, letting the heat warm your bodies from the inside out. Unless Jungkook and Taehyung pull some extremely ridiculous prank, the last official day of camp is usually everyone’s favorite, filled with snacks and music and laughter.

The performances by the campers go about as well as any performance by a bunch of elementary schoolers can go—that is to say, the kids remember the first five seconds of the choreography before they devolve into pandemonium, dancing as many weird, trendy dances as they can, and some you don’t even think have been invented yet. Nonetheless, Hoseok is proud, and beams at all of the campers as they scurry away from the center of the gymnasium once their dance is done, grabbing little snacks on the tables by the windows before settling in to watch the next stage. Hoseok does a good job of keeping the music current and upbeat so that nobody falls asleep, and gives the campers enough creative liberty so that it doesn’t feel too practiced. 

Lightly rehearsed, Hoseok likes to say. 

Absolute madness, Yoongi usually corrects.

After the dances, Seokjin and his hoard of campers with guitars the size of an overgrown ukelele make their way to center stage, and you and the other counselors bet on what stupid song he’s taught them all. He starts it off with everyone’s favorite and the most timeless of all tunes—Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star—before the musical highlight. 

(“It’s gonna be Fireflies,” Taehyung insists, so confident in his choice that he even wagers two of the homemade Rice Krispie Treats that Yoongi got all of the campers to make for today’s celebration. 

“It’s been too long since he rickrolled us,” Jungkook says, eyes narrowing suspiciously to Seokjin at the front of the room. “I’m just waiting for it.”

“Wonderwall, obviously,” Hoseok contributes, even though Seokjin got all of the campers from last year to play that. 

You and Jimin are both almost positive Seokjin has chosen to perform Let it Go, a song that will never truly escape you, but you keep your comments to yourselves. 

“I’m thinking Photograph,” Namjoon comments mindlessly, late to the conversation.

“The Nickelback song?” Yoongi says with a scoff. “Dude, we’re the only ones old enough to even know that song. No no, I think it’ll be Despacito.”

“If I have to hear Despacito one more time, I’m going to jump out of the f—” Taehyung stumbles on the syllable as Namjoon turns to glare at him, making Taehyung sputter for a replacement. “F… -reaking window. Watch me.”)

In the end, none of you guess correctly, because Seokjin has chosen to teach all of the campers how to play Country Road, Take Me Home, and honestly, none of you can even be mad about it because by the thirty second mark, you’re all singing along. There’s just something about that song that forces you to belt out the lyrics, something magical and irresistible. 

Afterwards, it is finally time for the counselor’s performance, which, if the camper’s excited screams are anything to go by, is apparently the peak of the afternoon. Hoseok puts on the same upbeat dance music and all of you go to town, following his choreography without any hitches before jumping into the solo section. Namjoon and Yoongi both attempt a trendy Internet dance and fail miserably, Taehyung and Hazel do a little tango that involves no accidents, and then it’s you and Jimin’s turn. 

The music isn’t really appropriate for the slow dance that Jimin taught you in the counselor meeting room, but he makes it work and you follow along, tracing his footsteps and laughing at the prickly sensation his hand on your waist sends shooting through you. You really have always been ticklish there. Hoseok only gives everyone thirty seconds before they’re booted off to the sideline, but thirty seconds is just enough time for Jimin to spin you once before pulling you into a kiss in front of dozens of campers and all of the counselors, whose hollers and hoots fill the gymnasium, bouncing off of the walls and ricocheting into your ears, when they watch you. It has your cheeks heating up something fierce, all embarrassed by Jimin’s big reveal, but the great big smile on his face makes it all worth it. He looks so happy to be here with you. He looks so goddamn happy to have you. 

It makes you feel like you can do anything. 

Ultimately, Jungkook and Seokjin get the greatest applause, because Jungkook lifts Seokjin into the air figure-skating style before Seokjin comes crashing down on him, and they land in a puddle on the gymnasium floor to the screams of all of the campers and counselors, who have never seen anything quite as artistically dramatic in their lives. 

Afterwards, you and Jimin retire to the snack tables alongside the rest of the counselors as the campers are free to roam the building, check out the art on display and eat as many ants on a log and homemade Rice Krispie Treats as they can get their grubby hands on. 

“Congrats, you guys,” Namjoon says, raising his dixie cup filled with lemonade. “It worked out after all.”

“I’m proud of you,” Yoongi murmurs to you, a soft smile gracing his features. 

“Love always prevails,” Jungkook declares, sighing happily, always a hopeless romantic at heart. You sure hope that one day, Jungkook will fall in love with someone who loves him back unconditionally, because he deserves it. 

“Which one of you confessed first?” Seokjin says, Taehyung nodding furiously behind you. You see that the bet is still on. 

“Me,” you say. 

“Me,” Jimin says. 

You both look at each other, eyebrows furrowed, clearly on separate wavelengths. 

Seokjin narrows his eyes. “Alright… which one of you said ‘I love you’ first?”

“That would be me,” you admit sheepishly, having a year’s headstart on Jimin when it comes to love confession. 

“I fucking knew it,” Seokjin says, palm out. Taehyung begrudgingly smacks five dollars into Seokjin’s hand, muttering to himself about how he was convinced that Jimin would tell you first. It makes you wonder, just a little bit, how long Jimin had known.

You open your mouth to defend yourself and your weak, weak heart, when you feel a tap on your side. Behind you is the same girl from the day that you were making cards to send back home to people you love, the one who absolutely grilled you about your feelings for Jimin. 

“Yes, Rose?” You ask happily. 

“So did you send it to him?” She questions. 

“Send what?”

“Your card. Did you send it to Mr. Jimin?” She elaborates, eyes wide in curiosity. You make a mental note to remind her to never stop being inquisitive. It will take her far. 

“No, I didn’t,” you say with a laugh, shaking your head. You look back at Jimin, where he’s laughing with Seokjin and Taehyung about their stupid bet on you, and you grin. He is so beautiful. It’s still hard to believe he’s yours. “Jimin doesn’t need a card to know that I love him.”

Not when he’s right here, and not when you know he loves you back. 

The counselor campfire is held on the day very last night that you spend together, after all of the campers have left the mountain, returning home, and you finally have the place to yourselves. Namjoon and Yoongi light it because everyone else has been banned from doing so after the Great Flame Incident two years ago, and then you all sit on the logs around the fire pit, reminiscing of the summer gone by, musing aloud about what the future holds. 

You and Jimin snuggle up together, and this night faintly reminds you of the one from last year in the way that Jimin still glows, warm and yellow, in the light of the fire, in the way he seems to make perfect s’mores no matter what, in the way that he laughs at everything that you say. But even with all of the similarities, nothing, literally nothing, could top how you feel right now, dancing on cloud nine with Jimin by your side. 

Never in your wildest dreams did you imagine you’d have him. Never in your wildest dreams did you think your confession would amount to anything more.

“You’re burning your marshmallow again,” Taehyung points out crudely, the side of your marshmallow already turning an ashy coal color. 

“Ah, fuck,” you mutter to yourself, yanking it away from the fire as you blow on it. 

“You’re never gonna learn, are you?” Jimin teases. He plucks his off of his stick, perfectly toasted, and holds it out for you. “Here, have mine.” You open wide and he pops it onto your tongue, the crisp, sweet flavor melting in your mouth as all of the other counselors groan, clearly wishing that they were somewhere other than here. Jimin’s fingers reach up to your chin, tilting your face towards him, before a thumb comes out to wipe away at the smudge on the side of your lip, a sticky white crumb that he pops into his mouth, earning another round of whines.

“Gross,” Seokjin says, nose scrunched up. “Just because you guys are in love now doesn’t mean you have to keep showing us. We get it.”

“Oh, just leave them alone,” Yoongi chides. “They’ve been pining after each other for so long, let them have this.”

“Thanks,” you murmur to Yoongi. You have a lot to thank him for. He has always been on your side, even when you weren’t. 

“Anytime,” he promises. 

“If they’re gonna be like this next year, then I don’t know how long I’m going to last,” Taehyung admits with a fond sigh, because no matter how much he pretends to be annoyed, you know that he’s happy for you. 

Namjoon sucks in a breath. “Uh, yeah, about next year…” he says, wringing his hands together. “I’m not going to be coming back.” You fall into silence, the only sounds the crackle of the fire, the rustle of the wildlife in the woods. “I have another internship at a firm, and then I’m going to be going into the job market, so I don’t, uh, I don’t really see myself coming back here.”

“Me too,” Yoongi chirps up, earning a surprised look from everyone else. “I’ve just been given an offer to produce music for this small record company, but they’re located across the country, so I’ll be moving soon. I guess—well, I guess now’s as good a time as any to tell you all.”

“Congrats,” you tell him, sad to hear he won’t be back but thrilled to know he’ll be doing something he truly loves instead. “Seriously, Yoongi. That’s amazing.”

“Yeah, man, that’s sick,” Jungkook pipes up. “When you’ve won your Grammy you have to remember to mention us.”

Yoongi chuckles to himself, small and quiet, but even in this orange light you can see the way his cheeks are turning cherry red, relishing in the praise. “I’ll miss you all,” he says. 

And slowly, one by one, you all begin to admit that even though you love it here, being a camp counselor had always been temporary, and it just wouldn’t be the same without everyone else here with you too. You and Jimin will be graduating this coming school year. So will Taehyung. Seokjin has a Master’s degree in acting that he wants to pursue. Even Jungkook, who is younger than all of you besides Hazel, has said that he plans to travel with his college lacrosse team next summer. 

“Damn,” Taehyung says when everyone is finished, as you all begin to count how many of you there will be left for next summer. “Who’s gonna do Namjoon’s job?”

“I already asked,” Namjoon says with a proud grin, “and Hazel said she is happy to take on the responsibility.”

“Oh, fuck yeah!” Seokjin shouts, giving Hazel a massive hug, nearly crushing her in two. “Hell yeah, Haze! You are going to be kick ass at that. I’m proud of you!”

The rest of the counselors soon follow suit, congratulating Hazel and cheering for her future. It almost makes you want to come back, but you know that Hazel will be fine without you. As long as she still has her secret stash. 

“Nice work, Haze,” you tell her, earning a shy smile from her in response. “You’ve always been a leader.”

“I’m just nervous I won’t be as good as Namjoon,” she admits timidly, clearly a little overwhelmed at such an enthusiastic response. 

“You have nothing to worry about,” Namjoon assures her. “I know you’ll be fine. Plus, you won’t have all of these losers to worry about, so your workload will be much lighter.”

“Hey!” Seokjin, Taehyung, and Jungkook all shout at once. 

“Don’t get me started on the two of you,” Namjoon chides, eyes narrowed. “You’ve caused me more stress than my senior thesis.”

“Out of love,” Seokjin swears, Jungkook and Taehyung nodding enthusiastically next to him. Namjoon rolls his eyes, even though you know that he secretly loves the extra work that they give him. It keeps him young, in that old-timey kind of way. 

“Then I guess this is it, isn’t it?” Hazel asks, standing up and holding out a finished s’more, already taking on her newly-bestowed head counselor duties. “I suppose I’ll do the honors. Congrats to Y/N and Jimin for finally figuring their relationship out, congrats to Yoongi for getting into that record company, congrats to Namjoon for getting his internship, and congrats to everyone else for doing what they love, and for not letting their dreams be dreams. This summer feels sort of like the end of an era, in a way, don’t you think? I mean, lots of us are moving on to bigger and better things, celebrating the past and aspiring to become people that we hope will be admired in the future. And I guess that I just want you all to know that no matter who you become, no matter what you do, I’ll always be someone who admires you.”

If you were a little drunk or just a little more sentimental, Hazel’s words would almost bring tears to your eyes, but instead you just join everyone in cheers, standing up and clinking your s’mores together.

And in a way, it really does feel like the end of an era. No more summers on the mountain, no more late-night camp pranks, no more hydrangeas in the greenhouse. You’re moving on, not only from this part of your life but from your almost-fruitless quest for love, from the place that led you to fall so deeply for Jimin, the place that has housed every memory you have ever saved of him. You’re moving on to a world where Jimin is with you every step of the way, where you know that he will always be there for you, where you no longer have to fight yourself to keep from loving him, where you have to do everything you can to preserve an already-fragile friendship. 

No. Now, you can take your first step forward with Jimin by your side. 

“Cheers!” Everyone shouts. 

“Cheers,” Jimin says to you, pulling you in for a quick little kiss, and no matter how hot the campfire burns Jimin’s lips upon yours will always be what warms you from within. “Cheers to us.”

You grin against his lips, pressing back because you can never get enough, and you murmur, “Cheers to us.”

“Hey! Jungkook!” Seokjin shouts right as Jungkook hops into his car. “When we text you in the group chat you better fucking respond!”

“I will, I will!” Jungkook screams back, voice so loud you can hear it despite the fact that all of his windows are rolled up. 

“No, he won’t,” Yoongi deadpans as he passes you by, duffel bags hanging from his shoulders. “You know he won’t.”

“He never does,” you agree. Getting a text from him is almost as impossible as winning the lottery. “I’ll call you, alright? I know you don’t really like texting, either.”

“Talking is just easier,” he says with a nod. “I’m looking forward to it. Call me whenever you need me.”

“I will,” you promise, watching as Yoongi bids you one final goodbye before heading to his own ride. He plops his bags into the trunk of Namjoon’s car before getting into the passenger seat. Namjoon pushes his head out of the window to wave, smiling wildly at you as he starts the car. You grin, waving back, and watch him, Yoongi, and Jungkook, disappear down the mountain. 

“You’re next, right?” 

You whip around to find Jimin standing behind you, a frisbee in one hand and a suitcase in the other. He won’t be leaving for another couple of hours, when Taehyung’s finally ready to go. They live close to each other so they figured they’d save money by splitting an Uber, which will be waiting for them at the bottom of the mountain.

“Yeah, gotta get back before college starts,” you say, dropping your bags at your feet. “But we’ll see each other before then, right?”

Jimin and you attend universities on opposite sides of the country. Loving each other is the easy part. Staying in love is what will challenge you. 

“Of course,” he promises. “I’ll visit whenever I can. And I’ll come see you on all my breaks during the semester, too. You and Jungkook.”

“Good, you better,” you say, and you pull him in for a bruising hug because you know that this will be the last time for a while. Not a long while, but a while, and even if you have committed every slope of his figure, every inch of his face to memory, you still have to remember how warm he is when you hold him, how soft his lips are when they touch yours. Those things… those are new. “I’ll miss you.”

“I’ll see you soon,” he assures you. “But I’ll miss you too.”

Several feet away, Hoseok honks the horn of your car to let you know that you’re all ready to go.

“I’ll call you when I’m home, okay?” You promise, pulling him in for another hug, one last time, feeling this strange desperation rush through you, like you won’t see him for weeks and this is all you’ll have left. “Isn’t it weird? You’re right here and I miss you already.”

“We’ll see each other again before you know it,” he says, pressing his lips to yours in a sweet, quick kiss. No matter how many times he does it still sends sparks shooting through your veins, but you suppose that that’s just another thing you’ll have to remember. When you part, he notices your worry, eyes softening at the sight. “Hey,” he says, lifting your chin up so you look at him. “I love you.”

You crack a smile. “I love you, too.” 

It’s not a goodbye. 

It’s an until I see you again.

You grab your duffel bags and hike them over your shoulder, footsteps heavy and weighted as you slowly make your way towards your car. Every four steps or so, you turn back just to make sure that Jimin’s still there, and sure enough, he’s watching you, this lopsided, love-drunk smile lacing his features. 

You place your bags in the backseat of your car before heading to the driver’s side, hand on the handle as you look up one final time. 

There Jimin stands in the middle of the clearing, the warm afternoon sun bathing him in a halo. There he stands, beautiful, and kind, and lovely, and in love. And you are so in love. You wave. He waves back.

And you know that you two will be alright. 

You jump into your car and tug the door shut behind you, keys in the ignition, engine revving, and you sigh, content and feeling confident in life. You peer into the rearview mirror to see Taehyung running up to Jimin, wrapping an arm around his shoulder and waving goodbye to you. You lift your hand up in response, watch as they bid you farewell as you creep towards the slope down the mountain. 

As you drive down the mountain, you take a deep breath, inhaling the fresh summer air, and you smile. 

↳ links are broken, but don’t forget to message me with any thoughts or feedback!

[chaotic-carnifex]

I am so intrigued by blaseball what is this?

Oh god how do you explain blaseball, especially with how much more complicated it recently got

So, it's a... baseball simulation. It's very simple, all you really know are the names of the players, the teams, the players' batting, defense & pitching stats (and vibes, which are definitely real) and there's a little box of text during live games that tells you the plays being made

However, blaseball is essentially baseball with really weird extra rules. The teams play in weather conditions such as Sun 2, Coffee, Solar Eclipse, Peanuts, Flooding etc. Sometimes a rogue umpire incinerates a player during a solar eclipse, players can swallow stray peanuts and may have an allergic reactions, the weather just has really weird effects.

Also the plane of existence blaseball is played on has recently begun sinking into the immateria which means sometimes players are attacked by consumers.

Oh, and a dead player once just wandered out of the afterlife (the Hall of Flame) just 'cause they could, to the annoyance of everyone involved bc they are terrible (I love them).

It's confusing. There was a battle between a peanut god and a giant squid several seasons back. Spacetime broke at one point, resulting in the Grand Unslam and unlimited Los Angeleese (is that the plural of Los Angeles??). A Hellmouth opened under Moab, swallowing it whole and resulting in the Moab Sunbeams being renamed the Hellmouth Sunbeams. You get used to it.

The fun part, though, is the community:

Every week, elections are held, in which YOU can vote and then on Sunday, decrees and wills are passed and blessings are doled out according to the results, all of which affect the game - decrees literally change/add rules, while wills&blessings generally benefit the teams that vote for them in some way.

Also, since nothing is actually known about the players, people get to just make things up! If you come up with a particularly fun headcanon, it becomes widely adopted.

Anyway, I literally cannot explain the entire thing in a post, it's simply impossible. Just... go have a look. Maybe watch some youtube videos on it. I could maybe explain it somewhat out loud, given the chance, but even that I think would take. A while. And there'd be so many questions (which is actually one of the reasons that I think explaining Blaseball out loud works better, so ppl can interrupt like 'okay but what does that MEAN')

Just head on over to Blaseball.com if you wanna join the insanity

[katytheinspiredworkaholic]

Correspondence, Chapter 04

Pairing: HotchReid

Summary:  An AU where Reid never joined the FBI, but got roped into consulting for the LA field office while working and teaching at Caltech. Hotch gets his email referred from a fellow agent, and they start to work on cases together -- until they start talking on a regular basis. Regular becomes frequent, frequent becomes constant. They know nothing about each other, but they don't really mind.

Rating: Mature/Explicit (eventually)

Chapter CW/notes: Action-y in that there is offscreen violence and peril, injuries, talk of surgery and symptoms/effects of medical grade narcotics (morphine), more on that big ol’ age difference. Side notes: Agent Anderson of the L.A. field office has no relation to Agent Anderson of Quantico, VA, because Agent Anderson of the BAU is a national treasure. (I’m considering going back and renaming the OC, but as of right now this is the last we hear of him for a while). And I know no one really pays attention to them, but the time stamps on the texts match the time zone of the scene setting. Set in season 6, self beta’d.

Word Count: 8893

Masterpost Link

Ao3 Link

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Chapter 04

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Late September 2010

--

Spencer Reid wakes up to the early grey morning two weeks later, a perpetual haze shrouding his room long before his alarm was supposed to rouse him. He reaches blindly, blearing eyed and checks his phone for what feels like the hundredth time, only to find no messages waiting for him. A terrible, horrid feeling has been clawing at his chest and throat the longer it gets -- the more time that passes -- and he still hasn’t heard from Hotch. 

They’ve been messaging each other near constantly for months now, and it only seemed to get more intense after that fateful talk at the beginning of September. Where Hotch finally revealed he’d thought Spencer was much older than him, and not the other way around. Spencer had set him straight, as much as he could, and even that had been nerve-wracking to say the least. The two men were crossing into a territory neither really wanted to put a label on, and Spencer was both afraid of it and excited by it. Of what it could mean, and how long it could last, but he’d thought he’d had time to figure out a solution to his inadvertent secrecy.

Then, Hotch began working a case in Delaware two days ago. 

It seemed like a textbook unsub; maybe a little aggressive with anti-establishment overtones, but nothing they couldn’t handle. Nothing the BAU hasn’t seen before. They’d been closing in on the suspect, no location yet but some prospects that needed checking out, and the last Spencer had heard from Hotch…

It had been lunchtime for him, and midafternoon for the older man. The exchange hadn’t been anything of consequence, just their usual, easy correspondence. Hotch was going to check out that lead they’d spoken of, Spencer had a budget meeting as soon as he was done eating in the middle of his office hours, and they had a plan to play chess online that night. Hotch is still terrible at it, but he keeps coming back no matter how thoroughly Spencer wipes the floor with him. Now, sometimes they just forget about the game entirely after the first few minutes. It makes him smile each and every time, soft and fond and lighting a warmth inside him Spencer has… never felt before. 

Then Hotch hadn’t messaged him the rest of the night.

Hadn’t shown up online to play chess.

Hadn’t texted him goodnight, or even sent him an update on the case. 

Nothing in their conversations warranted such ostracization, and although Spencer has been ‘ghosted’ before (as his doctoral students would say) he knows Hotch would never do that. Not after everything, the history they’ve built the past months -- leaving nothing but the dread to sink in and spread like a stain.

All night, he imagines the worst.

By morning, he all but expects it.

--

[]9/22, 18:59[] Are you alright? Did something happen with the case?

[]9/22, 19:10[] If you were that scared of losing at chess, I can also beat you at online poker instead.

[]9/22, 19:30[] I’d suggest scrabble but that’s honestly not fair to you.

[]9/22, 21:55[] Hotch? 

[]9/22, 22:30[] I’m assuming that lead panned out, and you caught your unsub and are neck deep in interrogation.

[]9/22, 22:36[] I don’t want to imagine anything else, so that’s what I will picture.

[]9/23, 00:06[] Hotch please answer me. 

[]9/23, 05:32[] Please be okay.

--

Spencer arrives at Caltech looking a little more of a mess than usual. More than most are used to seeing him, at least, and it causes a few second glances from students he passes and other faculty -- but he really can’t find it in himself to care, this morning. His unruly curls, getting longer again, falling into his face and over his ears, are frizzy in their unkemptness. Bags under his eyes, normal, but he’s settled for glasses instead of his contacts. He has a spare pair in his desk, he’ll have to change them before class. His glasses somehow always make him look even younger. A mystery that boggles the mind, because once he had grown into his face a few years ago (around 26 or 27, close enough he had worried he would forever be cursed with a ‘baby face’) Spencer had thought he would finally be getting away from that. 

And yet, square jaw and ‘grandpa’ glasses and thin frame towering just over six feet did nothing in the slightest to aid him. Certainly not stopping a man outside the campus coffee shop from shouting “Watch where you’re going, kid!” as he near barrels over him on the sidewalk. Not his sweater vest or half suits, attire straight out of a 1940’s noir film (he’d even sported a vintage inspired undercut with his waves combed over for a while there, too. Way too much upkeep, as nice as it looked). Nothing makes him any more grown up in the eyes of the unsuspecting world, than he’d been without his five doctorates and board of director’s seat. No matter what he tried, it seems.

This has been a subliminal thing for years, something Spencer always said didn’t bother him in the slightest. And for a long time he didn’t care one way or the other, he just kept getting more degrees. All his life Spencer has been ‘too young’, always been ‘kid’ or ‘sport’ or ‘tiger’, even when running quantum physics equations in his head. And it didn’t matter. Not with his credentials and accomplishments and everything he now has to his name.

Until Hotch.

Now, Spencer cares.

Notices, even through his haze of worry and sleeplessness, how on the street it’s “Watch it, kid!” and fifteen yards later it’s “Good morning, Dr. Reid” as he steps into the Physics building where everyone knows him on sight. Knows him, and what he’s capable of. 

What if when Hotch met him all he saw was… another kid? 

If they ever met.

“Whoa, rough night Dr. Reid?” 

“Yes, you could say that,” he mumbles out as he signs in and scans his ID card, taking the stack of mail that the desk attendant hands him. But stops before he gets too far from the desk, backtracking. “Hey, have you watched the news this morning? Did anything show up about New England or Delaware?”

“Not that I saw, Dr. Reid,” she says in confusion, looking up from where she had been texting on her phone. “Just a whole lot of coverage on the shitshow at capital hill, as usual. Oh, and more depressing reports about the earthquake clean-up in New Zealand.” 

Of course, why would there be a news story about a killer in Delaware here in California. He’d have to look up everything online himself. 

“Thanks anyway, Carla.”

“No problem, Dr. Reid.”

-

Spencer spends way too long online that morning, searching for anything about the case Hotch and his team are working. He usually prefers paper copies of news media, at first barely knowing where to begin, but he falls into a wormhole of news outlets and local Delaware station websites, reading the thousands of webpages faster than he can scroll and click through them. But he can’t find anything pointing to a disturbance related to the case. There's nothing about a raid, or a shooting, or even an arrest -- which could all just be a part of the ongoing media blackout -- but it also does nothing to stop him from panicking. Spencer gives up after an hour, and diverts to other resources. Ones with a direct line to Hotch. 

With a drafted email pulled up to Ms. Penelope Garcia, the BAU's personal tech analyst, he ponders how to... even word this without it sounding too personal. Too much like he and Hotch have more than just a working relationship.

Because they do. They have... something.

Something that gives him fluttering sensations in his stomach, makes him check his phone constantly, and react to even the slightest chime similar to his text tone. Makes him smile when he sees Hotch's name on his notifications, in his email inbox, makes him message the man in the middle of the day at the most random thoughts. Just because he wants to make him laugh.

[]8/21, 15:36[] You're going to get me in trouble.

[]8/21, 15:38[] You didn’t laugh in front of your team, did you? The scandal.

[]8/21, 15:42[] I'm at a crime scene. There's a dead body in front of me.

[]8/21, 15:43[] Then why are you checking your phone?

[]8/21, 15:45[] You know why.

But that’s not something that is shared with the rest of the team, he’s sure. So he should be careful how he words his email, lest Ms. Garcia realize that Spencer isn’t asking purely as a colleague. 

Surely they know he has friends, though?

Chewing his lip, Spencer types out a brief email asking if Agent Hotchner is feeling well since he missed an appointment the night before and hasn’t been returning his calls. It’s a phrase he’s used often, so it comes naturally to Spencer as he types it out, and he realizes… he hasn’t called. He’s sent a dozen text messages, but not a phone call. Never a phone call. That was against the rules, the unspoken ones that always kept this friendship easy and free-flowing and evolving into something more.

But this feels like the closest to an emergency they’ve ever encountered before.  

He looks to his phone beside him on his desk, and tries to fight back the dueling forms of panic clawing at his chest. Listed in bullet points behind his eyes. Panic that Hotch might not answer, panic what that means for the man he’s been… becoming more and more inclined to than any other person he’s met in so long. Panic if he does answer, breaking that barrier of written words to spoken, and the opportunity to hear Hotch’s voice. But he would also hear Spencer’s, and then there would be no hiding just how… how young he really is. He still didn’t have a plan for that, wracking his overworked brain day and night for a way to incorporate the information into a conversation that wouldn’t stop everything in its tracks. 

But his phone is in his hand before he can stop himself, Hotch’s contact pulled up and his thumb hovering over the phone number with baited breath. 

Was he really going to do this?

He presses the touch screen and can hear the line connecting, the dial tone ring even before he gets the phone up to his ear and waits. It rings, and rings, and rings a fourth time -- before clicking over to voicemail. And Spencer’s hyper-fast thought processes fail him as he realizes far too late that he’s going to hear Hotch’s voice for the first time, anyway. Frozen in a panic, unsure if he wants to or if that had been something he wanted them to do together that the seconds slip by like water through his fingers and suddenly it’s too late.

“You’ve reached the voicemail box of -- (703)-567-8790 -- this caller is not available. Please leave a message after the tone--”

It’s an automated, female voice that rattles off the numbers and generic call back message, and Spencer hangs up before it can begin recording him. Exhaling a shaky breath, relief a flash flood on his nerves that nothing had been ruined between him and Hotch thanks to an ill-timed phone call. 

He keeps the momentum going without much thought, and adjusts his email to Ms. Garcia before sending it. 

It feels so understated, and yet over dramatic the more he thinks about it. The more he reads it.

.

Please let me know of his well-being.

.

God, no wonder Hotch thought he was in his 60’s. 

But Spencer has to keep the façade up, for now, not give away anything he doesn’t want to just because the emotional part of his brain is running rampant over the rational one. There are… many explanations as to why Hotch isn’t answering him. His gut feeling aside, he doesn’t need to be panicking like this. The world is still turning, he still has work to do, so Spencer tries to gather himself into some semblance of order and preps to talk to his doctoral students within the hour.

--

His morning routine progresses as usual, as if nothing at all is wrong with the world. Dr. Reid has his mandatory round up with his doctoral candidates going over thesis and dissertation parameters, class lecture schedules, updates, the works. Like morning announcements, but he requires them all to be there and to listen, and they all show up. Everyone knows of Spencer’s eidetic memory. He will certainly not forget a single date or schedule change, and he expects his students to not forget as well. 

But this morning Spencer is fully distracted, his mind elsewhere, somewhere in the state of Delaware with an agent who may or may not be in danger. Because Spencer cannot shake the feeling that something is wrong. It almost seems more like a fact than a feeling. The juxtaposition of his daily routine and this unfounded worry throws him entirely off kilter, and all of his students seem to know right away. 

Then, his distraction reaches its peak when his email pings, right in the middle of his department announcements. A response from Ms. Garcia of Quantico, VA flashing across his laptop screen. Spencer’s eyes skim the preview sentence in the pop-up box, and his voice trails off as his mind… whirls. 

.

Dr. Reid, I’m sorry to tell you I don’t know when Hotch will be available again. There was an incident, and he’s still in surg-

.

Surgery.

Surgery.

That vice-like grip of worry that has taken hold of him since last night tightens further, to the point Spencer can’t breathe. Hotch is in surgery, Hotch is hurt, and if he hasn’t been answering his phone since last night -- or even late yesterday afternoon -- it was not a minor thing.

Hotch is hurt. 

She doesn’t know when he will be--

If he will be --

“Dr. Reid? Are you okay?”

“I--” he’s still looking at the email pop-up box, and is clicking on it before he can stop himself. Immediately disconnecting his laptop from the projector as his email loads there. It takes him a fraction of a second to read the email. “I’m sorry, an emergency just came up. Kimmy, finish reading off the schedule for me?” He doesn’t even wait until she answers him, just picks up his laptop and retreats to his office as fast as his long legs will carry him.

.

--surgery and we’re still waiting on word. I know you 2 talk on the reg so I’ll keep you posted. 

Fret not, genius professor, our fearless leader has been through much worse than this.

.

She’s using informal speech patterns, which she has never done before. It bleeds her nervousness, and worries Spencer even more. Teetering on the edge of panic. Ms. Garcia also revealed she knows he and Hotch talk, but surprisingly that doesn’t have the effect he thought it would on his already rattled nerves. Instead, any and all reservations fall away as he types out a response much in the same way he and Hotch had started their friendship all those months ago.

.

Please, is there anything you are allowed to tell me about the case or his condition? We --

.

Spencer pauses, bites his lip as he considers crossing this boundary into the uncomfortable unknown, and then thinks about Hotch on a hospital operating table three thousand miles away.

“Screw it,” he mutters and continues to type.

.

--We’ve become good friends and I’m very worried.

.

The reply is almost immediate.

.

That makes 2 of us, boy wonder, but I’m already hacked into the hospital records database and Prentiss is in the waiting room for any immediate actions.

I’m sending you the case files and the incident report from last night. Maybe you can see some shiz we can’t b/c the bossman is tough but he’s been in surgery a long time. 

.

Of course, whatever he can do to help. Spencer’s heavy heart-beat triples in his chest as pulls up the files and immediately prints them out so he can read through them faster. Utilizing anything and everything he can do to aid the BAU team, and whatever Hotch has gotten himself into. But then, his mind sticks on something from the email. Boy Wonder. It stalls his hands mid-movement.

Ms. Garcia knows how young he is.

She must have done a background check on him, that would make sense since he’s been consulting so much lately. But why would Garcia know his age, and not Hotch? Wouldn’t she send the files to him directly? Had Hotch really known, all along?

Or did she do it on her own, and not tell him? Assuming her boss already knew everything about him. It’s too many questions and possibilities and they are interfering with what’s most important right now. Best to get it out of the way, no time to be indirect about it.

.

Ms. Garcia, did you update my dossier with the bureau after you ran my background check?

.

If you’re referring to why Hotch seems to think you’re rocking the senior discount at restaurants and not still getting carded for beer, then no I didn’t update it. I’m very anti-gov files having every detail of our lives in them, that’s what   I’m for, and I figured there was a reason he didn’t know. Your secret is safe with me, sugar bean.

.

Spencer hadn’t meant for it to be a secret at all, it just happened that way. 

The real reason is Agent Anderson of the LA field office is a dick, with a bully streak he never outgrew after high school, and didn’t bother filling out a full file on him the first time Spencer consulted for the FBI. Then, he couldn’t be bothered to update it when his consultations became more than a one time thing.

But that was all in the past now, and Spencer can’t even be upset about it. Because now he has Hotch.

.

Thank you, Ms. Garcia. I’ll let you know my findings soon.

.

He skims the file quickly, pulling information out at lightning speed. It appears a very straight-forward case. As straight-forward as a murderous sociopath can be, anyway. Very anti-establishment, like he and Hotch had discussed the previous day, aiming for specified targets that devolved to anyone in a uniform. Anyone who appears too official, or labels as official. 

It’s easy to see, now, why the unsub attacked Hotch instead of running from him. He practically served himself up on a silver platter. But there’s something about the kills that’s bothering Spencer. The knife wounds, bludgeoning, even the gunshots during the first murders when the unsub still hesitated -- it’s all overkill. Rage. Every single target has died from massive internal bleeding, M.E. reports all label the knife wounds and beatings as the cause. But the amount of blood left over, measured during autopsy, doesn’t add up. They bled too much. No wounds indicating intentional bleeding occurred, and the tox screens are all clean. 

Except, every victim’s hospital records show elevated potassium rates. Spencer’s hands, skimming down each and every page quick as they can, stop on a dime as his gaze zero in on the information. 

“Oh, God,” Spencer whispers, quiet and horrified. “--Hotch.”

There’s no time for email.

He picks up his phone, goes to an older email that has full contact details in the footer, and dials Ms. Garcia’s direct line in Quantico.

“Speak, and behold greatness.”

“Ms. Garcia, it’s Dr. Reid,” Spencer says, and his tone and quickened speech patterns gives way to his panic.

“Dr-- Dr.  Reid?” 

“Yes, quick there’s no time. Do you have Hotch’s hospital records in front of you still?” 

“Yes,” Garcia says, her voice a musical thing even in it’s breathless reaction to his heightened state of haste. “Updated every two minutes.”

“Is his potassium elevated?”

Some quick typing of keys that move faster than even he could ever hope to type. “...Yes.”

God. “Okay, okay I need you to call the hospital right now,” Spencer says in a spiel that all sounds like one word. “Whatever you have to do, he needs Sodium Polystyrene Sulfonate as soon as possible, to counteract the chemical imbalance or he’s going to go into kidney failure and bleed out.” 

There’s more typing going on and Ms. Garcia’s breathing has gone a little labored.

“Alright, alright I’m getting patched through. What else can you tell me?”

“I think he’s been dosed with something called an XG Compound, either Eastman or Zhao I have to look up the specific components and chemist. But they are a series of banned, experimental military-grade drugs that suffer effects of thinning the blood, that’s why they can’t stop the bleeding around his stab wounds and old scar tissue.” Hotch’s old wounds from Foyet would only exacerbate the condition, once it reached the kidney failure stage, but up until then the intrusions of hardened tissue is the only reason his abdominal cavity hasn’t been flooded with blood and drowned out his other organs. 

“Okay, okay I’m through, I’m keeping you on the line. Stand by-- ” then she clicks over and he’s left with a pulsating silence. Nothing remaining but continuing his work, and hoping he’d called in time. Hoping that Hotch will be alright.

--

Spencer is digging through his floor to ceiling bookshelves for the biology book on airborne pathogens given to him by a visiting Professor two years ago and he is hating himself for never cracking it in that moment. It’s nearly the last book he gets a hand on, because of course it is, and he makes it a third of the way through the book before Garcia is back on the line. The phone on the floor beside him and just barely within reach. 

“You literal genius, I could kiss you,” Garcia tells him in what can only be overstated relief, and Spencer snatches up his phone with a very undignified scramble. “They’ve had to do two transfusions on him and are prepping a third, but you were right he’s been dosed with that XG compound.”

“He’s going to be okay?” Spencer asks, still cross-legged on his office floor surrounded by books and holding his phone to his ear like a lifeline.

“Yes, yes my dear he’s going to be alright. They think. He’s not out of the woods yet and the surgery is still going on, but he -- he would have died within the next hour if you hadn’t found out what was wrong.”

Spencer’s heart is in his throat, her words doing the exact opposite of reassuring him. Hotch had been that close to dying, to being forever out of reach, because Spencer had been too scared to pick up the phone. 

“I should have called sooner,” he says, so quiet even someone in the room wouldn’t have heard him correctly. “I knew something was wrong.”

“Oh no, sugar don’t think like that. You just saved his life,” she pauses, like she wants to say something else, but diverts to an adjacent topic. “How did you know?”

“Autopsy reports. There wasn’t enough blood left in the bodies, they bled out too quickly. Then I saw the elevated Potassium,” he murmurs it all, rattled off without really thinking about it.

“And you just… knew all of that, without looking anything up?”

“That’s basically what I do. The only reason anyone calls me,” Spencer laughs but it holds no humor. “I know too much, make connections, and drink too much coffee.” 

“You drink and know things, oh God I hope you get that reference because you’re getting a coffee mug.”

Spencer laughs a little, despite the situation, and feels… lighter, somehow, even with the worry still plaguing him. Caught up in his chest like a bad cold. 

“I’m reading this textbook on airborne pathogens, I have a hunch, and I’ll send you anything I find that can help with the case,” Spencer continues, his voice not so heavy for a moment. “Just… tell me when he’s out of surgery? Keep me posted?”

“Of course, honey, you’ll be my first message,” Ms. Garcia assures him, but then she pauses again -- and he almost hangs up because it feels too anticipatory. “You should tell him, B.T.Dubs.”

Spencer hesitates more than is probably necessary.

“... I don’t know what good that will do,” he admits, quiet and unsure. “I’m not -- I’m not ready for this to be over.”

“You’re not that young, honey. Does he know you like him?”

“Mmhmm,” Spencer makes a nervous, affirmative sound. “And… he likes me, or who he thinks I am.”

“Don’t write him off just yet, Doc, let him speak for himself when he wakes up,”  Ms. Garcia all but scolds him, in as gentle a way as possible and Spencer appreciates that, at least. 

“--I’ll think about it.” 

--

Not long after Spencer finds what he’s looking for: military grade poisons that were banned for causing adverse effects, listed and categorized by chemist and agency. It is the Eastman compound, originated during the first invasion of Afghanistan. Their unsub has prolonged exposure, Spencer is sure, and that will narrow down the suspect pool immensely.

After he sends the information to Ms. Garcia, Spencer looks to his phone once more, where there is a block of text all from him himself in his correspondence with Hotch. Begging him to be alright, to answer him, and now that he knows that the man has a fighting chance -- or as much of one as he will be able to have, with where advanced medicine resides in the current conjecture of time -- there really isn’t much he can do now. But hope. And wait. And pray.

Except Spencer doesn’t believe in prayer, or God, or anything that might hear him. The only thing he really believes in is science, and facts, and none of that is very helpful to him right now. Except maybe the coincidental balance of the universe, in a theoretical physics sense, and unexplained phenomenon that have an equal and spatial balance to it. Anything with the descriptor ‘unexplained’ always draws him in like a moth to flame, and he knows he can typically find a semblance of comfort in the way his brain constantly connects dots and far off specks of information that not everyone can see at first glance. Constellations in the sky. But only when he has someone to tell it to, that even pretends to listen for a moment, and for a long while now… Hotch has been that someone. Hotch always listens to him.

Before he knows it, he’s typing into the text box once more --

[]9/23, 11:10[] You’re in surgery still, but Ms. Garcia has confirmed the treatments are working and they are able to actually repair the damage instead of treading water like they have been the past ten hours. I’ve had her personally in contact with the doctors and surgical staff, and all they’ve been able to tell us is to let them work and just pray for you.

[]9/23, 11:13[] Which is such an odd thing; men of science telling people to pray like the outcome of a surgery isn’t in their hands, but some theoretical astronomical entity. I know it’s probably just a ‘bedside-manner’ tactic, but it doesn’t help me in the slightest so it just irks me instead.

[]9/23, 11:15[] I don’t believe in prayer -- a shock, I’m sure -- but I do believe in the phenomenon of universal affirmation. It’s an interesting trend in history and spans cultures where if someone has something awaiting them, to live for, even if they are unaware of it… they will fight harder to cling to life. 

[]9/23, 11:18[] But I also know you will fight tooth and nail for Jack, and for your team that you treat like family, and maybe even me. I’d like to hope I’m included in that, and no amount of books or IQ points can make me think of something to contribute to help you keep fighting.

[]9/23, 11:19[] Just please keep fighting. Come back. And if I come up with something to entice you… I’ll let you know.

It eases a lot of the tension in his chest, talking to Hotch like this -- even if he’s just talking at him, in a place where he might never know what Spencer has had to say. But he can hope. Hope that Hotch will wake up and have thirty missed messages and see they are all from Spencer and it will make him smile. 

Spencer would give anything to see him smile, and he allows himself to hope that one day... he might get to. 

He might as well, while he’s sitting there hopelessly hoping for things beyond his control. 

Come back to me.

Spencer almost types it out, can see it in the text window though he hasn’t pressed a single letter, and closes his phone before he can. Pressing it to his mouth and closing his eyes and just… 

Hoping.

--

The hours roll over into the afternoon, and there’s still no word. 

Spencer has spent the majority of the day messaging Ms. Garcia, who has had no information beyond trivial updates here and there and Spencer has read more about surgical procedures and practices than he has in his entire life. Even raided the biology department’s library, surrounding himself with the comfort of books and files and filled his head with the soothing monotony of medical terms and safety protocols. 

But once noon has come and gone he finds himself staring into the bookshelves across from where he sits on the floor, among stacks of textbooks, with an epiphany trying to make itself known to him. Despite his every attempt to ignore it. 

His phone is back in his hand, there’s an email correspondence from Ms. Garcia that only briefly says Still nothing. And that makes up Spencer’s mind. 

[]9/23, 12:49[] I’ve thought of something.

What he types next makes it hard to breathe, his heart lodged in his throat, and it all comes flowing out of him much like before. His fingers keep moving, his emotional part of his brain steam-rolls over the rational one, and then he’s done and he’s tacked on six extra messages and Spencer has to put his phone away before he rereads it beyond what is deemed healthy or sane. 

Because he’s done what he could, and all he can do is believe that will be enough to… subliminally keep Hotch fighting. The day is only half over, and Spencer feels like he hasn’t slept in a week. 

It would be hours before he got the message that would send relief through his spine like a shot of Novocain. Just three words from Ms. Garcia, sent in haste in a text instead of an email.

{}9/23, 14:58{} He’s in recovery.

--

Hotch wakes up just barely the first time, the room spinning and hit with that familiar smell of anesthesia he can always taste as it fills his senses, before he slips back under. 

The second time is to a small pencil light being flashed in his eyes, staccato movements meant to test his pupil reactions, and an older woman in nurse’s scrubs saying his name and calling to him. He hums an affirmative, even though he isn’t fully returned to a working state of mind. Instinct, more than clarity.

“Welcome back, Agent Hotchner.”

“About damn time,” he hears Prentiss say from somewhere across the room. Probably leaning the wall, if that faux drone is anything to go by. The nurse gives her a look but his agent isn’t even fazed by it, as far as Hotch can see. It takes him a moment for his eyes to adjust that far. But he knows the look well enough he doesn’t actually have to see it. 

“Where is everyone? Is anyone else hurt?” Hotch can feel the words form on his tongue, droned out in a haze, his mind slowly coming back to him. 

“Good to see you, too, boss,” Prentiss says in mild exacerbation, coming up to the side of his bed but not taking a seat. She must have been waiting a long time, her whole stance jittery just like after long flights on cases. “Everyone is fine, you’re the only one that got into a knife fight with an unsub who’s into biological warfare.” Hotch blinks at her, trying to make her words make sense without asking it of her. He remembers going to a warehouse to follow a lead, but not much else after that. It’s coming back too slowly to keep up with her. Prentiss just sighs, and repeats herself. “Everyone is fine.” 

She regales him with a play by play, his own memories appearing like raindrops on a windshield to accompany her commentary. Slowly beginning to form a picture of what had happened. He’d been stabbed before, more than he cares to think about, and he’s been dosed with military-grade drugs before as well -- but never both at the same time. No wonder he feels like he’s been hit by a truck.

“You’re lucky to be alive, honestly,” she points out, hip resting against the plastic side panels of his hospital bed. 

“Yeah, I’m gathering that.”

“And your phone has been blowing up like crazy.” 

Hotch is finally able to sit up enough and see straight without his vision swimming, to find that his agent does indeed have his cell phone in her hands. 

“What?”

“Yeah, eight missed calls and three voicemails, and--” she squints at the screen before looking at him in astonished confusion, “eighty-seven missed text messages, from a whole bunch of people. I’m not reading through all of them. I didn’t know you were that popular.” 

“I’m the Unit Chief, popularity has nothing to do with it,” Hotch deadpans, more himself. Wanting to reach for his phone but his arms are still dealing with pins and needles sensations, sluggish to lift and his fingers uncooperative. “Who called me eight times?”

“Let’s see,” she unlocks his phone -- somehow, god damn it Prentiss -- and scrolls through his notifications. “Two calls from Jessica, one from me, three from Strauss (Jesus), one from Dr. Reid, and one from Garcia. It doesn’t say who the voicemails are from.”

Hotch suddenly feels much more alert, his heart rate monitor picking up but he does his best not to draw attention to it, instead looking up at Prentiss as carefully guarded as he ever is. 

“Dr. Reid called?” he tries to keep his voice even, and unaffected, but the aftereffects of the drugs in his system leave a little more hitch in his voice than he would have liked. 

“Yeah, he’s been talking to Garcia,” Prentiss says without much comment, still scrolling through his phone and making Hotch a little more than nervous. “Busted the case wide open, and saved your life while he was at it. We never would have known you were dosed with something if he hadn’t figured it out. Think you owe that old man a fruit basket.”

“Can I have my phone back?” 

“Don’t think you’re supposed to have it,” she says without looking up, still scrolling through his notifications. “Lots of junk e-mail…”

“One of those voicemails is probably Jack, I should call and let them know I’m alright,” Hotch tries to reason with her.

“He and Jess are already on their way up, they’ll land in an hour,” Prentiss tells him, but looks over her shoulder for that nurse as she makes to hand Hotch his phone anyway. Still hesitant despite her predilections to breaking every rule she can get away with.

“I still want it back,” Hotch insists, regretting saying it as soon as he does.

It catches Prentiss’ attention a little too sharply. “...why?” But at Hotch’s steady stare and solid silence, unwavering like he hadn’t just been in surgery for hours on end, she finally relents and hands it over, still giving him a suspicious look. 

“It’s important,” he finally admits, when she doesn’t stop staring for a good couple of minutes. Those perfectly shaped eyebrows raise near to her hairline, the profiler in her connecting more dots than should be humanly possible. 

A small smile teases her lips, though not fully forming there. “Now I wish I’d read them.” 

Hotch just gives her a reprimanding look of his own, but it’s short lived.

“Thank you, for staying.”

“Wouldn’t miss it,” Prentiss assures him, her smile going softer. “I’ll leave you to your mystery woman.” A beat, another raised eyebrow. “Person.” A knowing look, but then she exits and Hotch is able to look at his phone at his own discretion. 

- 

Hotch goes through the text messages with a brief glance; there’s so many of them. Other agents and agencies, his team in a group chat Garcia had started, Jessica left fifteen before someone got a hold of her, and Jack’s school sending reminders about soccer and parent teacher conferences. 

But 39 are from Spencer, and his heart constricts in his chest at the worry he must have caused the man. Aches next to the scars on his chest and the blood that doesn’t belong to him in his veins. And somewhere in the recesses of his mind, it’s coupled with a torturous feeling of longing. Even subtle jealousy, because even half drugged out of his mind Hotch hadn’t missed the precise word choices Prentiss used. Garcia has been talking to Spencer -- talking. 

Garcia got to hear him.

She talked to Spencer, when he still hadn’t, because of some unspoken rule Hotch isn’t even sure when they decided upon. He still knew so little about the man, and Spencer’s voice could tell him so much with just a few words. He could fill volumes with what he would learn from just a single message --

Without much further thought, Hotch pulls up his voice mail. Listens to the automated voices and the three messages there. None are from Spencer, although his heart had beat a little harder in anticipation -- enough his heart monitor beeped audibly next to him. Embarrassing as that was, like a lovestruck teenager. He’d glared at it and centered his breathing until his heart rate slowed back down, not wanting to alert the nurses station. Two of the voicemails are from Jessica’s phone, one of her worried out of her mind, and the other of Jack telling him they are coming to see him and he hopes he feels better soon. Just listening to his son speak more strongly than his aunt had or anyone else should in his situation, telling his daddy he loves him while the sounds of a commercial airline filter through the background, makes Hotch want to smile and sob all at once.

The last voicemail is from Garcia, telling him a similar story to what Prentiss had earlier, but with a bit more detail on her end. How ‘Dr. Reid’ called her out of the blue, because there had been no time for his usual emails, and gave them the information that saved his life. He’d been working the case diligently, ever since, and was checking up on him a lot. More than a lot. ‘Let him know you’re okay, when you wake up and get this. The poor guy is worried sick, and my updates only give him so much comfort.’

Spencer had actually called Garcia, when he hasn’t physically spoken to anyone in Quantico the entire time he’s consulted for them, just to save a few precious seconds to relay what he’d found. He’d even broken their rule, probably before hand, and called Hotch -- just to make sure he was okay. Hadn’t stopped working to help, the moment he found out he wasn’t.

It’s a strange thought, that if not for Spencer -- Hotch would be dead. That Jack would be flying up here for a very different reason. 

Hotch switches over to the text messages with a lump in his throat. Not at all prepared, emotionally, but needing to know.

The 39 messages start from the night before, when they were supposed to have had their usual online chess date. They range from playful banter, teasing edged in worry, and escalate to panic as the night wears on. Anxious worry bleeding through the single sentences, building and building until that lump in his throat feels like it might block off all air soon. 

Please be okay.

God, that alone starts to set a tone -- and reveals something Hotch hadn’t expected to find. Those three words give way to his speech pathology training, and all indicate that Spencer is… very likely younger than he’d originally thought. Some of Hotch’s assumptions might be close, even the teasing ones he’d only said because he’d been sure they were wrong. The other man is obviously beyond worried about him, as well. Petrified, despite knowing the risks of his job. They had become so close the past few months, were most definitely past the flirting stage and into something so tentative and wonderful Hotch can barely believe it some days. But they had never talked about this, about the possibility that Hotch might walk into a situation one day and not walk back out of it. 

Spencer’s messages soon give way to him just… talking at Hotch. Relaying what was happening, philosophical rants meant to ease his own mind and Hotch finds himself smiling softly at the man’s constant stream of thought, lectures at genius levels that he still feels so compelled to share with Hotch. Because they are that close. They really, truly, are -- and it brightens the fluttering feeling in his chest all the more. How Spencer is trying, subliminally, to draw Hotch back to the light. Three thousand miles away.

Please come back.

Hotch hears it loud and clear, the come back to me. Even unwritten. And it makes his heart skip a beat, aching as it does.

Then…

[]9/23, 15:49[] I’ve thought of something.

[]9/23, 15:52[] I’m 29.

Hotch doesn’t understand, at first. But then it hits him.

Years.  

29 years. 

Spencer is 29 years old. Proven, further, by the following messages sent after that.

[]9/23, 15:56[] I’m a certified child prodigy, on a registry and everything. I graduated high school at just twelve years old, and had my first Ph.D. by 15. Youngest in CalTech history.

29.

Jesus Christ, no wonder he hadn’t wanted to tell Hotch his age. 29 is… far younger than he expected. 

When Spencer was born, Hotch was getting his driver’s license. 16 years difference in age…

He keeps reading, despite the numb aftermath of a bomb going off inside his head, trying to process it and also hear the younger man out.

Younger. Spencer is 16 years younger than Hotch, and he finds himself scrubbing at his face to try and wake himself up further as he reads what Spencer sent.

[]9/23, 15:57[] I turn 30 at the end of October, and I was trying to wait until then to tell you. 

[]9/23, 16:00[] I’ve noticed a prominent dynamic shift in perception, between listing my age as in my 20’s and ‘almost 30’. It’s a numerical allusion our brains can’t help. You hear 29, you think 21. It happens with decades, too, once someone is outside the familial range of 10 years. +/- either side.

[]9/23, 16:02[] An age gap doesn’t sound as bad when I’m 30. That’s why I wanted to wait, just a little while longer, but if that universal affirmation phenomenon actually works for us -- I don’t mind dealing with the consequences.

[]9/23, 16:03[] Just please come back. 

[]9/23, 16:07[] Please be okay.

[]9/23, 16:10[] I miss you.

His heart is about to be ripped to shreds. 

Hotch feels terrible, because Spencer is right. 29 sounds so young, and it keeps repeating in his head over and over. But 29 isn’t the same as 21, he isn’t some college student still stumbling around trying to figure out his life. He has five Ph.D.’s, runs three departments at one of the best universities in the country, is consulted by the FBI and Homeland Security and very obviously has a reputation he upholds to the highest regard. Hotch had guessed Spencer was 32 not so long ago, what was the big difference between that and his actual age? From what little Spencer just shared of his life story, he’s never gotten to be a kid, so who was Hotch to consider him one? What gave him the right to be floored by this, did it actually change what he thought of Spencer? How he felt about him only moments prior to reading that?

I miss you.   Come back.   Please be okay.

I’m 29.

It could be the recent flirtation with death, the anesthesia or the morphine, even the gratitude that Hotch will get to see his son again and not leave him without both his parents -- there’s so many reasons for him to take pause as he considers the messages in front of him. 

But it feels a lot like the months of talking, and the countless late nights spent together, that pile up and up in his chest. A rising pressure that reminds Hotch that he and Spencer have something, and it’s not a normal, regular situation for either of them. Something that precedent, and everything Hotch has ever been told to hold to standard, doesn’t seem to fit. He and Spencer don’t seem to fit, when looked at afar or even on paper -- but they do. They really do. It was never supposed to be something that could be this easy, or normal in any capacity.

But what about their lives ever was?

[]9/23, 18:26[] I’m so sorry I worried you.

[]9/23, 18:26[] I miss you, too.

[]9/23, 18:27[] If I stop answering you, the nurse took my phone away. I hate hospitals.

[]9/23, 18:29[] Hotch, you scared me to death.

[]9/23, 18:30[] I know, I’m sorry.

[]9/23, 18:31[] From what I heard, you saved my life.

[]9/23, 18:33[] I don’t even know how to begin thanking you for that.

[]9/23, 18:36[] Just get better.

[]9/23, 18:38[] Which means resting, don’t glare at your nurses too much. They’re there to help you.

There’s a long stretch of a pause in their correspondence, which picks up so smooth and easy it’s as if they had never stopped. Like the last few days hadn’t happened at all. But they had, they were both looking at the messages to prove that. He does take pause, maybe more than he should, and Hotch knows miles away Spencer is just as nervous. Staring at his phone.

-

Hotch isn’t wrong. Spencer let out such an exclamation of relief at Hotch’s name on his notifications he about sobbed with it. He never cries, hasn’t in years -- but his eyes sting with relief and worry and… an emotion he doesn’t want to name.

[]9/23, 18:44[] What day is your birthday?

[]9/23, 18:45[] October 28th.

[]9/23, 18:45[] Same week as mine. November 2nd.

Hotch pauses, again, considers his next response… and 3,000 miles away Spencer can barely blink as he stares at his phone with mounting dread. 

[]9/23, 18:49[] I understand why you didn’t want to tell me. It’s alright.

[]9/23, 18:51[] Am I correct in assuming you’ve never been in a relationship with this much of an age gap?

It takes Hotch a moment to even gather the courage to type that out and send it. Knows it sounds almost too formal, for them, but Hotch also knows that he and Spencer are balanced on the edge of a knife, here, and… no matter what the outcome, everything is about to change between them.

Spencer licks his lips in nervousness, reading the line over and over although he has no need to. It feels like a tipping point, and he’s still… terrified this will be his last conversation with Hotch outside of case work. Ever. 

[]9/23, 18:55[] Never. 

[]9/23, 18:57[] I haven’t had many relationships at all. My peer groups have always been older than me, and people my own age never understood me enough to be interested. So it’s just something I was used to, going without.

[]9/23, 18:59[] This has been… the closest thing to what I’ve been told is normal that I’ve ever experienced. I’ve never had the chance to have something like this with someone, or connect in this way. I gave up, for a long while there.

[]9/23, 19:01[] I’ve been in a similar situation before, on an intellectual spectrum.

[]9/23, 19:03[] I’ve never--

Hotch pauses, again, putting his thoughts in order. Weighing it all, before taking that final leap. Spencer waiting with baited breath, all the more. 

But Hotch doesn’t regret what he sends. Not one bit.

[]9/23, 19:03[] I’ve never dated anyone younger than me like this, before, so we’ll both be on a learning curve.

[]9/23, 19:03[] But we will figure it out. Together.

Spencer’s breath catches, and he can’t seem to release it again. He can’t believe what he’s reading. What Hotch has sent him. 

He said ‘dated’.

He thought they were dating. Spencer isn’t quite sure he can trust his own eyes, despite the words being there in stark black and white on his phone screen.

[]9/23, 19:06[] Dating?

Hotch smiles, because he just knows -- from that single word text -- that Spencer has sent it not in admonishment or anything negative of the sort. But in hope. Confident that he recognizes the nuance in Spencer's voice even without ever having heard it, Hotch just knows, and it makes warmth blossom anew in his chest. Sends his heart rate monitor skittering across the machine all over again.

[]9/23, 19:08[] Hate to be the one to tell you, but all of those late nights where we talked for hours instead of playing chess? Those were dates.

Spencer has his hand over his mouth, still in disbelief that he hadn’t… fucked this up beyond repair. That his age hadn’t been the deal breaker he’d feared so vehemently for months now. That everything is still as it was, age difference and life-threatening situation, aside.

They were dating. All this time.

[]9/23, 19:10[] I should have worn nicer clothes.

Hotch laughs at his phone at the same time Spencer laughs at his own, having reread what he’d sent. 

3,000 miles away, and their quiet laughter coincides perfectly. 

[]9/23, 19:11[] Our next one I’m sure I’ll be in a hospital gown, so I think you’re in the clear.

[]9/23, 19:12[] Sounds like you’re making plans, already. 

[]9/23, 19:12[] You still need rest.

[]9/23, 19:14[] Well, I have to thank you somehow. And, I saw something about poker instead of chess? I’m actually not bad at poker.

[]9/23, 19:15[] … you remember I’m from Vegas, right?

[]9/23, 19:16[] We’ll play for fake money.

[]9/23, 19:18[] No such thing.

[]9/23, 19:19[] I do play for favors, though.

[]9/23, 19:19[] Oh? 

Hotch feels a wild, youthful thing unfurl in his chest as he types away. Mischievous, almost, in a way he only gets when he and Spencer are hours deep into conversations in the middle of the night. But it’s broad daylight, and he has to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from smiling too wide. Getting lost in the thrill of it all. In the officiality of it, now, and another curtain unveiled between them.

[]9/23, 19:20[] Did you have something in mind?

Spencer has to be blushing seven shades of red, right about now, and he hides his face from his phone for a moment before he realizes how ridiculous that is -- Hotch can’t see him. He can stop messaging the man any time he wants to.

Except he doesn’t want to.

[]9/23, 19:24[] I’ll get back to you.

Hotch can’t help it as he grins at his phone. A wry, suggestive thing, but he manages to school it before a passing nurse can see him -- how his eyes are alight with possibility. With elation, just from talking to the younger man that had seemed to capture a part of him he thought wasn’t available to anyone any more, and types out one last -- slightly more flirtatious subtext to put a cap on their conversation. To indicate he’s awaiting more, always wanting a little more of Dr. Spencer Reid.

He can blame it on the morphine, later. 

[]9/23, 19:25[] Looking forward to it.

--

(tbc...)

--

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