#their social media person followed me back from the official account lmao

[larkthorne]

every FUCKING pregnancy book has a self congratulatory little write up like this. oh we really care a lot about being inclusive which is why we say pregnant woman and her sperm generating husband approx 5 times per page. right. right. inclusive. you put in the little paragraph -- yeah. okay.

it's not even hard, there's a notable organization called evidence based birth out of fucking Kentucky that uses terms like 'pregnant person' 'gestational carrier' 'non gestational parent' -- they are not an organization which predominantly serves queers, like I love a queer doula, I love a queer midwife, that's awesome! and those folks usually use inclusive language. but it's like, this is not a queer-exclusive thing, here's this whole ostensibly straight organization that's committed to allyship in a way that puts every major publication to shame.

I love the otherwise reliable contents of these highly recommended non-inclusive books so I'm GONNA keep reading them but like you can obviously do better and you know that you should. fuck's sake.

[troythings]

a week or so ago there was a really good article on the “girlbossification” of war and warfare itself, but specifically centering on the IDF’s thirst traps (ie, showing off the female body along with some nice nationalist propaganda to go with it, because sex sells with angry horny men looking for purpose) and “enlightened feminist” social media branding

this is nowhere near the first piece on it, it’s been pointed out by literally everyone

“hello, young and impressionable woman looking for purpose! want to defy traditional gender roles and empower yourself by committing genocide and war crimes? tee heeeeeee!”

yeah, unfortunately we have some of those at home too. we know where that messaging leads:

pictured at the abu ghraib prison are lynndie england and sabrina hartman. the (living and dead) bodies have been censored out. look up these pictures at your own risk, they are NSFL.

the “girlbossification” of global warfare also made me remember the coverage of this disaster from a few years back. which, funnily enough, stars an IDF soldier in what is basically the worst superhero casting of all time.

jesus christ lmao.

“woman fighting in war….is good?”

this stupid sentimental garbage is literally followed by not-diana massacring through overwhelmed, non-powered human soldiers who can’t hold a melting candle to her. oversimplified, caricature depictions of people in a war, which in reality, was fought between equally shitty colonialist imperial powers and was more grey vs grey than anything else.

me personally? i sat through that nonsense and forgot about it within a day. except when people try to lecture me “it’s just a superhero film!! forget the politics!!” funny you say that for a medium based on nationalist pro-war propaganda since the very beginning.

and weirdly enough. that’s what wonder woman (2017) is. not only is it zionist (starring an unrepentant IDF soldier as the premier superheroine) americentric propaganda (condensing the nuances of world war i into some cheap “fantasy world war ii lite” copium), it feeds into the lie that, if you are a woman, whatever bad or morally dubious thing you do is not your fault and might even be called ‘empowering.’

because hey, “girls can do anything boys can! including heinous war crimes! more 👏female 👏 war 👏 criminals!! slayyyyy!”

hahaha…no. we already have various assorted scum around the world devaluing the lives of other humans. how is it any better if they are female?

tell me again how empowering your “strong independent woman” label is, when you end up on trial at the hague or come home with dehabilitating trauma and all of your limbs blown off.

[ofprincessesandqueens]

While I didn’t think they were top notch before, this past 5 months have really shown me that KP and WK are just… not good with the whole communications thing. And that they don’t really think at all. I’m personally not a fan of how William has turned their official account into also being his personal football account, but I do know it kind of endears him to the football community so idk. I just think it’s toeing the line. Just how they present themselves on social with captions they give out as little information as possible has been talked about for ages. But like… they have a 4 year old picture as their profile pic on their sm accounts, their twitter header is from Earthshot back in November? It’s supposed to be an account about the two of them, and things like that is supposed to reflect that. Small things like that really makes me wonder who is their social media person is and how much are they able to do, or don’t care about doing.

And while at the moment I’m going to excuse Kate everything, but just see how they treat all of her projects and patronages she supports. Nothing, it’s complete silence from KP about everything. They tried to tell us that she worked from her bed back in February (which was unnecessary because no one really expected that from her), they briefed the media that while she was undergoing treatment she would also go about her daily life as much as she was able and asked them to leave her alone which is completely fair. But they have never followed up on the supposed work she’s been doing. Like things we know she’d highlight in some way, like last week was maternal mental health day, this week is mental health awareness week. They don’t help themselves, and imo it shows that they haven’t learned from what led to the hysteria in March. People are just refraining from commenting on the absence of her complete presence because of her illness, but it’s not Kate personally who does a social media post about things her patronages do, it’s the people working for her. I don’t even remember the last time KP mentioned Shaping Us, it might just as well have been the carol concert.

I do agree Will being a football fan endears him (I know, I am a football fan too, lmao). I agree with the point raised by @charlotte-of-wales that Aston Villa not being a top-top team helps him get away with it more and I think as long as he doesn't tweet about them weekly it's fine.

About Kate and updates of what she is doing now I'm going to give her space here. Those treatments can be complicated, so I hope she is resting, eating well and doing exercise. The statement that she would go with her daily life is more like anything meant to not raise concerns. I do agree with you about the posts. There are no reasons to not highlight on social media her causes.

"They don’t help themselves, and imo it shows that they haven’t learned from what led to the hysteria in March." - YEP.

[lxvvie]

Hi - id like some advice? If it’s okay to ask? I’d love to write and share fanfiction, including 40K smut (I’ve started several but finished none yet). I’d also love to make glowing and embarrassingly gushing comments on other people’s amazing fics (including yours!), here and on AO3, and I’d like to enjoy chatting with like minded people on these subjects. But I’m afraid of being found out. Im not a college kid anymore, not by a long shot, and I wonder if I did jump into this particular Garden of Delights, what if somehow my work found out? Is it worth the risk to write about giant supersoldiers going at it? Especially now that AO3 requires an account even to comment. Maybe I’m paranoid & maybe it’s enough choose an obscure screen name and use a unique email to set up the Tumblr or AO3 account. But I’d be interested if you have any other tips for protecting anonymity.

Hey, nonnie, hope all is good on your end and yeah, it's perfectly fine to ask this question. I'm about to get a bit long-winded here so bear with me lol.

First, let me say that fanfiction has no age cap. I'm absolutely thrilled to be seeing people of various ages enjoying fanfiction, and as someone who, come August, will officially start her career in academia, I can understand the concern around anonymity.

One thing I like to do is compartmentalize when it comes to this. I see it as a hobby and as such, I keep it separate from my personal and professional life. So yeah, having a unique name and email dedicated solely to your hobby works!

I think Tumblr and AO3 are especially good places to maintain anonymity compared to other social media platforms. I do my best to pick and choose what information I divulge about myself, too. Not enough for folks to go crazy with but enough for people to get to know me and find some relatability.

I also think what's helped me thus far is keeping my distance from fandom discourse. I only come on here to post my content, interact with people who interact with me, and keep it moving. Every fandom is not without its problems but so long as you do you, I think you'll be fine. I think those who follow you will be appreciative of this because you've cultivated a space for yourself and others to simply be; this is and always will be the primary goal of my blog.

I wrote all this to say that yes, if you truly want to, you should absolutely do this, and yes, I think it's quite worth it. In my experience, it's been a good avenue for stress relief and a way to honor my inner child by coming back to the hobbies I loved before adulting became a thing lmao.

[teenmomcentral]

Another day, another ‘Teen Mom’ star showing off their nether regions on The Interwebs…and ‘Teen Mom’ stars feuding on social media.

On Tuesday, Catelynn Lowell announced on Instagram that her newly buffed husband, Tyler Baltierra, has officially joined OnlyFans, and that she will be running his account, deciding which photos of Ty’s dingle-and-dangles to share with the masses.

While some fans were excited that Tyler would presumably be showing off his girl-baby-maker to weirdos on the Internet, one person who was not thrilled was Ty’s former Teen Mom co-star, Farrah Abraham, who took to Instagram Live to call Tyler (and the other ‘Teen Mom’ stars on OnlyFans—such as Jenelle Evans) hypocrites because they once shamed her for doing adult industry work.

Naturally, Jenelle (and her ever-lurking husband David Eason) had to weigh in on Farrah’s commentary.

The Ashley is going to attempt to recap the events for you…

On Tuesday, Catelynn posted a link to Tyler’s newly created OnlyFans account, directing her Instagram followers to shell out some cash to see Tyler’s, um…bulge. (Yes, The Ashley shuddered while typing that sentence.) 

On Tyler’s cringefest-of-a-bio on OnlyFans, he tells everyone that, “This account is ran by my wife because she likes to show me off.” 

After the ‘Teen Mom’ twosome launched Ty’s “Nudie Cutie” site, Tyler made it clear that Catelynn is pulling the strings.

“For anyone wondering though, I will NOT be in control of my account on there,” Tyler posted on Instagram on Tuesday. “It will completely be in my wife’s control. LOL. She’s the boss, I’m just there to do as I’m told LMAO!” 

(The Ashley will give you a moment to digest the thought of Cate being Ty’s dominatrix telling him which photos of his love-worm to post.)

For those of you wanting to pay to see Tyler flex his muscles (both pectoral and “meat,” assumingly) it will cost you a cool $30 a month. 

Farrah– who has been showing off her Backdoor (and other body parts and, um, body functions) on OnlyFans and other adult sites for years— seemed surprised that Tyler would display himself on the pay site, given that she felt he criticized her when she banged her way into the adult industry back in 2013 when her first adult movie, Backdoor Teen Mom, was released. 

Naturally, Farrah took to Instagram Live to blast Tyler, as well as other ‘Teen Mom’ stars who are now posting their privates for the world to see. 

“I have to say, aren’t these the same ‘Teen Moms’ that said I was going into adult entertainment?” Farrah— who most certainly went into “adult entertainment” by doing whole p0rn films— said. “The funnier thing is, I never changed who I was.”

Farrah then claimed that it was unfair that she fired from ‘Teen Mom OG’ due to her adult industry activities, but these ‘Teen Mom’ stars aren’t being let go. (What Farrah is saying about being fired is not exactly correct. As The Ashley has told you in the past, there were several contributing factors to The Big F getting the boot from the show. Although she was fired in part for refusing to turn down an adult gig that went against her contract for the show, she was was also let go for other reasons.) 

“They’re on the same platforms that I’m on, yet I’m the only one that got fired!” Farrah said.

Farrah then busted out some of her signature legal “Farrah Speak.” 

“Maybe it was just politically charged for wrongful firement?” she said.

(And, no, that’s not a typo. She actually said, “firement.”) 

“But in the end, we’re all adults and we can be on adult platforms, right?” she said. “So I don’t know. Maybe all of the ‘Teen Moms’ are switching to p0rn? And they’re all p0rn stars? But I remain the same.”

Farrah’s message was seen by Tyler and Catelynn, as well as Jenelle and her husband David, all of whom responded to Farrah calling them hypocrites and p0rn stars. 

Tyler and Catelynn made it clear that they are not doing p0rn, as Farrah stated.

“Y’all, we aren’t doing anything sexual on OnlyFans LMAOOO!” Catelynn posted to Instagram Stories on Wednesday. “Please we got kids! I would never lol. But if you do want to see what we are posting then click the link! #NoShame #HotHusbandAlert.”

Tyler doubled down, writing on Instagram Stories that what he’s posting on OnlyFans is not even close to the level of adult entertainment Farrah has participated in.

“To be fair, I’m NOT doing p0rn at all!” Tyler wrote. “Cate is just sharing the stuff that I personally send to her lol! There’s no sex involved or even videos on the page she’s running. I didn’t go to a p0rn production company, hire adult film stars & crew, have sex on camera, pretend that it was some ‘leaked’ personal footage, or make genital molds to sell.

“Cate is being completely transparent & honest about it all,” he continued. “It’s just a wife sharing photos of her husband, that’s literally it! But I get why some people are comparing it to my former cast member’s endeavors TBH & that’s totally valid! I just wanted to clarify what type of content is actually being shared on there in case anyone thought otherwise.” 

Jenelle also had a lot to say about Farrah spouting off. Jenelle— who recently admitted that a large portion of her income now comes from showing off the ol’ “bush ‘n’ tush” on OnlyFans— posted to Twitter about Farrah’s rant.

“Then we got [Farrah] over here talking s**t,” Jenelle tweeted on Wednesday. “My God…talking about ‘I haven’t changed.’ Girl you don’t even look like the same person anymore, besides your horrible personality.”  

“You’re right Farrah, you’re still you…a straight up bish,” Jenelle wrote on Facebook. “Acting like I didn’t support her through being fired and even invited me to her birthday party and we went! She will always be another one to talk mad BS and never change.” 

Jenelle’s hubby David took a break from working, studying, f**king raking to also weigh in.

“Not the backdoor booty queen comparing herself to people who are not relatable,” David—who also had a short, yet horrifying stint on OnlyFans— wrote on Facebook on Wednesday. 

None of the other ‘Teen Mom’ stars who are currently on OnlyFans— including Jade Cline, Briana DeJesus, Nathan Griffith and Brittany DeJesus—have responded to Farrah’s comments yet.

[sennamybeloved]

for the acrostic ask game, how about sour belt! - @dragonfruitcore

thanks so much!!!!

S - Story - if you and them were in a fairytale, which story would you be and who would play which character?

i’m unsure whether or not this question is asking me to cast us as characters in a pre-existing fairytale (ex: romeo and juliet) or to make one of my own, but i’m gonna go with the latter because it’s easier for me.

i have been very attached to the idea of dragon!sour belt for a LONG time, so the first thing this prompt makes me think of is a spin on the “damsel in distress locked in a tower guarded by a dragon and a knight in shining armor comes to save her” trope, except sour belt is cast as both the dragon AND the knight! i’m kinda blanking on the story, but i’ve always imagined that in stories like these, the dragon isn’t guarding the princess but instead the land surrounding the tower; it’s home. the princess is just snuck past the dragon and placed into the tower at one point or another. so, i suppose, upon noticing that i have been imprisoned in her front yard essentially, sour belt sets me free and takes me under her wing (literally), making her my super cool dragon girlfriend!!!

O - Online - what is your f/o’s social media presence like, or what would it be like if they had internet in their world/era?

sour belt uses social media to promote her brand. he posts pictures of clothes, popular models wearing her clothes, pictures of runway events, etc etc. she doesn’t really have any “personal” accounts, maybe just a burner or two to keep up with me lol. but typically, she follows/interacts with her friends using the official acid account, which… causes a lot of confusion.

U - Uplift - how do they help you when you’re stressed or sad and vice versa?

she is the KING of helping me when i get emo about my physical appearance. i mention feeling unattractive once and she’s like “makeover? you want a makeover? you’re super beautiful babe don’t ever forget that but do you want a makeover???” and usually the answer is yes lol. trying on outfits she tailored specifically for me is a HUGE pick me up. she behaves similarly when the stress is more internal, believing wholeheartedly that how you feel on the outside affects how you feel on the inside (which… true!). either that, or she just sits beside me until i feel better, providing comfort and assistance when i need it.

as for vice versa, i usually have to pull her away from her work to keep her from popping a blood vessel. i sometimes take over for her while she rests, which is such an honor tbh—she barely let me do anything when i first became her intern, and now she straight up lets me do commissions for her lmao. she rarely ever gets upset over things that aren’t related to work, but when she does, my go-to is a movie night with lots of snacks and lots of cuddles. works literally every time!

R - Rainbow - what colors do you associate with them and why?

green, blue and red! it’s her main color scheme (minus black) and whenever i see them combo’d anywhere i’m like “:0!! WIFE!!!! WIFFEEEEE”

B - Before - before you decided to make them your F/O, what did you first think of them/their source?

well, i’ve always adored cookie run. it has such a simple but adorable gimmick, with surprisingly good character design and storytelling. what’s not to love? i used to play ovenbreak a LOT back in 2018, and i was just getting into kingdom when super fashion week dropped. i remember seeing her trailer all over tiktok, tumblr and youtube and being like wow……wow. her shear beauty convinced me to play ovenbreak again. powerful as fuck.

E - Emotion - is your f/o open with their feelings or do they keep them close to their chest?

pretty open, i’d say. she’s a huge flirt with lots of charisma—she just too caught up in her own little world to make the first move. but she made the first move with me. cause i’m special /j

L - Language - what’s their love language? what’s yours?

hhgg…hers is probably asks of service?? and i have no idea what mine could be. probably words of affirmation, maybe physical touch???

T - Teach - what skills of theirs would they teach you? what would you teach them?

well, she taught me how to sew. she also taught me outfit/costume design and bits of color theory. i taught her how to draw a little bit better.

also, this wasn’t really the question, but we learned to dance together! well,,”learned” is a bit of a strong word. we both still suck total ass. but it’s fun!!

[writingtoforgetreality]

Damage Is Done - Little Movie Star Chapter Three (Jensen Ackles x Daughter!Reader)

[Actors-Masterlist], [Little Movie Star-Masterlist]

Previous Chapter / Next Chapter 

Summary: Jensen & Danneel were ready to break the news. Surprisingly, so were you. You should have known better than that. Good feelings disappeared more sooner than later. How stupid of you to think that things were going in the right direction.

Words: 1,761

Warnings: fluff, cyber bullying, panic attack, fake social media posts (picture credits go to their rightful owners)

If you like my work & wanna support me: a coffee would be highly appreciated ❤

~2016~

Things were going slow. And you could tell that the tension built itself whenever you distanced yourself more again. But you were trying, you really were. Jensen & Danneel could tell. They saw you struggling when you took part in their family activities. Your body language gave you away a lot of times. Neither of them commented on it, though. Communication was improving. More often, you spoke up when something happened you did not like & Jensen & Danneel did the same for you. Sometimes, it hurt a bit, when they told you that the way you acted was not appropriate. Sometimes, you stormed off to your room to cool down, only for you to come out a bit later to apologize for your behavior. Danneel was incredibly proud of the change you had been through so far. She could tell that Jensen & you shared a stronger bond but that was one thing Bill had warned them about. Whatever family you were put in, you usually connected faster with the fathers. In her head, she was already planning a girls day with you. Shopping & all that. Maybe that would help your bonding process.

You were eating breakfast when Jensen started a conversation that left you…unsure.

“So, we were thinking about breaking the news to the world. What do you say?” he eyed you carefully, waiting for some sort of reaction. You stopped eating for a second & looked down at your plate.

“For publicity?” the words were quiet but they could hear you crystal clear.

“Do you really think we need publicity?” Danneel joked & you were lucky that she eased the tension. Even a chuckle escaped you & finally, you looked up at them.

“What are you guys thinking? How do you wanna do this?” you asked, now starting to like the idea of them wanting you to be an official part of their family. It was fast but you thought if the world knew you were a part of the Ackles, then you might have an easier time accepting it yourself. They explained that they planned a simple Instagram post. Nothing more, nothing less. A picture with the six of you. The thought scared you but you agreed anyway which earned you two big smiles.

“Hey, Jensen?” walking over to where he was sitting, he turned his attention to you. “Could you help me with something, please?” you felt stupid to ask for help, especially because of something like that but you knew he had more experience than you.

“Sure thing. What is it?” he looked intrigued & then confused when you handed him your phone after sitting down next to him.

“Um… I don’t have any social media accounts but I’d like to get them started? I thought you might know what’s fitting & what isn’t.” Jensen seemed more than happy to help you out. It did not happen every day that you came & asked him something. So when you did, he appreciated it.

The two of you played around for a while. Jensen explained the basics. Even though you had to admit that he was not the pro you believed him to be. It was alright & in the end, you had a twitter & an Instagram account (@iam(Y/N)ackles). At first, you were against the handle. After all, your last name was not Ackles. But Jensen insisted that it was right for you to have these account names. He helped you setting everything up & you started following people you liked, starting with Jensen & Danneel, obviously. Followed by the rest of the Supernatural cast.

At the end of the day, after you took the picture Jensen & Danneel wanted to post, you were very nervous. The picture turned out to be incredibly cute. You were holding Zep in your arms, Arrow had been held by Danneel & JJ was sitting on Jensen’s lap. Immediately, you set this picture as your phone wallpaper, smiling wildly when you did so. All of a sudden, your phone was flooded with notifications. Both, on twitter & Instagram. Annoyed by the dinging sound, you turned them off completely. Jensen & Danneel tagged you in their posts & you were gaining hundred, thousands of followers in a very short time.

“(Y/N)? We posted the pic, just so you know.” but by the way you were looking at your phone, Jensen could tell you already knew this. He told you that it was probably better if you turned off the notifications but you brushed him off, saying you already did.

“Have you looked at it yet?” curiosity was written over his features. Shaking your head as an answer, he nudged you & told you to go on. Taking a deep breath, you opened Instagram & immediately were met with the picture on your timeline. The picture put a smile on your face again. You guys really looked cute. Like a cute little family. Then you went to read the caption.

Scrolling down, you saw Danneel’s post with the same caption & tears threatened to spill. You had not cried in front of other people in so long but right now, you could not hold back anymore. Gratitude was rushing over you & before you knew what was happening, Jensen wrapped his arms around you & pulled you into a hug. This time, you did not reject him, needing the comfort of another person. It felt good to be hugged, you had almost forgotten how much you actually loved it

“Thank you.” you mumbled into his chest. Jensen simply stroked his hands up & down your back. He could tell that this was a huge step. You were hugging, after all, & he was more than thankful to share this special moment with you. When you heard Danneel entering the room, you rushed over to her & gave her a hug, too. You could feel that your body was not reacting the same way when you were wrapping your arms around Jensen but it felt good nevertheless.

The rest of the day, conversation flowed easier. Dinner was filled with laughter & you guys chatted a lot. This act, of them posting you on their social media, showed you that they were not going away anytime soon. They were in for the long haul. Still, there was this awful voice in your head but tonight, it sounded a bit further in the distance, a bit more quiet than usual. That night, you decided to do a movie marathon. You had done them before but this one felt…different. It felt easier. You found yourself enjoying their company more & for a second, you had hope. Hope in the future. Hope in your new…family. Would you ever feel comfortable calling them your family? Maybe, if you kept going forward at this pace, then maybe you would.

Laying in bed, you wanted to check out the posts one more time. By now, you had thousands of followers even though you had zero posts on your account. Maybe you should repost the picture? Yeah, you could do that. Your thoughts were interrupted when you made the big mistake of going through the comment section under Jensen’s picture. Yes, there were a lot of positive responses, especially from his castmates, but when you kept scrolling, you found one hate comment after the other. They were awful to read through.

“really? she’s ugly as hell lmao”

“why would they choose her?”

“probably thinking she’s better than everyone lol”

“she should go back where she came from”

“wtf??? leave our ackles alone, bitch”

Tears were streaming down your face, this time because you were genuinely hurt by their words. One mistake followed the other & you were scrolling through your message requests. One was worse than the other. There were literal death threats people were sending you & you did not understand a thing. Nobody knew you & yet they were already building an opinion about you. Angry at yourself for reading through them & angry that you agreed on making a post for Instagram, you turned your phone off & threw it at the end of the bed. All good feelings had disappeared. Maybe they were right. You knew you were not pretty. You had asked yourself a billion times why they chose you out of everyone. You were sure they would send you back once they read through the comments. No matter how hard you tried to calm down, you could not catch your breath & started hyperventilating. Shit, you were about to have a panic attack. You had suffered from them ever since you were little but the last one had been ages ago. Usually, you would run to Bill & he would talk you through it. But he was hours away & he would most likely be asleep by now. Contemplating if you should go to Jensen & Danneel, you decided against it after the comments were repeating themselves in your head. So you just let the panic overcome you. It was better to let it out than to push it down further, you knew that. But having to go through such a period alone was everything but easy. Telling yourself you were fine & safe over & over again exhausted the shit out of you. It felt like hours but when you were finally at a point where your breaths evened out & your heartrate slowed down, you fell asleep almost immediately. Tomorrow, you had to talk to them, you knew it. Maybe they would be aware of the comments by then & would start the conversation. How were you supposed to start such a conversation anyway? Hi, your fans hate me & send me death threats. Come on, that sounded stupid. But the thing was that it did not feel stupid to you. Their words hurt you & Jensen & Danneel told you to come to them & be open with them if something bothered you. There was enough time for that in the morning, though. For now, sleep seemed like the best option & the best distraction. You just hoped that your dreams would be kinder to you than your family’s “fans”.

~to be continued~

Next Chapter 

Published (04/03/2021) by Cathy

Tags: @vicmc624​, @imaginationisgrowth, @stoneyggirl​, @alyispunk​, @thevelvetseries​, @multifandomlover121, @samsgirl93​, @supernatural3002​, @diabetes-03, @prettyybubblesintheair, @originalsoulcollector​, @vir-tual, @bellero​, @sergantbuckybarnes (let me know if you wanna be tagged <3)

[ahgastae]

worst chefs in seoul (outline) – kim seokjin x gn!reader

➥ word count: 3.9k | reality/cooking show au | crack | fluff

➥ m.list

➥ a/n: we’re back at it again with another wip i never finished lol. this one is the outline for what was intended to be a social media au (as evidenced by some of the notes i left for myself), though it’s likely that’s not how it actually would’ve come out. i’d love to hear some of your thoughts/reactions, and i hope you enjoy ♡

day ???

start w y/n and yoongi goofing off on twitter

the whole y/n eating a moldy grape thinking it’s a kiwi thing

and yoongi panicking bc of it

could transition into them talking about the finale episode of their favorite show: worst chefs in seoul

they’re both huge fans, and equally complete disasters when it comes to culinary skill

yoongi likes the show bc he likes the competition aspect and tbh he got addicted after y/n forced him to watch the first season w them

y/n also likes it for that reason, but the main reason they watch it is bc of a certain kim seokjin

anyway, they talk about the finale, and then yoongi says something about the next season’s ‘nominations’ coming up soon

y/n jokingly says they’re going to nominate yoongi bc of that one time he made tacos with dog food

and yoongi fires back w the time they managed to light the microwave on fire making cup o’ noodles

they agree to let each other live

…..for now

sike!

the two actually do end up nominating each other w/o the other knowing

y/n honestly just thought it would be funny if yoongi got picked and yoongi was like “fuck it why not”

little did they know…..

while the nomination guidelines assure that the selection process is completely random, this is a reality show

meaning for anyone w a brain that’s obviously not the case

contestants are actually chosen by the show’s assistant producers and approved by the chefs themselves and then the higher ups

but who are those assistant producers??

none other than park jimin and kim taehyung

neither of them keep their involvement with the show a secret, and one takes it a teensy bit more seriously than the other

anyway, they’re usually told to find a batch of contestants (that they feel) would conjure up the most drama for the show

it is tv, after all, and they have to keep people watching

and that part is crucial

to their credit, they do (somewhat) succeed for the most part

jimin selects yoongi and namjoon from the nomination pool bc he thinks joon’s clumsiness w yoongi’s nonchalant nature will work for max chaos

and taehyung chooses y/n and jungkook bc while their competitive drives are similar, y/n’s subdued nature has a big chance for conflict w jk’s out-there attitude

(how do they know all this? they’re experts at what they do leave me alone)

day ??? 2.0

y/n (and yoongi, secretly) is ecstatic when they get the emails/DM/whatever that they’ve been “chosen for the next hot season of worst chefs in seoul!”

but then yoongi asks if it’s allowed for them to know each other and accept the nomination

like they’re best friends. is that going to present some kinda problem that’ll get them both kicked off??

should only one of them accept it?

(he’s immediately ready to sacrifice his own nomination bc he knows how much y/n cares about this stupid show)

y/n says they’re not going to let him do that bc they were both chosen, meaning they both should get to go

but—

“it’s fine!! we can just pretend we don’t know each other when we’re on set!”

and so they’re off

to some undisclosed location in seoul

day 0

jimin and taehyung are the first to greet everyone, collecting all four contestants together for a tour of the dorms

and y/n starts texting yoongi in a panic bc both of their dumbasses forgot that the contestants are separated into teams as soon as they arrive

yoongi prolly says smth like i’m two feet away from you why are you texting me

(y/n reminds him they can’t make it seem like they know each other)

yoongi acts like it’s not that big of a deal

prolly says there’s a good chance they’ll end up on the same team

and if they don’t they can just hang out in the dorms when the cameras are off and away

which is when jimin loudly announces that this season, each team is getting their own dormitory

and that contestants will be required to stay in their dorm while filming the season, except for approved ‘outings’ for the show

he moves on before anyone can ask what that means

they’ll be allowed to pick whichever dorm they want to stay in for the first night, since they want to get the contestants’ reactions on camera when they reveal the teams

but after they’re revealed tomorrow, it’s your dorm and your dorm only

y/n and yoongi automatically gravitate towards each other

they end up together in the ‘new’ dorm, which yoongi grumpily notes is practically bigger than their whole apartment

y/n wonders if they ended up in seokjin’s dorm, and gets excited at the thought of this being a ‘test’ to see which chef’s team they’ll be on

to which yoongi asks what makes this dorm his?

“idk i just...feel his aura in here”

“.......okay, weirdo. i’m gonna go ‘feel his aura’ in the bathroom and take a—”

“yoongi!!”

y/n can either ask what yoongi thinks of the other contestants or they can both pretty much blow them off entirely for the time being

idk which yet

day 1

next morning, the contestants are woken up bright and early by none other than our favorite assistant producers

the wake up call comes in the form of a new group chat between the six of them

along with a link to ‘download’ the calendar for the shooting schedule

(which is really an app/virus that disables certain functions on their phones)

((such as most social media and texting numbers outside their ‘parameters’))

after that’s all hashed out, jm & t explain that this group chat is for any and all notifications and updates about the show, as well as any questions and/or concerns the contestants might have

like

“can i just vote to eliminate myself now and go home?” and

“how do i get this fucking thing off my phone” and

“when do we find out what team we’re on??”

the answers to which are

no

you’ll find out when filming is finished

and right now!

they tell the contestants to get up and get dressed as their first day on set officially starts now

y/n and kook immediately jump into action and leave the gc

joon lags behind a little confused but follows the flow

yoongi, ever the people person, gets aggressive when they don’t answer his questions about their goddamn malware

“is this even legal?? are you even fucking allowed to just disable our devices like this?”

“what if there’s an emergency??”

“looks like you’ll just have to find out, huh?”

yoongi’s phone then crashes and won’t let him unlock it until the first block of filming is finished

jm: “oops ƪ(˘⌣˘)ʃ”

day 1 recap

we find out through our superfan what happens during the first episode

(maybe do something like this person is some kinda press/‘news’ account dedicated entirely to w.c.i.s. and the two chefs)

((mayhaps they leak the contestant list before it goes public??))

((jimin and tae could have some kinda unspoken rivalry w them lol))

anyway the story is told through them in a series of twitter threads

(plus a few messages from y/n to yoongi freaking out about the teams they get put on)

first event of the day is: the team announcements

yoongi and joon end up on team kim seokjin and y/n is on team jyp w kook

being split up puts a bit of a damper on their plans, and with this stupid cell block they don’t know if they’ll even be allowed to talk to each other

none of them get much time to react, though, as they’re then shuffled off to their respective kitchens

where they finally meet their respective chefs

and, lo and behold, y/n is goddamn terrified

jinyoung is even scarier in person than he is on tv

“don’t laugh at me yoongi!! this is the guy who made a girl sob on live television!”

“and now ur gonna be the next person what’s the problem lmao”

while y/n tries to get past their fear, they’re given their first official task: work together with their new partner to create a meal of their choice

the catch is that they aren’t allowed any help from their chef yet

and since the teams were just announced literally like 10 minutes ago, none of them have had much of a chance to get to know each other

(the network knows this, and does this on purpose since most of the seasons’ first episodes are spent either arguing or being completely lost)

things go about as well (read: badly) as expected

y/n and kook soon discover their very conflicting personalities and spend the majority of the round bickering back and forth about what to make/how to do it

meanwhile yoongi slaps a piece of sliced cheese directly on the stove while joon runs around like a chicken w its head cut off

in the end, team jyp somehow manages to come out victorious

they cobble together some (semi) edible banana milkshakes to present to the judges

(‘together’ meaning y/n wanted to make plain vanilla milkshakes and kook switched it for banana milk when they weren’t looking)

yoongi and joon tried (keyword being tried) to make grilled cheese

but between yoongi’s cheese-to-stove method and joon dropping their two pieces of burnt toast right before the timer rang

they didn’t get many points

as their reward, team jyp has the honor of picking what they’ll be making tomorrow

they’re given the rest of the day to think and talk it over while team ksj is told to reflect on what went wrong in today’s trial

back at the dorms (now in their separate teams), y/n finds that yoongi finally graces them w a response

(and that they were right about which one was ‘seokjin’s’ dorm)

yoongi tells them about ‘that little shit’ locking him out of his phone and that he honestly just wants to get tf out of there contract or not

y/n convinces him to stay and stick it out, if not for them then for the prize money at the end

yoongi then asks what dish they’re going to pick for tomorrow, and asks if they can pick something he at least has an idea how to make

cue y/n saying that they were thinking of suggesting one of seokjin’s signature dishes but not knowing if kook would go along w the idea

“he kept trying to switch out our ingredients for banana milk and i don’t know how to tell him to knock that shit off”

“honestly you know i’m not one to take charge but he wasn’t even listening to me!! what’s to say he’s actually going to listen to the PROFESSIONAL chef here to help us??”

“aNd SPeAkINg oF THaT”

cue y/n whining about how they wanted to be on jin’s team and it’s not fair that they both got stuck w jinyoung AND a bratty kid on their team

yoongi sympathizes since he was looking forward to them being on the same team, but makes y/n agree that if he has to give the competition a chance then they have to give kook one too

“i mean yeah he seems like a bit of a dumbass but isn’t that why we’re all here? bc we have no fuckin clue what to do in the kitchen?”

hmm...fine they’ll give him a chance

but they still think he’s a lil shit and don’t really wanna talk to him at all, let alone reach some kinda compromise on what to make

they don’t get much or a choice, though, as they both receive a mysterious message from...jungkook? in another group chat?

the contestants find that they have all been manually added to another gc

except this one is missing the two assistant producers who love to breathe down their necks

everyone but jk is immediately suspicious

is this some of trick to get them to screw up?

to break some kinda hidden clause in the contract none of them actually read?

wasn’t that thing they downloaded supposed to block incoming messages like this?

“but wait, yoongi, then how were we able to��?”

but as of right now, they don’t get any answers

and they’re all too afraid to ask anyone but each other

“well we’re all here so...we might as well get to know each other right?? :D”

this is where we get our first in-depth look at the four people stuck on this show together, who in their lives nominated them and why

(y/n and yoongi’s lying skills are put to a bit of a test as they each rush to pull stories right out of their asses)

kook talks about bambam and says his nomination said smth about “adding banana milk to everything f*ckin thing he makes”

he doesn’t really get why that was enough to land him a spot on the show but he thought it would be pretty cool to be on tv and just went along with it

namjoon talks about hobi and emphasizes that he’s not that bad of a cook

he just gets nervous and confused when it comes to recipes and cooking which expresses itself in the form of his unabashed clumsiness

joon then asks if they’ll really be prevented from having any outside communication until filming is finished

he, like yoongi, questions the legality of deceitfully installing the block on their phones

y/n says there probably was some kind of hidden clause that allowed them to do that, as they “can’t imagine seokjin would take part in a competition that abuses its contestants”

to which joon replies that they don’t actually know seokjin so they can’t really ‘imagine’ anything about how he will or won’t act

right as yoongi is about to jump in and tell him to back off, jungkook decides that that’s way too much legal talk for him

he forces changes the subject back to the gc as a whole and says that even if they’re prevented from talking to their friends he’s happy they’ll “at least have each other :D”

y/n feels like part of that is directed at them and feels bad for how they thought he was ‘just a dumb kid’ before

namjoon, however, is still hesitant

he’s not sure if this chat could get them in trouble in regards to the show and their contract and what not and says that they all should probably delete it just to be safe

but that is unanimously vetoed by y/n and kook (and yoongi, reluctantly) and they decide that if the block allowed it to pass through then it must be allowed

before joon can argue anymore, they all receive a message from tae in the ‘official’ gc

he briefly explains the lights out policy of the dorms and tells them that they’re probably going to want a good night's sleep for their ‘big day’ tomorrow

yoongi then says smth like “well...guess that’s lights out then” and jk responds excited as ever w “night guys!! see you all in the morning! :)”

and y/n can feel their soul leaving their body for even thinking anything ill about him

day 2

contestants are woken up bright and early by alarms they didn’t set

(“oh great, so they just hijacked every app on our fucking phones then”

jimin tells them all to hurry up, get dressed, and meet the chauffeur outside bc they can’t afford to be late

(“literally! every second you waste is money docked from the network’s wallet! so get your asses in gear, guppies!”)

y/n and kook get outside first, but yoongi and joon are nowhere to be seen

y/n decides to text the q & a gc to get the dirt on seokjin

they kinda start sucking up to jimin and tae to see if they’ll reveal any info, particularly about what the chef is like and if it’s possible for him to talk to the ‘other’ team’s contestants

and while the producers are pleasantly surprised that one of the contestants actually want to use that gc for something other than yelling at them

they unfortunately can’t give much info besides what most people already know

and confirm that one of the chefs talking to the other’s students was probably not allowed, but that it’s also never really happened before so they’re not really sure lmao

(“taehyung!!” “what? was i not supposed to say that?”)

jimin cuts the conversation short there as yoongi and joon arrive and they all get on the shuttle for the set

taehyung does say one last thing tho

“good luck!! hopefully they don’t tear u up too bad!”

but first

our superfan gives us the downlow on the competition and how it works

after being split into teams, the contestants will rotate between ‘training’ w their chef and competing against each other in timed trial rounds

prizes can be won for both events, but the ones for the trial rounds are generally more competition based while the ones for the training rounds are more about luxury/quality of life while filming

each trial round win counts as a point towards the team’s score in the competition

only trial rounds affect this score

once a certain number of points has been reached (5), that team moves into the next phase of the competition

instead of working as a team, they are split up and now have to work against each other to win the favor of their chef

and in the finale, after one last big cookout competition, an individual winner is chosen and crowned a ‘former’ worst chef in seoul

once the contestants arrive on set, the chefs reiterate that today is just a training round

(they all let out a collective sigh of relief)

and it’s a good thing everyone woke up so early bc they’re just in time to learn how to make breakfast!!

“it’s not like we had much of a choice-oof.”

“anyway! team jyp, since you won the pretrial round yesterday, you get to decide what both teams will be learning how to make today. so, y/n, jungkook. think carefully. what do you want for breakfast?”

y/n is about to suggest seokjin’s signature strawberry and cream crepes when jungkook, who is still half asleep, blurts out “omelette”

(also i’ve decided that jackson is the host of the show now and i’m not changing my mind)

and it’s decided. they’re makin’ omelettes

(y/n is only a little bit peeved)

shuffled off to their separate kitchens, y/n is reminded of just how terrified they are of jinyoung

sure, they thought he was scary yesterday when they realized they were on his team, but now he has to actually teach them and they can’t help but think he’s going to make them into an idiot sandwich by the end of the day

as such, they try to keep half-asleep kook in between them and jinyoung at all costs, even if it meant running around the kitchen like a lost puppy

jinyoung, fully aware of how the show portrays him and how fans view him, notices this almost instantaneously

but he unfortunately doesn’t get to pull y/n aside to address it before jungkook starts digging through the fridge for banana milk and almost throws the entire carton of eggs on the floor

professional chef jyp mode: on

and they’re off

it’s a little difficult with y/n dancing around the kitchen anxiously and jungkook’s absolute aversion to being told what to do (as y/n predicted), but jinyoung manages to whip them into shape long enough to (barely) make a ham, cheese, and “green onion? wtf is that?” omelette

team seokjin, however, does not favor as well

yoongi apparently doesn’t know what tf a green onion is either and just throws in whatever green vegetable he can find while jin is struggling to keep namjoon from setting himself on fire

….and it turned out to be celery

that, plus joon somehow managing to burn the omelette to a crisp, costs them the training round

y/n and kook start to celebrate their victory and actually working as a team when jackson informs them that their ‘prize’ is they get to eat what they cooked while the other team gets whatever is left over on the catering table

“i hope you listened to your chef!”

“...jungkook, please tell me you used actual milk in this”

“um…”

back at the dorms, the contestants share their thoughts on their first day of training, as well as their first official day w their chefs

(also include y/n saying something about their banana milk omelettes actually not being half bad)

y/n immediately recalls how much they were terrified of jinyoung, almost cutting their finger off when he glanced over their shoulder when they were slicing the green onions

jk agrees, adding smth about how he didn’t think a scowl could ever be so intimidating

“it reminded me of my mom’s face when she found out i tried to pierce my own ears in the bathroom in middle school!! i was too afraid to push the needle all the way through and walked around with it in my ear all day until one of my teachers finally noticed and sent me to the office!”

...ok jungkook

during all of this, yoongi and joon are both like...wtf

“seokjin was literally nothing but nice to us. even when namjoon almost set his sleeve on fire lmao”

“hyung how did u manage that” “doesn’t matter”

jungkook thinks the difference in the chefs is hilarious, but y/n is only upsetti spaghetti

they go on a bit of a rant about how badly they wanted to be on jin’s team

saying something about how jinyoung is scary and mean and they’re almost positive he can sense their fear or something and probably use it against them while jin’s team would be so much better on the sole fact that they wouldn’t feel like he would turn them into an omelette for getting something wrong

cue jk being all babey asking “you...don’t wanna be on a team with me? :((“

and y/n immediately PANICS and tries to explain that NO, it’s not HIM but yoongi saves their ass by saying that seokjin is just their favorite and that’s all

jungkook feels better, but then namjoon is like “hol up. we all just met. how could you possibly know that?”

insert more y/n fumbling and jk confusion

yoongi (once again) covers w some bullshit story that he was able to just guess that based on what y/n’s said in the gc so far

joon wants to question it further, but jungkook informs them that the lights out call just came in before he can

another yoony/n sigh of relief

in private, y/n freaks out to yoongi for almost blowing their cover to the others

prompting a short conversation over whether they think they can trust them or not

y/n admits that they’re warming up to kook, but is a little suspicious if namjoon will keep their secret yet

convo ends with yoongi saying something like “well, the kid’s right about one thing. at least we know we have each other”

end.

[not-poignant]

Book recs on autism/add/CPTSD?

Aside from the books I recced here ages ago, which are mostly PTSD and dissociative disorder focused, nope. There’s one book in there on autism, but it’s specifically for partner workshopping, and that’s it.

Part of the reason I don’t have any book recs on C-PTSD is that there is not a ton of great books out there on C-PTSD, and this is partly because it’s not officially recognised in most of the world’s major diagnostic manuals. People can’t decide exactly what it is, or whether it’s a combination of comorbidities. They can’t decide if they want to call it C-PTSD or DES-NOS or something else. Not only that, but a serious push was made to include DES-NOS and DTD (C-PTSD related acronyms) in the latest revision of the DSM, and all were pushed back/rejected for just being insufficiently presented as conditions. Imho, I don’t think the DSM was wrong to reject what was put forward as the disorder.

I followed research around C-PTSD closely (because my symptoms match the description of it closely) around 1994 and in the decade afterwards. A lot of the time it was described as PTSD made additionally complicated by a dissociative disorder or alternatively, a personality disorder like Borderline or Bipolar Personality Disorder. It was used to distinguish from say, one-off rape-triggered PTSD, and PTSD that might be triggered by hundreds of rapes over a prolonged period since childhood (understanding that obviously, these would create different types of severity in the post-trauma spectrum, and require different treatments and expectations of recovery), and as with all disorders, a lot of people began self-diagnosing with C-PTSD who may have been dealing with comorbidities (PTSD + BPD as an example) that felt or looked similar.

Anyway, as a result, the literature on it outside of Herman’s work (which is in my stack of books) is like... mmmm. Hit and miss. It’s mostly articles.

Over time, with more research, it’s become less popular as a diagnostic disorder over time and not more popular, partly because a lot of the symptoms can be accounted for by pre-existing other conditions (ditto the treatments recommended). That isn’t to say it doesn’t exist, or that people can’t feel like that’s where they belong in terms of a label - I used the label myself for like 9 years before I decided against it - but the research around it shows more holes than anything solid, and there’s still a lot missing in the understanding of what is trying to be attained in the description of C-PTSD in the first place. It kind of had a golden age from like 1995-2005, dropped off the face of the planet, and then got picked up again during the renaissance of Tumblr (and social media) self-diagnosis and post-trauma social media vlogs etc.

The gold standard for C-PTSD discussion was still what was put forth by Judith Herman in Trauma and Recovery in 1992. There’s a reason even the Wiki article doesn’t step out much past that; there’s not that much good scientific work that’s been done in the field since that’s consistent or proves the existence of the disorder in the first place. :/ Traumatology science is complicated, but...things are not looking good for C-PTSD and it’s related acronyms DES-NOS (Disorders of Extreme Stress Not Otherwise Specified) and DTD (Developmental Trauma Disorder, for the childhood equivalent of C-PTSD) joining the DSM any time soon. So I kind of...dropped off with that research myself.

I have a lot of feelings about the C-PTSD diagnosis because I’ve had therapists diagnose me with it. But for the most part, it doesn’t change your treatment protocol anymore than if you had severe PTSD from prolonged trauma complicated with other mental and physiological disorders. As a result, I’m satisfied with the books on PTSD that I already have. I don’t set out to write characters with ‘C-PTSD’ - I write characters with PTSD complicated with other issues a lot of the time; if that reads as C-PTSD, that’s fine, but that’s actually just what PTSD complicated with other issues looks like as well.

I don’t have any book recs on ADHD or ADD, partly for selfish reasons - I don’t have it. I do have a lot of the symptoms, because there’s a lot of crossover between ADHD symptoms and severe PTSD symptoms and autism symptoms. (Fun fact, people with trauma who think they have ADHD or get diagnosed with ADHD first, often don’t realise that 70% of their symptoms can all be explained by PTSD. There are quite a few folks out there diagnosed with the latter, who might do better with treatment protocols for the former added in - many people don’t realise that mental illnesses trend in the mental health community. For like ten years it was bipolar and rapid cycling bipolar, for the last five years it’s been ADHD, some of those people have...you guessed it...PTSD, lol; when a disorder is trending, it gets diagnosed way more often whether the person has it or not - that’s why a differential diagnosis is so important).

I relate to almost every ADHD meme I see, because I have severe PTSD, lmao.

I’ve read a lot of articles on ADHD over the years because I have many friends who have it, but I don’t bookmark stuff like that so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯  I apologise! I mostly just pass them onto friends who have it and have appointed me their ‘research friend’ and that’s that.

And as for autism, I’ve never felt particularly compelled to read up on it, weirdly, outside of like the practical book that I’ve got in my collection (which I do, actually, recommend). Again, a lot of the symptoms between Asperger’s and severe PTSD actually are comorbid with each other, so again, a lot of the stuff covered in my PTSD research and therapy actually gave me adequate tools to deal with my autism.

But also just... most books on autism focus on boys with autism and focus on AMAB people and AMAB presentations and AMAB research and are less useful to me than like, articles and websites that specifically talk about AFAB autism presentation etc. The world of published autism books has a ways to go when it comes to not being like, sexist/misogynist in its presentation.

[misfitjohnnys]

unintentional; i just can’t stay by your side

You’ve worked hard for everything you’ve gotten and Mark Lee is a soft twist in your busy life, but you know hiding part of yourself eventually always bites anyone in the ass.

Word count: 19k - part 4/5

Reader x Mark Lee

(M)

masterlist // warnings

Mark hadn’t texted you back yet even once you woke up, sending you into a slight worry. The night shift had been hell and you were trying hard not to worry about Mark on his flight; you already had so much on your plate after your time spent away with him.

a/n: this chapter contains smut

You quickly logged onto Tumblr and tried to get some kind of update, blinking a bit when you saw nothing from searching his name and moved to Twitter. You were still met with nothing. The signs were both good and bad. No bad news, but that didn’t necessarily mean it was all good. You decided to text him again, but hoped you weren’t being too much. You’d already sent a few texts and you were scared to text the other members in fear that something bad had happened; you couldn’t handle if that was the truth.

Everything okay? Missing you :(

You sighed, tossing your phone to the side and staring at your ceiling, alone in your empty bed. It was the first time Mark had been away from your country since you met and you hated that you were feeling this way, but you couldn’t help it. You got up and tried to busy yourself by cleaning and taking your things from the spare room to set your decorations back up. You thought it would make you feel better to do so and to see things that reminded you of him, so you reorganized your memorabilia with no avail, trying to wait patiently for a response.

Mark was probably busy, you decided. Baekhyun had blown up his phone and he was back at home so maybe he was catching up, but you thought a text message wasn’t too much to get. Mark was normally good at responding, wonderful even. So, it was only a bit odd that you’d gotten nothing since his just landed! text that you’d gotten at 7pm the previous night. It had been about a day and a half since you dropped him off and the flight was almost 16 hours, so something didn’t feel right. It should’ve been nearing 1am at that point. You’d have to get used to the time difference, unfortunately.

You decided on cleaning your whole apartment to distract yourself and take a day off, calling the housecleaner off yet again. You needed to keep your mind busy until Mark would text you back. It took about an hour after you started your cleaning, but you finally got a response, gasping when you saw the name on your phone. You had to calm down for just a moment before opening it, smiling and trying to relax. It had been way too long for a response, but you were going to give him space.

Hey

You swallowed. He hadn’t ever texted you a greeting like that before, he always used emojis and overused exclamation points, so just the simple word bothered you. You tried to shake it off, texting him eagerly as always.

hey!! how is everything?

You hoped you’d get a better response, but you were left disappointed.

its okay i guess, i’m pretty busy.

You gulped, not liking the tension, but after all it was over text message, so you shouldn’t be as worried as you were. but something didn’t feel right. You tried to find the right words to respond but were cut short by the ellipsis followed by another text.

Can we like, talk?

Of course, you could talk to him. You shockingly weren’t busy, and you always made time for Mark.

yeah of course! you wanna call me? 💞

You tried to ease whatever was going on with your own sweetness, hoping it would be returned.

Not really.. I’m kind of in the middle of something, but I have to talk to you.

Oh no, there it was. Something was happening. You wanted to play the joke card to ease the tension because he always wanted to call you, he rarely didn’t call you for at least a minute when you asked, but you had to understand that he was back home and things would be different when he was there. It was much more dangerous. You watched the dots appear on your screen again, pausing your own thoughts for response.

Are you like, an nctzen?

Mark felt stupid for asking like that, but they were the only words he could come up with. You thought it was cute and you didn’t think anything of that message, which eased your concern a bit.

well yeah, dummy 😂 why wouldn’t I be?

More dots showed up, quicker this time.

No. That’s not what I mean.

You swallowed again.

Mark was sitting at home awake much too early with Taeyong sleeping, not really wanting to talk to him about the situation either. Taeyong didn’t seem like anything was wrong and that bothered Mark to no end. He sighed, typing a response again and he only saw the read receipt from you.

Like. Okay. Were you a fan of us, before all this happened? Like from the beginning. When you met me.

Your heart was beating fast, staring blankly at the message. Fuck, you should’ve told him by now. You had the time, you had the ability to tell him the whole time, you don’t know why you hadn’t. Of course, you knew that it was more of a possibility of him tossing you away that scared you into not telling him in the first place. You had every opportunity to come clean and you hadn’t. You feared his judgement and it swayed your truth. You sat in guilt on it for so long, hoping it would turn out to be fine and be something you laughed about later on, but it didn’t seem like that was how the conversation was going to go. At all. You were nervous, you wanted to deflect, buy some time. Maybe he was just asking to clear his own head and you were thinking too hard into it.

mark baby what’s this about?

You felt stupid for asking like that at the seriousness of the conversation, sighing and deciding on sending another message.

can you call me later? i can tell something is up, we can talk about it later if youre busy okay? focus on your work, i love you.

You had forgotten about the time again, just assuming that he was busy with other things. He did have extremely tight schedules after all.

I’ll call you later.

Okay, I’ll be here to answer, alright?

And like that, you got no further response, no I love you too, just a read receipt and a bad feeling in your gut. You sighed, checking on the time difference. Mark had to have been home in his dorm, lying awake either much too late or up too early and you knew how things got to him in the hours between night and morning. Maybe he needed to sleep whatever off, you would give him the space. You decided to try and busy yourself with cleaning again, but you found yourself obsessively checking on Tumblr, Twitter, and anywhere else you could think to find any information on what Mark had been up to. You knew it was wrong, but you thought your worries would be eased. What if he found your accounts? Maybe that was what this was about, but you didn’t think so. Mark wasn’t very big on social media in general, so you doubted he’d find you easily.

The feeling in your gut didn’t subside for a few hours, aimlessly wandering around your apartment and trying to straighten up even more, but everything was reminding you of the last week and the fact that Mark had just been there days ago and now he was back home questioning you over text message and nothing felt like it was making any sense. You didn’t know what exactly you did wrong, but there were so many ways he could have found out, you weren’t exactly sneaky, you just didn’t tell him the whole truth.

You sighed heavily, deciding to text your friends to figure out what was up. Irene was still pretty angry with you for ditching your responsibilities to follow a concert tour and you’d hardly seen her aside from in passing without questioning you, so you didn’t know what she’d think if you messaged her about Mark. She was off of the option list. Yeri seemed like a valid person to give decent feedback, so you shot her a message.

Yeri sweetie I’m freaking out I don’t know what to do

She was always quick to reply.

Oh god what’s happening are you okay

Not really, I think I fucked up with Mark and I don’t know what to do

Holy shit wait, are you still talking to him????

dude AM i?? We kinda made things official and he came to visit me a week ago shit im sorry I haven’t updated you

no fucking way dude I still have Lucas in my DMs… man what have we gotten ourselves into???

lucas??? in your DMs???

YES OMG but okay that doesn’t matter what’s happening with Marky Mark???

You’d return to the Lucas conversation at a later date, that didn’t matter right now. You wanted guidance and you knew Yeri wasn’t the best at advice, but she was great at listening and offering a helping hand as much as she could give you, so it was helpful.

okay so he texted me some cryptic stuff and I’m just really nervous that i messed something up

Alright stop freaking out lmao, I’m sure everything’s fine and you’re just being dramatic!! What did he say?

You sighed and screenshot the last bit of your conversation and sent it, hopefully trying to get a better answer. It felt wrong to share your conversations with him, but you felt it was the best way to help you and get a clearer answer. Yeri knew you had put up the charade in the first place and wasn’t too fond of the idea, but she’d never tell you that. She’d act oblivious as much as she could to stay on your side.

What could that be about?? Did someone get to him and try to make you look bad??

Yeri i literally have no idea, I’m freaking out trying to figure it out! It’s like 2am there and I don’t want to bother him again to talk

Okay sweetie well just let it ride out, see what he has to say and call him in the morning! Don’t freak out too much yet, I’m sure it’s fine!! i love you!!!

You sighed again, hoping that Yeri was right, she usually was, but Irene usually had a more practical answer. Irene wasn’t someone you could ask about this though, she’d be angry with you for trying to focus on someone instead of your work and you hadn’t even updated her on exactly what was going on, so she was out of the loop to begin with and telling another person didn’t seem like it was in the best interest of you or Mark. You frowned, hoping that you’d calm down a little more before going to sleep because it had gotten dark before you realized how fast time had flown by. Maybe you’d send him one last text, just to ease your own mind.

Hey, I know it’s late, but I’m worried I did something to upset you and that’s the last thing I want, can we talk as soon as possible?

Yeah, I’ll call you in the morning.

Goodnight.

Sleep well, okay?

He’d never been so short with you before, just hoping that it wasn’t an issue you created because you didn’t think you did anything for him to find out. Maybe someone else was speculating and it wasn’t on you at all. You tried to convince yourself that maybe someone had him paranoid instead of it being something you did. You were trying to be optimistic and hoped it would all just blow over. It would break your heart to have ruined it yourself because things were going so well, and it was so long since you’d been so happy before. You sat in your freshly made bed, hoping to relax a bit. A few hours passed, still trying to find things to ease your mind before it was getting late. Still no call from Mark and no other texts from him either. You checked the time, hoping it was getting to be around morning time for him. Maybe you’d get lucky and he needed to be up early.

Your hopes were answered when you received a text around 4pm.

Is now a good time?

Your heart was racing faster than you’d ever felt it, your stomach in knots.

-

Mark had the chance to talk to Taeyong, who had more of a difficult time talking to him than he thought possible, Taeyong’s nerves were shot and he spent his hardest time trying to defend you.

“So you knew about this, like, the whole time?”

“Well, no..” Taeyong sighed, scratching behind his ear nervously. “I only found out after we went bowling and Baekhyun-hyung had me come in the room with him and-“

“So you helped him go through the suitcase?”

“No, not at all, I-um- actually told him not to, but you know he’s very persistent and-“

“Taeyong, come on, please.” Mark nearly looked on the verge of tears. “You know I hate being lied to, I hate it so much, so why didn’t you tell me?” He pleaded with his leader, hoping to get a better answer than the upsetting one he was getting.

“I-“ Taeyong sighed. “I saw how happy you were, and I know that we all get a bit uncomfortable when we try to talk to someone and they’re a fan, and I-“ He tried to gather his words, earning a disappointing look from Mark. “I didn’t want you to make that mistake.” Taeyong was honest, he was pure at heart and only wished for the best in people. The last thing he wanted was for Mark to give up his chance of pursuing you because of the stigma around dating a fan, so he stayed quiet and it was biting him in the ass.

“Well, now I might have made another mistake because I’ve been lied to for the last, what? Few months?” Mark scoffed. “Does anyone else know? I mean come on, we’re all in a group chat with half of 127, you know how awkward that is that I literally introduced them to someone who possibly fucking idolizes them? That’s so weird dude!” Mark didn’t like the idea of putting Yuta, Jaehyun, Johnny, or anyone else in danger and it would be all his fault if something happened, the boys were weird and texted dumb things and private conversations, so it wasn’t a good look to have you knowing them all like that. Granted, they were adults and could have spoken up and denied being added, but Mark knew they all believed the best in people, which is why he made the chat in the first place.

Taeyong gulped again, trying to get Mark to calm down before he spoke again. “Nobody else knows.”

“Nobody?” Mark didn’t seem so sure.

“No, Baekhyun hasn’t told anyone either.” Taeyong was biting his nails, looking anywhere but in Mark’s eyes. He was almost sure that Baekhyun hadn’t told anyone because he seemed so adamant that the word shouldn’t get out, but Taeyong wasn’t entirely positive.

“You sure?” Mark asked, pleading for Taeyong to answer him honestly. Taeyong had a history of making sure everyone was always happy, so Mark had to make sure he wasn’t avoiding the truth just to please the boy.

“I’m positive, okay?” Taeyong nodded. He wasn’t, but it would put Mark at ease, but he was positive that even if Baekhyun had slipped up that he wouldn’t put them into even more danger by adding to the situation. EXO was known for being level-headed and under the radar, so he didn’t fear that you’d be exposed, not even a little bit. He thought a moment, blinking at Mark. Taeyong was going to make his statement. Maybe he wasn’t right in how he felt, but it felt like he was. “I don’t care, I think the two of you are good together and you make each other happy, so you shouldn’t care either!” Taeyong sighed softly. “Have you two talked?”

“Not yet, I’m, um, supposed to call later. I was supposed to call days ago, but I-I don’t know if I can.” He’d texted you, but he’d avoided calling you for days and you tried to be fine with him not talking to you even when he seemed like he had so much to say and clearly the conversation was important but the time never felt right and Mark was obviously avoiding the problem.

“Please talk, you guys have something special okay, I know it.” Taeyong offered a smile, trying to make sure Mark didn’t regret his decision just because of one small hiccup. Mark sighed again, his face in his hands. “You should be upfront and figure the whole thing out.”

“Okay, I’ll call, fine.” Mark grumbled, pressing his thumb and forefinger to his temples. “I seriously don’t know what to do, man.” He scoffed. Taeyong sighed softly, nodding his head.

“I mean, stand in that position, what if you decided not to talk at all just because you found out about the three of them were fans? I can’t exactly blame them in this situation. I can understand why they hid it from you, you probably would’ve backed away before it even started.” Taeyong tried his best to comfort Mark, but he could tell he was failing. He was disappointed in himself for failing to talk to Mark before Baekhyun got to him in the first place, he blamed himself more than anyone. It was a tough situation to be in in general, he understood both perspectives and just wanted everyone to be happy. Taeyong didn’t know what to do.

“But you could’ve warned me.”

“I don’t know that it would’ve helped..” Taeyong was probably more nervous than you, settling back down with biting his nails and he wasn’t even sure who he could talk to about his own nerves, not wanting to hurt Mark any further until you two settled what was going on. He hoped everything would be okay, Taeyong liked you. He thought you were wonderful, and he was so happy to meet you and see how radiant and excited Mark had been since becoming a trainee, he just hoped it would all be fine. He wanted Mark to be happy, he wanted you to be happy. He liked the friendship he’d made with you and checking to see how you were doing, always followed with happy text messages and even he wanted to message you before it blew up, but it didn’t feel right.

Taeyong wanted it to all be okay.

-

“Hey.” The voice on the other end of the speaker was almost terrifying. You had gasped when Mark finally called. It had been a while since you talked. Mark had done a good job ignoring you for way too long and you felt like you could pass out.

Your heart was pounding painfully in your chest. It was nearing 4pm your time because he’d clearly let it go on to the next day even after he and Taeyong’s conversation, but he had finally decided to call when he woke up, thoughts rushing around both your heads, but the biggest fear was whether or not Mark was alright. You had been so worried about you and where you stood with him, but once you heard his voice that was long forgotten, you just wanted him to be alright. That’s what mattered more than anything.

“Mark?” You questioned, voice coming out much shakier than you wanted it to.

“Hey,” He sighed through the speaker. You didn’t know if you were ready for the conversation even if you had so much time to prepare for what you’d hear, but you knew it was necessary to keep whatever was happening between the two of you at a decent standing. “I’ve got, um, a question.” He sounded confused and choked up.

“Okay, yeah, you can ask me anything.” You assured him, hoping to put him at ease. “Is this about what you texted me about?”

“Yeah,” Mark cleared his throat. “It is, um. So, like. Be real with me.” He sighed again. “Were you a fan of us before all this? Be honest with me, please. I-I-I asked the other day and you didn’t answer.”

You had half a mind to deflect again even after some serious thought, but you weren’t sure it was the right answer. “I-“ You sighed. “I knew about you.”

“That didn’t um, exactly answer my question.” His laugh sounded condescending and you felt like you could vomit. “How much did you know?” You sighed again.

“A good amount, I guess..” You trailed off, voice quieter.

The speaker was silent for a moment. “Please don’t lie to me, I really don’t like being lied to.” He was making it more and more obvious that you had really messed up, which was your biggest fear. You had messed up and there was going to be no way to avoid the conversation and go back to normal because you neglected to tell him in the first place. You avoided it on purpose and kept making excuses, but you were screwed. You messed up. It wasn’t someone projecting on him, he had been told the truth and you didn’t know how, but it didn’t matter. He knew and all you could do was confirm and come clean.

“Mark,” You sighed again, knowing it was finally time to fess up. You weren’t sure how to word it, but you finally had to tell him the truth even though it was too late. You had a feeling. “I was actually in the city for the SuperM concert with my friends and-“ You paused to calm yourself down. “I’ve been a fan of you for a while, yeah.”

“Me?” His voice was softer, obviously trying to get you to continue.

“Well-Like, all of you? I guess.” You said briefly, biting your lip. “I’ve kind of.. been a fan for a while.”

“And you didn’t think this was that big of a deal?” He asked with a scoff.

You paused for a moment, silence breaking waves in your head. You should have told him, and you had been purposefully avoiding it. You feared telling him and it felt like good reasoning until that moment. “I was scared, Mark.”

“Scared of what?” He asked, tone much more aggressive than you were used to. You felt sick to your stomach, lying on your bed and trying to finish the conversation without freaking out fully.

“Scared of you not wanting me anymore, I guess. Scared that you might not give me a chance.” You hoped that was the right answer. It was the truth and hopefully he would understand. Maybe it would all blow over.

“I wish you would’ve just said something because now it absolutely, like, feels like you’ve been hiding shit from me.” Mark had never raised his voice, he still was level-headed, but you knew he was correct in his feelings and he had every right to react that way. “I seriously hate being lied to more than anything in the damn world and you’ve been doing it to me for months, I just like people to just be, like, upfront with me, dude!” It was weird to hear him speaking like that especially since it was all so new to begin with, wishing you had never put him in the position to be angry with you.

Internally, Mark knew that he more than likely wouldn’t have given you a chance, but he didn’t want to think about it. He wanted to pretend that he wouldn’t have done that, but it wasn’t the truth and he knew it. He was pulled from his thoughts again when you spoke. “I-Mark, I-I’m really sorry, you’re right, I should’ve said something.”

“Yeah, you think?” He scoffed again. “This is like, exactly what happens to people in this industry.” His voice started to crack a bit and knowing you were the reason for his upset was more than heartbreaking. “We have such a hard time dating people because they get lied to, okay? I trusted you, I poured my heart out to you and every single time I thought you were just interested in me, it was all things you probably already knew, huh?” The bite in the last sentence was soul-crushing, your throat felt tight.

You didn’t know how to respond. You pulled yourself together, trying to ignore the blinding headache you were getting from having hurt him so badly. It was never your intention, but he was right. He was. “Yes.”

“You knew all that stuff. You knew our songs; you knew the members and here I was just thinking you had learned it all for me.” He spat, hurt in his tone. “I thought I was special, someone you wanted to get to know and it was stuff you already knew! You knew everything, didn’t you? Didn’t you?” He repeated more aggressively, but you didn’t want him to think you wouldn’t have done those things in the first place. If you had been in the position to get to know him from scratch, you would have learned those things about him, but knowing him was the reason you had connected and invited him to the party in the first place. He was special, but it wasn’t an authentic relationship and it killed you that you’d done something so stupid.

“You.. Are special, Mark.” You sighed, trying to ignore the tears begging to fall because he was right. “You didn’t deserve to be lied to, but Mark, I really like you. Not even just because you’re famous or my idol or anything, I really, really like you okay? I’m interested in continuing to get to know you and every moment I spent with you is a miracle and I just hope you feel the same way.” You were both quiet for a moment.

“I mean,” He huffed into the phone. You didn’t expect him to go off. “I thought I did, but how can I trust you? I had to find out from Baekhyun that you’d been lying to me! Not only me, but to Lucas, Taemin, everyone!” The words stung. “We let you in the chats, let you into our personal lives, and then we find out we probably fucked up big time? That’s low, it’s really fucked up looking at it. It puts us in danger, okay?” You gulped. He was right. He had every right to be mad because it was almost like you were invading his personal life by hiding part of yours. “I’m supposed to make the decision on if I want to take it anywhere with someone knowing who I am. I’m supposed to be the one to decide, not you!” It felt wrong. You felt wrong. You shared so much with Mark and he shared enough with you to get him into huge trouble, but you had ignored it for your own selfishness and continued to drag it on. “Do you see where I’m coming from?”

“Mark, I swear I’d never put you in danger.” And you wouldn’t. You’d never do anything to hurt him or anyone else but that didn’t matter in the conversation. You had avoided dating for the same reason, people searching for your money or to get what they wanted when you first got your name up, but you never expected to be in the opposite position. You didn’t need Mark for the money, but the validation of having someone more famous than you was probably an internal validation that you seeked. Maybe it was why you’d done it in the first place; having someone you looked up to interested in you felt good and it made you selfish.

The mention of Baekhyun didn’t raise any flags in your head at the time, it didn’t even cross your mind that it was why he’d been so dodgy with you and weird in the first place. You’d only met him twice in comparison to the others and both times he was sweet but guarded. The lines didn’t connect at the mention.

“So, you haven’t talked about this to anyone? Not on the internet or anything?” He scoffed, finding it hard to believe if your answer was no. You hadn’t told anyone and the people you did tell had met with them and weren’t in any position to speak out about it. Seulgi didn’t care and Yeri was talking to Lucas, so they weren’t a threat because they’d end up exposed too. However, Yeri was an open book and you were positive Lucas knew about her liking him anyway.

“No, I swear. I’ve only talked to the friends you met and they’re not stupid either, we’d never do that to you.” You answered honestly. “I haven’t told anyone, at all. Not even my assistant! They only know I’m talking to someone, what’s between us is private.” Mark knew who Irene was to you and the fact that you hadn’t told her didn’t seem close to believable in his state of mind.

“I just don’t know if I can trust that.” He had every right to feel that way, but you wanted to let him know that you cared, and you would never cross that line. You had to remind yourself that you’d never get Mark in trouble and that seemed to be what he was most worried about.

“I-“ You swallowed, sighing and trying to let him calm down. “Mark, I promise I’d never do that. I wouldn’t tell anybody because I know what would happen if the word got out, I-” he cut you off.

“I just-I don’t know what to do now.” If you were in fact being honest, Mark had to consider how he was feeling now that he knew the truth. It was all up to him to figure out what to further do.

“I-I know.” You did know, you did know the danger he could be in, but again, you’d never hurt him. You hadn’t said anything. You’d been truthful and didn’t even know how you wound up in that position, but you were definitely not going to ask. You weren’t lying about anything you’d confessed to at all, you only wanted the best for Mark, but you being with him was just too exciting to give up and you knew from the early in the beginning that you didn’t care who he was, you liked him for who he showed himself to be, you liked his authentic self. Maybe you should reiterate your feelings and the silence was killing you. “Mark, I promise I could care less about how famous or anything you are. I like you. I like you more than anyone I’ve ever dated or talked to, and yeah it’s exciting that you’re someone I used to idolize, but it’s all changed now. I know you deeper than that. You’re amazing and I love that you gave me a chance and I hope you can give me the opportunity to make it up to you and everyone else.” The line was quiet again for longer than you expected. You wish you knew if he was smiling, if he was feeling better, if all you were saying meant anything. “Mark?”

“I’m processing, okay?” He huffed over the phone again. “I just don’t know how I feel, okay?”

“I understand.” You did, you knew the tight spot you’d put him into, but you were going to own up to it.

“I’ll talk to you later.” You could hear the irritation in his voice. “Let me think.”

“I-“ You swallowed, wondering if you should even say it, but you wanted to remind him how you felt. “I love you.”

“Yeah.” The line went blank, he’d hung up. You hadn’t experienced a heartbreak like that; it was unsettling and crushing. You felt tears well up in your eyes and wondered how you went from being so wonderful to being such an issue in his life. That was the last thing you wanted, but deep down you knew that time would come. You just hoped you got lucky enough for him to be blind to it, but not everyone else was. The subject of Baekhyun finding out was starting to stand out in your head finally, furrowing your brows and you knew you should leave Mark alone, but you wanted to know exactly what he meant. You didn’t want to further bother him at all, but after a few minutes, it was eating you up and you knew you had to ask. You thought up a text to Mark, but quickly erased it. You decided to text Taeyong.

Yong?

You didn’t get an answer quickly, so you’d send another.

can i ask you something?

You got to thinking about everything Mark said and suddenly Baekhyun seemed to be an important part in the whole thing. Maybe that was why Baekhyun was so distant. Maybe he knew the whole time. The possibility was driving you crazy, but you had to remain calm and work it out the right way. It was your only hope of redemption and Taeyong was the most calm and friendly person you’d spoken to from the experience. You two had become decently close. Taemin and Ten didn’t seem comfortable enough with you yet and Lucas was unfortunately hopeless when it came to any issue at all, he was the biggest avoider in conflict and Mark had mentioned that he was timid when a situation arose, you noted, so you would definitely not bother him. You’d just have to wait it out for now.

No response from Taeyong. Maybe you’d messed that up too.

Days upon days had passed and you still hadn’t gotten a response or any kind of message from anybody. The weeks had passed and you tried your hardest to busy yourself with floor plans for weeks and working with contractors to get your other places set up, but even when busying yourself, your world was falling down. It was disheartening, but you couldn’t help but rethinking about the danger and terrible position you’d put them all in, so you were best to leave it alone until anyone felt ready to talk. You were constantly reminded online that 127 were off to Spain soon, then New York, so you knew everyone was more than busy, but you hoped that maybe you’d get a response before then.

You spent days in your head and after a long-going meeting about final calls, it was getting late, so you decided to head to the main restaurant location and hopefully get your mind off things. It wasn’t the most helpful, but you could only dream, assisting with food prep and listening carefully, catching up with the workers you hadn’t seen in a few days because you were so preoccupied with your own personal issues. You felt like you were letting them all down, but they assured you about how fine it all was. You’d done your job and adequately prepared them all for the journey, so you felt almost useless in the time being. For once you finally had everyone ready to deal without you being on location. It felt wrong. You still had a few store openings to work on, but your mind couldn’t focus in on that at the moment. You had been working at the cutting board for hours thinking, but were pulled from your thoughts in the mindless work.

“Everything okay? I got a call saying someone was here with their head in the cutting board again being awfully quiet.” You heard a familiar voice behind you, one that always made you feel a bit better. You turned around to see Irene with a bright smile, hands placed on her hips. You sighed of relief, smiling at her and dropping your knife on the table to walk over and hug her after tugging your gloves off to hug her. “What’s wrong sweet pea?” She offered, gently patting your back. “You’ve been out of it since your trip.” She was giggling and you felt yourself let go, tears rolling down your face as you tucked your head into her shoulder. She had been annoyed with you before, but she didn’t seem to be upset at all.

“It’s been a hard few weeks, ‘Rene.”

“I could tell, I could.” She consoled you, trying to bring you back down to earth before diving deeper into the real problem. “Just talk to me if you want to, okay? But I know when you willingly cut vegetables in here at night that you’ve got something going on.” You nodded, drying your face on her shirt. You stayed in her embrace for a while before pulling away.

“Your shoulder’s a little wet.” You laughed, wiping your eyes again with your sleeves.

“I’ve been used to that for years.” Irene teased, leaning against the counter and her voice was sincere. She cared about you more than you thought someone should. “Now tell me what’s actually going on.” And that’s when the dam broke.

-

“So that’s what you’ve been up to?” Irene was looking at the table in the empty restaurant and trying to process all the information she just got, eyes somewhere between disbelief and concern. You’d gone off on a tangent and confessed everything to her right there. In your heart you know you shouldn’t bring yet another person into the equation, but you had to go somewhere to get a decent opinion and Irene was the most level-headed person you knew. She was technically responsible for you after all, that’s what you paid her for, and she absolutely deserved a raise at that point. You’d make a mental note of that.

“Yeah.” You nodded, carding your fingers through your hair. “It’s pretty fucked up, isn’t it?” You scoffed, in disbelief that you’d gotten yourself into the situation at hand. You hated that you did that to anyone including yourself.

“I don’t think so.” Irene shook her head, sighing. “I understand why you did it, I really do, but I also see it from his perspective, maybe he just needs some space, you know?” Irene was always right, stirring her coffee and taking a sip. “Who knows, maybe it could all blow over if you really like each other, yeah?” She offered a sweet smile, hoping to get your hopes back up. You nodded in response. “If they’re coming here soon, why not go ahead and try to talk to him? You’ve got a conference in Jersey in a few weeks I could probably move up, and they’re pretty close, so maybe you could get a little leverage?” She shrugged, leaning back in the booth seat.

“Oh my god, shit. I completely forgot about that conference.” You sighed, groaning softly. “You think that’s a good idea? Just show up?”

“It’s the Macy’s Day Parade, it’s not like it’s some private event.” Irene snorted, shrugging. “Let me talk to the investors, I can try to see if they’ll move up to that weekend. I mean, come on, I can go with you.”

“You’d go with me?”

“You’re literally paying me to take care of you.” She snorted again, reminding you yet again that she was the greatest investment you’d made thus far. “Of course, I’ll go with you. Everyone here is fully capable of taking care of the place. You’re not stupid, you did a good job at hiring.” You rolled your eyes, smiling at her aggressive complimenting. “You’ve done your job which is why you find it hard to find something to do when you just show up here.” She snorted gain. “Which is also why your busy work consists of cutting vegetables when you’re upset.”

“I guess I should be less competent then, yeah?” You joked, seeing Irene roll her eyes playfully.

“That’s the opposite of what I’m saying, you workaholic.” She tapped the top of your hand playfully mimicking a smack. “Sometimes it’s good to let other people work for you, so you can go ahead and easily fuck around with people like Mark Lee.” She raised a brow, shaking her head. It was the first time she’d understood the depth of why you weren’t talking to her about what was happening. “Trust me, it’ll all be fine, promise.”

You were finally laughing; glad you had some outlet to let go of what you’ve been holding onto. You felt like you should have gone to her in the first place. Irene was honestly a lifesaver and you thanked her day in and day out for that amongst everything else she’s done for you. “So, I guess you’re going to see them with me?” You smiled awkwardly, knowing partially that it was a bad idea, but making a work trip wasn’t entirely a horrible excuse. Irene couldn’t care less about seeing the boys, she was in it for you to begin with and you were sure that’s how it would remain.

“I’m going for you and the Macy’s Day Parade, don’t get it twisted.” She teased, grinning wide. “I’m an emotional support assistant, not your love life therapist.”

“That’s fair.”

“At least you have a love life now, I’ve been waiting on you to get distracted since the first store opened. You deserved a little break and I don’t want one little hiccup to ruin that for you.” She was right and you knew it. “Now let’s go home and get some rest, alright?”

“But the vegetables!” You sighed, remembering that you’d started a job you wanted to finish. Irene groaned.

“Okay, fine. Let’s go finish the vegetables and you’re going home and drinking a glass of wine and going to sleep right after, okay?”

“Yes, mom.” You snorted, standing up and wiping the table clean before returning to the back, Irene gladly following to assist and make sure you weren’t there until ungodly hours of the night. It was already late, and she knew how you were, so she’d keep an eye on you to make sure you were in good standing and you appreciated it more than you could express. Everyone else had gone home after closing and you only had yourself to worry about.

“So, I got your conference moved up.” Irene offered after a few moments of silence. You hadn’t even seen her send an email. “You can thank me later.” She shrugged. “We’re flying out in two days, so be prepared.” You shook your head, smiling. You’d been prepared for the meeting for months now, filling every hole with explanation and you were more than ready to present, but seeing Mark again made it even more worthwhile.

“God, I love you.” You reminded Irene once again.

“Hm, I know.” She was confident, as she should be.

You got home and did exactly what she told you to do, got a glass of wine, showered, and got into your comfortable clothes to get a decent night’s rest. You were due at the restaurant in the morning to go over some new procedures, so your rest was important and thankfully, you slept like a baby.

You woke up to a missed call and a few texts, groaning at the full notification screen but decided to ignore it until you were coherent enough and had some water and coffee in your system for the day; it could wait. You forgot you had even been waiting on responses from anyone, you weren’t awake enough for that and you had work to tend to.

When you were finally at work, waiting for everyone to show up, you quickly read through your phone and glanced at the messages, one from Mark.

I’m ready to talk, call me when you can.

You also had a missed call and a text from Taeyong. It had been what? A few weeks or so since you texted him? You forgot you had even texted him, getting back into the swing of work had really distracted you from the passing days and you almost forgot what you sent him but were quickly reminded with a heavy beating heart and a deep breath as you looked the messages over.

Hey, I’m so sorry I’ve been so busy, is everything okay? I should have responded by now but I just got so distracted and didn’t know what to say 🥺 I know things went down with you and Mark and I hope you’re okay, I’m here if you need me, I promise. We just got finished up in Spain and we’re about to fly out so if I don’t answer then just hold on!!

Taeyong was always so sweet, making your heart pound heavily and hoping he wasn’t too stressed about the situation, he was always on edge with stress and from what you gathered he had the most overlapping schedules and you hated to add more to it. Taeyong didn’t want to go behind Mark’s back and talk to you about the situation until he had the time to say anything himself, so he went with his gut feeling for not responding immediately but when he was going through his messages after the awards show, he was hit with guilt for not talking back to you and he was sure you were freaking out across the world. He hoped his message would find you well.

You quickly typed up a text to Taeyong

Hey!! Don’t worry about it, I felt bad for dragging you into it anyway. Mark wants to talk to me, and I was just nervous, I didn’t know if you were near him or knew what was going on, but thank you for caring so much, I appreciate it and I hope your flight goes well!💛

Then it was time to text Mark back. It took a minute to draft up the perfect message, but you just said what felt right in the moment.

Hey, I’m really busy with work today, but you can call me when you’re ready and I’ll answer, okay? Take care of yourself and work, that’s what’s important

You thought your message was the right amount of distance, taking a deep breath after responding. You didn’t want to seem to eager and you definitely didn’t want to mention that you were going to see them, it could mess things up, but you also hadn’t factored in him wanting to talk as soon as he was heading back to the states.

Mark didn’t call you back. Taeyong didn’t text. You knew they still had to be on the plane and talking was rare when it came to flights, so you’d focus in on continued prepping for your meeting and getting everyone in the restaurant in check, including your newest manager. It pained you to think about what your job had gone through and your neglect had caused problems, so you were still nervous to take the trip, but you had to believe Irene when she told you that it was going to be fine.

You finished up your meeting and busied yourself with casual preparation as the day went on, getting nagged by Irene on the fact that you didn’t have to do this or that for every little task you put yourself on and you had perfectly capable workers to do it, but you honestly liked helping out and everyone there seemed to enjoy having you around. You loved creating a fun work environment and you kind of missed being a part of the kitchen staff. You sighed after a long day, sitting in your office to relax for a bit. Irene sauntered into the office after finishing up her own paperwork to smile at you.

“So,” She giggled, sitting on your desk. “You ready to go talk to your guy?” She teased.

“Maybe, yeah.” You nodded, grinning. You sighed again, shrugging. You hadn’t heard from anyone yet, but you were being patient. “Does he know you’re coming yet?”

“Nope, I guess I’ll tell him when we’re there.”

Irene snorted. “Of course, I figured you were going to say that.” And as soon as she spoke, you saw your phone vibrating on the desk. You gasped, looking over at Irene, who sent you a knowing look.

“Is that your guy?”

You swallowed, nodding. “Yeah, it is. Um, I-I’m nervous.” You sighed, picking it up and hesitating to answer. Irene quickly reached over to press the green button and grinned widely at you before mouthing a ‘good luck’ at you and then slipping out of the room, back behind her own office door.

You gulped. “H-hello?”

You heard a soft sigh on the phone, accompanied by some scattered voices in the background. “Hey!” Mark exclaimed. “We-we um, just touched down, we’re going through customs now.” He explained, his voice seemed a bit paced over the speaker, you hoped he was okay.

“How was the flight?” You asked quickly, trying to shift the subject to his importance. You hadn’t heard his voice since the big talk, but you’d try not to focus on how nice it was to hear him again.

“It was fine, yeah.” He spoke softer, voice calming down. “How are you?” He asked.

“I’m-I’m okay.” You answered honestly, but you couldn’t help the blush on your face or the heavy beating of your heart. “It’s been a long-ish day.”

“Yeah, same here.” He cleared his throat. He was quiet for a moment, so you assumed he was thinking on what to say. “So, um, I just wanted to apologize.” You were silent, shocked that he was the one apologizing. “I didn’t mean to get so angry with you.” He was speaking quieter, continuing to ramble on because you couldn’t quite find the words to say back. “I was just upset and didn’t know what to do.” You had to admit that you hated doing that kind of thing over the phone, texting was easier and in person was more personal, but if it was the way Mark wanted to have the conversation, you were fine with it.

“No, no trust me, you had every right to feel that way, I know how you-“ He cut you off.

“But listen, that’s not why I called.” Mark sighed again. “I wanted to see if you, um, had the possible time to meet up maybe, so I could get some clarity on how I feel or something. I’ve just been really stressed and, yeah.” He was quieter and you couldn’t stop the smile that spread along your face. “Sorry I haven’t messaged you..”

The last part didn’t really flow through your mind. You almost stopped listening after he said he wanted to meet with you. “Like, in New York?”

“Yeah, yeah, um, I know it’s last minute, but maybe we can meet somewhere before I fly out again, you know?” You sighed again, remembering that he still had other responsibilities, but he was still wanting to meet up. “I just think it could help, you know, whatever this is.” He sounded nervous, but confident in what he needed at the same time. It was a tone you weren’t used to. He knew exactly what he wanted for the first time since you met and that felt good. At least he was sure about it. You understood you hadn’t been together long, but you still cared about him and how he felt about it all, you just wanted him to be happy.

“We may be able to arrange something.” You hinted, smiling. “You’re there for two days?”

“Well, yeah. We sleep tonight and we’re here the next two nights, so I’ll be here.”

It was fortunate that you could easily get tickets had you not bought them beforehand. Maybe the relationship would be able to work out if the two of you stayed looping each other in, it wouldn’t be so hard.

“I’ll let you know, okay?” You sighed happily into the phone.

“Okay, cool, cool.” He laughed softly over the speaker. “I’ll, um, hopefully see you, just let me know.”

“I will, promise.” It was the most basic conversation the two of you had, as if it didn’t involve you flying across the country to see him yet again. You were shocked at how calm he seemed, hopefully he was feeling better about the situation. You sighed of relief.

“Cool, yeah.” Mark cleared his throat again. “I-um, I’ll talk to you later.”

“Okay.” You nodded, sighing and not yet wanting to hang up. It was nice to hear his voice again. You were whipped and you knew it. “Well, um,” You grinned. “Bye, bye.” His giggle over the phone was cute.

“Bye.”

It wasn’t long before you got a text from Taeyong.

It sounds like you guys are going to work it out? 😃

You grinned at the message.

Yeah, I think so 🤞

-

“So, ready to go?” You heard a voice through your apartment, gasping loudly and not at all awake enough to function and hear someone in your house. It was late in the night and you had just woken up from a nap, you booked a 2am flight so you could easily make it for the morning, but you had a feeling you wouldn’t sleep at all on the plane because it was nearly midnight and you had taken a really good nap.

“Jesus, I really should take your house key away.” You groaned from your bedroom, popping your head out to see Irene at the front door, fully dressed and ready to go.

“And stop me from scaring you? I haven’t hardly seen you in weeks, so you have to deal with me for the next few days.” She laughed, walking into your kitchen to grab a glass of water. “God, your house is so clean, who are you?” She laughed, knowing that you’d definitely been keeping it straight for Mark and to busy your head. She knew you all too well.

“Okay, I didn’t sign up to be roasted, let me live.” You snorted, zipping up your suitcase and turning it to the wheels to get ready to leave. You pulled on your oversized coat and stepped into your boots, trying to prepare for the cold weather as you walked your bags down the stairs.

“Oh, okay someone’s looking nice.” She teased further, taking a sip from the glass. “It’s good to see you pulling yourself together, I ought to thank Mark myself.” You rolled your eyes at her, putting your bags at the door before putting your sunglasses on top of your head. “Ready?” You might’ve been dressed up to easily be ready for tomorrow and early check in at the hotel, so you didn’t have to worry about what you’d see Mark in. You needed to be dressed your very best for the situation.

“Ready!” You nodded, smiling at your friend.

You hadn’t talked to Mark much because he was clearly avoiding the full conversation you needed to settle and while you were anxious about it, you didn’t mind avoiding the conflict. You’d talked more to Taeyong, mostly about scheduling and he seemed rather excited to see you, much to your own surprise.. You definitely avoided the groupchats. You were trying your best to distance yourself, give Mark some space to decide what was going to happen between you two. You were an adult; you could handle that.

The flight was shorter than you thought it would be, spending most of your time emailing and scripting for the conference while Irene slept. She had taken an Ambien and absolutely hated plane rides, which shocked you because she was more often than not willing to go somewhere with you. When you finally landed, your adrenaline was high, and you were more than excited to walk around the city and explore. You’d never really spent much time in New York before and Jersey was only a short ride for the conference on Saturday. You were more excited to visit there than you thought you would be, and you hadn’t exactly told Mark you were officially coming yet, you’d leave the surprise up to him. You were there for business with the hope of excitement, so you were sure you couldn’t be too let down.

Thursday night was the official performance and thankfully you landed early enough to make it for the parade, excitedly checking Twitter eagerly to find out what parade float 127 was on. Thankfully your hotel was near the parade route, so you quickly headed out to see where everyone had been lining up. You easily found a good spot near the end of the parade, excitedly waiting to see the boys you’d been waiting to see. You still hadn’t met anyone in the 127 groupchat aside from Taeyong and Mark, so it was even more exciting to meet the other people you’d talked to in person.

You excitedly watched the parade because weirdly enough, you had always wanted to see it. You sighed happily, grinning wide with Irene at your side. She watched intently, noticing how excited you were, and even though you could tell she didn’t understand the hype, her being there with you meant the world. The whole parade was amazing, bright exciting colors all around and you felt like you were in heaven, bright skies felt like the whole world had meaning again and maybe it was just because you were tired, but things felt right. You sighed happily, glancing around the corner to finally see the gigantic Lego float and you gasped loudly.

“Irene! It’s them!” She whipped her head around, enjoying seeing you so happy so she was going to give into your excitements.

“And which one is Mark?” She snorted, grinning when you started jumping around excitedly, screams filling the people around you.

“The little one with the black hair!” You beamed, waving and hoping they saw you. You giggled excitedly, whipping out your phone to snap a picture of them to send to the 127 chat.

You guys look amazing!! congrats! I got a good view of the float and you all look so happy 🥰

You sent the message quickly, stuffing your phone back into your pocket before Irene spoke to you, checking out the float herself in the time being. You didn’t expect the next words to fall out of her mouth. “The tall one with the black hair is actually kind of hot.” She snorted, nodding with pursed lips. “Not bad.” Your eyes widened with slight shock, but you couldn’t exactly blame her for the comment.

“Yeah, that’s Johnny!” You giggled again, waving excitedly. Unfortunately, none of them looked in your direction, but you didn’t mind. You didn’t warn them beforehand so that they could look for you and you hoped you’d meet up with Mark and maybe the others later. Just seeing them made you feel better and the butterflies returned to your stomach at the thought that you were so close to the members you hadn’t seen before. You shook the thoughts away and tried to remember that some of them were your friends. You leaned into Irene’s ear to explain quickly to her. “Okay so Yuta is the one with long dark hair, Taeyong is the grey hair, Jaehyun is the-“

“I’m literally getting none of this.” Irene giggled, patting your back. You laughed in response, shaking your head and realized the explanation was hopeless. “Maybe we’ll meet with them later and it’ll all come to me.” She teased you further, shrugging and a buzz of excitement ran through you. Maybe you’d actually get to meet and see them all, your boyfriend’s friends and long-time idols, you could only hope. You wished more than anything you weren’t so excited to see them all in front of you because of who they were and that’s what got you into the mess with Mark, but you had to remind yourself that they were people and you didn’t know what of the situation they knew. Maybe it was best that they weren’t in the equation.

“Yeah, yeah I hope so.” You nodded, sighing happily as the float went further away from you.

You walked around after the parade ended, excited to see all the other sights and floats. It was a beautiful parade you had to admit, unable to stop the grin on your face. You loved the sight of New York, happy to possibly have a restaurant open near there that you could visit often. Even on your off moments, you liked thinking about new work opportunities because it would better help you plan your future. It felt like things were finally falling into place and you were excited about that. You hadn’t checked your phone in a while, so you pulled it out and gasped at the excited responses in the groupchat.

You’re here!! I didn’t think you’d come!! We should all go to dinner or something! Mark’s paying

Nevermind every man for himself Mark punched me

From Johnny. He always managed to make you laugh.

Oh gosh are we finally going to get to meet you?!

From Jaehyun

Glad you could make it ☺️

From Taeyong, who knew better than anybody that you’d probably show up. Taeyong could tell your potential and whimsical decision making from the second you became friends. Maybe it was for the better that you two were getting close.

And finally, from Yuta, a self-proclaimed self-enthusiast.

wow I really was living my best life huh? Look at my face😂😂 Hope you enjoyed the parade!

You definitely did enjoy the parade and were more than happy to see them as excited as you were. The boys seemed like children who were in a candy store on the float, so you knew they were having the times of their lives and loved being there. You hadn’t seen them so happy in a while and they all definitely didn’t look that excited in Spain except for when they were with Lizzo, so it was a good time for everyone. You loved seeing them so happy. You hadn’t received a text from Mark in the groupchat, but you missed a text in your personal ones, heart racing when you saw his name.

You came? Why didn’t you tell me! Did you want to meet up tonight?

You gulped, biting your lip and showing the text to Irene. “I want nothing to do with your love life.” She snorted, shaking her head and turning her attention to the street food she’d just gotten. It was a mess on a plate, but she seemed to thoroughly be enjoying it. “But go ahead, you’ve still got a whole day to screw around before we go to Jersey, nothing’s off limits.” She shrugged. “But I will be in the hotel sleeping in a few hours after the performance because I’m exhausted, so don’t get killed.” She teased further, smiling over at you with a mouth full of food.

“You think I should meet up with him?” You asked nervously, biting your lip and wondering how to respond to his text. He still had the performance that night, so you knew it would be late when you’d meet with him.

“I don’t see why not.” She shrugged, offering you a bite which you politely declined. You quickly typed up a text.

Well I actually ended up getting an investment meeting and I didn’t want to jinx anything, so yeah, I’m here if you wanna go for coffee tonight or something?

You didn’t want to seem too excited, but your brain was buzzing, too hopeful for meeting with the boy who had your heart wrapped around his finger. Mark quickly responded.

I’d like that, yeah!

We have the performance later and we’re about to start getting ready for it, so I’ll text you when I’m free?💚

You sighed happily, things were looking up. He seemed just as excited to meet up with you as well. It was a few weeks since you got into your argument and not long before that was the last time you’d seen him, so you feared slightly that things would still be awkward or messy, but you didn’t want to focus on that and thought that things might actually be okay. The fear still sat in the back of your mind, but you’d try your hardest to ignore it. Thankfully you were able to go drop by the hotel after walking around for a bit, maybe you did need just a little bit of a rest before the performance.

You got to the hotel and got settled in, changing your clothes to be a little warmer and layered and of course not at all to look nice for Mark. You checked yourself out in the mirror, grinning at the outfit you decided on. “How do I look?” You asked Irene, who was already chugging down a glass of wine from the minibar at the hotel.

“Looking good, yeah. Someone to impress?” She was teasing yet again, giggling and pouring herself another glass of wine.

“Shut up.” You laughed, grinning and pulling your coat on. “Are you coming to the performance with me?” you asked with a giggle.

“I’m pregaming for a reason aren’t I?” She cocked a brow, shrugging. You rolled your eyes. Irene didn’t drink much, but she had made sacrifices for you so you didn’t mind her drinking on the job.

“You’re always pregaming.” You snorted, slipping your feet into a nice pair of shoes. “Are you warm enough?”

“After this wine hits, I will be.” Irene grinned, walking over to grab her coat. She looked flawless as always and it made you sick, wearing a black turtleneck and khaki pants. She fixed her lipstick quickly in the mirror and pulled her coat on to easily go out. “Now let’s go get your boy back.” You groaned, cheeks heating up and grabbing your phone to make your way out of the door.

The concert stage was packed, as you expected, but shockingly to your surprise, when you got there, security walked the two of you to the front, not asking any further questions. It left you to assume that one of the boys had hooked the two of you up. You’d shown Irene to Mark and the others through various selfies, so you weren’t going to bite the hand that fed you just to get a better look at the boys on stage.

The performance went perfectly, grinning and watching them put on their best performance. You sighed happily, loving the feel in the air. The wind was chilly, but you were fully willing to endure it just for them. You caught all the boys from the 127 chat you were in glancing at you at least once and it made your heart race, but you were in perfect view and you were sure they were looking for you in the first place. That was even more exciting. The crowd dissipated after the small performance, leaving you and Irene to walk around aimlessly while you waited on Mark. Irene was getting a little grumpy, assuming the wine drunkeness had worn off and factoring in that you had flown through the night. “I’m ready to sleep my ass off.” She warned, groaning at the cold.

“You can go ahead to the hotel if you want.” You warned her, making sure she knew you could fend for yourself.

“And leave you here in the middle of New York?” Irene snorted. “You sign my paychecks so I’m definitely going to make sure you’re safe so that I get paid.” She was further teasing. She had a funny way of letting you know she cared about you. You walked around for about an hour and Irene happened upon a spiked hot chocolate from a street cart before you got a text from Mark

Where did you want to meet up? There’s a little coffee shop a couple blocks from our hotel that’s open late if you wanna go there?

the streets should be pretty clear by then because it’s dead cold out ya know🥴

You grinned ridiculously wide, quickly telling Irene what you’d been sent. “We’re gonna go meet at a coffee shop, you wanna walk me there?”

“Absolutely not, but I definitely will.” Irene laughed, tucking her phone and keys into her pocket along with her hands. “Let’s go.” You got the location from Mark, beginning to make your way there because you weren’t too far from it. You both ended up getting a taxi after two blocks at your expense to make up for Irene being in the cold for so long. You didn’t want to make her walk, but the ride wasn’t far, and you happily did it for her comfort after hearing her shiver and complain. You got to the location and you were surprised to see how empty it was, the two of you getting out and standing at the corner. You quickly pulled out a cigarette from your pocket and lit it up, earning a groan from Irene. She hated it, but she knew that wasn’t going to stop you.

You were shaking from nerves, but you were excited to see where the interaction was going to lead you. You and Irene were talking about some work developments when you heard a loud “Hellooooo” from behind you. You turned around, gasping when you saw Mark and Johnny both in masks and hats. You quickly took a drag of your half smoked cigarette and tossed it on the ground when you saw Mark eye it.

You had to admit you were a bit starstruck to see Johnny. He was huge, massive even and you glanced at Irene to see a cocked eyebrow on her face, clearly checking out the tall boy. You pulled yourself from your distraction, grinning at Mark who had his hands stuffed into his pockets.

“Hey.” Mark started, his eyes showing his smile above the mask. You got closer, the two of you embracing like your lives depended on it. You sighed softly, almost feeling tears well in your eyes as you held him tighter, never wanting to let go. His arms were around your waist, gently thumbing over your back through your coat. “it’s good to see you.” His voice was barely above a whisper, right by your ear. “You smell like cigarettes.” He giggled into your neck.

“Shut up, I’m sorry.” You laughed. “It’s good to see you too.” You spoke quietly, still in his embrace and you somehow pulled him tighter, eyes closing and it felt like an eternity. “Um, this is Irene.” You your head toward her and felt Mark lift his hand from your waist to give her a wave.

“You must be Mark.” She stated, shrugging her shoulders. “Heard a lot about you in the last two days.” Mark didn’t seem to mind or catch on that you’d told someone else about him, just thankful that you were with him.

“Um, so, I’m Johnny.” You heard loudly behind you, a laugh being pulled from both you and Mark as you let go of each other. Johnny was introducing himself to Irene, shaking her hand and the grin on her face looked unbelievably pleased. You shook your head, giggling at her before turning to Johnny yourself. He opened his arms wide to hug you, quickly running to his embrace. It was only a quick hug, him patting your back in a friendly manner before pulling away. “Nice to finally meet you!” He exclaimed; grin wide on his face under his mask as well. You turned back to Mark, who quickly grabbed your hand to tangle his fingers with yours.

“Johnny’s a hugger.” He warned with a small laugh. “He’s been practicing all day how to greet you.” Mark said with a hint of sarcasm and you saw Johnny’s face contort to glare at him.

“And Mark exaggerates everything.” Johnny came back confidently.

“So, we should go.” Irene shot her attention to Johnny, seeing him shrug with a nod at her statement before turning back to you. “Leave you two be, yeah?”

“I’m game.” Johnny agreed quickly with a shrug. You were a bit stunned to see Irene being so forward. “Did you need a ride to your hotel? I’ve got an Uber on the way and I’d hate for you to walk alone.” You were also stunned that Johnny was seeming to take to Irene that quickly from what you knew about him. You didn’t miss the flirtatious energy he had with the charm in his tone.

“We’ll see you two later.” Irene nodded, following behind Johnny. You had a weird feeling that the two of them would end up more than just going home even though Irene claimed to be so tired, but it wasn’t your business and they were adults, so you would leave it alone and let them do whatever they set out to do.

You heard Mark clear his throat. “So, uh.” You heard him laugh softly. “You wanna go inside or freeze to death?” He teased.

“I’d like to not freeze to death, please.” You both grinned, hand in hand as you both walked inside. You saw Mark look around, making sure that nobody in there was paying any attention to him. He had to make sure he was in extremely good standing when it came to being out in public in such a big city, especially this soon after a concert. He looked relieved, pulling you to a dimly lit corner of the shop. You both sat down with a sigh, seeing a much older waiter come to the table to greet the two of you. You both glanced over your menus and the silence was comforting. You both put in your orders before Mark slid his mask below his face after feeling comfortable enough. He looked so beautiful without makeup on like that, so relaxed, the soft shadow of his facial hair made your face warm.

“So, you finally got to meet Johnny.” He teased, seeing you roll your eyes and grinning wider at him. “How was that?”

“Yeah, it was great, we’re best friends now.” You joked, hearing Mark let out a hearty laugh. “I’ve heard ten words and he’s the greatest.” You both snorted.

“Good to know, good to know yeah.” He was giggling more, and you felt like your heart could burst. “So, um, how is everything?” he asked shyly, his hands placed gently in his lap.

“Well,” You shrugged. “Things are okay,” You cleared your throat again. “A lot is going on with work and I’m about to open a new store hopefully next year here if the meeting tomorrow goes well.”

“Ah, yeah, yeah, the meeting!” Mark nodded. “So, you came here for that?” He was asking with intent and it felt nice for him to be interested in you again like that again. It felt comfortable. “I was actually really shocked when you sent that picture, I couldn’t believe it and when I saw you in the audience I got really excited. I almost thought you were fucking with me and grabbed a picture off the internet or something.” He was blushing, a wide toothy grin on his face. “Johnny apparently told the security to let you and anyone you were with to the front, not my doing.” He snorted with a shrug.

“Ah, so Johnny is the master relationship specialist now isn’t he?” Mark couldn’t stifle his laugh when he took a sip of his coffee.

“Uh, yeah, I guess you could say that.” He snorted again, grinning. “He’s like the number one pusher when someone says they’re going to date so, it’s like, his thing.” He admitted with a shrug. “When I first told him about you his first reaction was like ‘An American? You have to do it, it’s the law if you’re my friend’ and got way too excited. He’s always trying to hook anyone up but never really finds someone for himself.” You thought back to him and Irene’s reaction to each other and stifled a snort.

“I mean, he’s taking my assistant home.”

“Yeah, I kinda caught that.” He was laughing again. It was nice to see him happy here, he always seemed excited when he was in the states anyway, so you were glad he enjoyed spending time with you too.

“Don’t worry, she’s the best.” You warned. “He’s in safe hands. She keeps me every day from making horrible life decisions.” Mark looked a bit confused at that but waived it off. “Some of them at least.”

“Well, that’s good yeah.” He cleared his throat, calling for the check. “So, you wanna get out of here?” His voice was slightly low, and you didn’t know what was up, but at that point you were willing to do anything for Mark. You’d only been there for a short time and only ordered coffee, so you were both fine with leaving so soon.

“Sure, let’s go.” You nodded, groaning a bit when Mark handed his credit card to the waiter to pay for the both of you. You learned quickly that it was just how he rolled, it didn’t matter if you could easily pay for yourself or not, he was definitely a sweetheart and liked treating you. The two of you strolled out back onto the sidewalk after he put his mask back on.

Mark was walking closely with you, not holding your hand or arm because he was still afraid of being caught in public and getting his reputation ruined. You’d both been so lucky to not get caught especially since the two of you were always in bigger cities where a disaster could easily strike. The small chatter of the light conversation had you feeling like things were definitely going to be okay and Mark seemed pleased, talking to you about the weather and how he thought he’d get sick soon if he kept having to change climates. You wished him the best and recommended vitamins that he just brushed off with a laugh. “Yeah, I’m hearing you I just know I’m not going to do it.” You both were giggling at that point and you both didn’t even know where you were going, just aimlessly walking along the street, coming on a dimly lit part of town. You both sighed, glancing at each other with soft grins. Nobody was in sight and he just looked so perfect. You stopped in your tracks which caused him to pause in place. “What’s up?” He asked, eyes full of wonder.

“Nothing.” You shrugged, sighing. You scooted closer, seeing Mark’s Adams apple bob in his throat. You reached up and gently pulled his mask down, biting your lip before leaning in and pressed your lips to his tenderly, your bottom lip slipping between his soft ones. For a moment, you forgot about your problems. A low noise left his throat and he eagerly kissed you back, his hands fumbling to come out of his pockets to reach one up and place it on the side of your face, pulling you in closer as his breath dusted your skin. His breathing was hitching, his other hand gently tangling in your hair and his lips got more aggressive, sweet noises being pulled from him. You were the first to break, eyes fluttering back open and glancing at him before he kissed you again, this time much more pressure and neediness before breaking off quickly.

“Your hotel or mine?” He spoke breathlessly.

“Find out where Johnny and Irene are.” You grinned, pecking him once more and he quickly whipped out his phone. You didn’t miss the bright blush on his face before he pulled his mask back up as he texted his friend. There was almost no time before Johnny responded back that he and Irene went ahead to a karaoke bar to meet up with Jungwoo and Jaehyun. You had no idea how or when everything had gotten so crazy, but all you heard out of that was that your hotel room was empty, and you wanted Mark as soon as possible. “My place is open, then.” You grabbed his arm and pulled up your directions, quickly calling for an Uber to bring you because somehow the two of you had ended up extremely far away in the cold and gotten caught up in the conversations.

When you both stepped into the Uber, Mark’s hands were on your thighs and you had to bite back the urge to have him right then and there because not only would it be uncomfortable, it was rude, and you liked your private time with Mark. You placed your hand on top of his and you saw the grin reach his eyes as he stared out of the window, sitting much too close to you in an empty back seat. The minute you pulled up at the hotel, Mark groaned and let out a quick, “Thank god.” You laughed in response, tugging him by the hand into the building and easily making your way into the elevator. The second you were inside with the doors closed, Mark couldn’t keep his hands off of you, harshly kissing your lips in the empty elevator with both hands on your face and your back pressed flush against the wall.

Mark wasn’t ever so needy, and you definitely didn’t mind. You detached and pulled him immediately to the hotel door, giggles pulling from his lips as you made your way inside, the two of you tossing your coats on the floor and went straight back to making out. His tongue easily found entrance to your mouth, moaning at the heat of the moment. It felt so good to kiss Mark, both letting out heavy breaths and as he pushed himself closer to you, you could feel his arousal pressed against your hip, the heat in your core throbbing. This was the least talkative you’d both been in the bedroom, but words didn’t seem necessary. You backed him over to the bed, laying him down and you loved how flushed he looked, like he was all yours as you sat in his lap, barely hovering his small frame. Mark groaned, hands finding your hips and you reached down to him, tossing his hat and mask off the bed.

“Damn, I could get used to this.” He giggled again with a dopey smile and his disheveled hair spoke volumes. You rolled your eyes, smiling before kissing him hard again, his hands reaching down to gently grope your ass, soft hands kneading over your bottoms and you couldn’t help but to giggle into his mouth. It was suddenly very warm in the room, much too warm for all the layers you both had on and you pulled away from him, panting and out of breath. Mark looked so beautiful and flushed that you could moan, sighing and pulling off the top layer of your shirt before working his off as well, leaving him in a white button up that was much too wrinkled. He looked so soft in white, you had to remind him of that later. You tossed your top away, the underlayer riding up and Mark slipped his hands up the fabric, groaning at the fact that you’d neglected to wear anything but shirts. His hand found your breast, kneading at the flesh as you gasped, grinding your hips down on his.

“Mark,” You sighed, eyes fluttering shut. “I missed you.”

“I missed you too.” He groaned as you leaned closer, slipping his other hand under your shirt and toying with a nipple, the two of you much too flustered to make any other commentary. He lifted his knee up to lean you back down, kissing harshly again and your hands worked their way down Mark’s shirt buttons, feeling his muscles tense under you along with his breaths. His hips moved up to get any kind of friction and you loved how much he wanted it. You didn’t question him, easily opening his shirt before going to his jeans, unbuttoning and unzipping them slowly to tease him, his breathing got heavier with every move.

You moved your hips back a bit, settling more on his lap before slipping your hand into his boxers. He gasped at the coldness of your fingers, but he didn’t complain. Your hands were still cold from outside, but it seemed more like an exciting difference. Your fingertips danced along his length, feeling him bite at your lip sending you out of this world. “Want you, now.” He panted against your lips and you weren’t one to deny him. You quickly slipped back between his legs to tug your pants off as you let his arms fall back to his sides, but Mark couldn’t wait.

His hands were on you again, quickly tugging at the fabric and pulling them off of your legs with a fire in him you hadn’t seen before. He tossed them on the floor before hovering over you again. He tugged your underwear to the side and pulled his length out of his jeans. You sighed heavily as he pumped at himself a few times, eyes hooded. You caught his eyes, the two of your faces a complete mess. “Fuck,” You panted, earning a breathy laugh from him before pushing him back down on the bed to take slight control again. You sat with your clothed folds along his length, rubbing yourself with closed eyes and you felt him grasping at the bed sheets, panting at the feeling. “Condom?” You questioned, hearing him gulp and try to fish one out of his shirt pocket.

You giggled a bit at his anticipation, but you weren’t going to comment and embarrass him further. His face was already so red and spent when he handed the packet to you, a smirk playing on your face as you tore the foil open with your teeth. His hands were searching your body, slipping underneath you to lift your hips up. His fingers snuck under the fabric of your underwear and played in your arousal and you swear you heard him moan. You were a bit distracted as you fumbled with the rubber, his fingers dancing along your clit before slipping two inside, quickly quirking them forward toward himself and you hushed a moan, panting heavily as you tried to slip the condom on him, a mess of hands and sweat making you both see fog. You rocked down onto his fingers, wrapping your own around his length and jerking him off slowly, a sigh of relief leaving his lips.

His arousal was so evident with the redness of his cock and you were nearly dying to have it inside you. He slipped his fingers out of you when he couldn’t take it anymore, moving them to his own lips and you gasped when you saw him slip them inside of his mouth. You were quiet, just ready to have Mark again. You lifted your hips and watched him suck his fingers clean, lining him up with your entrance and the crotch of your underwear pushed to the side. The two of you hadn’t been so hasty or fumbling before, but it seemed oddly fitting.

You sunk down on him quickly, pulling a throaty groan from the boy underneath you, his head tipped back in ecstasy. You let out a noise of satisfaction, happy to finally have him inside again, enjoying it for a minute before he got eager, his hips moving himself inside of you just barely. “C-can’t take it anymore, need to feel you.” He panted out, his lips swollen and pouty as you grinned, rocking yourself down on him. You barely registered his warm hands on your sides again until he pulled you down, your clit grinding against his pelvic bone and you saw stars, whining a bit as you pushed your hips down against him again, the friction driving him wild and he was whining.

You didn’t expect those noises from him, but you couldn’t say you didn’t like it. He was panting more and more, and you were chasing your high, loving the way Mark filled you, sweet noises filling the hotel room and the wet sounds of skin on skin made your head spin. Mark’s breathing was heavier than you ever heard it before, and he was gasping. “Gonna-gonna come.” You were a little surprised, usually his stamina was good, but this time something was different. You heard him gasp loudly one last time, his eyes screwing shut and you felt him shake lightly underneath you. You stilled your hips, giggling at how out of it he was, and you let him ride it out, gently moving your hips until he couldn’t take it anymore. “Sit-sit on my face, please.” He pleaded with droopy eyes and you weren’t going to deny him.

You were hesitant at first, crawling over and hovering over his face, He pulled the crotch of your underwear and ripped slightly, then with full force tore the fabric open then all the way up and tossed it off to the floor, smirking below you and you gasped.

“Did you just-“

“Yep.” He cut you off with a grin, pulling you down by your thighs and pressed his tongue against you.

“Oh fuck.” You whined, feeling your knees get weak as he lapped at you, moaning as he sucked softly at your clit. You were lost for a bit, trying to bring yourself back down to earth when you heard your phone ring, gasping again when he slipped his tongue inside before pausing. He pulled away for just a moment.

“Answer it.” He smirked again before pulling you back down.

“It’s Johnny!” You whined, grinding down back onto his tongue. He shrugged underneath you and you hesitated, deciding to let it go to voicemail and Mark had the audacity to laugh. You quickly picked up your phone with shaky hands just to barely read a text message from the aforementioned person.

Since neither of you two are answering, I just wanted you to know I’m taking your friend back to our hotel, she’s tired and a bit plastered so I’m gonna let her crash there. Have fun you two 😂

It felt like a taunting message, waving it off and tossing your phone back somewhere else on the bed. You didn’t exactly care what Irene was doing at the moment, but she seemed safe with Johnny, so you ignored it. You sighed of relief when Mark nudged his nose against your clit, looking down to see his extremely hooded eyes and you could have burst right there. You moaned loudly, reaching down to gently grab his hair and the noise he made vibrated through you, his tongue flat against your clit and it threw you over the edge, pressing yourself hard into his face and the grip on your thighs tightened, his fingertips almost aching as they pressed into your skin. He continued to lazily lick through your high, pulling away to place soft kisses on your thighs when he figured you’d had enough, bright red blush still evident on his face. You glanced back to see he had discarded the condom and there was spurts of come glistening on his stomach, you flushed again, realizing he’d come from eating you out. Mark was going to be the death of you. You crawled off of his face, collapsing on the bed next to him, both of you panting.

“That was-“ He started.

“Yeah.” You both ended up laughing, Mark tossing his arm over his face in embarrassment. “I don’t think I’ve ever come that hard.” He let out a heavy breath.

“Please, say less.” You snorted, cuddling up to his side and realizing exactly how disgusting and intense the situation was, but you felt so satisfied it didn’t matter. You took an idea, smirking before reaching down to touch his stomach, dancing and teasing your fingertips in his come.

“D-don’t.” He groaned when you looked down to see his half-hard cock slightly twitch. “Give-give me a minute.” He pleaded. So you did, but it wasn’t going to be over just yet, you both knew that.

-

“The breakfast here is nice.” Mark was smiling shyly, sitting in the corner cafe with you. The place was relatively empty and you liked that Mark had to find places to easily hide from photographers, it gave you a bit more space from people in general, but the quietness of Mark was also a bit weird. He was smiling, but much more shy than before, but you assumed it was because of the situation you were in and he was a bit uncomfortable during the day anyway in a normal situation.

“Yeah, I love breakfast food.” You shrugged, taking a bite of your own food, enjoying the silence. You both were a bit sad because you were going to part ways that day, which seemed like another reason that Mark was being distant. You weren’t used to seeing him for only a minute and it felt weird to have only went on a date and slept with each other, so you sighed, seeing Mark pick at his food and eat in small bites. You frowned. “So, you guys heading out later?”

Mark nodded, shrugging before looking up at you. “Yeah, we’re headed back home after this, so.” He had a sad smile, looking up to catch your eyes. “I’m-um, sorry we didn’t get to hang out more.” He added shyly.

“No, no it’s fine, I’m just glad I got to see you.” Mark was smiling with his mouth full and it made you feel better. He was fidgety in his chair, probably from nerves.

“Yeah, I really am glad I got to see you too.” He nodded, sighing softly before taking a drink from his glass. “And Johnny and your friend seem to still be having a good time, they got breakfast this morning.” He snorted, wiping his mouth. “Everyone seems pretty happy.” He sighed again.

“You seem nervous.” You pointed out finally, settling your hands in your own lap.

“Yeah, I don’t really feel like leaving yet, it’s always a bummer when we go home.” You frowned, remembered how much happier he was in North America but it was interesting to hear him admit he didn’t want to go home at all. You felt bad that he had to leave, and you wished he could stay. Mark needed to be back at his hotel in an hour or so, so it was nice that he was spending his last bit of time with you. He said himself that he would’ve just been sitting in his room all night long probably, so the fun you guys had was at least worth it. “I hate coming here for like two days.” He frowned. You sighed and reached over the table to gently squeeze his hand. His smile was soft, but it was worth it. You both finished up your food and sheepishly made your way outside to head your way to his hotel.

When you pulled up, the taxi stopped at the corner and Mark looked at you with the softest eyes you’d ever seen. He sighed and squeezed your knee gently before wrapping your arms around you, hugging you tightly and relaxing into your neck. You both pulled away after a heartfelt embrace, frowning at the fact that you had to separate once again. “Text me?” You asked softly and got a warm nod before he pulled back to lean in for a kiss, his soft lips making your face feel hot. It was a tender kiss, one that longed for something more ,but you knew it was time. “I’ll see you later.” You got a grin back.

“Yeah, I’ll, um, see you soon, okay?” He giggled softly, opening the door and sighing as he stepped out, waving back at you as he made his way back into his hotel in the clothes he was still wearing the day before. You didn’t mind seeing him like that though, it reminded you that the two of you had your time together.

You saw Irene saunter out of the hotel, a grin plastered on her face and sunglasses covering her eyes. You shook your head in disbelief, snorting when she stumbled into the car, a cup of hotel coffee in her hands.

“So, it looks like your night was nice.” You teased, raising a brow at her.

“God, you don’t even know.” Irene was laughing. “My makeup is so messed up and yet I woke up to a gorgeous man making me hotel coffee in boxers and a white t-shirt and I still didn’t get his number.” She groaned, smile still painted on. “I literally never do anything like that, and I know you’re my boss but you have no room to judge me.” She shrugged again.

“Well, I’m not going to judge you, but I also have to mention that I do have that guy’s number.” You saw her mouth agape.

“Holy shit give it to me.” She was serious and you almost had to laugh. “He meant to last night, but we got, um, distracted.” She cleared her throat.

“Johnny right?” You giggled as you joked, scrolling through your contacts as the taxi made its way back to your hotel. “Yeah, it’s right here.” You showed your phone to her, seeing her excitedly type it into her own phone. “You’re not gonna like, text him right now are you?” You snorted, taking your phone back after she added it to her phone.

“Oh of course not, I’m going to wait it out and see if he asks you for mine, then I’ll have it for when he decides to hit me up.” She was always very forward, shrugging. It was actually extremely funny, but you wouldn’t push her forward. “But I also got hardly any sleep last night, so I want to take a nap before we head to Jersey.” You had actually forgotten that you were supposed to head out that night, but you figured it definitely was a good idea to go there tonight before the morning conference.

“Shit, I’ve still got to make prints.” You groaned.

“We’ll stop by a print shop on the way.” She was always thinking ahead, you were thankful, but you could definitely tell she needed some sleep and it wouldn’t hurt for you to get a nap in. You and Mark had practically been up all night anyway because of jet lag and other things, but you’d shut your mouth on that one. Irene was yawning, so you figured it was best to keep quiet.

You both took an equally satisfying nap, only a few hours passing by. Thankfully when you got up you were both easily ready to go, showering quickly and making your way out and wait for your Uber. You both decided it was the best and easiest way to get to Newark and it wasn’t at all long of a drive. Your mood was slightly down, still thinking about Mark and quickly realizing the two of you hadn’t actually talked about any of your issues. It left a sore spot in your heart and the rest of the ride felt a little weird. You stopped to make prints on the way and didn’t miss the stupid grin across Irene’s face.

“What’s up with you?” You asked, trying to ignore the feelings in your own chest.

“Johnny’s really cool.” She shrugged, sighing happily as she scrolled through her own phone. “I ended up texting him and he said thank god I got his number and you know I don’t normally do that.” She snorted. “Maybe we can both have some fun. How was Mark, dare I ask?”

You sighed heavily, a slight smile playing on your lips. “He was great, we, uh, didn’t talk really, so I’m kind of bummed, but I think it’ll be fine.” Irene frowned a bit, sighing.

“I mean maybe he got over it?” She offered help, but it didn’t really seem accurate. “Maybe he realized it doesn’t matter and you guys are going to be fine.” She nodded, giving you a wide smile before turning her attention back to her phone. “Johnny says they’re about to head out.” Her giggle made your eyes almost roll. You hadn’t heard from Mark at all, which made you worried, but you weren’t going to pry.

“Okay get this, he’s got a weird really bad tattoo on his ass that says I heart Chicago.” Irene was snorting and you felt your chest get tighter, trying your best to smile at her and act like it was all fine. “He’s really weird and I know it’s quick but I kinda like him, he’s cool.”

“I get it, I get it.” You snorted, almost trying to change the subject. You whipped out your phone to see no new messages. You sighed again. “So,they’re-“ You cleared your throat. “Theyre about to board?” You asked, biting your lip and knowing you shouldn’t ask questions.

“Yeah, John said he’s got on-flight wifi so we’re gonna play some dumb game tonight.” Irene reminded you, just making you even a little more upset. If Mark had on-flight wifi then why couldn’t he text you on the plane too? Or even before? Your head was swimming in thoughts and wondering what was going on, so you decided to send him a single text.

Fly safe!

He wouldn’t know that you meant it condescendingly, but you were just looking for a response at all. The only thing you really got from them at all was group messages, unfortunately from everyone but Mark. Even Jaehyun, who was the least active member of the groupchat, was being active, You didn’t understand why Mark wasn’t talking, but you began to feel like you were overthinking. You felt like banging your head against a wall, waiting for your prints to hurry up. The car was waiting outside and as soon as the last one printed, you tried to rush a laughing Irene out to it, but she wanted to review and invoice everything, so she was lagging. You needed some fresh air, standing outside. You lit up a cigarette, trying to relax. You were mad at yourself because you’d been really trying to lay off smoking, but when you weren’t around Mark and your anxiety was high, you needed it. You read over the messages you missed a couple times, they were mostly talking about how crazy America always was, but all you wished is that Mark’s name would pop up on your phone.

You were halfway down the cigarette when your phone buzzed, glancing down to see a simple, effortless text from Mark.

Thanks! I’ll let you know when we land

You felt like crying, but you needed to be strong. You never did get that text, still only getting responses in the groupchat and you knew Mark had to be fine because the rest of them were acting normal, but it pained you since he wasn’t very forward with his feelings. Taeyong hadn’t even messaged you so maybe Mark was fine, and that hurt more than anything. Maybe he was fine and perfectly content without you and you just had to hope that it was just your mind making that up.

The meeting went perfectly, thankfully. The city was clean and the two of you had a wonderful time walking around and discussing the proper real estate investments. You’d wanted to open a new location on the east coast for a while, but never took the steps to get it done and now the keys were almost literally in your hand. There was tons of work to do, but you knew you could get it done. Irene would be on campus there for the first 6 months after the building details were worked out and things seemed to be going well.

Except the fact that in your heart, nothing felt right. At the point when you got home, you still hadn’t heard from Mark or anyone else, but a gut feeling made you not want to ask. You were worried and only had small talk about Johnny with Irene and you hated the amount of jealousy you were feeling from not getting your own interest to talk to you. You were normally tough, you were normally the one to ghost people due to distractions, but you’d just seen Mark a few days ago and he was in your bed all night, so why hadn’t he messaged you aside from that one message? He was normally blowing up your phone prior to the entire incident with him finding out. Why wasn’t he worried about talking to you anymore? He seemed to really be getting along with you in the hotel room.

It made you sick to think about, how easily you two slept together after a big conversation and part of you felt a little used, slightly heartbroken and unresolved because it was so obvious that everything was falling apart, and you stayed hopeful when you shouldn’t have. You had a whole new store opening up and you should’ve been focused on work, but all you could think about was the fact that you were only getting one or two pathetic messages from him a day until they became days apart, only rarely getting a half-assed response from the group chats when he didn’t respond to you.

You missed Mark.

You felt sick. Things got harder, they did, and after about a month of suffering, you stopped responding all together, just hoping Mark would pick back up in talking to you on his own when the time got right, but you felt a bit hopeless and you were right. Mark was no longer making an effort and it had been about three weeks of smoking heavily and not talking to him at all. Your chest hurt when you saw him on your social media timelines. Your love for them felt so different and you almost felt sick each time you saw his smile. You heard about their new song coming out and you realized just how long it had been since you’d seen him. Time passed by so quickly and it was two days shy of two months and you tried not to cry, but you missed how things were and part of you knew this would happen, you just didn’t expect to take it so hard especially for so long.

You’d flown out east on location multiple times because due to how the meeting went, investors were pushing for opening sooner and you’d been successful at every single opening yet with immaculate concentration and precision. You felt nice to have the distraction of worrying about work, but each time you stepped into the crisp New York air, you were pelted with remembrance of your night with Mark and wondered what went wrong after you left him. Things looked perfect from the outside when you were there, but you wished you could’ve changed how it went. Maybe you did something wrong along the way that you weren’t picking up because Mark had been all over you and he was the one who pushed sleeping together, so you were left dumbfounded and trying to remember that the new location was important and you needed to ignore your feelings about the hurt in your heart from the last place you saw the person you called your boyfriend. You didn’t know where you stood anymore.

You hated that you got so wrapped up in the idea of Mark that you ended up ruining it all by fearing you’d ruin it. You were aching for him to call you, talk to you, anything because he still would be so close to you all year with promotions. Hell, you’d seen the SM Entertainment schedule for the whole year of 2020, and he’d be there in the states constantly especially with a new Neo City tour that stopped immediately in Los Angeles in June. Before you knew it, February had come up and you wished you could stop thinking about the fact that Mark would be in your state with SuperM in only a few days. You tried your hardest not to be hopeful, but you couldn’t help yourself.

You’d been staring at the StubHub app for 30 minutes now and SuperM tickets were going lower and lower by the day and they looked so pleasing, to maybe see him again and talk, maybe catch up, meet up, anything. You went over it a few times in your head and after a long day of work and a glass or so of wine, you made the horrible decision of buying tickets.

You swallowed after you pressed pay, leaning back in your bed and thinking about what you’d done, but it felt like the right choice. They were going to be there within the next two days and you had to chance it. Maybe you’d get your answer. You bought two tickets because the closest spot available only had two seats, so you sucked it up and decided to go for it. You didn’t even think about who could possibly accompany you until you gasped at realization. You opened your phone again to quickly call Irene, who was supposed to be at home by now.

She answered after the first ring.

“Hello sweetheart!” You hadn’t seen Irene much over the last couple weeks, the two of you busy with store arrangements and whatnot. She’d been interviewing for the new hires in Jersey as soon as the new year started, the two of you rarely crossing paths between flights, and she’d gotten back last week, so hearing her voice felt nice.

“Irene!” You had to take a breath.

“What’s the situation?” She snorted and you could hear her flipping through her keys in the background. “I’m just getting home so it better be good.” She was teasing, but you had to calm down before speaking to her properly.

“I just bought tickets to the SuperM San Diego show and I wanted to know if you wanted to come with me.” You spoke much faster than anticipated but you heard a small pause over the speaker. “They’re performing there, and I want to see Mark but I think it was a bad choice because I’m freaking out. Help me, please.”

“I think I can do it.” She was giggling and you knew it was a good sign. “What day is it?”

“The 30th of January.” You groaned, realizing that it was only two days away and you’d have to travel there from Los Angeles, which wasn’t ideal, but it wasn’t an extremely far ride either. You heard silence again before a sigh.

“You’re literally insane.” She snorted. “Yeah, I’m in.”

“God you’re a lifesaver.” You laughed, almost on the verge of tears. You wanted to see Mark, you had to. It felt like the only appropriate way to do it and your mind was still really fuzzy from missing him, but at least you had someone to indulge with you. She knew the two of you hadn’t spoken and the tension was touchy when you saw each other and tried to avoid bringing up the subject of your love life due to the unfortunate circumstances. Irene didn’t pry, she never did.

“Is Johnny going to be there?” She giggled softly and you tried your hardest not to roll your eyes.

Of course, Irene was lucky and had kept contact with him and you were at home for weeks moping about the one you were sure you had lost. You sighed. “No, he’s not in that group, ‘Rene.” You snorted a little, shaking your head. “But he’ll be here in June if you guys are still a thing.”

“Ugh, the things I do for you.” She sighed heavily, but you could tell it wasn’t serious. “Yeah, I’ll come, we leave Friday morning?”

“What about Thursday evening?” You bit your lip, hoping that maybe you’d get a chance to see them when they landed, maybe you’d get the gumption to text Mark and handle everything and you’d both be fine again. Realistically you knew that that was a low probability, but you had to try. Maybe Ten and Taemin could help you out again. They were the main ones who got you into that mess in the first place, maybe their presence would help. You were freaking out in your head and you didn’t even register that you were still on the phone until you heard your name getting yelled at you. “Uh, s-sorry I got distracted, what were you saying?”

“I said it’s fine but you’re booking the hotel.” She was laughing again. “You gonna actually hang out with Mark, not just sleep together? Are you gonna talk?” You groaned in response, not really wanting to tell her what you were up to, but you wanted to fill her in at least a little. You fibbed a tiny bit.

“We haven’t talked in a week, I thought I’d surprise him.” You bit your lip and hoped Irene was nice enough to understand.

“Perfect, it seems to be a habit of pulling up on him, yeah?”

“I guess so.” You sighed again. Maybe you should text him, maybe he was more relaxed since he was soon to be in the states and was going to go to his hometown soon. Maybe he’d be in a better spot to respond to you. You tried to reason in your head that the possible reason that you two didn’t talk much was specifically because he was out of the country again. You were trying to remain hopeful.

“Okay, well you seem distracted, so I’ll call you later?” You knew she was right; you couldn’t even hold a conversation.

“Okay, love you.” You sighed again, biting your lip and wondering what had brought you to the point in your life where you were showing up randomly to see a guy. You never thought you’d be in that position to like anyone so much before.

“Love you too! I’m gonna go home and pack. Get some rest tonight!” You definitely needed the rest. It had been a few weeks since you really got a decent night’s sleep, so you hoped her blessing meant something. You sighed and hung up, shaking your head to try and pull yourself back together. You opened your phone back up, scrolling through social media to steady your mind, which happened to end up the opposite when you found an update that very clearly stated that the members were in LAX that morning, literally miles away from your home and you blinked in shock. They were there already? You tried to steady your breathing. It was a sign, you needed to speak to Mark soon. You had no idea where he was or what he was doing at the moment, but being so close to you had to mean something.

[daesungfmd]

hwang daesung + instagram!

headcanon 4  /  wc: 1194

as an esfp, daesung desperately needs social interaction. leaving him alone for long periods of time is a recipe for disaster, but given his occupation and the types of people in his life, it isn’t always possible to meet up with friends whenever he wants to. when all else fails, social media fills the empty spaces. you could argue that he relies a little too heavily on it and—honestly speaking—you would be correct, but daesung will always always always claim that his rs with social media is very healthy :) 

having said that, there isn’t a single day that goes by in which he doesn’t post on at least one social media platform. his favorite option is instagram, so he has the largest following on this app out of all of his other personal accounts. even if he doesn’t upload directly to his feed, he’ll usually post a couple things to his story.

he has dms & replies to his stories open to all (because what’s the point of having social media if you’re not going to socialize, right?), so his messages are constantly flooded. when he first opened his personal instagram account, he responded to a lot of dms, but was told by gold star that he needed to keep all interactions with fans public, so he.... stopped? lmao, no he didn’t. he just cut down drastically.

more because of his messages getting out of hand than the company telling him not to reply, honestly. like... he cares about what the company says, sure, but he also doesn’t see the harm in talking to fans, being personable, making ‘em happy.

but! they’re still open, anyway, and he tries to read absolutely everything he gets even if he can’t respond. when he’s feeling lonely at night, he likes to open up instagram and start reading through his dms <3 kinda pathetic but it’s a lonely life <3

he follows a relatively large amount of people taking the fact that he’s an idol into consideration. first of all, he follows all official gold star group accounts, the other impulse members, and all labelmates that he considers himself to be friends with. outside of that, he follows friends that he has from other companies, but only male-presenting friends because he doesn’t want gold star’s pr people to get onto him. follows his male-presenting non-celeb friends, as well. some actors that he likes, some indie musicians that he likes, then the rest are meme pages and pet pages.

as far as content goes, he mainly uploads photos and videos of himself to his feed. the biggest chunk of it is just selfies, candid pics taken by his friends & behind the scenes snapshots taken during promotions/filming, but it’s not uncommon for him to upload a little video of himself singing and/or playing his guitar. sings a lot of old ass songs like long lost memories loom beyond the window by sanullim (1980), to you again by byun jinseob (1989), with the heart to forget you by kim kwangseok (1992), on the street by kim kwangseok (1993), what can i say by the breeze (2010), etc. i imagine a lot of his fans probably don’t know the songs, so they usually don’t get as much interaction as the rest of his posts but That’s Okay! he just likes to sing for fun <333 he does it for himself.

other than that... he posts pictures of his pets semi-regularly (as of dec. 2020, he has two rats and a dog), every now and then he’ll post a video of himself doing some skateboard tricks, and verrrrry very rarely he might post a pic of another impulse member???

pretty meme-y irl, but tries to look charismatic / “sexy” on instagram for the lols. doesn’t always do this, but fans have grown accustomed to pictures of him with half-buttoned shirts, head leaned back to show off his neck, tongue stuck out. lowkey they clown him a lot for some of the selfies he uploads, but he sees them going crazy on stan twitter so he can deal w it. anything for some extra attention!

doesn’t always think before posting, so sometimes he’ll stare at a selfie for a little too long and realize he looks dumb (in his head, of course) and delete it. happens more often than you’d think, so a lot of fans claim that his instagram content is limited time only. better turn your notifications on if you wanna make the best of it!

uses the story function to share little pieces of his day. sometimes it’s just a “good morning” message, sometimes it’s a picture of the sky wherever he’s at, sometimes it’s a video of him skateboarding, sometimes it’s a mirror selfie with whatever song he’s into atm attached, sometimes it’s a pic of certain points in his outfit that he wants to show off (like the painted nail in the middle image above, lmao). can be anything, though; he just likes to keep something in his story at all times so that his fans have a little piece of him to keep them company. doesn’t hurt that sharing his life with the internet like this helps him to feel a little bit less alone, as well.

likes to mess around with filters in his stories, has a habit of doing this when he’s tipsy/drunk. when you see a sequence of 25 selfies that all look pretty much the same, just with different filters, you know that daesung’s been drinking.

one time when he was drunk, he uploaded a selfie to his story and tagged jennifer aniston in it for literally no reason. fans will never let him live this one down.

sometimes he uses stories to interact with fans when he can’t sleep. he’ll ask something like “what’s a good movie to watch when you’re feeling sentimental?” at three in the morning, and 200+ messages just telling him to go to sleep come in. will then post a small vid of himself saying, “you’re all telling me to go to sleep...... i didn’t ask what i should do. i asked for movie recommendations!! answer the question and i’ll go to sleep :)” and then half an hour later, follows up with another video saying “actually i’m not going to sleep!!!! i’m watching shrek now haha”

aka he acts like they’re his friends. WAY too comfortable on his instagram account, but shockingly hasn’t posted anything bad enough to cause a controversy yet.

he does weekly/bi-weekly friday evening livestreams (depending on how busy he is/how he’s feeling) where he spends between an hour and an hour and a half talking with fans and playing guitar/singing for them. i’ll do a separate headcanon about these streams later on because it will undoubtedly take too long to share all my thoughts in this post, but! they were pretty popular when he first started doing them about a year and a half ago (as of dec. 2020), but once fans realized that he sings pretty much the same songs every time, half of them stopped tuning in which is..... fair.

he just loves instagram so much. it’s his comfort app.

[hollyand-writes]

Quarantine Q&A

I was tagged by the lovely @gremlinquisitor ❤️ Sorry it took me so long to get round to doing this!

Tagging: anyone who feels up to it -- like Erin said in her own post, take care of yourself first, and if you don’t feel like you can talk about this, then please don’t try to force it. ❤️

Are you staying home from work or school?

My husband and I have both been working from home since mid-March. I was already pretty much working from home before that anyway (been doing it for about a decade), so I was used to it and therefore don’t feel my life has changed dramatically. We’re really lucky that our jobs can be done 100% from home -- March and April were really busy months for both of us work-wise, so I think that helped us both cope and feel useful. 

In a weird way, lockdown didn’t/doesn’t upset or stress me out? I think it’s because I had a head start on worrying about the pandemic back in January: I have family in China/HK/SE Asia and I was really, really worried about them for a bit. I follow a few Chinese-language social media accounts of people based in China / East Asia and what was coming out of there was really, really bad -- sometimes worse than what was being reported in Western media -- and people over there were so angry and terrified for months before anyone in the West started worrying about it, I think. 

So, by the time the pandemic hit the UK and lockdown was announced, I think I was just relieved that finally there was something I could “do” about what was going on in the world, if that made sense??? I’d been reading these first-hand anonymous accounts “on the ground” in Chinese for two months by that point, so I felt like I kind of knew what to expect physically and emotionally. (My family and family-friends out there are all fine as far as I know, btw.)

If you’re staying home, who’s with you?

My husband. 9 weeks into lockdown and we’re still very much enjoying having each other around! He misses his colleagues, but he doesn’t miss his commute. We have the odd Zoom party and catch up with his family on FaceTime (it’s weird how it took a pandemic for us to think of video-calling them instead of phoning them), but yeah, he’s been great lockdown company and I love having him home! I don’t want him to go back to work LMAO! 

We work in the same room, but tend to be very good at focusing on our work during the work day, so we don’t really distract each other and give each other space when needed (mentally rather than physically, though; we live in a tiny flat with only like 3 rooms so it’s hard to give each other physical space). We play endless games of Civ6 against the other during breaks from work.

Are you a homebody?

Before 2020? No, not at all. But after lockdown started? I’ve been discovering the delights of just chilling at home with my husband, being busy and in-demand at work, writing, reading books, teaching myself Photoshop (working through an online course LMAO) and playing Civ. 

Also I’ve been really happy about all the money I’m saving from not going out and not buying anything apart from food and books LMAO! 

I’ve not really felt very talkative this year; and after lockdown started, that even extended to many of my real-life friends -- I’ve just felt happy staying at home and not talking to anyone except my husband, for some reason. (As an aside -- sorry to all of you on Tumblr and Discord for not chatting so much -- it’s not personal, it’s just whatever phase I’m going through, both IRL and online!) I’m not depressed or anything, I don’t think -- just happy doing my own thing for a bit.

An event that you were looking forward to that got cancelled.

The one that I was most gutted about was the Euro 2020 football tournament (soccer to you Americans of course) -- I had tickets to go to the final in July. But the organisers said they’ll hold the tournament next year and tickets will be valid, so I don’t feel so bad about it now. 

I miss the gym the most, I think. Everything else has kind of sorted itself out (even cancelled events), but the gym / working-out thing hasn’t. I started doing some home workouts with resistance bands at first, but I’ve fallen out of the habit of that somewhat -- it’s just not the same as having an actual barbell in your hands.

I was also meant to go on holiday to Greece with friends (12 of us) but that’s been cancelled. Funnily enough, when lockdown was announced in the UK I was secretly relieved, because I had a lot of social events lined up and my social life had been so busy up to that point that I was starting to get rather overwhelmed with it all. Turns out I’m an extrovert with a strong introvert streak.

What movies have you watched recently? What shows are you watching?

Hmmmm.... not really so much movies, I think. Aside from Frozen 2 (again). We’re currently working our way more through the 1994 BBC TV series of the classic novel Middlemarch (because I’ve been reading it), but we tend to play Civ, or read, or bake/cook, rather than watch TV.

What music are you listening to?

Gosh, loads, haha! The Frozen 2 soundtrack. Ibiza clubland tunes (to remind me of good times, LOL). Listened to old Eurovision tracks over the weekend (to get me in the spirit, even if Eurovision 2020 was cancelled). Attended virtual concerts that my friends in music bands have been holding. Pretty much everything you can imagine, whenever the mood strikes. Today I was listening to Suede’s Singles.

What are you reading?

Right now I’m reading “Middlemarch” by George Eliot; I’ve been getting through lots of books since February, both fiction and non-fiction.

That said, I’ve not really felt like reading fanfic much -- stopped reading Dragon Age fanfiction in December or January (and completely fell out of the fandom for a while, too) so I’m really behind on every longfic I was following. I’m only just starting to catch up on it all, in May, although I don’t see myself being in fandom/online that much. I’ll get to all your fics eventually! I’m just slow 😄

What are you doing for self-care?

Lots of things, and I think they’re helping because I’ve been coping OK so far (sorry this list is so long!): 

Staying offline -- especially off Tumblr and Discord and Twitter -- more often, which has really helped me get work done (sorry I’ve not been around much, though) and finally getting around to doing all those projects I didn’t have time to do / wasn’t home often enough to do is helping, especially when I can see progress being made 

Weekly therapy sessions -- started these last year when my brother got very seriously ill; the therapy sessions have now moved online via video-call rather than face-to-face and in-person, but I’m still keeping up with them through the pandemic. I haven’t felt like I need it, tbh, but I figured it couldn’t hurt to keep having therapy just in case...

Being grateful for how lucky I am -- I’m still alive and well for now, as are my loved ones, my husband and I are still in jobs / earning money, and things could be a lot worse; for example, at least I’m still able to go for walks in the park: my brother is officially a “vulnerable category” person who has to stay completely indoors and self-isolate for 12 weeks, even though he’s in remission; he can’t even go to the shops to get food

Working -- it’s been really nice sometimes to keep busy. The nature of my work means that unfortunately I can’t completely switch off from the news, so I tend to look at less of the bad and sad news and consume more the “how does the pandemic affect my specific specialism or field” news -- I find that limiting my news consumption is helping

Husband and I go for a walk in the park in the sunshine once a day (it’s been warm and sunny in London ever since lockdown started in March) for like 45 minutes a day. We have a really lovely park and I’ve taken lots of nice nature photos, and have discovered parts of the park and our neighbourhood that we didn’t know before, which has been very exciting 😁

We’ve been cooking and baking a lot more because we’re not commuting, and we’ve got time to cook ourselves nicer / healthier meals, and experimenting with baking puddings and cakes.

Taking multivitamins and fish oil every day, with boosters for Vitamin D3 and magnesium -- I actually think the latter has helped me sleep better and helped with motivation this year, but who knows LOL

FaceTime with husband’s family -- I actually think this lockdown has improved the quality of our relationships there, and they’ve been really happy to chat to us more often than usual

Just... not pushing myself on anything: usually I’m a really chatty and sociable person, but this year I’ve been far less chatty and just not felt so sociable, and just enjoyed being away from people to read and write or whatever. My one and only goal in 2020 is to survive it -- literally, given that there’s a pandemic on, LOL. Anything else is a bonus.

[purplesurveys]

766

My dad is starting to gear me up for ~adult life~ and has made me start a Paypal, a social security number, and all that jazz and it’s making me immensely anxious, so expect more surveys than usual in the next few days lmao.

How frequently are you inclined to read, and how much? Not frequent at all. I’ll read only if I have to; and when it comes to reading for leisure, I’ll only reread books I’ve already read in the past. I find it sad considering how big of a bookworm I was as a kid. When was the last time you questioned the direction your life was taking? Right now, what with the Covid crisis. My life would have been mapped out ever so neatly if my life’s schedule went as expected - finish the sem, finish my thesis, graduate, travel for a bit, get a job. Now that that has been thrown out the window I essentially have to start from scratch and go into the world blind. And if you've been reading my surveys, you’ll know my least favorite thing to have to deal with is big change. Would you say that your personal views align with society's, generally? Not the society I have no choice but to be surrounded by, which is mostly Catholic, homophobic, sexist, and just very backwards in general. But when it comes to people I voluntarily choose to be with, like the friends I make and the people I follow on social media, I make sure their views are as liberal as mine so I don’t go completely crazy. ^ If not, in what ways do your opinions drastically differ? I just said it, but yeah Filipinos continue to be very resistant to more open-minded, modern views. Girls will still often be told to cover up, religions other than Christianity are viewed as wrong and of lower status, abortion is the most scandalous thing a woman could do, drug addicts must be handled with bullets and not rehab, etc. Basically everything you can roll your eyes over, that’s what Filipinos will tend to side with; and it’s very difficult to want to have your voice heard here because you will be ridiculed and thrown Bible verses instead of legit arguments. What small things have the ability to get under your skin? People who only start picking their orders once they’re the ones at the cashier, drivers who do have their turn signal on but will go THE OTHER DIRECTION, finding out there’s a car accident and I find out traffic has been building up only because drivers slow down to look at the crash site. The last one makes me especially mad every time it happens lol.

When was the last time you were caused to be upset with someone? I haven’t been upset with anyone in a while. If I’m upset these days, blame it on the weather. ^ Have you made up with that individual yet, or will you ever? I will never be ok with the summer climate over here. What is something small that has the ability to cure a bad mood? Hearing a favorite song on the radio as I’m driving, hitting all the green lights while driving, finding a parking spot near the mall entrance... man I really miss going out :(( What beverage is best capable of quenching your thirst? Water. What was the last big change through which you went? It hasn’t happened yet but I’ll be graduating and will officially be done with school forever in a few weeks. I mean, that’s the case unless I decide to take up a master’s but honestly the chances of that are super blurry as I’m over school at this point. ^ Do you deal well with change, typically? Have you always? I am honestly terrible at it and as much as I’m excited to get my first real job, I’m also scared to see how my adjustment pans out. I’ve had a pattern for not being able to adapt well to a new phase – I didn’t adjust in high school until my junior year, and I didn’t adjust in college until the latter half of my sophomore year. I really wish the trend doesn’t continue in the workplace because I can’t handle another mental slump. How do you feel after spending a great quantity of time online? I feel nothing? I mean I need the internet to do almost everything so it’s just become a part of daily routine; it’s normalized already. I would tend to feel some shame if I’ve been unproductive online when I could’ve been doing much more important stuff, but I’ve been avoiding that - I’ve been working on my thesis again, working on stuff for my org, participating in my other extracurriculars, etc. I feel relatively productive given the current circumstances. What do you consider to be the biggest drawback to being you? Like I said, I’m terrible with change. It takes forever for me to warm up to new conditions, and in that period I tend to feel very alone and miserable. I don’t know why I’ve never learned to just get out and make friends earlier. What do you consider the best part of being who you are? ^ Related to said drawback, once I have adjusted to the change, I do very well. I make lots of friends and am back to being my bubbly, social self. I just wish She could come out more easily. What kinds of things do you have on display in your room? Several Audrey Hepburn frames, a couple of paintings, and a poster of a Korean actor. What do you think your room and its contents say about you, if anything? I think more than anything you’ll see how my interests have shifted over the years haha. There’s tons of old WWE magazines, Paramore albums, Beyoncé albums and DVDs, crafty stuff like painting sets and coloring books, etc. When was the last time you felt insecure about something/some situation? Half hour ago when my dad was encouraging me to register for a bunch of grownup stuff. He doesn’t pester me a lot in small bits everyday (which I would really prefer); he’s more of a I’ll-dump-all-this-shit-on-you-in-one-go kind of person, which pressures me even more. I mean I’m excited for this new chapter but I wish he didn’t tell me to start a bank account and a Paypal and a social security number and a TIN all at the same time. What is something about which you are very confident or self-assured? I pride myself on being a good worker/co-worker. Do you ever stop to contemplate infinity? No. Are you comfortable amongst nature, or does the wilderness discomfit you? Sure, it makes me feel at peace. When was the last time someone or something caught you off guard? Andrew did a buuuunch of progress on our thesis this afternoon after a few days of passive-aggressively telling him that I’ve been doing all the work in the last week. How much time do you put into maintaining your appearance and hygiene? I don’t want to take a lot of time since I’m usually on a tight schedule but I do put enough effort to look and smell nice, if that makes sense. Like I wouldn’t take hours to do my makeup and put up an intricate hairdo, but I will still make sure I don’t exit the house looking shabby. Are there any foods you eat daily? . . . Or wish you could? I have rice and some sort of meat everyday. When was the last time someone new entered your life? Start of the semester when we had a new wave of applicants joining our org. ^ What was your first impression of that individual? They all seemed nice and fun to be around, and I’m glad their batch has had amazing chemistry from the get-go. But because of the lockdown I never got to know them all that well so I’m a little sad about it, since I’m already graduating. Do you put much thought into your handwriting? No? It’s not really something I can control anyway haha. What are some of the top priorities in your life right now? Ugh I’ve talked about this so much on here that it’s almost stupid because I take these surveys to begin with to distract myself from my current anxieties only for the surveys to ask about said anxieties ksksksks. Can I say pass for now? Lol In general, how do you feel about romantic relationships? They’re nice, and it feels good to have a person you can share everything to, be affectionate with, who supports you in everything, etc. I’ve been used to being in one for so long now I honestly can’t imagine being single. Which emotional sensation inconveniences or bothers you the most? As if I haven’t talked about it on this single survey enough, anxiety. Are you capable of consoling others in their grief? It depends on how bad is the thing they’re grieving and how accepting they are of help. I don’t know if I’m capable of talking to someone who has lost a parent, but I’ll be able to talk to a friend who’s going through a breakup. Do you ever find it awkward to compliment another being? No. I can give compliments, but I’m unable to take them. When was the last time you had a new experience? What was it? Earlier this afternoon when my dad made me make a Paypal hahaha. Skskss plz stop reminding me of scary things Do you dress more for yourself, or to the expectations of others? A little bit of both. I want to look nice, but I also make sure I keep up with the trends so others think I look nice. What kinds of things tend to stress you out? The stuff I’ve mentioned throughout this survey... What is one way you cope when you feel like crap? I watch videos, I eat whatever I’m craving, I talk about it with my girlfriend, I hug my dog... I have a lot of coping mechanisms.

Name an insult you regularly receive, if there is one? My mom tells me so many insults on a regular basis I can put each one of them in a spinning wheel and give you whatever comes out lol. Name a site that takes up a lot of your time? YouTube. What is something you used to believe about life that you no longer do? That money was easy to acquire. It was certainly so easy to fantasize about as a kid. What is a lesson you have recently learned? I don’t recall picking up anything new lately. Realizations, sure; but I’m not sure about lessons. Do you have a tendency to look on the morbid side of life? Sometimes. When was the last time you went shopping? What did you buy? A weekend before the quarantine. I bought a couple of new tops. When you shop for clothing, how long does it take you? 10-15 minutes tops. I just pick out whatever looks pretty. What is something fun you have done within the past week? It’s been a horrid week. I can’t answer this question. What is something you hope you never have to do again? Stay at home with nothing to do for this long. How does the rain affect your mood, if it does? It makes me feel happy and at peace.

[margaret-vanzin-blog]

(natalia dyer, female) MARGARET “MAGGIE” VANZIN, the BROKEN BIRD, is NINETEEN and a SOPHOMORE. SHE is majoring in LITERATURE. In addition to being Quentin’s FAMILY FRIEND, they are part of the Imperium Society. MAGGIE was probably selected because SHE WAS A DANCE PRODIGY AND A SOLOIST OF A PRESTIGIOUS BALLET COMPANY. They remind me of PRECISE ANGLES, TREMBLING HANDS, WELL-WORN POINTE SHOES, & THE COOL EVENING BREEZE. (tara, 21+, est, she/her)

hi! i’m tara. i’m a slut for dark academia, secret societies, et cetera, so this is my exact preferred wheelhouse. i’m really lucky i saw this rp in the tags this morning. below is an intro to my darling Maggie. 

sorry for the length lmao but I wanted to make sure I had her whole history straight. feel free to skip down to the personality subtopic if you like.

trigger warnings for self harm (though in a non-direct way?).

Chapter 1: Messy childhood™

She was named for psychologist Margaret Floy Washburn, and she uses Margaret professionally but often goes by Maggie.

I think she’s 5th out of the 6 Vanzins?? (Vanzin squad, if that conflicts with what you have already, let me know)

Adpoted by Moira and Yakov Vanzin as an infant, she never knew any other life than what the psychologists provided. Due to her seemingly advanced spatial awareness as a baby, they decided that her specialty would be dance, and they bred her for ballet. She began training almost as soon as she could toddle around on two feet.

Most of her childhood was spent sequestered in the dance studio her parents had built in their house. Her teachers crafted a strict schedule that combined the Vaganova method with the Cecchetti method, honing her strength and elasticity.

Maggie has always been pliable, a puppet in the hands of her trainers and her parents and whoever else wanted to mold her. She was never asked whether she wanted to do ballet, but she never argued, either. She never considered that an option.

By age eight, she was splitting her time between training and home and dancing in the corps de ballet of the Bolshoi Ballet. Sometimes, as the ballets they performed didn’t have roles suited for someone as young as Maggie, the company’s choreographers would adjust the blocking specifically to allow her exquisite talent a chance to shine within the company of much older dancers.

As she was growing up, she saw how talented her siblings were, both intellectually and physically. And much like some of them, her main goal was to live up to her parents’ expectations - and really, to avoid being the only disappointment. But as she grew taller, and her body proportions shifted, she found it harder and harder to keep up with the level of performance that was expected of her. The jumps and spins required different physics now, physics that she hadn’t had the time to figure out. 

This is true for all ballet dancers, not that she would know; she never got much of a chance to spend real time with any of the others. She was whisked in and out of rehearsal spaces and performance halls and had no opportunity to befriend anyone even remotely close to her age, other than her siblings.

(And even then, I imagine she saw very little of her siblings, despite how much she may have wanted to spend more time with them.)

Chapter 2: Shit falls apart

Because she began struggling for the first time in her life, by around age fourteen, she saw herself as a failure. She slept only a scant few hours a night, too restless and overcome with worry to be able to fall asleep. Her intense diet regimen had become even more restrictive, and she began numbly ingesting only the food that was strictly necessary for survival. Yet she still had to work three times as hard as she ever had before, and it was driving her towards a nervous breakdown. 

She thought about speaking up about the pressure she was under, telling her trainers or her parents, but she was terrified that either they wouldn’t take her seriously or that they wouldn’t care. Besides, other people - including her siblings - could handle the pressure, so shouldn’t she be able to, too? Plus, it was obnoxiously cliché, the dancer suffering from a work-related mental breakdown. She resented herself even more for it.

Around the same time, the Bolshoi promoted her to become a fairly regular soloist, on track to become a principal ballerina in the next few years. The record for the world’s youngest prima ballerina is nineteen; Maggie’s trainers projected she could reach it earlier than that if she put in enough effort. As expected, pressure only mounted.

At eighteen, she was indeed offered a contract to sign on as a principal. The media celebrated: youngest ballerina ever offered principal position with a major company. Her parents were delighted, and under their watchful eyes, Maggie signed on the dotted line.

She began funneling money out of her personal savings account, the equivalent of a few hundred dollars at a time.

Five weeks later, with trembling hands and skittish eyes, she offered the equivalent of ten thousand dollars to one of the other girls who’d just gotten expelled from the corps at the last company cut, in exchange for staging a hit-and-run. Not enough to kill her; just enough to take her out of the game. The other ballerina took the money, went ahead with the plan as arranged, the incident occurring in the back alley where they were sure there’d be no cameras, just as Maggie purposely left the theatre late one night. 

An injured Maggie called for the paramedics, the impact of the car and her fall having broken her right leg and wrist, among other minor injuries. Enough, and more, to take her off pointe shoes for a while. 

When they found her (and for some time afterwards), she was an absolute sobbing wreck, mostly out of shock and disbelief that she actually did what she did, though everyone took it as devastation that her ballet aspirations had shattered along with her leg. Moira and Yakov were livid about the accident, but there was no way of tracing the vehicle, and the culprit went unpunished. As of now, no one knows that Maggie orchestrated it herself. The ballerina who hit her is still part of the company, though they haven’t spoken since. Maggie wishes she should send the girl a thank you card but doesn’t want to risk contacting her. 

Was this slightly overdramatic? Oh, for sure. But it was the only way she could think of to get out of her situation and finally be able to rest without outright quitting or admitting defeat. To this day, she faces conflicting feelings of both guilt and relief over her decisions in that regard. 

Chapter 3: Ashcroft

After having lost so much muscle in her right leg during the healing process and weeks on crutches, she was in no place to begin intense training again. The Bolshoi graciously released her from her contract until she could regain full range of movement through physical therapy.

Her parents, having added the “youngest principal ballerina” to their collection in name if not in deed, agreed to allow her to attend Ashcroft with her older siblings until her full range of motion has returned. As principal ballerinas are often in their mid 20′s-early 30′s, the Bolshoi Ballet then also agreed to let Maggie not just attend university through her recovery but attend until her university graduation, before officially re-joining the company.

There was no need for her to major in dance, since she already has a position waiting for her (a position which she’s dreading, knowing what happened when she was under pressure last time). So instead of studying dance at Ashcroft, she found herself… free to choose. She’s never been able to do that before. Arbitrarily, she chose literature, since she can read at the very least - she’s not particularly made out for academic study, like Florence or some of her other siblings might be, but she’s still happy to have a life outside of ballet, at least for a little while.

When she was invited to join the Imperium Society, she joined. It didn’t matter much to her either way, but she didn’t think she had another choice - and besides, her siblings were in it already. She would always follow in their footsteps, no matter where that took her. 

Quentin’s death was a shock - especially after learning that he was stabbed and poisoned. He was a fairly close friend of some of her siblings, she knew, even if she hadn’t known him as well. But she’d still known him; plus, the murder of someone in their society didn’t do much to set her mind at ease. 

Personality

Anxious. Despite her calm eyes, her anxiety is visible in her twitching fingers and her slightly warbling voice. I imagine that if her parents noticed, they never cared; if her siblings noticed her anxiety, and they ever said anything to her, she would have pretended she was fine. The only time she’s not nervous is when she’s on stage, because she knows that’s what she was made for. A stillness takes over when she dances - and while she hates ballet for how it affected her mental health, she can’t help but appreciate the sense of peace that it gives her physical body in the moment. 

Obedient. Except for her one (arguably major) act of disobedience, which still remains a secret, she doesn’t have any experience saying no or arguing with others. She’s definitely more of a follower than a leader, and she’s as pliable as ever. This can be a positive or negative, depending on the circumstances.

Naive. Probably because she’s had very little social interaction with people outside of her family, she usually can’t discern when people are telling the truth or when they’re lying. Though some of her siblings have gotten her semi-used to recognizing sarcasm, at least.

Kindhearted. The ballet world is cutthroat, but the only person she ever really felt competitive against or vitriol towards was herself - not anyone else. Despite outsiders viewing her as almost robotic in her perfection, if they ever got the chance to know her, they would be surprised by her gentle voice and pleasant, mild demeanor.

Potential Connections? 

I’d like her to make some friends, though the level of friendship can vary. I can also see her being really easily taken advantage of by someone she thought might be a friend.

She’s never been to traditional school & she literally can’t do math of any kind, and knows only movement-related physics, so she’s going to need some tutors of some sort, I’m sure.

She needs someone to be a social influence on her, whether good or bad or somewhere in between. Introduce her to the meaning of “fun.”

Romantic connections? She’s never had time for any before? Another dancer kissed her backstage once but it was a spur-of-the-moment thing and nothing came of it. God, Maggie would be such a romantic disaster.

I’m also really looking forward to plotting with her siblings and figuring out their dynamics, oh man. 

I’m up for pretty much anything with her, tbh!! 

[nobeliumoxygenoxygen]

Seromina || Firsts

For Sero Ship Week Day 3: Firsts at @seroshipweek​

SUMMARY: Ashido tends to overshare her personal life on social media so it’s only fitting that she shares her favourite moments on it too, right?

But this time, it’s only for one pair of eyes.

GENRE: sero hanta x ashido mina, social media au (I think?)

TEXT from your queen 💕

follow @iloveutapeboi on insta its private but dw youll be accepted start from the first post!!!!!!!!

POSTS

1

[Image: Candid of Sero taken from the side; slightly blurry, low angle as if the photographer was trying to be discreet as they took it. He’s wearing an orange hoodie with black stripes. He’s grinning at someone in front of him and he holds a bitten meat pie in one hand. In the background, there are barely visible bowling lanes.]

Caption: the first time i thought to myself “maybe seros actually cute and i actually like him in a like like way” if that make sense lol. maybe there were other times but this was the earliest memory i could think of. this was after that laser tag game we all played and you did your whole dramatic self sacrificing for me (lol quickest way to my heart - take a laser tag shot for me). 

2

[Image: Image of the city taken from inside a bus. Half the image is of the seats of the bus whilst the other half are buildings of the city. A few people are in the shot, but they’re faces are unrecognisable.]

Caption: first time I realised I was in loveeee (i love youu) how cheesy amirite. its a bus because i realised it when we were going back to ua together after a field trip and idk i just had this light bulb moment ok ugh this is too cheesy were done here ily but im cringing too hard at the cheesinesssss (two posts in and im already dying but im pushing thru!!!!)

3

[Image: 2 puppies being held by someone who is clearly Sero by the look of the arms and his orange black striped hoodie. One puppy in each arm; a white pit bull and a brown one.]

Caption: our not-so-official first date?? idk if you’d call it that but like......we were alone together so idk??? u know i was going to actually confess today but the dogs were so cute they distracted me!! so i forgot lol!!! (theyre only sliiiiiightly cuter than u dw dw!!! 🤣)

4

[Image: Sero’s silhouette inside a movie theater. He’s facing the camera but it’s too dark to see much other than the shadows of his face and the glint of his white teeth in his grin. In the far left of the photo, the Lego Movie is playing.]

Caption: our official first date (tho i guess it was kinda rushed??? considering i literally told u i liked u like an hour earlier lmao but i wouldnt have it any other way ❤️)

5

[Image: Ashido’s room, taken from the doorway. The bed is unmade; the curtains are drawn back to let the sunlight in; the desk is a mess of school books and loose sheets. Ashido’s arms are outstretched in front of the camera; she’s forming a heart with her hands.]

Caption: place we had our first kiss!!! (tho we failed like five times and kept laughing!! the movies are wayyyy too serious - they make it seem like ur not allowed to laugh!! our kisses are so much better😘)

6

[Image: Pathway leading up into a park where cherry blossom trees frame the edges. There are a few passerbys and one dog, legs a blur, running through the image.]

Caption: place i asked you to be my boyfriend because SOMEONE STILL had this WEIRD idea that?? i??? didnt?? like?? them? EVEN AFTER?? LIKE FIVE DATES?? AND FIVE KISSES???

7

[Image: UA Heights Alliance common room. Looking through the windows, it’s night and there’s no one in there but there’s food wrappers strewn across the coffee table and the floor.]

Caption: place you said your first i love you (ok i suppose i shouldnt be salty about the boyfriend asking thing because first ilys are such a milestone!!!! ps. im still sorry i panicked when u said it lmao i love how we laugh about it but i know from sources coughbakuyellingthat1tapeboiwasstressingashell that you almost cried ilyyyyyyyy ❤️❤️❤️)

8

[Image: Close up focus of Sero’s lit up face. He’s giving a close-eyed smile to someone slightly to the left of the camera. Just making it in the frame is a slice of bright blond hair. The background is blurred but it is clearly of a busy beach; the sky is blue and there’s not a cloud in sight. There are two figures, one shirtless with red hair and one wearing a wetsuit cut off at the lower thigh with what might be black or dark purple hair in the water in the far background.]

Caption: when i said my first i love you (i love you toos and i love yous on phones dont count!!! and also u are sooooooo cute in this photo!!! not that ur not always cute ofc 😋)

9

[Image: Text screenshot. (Sent) Ashido: IM SO MAD AT U SERO HANTA ANSWER MEEE (Receiving) Sero: NEVER U TRAITOR (Sent) Ashido: UR THE TRAITOR!!!!]

Caption: first fight :( one of the saddest chapters of my life i hope we never do that again ❤️

10

[Image: Rice with natto on top, chopsticks on the side. The dish is on top of pink, patterned napkins.]

Caption: first (of many!!!!!!!!) anniversaries (see??? taking pics of food is VERY important!! and u dared to make fun of my ‘attempts at being aesthetics’!!)

11

[Image 1: Necklace in shape of a crown with engraving of words “Alien Queen”.  Image 2: Necklace is flipped over with engraving of words “Ashido Mina”.]

Caption: first (of many!!!!!!!!!!) anniversary presents (I LOVE IT SO MUCH WHY R U SO NICEEEEEEE ITS SO CUTE IM WEARING IT EVERYDAY ILY)

12

[Image: From the side, Sero smiling softly, looking up at a beautiful orange sky to match his brighter orange hoodie. His eyes are wide but he’s happy. Behind are a few trees.]

Caption: I love youuuuuuuuuuuu sero hantaaaaaaaaaa and dont you forget it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! *spam of heart emojis* (also u r seriously wearing the same hoodie in like five of these pics w h y)

TEXT to your queen 💕

im actualy cryin can i call u

TEXT from your queen 💕

oof  [Image: google search bar “how to comfort crying boyfriend”.] ofc u can!!

CALL TRANSCRIPT:

Sero: How long have you been planning this? I love you so muchhhhhhhh. I’m crying, can you hear my tears? How did you do it? Did you go to every place or were you planning this from the beginning?

Ashido: *laughter* You can’t hear tears dummy. And you’re not meant to cry! Its meant to be a happy thing! *more laughter*

Sero: ...Glad to know your happy about my pain. ...Its amazing I have literally no words Ashido. I love it-I love you and I love us. Thank you so much.

Ashido: Awww don’t make me blush. It was nothing!

Sero: What do you mean NOTHING? Don’t insult yourself Ashido Mina this is...I don’t know-EVERYTHING!

Ashido: Okay that’s true. I’m awesome.

Sero: I’m going to treasure this forever. You’ll never delete this account right?

Ashido: *giggling* Course not!

Sero: It’s too amazing. Seriously, and I gave you the most cliche relationship present ever.

Ashido: Eesh don’t worry! I love my present! Besides it was the final piece for the account!

Sero: If you say so. You know, I don’t think a meme war counts as a fight...in a relationship...

Ashido: Of course it does! I was soooo angry at you. How could you side with Kirishima?! It was so frustrsting! You wouldn’t BELIEVE!

Sero: ...Trust me I believe. *muffled* Especially after you taped me to the ceiling.

Ashido: What was that?

Sero: Nothing! Also how’d you take the pic of your room with your arms in front of you? Is it...*whispers loudly* sorcery?

Ashido: *giggling* You got it. I have a second quirk that I-...I kept secret. Yup. But I’m telling you because you’re my boyfriend and all.

Sero: And I will totally believe you, because you’re my girlfriend, and all. Hey, I know you need your beauty sleep but can I come over--

Ashido: Yes!

Sero: --tomorrow--wait, what?

Ashido: Oh. Well-

Sero: *muffled snort* Someone’s desperate.

Ashido: *huff* Shhh! You can come over anytime!

Sero: Would you really not mind if I came over now? At like...*shuffling* eleven?

Ashido: Is that even a question? If you come over now, I can add it to the journal!

Sero: The journal?

Ashido: The account Sero!

Sero: Okay...Why? It’s not the first time I’ve been to your house. Firsts was the theme right?

Ashido: Yep! And I can make it ‘First night spent together’ wink wink.

Sero: …*muffled laugh* Whatever floats your boat.

Ashido: But you’re getting a cab here right? You better not walk out this late at night!

Sero: I mean, we’re both training to be heroes if we can’t walk out at night then what could we do--

Ashido: Sero you butt!

Sero: --but yes I’m getting a cab.

Ashido: Good! You better stay on the phone the whole time too!

Sero: Of course. I love you Ashido Mina.

Ashido: And I love you Sero Hanta! ...Wait are you still wearing that orange hoodie?

Sero: ...*distant mumbles* Why do you hate my beloved hoodie so much?

Ashido: *equally distant mumbles* If you wear it one more time the photos will think you have one hoodie.

Sero: What would you say if I said yes?

Ashido: I’d say we’ve got our next date planned and you can guess what it is.

Sero: ...I mean, I wouldn’t say no to any time with you anyway?

Ashido: Pfft, stop being cute. Just-alright, whatever. Tomorrow? At whatever time we wake up I guess?

Sero: It’s a date.

A/N: completely forgot that they live in the same building so pretend it’s holidays or something 🤷 buuuut i hope you enjoyed this was harder than expected so im rlly sorry if they seem ooc 😳!! Thanks for reading!!

[sofhyuck]

Terrace House!AU Winwin

Genre: fluff, bullet point scenario, veeeery brief mention of sexual harassment 

Word Count: 1.9k so close to 2k i swear

A/N please read the introduction first!!

am i doing this in any particular order?

absolutely not lmao

anyways for this au let’s pretend uhhh you’re a famous Instagram/social media personality (idfk) and you’ve done multiple collab videos with other idols such as Amber and Jae so you’re fairly well known in the kpop sphere

and lil baby sicheng won’t ever dare to admit it bc he will be teased relentlessly has a tiny lil crush on you

tiny little as in he has a secret insta just to follow you so he can keep updated since sm doesn’t let them even dream of having their own accounts

anywayssssss

you’re running a tiny lil bit late because you just came from a business meeting oversees and the airport lost your luggage and it was a whole mess so now you’re tired and aggravated from fighting with the airport staff and you’re terrified of making a bad first impression

luckily you managed to gather all of your suitcases and traffic isn’t bad so you’ll be able to make it for dinner 

but that doesn’t ease the anxiety of meeting five new people that you’ll be living with for the next few months

the driver pulls up to the house and you thank him and lowkey you’re shaking a little but it’s fiiinehaha

the door opens before you even ring the doorbell bc everyone was waiting for you and a woman in her late twenties with a kind smile pokes her head out

“finally you’re here! we were beginning to think you weren’t going to show”

and you just blush and stutter out an apology but she just shushes you and ushers you inside, yelling out for someone to bring your luggage into your room

there’s barely time to take in your surroundings before you’re dragged into the living room were most of the house was gathered only to be met by a soft gasp

poor sicheng is red bc yea he just gasped when he saw you how embarrassing can you get poor kid

lucky for him you couldn’t figure out where the gasp came from so he’s safe for now although one of his roommates can already tell sicheng is in love with you ooooh boy

you quickly introduce yourself, the younger members already knowing who you were, excitement clear on their faces sicheng literally bouta hop out of his seat cute bubby

and everyone introduces themself and when it gets to sicheng you just cut him off with a giggle like “i know who you are”

and he is sh00k bc wow you know who he is what is life and your giggle was so cute wtf of course she knows who you are sicheng

meanwhile you’re like wow he’s even cuter in person this is why all of nct is fucking wh i p ped for him

the woman who met you at the door has already dubbed all of you as her children and a man around her age is your dad she’s an unashamed queen and you all love her

but it’s getting late so you all retire to your respective rooms but the fun doesn’t end there for you ladies oh no

mama wants to gossip she seent the way sicheng gazed at you heart eyes and all what am i even saying anymore idk i’m watching jeffree star and shane dawson while writing this oops back on tracknow

so she sits you and your other roommate down and is just like...spill the tea girls who’s cute who’s not past relationships i want everything go!

and they both look at you bc they know you and sicheng already have a lil somethin going on

so you’re like yea obvi i think he’s cute i mean look at him

but they just look at you like mmhmm sure that’s all

so you sigh and just sort of...spill it all out talking about how you never really have the chance to date since you’re kind of in the limelight now and the possibility of being caught up in a controversy is hella high

so yea you’re a little wary about flat out stating you might have a crush on an internationally worshiped idol

and your roommates just nod in understanding and then you switch topics, talking until three in the morning and you’re about to pass out

meanwhile in the boys room... *insert cool visual transition* 

sicheng was being teased to hell and back before he finally has to be like...yea i think she’s cute but i don’t really want to say more for risk of her getting swept up in some controversy she doesn’t deserve that wow we stan a gentleman

so now there’s this mutual understanding within the house to not push the idea of you and sicheng too hard

even the producers are in on it bc they don’t want their show getting a bad rep either

but it’s still inevitable you guys hang out, i mean, you’re living in the same house and there is an obvious attraction between you two

now sicheng’s in a bit of a lull right now, his comeback just wrapped up and he’s not doing anymore promotional activities so he’s resting a bit and he’s getting a lil bored just hanging at the house

meanwhile you’re doing a mini series where you go around to different attractions and just live the tourist life you’ve never been able to live before

for your next episode you’re going to everland and you’re like...why not invite people from the house??? bc it’ll be boring to go by yourself

so you invite everyone and that’s how you all end up at an amusement park running around like children

your manager supplied the group with three mini cameras so that you can break up into groups and obvi mom and dad pair up and the other roommates want you and sicheng to be able to spend time together

so you all get your cameras and split up on your own to wreak havoc have fun!!

does sicheng like rollercoasters??? idk but lets say he does and you don’t mind them either as long as they don’t go upside down and the line isn’t long yes this was me at everland i went on two rides rip

but there’s a problem...putting two well known celebrities together in a highly populated area is uhhhh not the best idea

you get in line for a ride, having a nice conversation about your lives when a group of giggling girls join the line behind you

giggles quickly turn into squeals as they spot sicheng and you don’t really know what to do bc you’ve never had to deal with fangirls before, especially not this close

and while you know that fans are generally nice...you’re still hyper aware that some are...not so nice

and one of the girls in the group is not looking at you too kindly while sicheng offers to take pictures with them 

you’re more than happy to take the pictures for them until one girl practically throws her phone at you and grabs sicheng’s arm

now you’re obviously glaring at her while she strokes his arm, oblivious to how uncomfortable he is

when her hand begins to travel, ahem, a little lower you snap

the producers weren’t even saying anything while sicheng is literally being groped????

you shove her phone into her hand and grab sicheng’s hand before sprinting away from the girls and the cameras, finally stopping in an almost empty area of the park

in your rush you left your personal camera by the roller coaster, leaving you and sicheng completely alone and camera free for the first time in months

you both take a moment to catch your breath, settling down on a bench

sicheng breaks the silence by wrapping his arms around you and letting out a few shaky breaths

it took you a few moments to realize he was crying

the two of you stayed like that for a few minutes, letting him cry all his tears out

eventually his breaths evened out and he removed himself from your shoulder 

“thank you for that” he sniffled “i was so scared and i didn’t know what to do there were so many people and cameras and everything was happening at once-”

you quietly shushed him, wiping away stray tears from his cheek

“it’s ok sicheng, that shouldn’t have happened. no one has the right to touch someone else like that without consent and the crew shouldn’t have just done nothing, to be honest i’m really mad right now and i don’t want to go back there where every single move we make will be recorded. let’s just...stay her for awhile”

and you two do

you talk about anything and everything ranging from your favorite color to the pressures of living in the limelight

you finally get the opportunity to talk how you’ve wanted to for the past few months but haven’t been able to because of all the cameras constantly surrounding you

and you guys texted the house groupchat so they all know where you are but they don’t tell the cameramen bless their souls

finally it’s time for you all to meet at the front gate and you both get an ear full from the producers

but oh ho your manager knows what happens so before the producers can finish he goes o f f on them bc they handled the situation incredibly unprofessionally 

despite your ability to avoid cameras, word about the whole incident spread rather quickly and, well, nctzens fucking loved you lol

so from then on, you and sicheng didn’t really care about being close on camera

plus fans had been shipping you since the show had first aired and your ship name was trending for almost two days when news of the incident first broke

yuta and taeil had even face timed sicheng to tell you they fully approved of your relationship

speaking of relationships

you and sicheng had gone on multiple dates that totally weren’t dates but also totally were

so you guys were basically dating without either of you having actually asked the other out

you’re just happily living loving each other while the entire production crew, cast, nctzens, and all of nct are like 

p l s just make it official we’re all dy i ng

after the show you guys still hang out like all the time his dorm is basically your second home

and one day you two are sat cuddling in his room, rewatching your show and reminiscing about the good old times it’s been a month calm down there kids

until you notice him staring at you so you look over at him and you both just stare at each other for a minute and then he just leans down and pecks your lips

and you both just smile until you speak up

“so...dong sicheng...will you be my boyfriend”

he pouts because “i was supposed to ask you first”

“well maybe if you didn’t take so long i wouldn’t have had to make the first move!”

“i’m the one who kissed you though!”

you two continue your banter until he kisses you again, effectively shutting you up

the rest of the day is spent cuddling and kissing, briefly interrupted by yuta walking into the room only to tear up and leave the room

to this day he refuses to tell you if it was due to his happiness or jealousy

Masterlist