#there are No Fish in there i think . its just Memory

[alexanderlightweight]

oooh its prompt day! can I ask if you have anymore to the amnisiac alec one?

it has been a while but here is the next part of that fic! I hope you enjoy

<3 lumine

-

all my fears forgotten

I know amnesia fics are often meant to be angsty but i actually really hate those. So i’m sorry to anyone expecting that but this is indulgent and soft af.

—

Alexander lays against Magnus, carefree and with a boyish grin on his face as he watches the birds fish in the water from their floating pavilion.

The boat is maintained and moved by magic and all they have to do is lounge and Alexander is the most relaxed Magnus has ever seen him.

However eventually, as most things do, the mood changes.  No less content but a different flow nonetheless.

“I miss something, my muscles ache in this movement.” Alexander does a familiar motion and without hesitation, Magnus snaps his fingers, summoning Alexander’s bow and quiver.

Of course, Alexander must have forgotten to summon even his own bonded weapons.

The thought makes Magnus glad that it was brought up now, in the peace of this lake and protected by a hidden realm rather than when in danger.

Not that he’ll let Alexander ever be in danger, but the world does keep trying its hand.

Magnus helps Alexander slip on and tighten his finger guard, shows him how to string his bow even as Alexander’s muscles relax at the familiar weight of his bow and the power it takes to string.

“Can you use magic to make me targets?” Alexander bats his lashes playfully at Magnus and it’s... it's delightful.

Alexander hesitated to ask Magnus for anything of late and Magnus has been too tired to figure out how to explain, when Alexander was still struggling to understand what separated him from the Institute.

Truth be told, it’s a relief for Magnus to be able to sidestep over this particular conversation. Not out of avoidance, but because he doesn’t think Alexander was at a point of separating himself from his duty to that degree just yet.

Alexander had been doing much better in his personal value of self worth, but it had still been tied to what he felt he owed the Clave in some twisted repayment for his parents' sins.

It infuriated Magnus then and it infuriates him now.

However it’s easier to ignore the urge to create a rain of ash when Alexander is like this, at ease and without a concern for anything other than what they’ll both enjoy.

“Won’t you lose the arrows?” Magnus asks, just to be sure because he still doesn’t think Alexander remembers how to summon any of his weapons.

Alexander blinks at him carefully and then smiles, slow and sweet like sunwarm honey.

“I’ll dive and get them. It’ll cool me off after.”

It’s said so sweetly, as if it’s a completely reasonable thing to do and considering Alexander is saying this without any memories beyond the basics then... Magnus supposes it must be a shadowhunter thing.

“Alright darling, as long as you let me tag you. Just in case I need to fish your lovely self out of the water.”

Magnus kisses the fingerguard protecting Alexander’s skin and gets a deep chuckle before Alexander presses gentle kisses to his forehead.

“That’s fine. Better safe than sorry.”

Alexander seems so serene like this, Magnus wishes there was a way to preserve this peace for his love. Because whether by his own memories coming back or watching Magnus’, Alexander will have to learn more of what is going on at some point.

For his own safety, and he’s already agreed of course. Even if he’d wrinkled his nose and sighed in defeat when they’d talked about it. Alexander is enjoying being reintroduced to the world by Magnus and apparently, he’s a bit sad of how many things he won’t need to relearn if his memories return or Magnus shares his own.

Which is incredibly sweet, but alas there are dangers untold and Magnus cannot stay away in this realm with Alexander forever, no matter how much he wishes he could.

Still, they have a little longer to remain like this, in bliss.

Magnus flicks his finger and eight spinning orbs shoot into the sky, moving at random and each with a fist sized gem contained by hellfire.

Alexander’s eyes light up with delight and Magnus laughs, carefree and full of joy as he readies his bow and notches an arrow.

Magnus leans back in his chair and summons a drink with a contented sigh.

“Have fun, Alexander. The hellfire will ensure that even if you hit the gems, it will take several strikes before any true damage is done.”

“So unless it’s a direct strike, it will take several.” Alexander’s eyes are busy, tracking the arcs of fire across the sky.

“It’s at random, Alexander. You can’t—” even as Magnus speaks, Alexander makes his shot.

The sound of a crystal shattering fills the tranquil lake and Magnus watches with delight and pride as the gem shatters and drops, the hellfire conquered from a single blow.

He leans forward, laughing as his fingers tangle with Alexander’s quiver and yanks him back to kiss him eagerly.

 “I do love it when you prove me wrong.” Magnus purrs against Alexander’s mouth and there’s a satisfied laugh against his lips before Alexander finally kisses him back.

Properly and with a smugness that carries over to the confidence of his kisses.

--

AN:

alec out here really wishing he doesn't need to get his memories until after Magnus has shown him everything personally because it's much more interesting and likable that way.

magnus is suffering okay, he has to the responsible one because he knows what the world is like and its very upsetting. he took would like to just introduce the world over to Alexander before he has to show them the mess of life

-

magnus: darling for the sake of your pride i'm letting you know you won't be able to... oh... you're a sniper. that's hot

alec: he practically dared me to. he didn't believe in me! I definitely showed hi-mmf. oh okay kisses. I am pleased.

[crustyfloor]

In a sense it feels like Till has always lived in a metaphorical "fishbowl" enclosed and isolated from the world outside of it, not just physically but emotionally, because in the same way his love and memories are sealed away in a coffin, he also keeps those feelings and keepsakes in their own little space where they can float around and stay untouched by the world, guarded. His life started in a cage with Io, just a different kind of fishbowl where they were trapped and could only see the world inside looking out, but they were happy. Till was happy to have his passion for music and the love of his provider in that fishbowl, the same can be said for when he's living in Anakt garden, he was trapped in an idealized environment with entities on the outside looking in where he could only touch the true outside world from a distance, but his most treasured memories belong to that fishbowl, you get used to it after a while and you fear leaving it alongside the comfort of your memories and the other fish alongside you, I think that's why Till dreams big, is inspired by the outside world, but doesn't leave the fishbowl as much as he asserts he doesn't want to be 'restricted' as backwards as it is he can't leave it all behind when all that he loves and all that's familiar is there in that fishbowl

[autistme]

guy that actially is a parody of himself (lamented abt not finding smth before finding it when it was right there THEN thought actually it WASNT right there and i wasn't completely missing something under my nose but actually it WAS and i mixed it up for a similar cideo [I AM TRULY SO STUPID] [I JEST]

[ooglywooglies]

i literally hate the concept of genetic memory so much, it MIGHT have some basis but its literally a debated, unconfirmed concept in science so there is absolutely no reason to be running around touting that its real i think of posts about how like certain things are universally scary to us because of some specific mysterious unknown predator our ancestors dealt with and other similarly absurd ideas

[dawnslaughter]

shoutout to the guy who lives in a forest of stained glass trees with crimson leaves and grass that's as white as snow . ideal headspace

[reinemichele]

[hollowfairybabybat]

woke up took my usual 1mg of a xan n an edible im just goin 4 it 2day

[royalreef]

[non-plutonian-druid]

So heres the thing about Dredge.

I think its a huge missed opportunity that the main character is the husband and not the wife.

the backstory doesnt come out fully until the end, but when it does, what you learn is this:

some amount of time ago, the player character was married. over the course of the game, you pick up notes from a woman, and at the end you learn that she was your wife.

*was*, because Cthulhu ate her.

you were a fisherman, and obsessed with the ocean, and she was not. you were superstitious, and she was not. And one day, she messed up and did something unlucky, and then she was lost at sea one night when she was on your boat.

it fucks you up so bad that you lose all your memory and end the world trying to save her.

so, obviously you're torn up about her, but also, it kinda didn't have anything to do with you. She fucked up and she got got. whoops! Oh well. It also didn't change very much about you: you're still a superstitious fisherman obsessed with the sea, except you're sad now.

But if you were the wife? If he died instead?

you were happily newlywed, but if you had one issue with your husband, it was that he was too married to the sea. He was too obsessed with fishing. He liked his boat too much, and he had all these sailor superstitions that you don't take seriously.

then one day, you ignore his superstitions. and a horrible eldritch force that you've never even dreamed of KILLS HIM.

your husband is DEAD and it is YOUR FAULT.

and it breaks you. So much that you take his boat, set sail, and spend your life at sea. Just like him. Embroiled in superstition and ocean magic. Just like him. Just like your least favorite parts about him. and you spend the rest of your life trying to undo the horrible thing you did, and only ever manage to end the world.

wouldn't that be so much fun?

[5-htagonist]

ADHD TIPS: FOR THE NONMEDICATED AND THE MEDICATED

obviously, ADHD is not the same for everyone who has it. if you dont have ADHD, or aren't sure, but experience issues with executive function, memory, impulsivity, and emotional regulation, these tips can still be helpful!!!

practice radical self forgiveness

keep a notebook/journal

give your items a home

keep baskets, boxes, and bins, especially clear/mesh or anything that lets you see whats in it.

buy fruits/veggies/anything that spoils super quick the day youre going to use it

keep a list of easy meals

keep a trash receptacle in Every room

when you notice something dirty piling up, clean for just 5 minutes

do NOT worry about completing necessary chores. just do a little

if you need it frequently, keep it in sight, but off the floor if you can.

check under your bed, couch, or other corners where stuff can pile up when you get that random energy spike.

take a multivitamin, and cut down on soda (or other highly sugary food/beverages) if youre able. seriously!

specifically for the medicated!

take your meds, go to bed, and wake up at around the same time every day.

being vitamin deficient can make your medicine less effective. magnesium, B vitamins, omega 3s, and vitamin D might help. if you dont eat a lot of fruits, veggies, and fish, you are likely deficient in these at least.

stay. hydrated. For the love of god

try things you had trouble doing before medication

dont expect medicine to fix you

dont blame medicine for all of your improvement

no 2 people are the same, and what works for me might not work for you. i am likely on the spectrum, and i wasnt medicated at all for my ADHD until i was 17, and i wasnt on the right medicine until i was 21. i would recommend keeping that in mind while considering my tips!!

i will elaborate on these tips under the cut!

practice radical self forgiveness

i think this is the most important of all of these tips, which is why i put it first. i know its easy to look down on ourselves for our disability. but you must acknowledge this: you are disabled. you have a disability. you cannot hold yourself to the "normal" standard. more than likely, you grew up in an environment that didnt teach you how to navigate the world as you are, either. thats okay! we must teach ourselves.

try to view yourself as both the teacher/parent, and the child. when you forget something important, or make a careless mistake, or give into impulses, or say youll do it later and dont, or go too long without a bath, or let the trash pile up, you have to be kind to yourself. the child within you needs it. these things simply dont come naturally to us.

you must apologize to yourself as the child: im sorry i didnt pick up the trash. i know it makes the place dirty, and overwhelming. i will do my best to improve. i love you. you must forgive yourself as the parent: its okay, pumpkin. i forgive you. i know you didnt mean to make me overwhelmed, or to invite dirt into the home. i will help you improve. i love you. you also must do the reverse, apologize as the parent: im sorry, child. i did not teach you how to know you should pick up the trash. i did not teach you to recognize dirt. i will do better, and i will help you as best i can. i love you. forgive as the child: i forgive you. i know you are doing your best to lead me, and teach me what you know. you werent taught to pick up and see dirt either, were you? as long as you support and love me, we can figure it out together. i love you.

i know, to think this way can feel infantilizing sometimes. and its much harder to teach ourselves these habits. if its available, its okay to ask for help. just dont be too hard on yourself when your disability impairs your ability to be "normal." our habits die harder than most. even if you forget to maintain a habit, just do it when you remember.

2. keep a notebook/journal

i know, i know... every ADHDer HATES this tip. but it seriously works. dont hold yourself to a rigid standard when using it. i prefer dot grid journals, so i can write notes, or sketch, or make lists, or otherwise neatly divide pages how i wish, rather than it being blank/horizontally lined.

i dont keep a to do list all the time, i dont journal every day, i dont even look at the thing every day. there is no right way to use your journal. i use mine for many things at once: if i forget a notebook for class, or my laptop dies, i put my class notes in there. i put random doodles, layouts, oc pages, Big Feelings, and weekly/daily plans/to do lists. i dont obsessively keep up with it, or update it every day.

i DO use it when i feel overwhelmed. if i feel like 50 different things need to be done in 3 different domains and i dont know where to start, i write them down as i think of them. here is my typical order of operations (it took me a while to figure this out. i struggle deeply with prioritization.)

first, i write everything down i can think of that that moment. second, i label them necessary, important, and least important. third, i label how long they take (most time, some time, least time) finally, i start with the most important one that is the least overwhelming

now, i dont have an easy time labeling importance and time taken, of course. that can be the hardest part. but i dont worry so much about accuracy of my labels. i havent got it all down because i will almost always prioritize schoolwork over housework and hygiene, but we cant be perfect. the MOST important thing is always your health and safety.

dont worry about finishing a todo list, either. the most important thing is getting stuff you can forget on paper where you can look back at it when youre overwhelmed. you should keep your journal somewhere you access frequently or can see it.

also, the journal helps with big feelings. if youre feeling that white hot anger, the itching impulsivity, or rejection sensitivity, or anything that makes you think "i cant do this," start jotting words or pictures down. it can be anything. this will help when you feel that feeling the next time. we often get stuck in loops because we dont remember what caused a feeling or conflict, so we make the same mistakes. when you write it down, you can take your own word for it when you make a mistake. this makes it easier to recognize when youre falling into a pattern, and makes it easier to change your response.

3. give your items a home

if you arent constantly using something, or go more than a day without using it, send it home. an objects home is just somewhere it comes back to when its not needed, so that it isnt taking up space where it isnt needed. things like snacks, laundry (clean and dirty), art/craft/hobby materials, coats, electronics, plushies, anything. personify your stuff just a little bit- if you cant use it anymore, it cant find a home with you-- you have to send it on trash vacation. your coat wants to go home! pick it up and take it there when you can. its okay if that home isnt permanent, or if you lack materials/money to create a proper home. our coatrack is a chair right now, which is a much comfier home than the floor.

4. keep baskets, boxes, and bins, especially ones that are see through/visible

this helps you give your items a home. if you buy storage, get something stackable too, but even a cardboard box works. keep like objects together! and keep them near what theyre used for.

5. buy fruits/veggies/anything that spoils quickly the day youre going to use it

its sooo tempting to try to eat healthy and save money by stocking your fridge full of healthy produce and raw meat, but unfortunately i know how much money we waste forgetting/not having the energy to use them. if you need a fresh fruit, veggie, or meat, for something you are definitely planning on cooking, buy it the day of. if you have something in your fridge you dont think youre going to use before it rots or molds, stick it in the freezer!!!

also, frozen and canned fruits, veggies, and meats are just as good as fresh. they stay good for so long you dont have to worry about it going bad.

6. keep a list of easy meals

things that you can get down your gullet easily, and prepare easily. 1 pan meals, sandwiches, hotdogs, hot pockets, instant oatmeal, canned meals. i typically keep instant oatmeal and those tuna creations packets, as well as club/ritz crackers. also, skillet meals like velveeta skillets and hamburger helper are awesome, just keep some frozen ground beef (or meat of your choice) and youre good to go!

also, eggs last for MUCHHHH longer than the sell by date. i have had eggs 3 months past the date (note im american so they are under refrigeration) that were still good, but obviously that long past the date you should do a sniff test after breaking an egg. eggs are awesome in terms of ease of prep. heat your pan up to temp before cooking and they wont stick so bad. use cheese or milk to make a desirable texture for scrambled eggs or omlettes. dont forget salt and pepper (necessary...) you can also stir an egg and peanut butter into instant ramen for some actual nutrition. i also keep onion powder, paprika, and cayenne for yummy eggs.

in the egg vein, french toast is extremely easy and filling, and will sate a sweet tooth with some syrup!

7. keep a trash receptacle in every room

it doesnt have to be big, but having a designated trash spot in your bedroom is super helpful

8. when you notice something dirty piling up, clean for just 5 minutes

you dont have to clean to completion, thats overwhelming!!! but when you see something gross or messy and it bothers you, just take a couple minutes and pick up a little. play a song and tidy until the end of it! cleaning isnt all or nothing!

9. do not worry about completing chores, just do a little

in the same vein as the last one, the most important thing is getting the ball rolling. cleaning can be really hard because of the overwhelm of how bad it is. you can make it less bad a little at a time!

something ill do is sort out and scrape off the dishes before even thinking about doing them. that way, they take up less space and it doesnt look quite as bad. then next time i come to them, i do a bit more. or ill pick up the dirty laundry off the floor, then ill put it next to the washing machine, then ill wash/dry. i dont worry about folding and putting away unless im up for it-- its more important that theyre clean at all.

10. if you need it frequently, keep it in sight, but off the floor if you can.

remember, the floor is the stuff killer! if it must be on the floor, designate a spot.

11. check under the bed, couch, chairs, and piles if you have a random energy spike

i have found so much stuff i didnt even realize i lost. this also prevents pests and the accumulation of dirt.

12. take a multivitamin and cut down on soda (or other highly sugary foods) if youre able. seriously!

in high school i tried eating low-carb for a while. i didnt maintain this diet, but what i did maintain was not drinking soda regularly. when i say my head cleared and i felt less groggy, i mean it. if youre in the position, pay attention to the amount of sugars in what you eat and drink.

i know the "eat well" advice is given out too much, but nutrition seriously matters. if you care to work on your nutrition, do not worry about fat, carbs, or anything like that. just cut down on how often you eat highly sugary foods. you will feel so much better just from that. i have a sody pop as a treat every now and then and i have a whole other appreciation for it :-)

for the medicated:

take your meds, wake up, and go to bed around the same time

your body works on a schedule whether you want it to or not. pay attention to this schedule and try to work with it. when do you usually get tired? when do you prefer to wake up? when do you usually use the bathroom? this goes for nonmedicated people, too. your body will thank you!

2. vitamin deficiency can make medicine less effective. magnesium, B vitamins, vitamin D, and omega 3s can help.

these vitamins are all harmless, except for magnesium, which can slow your heart rate and cause shallow breathing IN HIGH DOSES. luckily, stimulants tend to deplete vitamins/electrolytes like magnesium, which can cause twitches and spasms. dont get large doses of these, 100% daily value is just fine.

3. for the love of god stay hydrated

imagine you are a machine and water is lubricant. stimulants suck up this lubricant to make you run more effectively. however, without extra, the machine will still run like shit. try to drink a whole glass with your medicine, and keep a cup to fill thru the day.

4. try things you had trouble with before medication

its super easy to get discouraged from something when you feel like a failure! try it again now! it may be easier. be sure to give yourself praise for what you do! your effort, your success, anything! this will teach your brain to see stuff through and help you feel and be more competent!

5. dont expect medicine to fix you

adderall, vyvanse, ritalin, none of these are a pill to fix you. they give you the capacity to work on yourself. dopamine is the "go get it" chemical. typically, ours is low and irregular, so we dont feel the drive to "go get it" when we need to, and we dont feel enough of a drive to see something through until we "get it." you still have to put in a lot of effort to fix habits and do work, medicine makes it so its easier. for me, it also reduces Noise in my head, so i can focus better. i still have to put effort into everything, its just less painful.

6. dont blame medicine for all of your improvement

again, medicine gives you capacity. YOU still do it all! its all you!!!!!! :D

thank u for reading i hope these are helpful! i feel like adhd tips are veryyy all or nothing and never explain WHY they may help, so i hope my explanations are helpful!

[sealsdaily]

Rating Seal Emojis

Somewhat of a tired format but i still enjoy it so i decided to do one myself?

These sweet thangs don't have much history, as the seal emoji was only added in 2021, but there's still enough to go around so let's go.

Apple iOS

Looks to be evocative of a really grey baby seal. It's quite sweet but i dont like that it has shoulders. 7/10

Google Android

Actually biased, but this is easily one of the cutest. I can excuse the undefined flippers. 10/10

Samsung 2.5

Like trying to redraw the Google emoji from memory. The features seem weirdly disconnected from each other. 5/10

Samsung 6.0

They went back, and decided it needed to be cuter, which they overdid, but who's to say it didn't work? 100% baby thing. Hind flippers are way small though 7/10

Windows 11 2021

Feels more evocative of a baby harp seal than the other ones. The tail makes what i can only describe as a "Seal Bident" and the front flippers are closest to the sleeves of a wavy blouse, but above all, it's JOYFUL and y'know what, i love the energy 9/10

Windows 11 November Update

...and then this came in. There's nothing wrong with this one per se but just compare the previous one! They took its joy and made it some kind of undefined mystery species. 5/10

Microsoft 3D Fluent

It's just the last one, but in 3D. Purple is a pretty novel color to shade a seal with but it doesn't add much, and the definition 3Dness gives it makes it feel weirder. 5/10

WhatsApp

"A seal is just like if you put a dog head on a fish, right?" I can't find a single species of phocid that has this coloration making me think they found an Australian sea lion and went "good enough". Ironically, this one also has the most accurate pose and flipper detail, so it's kind of a net zero. 7/10

Twitter

Sea lion! The tail is a hand and while usually that could be fun and interesting this emoji is going for accuracy and it just makes that fall apart a little bit. 8/10

Facebook

Standing tall and proud! This emoji, while recognizing how the hind flippers are placed, seems to forget the tail resulting in Smooth Barbie Crotch for seals. Front flippers bend real weird too. 8/10

[miabebe]

The Intruder's Eye (CSC)

Was it really love if it didn't include just a little madness? What was love if it didn't cross the line? And how was it love if it didn't make one want to keep an eye at all times?

Pairing - Afab!reader x Choi Seungcheol

Word count - 6K (I failed the below 5k challenge T.T)

Genre - Oof buckle up my friends. This is a halloween special so I tried not hold back - its a psycho-thriller, there's smut and a whole lot of pyscho-ness whelp Warnings under the cut!

A/n - It's the week leading up to Halloween folks! Unfortunately I'm not the biggest fan of clowns and ghosts and vampires etc, but I do love me a good dose of psychos (who I think are scarier btw) so here you goooo! You can also check out Jeonghan's and Joshua's!

Again @tusswrites and @tomodachiii - what would I do without y'all 🫂 this piece is basically all you guys!

warnings - intruder in the house, mentions of stalking, medications, deranged characters, triggering descriptions of a home intrusion, smut, homemade porn (lol), bondage (mouth and hands), blowjobs, cum eating, riding, rough sex, mentions of toys and anal, manhandling, psycho behaviour, please forgive me I can only allow myself to be this unhinged during spooky season

It was the soft pitter patter of the rain against the car window that woke you up. 

Slowly fluttering your eyes open, you looked out down the dark, lonely road on the other side, at the street lights were still obscured by the downpour. It's not as torrential as it was when you stepped out of the grocery store a while ago. It was too heavy for you to even drive then so you settled in your car for a while, waiting for the rain to get less harsh. You didn't realise when you fell asleep. 

Looking at the 8pm flashing on your phone screen and the way darkness had engulfed everything around, a strange panic rose in you. You weren't really afraid of staying out too late but given the things that had been happening around you recently - you didn't want to take the risk. 

Turning on the engine and shifting the gears, you took a deep breath, and started driving  towards home. 

The street was empty for the most part - not many cars were on the road given the warnings for the incoming storm earlier that day. You didn't have a choice but to leave - you were suddenly running low on supplies, the shopping list in your hand was almost a page long. You glanced at the groceries at the backseat with a satisfied sigh - guess the newfound cardio routine was doing a good job in working up your appetite. 

As you neared your house, the streets became more illuminated, much to your relief. Unlike the rest of the town, your neighbourhood was a much safer space - there were streetlights, surveillance cameras and disguised cops always patrolling the area. Most people who resided here didn't know but many of the inhabitants of these row houses were in fact people placed on witness protection. You knew because you were one of them. 

One year ago, your testimony in a high profile case had led to some very bad people finding themselves behind bars. In exchange, you were promised protection, leading to your identity being morphed and your life being relocated to this locality. You were promised that nothing would happen to you here, that you would be very safe. You believed it then, but not so much now - not when you turned into your street and noticed the camera at the end of it was short circuited. Perhaps the storms over the last few days had a hand in it. 

You didn’t think much of it.

But maybe you should.

Because as you grabbed your groceries and ran to the door, fishing for your keys, you realised you didn't need them. The door was not locked. 

You racked your brains to remember if you had locked the door before you left or if you were in too much of a hurry to beat the incoming rain. Your memory is a little fuzzy, it has been like that for awhile, but you were too cold and aching to just get inside to give it any further thought.

 You must've forgotten to lock it - what other explanation could there possibly be? 

Balancing the bags in one hand, you slowly pushed the door open as you stepped in, flipping the switches with bated breath. 

Everything seemed fine, nothing felt out of place. Releasing a breath you tell yourself that everything is fine - you were clearly overthinking things. Paranoia had been a part of your life ever since the proceedings of that case - you were always wary, always suspicious, always scared. Though, you shouldn't be feeling that way anymore, you had taken your medication - you should be fine.

But how were you supposed to feel fine when every small thing made the hair on your skin stand. Like the curtains in the living room being open for example. You never kept the curtains open, especially not since your new neighbour moved in a few months ago. 

He called himself Choi Seungcheolwhen he knocked on the door to offer an introduction. You didn't know if that was his real name or the one the cops had given him as a part of the programme. Either way you didn't ask him lest he might ask you yours in return - you didn't need your identity compromised, not when the gang of those convicts was still actively looking for you. You had simply nodded and shut the door. 

Since then, you’ve always had the curtains closed. You had to, because somehow every time you looked out, Seungcheol was by his window, watching you. If you were being honest, Seungcheol was hot as fuck and a year ago, if a man like that was interested in you, you wouldn't have let him go. But things were different now - you couldn't trust anyone anymore.

Walking up to the window, you stumbled over the dumbbell in the way as you glanced at the neighbouring house. The two of your houses were the only ones on the street that weren't covered in Halloween decorations. It made sense - you were both single and did not have to deal with whining, crying, demanding children so there was no need for this facade. 

But you weren’t that lackluster, you did buy and keep some candy for the trick or treaters though you wouldn’t know if Seungcheol had done the same - he didn't seem too particularly fond of children. He never let them near the house. In fact he never let anyone into his house. You had never seen a woman or a friendly face from town or even a family member step into his place - he pretty much always kept to himself. It’s not like anyone else in this neighborhood had the luxury for such anyway.

At present, there was no sight of him or even his silhouette, with how the curtains of his house were drawn but all the lights were still on. Sighing a little in relief, you do the same, shutting the blinds. Still feeling the weight of the dumbbell against your foot, you pushed it out of the way, wondering how it had displaced itself from the rest of the workout equipment in the first place. You hadn’t even used those in a while now. 

Still lost in thought, you walked into the kitchen and as you turned the lights on, a shiver ran down your spine. 

Something was off, something did not seem right. 

At first glance everything seemed fine, but looking again carefully–nothing seemed right. The apron wasn't in its usual place by the spice rack, you don’t recall leaving out a glass of water on the counter, or leaving a packet of corn chips open. You never leave things out when you leave, you always put them away.

But things like this had been happening ever since you started your medication. You were more forgetful, and that was inconvenient but without your daily dosage it was like a fight between your nerves and caution - anything that moved invoked fear in you, every small sound made you shiver. There was no choice but to take those pills everyday. It was the only think keeping you sane. 

Shaking your head, you organized everything back in place again. Everything was fine. You had taken an extra dosage right before you left the house, you were just a little fazed from all the chemicals. Surely it was just your imagination, it wasn't like anyone could have entered the house in your absence….right? 

But there was a half eaten bowl of cereal in the sink and you… you were lactose intolerant, you didn't drink milk - that couldn't be yours. Hands shaking, you took a step back. 

Someone was in this house. 

Quickly opening the drawer, you grabbed a knife, gripping the handle hard and tight. The only question was, were they still in the house? 

Wiping the sweat off your face, you took a small careful step out of the kitchen. 

It was quiet, deadly quiet, there was not a sound to be heard, but the hum of the electrical appliances and the soft patter of the rain outside. Then you heard it, ears sharp and sensitive to the sound of water dripping. Slowly you moved towards the washroom, holding your weapon out, breath shaking. 

When you cautiously pushed the door open you noticed the floor was wet, water leaking from the shower head, drop after drop. You've never had this problem before, did you have a plumbing issue?

Stepping in, you tried to fix the faucet with your free hand. But no matter how many times you adjusted the hardware, water continued to drip, rendering you unsuccessful in your attempts. It felt like a really strong hand had broken the tap which was silly because you were definitely careful with how you handled your things? Neither could have broken this nor clearly, could you fix it. Annoyed by your failure and the thought of calling maintenance, you stepped out of the shower, catching sight of yourself in the mirror. 

There was a strange tiredness etched all over your features, hiding a stranger something behind it. Your eyes had sunken further into their sockets, thin wisps of hair framing your face - You’ve definitely had better days and was… was that a knife in your hand? 

You glanced at it quizzically. Why did you step into the shower with a knife? 

Softly smacking your head at your silliness, you walked back into the living room, leaving the tap for another day. Half yawning with tiredness were ready to retire for the night when your eyes fell on the grocery bags still waiting for you on the table - you had forgotten about it. Groaning at the thought of having to put everything away, you set the knife on the dining table and grabbed your purchases instead, taking them into the pantry. Perhaps it was because you were too deeply immersed in your organisation, but your otherwise sharp ears missed the rustling of the leaves outside, crunching under someone’s footsteps.

Going through the grocery checklist scribbled in horrible handwriting to make sure you had gotten everything, you swiftly began putting them all in their place. The pastas in the jars, the fruits in the baskets, the sauces in the tray. The heaviest thing you bought was perhaps those huge jars of protein powder. You weren't really sure why you decided to buy it - sure your doctor said you were too weak and needed to exercise to build strength but you didn't need to buy all of the products the Internet recommended to you. 

Telling yourself you'll find use for it later, you pushed them onto the shelves and turned to the meat instead, throwing them into the fridge. You didn't really know how to cook meat too well but you wanted to try. Seungcheol had once grilled some meat in his backyard and came over to offer you a few bites. When you tried to take it from him at the door, he pulled his hand back and cocked his head. 

“Are you not going to invite me inside?” 

He was always trying to make a move on you like that. You knew what he wanted, you knew what he had his eyes on but the answer was, no. You could take the deliciously cooked meat from him but couldn't let him into the house. It was too soon to trust him. 

But Seungcheol was relentless. 

It was evident with how he was the only one in town who turned up at the video store where you worked. And he came everyday. Normal people didn't borrow a new movie everyday, right? Clearly he was flirting with you. Or at least he was trying to. You only ever behaved professionally with him . Except sometimes, when he asked for movie recommendations of a very specific genre. You didn't really know many serial killer documentaries or crime podcasts to suggest, so you would simply ask a colleague to take over. Over the days, you watched him consume every last bit of thrillers available in the store and distantly wondered if he had a life outside of this consumption. 

Perhaps not. Seungcheol seemed a bit odd like that. 

He talked to everyone in town but didn't really seem to have any friends. He wasn't home for days together sometimes - you didn't really know the nature of his job so you couldn't tell why his absence was so frequent. He always drove that tiny pickup truck of his with some weird boxes and bags hidden under big blue plastic sheets in the trunk. . 

The whole deal about him was just not right. You knew something about him was not right. Even though he was incredibly pleasant on the eye, you had to be wary of him. 

You had to be wary of everything. . 

But maybe you weren't always as alert as you should be. Because it  was only as you were putting away the last of the snacks that you heard that sound - the thumping. 

It seemed like it was coming from outside…. Or was it upstairs? It felt like it was coming from right above, like the sound of someone's feet. 

And just like that,, you remembered the intruder again - the one who might still be in your home. 

Quickly you rushed to grab the knife from the table once more and held it out in defense. Whoever came to the house was most definitely still here, you could feel it in your bones. 

As you slowly made your way towards the stairs, trying to maintain a soft footfall to avoid the creaking of the stairs, another sound took you aback. 

No, not your racing heart - The doorbell. 

Turning sharply, you glanced at the door with wide eyes. Who could it possibly be?  At this late hour?

The ringing only became more persistent, morphing into knocks while you inched towards the door, grip on the knife tightening. 

As you slowly pressed down the handle and slightly opened the door, you were met with cheerful voices, much to your relief. 

“Happy Halloween!” 

Before you was a tiny ghost, a pirate, a couple of princesses and a buzz lightyear, all half your height, looking at you surprised. 

“Ms. L/n!” 

“Hey kiddos.” 

“Where's Mr. Choi?” The pirate pouted. “We thought we could finally get him to be nice to us, hand us some treats.” 

“Aw.” You pinched his cheek with your free hand. The one that was not hiding the knife behind the door. “Mr. Choi isn't in town sadly.” 

The little kid looked at you quizzically. “Then what are you doing in his house?” 

.

.

.

Oh. 

You blinked at him while he looked up at you expectantly. 

Then your lips split into a sweet, saccharine smile. 

“He asked me to look after it while he was gone.”

“When will Mr. Choi be back?” 

You glanced at the inquisitive little ghost, fiddling with the knife in your hand. 

Please, please don't make me use this. 

“Do you want an answer or candy?” You cocked your head cheekily. “I'm only giving out one.” 

“Candy!” They screamed as you laughed and reached for the packet you had just bought, ripping it open with the knife.

They watched excitedly as you dropped handfuls of chocolate into their little baskets and plastic pumpkins. With a scream of “Ms. L/N is the best!” they scurried away to their next target of the night. And so did you, tossing the knife onto the table once again.

You clutched your head and released a low hiss of irritation at the dull throb.Those stupid medicines were really getting to your head now, you were forgetting too many important things. Thank fuck for the children, otherwise you would have never remembered what really had to be done. 

Locking the door behind you, you quickly made your way up the stairs. There was no need to head softly - the stairs had a tendency to creak in your house, not in Seungcheol’s. 

The thumping from earlier was more pronounced now as your senses slowly cleared up, much like how the light flooded from underneath the bedroom door. The soft thumps are getting louder and louder as you neared it. With a twist of the knob and swing of the door, you tilt  your head with a smile. 

Light flooded from underneath the bedroom door, the soft thumping sound getting louder and louder as you neared it. Opening it wide, you cocked your head with a smile. 

There he was. 

Sitting on a chair in the middle of the room, Seungcheol was looking gorgeous as ever. He was dressed in just his grey sweatpants, the thick muscles of his shoulders and pecs bared before you. His biceps too were popping on either side thanks to the fact that his hands were tied at the back of the chair. Oh and his mouth was gagged shut, his words turning into muffled whimpers as he looked at you wide eyed, halting the stomping of his feet.

“I know, I know, I'm sorry.” You raised your hands apologetically. “I meant to be back soon but you know how I am, forgetful little me. I'm sorry baby.” You neared him, walking around his chair, bending to whisper in his ear. “But I see you're having your fun.” 

Your eyes flickered from the tent in his pants to the laptop you left on for his entertainment, right in the line of his vision. You see yourself on the screen, dressed in the hottest lingerie you owned, looking right in the camera with the vibrator held just where you needed him and only one name spilling from your mouth - Seungcheol. 

This wasn't the video you played from him before you left for the grocery store - perhaps they were auto playing, lucky him. You had hours of such footage of yourself - in all kinds of positions, with every possible toy, in role play costumes, in every possible color of lingerie, you had an unmatchable variety. The only thing common among all of them was his name. Choi Seungcheol. 

Could you be blamed? The man was unbelievably attractive. It wasn't like you didn't try to avoid him, to repel all that magnetism. You were well aware of your nature - it hadn't been long since you had gotten a chance to start afresh and you didn't want to spiral again. You really really didn't. 

But Seungcheol was persistent. He wouldn't stop flirting with you at any given chance, he kept trying to invite himself home, he was consistently intrusive. You kept him at bay for the longest time, at least until the day you had to return the box he had left with you, the one in which he gave you the grilled meat. 

You didn't expect him to open the door with his shirt off, slick with sweat, flushed and half panting. When you caught sight of the dumbbells behind him,  could tell he was working out but somehow you couldn't help but think this was probably how he looked when he fucked and god did that make your mouth water. 

That day he shouldn't have invited you in. Then you wouldn't have found your resolve crumbling so weakly. You wouldn't have found yourself under him being pounded like there was no tomorrow. You wouldn't have crossed the line like this. 

What started that day set off a cascade of events. Sleeping with Seungcheol became quite a regular act - there was no part of you that he had left unexplored, untouched. He was in every crevice, every cell, you were entirely consumed by him. When you were at work, all you could think about was how well he fucked you the day before. When you were on the way home, all you could think about was how well he was going fuck you today. Even after you reached, you always made it a point to immediately wash up, wear your nicest underwear and knock on his door. You always did it at his house. 

He did try to come to your place a couple of times but you consistently steered the two of you back to his house somehow. It was one thing to let him cum in you but to come into your house? You couldn’t have that happening, he’d ask too many questions - why do you never use the garage Y/n? Why was it always locked Y/n? Why did you have a ridiculous number of gardening tools in your house when you don’t even grow any plants Y/n? You knew the questions wouldn't seize and the answers weren’t good for him. They weren't good for anyone who's heard them all these years. 

Another reason you didn't want him home was because you didn't want to ruin the surprise. 

Now, Seungcheol was a self-sufficient man. He was happy with himself, his life, his home, his solitude. It was evident all he was looking for in you was a good fuck - afterall, he would never ask you to stay the night or to be his girlfriend even though you'd been seeing each other for months. You were okay with that….. for now. The two of you were still exploring, still understanding each other's bodies and limits. You didn't mind him taking his time, you needed your time as well. 

You see, Seungcheol loved his home. He loved every piece of furniture, every bowl, every mat - he was incredibly fond of his space, taking all the time and effort in the world to curate it. You, on the other hand, didn't really care much for your house. As long as it could fulfill basic needs and keep you safe, you were good - it wasn't like you stayed for long in one place anyways. But your heart knew that you wanted to stay with Seungcheol for the rest of your life. There was something dark about him too that told you he belonged with you the way you belonged to him. You wanted him to feel like he belonged to you too, you wanted him to feel at home with you. You wanted to be his home. 

That's why you took months together to design and turn your house into an identical replica of Seungcheol’s. 

And when you say replica you mean down to the T. Everything was the same. You made sure it was the same. All those times he was away for days together thanks to his job, you found yourself slipping into his house taking detailed notes of every object, every piece. You would only see, not touch or take anything away. Come on, you were no thief, thieves are bad people.. 

After that you had spent all your time online or going from store to store, finding originals and duplicates of his belongings. Given that he loved to have really exclusive pieces in his house they were not easy to procure but with a little sweet talk, a little threatening and a little unspeakable things, you had somehow managed to bring them all home. To the home you were making for him. 

Earlier this week, you had gotten hold of the last piece of the jigsaw puzzle - a childhood photo of Seungcheol's family, framed and hung on the wall. It was the hardest thing to get your hands on. His estranged sister would not leave her house for long enough - it took a major occupational accident at her husband's construction site to finally get her moving. 

With everything finally in place today, just as the sun began to set, you went over to Seungcheol's house to bring him over at last, to show him what you had done for him. Seeing how his front door was unlocked you stepped in, curiously looking around for him. But that feeling evaporated the moment you heard that sound - the sound of a woman moaning. 

It felt like the ground under your feet had slipped. Perhaps that was why you grabbed the baseball bat leaning against the wall, to give your shaking hands something to hold on to as you made your way to his bedroom…. He didn't even bother to shut the door. 

There he was, sitting on the bed with his laptop open before him, frantically getting himself off to the video of some pizza delivery girl getting her “payment”. 

Porn. He was watching porn. 

The moment his eyes fell on you by the door, he quickly tucked his length into his sweats and jumped off the bed, looking at you like you were crazy. Oh no Choi Seungcheol. He didn't just do that. He shouldn't have. Maybe then you wouldn't have swung the bat and knocked him out cold. Maybe he wouldn't have found himself in the middle of the room all tied up when he came around. 

You just couldn't understand him. What was the need for him to look at other women or even think of one when you were right there? Was he bored of you? Were you not enough? You did everything you could to keep him - every depraved fantasy, every humiliating act, every time he was rough to bruise you for days together, you took it all, you begged for more. Then why was he doing this? 

When he finally opened his eyes, he didn't answer your questions, he was simply screaming to set free. Well of course the only thing you could do was to shut his mouth in some way and with him unable to speak, you had to find other ways to get answers. You needed to find out if Seungcheol was just not attracted to you anymore. 

That's why you brought out your video collection, little films you had taken of yourself back when you were still pushing him away, all while wondering what it was like to get fucked by him. His mouth may say whatever but anatomy couldn't lie right? There was something else that could stand up and answer you. 

You had meant to stay and watch, afterall, you were proud of the quality of your content but the flashes of thunder outside told you that perhaps it was wiser for you to go to the store first. You knew whatever was going to transpire wouldn't be over any time soon, you had to stock up before the storm locked you in. Besides, it was Halloween night, all the cute little kids would be coming around for candy, you didn't want to miss out on that. 

You didn't and thanks to them, you didn't succumb to your forgetfulness and miss out on this either. 

“There there.” You cooed, removing his gag and he coughed, unable to regain his ability to speak just yet. You waited for him to come around, walking back to sit on the edge of the bed as he looked at you meekly. 

“Water.” He whispered, voice just a little horse. 

You raised your eyebrow. How did he manage to sound so sexy all the time? 

“Thirsty are we?” You smiled. “I thought my gift might have helped.”

“Y/n please.” He groaned. “What kind of sick joke is this?” 

Oh. He thinks it's a joke. A little Halloween scare perhaps. A prank gone overboard. Oh he has no idea.

“I think it's me who you take for a joke.” You glanced down at his raging boner. “Or not, considering how excited you are.”

You got up, leaning over him, hand gripping the back of his chair. 

“I'll help you.” You licked your lips. “Either I'll untie you, take my little collection and get out of here. Or I'll help with your not so little predicament with any and every hole I have…. Pick your poison.” 

Seungcheol looked at you wide eyed. His breath was shaking, lips were quivering and a hundred and one things seemed to be running behind those pretty eyes. 

Slowly gulping, his Adams apple moving with a bob, he shut his eyes. 

“It's unbearable.” He mumbled. “It's just…. Please help me.” 

And you knew exactly what he wanted you to do.

Sliding off the bed, you got on your knees, crawling up to him, slotting yourself between his legs. Seungcheol’s eyes flew open when your hands found his thigh, a soft sigh tumbling out of his mouth. He loved to fuck your mouth. He loved how eager to please you always were, always trying to take in more of him, always trying to do better. God he loved it.

He watched as you pulled his sweats down the best you could and wrapped your tiny hand around his dick. He was raging hard, the tip flushed in an angry red, precum smeared all over. You were lucky he was in your control now. If he were allowed to have his way, he might just break you. 

Stroking him agonisingly slowly, you inched closer to place a small kiss on his tip, the softest interaction that had ever happened between the two of you. Before Seungcheol could even relish that moment you wrapped your lips around his length and took him all the way in. Fucking hell. Seungcheol thought he was going to pass out with how intensely you were blowing him. He wished you'd untie his hands. He'd go anything to just push your head down his dick and feel himself in your throat. That was a sureshot at making him come, these shallow and fast bobs of your head were only aggravating him. 

Maybe that's what you wanted. Because the moment he let out his tell tale groan, letting you know he was close, you pulled away with a pop and wrapped your hand around his cock instead. Before he could complain about losing the warmth of your mouth you began stroking him fast thanks to the wetness of your spit and before you knew it, he felt himself reaching that high, meaningless words leaving his mouth. With a few more jerks, he came all over himself in spurts, ropes of white coating his abdomen. 

As he tried to battle his feelings of relief after finding a much needed release, disappointment for not coming in your mouth, and slight fear, not understanding what the hell was going on, you slowly let him go, wiping your hand on his sweats. Looking straight into his eyes, you leaned forward, gathering the cum all over his skin with your tongue and showing it to him before you swallowed it. Fuck, Seungcheol felt the blood rushing down there again. He was far from done tonight. 

Getting up you looked at him questioningly though you were well aware of the answer. 

“Do you need more?”

Unable to do anything else, he nodded slowly, whispering please. 

Smirking, you quickly stripped yourself out of your clothes. You would have made a show out of it, tease him slowly but you were equally desperate to fuck him so you quickly abandoned that idea. Throwing your garments somewhere, you clambered onto his lap, aligning yourself over his dick. You didn't need any prep or lube, you were practically dripping from just blowing him. 

Slowly sinking onto his length you threw your head back, finally feeling full. Seungcheol moaned too, burying his face between your boobs as you bottomed out, your grip like a vice. Holding onto his shoulders you began fucking yourself on his length, snapping your hips relentlessly. You could tell the feeling was too much for Seungcheol too as he bit on the soft skin of your breasts. It stung painfully but you let him - you always let him do whatever he wanted to you anyways. 

“Tired?” He looked up at you with a triumphant smirk as your pace began to falter thanks to the not so comfortable position of your legs. “Are you finally going to ask me for help?”

You shook your head. You didn't want him to have the upper hand anymore.

“Don't be stubborn, doll. You know it's better when I have my hands on you.” He ran his tongue along your breast, relishing the sweet and salty taste of you. “Untie my hands and we can make this better y/n. I know how much you love my fingers up your ass, and how much you like the grip on my hands all over you and how much you want me . Come on baby, untie me.”

You didn't want to, you really didn't want to but a part of you knew he was right. He could make you feel so good. 

Reaching over you pulled on the knot holding his hands together and in a flash his hands gripped the bottom on your thighs and with the sheer strength of his that you loved, he got up, lifting you along with him. Immediately pinning you to the wall, he began thrusting into you, drawing out the most exquisite moans from you as he hit the spot again and again and again. When unable to hold it anymore, you came around him, he tossed you onto the bed, pounding into you mercilessly, making you cum around him one more time before he painted your ass and back with his own release. Even then the night was far from over. 

After that he fucked you almost till dawn, pushing you to the limit as he made you cum so many times, you couldn't even keep count anymore. All you knew was that every bit of your body was screaming and creaming in pleasure - it was confirmed, you had to have Seungcheol for life, you had to do whatever it took to keep this insane man forever. You didn't know how but you could think about that later. For now, as day break approached, the two of you passed out in his bed. 

Seungcheol looked at you under the afternoon sun streaming into his room. You were fast asleep - he tried waking you up a couple of times but you just would not budge. Finally giving up he resorted to just staring at you. 

Last night was…. better than Seungcheol’s wildest dreams. He always knew he was a bit of a freak, but he didn't think he'd find someone to match it in this quiet town he had been reluctant to relocate to. Even when he first met you, he thought you'd be one sweet love making session at most but you took him completely by surprise. You were as wild as he was - you were down for anything he asked, you never said no and most importantly, you enjoyed it all. Seungcheol thought he had hit the jackpot with you. 

But yesterday was most definitely not normal. At that time he was thinking with his dick because all the blood in his body was clearly there but as he looked back at what happened, nothing about it was right. You had knocked him out, tied and gagged him up before you left him. You had hours of footage of you pleasuring yourself to the thought of him… 

Seungcheol had noticed the dates. It was way before the two of you had begun your little arrangement and he didn't know what to think about that. There were tiny sirens going off in his head telling him to run as fast as he could but Seungcheol couldn't stop staring at you. You were ridiculously beautiful and he just had the best sex of his life last night. 

When you whined softly and turned over in your sleep, Seungcheol finally rolled off the bed and dressed himself. Finding your scattered clothes on the floor he gathered them, looking at them with a frown. He couldn't have you wear these again and his clothes were far too big for your tiny frame. Maybe it was time to start making room in his closet for a few of your clothes.

Knowing how tired you must be given last night's events, he silently fished out the keys from the pocket of your pants and decided to bring you a fresh pair from your house. 

He shouldn't have gone over. He never should have stepped into your house. Maybe then the tiny sirens in his head wouldn't have become a full blown ringing. 

If he had never discovered the truth of your house, if he wasn’t staring at an exact replica of his space, maybe he would've never come to terms that last night was indeed extremely abnormal. 

You were not normal. 

Something was very very wrong with you, the dozens of medications on the dining table were a testament of that. Seungcheol knew he had to go. He had to leave you and that house and this town. He needed to run away from this madness.

But when he turned to leave, he felt his heart stop just for a second. 

There you were, right at the door, dressed in yesterday's clothes, looking at him expressionlessly. Your eyes ran over his face as he felt the hair on his skin stand. 

He had to go, he had to get the hell out of here. 

“Oh baby.” 

You cocked your head at him, leaning against the frame with a small smile. 

This was an expression you had never seen on Seungcheol's face before - a mix of shock and fear and repulsion. You could tell he wanted to run. You knew he would end things now, you knew it was over but alas, it was too late to let him go. 

You couldn't let him go. 

Taking a step ahead, you slowly closed the door behind you, inching closer to him, yesterday’s knife stashed safely in the back pocket of your pants.

“Do you want to see what's in my garage?” 

A/n - As usual, comments and reblogs are much appreciated - I'd love to hear your thoughts, it really helps :) You can also read Jeonghan's and Joshua's :)

[reilemon]

⋆ Velvet Night ⋆

♡︎ synopsis: a cozy movie night turns into something more when Xavier’s desire for you overwhelms his restraint.

♡︎ pairing: Xavier x fem!reader

♡︎ cw: consensual somnophilia

♡︎ word count: 1.2k

♡︎ a/n: the third story for kinktober 2024.

♡︎ Thanks to my dearest friend and beta reader ♡︎@its-de♡︎ for helping.

divider by @cafekitsune

You started dozing off while watching a movie with Xavier. The two of you made a pillow fort in his living room and played the movie you've postponed for weeks. You prepared snacks and poured yourselves mugs of mulled wine. The night had already fallen, with gentle autumn rain tapping on the windows. You were snuggled up under a blanket in Xavier's hoodie, the wine making your body feel like velvet.

You could feel your eyes starting to droop during some scenes you didn't care about. So you did what you always do in such moments - tease Xavier. You rubbed over his sweatpants, kissed his neck, then your hand found its way into his underwear. And that's how you dozed off - with your hand wrapped around his dick.

He chuckles to himself as your breathing got steady, your head completely resting on his shoulder. He gently fishes out your hand and rests it on his chest. You stir in your sleep and move to your side, back turned to him.

You wiggle your butt, grazing his hip. Xavier just smiles and shifts his focus to the movie. Your butt bumps into him again, with more intention this time.

"Xavier..." You whisper over your shoulder with your eyes still closed.

"Hm? What is it?" He asks, turning on his side, wrapping an arm around you and pulling you closer.

"You know you can do what you want while I sleep?"

He knows. You’ve given him that permission once, and the memory of it still lingered—how your body responded even in sleep, how soft you felt wrapped around him. But as much as he wants to, as much as his cock throbs at the thought of slipping into your warmth while you were none the wiser, he prefers to see your eyes widen in pleasure, hear you whisper his name. He exhales slowly, sinking deeper into the pile of fluffy pillows. He tries to focus on the movie, but the way you fit so perfectly against him made it harder to think of anything else.

Xavier gulps. He doesn't want to leave the warmth of the blanket and retreat to the cold bathroom for relief. He glances over his shoulder. There were a few napkins on the table.

Your unconscious movement sends a jolt through him, the soft curve of your ass brushing against his clothed erection. Heat simmers under the fabric, his cock pressing hard, too constrained by the sweatpants. He bites back a groan, moving his hips in slow, careful motions. He tries to be gentle, not wanting to disturb you, but each grind sends a wave of pleasure through him, clouding his restraint.

With one free clammy hand, he pulls down his sweatpants and underwear as smoothly as possible, his hard dick resting against the soft fabric of your pajama pants. The man hesitates for a moment before he does the same to your bottoms. He whispers 'sorry' every time you twitch and hum in the process, feeling guilty for disturbing your sleep. When he manages to pull down the pajamas and panties to your knees, you glance at him over your shoulder with a sweet smile before dozing off again.

Xavier’s breath hitches as his finger slides easily between your folds. You are already so wet, your body ready for him, and the thought made his heart pound harder. He can feel how your walls clench around him, and with each pulse, he wanted more. He bites his lip, his ring finger teasing at your entrance before sliding in. His body presses closer, his cock resting heavily against your back as his fingers work deeper. He finds himself moving faster, unable to stop the growing urgency that makes his hips grind against you. Your wetness coats his hand, and the sound of it, coupled with your soft mewls, makes his cock throb harder against your skin.

His face is on fire, short hot breaths coming out of his parted lips. The blanket and his hoodie are suffocating him. You, on the other hand, seem very cozy and comfortable. He keeps the blanket over you while he takes off his hoodie, joining you back again, shirtless. Resting on his elbow, he uses his other hand to guide his dick between your wet pussy lips. Xavier lets out a shaky exhale as the tip pushes past your entrance. He moves his hips, one, two times, and moves his hand to gently lift your upper leg.

Xavier's plan to be as quiet and slow as possible is thrown out the window when he feels your warm, drenched pussy squeeze his cock. Strands of his hair stick to his damp forehead, the sweat trickling down his temples as he loses himself in the rhythm of his hips slamming into you. His voice betrays him, each exhale a mix of low moans and sharp gasps. He can’t tear his eyes away from your blissfully peaceful face, the soft flush of your cheeks and your parted lips letting out delicate whimpers. Every sound, every twitch of your hips drives him insane, his cock swelling inside you as your pussy squeezes him. The way your walls flutter around him makes it impossible to slow down, his thrusts becoming deeper, rougher, the friction between you unbearable in the most delicious way.

He moves your leg over, bent at the knee, and you lie on your stomach while still cuddling the pillow. Leaving only your torso covered, he gets on all fours, his arms and legs caging your sleeping figure. He starts rutting into you again, release building up inside him. His hand sneaks its way under you, fingertips pressing onto your clit. The pads of his fingers press and circle the bundle of nerves, eliciting sweet moans and whimpers from you. Xavier sucks in a breath through his teeth as he feels your walls squeeze him, and he knows he's seconds away from coming.

His breath comes in ragged gasps, his lower belly tight and flexing with each thrust, his balls clenching as the pressure builds. The way your pussy grips him, soft and wet, is driving him insane. His hand keeps circling your clit, desperate to feel you cum with him, but he’s too far gone to wait. His cock throbs violently, and with a strangled groan, he pulls out, pumping himself feverishly. Hot, thick spurts of cum splatter across your ass and thighs, leaving his body shuddering with each wave of pleasure. His muscles tense and relax all at once, a deep groan escaping him as he milks the last drops from his cock, his entire body buzzing in the aftermath.

His chest heaves as he grabs the napkin from the coffee table, barely giving himself time to breathe. Every muscle in his body still tingles with the aftershocks of his release, but his hands move with quiet urgency. He gently wipes away the mess, careful not to disturb you, his fingers light as they glide over your skin. He won’t let you wake up sticky, not when you look so peaceful.

Just as he finishes the last careful swipe, you stir beneath him, a soft, needy groan escaping your lips. He pauses, watching as you roll onto your back, your thighs rubbing together. "Xavier ~ "

He chuckles softly as his gaze lingers on you. His name, falling from your lips in that soft, needy whine, makes his heart race all over again. He crawls over you, the warmth of his body pressing against yours, and as his breath fans over your ear, he whispers, 'I know, I know.' The words are a promise, as much as they are reassurance. His lips trail down your neck, slow and teasing, leaving a warm path as he kisses lower.

[mothking-rising]

Got a rude response from someone I reblogged from so I'm making my own post about Ice Flight because um--

Hey Ice Flight can be pretty cool actually and be different from the rest of the flights, and this post is gonna be my two cents about it. I've seen people go around just summing it up as "cops" when just like every other Flight they can be so much more?

While first, I do agree that Ice’s aesthetic is kinda weak as is. Not a lot you can do with the same winter themes over and over with the occasional broken chain motif. I’d love to see people get creative to what they think Ice represents and how they contribute to Sornieth’s systems, cultures, and dragons as a whole.

I see ice flight specializing in stuff like collection and cataloguing as iirc before the map update it said those were things Ice Flight likes. I think where Earth is Uncovering What Was, Ice is about Preserving What Is.

They’re not entirely just cops (and even then stripping them to just the role of "cop" is a bad take). They’re also researchers of the things they fear, and of relics that need studying. In my head Ice would probably have the best museums, archives, and storage houses. What better way to preserve or trap something than in ice?

They’re a flight of Order, not so much in the sense of cops and law but a flight that bulks when there’s a sense of disorder or chaos, disorganization, and imperfection. If it’s uncategorized, unsorted, then it needs to be so in order to be learned. Where Lightning is stats and progression, Ice is pattern recognition (Tundra’s memory being linked to their smell may also reflect this) and tradition (Gaolers role system and lack of awareness about the state of Sornieth and not just the Ice Fields).

This can be extended then into interests, individual home cultures, businesses and what not. Why not start a collection of rocks? Or insects? They’d know best how to preserve it. Need something specific from the shop? Probably very easy to find if you know the qualities and traits you’re looking for. Need something preserved for safe keeping? They’ll do that, and they’ll do it awfully well. Perfectly. The systems have to be perfect. The line up has to be perfect and up-kept and looked after intensely— possibly so intense it’s evolving into passion. There can certainly be a sense of pride.

Combine with the lore that Ice is typically more hostile to outsiders due to their melting home I can see them being much more traditional and closed off. Not quite isolated, but having a more unique culture that’s a little more closed off from others and not quite as shared, trying to preserve what is left of their home and traditions.

What about urban legends and superstition? They’re guarding creatures and horrors in those prisons, surely the local resident dragons have folklore over that? What about fishing and hunting, two very popular ways to get food or supplies in climates like these? Where are the ice fisherman skins or hunters bound in furs? What about the fauna or flora found in the region we can probably make skins for that too.

Existential horror can also be fun; remember, relatively recently Gaolers learned that Sornieth has changed. Dragons of other flights have other magic not native to their elements and in addition the age old threat of Shade that seems to be making new problems for new times.

We have a flight literally dealing first hand with monsters and horrors existing already on the planet and in its own prisons and fighting against it, yet people relegate that to Arcane. 😔 Unlike Arcane, the unknown is already here in Ice.

You could easily take inspiration from the movie The Thing, too. It writes itself ngl.

Theres much to do and think about with Ice when you remember this is a region with its own people and culture and not just an aesthetic, and I’d like to see it dabbled in more. Even if it’s just headcanon, you can make it into a skin. That’s what people have done with Light with the whole angelic themes, so why not take creative spins on ice too?

Give ice some headcanon love like y’all do with Arcane and Light. Those flights aren’t about eldritch horror or angels but there’s endless skins for them about it. Give ice some of that same ole love too 💕

[heesmiles]

SEA FOAM N.RK

೨౿ ⠀  ׅ ⠀   ̇  21k ⸝⸝ . ‌ ׅ ⸺ word count.

pairings ✧⠀ ͚֯ ni-ki ៹ fem ! reader ᧁ ; angst ˒ summer romance ˒ slice of life

warnings ◞ ⠀ ⭑⠀ ⠀ׂ angst summer romance ni-ki works at a record shop on the pier very insta lovey death

in which ࿐ With the smell of salt and seafoam in the air, you fell in love. In a quiet town, on a quiet hill, in a quiet home. The hum of the ac whirling and the feel of sand on your toes. Sea shells piled high on your front porch and a tan so golden you could thank the sun personally as it was clear the two of you were friends, and a boy, tall and lanky. Quiet but so very expressive shows up and ruins it all. Leaving the smell of the sea now bitter.

★ ! rain's mic is on ⋆ ͘ . god I live for heartbreaking summer romances like these. Also, I have little to no knowledge about record stores and records in general all of my research came from unverified google searches so beware I could be way off. Sorry if the ending is a little rushed. i kinda rushed this, so if there is any inconsistencies im sorry.

You’re sweating by the time you carry the third box up the porch steps, palms stinging from cardboard edges and sea salt already clinging to your skin like memory. The wind smells like brine and old wood, like stories left too long in the sun. Your mother follows behind you, arms full, her voice soft with nostalgia. "She kept the porch the same," she murmurs, half to herself. "Even the wind chime." 

You glance at it — a tangle of glass and driftwood — clinking above the door like it’s welcoming you in, or warning you away. Inside, the air is still. A little musty, but not unpleasant. You set the box down with a thud that echoes too loudly, like you’ve intruded. Like the house wasn’t ready for your arrival. “Is there any way I can come back early?” you ask, wiping your hands on your jeans. “Like after a month, maybe?” 

Your mother shakes her head, not unkindly. “Three months, sweetheart. That’s what we agreed. She’s your only grandmother. And she asked for you.” You nod, even if you don’t understand it — not fully. You never really knew her. She sent birthday cards with spidery handwriting and once mailed you a book about sea glass. But she was always a whisper at the edge of your life, a stranger with your mother’s eyes. “I just don’t want to waste the whole summer,” you mutter, mostly to yourself. 

Your mother smiles as she opens a window, letting in the sound of gulls and the slow hush of the tide. “You won’t. I loved growing up here. The sea — it was like a second home to me. I think, by the end of the summer, you’ll feel the same.” You don’t believe her. But you say, “Okay,” anyway. You don’t unpack all at once. There’s something about the act that feels too final, like admitting you’re really here, like committing to the idea that this house, this salt-worn cradle of creaks and shadows, is yours for the summer. So you leave the boxes half-full, your clothes draped across the bed like discarded thoughts, and drift from room to room instead, letting the space introduce itself to you in its own time. 

The house is old, but it breathes. You can feel it in the floorboards that groan under your steps, in the walls that carry echoes of laughter long since dissolved into dust. There are photographs faded to sepia on the mantel — a young woman in a sundress you’re told is your grandmother, all wind-blown hair and wild grin, holding a fishing pole like a sword. The sea is behind her, always behind her. Like a shadow or a promise. By the time twilight folds itself into the corners of the sky, your mother and grandmother are in the kitchen, their voices mingling with the clatter of cutlery and the hiss of something frying in butter. The scent of garlic and lemon curls through the hallway like a beckoning hand, but you slip out the back door before it can catch you. 

The backyard is a suggestion more than a space — a sloping strip of grass that quickly gives way to sand, and then to sea. The beach begins where the porch ends, and the ocean feels like it’s breathing just for you. You kick off your shoes at the edge of the deck and step onto the sand, warm and soft, like the sigh of something ancient and half-awake. It sinks between your toes, gentle and slow, like the earth is welcoming you home in a language older than speech. The wind tousles your hair with fingers made of sky, and you close your eyes, tipping your face toward the horizon. 

The sea is a mouth and a heartbeat, a secret keeper, a lullaby that never ends. It smells of rusted anchors and forgotten summers, of salt and sun and something that thrums just beneath the surface — longing, maybe. Or memory. You walk until the water reaches you, first your ankles, then your calves, cool and certain. It doesn’t ask questions. It just is. 

And you love it. You love the way it touches you without needing anything back. The way it roars and hushes, unbothered and infinite. The sea doesn’t care that you’re uncertain, or that this house still feels like a stranger. It accepts you the way the sky accepts stars — without hesitation. For a moment, you let yourself imagine staying like this forever — suspended between sand and surf, the wind combing secrets into your hair. You could vanish here, you think. And maybe the world wouldn’t notice. Or maybe it would, but forgive you. 

You're halfway to becoming driftwood when you hear your mother calling your name, her voice soft and sharp, carried just so by the wind. You turn back, slow and reluctant, the sea tugging at your ankles like it doesn’t want to let you go. “Coming,” you call, though your voice is quieter than hers, and maybe the sea swallows it whole. You walk back barefoot, your footprints already fading behind you, as though you were never there. And above you, the stars begin to wake — blinking one by one like they, too, have only just arrived. 

Dinner is eaten at a round table that creaks with age, its surface scratched and soft in places, as if it had been loved too hard by too many hands. The plates are mismatched, chipped at the edges like sea glass — not perfect, but shaped by time into something beautiful. Your mother and grandmother speak in the gentle rhythm of people who once knew each other well but have learned to be careful. Their conversation drifts like gulls on the wind — light, circling, sometimes dipping low into silence, sometimes carried away in bursts of laughter that feel too sudden, like they’re chasing something before it disappears. 

They talk about the town the way old sailors talk about the sea — with reverence and a touch of sorrow. Your mother leans back in her chair, her eyes half-lidded as she watches the twilight press against the window like a sleeping cat. “So much has changed,” she murmurs. “That café near the church is gone. The one with the lemon scones.” 

“Oh, that place turned into a surfboard rental years ago,” your grandmother says with a snort. “Lemon scones don’t do well in salt air. Surfboards, though? Those float.” They both laugh, and the sound is warm, like the golden spill of lamplight across the old wood floor. You stay quiet for the most part, listening. Watching. You’ve always been better at observing than participating, like a lighthouse — present but distant, lit from within but only ever shining outward. 

Your mother’s smile fades a little as she looks around the kitchen, her eyes lingering on the floral wallpaper peeling at the corners, the weathered cabinets, the window above the sink that frames the sea like a painting left unfinished. “I love your father,” she says softly, “and I love the city. But sometimes… I miss this. The quiet. The way the air smells like rain and salt. Seoul is so loud, so fast. It never lets you breathe.” Your grandmother reaches over, lays a hand over hers. “The sea’s always been patient. That’s why some people come back to it.” 

They both look at you then, like maybe you’re a compass needle trying to decide where to point. “There’s a pier,” your grandmother says, her voice gentler now, lined with a kind of hope that makes your chest tighten. “A lovely one. It’s changed, too, of course, but it still smells like sugar cones and fish and the ocean. You might like it. You should walk it sometime.” 

“I want to find a summer job,” you say, surprising even yourself with how quickly the words spill out. “Something small. I don’t want to just sit around.” 

Your grandmother’s mouth draws into a line, her fingers twitching slightly where they rest against the table. “You don’t need to do that. This is your summer. You’re here to rest. To be with me.” 

“I know,” you say, gently. “But I want to. I need something to do. Something that’s mine.” There’s a pause, like the house itself is holding its breath. Then she nods, reluctantly, the corners of her eyes softening. “Well, then,” she says, “the pier’s the perfect place to look. If you’re determined.” And you are. After dinner, with your hair still scented faintly of lemon and smoke, you slip out into the violet hush of Anchor–Crest’s evening. The town is quieter now, blanketed in the kind of calm that only truly settles over places close to the sea — as if the tide takes the noise with it each time it pulls away from shore.

The streets are mostly empty, save for the flicker of moths dancing beneath the halo of streetlamps and the occasional rustle of a breeze slipping through half-cracked shutters. The buildings huddle close together like old friends, their wood-paneled sides faded from years of sun and salt, their neon signs dimmed or gone entirely dark. It’s closer to nine than eight, and the town seems to be tucking itself into bed. But the pier is still awake. It stretches out before you like a song just beginning — long and wide, its planks worn smooth by thousands of footsteps, millions of stories. The air here is different, charged somehow, like anything could happen if you just walked far enough into the dark. The sea murmurs beneath you, a low and constant lullaby, and above you the stars have gathered like curious onlookers, blinking down as if to say go on. 

You walk slowly, your fingers brushing the splintered railings, your breath syncing with the gentle slap of waves against the pylons below. Shops line the pier like shells scattered by a thoughtful tide — a taffy place with its windows shuttered tight, a bait shop closed early with a sign that reads Gone Fishin’, Try Tomorrow, a crêpe cart tucked beneath a striped awning that still smells faintly of sugar and butter. Then, you see it. Tucked between a surfboard rental place and a store that sells miniature ships in bottles — a record shop. Small, crooked, and slightly slouched, as if it’s been trying to lean into the wind for years and just gave up. Its windows are cloudy with age, soft amber light bleeding through like a secret it’s trying to keep to itself. There are faded posters in the glass — album covers yellowed by the sun, a handwritten list of band names in glitter gel pen, curling at the edges.

And there, taped just below the handle of the door, a sign: Help Wanted. Inquire Within. 

You pause, heartbeat quickening a little in that strange, familiar way it does when the universe seems to wink at you. The kind of feeling you get when you find a four-leaf clover or hear your favorite song at the exact moment you need it most. You reach for the door. It creaks when you push it open, the bell above it giving a tired little jingle, like it’s been doing this so long it can’t quite muster the enthusiasm. Inside, the air is warm and smells like dust and vinyl, the nostalgic musk of sound long stored and waiting to be played again. Rows of records line the narrow aisles like soldiers at ease — some alphabetized, some utterly chaotic.  The door gives a soft jingle as it swings shut behind you, muffling the sea’s lullaby. Inside, the air is thick with time — the kind of air that hums with memory, like it’s holding its breath between songs.

The lighting is soft, golden, as if someone filtered the world through a sepia photograph. Lamps with beaded shades stand in the corners like forgotten sentinels, casting halos across cracked linoleum and rows of leaning shelves. Dust floats lazily in the beams, turning the shop into a snow globe left in a summer window. You move slowly, reverently — a traveler stepping into an ancient temple. The records stretch before you in endless alphabetized aisles, their glossy sleeves worn and faded, spines like whispered names waiting to be called. Your fingers trace them lightly, one by one, a silent prayer to the gods of sound. Bowie. Simone. The Beatles. Unknown names scribbled in Sharpie over plastic sleeves. 

You’re halfway down an aisle when your hand settles on a Nirvana album — In Utero, the cover a strange ballet of beauty and grotesque, angel wings and anatomy. You pause, studying the art, the ache in its palette. “You like Nirvana?” a voice says, cracking the quiet like a dropped needle on a fresh vinyl. You jump slightly, turning toward the sound. He’s leaning against the end of the aisle, half-shadowed in lamplight. Tall. Lanky in the way that suggests his limbs have only just recently agreed to coexist. His hoodie hangs off him like it’s still deciding if it belongs. His hair is messy, wind-tossed even indoors, and his eyes — sharp, dark, and somehow curious all at once — flicker from your face to the record and back again. 

You blink. “Yeah. Who doesn’t?” 

He shrugs, shuffling a step closer. “Some people pretend to. For the aesthetic.” 

You raise an eyebrow, smirking. “Do I look like I’m pretending?” He smiles — a crooked, lopsided thing that seems surprised to be on his own face. “No. You look like someone who knows the difference between ‘Heart-Shaped Box’ and ‘All Apologies.’” 

You laugh, and something in the air shifts — a soft vibration, like the low hum before a favorite song begins. He walks toward you, slipping his hands into the front pocket of his hoodie. “I’m Ni-ki,” he says.You offer your name in return, and the way he repeats it under his breath — testing the syllables like a lyric — makes your cheeks warm in a way the ocean wind never could. 

He leans against the shelf beside you, scanning the rows. “So what brings you into this little vinyl graveyard?” You glance at the Help Wanted sign in the window, still fluttering like a hopeful flag. “Looking for a summer job. Figured this place might be a good start.” 

He perks up, amused. “Really? You think you’re record store material?”

You cross your arms. “Depends. Is there a test?”

He grins. “There might be.”

And then he does quiz you — half-serious, half-mocking, fully intrigued. He asks which Beatles album came before Sgt. Pepper’s, who originally released Rumours, what the difference is between a 45 and an LP. You answer most of them with more confidence than you expected, and when you get one wrong, he pretends to gasp like you've committed treason, but you can see the approval tugging at the corners of his mouth.

“You know your stuff,” he says finally, tapping a record spine. “Or you fake it really well.”

“Thanks,” you say dryly. “That’s the nicest thing anyone’s said to me today.” 

He laughs, then bites his lip like he’s deciding something. “Alright. You’re in.” 

Your brows lift. “That’s it? I’m hired?” 

“I’m in charge right now,” he says, mock-grandly. “My cousin owns the place, but he’s in love or backpacking or both. Anyway, I basically run things. And you passed the vibe check.” You can’t help the way your smile slips out. “When do I start?”

“Saturday morning,” he replies. “Sharp. Don’t be late — unless you bring donuts. Then I might forgive you.” You nod, backing toward the door. “Duly noted.” He follows you a few steps, leaning against the frame as you open the door, the chime above it ringing again like applause. 

“Oh,” he adds as you step out into the salty hush of the pier. “And bring that Nirvana energy with you. The real kind.”

You shoot him a grin over your shoulder. “Only if you promise not to quiz me again.”

“No promises,” he calls after you.

The door closes behind you with a soft click, the light inside fading to amber through the glass. And as you walk back down the pier, the sea now a hush in your ears and your heart thudding to a rhythm you don’t quite recognize, you realize the summer has cracked open — just a little. And something new has started to bloom inside the quiet. 

Saturday, you’re up bright and early to get to the record store. You show up ten minutes early, clutching a canvas tote and the kind of nervous energy that hums just beneath your skin like a skipped heartbeat. You spent too long deciding what to wear — torn between comfort and the elusive cool that Ni-ki seems to wear like a second skin. You settle on a shirt that feels like you, jeans that have survived too many summers, and a necklace your mother gave you when you were thirteen, the one that always brings you a bit of luck. 

The record shop is already breathing by the time you arrive, its door slightly ajar, the bell above it giving a lazy chime as you slip inside. Morning light streams through the warped glass like golden syrup, catching on the dust motes that float in slow pirouettes through the air. The place smells like warm vinyl and old wood, a hint of incense lingering somewhere in the corners. Ni-ki is behind the counter, hunched over like a gargoyle with a mission, eating cereal out of a chipped coffee mug that reads World’s Okayest Employee. The sight of you standing there, ten minutes early and bright-eyed, seems to catch him off guard. 

“You actually came,” he says, cereal spoon paused mid-air. “You sound shocked,” you reply, stepping further in. “I did say I’d show up.” 

“Yeah, but people say all kinds of things at the end of the world,” he mutters dramatically, then grins. “Welcome to paradise.” The shop is a beautiful kind of chaos. Handwritten signs dangle from twine above each section: Garage Rock (Actual Garage Sound), Sad Bangers, Albums That Changed My Life But Maybe Not Yours. A crooked shelf labeled Jazz? leans against a wall like it’s had one too many drinks. There’s a cat curled up on a stack of Tame Impala reissues — soot-grey, one ear notched, its eyes opening slowly like it’s seen centuries and remains unimpressed. 

“Does the cat live here?” you ask. 

“No idea,” Ni-ki replies, peering over the counter. “He came with the store. Or maybe he’s a ghost. Either way, he answers to ‘Captain.’ Or doesn’t.” Your first task? Alphabetizing the used vinyl bin — which, as it turns out, is less bin and more bottomless abyss. A tangled jungle of warped records, bootleg mixtapes, and deeply cursed homemade covers — one of which features a Sharpie drawing of two clowns kissing beneath a blood moon. Someone has scribbled THIS IS THE WORST SONG EVER across a CD sleeve, then stuffed it back in like a warning. 

Ni-ki watches you with vague amusement as you crouch beside the bin, sleeves rolled up like you’re preparing for surgery. “Welcome to the hellscape,” he says, sipping his cereal. 

“Any actual system here?” you ask. He shrugs, pointing lazily. “That pile’s classics. That one’s vibes. And that one’s cursed. Do not listen to anything from the cursed pile unless you want your day to feel like a mid-2000s Tumblr breakup.” You sort, sift, dig. You laugh out loud more than once. Ni-ki drifts around the store like a song in human form, starting tasks and abandoning them halfway through — stacking CD cases only to knock them over, setting a record on the player and forgetting about it until it spins endlessly on static. He trips over a crate of cassette tapes and says, without missing a beat, “That was intentional. I’m stress-testing the floor.” 

You learn more by watching him than from anything he says. He knows where everything is — not by order, but by instinct. He talks to the records like they’re old friends, mutters to himself about which artists have Mercury in retrograde energy, and once, mid-sentence, gasps and runs to swap out a display because “no offense to the Beach Boys, but this is not their season.” At some point, a customer comes in and asks for something obscure — a Japanese city pop album from 1982. Ni-ki lights up like a struck match. You watch him slip into a rhythm, voice smooth and animated, leading the man to a dusty crate near the back, pulling out exactly what he needs. You catch yourself smiling. 

By the end of the day, the cursed pile has doubled in size, Captain has chosen your lap for a fifteen-minute nap, and you feel pleasantly exhausted — not the kind that drags you down, but the kind that fills your limbs like warmth after a swim. As you wipe your hands on your jeans and start to gather your things, Ni-ki reaches behind the counter and pulls out a record, slipping it into a sleeve that crackles like old paper. “Your initiation gift,” he says, sliding it toward you. 

You take it gently, examining the cover — it’s scratched, its corners soft with age, the title half-faded. “This is… unplayable,” you say, half-laughing. 

“It’s magic,” he insists, eyes gleaming. “Look at it too long and you’ll cry. Or get a vision. Or find a penny from your childhood. Who knows.” You clutch it to your chest as you leave, the shop’s bell ringing soft behind you, the sky outside slowly beginning to melt into gold. You walk home with salt on your skin and the feeling that something precious has been tucked into your day — a moment, a memory, a record full of invisible music. You don’t know what the song is yet. But you’ll be back to hear it. 

The sun has softened by the time you reach the house, folding itself gently behind the horizon like it’s tucking in for the night. The wind is quieter now, brushing against your skin with the hush of an old lullaby. And as you climb the porch steps, your eyes catch something you hadn’t noticed before. The garden. 

It sprawls across the front lawn like a living tapestry, riotous and delicate all at once — blooms of every shape and hue swaying together in a secret kind of harmony. It’s not a neat garden, not the kind trimmed to suburban symmetry or captured in glossy magazines. No, this garden is wild and purposeful, like it was planted by someone who speaks in symbols and lets the earth answer back. Ivy curls along the baseboards, and golden marigolds lean into the late light, their petals catching like embers. Lavender grows in thick bundles by the porch steps, and tucked just behind them, you spot foxglove and forget-me-nots and clusters of pink cosmos nodding like old souls. You pause, drawn to it — the hush, the poetry of it. Something in the arrangement feels like a letter, like a coded message meant only for someone who knows how to read the heart. 

Inside, the house is warm with the soft clatter of dishes and the gentle hum of a radio tuned low to a station that plays old love songs. The scent of dinner winds through the hallway — lemon and rosemary, something simmering slow on the stove. You wash your hands and sit at the table where your grandmother is already waiting, her silhouette lit by the glow of the kitchen window, her hair gathered loosely at the nape like a whisper of the girl she once was. She smiles at you — that quiet, knowing kind of smile that only grandmothers have, like she can already read your thoughts before they form. 

“So,” she says, placing a bowl of soup in front of you, “how was your first day at the record shop?” You tell her everything — the chaos, the charm, the cursed pile, the cat who may or may not be a spirit. You mention Ni-ki, his mismatched energy and cereal breakfasts, the way he spoke to the records like they were old flames. Her eyes twinkle at the name. “Ah,” she says softly, “Nishimura Riki. I know his parents. Nice people. Quiet. His father used to play cello in the church ensemble. Barely spoke more than two words but when he played, you’d think the cello had a soul of its own.” 

You nod slowly. “Makes sense,” you say. “Ni-ki’s got that… same kind of quiet. Like he’s speaking through other things.” 

She stirs her tea, thoughtful. “Some people carry their stories in their eyes. Others in music. Or gardens.” Your gaze drifts to the window, where the garden sways in the moonlight like a secret still being whispered. 

“Speaking of,” you say, “I noticed the flowers. They’re beautiful. Are they just… for show?” She chuckles — a soft, melodic sound that feels like the memory of spring. “Oh, child. Every flower means something. I never plant anything without a reason.” You tilt your head, curious. 

She points to the lavender first. “Peace. I plant it near the door to welcome calm.”

Then to the marigolds. “Grief. For the people I’ve lost. But also resilience — they bloom through everything.” The cosmos, pink and wide-eyed in the dark. “Balance. For the days when I forget how to find my center.” You sit quietly, drinking in her words like they’re poetry spoken between bites. 

“And the foxglove?” you ask, your voice low. She pauses, then smiles softly. “Insincerity, mostly. But also creativity. It’s tricky. Like people. Like life.” You imagine her kneeling in the soil, planting grief and peace and creativity like offerings to the universe, letting the earth hold what her heart couldn’t say aloud. The conversation fades into silence, but it’s a golden kind — the kind that wraps around the kitchen like a shawl. After dinner, she kisses your forehead and tells you to sleep well, and you climb the stairs with your head still full of flowers and Ni-ki’s strange magic and the scratch of the record you now keep on your nightstand like a charm.

That night, you lie in bed with the window cracked open, the salt breeze curling in like a dream. You think of the meanings woven into every bloom outside your window, a whole language spelled out in petals and stems. You wonder what kind of flower you are — what root is taking hold in you this summer, and what will bloom when you’re not looking. You fall asleep to the sound of the sea whispering just beyond the porch. And in your dream, the garden is singing. 

You wake to the soft hush of the sea breathing against the shore, a rhythm as steady as a lullaby half-remembered. The sky outside your window is the color of sleep still fading — a pale wash of lavender and rose, with streaks of gold beginning to stretch like limbs in the waking light. You dress slowly, quietly, the house still holding onto its dreams. When you step outside, the garden greets you like an old friend who’s been waiting. Dew clings to the petals like whispered secrets, and the air smells green and alive — a mixture of earth and salt and something faintly sweet, like memory distilled into fragrance. Your grandmother is already there, kneeling in the soil with a wide-brimmed straw hat shading her face and gloves dusted with the morning’s work. She doesn’t look up at first, too caught in the careful tending of roots and stems, but she knows you’re there. 

“Early riser,” she murmurs, brushing her hands on her apron. “Just like your grandfather used to be.” You sit on the porch steps, letting the sun pour over your skin like warm tea. She settles back onto her heels, her gaze soft as the morning. “He used to get up before the gulls started crying,” she says. “Said the world belonged to those who saw it first.” A small laugh slips from her lips. “He was full of sayings like that. Half of them are nonsense, but he made them sound like scripture.” 

She points to a patch of white daisies climbing along the fence. “We met right here, on this beach. I was just a girl then. My mother brought me for a summer away from the city. I thought I’d be bored out of my mind.” Her eyes glitter with the recollection, like tidepools catching sun. “Then I met a boy who loved the sea so much he could name all the tides and knew when the wind would turn. He taught me to listen to the waves like they were speaking.” You glance toward the ocean. It's still murmuring to itself, the tide curling in and out like the hem of a dress being tried on again and again. 

“I fell in love with him and the sea all at once,” she says. “And I never left. My mother was furious at first — she thought I’d thrown my life away for a boy and a beach. But I found something here that felt like mine. Something quiet. Something deep-rooted.” She brushes her hand over a bloom of violets. 

“My mother liked flowers. She used to say they were stories you planted in the ground. That if you paid attention, the garden would always tell you how someone was feeling. I didn’t believe her until I found myself planting daisies after he passed. Daisies mean loyalty. And innocence.” She pauses. “Hope, too.” You watch her in the golden haze of morning, hands moving over soil like she’s sewing love into the earth itself. 

She turns to you then, her eyes as bright as the morning sea. “Maybe you’ll pick it up, too,” she says. “The garden. The sea. Whatever calls to you.” You don’t say anything, but you think maybe something already has. You lose track of time there, listening to her stories, letting the warmth of the sun and her voice wrap around you like a well-worn quilt. The sea hums in the distance, and the flowers seem to lean in closer, like they’re listening too.

It isn’t until the light shifts just so and the air sharpens with mid-morning urgency that you remember the time. “I have to go,” you say, standing abruptly. “The shop…” She waves you off with a knowing smile. “Go on, then. Don’t keep the records waiting.” You dash inside, grabbing your bag, brushing dirt off your knees, heart still full of wildflowers and tide-songs. As you head toward town, the scent of the garden clings to you — lavender and daisies and something unnamed. You don’t look back, but you feel it — the house behind you, the garden blooming like a spell, your grandmother already humming to her flowers. The world feels quieter and bigger all at once. And your day is just beginning. 

The record shop is quiet when you arrive, half-asleep like the town itself, sunlight pooling through the front windows in slow-moving gold. Ni-ki’s already there, lounging behind the counter with a half-eaten peach in one hand and a book in the other, looking like he’s been plucked from another era, half-boy, half-daydream. 

But by afternoon, the sky begins to darken — not gradually, not politely, but all at once, like someone pulled a great gray sheet over the sun. You look up from the bin you’ve been organizing (“vibes, not in a cursed way,” as per Ni-ki’s instructions), and the world outside the window has turned the color of bruised plums. Thunder rumbles low in the distance — not yet angry, just clearing its throat. “You hear that?” Ni-ki says, peeking out from the back room with a pretzel stick hanging from his mouth. “Storm’s coming.” 

You nod, and moments later, the storm arrives like it’s been waiting just beyond the town’s edge, eager to stretch its legs. Rain crashes down in sheets, the kind of summer downpour that feels almost theatrical in its urgency. The windows fog over instantly, blurred with condensation and streaked with silver lines. The roof trembles under the weight of water, the gutter outside singing in rivulets and overflows. “Well,” Ni-ki says, stepping around a tower of cassette tapes and kicking off his shoes, “looks like we’re stuck.” 

He moves toward the record player in the corner like it’s a ritual, flipping through sleeves until he finds one — a faded, fraying LP with no label. He places the needle down with the kind of reverence usually reserved for prayers. The first notes float out, low and longing — jazz, smooth and syrupy, the kind that spills like honey and hangs in the air long after it’s gone. A saxophone sighs like a tired poet. The bass hums like a heartbeat underwater. 

You find yourselves lying on the floor soon after — not on purpose, not in a storybook way, but like you both quietly understood that the storm had pressed pause on the world, and this was the only way to breathe through it. The floor is cool against your back. The ceiling fan spins in lazy circles above you, casting shadows that dance like ghosts across the walls. Ni-ki talks, voice soft and winding, half-ramble, half-reverie. He tells you about his favorite album like it’s someone he used to love. The way the harmonies feel like home. The way the final track always makes him cry, though he never admits it out loud. He speaks in metaphors — calling guitars “bones with breath,” and lyrics “little spells disguised as mistakes.” 

You close your eyes, letting his voice wrap around you like the jazz, like the rain — steady, soft, unknowable. Thunder rolls again, not far now, and you imagine the shop floating at sea, untethered and drifting, safe in its island of sound. He says something then — something about how storms always made him feel like the world was wiping itself clean — and you smile, not because of what he said, but how he said it. Like he wasn’t afraid to say things that sounded a little foolish. Like he trusted the moment to hold him. Time slows. The ceiling fan turns. 

You don’t remember falling asleep, but somewhere between the thunder and the saxophone and the soft cadence of Ni-ki’s voice, you slip under like a pebble sinking into a tidepool. Not deeply. Not forever. Just enough. the rain has quieted, reduced to a hush against the windows. The storm has passed, or is passing, and the light outside is strange and soft — that post-rain glow that makes the world feel new. Ni-ki is still lying beside you, arms folded beneath his head, eyes on the ceiling like he’s watching stars no one else can see. 

“Hey,” he says, voice barely more than a whisper. 

“Hey,” you reply, voice still tangled in sleep. 

Neither of you moves to get up. The world can wait. 

You wake to the scent of petrichor and the sighing hush of a town still half-asleep. The world feels washed clean — the sky a milky blue canvas with clouds like lace unraveling at the edges, and the air still heavy with the ghost of last night’s storm. For a moment, you don’t remember where you are — only that there is warmth beside you, and a jazz record still spinning in its final loop, the needle clicking gently like a heartbeat that doesn’t want to stop. You blink yourself into focus and turn. 

Ni-ki is asleep next to you, curled slightly, one arm flung over his eyes like he’s trying to hold onto whatever dream he drifted into. His hoodie has slipped off one shoulder, and his hair’s a little mussed — the kind of morning mess that makes him look younger, more boy than mystery. There’s a dried smudge of ink on his knuckle. His mouth is slightly parted. You think, absurdly, that he looks like someone drawn in charcoal — smudged at the edges, all softness and sketch lines. The ceiling fan hums its sleepy circles above you. Outside, the gutters still drip, and the occasional car rolls past with a wet hiss against the street. The record player finally falls silent. Even the shop seems to exhale — every shelf and bin and poster a little quieter than usual, as if the music and storm had exhausted them, too.

Ni-ki stirs, stretches like a cat, and opens one eye. “You drool in your sleep,” he says, voice thick with morning. 

You blink. “I do not.” He grins — not teasing, not cruel, just lazy and amused. “Maybe it was me,” he admits. “I’m a very mysterious sleeper.” There’s a pause — not uncomfortable, just suspended — and for a moment, neither of you moves. The storm feels like it happened in another lifetime. You’re just two kids on a shop floor, heads full of music and dreams too soft to speak aloud. 

Eventually, Ni-ki props himself up on one elbow and squints out the window. “Looks like we’re not opening today,” he says. “Storm knocked out half the power lines on Main.” You sit up slowly, rubbing the back of your neck. “So… rain day?” 

“Rain day,” he confirms. “Wanna bail?” You nod. The agreement is unspoken and immediate. No need to tidy up, no need to explain. The day has already been claimed by the aftermath — by the soft quiet that follows when nature has had its say. You both gather your things in the kind of silence that only exists between people who’ve shared a strange closeness — not lovers, not strangers, but something fragile and in-between. Ni-ki hands you your jacket without meeting your eyes. You murmur thanks. He nods. 

Outside, the pavement glistens like wet stone under a watercolor sky. The air is rich with sea-salt and wet leaves. A few gulls wheel overhead, their cries sharp and laughing. Anchor–Crest is slower today, subdued, as if the town itself is still wringing the water from its bones. You and Ni-ki walk together for a while before parting ways — no destination in mind, just a mutual understanding that the day is meant for wandering, for letting the storm’s echo fade on its own time. 

“See you tomorrow?” he asks, voice light. “Yeah,” you say, the word carried on a breeze that smells like roses and rust and rain. You don’t look back as you walk away. But you feel him behind you — not watching, just existing in your orbit — a constant, quiet presence like the sea against the shore. And somewhere inside you, something soft begins to grow. 

By the time you reach your grandmother’s house, the sky has cleared into a gentle hush of gold and gray — the kind of color that only exists after a storm, as if the world has exhaled and is now resting. The air smells like old earth and wild rosemary, sea-laced and clean. Your shoes squish faintly as you step up the wooden path, the garden glistening on either side — every flower bowing under the weight of raindrops like dancers catching their breath after the final chord.

You expect damage. Branches. Broken things. But the house stands untouched, like it had been wrapped in some invisible spell while the storm passed overhead. The wind chime still sways lazily by the porch. The hydrangeas have leaned, not fallen. The paint is damp but not peeling, and the seashells your grandmother keeps lined along the windowsill shine like tiny moons.

When you open the door, you barely have time to step inside before your grandmother is there, arms around you in an embrace that catches you completely off guard. She's smaller than you remember — smaller than she seemed yesterday — and warmer, too, like a quilt pulled fresh from the sun. Her voice is thick with relief, caught somewhere between a scolding and a prayer.

“Where were you?” she breathes, her words muffled against your shoulder. “I was so worried—when the storm came I thought—” You freeze, then soften, arms coming up slowly to return the hug. You hadn’t been held like this in a long time — not since before time started moving faster than you could follow. Her embrace smells like lavender and the sea, like bread in the oven and old books, like home you didn’t know you were missing.

“I stayed at the shop,” you murmur. “I didn’t want to walk back in the rain.” She pulls back and cups your face in her hands, brushing your damp hair behind your ear with a tenderness that makes your throat ache. “Well,” she says, smiling now, though her eyes are still wet. “I’m just glad you’re alright. Come, I’ve made food. Something warm.”

The house smells like rosemary and lemon, like sautéed garlic and something bubbling slow on the stove. The table is already set with mismatched plates and two flickering candles in jam jars. You sit across from her, still carrying the scent of rain, and she pours you a cup of tea that tastes like honey and memory. Over your meal the conversation meanders, quiet and soft, like a river turning through an old valley.

You tell her about the record shop, about the way it holds sunlight and shadows and cats that may or may not be real. You tell her about Ni-ki — carefully, without meaning to smile as much as you do. You mention the jazz, the ceiling fan, the storm, the way he talks about albums like they’re alive. You skip over the part where you fell asleep beside him, but you think she hears it anyway, between the words. She listens with a faraway look, like she’s watching a memory unfold behind your eyes.Then you glance toward the window, where the garden hums in the damp light, petals dripping like soft tears, stems bowed and reverent. It’s beautiful. It makes life seem beautiful. 

She watches you, like she knows what you’re thinking. She frowns, but her eyes are bright. “They help me remember who I am. Who I’ve been. Who I’ve loved. I suppose now they’re yours, too.” And later, when the candles have melted low and the tea has gone cold, you lie in bed with the window cracked open, letting in the scent of salt and blossoms. You listen to the garden breathe. You think of Ni-ki’s voice layered over saxophones, and of your grandmother’s hands in the soil. You think of flowers that mean love, and others that mean goodbye. You fall asleep with petals blooming behind your eyes. 

The morning unfolds like a page turned gently — soft light spilling through gauzy curtains, the scent of something sweet wafting from the kitchen. You’re still rubbing the sleep from your eyes when the doorbell chimes, a sound like the beginning of something. Your grandmother beats you to the door, humming as she goes, the hem of her housecoat trailing behind her like a comet’s tail. You follow a step behind, only half-awake, expecting mail or a neighbor or perhaps a wayward gull in need of rescue. 

Instead, it’s Ni-ki. 

He stands awkwardly on the porch, hands jammed into the pockets of his hoodie, hair tousled like the storm reached down and ruffled it personally. There’s a flash of surprise in his eyes when he sees your grandmother — like he didn’t expect anyone to answer, let alone the guardian of the flower kingdom herself. “Morning,” he says, scratching the back of his neck. “I—uh, just wanted to check in. After the storm and all. Make sure everything was okay.” 

Your grandmother arches one perfectly skeptical brow, but her lips tug upward in a knowing smirk. “Well, aren’t you sweet,” she says, and then, without turning, she calls over her shoulder, “Your boyfriend’s here!” You nearly choke on air. “He’s not—! Grandma!” 

She only hums, stepping aside to let him in, her smugness trailing behind her like perfume. You shoot Ni-ki a mortified look, but he’s grinning, trying not to laugh as he toes off his shoes. “She does this to everyone,” you mutter. Before you can launch into a full defense, your grandmother reappears with a handwritten list clutched in her hand, like a scroll of ancient quests. She presses it into your palm with a look of deliberate innocence. 

“I was just about to send you out,” she says. “We’re out of a few things. Only you’ll do.” You scan the list. It reads more like a riddle than a grocery run: a very particular brand of marmalade (with orange peel but not too much), a sea-salt soap from a shop that doesn’t advertise, and a jar of rosehip jam sold only at a café that might not even be open today. 

“You’re joking,” you say.

 She shrugs, entirely unrepentant. “Consider it a scavenger hunt.” Ni-ki leans over your shoulder to read the list and whistles low. “Either she’s sending you on a magical errand,” he says, “or she really wants that soap.” 

“She’s definitely plotting something,” you reply, but there’s a thread of affection wound through your voice like ribbon. “I’ll come with,” he offers, casual and offhand, but you can see the hope stitched behind it like gold thread in a patchwork quilt. 

You pretend to consider. “Only if you’re okay with bickering over jam.”

He grins. “Wouldn’t dream of anything else.” 

The walk into town becomes a meandering pilgrimage. The streets of Anchor–Crest are still drying from the storm, puddles shining like forgotten silver, shopfronts flinging open their shutters as if shaking off a long sleep. 

You and Ni-ki wander from store to store like characters in an old fable — a place with handmade soaps tucked behind bookshelves, another where the marmalade comes wrapped in wax paper and twine. He insists on sniffing every candle in one shop, rating them dramatically: “Smells like a haunted bakery.” , “Smells like regret and pine.”,  “Smells like my childhood dog, but in a good way.” You roll your eyes, but your laughter dances between you like light on water. 

At a tiny grocer tucked behind the old post office, you find the jam — rosehip, exactly as described, its label handwritten and slightly smudged. You hold it up like a trophy and Ni-ki bows low, one hand over his heart. “To the jam champion,” he declares.

Victory tastes like strawberry ice cream, which you split outside the town pharmacy, passing the single cup between you while the sun warms your backs. You bicker over who gets the last bite until he smears a little on your nose, and you swat at him, both of you laughing like you’ve known each other since you were children. A breeze flutters by, salt-touched and warm. Around you, the town hums its soft lullaby of waves and wind chimes and distant conversation. For a moment, you let yourself imagine this is what everyday could be — errands with no urgency, ice cream before noon, a boy who talks in metaphors and knows how to make you smile even when you don’t mean to. 

You look over at Ni-ki. He’s looking at you. You don’t say anything. You don’t have to. The wind rustles the list in your pocket like a secret. 

Over the next week The rhythm of the shop begins to seep into your bones. It’s a strange music, this little record store by the sea — part jazz, part chaos, part quiet moments that unfurl like ribbon when no one’s looking. You start to learn its tempo: the sigh of the door when it swings open with the afternoon breeze, the soft clack of records as you flip through them, the low hum of the ancient fridge in the back that Ni-ki insists is haunted by the ghost of bad taste in music. 

Your fingers begin to recognize labels by touch alone. Your hands memorize the layout of the bins before your eyes do. You know which shelf leans ever so slightly to the left and which stack of cassettes will fall like dominoes if you so much as breathe wrong near it. You learn the faces, too the steady parade of locals who become less like customers and more like recurring characters in the play you're now part of. There’s Orchestra Boy, a wiry teen with oversized headphones perpetually slung around his neck, who only ever buys movie scores and always pays in coins. Ni-ki swears the kid once tried to pay in seashells, but you suspect he’s embellishing. 

Then there’s Captain Cash, the silver-haired gentleman who comes in three times a week to flirt, quite unabashedly, with the register. “Lookin’ handsome today,” he’ll say, running a finger along the counter like he’s tracing the jawline of a lover. “Treat me right and maybe I’ll buy a little something sweet.” He never buys anything, and yet you’ve started setting aside a Sinatra album for him anyway. And of course—Mac Witch. The woman who always arrives just after three, with a sunhat too large for her head and a gaze that could unravel your secrets like yarn. She leans on the counter and asks, “Fleetwood Mac?” like it’s a password, or a spell. You’ve taken to answering her with “always,” which seems to satisfy her every time. 

Ni-ki gives them all names like he’s collecting stories, and in a way, he is. He scrawls little notes about them on sticky pads that cling to the back of the register. “Orchestra Boy cried once to The Social Network soundtrack. Don’t ask.” “Captain Cash winked today. Bold.” “Mac Witch might actually be a witch. Hexed the jazz section, I swear.” At first, you roll your eyes at him, but then you find yourself playing along, adding your own observations, your own musings. The shop becomes your shared language, your growing constellation of inside jokes and secret categories. 

One sticky note simply reads: “You laughed when I tripped. Rude.” 

Another: “You looked pretty alphabetizing the punk section.” You pretend not to notice those. Sometimes you two dance when no one's around — slow, ridiculous spins to old soul songs playing scratchy on the turntable. Sometimes you argue over what counts as a summer album. Sometimes you sit behind the counter doing nothing at all, your arms brushing accidentally-on-purpose, your knees touching beneath the stool like a whisper neither of you is brave enough to say aloud. And still, nothing is spoken. The possibility hangs between you like a question left on pause. A held breath. 

One afternoon, with the sunlight slanting golden through the dusty windows and the warmth pressing against your back like a comforting palm, you’re manning the counter while Ni-ki attempts to wrestle a shelf into standing upright. It’s a losing battle. You watch him anyway. The shop is quiet, the air thick with the scent of old vinyl and vanilla, someone must’ve spilled incense in the back again. You’ve just rung up a man with three copies of the same ABBA album (you don’t ask questions anymore) when a woman steps up next, placing a worn Cat Stevens record on the counter. 

She looks at you, then glances toward Ni-ki, currently muttering expletives at a stack of ska CDs that just collapsed in protest, and back to you again. “He yours?” she asks, her voice low and curious, the way someone asks about a puppy or a garden they’ve seen from afar. 

You blink. “Who?” She raises a single brow, like you’re being deliberately dense.

You laugh, a little too quickly. “Oh—no. We’re just…” You trail off, unsure how to finish that sentence. Just coworkers? Just friends? Just two people orbiting the same chaotic star, waiting for gravity to decide? She nods slowly, unconvinced. “Mm,” she says, like she’s seen enough young love bloom and wilt to recognize the exact shape of denial. 

You hand her the record and she leaves with a knowing smile. Ni-ki wanders over a few minutes later, hair rumpled, hands smudged with dust. “What’d I miss?” 

You shrug. “Just another wise woman trying to ruin my carefully curated narrative of denial.” He chuckles, nudging your shoulder. “Story of your life.” 

“Yeah,” you say, and try not to let your heart show its teeth. 

That evening, when the shop has emptied and the sky turns the color of spilled ink, Ni-ki pulls out a dusty record from beneath the counter.

“Want to hear something weird?” he asks.

“Always.”

He places the vinyl on the player and the room fills with music, something soft and wordless, a melody that sounds like rain falling on piano keys, like memories you can’t quite place. You lean against the counter, eyes closed, the moment swelling around you like a wave, threatening to pull you under. When you open your eyes, he’s already watching you. Neither of you speak. The music speaks enough. And still, you don’t answer the question that floats quietly between you. Not yet. 

Yours and Ni-ki’s relationship was growing, evolving. But it was not the only sprouting relationship in your life. You and your grandmother spoke all night, getting to know more and more about each other everyday. Some nights even when Ni-ki joins, itt becomes a ritual. One you’d cherish forever.  It begins slowly like tidewater creeping in unnoticed. Your grandmother, once more quiet than not, begins to speak in stories. Not just the kinds you expect from the elderly weather-worn anecdotes about bus fares and distant cousins but tales that drift between the ordinary and the eerie, between the seen and the half-remembered. They come at night, usually after dinner, when the cicadas outside are humming lullabies through the window screens and the kitchen smells faintly of sea salt and jasmine tea. Sometimes Ni-ki is there too, legs folded on the floor like he’s twelve again, a bowl of popcorn resting between you both as if it were a sacred offering.

“There’s a ship,” she tells you one night, her voice as thin as moonlight. “They say it sails only in fog, sails without a crew. No name on the hull, no light in the mast. It passes by when the air turns cold in summer and the gulls go quiet. Just slips through the gray like a knife through silk.” You glance at Ni-ki, who’s already listening, eyebrows tilted like a question he’ll never ask aloud. He always listens to her like this, like he’s afraid of missing something essential, something not quite real but true all the same. Your grandmother sips from her chipped porcelain mug and continues, “I saw it once. I was sixteen. It was early morning, and I was up on the cliffs behind the lighthouse. There was fog so thick you could cut it with a spoon. And then there came no sound, no wake in the water. Just drifting by, like it had nowhere to be, like it had all the time in the world.”  

You ask her what it looked like. She just smiles, wistful, eyes reflecting something that lives outside time. “Like memory. Something that shouldn’t still be floating but is.” 

Another night, when the air hangs heavy with humidity and the storm scent of far-off lightning, she tells you about a boy. She picks at the lint from her cardigan, not quite looking at either of you. “He played guitar with the kind of hands that could undo a girl’s whole world. Sang like he didn’t need to be heard — just wanted the notes to know he loved them.” 

“Did he live here?” you ask, and her smile flattens, becoming something smaller and sadder. 

“For a time. He worked odd jobs. Lived in a shack not far from the dunes. I’d meet him by the pier every Tuesday, like it was church. Barefoot, always. Said shoes made him feel too far from the earth. Played for anyone who’d listen. Or no one at all.” 

“What happened to him?” Ni-ki asks softly, and you’re glad he did, because you didn’t want to. She looks at you both for a long moment, like she's trying to decide if you're old enough to know. “He left. He was always meant to leave. He told me once that some people are born to drift, and trying to anchor them only sinks them faster.” She pauses, glancing out the window, as though expecting to see him, even now, barefoot and grinning, guitar case in hand.  

Then she adds, almost to herself, “There’s always someone you leave, but never really forget.” The words settle in the room like dust. You feel their weight, their truth. You look at Ni-ki then, only for a second, and he doesn’t look away. 

She tells you other stories too, over the next few days. Not always so sad. One is about a storm that knocked a whale into the harbor. Another about a fisherman who swore he caught a mermaid and married her ; until she vanished, leaving only a salt-stained dress behind. Some stories make you laugh. Some stories make Ni-ki quietly raise his eyebrows, like he's filing them away in the same place he keeps the shop’s strange regulars. 

But there are nights where her stories trail off halfway through. Where she pauses too long, searching for a word, or a name, or the shape of something just beyond the edge of recall. You notice it first in the way she forgets her mug of tea on the stove until it whistles itself hoarse. Then in the way she repeats questions she’s already asked, softly, apologetically. “Did you see the gulls this morning?” she asks you twice in the same hour, smiling like it’s the first time. You don’t think much of it at first. Maybe she’s just tired. The days have been long and warm. The sea hums constantly outside, and the scent of her garden thickens the air like perfume. You don’t want to believe anything’s wrong. Not yet. 

But that night, as you’re brushing your teeth, you hear her in the hallway, talking to someone who isn’t there. Her voice is gentle, like she’s telling a bedtime story to a child that no longer exists. You tell yourself it’s just a dream. Just the house settling. Just the ghosts she’s been holding in her throat too long finally slipping free. You fall asleep that night thinking about the boy with bare feet, and the ship with no name. About the way her stories settle inside you like salt in the lungs, painful and necessary. 

Ni-ki texts you at midnight.

Him: she okay?

You stare at the message a long time before answering.

    You: I don’t know. I hope so. She’s kind of magic.

 He responds

          Him: like you.

You don’t answer. But you press the phone to your chest and fall asleep smiling, anyway. 

The idea is his, but it lives in you instantly. You're lounging behind the shop one lazy Tuesday, the kind where time melts like ice cream on pavement and the air feels like it's been steeped in heat and honeysuckle. Ni-ki says it so offhandedly you almost miss it, something about buying cameras, cheap ones, the kind your parents used to use before the world went digital and the future started spinning faster than memory could keep up. 

“Let’s fill them,” he says, biting into a peach so ripe it drips down his wrist, “with things that matter.” You squint at him from behind your sunglasses, sprawled across the concrete like a sun-drowsed cat. “Like what?” 

He shrugs, juice glinting on his skin like liquid gold. “I dunno. Whatever feels real. Important. Even if it’s dumb.” 

That’s how it starts; two disposable cameras, bought from the dusty corner of the Anchor–Crest pharmacy, the kind that come in plastic and promise only twenty-four chances to catch lightning in a bottle. The kind with no preview, no delete button. Just the click and whirl of commitment. A trust fall into the moment. You begin carrying yours like a talisman, tucked into your bag or looped around your wrist with a shoelace. Every click feels like whispering a secret to the future. 

The first shot you take is of the sky is the exact shade of blue you’ve only ever seen in dreams, streaked with clouds that look like ships sailing somewhere unseen. The second is of your grandmother’s hands as she weeds her garden, knotted with time, gentle as tide foam. The third is Ni-ki laughing, blurry and beautiful, caught mid-bite into a slice of watermelon that stains his lips pink like some kind of love song. 

He captures you, too, more often than you expect. You don’t always notice until after the shutter flinches. Once, he snaps you with your head tilted back on the pier, arms flung open to the wind like you’re trying to hug the sky. Another time, he catches you inside the shop, framed by the window, haloed in sunlight and dust. You’re mid-laugh, holding a cracked Bowie record like it’s the crown jewels.

He doesn’t say it, but you can feel it in the way his gaze lingers like the warm aftertaste of a secret shared: You are becoming one of his “things that matter.” You walk more. Talk more. Drift like jellyfish from one end of town to the other, floating through pockets of joy and shade. The shop becomes a home, the town a kind of soft-spoken symphony, all stitched together by his presence, awkward, poetic, a little off-beat like the B-side of a favorite song. 

He starts telling you things he hasn’t told anyone, like how he used to think time was something you could hold in your hands. Like a record. Like something you could flip to the good part again. He talks about wanting to leave Anchor–Crest once, but never quite finding the edge of the map. “I think I’m scared I’ll dissolve out there,” he says one night, lying on the roof of the shop with your legs barely brushing. “Like maybe I only exist here. Where I know the sound the sea makes when it’s trying to say something.” 

You want to tell him you understand. That you’ve felt more like yourself here than in any apartment or campus or hallway lined with lockers. That you’re starting to feel like your heart might be made of salt and driftwood and polaroid colors. That you’re falling for him in a way that’s quiet and steady and terrifying; like waves lapping at the same rock for years until finally, it gives in. But you don’t.

Instead, you nudge your shoulder against his and say, “That’s dramatic, Nishimura.” He laughs and turns his face to yours. “You like it.” You do. 

You fill the cameras slowly, deliberately, like savoring the last bites of a favorite meal. A shot of Ni-ki balancing on a railing, arms out like a scarecrow trying to take flight. One of your sandals abandoned in the sand. A crumpled napkin with a doodle he drew of you, big sunglasses, messy hair, heart for a smile. You find joy in the mundane, beauty in the unposed. You take one of his fingers grazing a record sleeve like it’s an artifact. One of his shadow dancing against the wall of the shop as the sun sets low. 

At the end of the week, your camera is full. Your heart, too, in ways you haven’t yet begun to name. When he hands you his roll, it’s tied with a ribbon the color of rust and dusk. His fingers linger too long against yours when he passes it over. “In case you forget,” he says, and doesn’t explain further. You don’t ask him to. 

Because you’re starting to feel the shape of the truth forming inside you like a storm on the horizon. The way you catch yourself watching his mouth when he talks, or memorizing the lines of his hands without meaning to. The way your pulse has started to keep time with his laugh. 

You’re falling in love with him. 

And suddenly, terrifyingly; it’s hitting you that summer doesn’t last forever. That there are only so many mornings left. That the sea will keep breathing after you go, but it won’t sound the same. That you might have to leave this boy with the sunbeam smile and storm-colored eyes, and everything you’ve become in this town that knows your name like a song. But for now, for this fragile moment pinned between now and next you tuck the roll into your drawer like it’s made of glass and carry the ache like a melody only you can hear. 

The next day your grandma wakes you up bright and early, It begins with your grandmother standing on the porch, squinting out into the distance as if searching for something in the middle distance, an answer in the horizon’s quiet language. She’s dressed in her usual soft, sea-worn layers, apron dusted with flour from breakfast, her hand resting thoughtfully on the banister. When she turns to you, her eyes have the mischief of someone younger than her bones would suggest. “This porch is peeling like a sunburn,” she says. “We should do something about that.” 

You don’t argue. Instead, you nod, and later that afternoon, Ni-ki appears like the tide, carrying a can of pale blue paint and an old brush that looks like it’s lived through more lives than either of you. You both kick off your sandals and join your grandmother on the porch, sun curling over your shoulders like a cat. The air smells of lemon and seaweed and something else, something sweet and nostalgic, like the ghosts of summers past settling into the woodgrain. You begin with intention. Ni-ki dips his brush carefully, dabbing the edge of the banister like it’s a sleeping creature he doesn’t want to wake. You crouch near the step, tongue between your teeth in concentration. But intention doesn't last long. Within minutes, the air is full of laughter and the sound of dripping paint, the brush strokes getting sloppier, more playful. Ni-ki flicks a stripe of blue across your forearm. You retaliate with a swipe across his cheek. He gasps like it’s a mortal wound and collapses dramatically onto the porch, hand over his heart. 

Your grandmother watches from her rocking chair, a lemonade in one hand and a knowing smile curling at the corners of her mouth. She says nothing, just hums something old and lilting under her breath, a lullaby she might’ve sung to your mother once, when the world was quieter and time didn’t feel like it was running out. By the time the sun starts to dip into the ocean’s mouth, the porch is streaked with uneven patches of blue, like clouds smeared across a shy sky. Your arms are speckled with paint, your hair carries streaks of war, and Ni-ki’s shirt looks like it’s been through a Monet thunderstorm. 

It’s then, with hands sticky and hearts swollen with too much something, that Ni-ki kneels by the bottom step and, with his smallest brush, draws a crooked heart. It’s lopsided and imperfect, like something sketched half-seriously in the corner of a math notebook, but he leans back and nods at it with grave satisfaction. “Bad luck to paint over that,” he says, voice soft but certain. His eyes flick to yours, unreadable and vast. 

You laugh, but the sound feels like it’s been dipped in gold. “Says who?” 

“Me,” he replies. “Just made it up. Feels true, though.” 

Your grandmother pretends not to notice. She doesn’t say a word as you and Ni-ki rinse off in the garden hose like children, shrieking at the cold, chasing each other in wet circles until the sun disappears completely and the sky is scattered with stars like freckles on the night’s skin. But the next morning, when you come outside with a slice of toast and a glass of orange juice, you see it. Next to Ni-ki’s crooked heart, drawn in delicate chalk lines, is a tiny sea star. Its limbs are uneven, barely more than a gesture, but it glows faintly in the early light. A secret signature. A blessing. You smile. You don’t need to ask who did it.

The porch creaks under your feet as you sit down on the steps, brush resting in your lap. The paint tin is still open, catching the light like a puddle of sky. You feel something tug inside you, gentle, aching. Like the knowledge that things are beautiful precisely because they don’t last forever. You trace your thumb over the heart and the sea star, and for a second, you imagine the three of you years from now, weathered, changed, scattered perhaps, but still tied to this porch, this summer, this stretch of sky and sea. For now, it is enough.

Over the weeks it was pattern, work at the shop, come home and tend to the garden or listen to Grandma’s stories. Most insistences Ni-ki was there, soaking in the anonymity your grandmother gave. Truly a puzzle that wasn’t solvable. 

The town was buzzing long before the first firework ever met the sky. Anchor–Crest didn’t often burst at the seams like this, but on the night of the festival, it became something radiant, lantern-lit and humming, awash in sea breeze and the scent of something frying in paper boats. Children ran with sparklers like they were holding lightning in their fists. Couples drifted toward the beach, hand-in-hand, their laughter caught in the hush between waves. Music poured from open windows and front porches. And over it all, the ocean whispered, steady and soft, a heartbeat beneath the noise. You didn’t go to the beach. 

Instead, you and Ni-ki found yourselves behind the record shop, where the alley opened just enough to see the sky stretch wide over the water. You sat on old milk crates, your legs brushing now and then as you passed a bottle of cherry soda back and forth, its fizz long gone but its sweetness lingering. The two of you were tucked away from the crowds, like a secret folded into the night. You felt the air change just before the first firework bloomed. 

It was a silence made of anticipation, as though the stars themselves were holding their breath. Then—pop—a streak of red, unraveling like a ribbon across the sky. It hung there, suspended for a moment before shattering into glitter, reflected in the shimmer of Ni-ki’s eyes when he turned to look at it. Another followed. Then another. Soon the sky was aflame, colors peeling across it like brushstrokes on canvas, every burst a soft gasp in the lungs of the world. 

You leaned back on your palms and tilted your head skyward, watching the night perform. Beside you, Ni-ki didn’t move much. His shoulder brushed yours, barely there, but he didn’t pull away. Instead, he let it linger, like a question he was afraid to ask but didn’t want to take back. The moment was quiet in the way only certain moments can be, when the world is too loud and yet somehow, you still find the stillness in each other. 

Then he said it, almost too softly for the fireworks to permit. “I was going to say something cool. Or poetic. But I can’t think when you’re this close.” You turned to him, heart clenching in the most inexplicable, irreparable way. You smiled, gentle and sure, like you’d been waiting for that very sentence, for that very kind of honesty. “You don’t have to say anything,” you said. 

And so, he didn’t. He kissed you. It was brief at first, unsure like a skipped heartbeat, like the inhale before a song begins. A feather of contact, like he was asking permission with the press of his lips. But when you leaned in, answered without hesitation, something in him steadied. His hand came up, cupping your jaw, thumb brushing along your cheekbone with the reverence of someone dusting off a cherished record. You tasted cherry soda and the memory of something sweeter. He tasted like courage and salt, like midnight and red confetti skies. 

Around you, the fireworks kept bursting shapes and sparks and flowers of light unfurling one after another but none of them quite compared to what bloomed between you. The real fire was here. Flickering low and soft in your chest, stoked by the touch of his hand and the warmth of his breath. A match struck in the ribcage. A slow ignition of something you hadn’t dared to name. 

When you pulled away, neither of you said anything for a long moment. You sat there, eyes still closed, foreheads just brushing, breathing in tandem while the sky kept celebrating. The fireworks painted your skin in glimmers of gold and green and a little bit of silver and Ni-ki looked at you like you were something miraculous. Not loud. Not grand. Just… true. You opened your eyes, and there he was. Awkward, unsure, a little breathless but so wholly there. And in his gaze, you saw everything he hadn’t said: the nights spent listening to records he’d never play for anyone else, the softness hidden behind the sarcasm, the way he was learning slowly, beautifully to let you see him. 

You were falling. Not suddenly, but steadily. Like a tide, like a drift. Not in a crash, but a surrender. You leaned your head on his shoulder, and the two of you watched the rest of the sky unfold color after color, heartbeat after heartbeat, until the final spark faded and left the stars to take back the night. Ni-ki’s hand found yours, fingers tangled like the spines of books too well-read to close properly. 

In the distance, the crowd cheered. The festival would go on for hours. But here, behind the record store, time had folded in on itself. The world felt small and infinite all at once. Just two souls, on crates, under the sky. Half-drunk on cherry soda. And the kind of love that sneaks up on you,  soft, bright, and blazing. 

Later, when you’re home you decide to go through the house, looking through the many many things your grandmother hoarded. The sea is restless today, wind tugging at the edges of the house like a child asking to play, and inside, sunlight drips through the curtains in puddles. You’re leafing through the drawer of a weathered side table in the living room, looking for a pencil or maybe nothing in particular. That’s when you find it. 

A photograph. 

Curled at the edges, dust like a fine lace veiling the surface, the picture feels delicate in your hands as if it’s aged not just in years, but in sorrow. Your fingers brush it clean, and there she is. A girl, maybe ten, barefoot on the pier. Her dress is stitched with sunlight, her hair caught mid-tangle in the wind, and her smile — oh, her smile — is the kind that only belongs to someone who hasn’t yet known heartbreak. She looks like she’s in love with the very idea of the world. Or maybe with the boy just outside the frame. You sit there, staring, struck still. 

Because it’s the same pier you’ve grown to haunt. The same wooden slats that sing under your feet when you walk them. The same stretch of ocean behind her, endless and waiting. Somehow, the years haven’t changed it. And now the photo feels like a message across time, a memory passed down not through stories but through image — a mirror between past and present. Your grandmother walks in then, quiet as always, with a book cradled to her chest and her slippers whispering against the tile. You hold up the photo like you’ve discovered a treasure, your voice soft when you ask, “Who took this?” 

She pauses. And something flickers in her eyes not surprise, exactly, but the soft ache of recollection. She sets the book down and joins you on the couch, folding her legs beneath her like a girl again. Her gaze drifts to the photo, and for a long moment, she just looks. As if she’s remembering not just the day, but the warmth of it. The scent of salt and sand. The sound of his voice. 

“Someone I never got to say goodbye to,” she finally says, and her voice carries the weight of unfinished poems and open-ended summers. You don’t ask more. You could. You could ask who he was, what he meant, why she never said goodbye. But there’s something sacred in the way she speaks, something fragile and private, like sea glass smoothed by decades. She’s not telling you the whole story, not in words. But she is telling you something. A secret in a bottle, set adrift with hope that one day, someone would find it. 

You look at her then not just the woman who grows flowers with meaning and paints porches barefoot, but the girl she once was. The one in the photo. And you realize she’s been weaving the past into your present like a thread of golden embroidery, soft, invisible, binding. She’s letting you know what she never said aloud: that love is worth it, even if it ends. That memory is a kind of farewell, even when you can’t speak one. That sometimes, the only way to hold on is to pass the story forward. 

Later that night, after she’s gone to bed, you slip the photograph into your notebook. You don’t say anything. You don’t need to. The picture folds neatly between pages of inked thoughts and half-written poems, a ghost pressed in like a petal. It stays there, a keepsake. A key. A quiet inheritance of things too full of feeling for words.

And though you don’t say it aloud, you understand. She’s trying to tell you something. Not with warnings. Not with regrets. But with a look, a story, a smile captured in sun and salt and paper. She’s trying to teach you how to love without fear. And how to let go without losing everything. 

She’s trying to tell you: This is how memory blooms. Even when the heart breaks. Even when the goodbye never comes.

The next day, you find yourself barefoot in the garden again, the soil warm beneath your feet like it remembers every step your grandmother has ever taken. The morning has broken gently, pale and lilac-toned, and there’s a softness to everything as though the sky itself is holding its breath, not wanting to disturb the quiet magic blooming among the flowers.

Your grandmother is already out there, humming something tuneless but tender, her hands buried wrist-deep in the earth. She’s planting white things today. Moonflowers with their secrets folded tight until the dusk opens them. Angel’s trumpets, hanging like delicate bells, both beautiful and a little dangerous like memories you’re not sure you’re ready to touch. “These,” she says, gesturing to the blossoms with a small, reverent nod, “are for remembering.” 

You kneel beside her, the scent of earth and petals curling into the air around you like incense. She doesn’t explain more, and you don’t press her. You just reach for the trowel, dirt crusting under your fingernails as you help her dig small homes for each stem, like you’re planting stories instead of flowers. You understand, in that wordless way you’ve come to know her, that this garden isn’t just for beauty. It’s a language. A diary written in blooms. A secret kept in root and stem and scent. And now it’s your secret too. 

In the evenings, when the sky spills into shades of orange and violet, you water the garden together. She teaches you which ones need talking to and which need silence. You learn to cradle the delicate necks of lilies, to hum to the hydrangeas when they look lonely. You learn that gardens, like people, sometimes need more light than you think, and sometimes just need someone to be near. Then one night, Ni-ki comes by. 

He arrives with that usual shuffle of his feet and a flashlight clutched like a relic. Your grandmother raises a curious brow, and he lifts the light under his chin, casting shadows across his face like a cartoon ghost. “Beware,” he intones in a voice two octaves deeper than usual. “The garden spirits are awake.” 

Your grandmother laughs at a real one, the kind that feels round and full and rare, like a pearl hidden in a shell. The moonflowers have just begun to open behind her, slow and secretive, their petals unfurling like parchment. The air smells faintly of something magical and damp night-blooming jasmine and freshly turned soil and the hush of waves beyond the dune. 

You and Ni-ki settle on the grass as your grandmother tends to her flowers, your legs brushing his occasionally, not quite on purpose. The flashlight sits between you now, casting soft golden light on your hands, on the moon-silvered dirt, on the flowers who listen more than they speak. You watch her from the corner of your eye as she moves among the plants, small, sure, slow. Her silhouette sways in and out of the night like a prayer being whispered. And every now and then, she glances back at you and Ni-ki. Not intruding. Just watching. Like she’s seeing something she’s waited her whole life to witness. 

Like maybe, she planted this moment years ago, and now, it’s blooming. Later, after she’s gone inside, Ni-ki helps you gather the watering cans, careful not to spill the leftover drops. You notice the way he looks at the flowers now not just as decorations or background, but as something alive and essential, something holy. 

“She’s cool,” he murmurs. “Your grandma.” 

“She is,” you say. And it feels bigger than the words. 

You sit for a while longer under the stars, your knees pressed close, the garden humming with the soft sounds of crickets and the ocean’s far-off lullaby. You don’t talk much, and you don’t need to. Because something is growing not just among the petals and the leaves, but inside you. Something that roots deeper every time he shows up, every time your grandmother smiles like that, every time the wind carries her laughter like a spell. This garden, this boy, this summer, it’s all becoming a chapter you never planned to write. But you’re writing it anyway, petal by petal. And deep down, you think you’ll remember it forever. 

In due time, you notice even stranger things about your grandma. Things that were more concerning then they were interesting. You start to notice the pauses. They bloom in your grandmother’s sentences like bruises on fruit, small at first, but impossible to ignore once you’ve seen them. She’ll be telling you about the best way to root foxglove or the old wives’ tale about planting basil by moonlight, and then she’ll stop. Blink like she’s trying to remember what story she meant to tell. Her hands, once so deft in the garden, tremble slightly when she pours tea. The flowers bloom just as wildly as before, but now it’s as if they’re doing it in defiance of something sprouting brighter, more desperate, as though they’re trying to shout down time itself. 

One afternoon, you catch her sitting on the porch steps, her shoulders slumped like the weight of summer has finally caught up to her. You sit beside her quietly, the wood warm beneath you, the sea humming its endless hymn just beyond the dunes. A breeze stirs the hem of her dress, and you notice how pale she’s become, how the blue of her veins shines like rivers beneath paper-thin skin. “Are you feeling okay?” you ask gently, voice barely louder than the waves. 

She smiles without looking at you. “I’m just tired, sweetheart. Don’t worry about me.” But worry curls its fingers around your ribs and holds tight. You want to believe her. You want to pretend that it’s just age, just the heat, just too many mornings spent stooped over flowerbeds. But something inside you whispers otherwise, a deeper truth that smells like wilted petals and sea fog. So you nod, because she wants you to, but your heart folds the moment away like a letter you’re too afraid to read. 

That night, Ni-ki stays over again. The two of you sit in your room, a record spinning low in the background, something melancholy and soft, a saxophone tracing circles in the air. He’s lying on your floor with his hands behind his head, staring at the ceiling like it might crack open and reveal something celestial. You’re perched by the window, looking out at the garden cloaked in moonlight, the white flowers glowing like ghosts. “She’s not okay,” you say suddenly, the words thick in your throat. “My grandma.” 

Ni-ki doesn’t move, but he listens. He always does. He’s good at letting silence have a seat at the table. “She forgets things. She’s been… slower. And I think—I think she’s hiding something from me.” 

You turn to look at him. He’s propped up on one elbow now, eyes softer than you’ve ever seen them, the kind of soft that only comes out at night, like owls or lullabies. “She told me not to worry,” you add, voice brittle, “but that just makes me worry more.” 

Ni-ki sits up slowly, crossing his legs and resting his elbows on his knees. “Sometimes people say ‘don’t worry’ because they don’t want to say goodbye yet,” he says quietly. “Or maybe because they know you’ll remember even if they don’t say the words.” You look down, heart aching in that dull, thunder-before-rain kind of way. “I just don’t want this to end. Any of it.” Outside, the garden breathes in the dark, each bloom a small lantern, each leaf a soft, whispered prayer. 

Ni-ki reaches out, brushing his pinky against yours where your hands rest between you. It’s not a kiss, not a grand gesture, but it holds more than either of you can say aloud. “Then we remember it,” he says. “We keep it. All of it.” 

You lean your head on his shoulder, and together you sit there in the hush of midnight, the record’s final notes fading like fireflies. The air is heavy with jasmine and something unsayable. You don’t know what’s coming. But you know this moment, and that it matters. Outside the window, the moonflowers nod, as if they agree.

For your next shift Ni-ki gives you the ever so daunting task of organizing the backroom of the shop. The sun is high when you find the box. Dust-streaked and nearly caving in at the corners, it sits crooked on a shelf in the cluttered back room of the record shop, wedged between forgotten promotional posters and a lopsided stack of cassette tapes. You tug it free, sending a small snowstorm of dust into the air, and crouch beside it, brushing your fingers across the lid like it’s some long-lost treasure chest. 

Inside, the box breathes with memories. Scraps of receipt paper scrawled with titles, our first dance, the song that made him cry, she kissed me right after this. There are folded letters, never mailed, the edges soft with time. A napkin with lyrics on it, smudged by what looks like coffee and tears. A ticket stub taped to a candy wrapper. Even the heartbreaks have a scent, like old perfume or the last note of a piano song, lingering, trembling, unfinished. You call Ni-ki in, your voice an echo beneath the fluorescent hum. He crouches beside you, brows lifting in surprise as he sifts through the box. 

“I didn’t even know this was here,” he says, holding up a note that simply reads: Tell her I waited. 

You don’t speak for a while. You just sit there in the quiet cathedral of forgotten feelings, both of you wrapped in the ghosts of other people’s love songs. Then, without really deciding to, you both begin writing. You find a postcard from the shop’s drawer, one with a faded illustration of Anchor–Crest’s pier and on the back, you begin your letter. You don’t write dear Ni-ki, and you don’t sign your name. But the words feel like rain loosening roots. You write about the feeling of walking barefoot on warm wood, about the first time you saw him framed by vinyl sleeves and sunlight, about how love can sneak up on you like low tide, gentle, inevitable, and full of pull. He writes too, tongue poking out in concentration, his pen scratching like a record needle over the silence. He won’t let you peek, just tucks the folded paper into an envelope and seals it with a thumbprint like wax. 

“These are for someday,” he says. “Not now.” You both dig a small hole beneath the porch behind the record shop, where the wood creaks like it’s keeping secrets. You bury the letters there, beneath a flat stone. No ceremony. No promises. Just a glance between you, wide-eyed and quiet, as if you’ve both whispered a spell. “Let’s come back in five years,” he says. 

And there’s a softness to his voice, but not the kind that swears forever. It’s a softness that knows the ocean, knows how it takes and gives in equal measure. He doesn’t say if you’ll come back together. He doesn’t have to. The ache is in the silence. Later, walking home beneath a sky full of melting light, you think of Seoul. 

Of its towering buildings, its bus-strewn chaos, its neon buzz. You think of your apartment window that doesn’t open all the way, of the way people brush past you on sidewalks like wind. Anchor–Crest is not forever. It was never meant to be. It is a pocket of sunlight in a drawer of rainy days. And your time here ticks forward now, louder than it did before. 

You try not to count the weeks left. You try not to picture packing up your life into boxes again. But the truth sits in your stomach like an untied ribbon. You are leaving. Eventually. The shop, the porch, the chalk sea star. Your grandmother. Him. 

And there are still so many letters unwritten. Still so many songs that haven’t reached their final chorus. But for now, you let yourself linger in the feeling. The one where you’re young and held by a town that feels stitched together by sea-salt and happenstance. The one where you bury love in the dirt and believe, even for a second, that five years is a promise time might actually keep. 

The week spills forward like syrup, slow, golden, clinging to every breath of summer left. You spend most days with Ni-ki, moving in and out of the record shop like it’s a second skin. He’s still a little awkward, all long limbs and mumbled thoughts, but he’s grown into the spaces between your silences. You know the way he hums when he's sorting jazz records, the way he taps his fingers against the counter when he's thinking, the way he always buys two sodas but only ever drinks one.

Ni-ki makes playlists like other people make to-do lists — tiny, specific, chaotic. For mornings with rain and toast. For when the light hits the counter just right. For crying, but romantically. You love them all. They’re tucked into his computer like little offerings, each with a title that reads like a whisper only the sea would understand. One afternoon, the shop is quiet, no customers, just the sleepy spin of the ceiling fan and the sun dusting across the floor like spilled milk. Ni-ki runs out to grab something from the corner store, and you’re left alone with the soft glow of his world. 

You wander to the computer, looking for a playlist to fill the silence. You’re not snooping, not really just following the trail of titles like breadcrumbs through a strange, beautiful forest. That’s when you see it. A folder named with your name. Just your name. Nothing else. The breath catches in your chest like it hit a tripwire. You click it before you can talk yourself out of it. Just one playlist inside. No title. No description. You press play.

The first song is soft, barely there, like something found floating in a bottle at sea. It’s not loud or dramatic, not the kind of love song that begs or screams. It’s the kind that waits. That watches. That understands. It sounds like dusk and waiting hands and things unsaid. You sink into the chair, the quiet pressing in around you, every note curling like fingers around your ribs. And then another. And another. A piano tune that reminds you of your grandmother’s humming. A song with lyrics about leaving but hoping to be remembered. One with no lyrics at all, just violins trembling like heartbeats under glass.

By the time Ni-ki walks back into the room, you don’t even notice. Not until he’s standing behind you, quiet as the space between chords, does he see what’s on the screen. See you. Doesn’t move to shut it down. “I didn’t mean for you to find it yet,” he says, his voice low, barely brushing the air. You turn to him, startled, a little breathless.

“But I guess I wanted you to, eventually.” He looks down, like he’s embarrassed by the rawness of it. But there’s something steady in him too like he’s decided not to hide anymore. His hand twitches at his side, unsure. You want to reach for it. You want to press your forehead to his and say nothing and everything at once. Instead, you just smile, the corners of your lips catching like the edge of a secret.

“Thank you,” you say. Simple. True. Ni-ki shrugs, but you catch the soft pink creeping into his ears. “It’s... just stuff that made me think of you. Or reminded me of the way you look at things.” You don’t ask what that means, exactly. You don’t need to. The music still plays in the background, gentle as sea glass against the tide. You stand there together, not speaking. Just listening. Like the songs are doing the talking for you. Like they’re tracing outlines around what neither of you knows quite how to say.

You’re falling in love. That much is clear now. But it’s not the kind of falling that feels like tumbling, it's slower, softer. Like leaning. Like growing. Like sunlight creeping up a garden wall. And somehow, it feels safer to fall into his songs first, where feelings can bloom behind lyrics and hide inside metaphors. Where everything you can’t say yet lives in the space between verses.

That night when you’re home You’re curled on the sun-bleached window seat in your bedroom, the hush of late night wrapping around you like a linen blanket. The light is syrupy, slanting in through gauzy curtains, and the room smells faintly of ocean salt and garden soil. Outside, the sea is quiet for once, a sheet of silver velvet instead of its usual restless thrashing. You’re scrolling through your phone, fingertips slow as though afraid of disturbing the images. 

There’s Ni-ki asleep in the breakroom, mouth slightly open, limbs askew like a collapsed scarecrow. There’s a blurry picture of the cat from the shop curled up beside a stack of jazz records, a paw draped over Miles Davis like it’s protecting something sacred. You and Ni-ki, holding up vinyl covers in front of your faces, Fleetwood Mac for you, The Cure for him posing like ghosts inside old album dreams. There’s the pier, all orange burn and watercolor clouds, and the beach the morning after the storm when everything looked dipped in silver. There’s a picture of your hand and his, side by side, resting on a crate of soul records. Not touching, not quite. But close enough. 

You don’t even feel it at first, the tears slipping loose. Just a tightness in your throat, a soft pressure behind your eyes like the weather's changing. And then it spills. Quietly. No gasping sobs. Just a silent, steady leak of feeling, like your chest couldn’t hold the tide anymore. You try to wipe at your cheeks with the sleeve of your shirt, but your vision stays blurry, your breath uneven. You don’t hear your grandmother until she’s already there, a shadow in the doorway, framed by soft light. She says nothing for a moment, only steps into the room and sits beside you on the window seat, her knees creaking like the old wooden floorboards. 

She hands you a tissue from her pocket, always prepared, like grandmothers are, and waits. You’re still crying when you turn to her, voice watery and unsure, but honest. “I think I’m falling in love with him,” you say. It’s the first time you’ve said it out loud. The words feel too big for your mouth, too raw, like they might catch on your teeth.

She doesn’t react with surprise. Just watches the sea through the window like it might offer an answer. “And you’re not staying,” she says, more a statement than a question. You nod, your voice barely a whisper. “I wasn’t supposed to stay. It was never supposed to be like this.”

She hums a soft sound, part sigh, part knowing. Like she’s heard this story before in the rustle of waves and the creak of porch swings. “I loved a boy here once,” she says, her voice light and low. “Before your grandfather, He Played guitar barefoot on the pier. Gave me a daisy every Sunday after church even though I stopped going.” You blink at her, surprised. 

“I never got to say goodbye to him,” she continues, Like she said before. her gaze far off now. “But I remember the way he laughed. The way he carved our initials into a driftwood post that probably doesn’t even exist anymore.” She looks at you then, her eyes a little tired, but warm like candlelight. “Love doesn’t always come when it’s convenient,” she says. “But it comes all the same. And when it does, you let it in. Even if you know it’s not staying. Even if it hurts.”

You let out a soft breath, leaning your head on her shoulder, feeling the steady rhythm of her presence. Outside, the wind picks up again, and the sea seems to lean in, listening. “You’re young,” she murmurs. “And you’ll leave. Maybe you’ll come back. Maybe you won’t. But what you feel now? That’s yours. No one gets to take it away from you.” You sit there together, letting her words settle like dust in the golden light.

Later, she gives you a cup of tea and tells you which flowers in the garden mean “hope” and which ones mean “goodbye.” And when you finally go to bed, the sky is stained with stars, and your phone rests heavy on the nightstand filled with memories you’re not ready to let go of, not yet. You fall asleep wondering what Ni-ki’s doing, if he’s listening to music, if he’s thinking of you. You are in love. And the tide is coming in. 

The record skips. It’s one of those old pressings Ni-ki found buried behind the counter, the cover sun-faded and warped with time. You teased him when he put it on, called it prehistoric, called it haunted. He clutched his chest dramatically and staggered back like you’d struck a mortal blow. Now the needle stutters again and again in the same three seconds of melody, a loop of velvet sound unraveling in the half-light of the shop. You laugh, throwing your head back as the music hiccups between notes, and Ni-ki watches you like he’s trying to memorize the way your joy looks. You tease him again about the dinosaurs dancing to this record in their day and he rolls his eyes and grabs your hand, pulling you into the open space between jazz and rock. 

“C’mon,” he says. “Show some respect to the classics.” 

So you dance. Not gracefully — god, not even close. You’re both barefoot, sock-footed, floor-sliding disasters. But your laughter rises like smoke in the golden dust of the room, and the shop feels like a dream someone once had about what love should feel like. The string lights hum above you. The air smells like warm wood and vinyl and strawberry gum. Your heartbeat is a tambourine, loud and messy, and the world shrinks down to the space between your palms. 

Ni-ki spins you — badly, crookedly — and you trip into his chest, laughing into the fabric of his shirt. You can feel his breath against your temple, uneven. And then he stops. Not in a grand, dramatic way. Just… stops. Like someone hit pause. The room keeps breathing around you light flickering, music skipping, the cat knocking something over in the back but he’s still, and when you look up, his face is unreadable.

“What?” you ask, quiet, breath still catching in your throat. His eyes flicker over your face, soft and sure and full of something heavy. Something that feels like oceans, like root systems, like the sound of a song you haven’t heard in years but still somehow remember.

“I love you,” he says. Just like that. No crescendo, no string section, no poetic build. Just the words, like they’ve been waiting for this exact crack in the melody to tumble out of him. The record keeps skipping. Your heart doesn’t. You freeze halfway through a breath, halfway through a life you weren’t expecting to build here in this sleepy town with its sand-dollar skies and salt-tongued wind. You blink. Your throat feels like it’s full of sun. You’re not sure when the laughter left, when it turned into something else, quieter, heavier, sweeter.

“I—” you start, then stop. Because there’s no poetry that can carry it, no metaphor wide enough to hold what you feel for him. So you do the only thing that makes sense in that moment: you say it back. “I love you.” Simple. Soft. Like the tide rolling in. Like garden roots twining under earth. Like the first light of morning spilling over the horizon, sure as anything.

His mouth curls into that shy smile, the one that only ever shows up when he’s caught off guard, when he’s trying not to look too proud. And he leans his forehead against yours, just breathing, the record still spinning in its loop beside you. You close your eyes. Outside, Anchor–Crest glows in the last stretch of summer. The sea is humming something low and endless. The sky is cracked open with stars you’ll never name, and your heart is a constellation, rearranged. Here, in the hum of old vinyl and new love, you both stand still in time. A little broken, a little breathless. But whole, in a way neither of you expected. Love didn’t knock on the door this time. It slipped in through the cracks. And now, it lives here too.

That night, the air was velvet with warmth, stitched through with the quiet hum of late summer. Even the stars felt closer, like they'd leaned in to listen to your joy. You walked home with your heart wrapped in golden thread, still light from the weight of Ni-ki’s words the way he’d said them so plainly, so gently, like he was handing you a seashell and not the whole universe. "I love you." You said it back, like a vow. Like a secret you’d been waiting to remember. The night had a heartbeat to it, rhythmic and slow, like the tide curling back from the shore. You felt it in your veins, that gentle ebb of something new beginning. Your feet barely touched the ground, soles kissed by memory and moonlight, the scent of salt lingering on your skin like a promise. 

You pushed open the door to the beach house still glowing from the inside out, a smile soft and blooming on your face and then everything broke. 

She was on the floor.

Your grandmother.

Crumbled like a fallen flower, like someone had picked her soul and forgotten to press it in the pages of time. You didn't scream. Not at first. It was as if the world went silent, sound sucked into some black hole just behind your ears. The air turned cold. You dropped your keys. They made a sound like thunder, and suddenly, your lungs remembered how to panic. You ran to her — fell to her — and called her name over and over like it was a spell that could undo the unraveling. She didn’t answer. 

The ambulance came with sirens that howled like the sea in winter. Your hands were sticky with worry, your voice cracking like broken records as you tried to explain what had happened, except you didn’t know. You didn’t know how long she had been there. You didn’t know if she was in pain. You didn’t know why the world could be so full of love and grief in the same breath. The hospital smelled like disinfectant and lost hope. The walls were too white, too still, like they were waiting to echo something terrible. Nurses moved like shadows, soft-footed and swift, and no one looked you in the eye. You sat in a plastic chair that didn’t know you, gripping your phone like a life raft. You didn’t call Ni-ki. You couldn’t. The words were too big to say out loud. 

A doctor with kind eyes came to you. You already knew. His mouth was still moving, but the ocean inside you had risen too high. All you heard was water. All you saw was the garden — the moonflowers blooming like ghosts, the crooked heart near the step, the sea star drawn in chalk. She was gone. 

No fanfare. No lightning strike. Just… gone. The same woman who told stories with her hands and grew meaning from soil. The woman who painted porches and loved thunderstorms and believed in the language of flowers. The woman who once ran barefoot across this very shore, laughing into the wind, now just a stillness you couldn’t reach. 

Your mother arrives at the hospital in a swirl of too-late urgency, her coat hanging off one shoulder, her eyes rimmed with the kind of red that only grief or airports can give. The moment she sees you curled in a waiting room chair like a child who outgrew their lullabies something shifts in her. She doesn’t ask questions, just sits beside you in that sterile, humming quiet, and takes your hand like she’s trying to rewind time. You don’t look at her right away. You’re staring at a wall of brochures for grief counseling and end-of-life care, sterile pamphlets with soft blue skies and paper-thin smiles. None of them know your grandmother. None of them say what to do with the ache that’s bloomed inside your chest like a bruise that remembers. 

“I haven’t told Ni-ki,” you whisper, your voice a wisp of breath lost in the fluorescent hum. “I couldn’t. I—I didn’t want it to be real yet.” Your mother nods, quiet. She waits. She’s learned by now that the heavy things come out not in sobs, but in slow-dripping truths, like honey off the edge of a spoon. 

You swallow hard. “This summer... it was supposed to be temporary. Just a stopover. A break. But it turned into everything.” You pause, the words catching on the swell in your throat. “I fell in love. And not just with him.” Your mother turns her head to look at you, her expression gentle, waiting. 

“I got to know her,” you say. “Like... really know her. Not just the letters she sent on my birthdays or the way she smelled faintly like mint tea when we hugged. I mean the heart of her. The garden of her. I watched her coax meaning out of moonflowers and paint stories into the wood of the porch. She told me about her first love and ghost ships and the wind and what it meant to stay. And I saw her — really saw her — as the most magnificent woman I’ve ever known.” Your voice falters, not from lack of feeling, but from too much of it. Like your chest isn’t wide enough to hold the hurricane inside. 

“I wish I’d known her my whole life. I wish I hadn’t waited until now.” You wipe at your face with the sleeve of your sweater, a small, shaking gesture. “And now that I do know her... now that I love her like this... she’s gone. And I’ll never get those years back. I’ll never get to give them to her.” Your mother pulls your hand into her lap, and for a long while neither of you speaks. The silence is softer now, a blanket instead of a wall. She doesn't offer empty comforts. Doesn't say "she's still with us" or "everything happens for a reason." Maybe she knows those are just sugar on a wound. 

Instead, she says, quietly, “Your grandmother always said you reminded her of the sea. Not because you were wild, but because you were full of mystery. She said you’d come to her when you were ready.” You close your eyes. You can almost hear your grandmother’s laugh again, warm and round like a bell swaying in the breeze. You remember her eyes, how they crinkled when she smiled, how they softened when she looked at you in the garden, in the porch light, in the little moments that had begun to feel like home.

“She was waiting for me,” you murmur.

“She was,” your mother agrees.

You lean your head against the window, watching the first light of morning break across the sky. Pale and slow and inevitable. And with it comes the ache, deep and hollow, like the hush after fireworks, like the space between the waves. You know the grief won’t go away. Not really. It’ll settle into the folds of your life, soft and sharp, tender and terrible. But so will the love. So will the memory of her hands in the soil, her voice weaving stories into dusk, the crooked heart and the sea star and every single moonflower. You close your eyes and see her not as she was in that sterile hospital room, but barefoot on the pier, smiling like she was in love. And you carry her with you. Just like she knew you would. 

The next day rises slow and reluctant, as if the sky itself mourns with you, its color the pale gray of unsent letters and unopened boxes. The air hangs heavy with quiet, the kind of hush that settles over houses in mourning, where even the walls seem to breathe softer, out of respect for the memories folded into their corners. You and your mother work in near silence, the occasional scrape of a drawer or the rustle of paper the only sounds that dare break the stillness. 

You're in your grandmother’s room — no, her sanctuary. Every object a relic, every fabric still scented faintly of lavender and time. Her closet creaks open like it’s exhaling a lifetime. You fold each sweater like it’s sacred. Your mother dusts the porcelain figurines on the windowsill with a reverence that almost breaks you. There's an old music box that still plays a broken lullaby, and you let it play anyway, let it warble its way into the silence, because somehow it feels right.

Then there’s a knock. Soft, like he already knows not to come in loud. Ni-ki stands on the porch with his hands tucked in his jacket pockets, hair tousled, eyes tentative. There’s something about him in this moment that makes your throat tighten — a boy made of quiet compass points, showing up not with answers, but simply to stand at the edge of your ache. He doesn’t ask for permission to care. He just does. “Hey,” he says gently, eyes flicking from you to the open boxes stacked beside the door. 

“Hey,” you reply, voice a thin ribbon barely tied. 

“I… wasn’t sure if I should come,” he admits, his words trailing like seafoam at your feet. “But I figured maybe you’d need help. Or company. Or neither. I didn’t want to assume.” You shake your head. “We’ve got it. Thank you, though.” 

He nods, not offended, just accepting. He glances over your shoulder, where your mother moves about like a woman deep inside her own memories. Then his eyes land back on yours, soft and unreadable. “I’m here,” he says simply. “Just so you know. For whatever you need. Whenever you want.”

And even though you won’t ask him to stay, even though your hands are already full of the past, you lean in. You kiss him. Just a brush at first like your lips are remembering how—but then firmer, more certain. He still tastes like strawberry soda and the sound of old records. His hand finds yours like it always does, like it never left.

You pull back before the kiss turns into something bigger than either of you are ready for. “Thank you,” you whisper. And it means more than gratitude. It means I see you. It means I don’t know how to hold all this grief, but I know you’ll hold me if I ask. It means stay, even if I’ve asked you not to.

He nods again, slower this time, but his eyes linger. He senses it, how you're a little farther away than before, how there’s something behind your eyes that you haven’t named yet. Not quite a wall, but a curtain half-drawn. You can see it in the way his mouth opens like he wants to ask, then shuts again, letting the quiet settle. He doesn’t press. He just squeezes your hand one last time, then turns and leaves with a slow, uncertain step, like he’s afraid to break the air around him.

The door clicks softly behind him. You’re alone again, except for the smell of old cedar and rosewater and the echo of everything she ever said to you in the garden. And still, you pack. You hold a scarf up to your face and breathe her in, as if doing so will keep her a little longer. And you begin to realize that grief is just love stretched too far to touch. But still reaching. Always, always reaching.

Two weeks pass like fog rolling in over the tide, slow, thick, and strangely silent. Anchor–Crest has grown quieter without her in it. The house feels emptier, not just in the way that missing a voice makes a space feel larger, but in the way that time itself seems to avoid the rooms she once warmed. You move through the days like someone walking underwater, each step slow, each breath thick with what’s left unsaid.

Your phone buzzes here and there, little flickers of Ni-ki checking in. A “how are you?” on a Tuesday morning. A blurry photo of a cat wearing sunglasses taped to the shop register. A song link sent with no caption. You respond, always, but only just enough. A thumbs-up. A heart. A two-word answer when three would’ve meant more. You miss him. But grief is a strange ghost it doesn’t like company, and it doesn’t like to be shared. You keep it close, like a stone in your pocket. Heavy. Private.

You haven’t gone back to the shop. You told him you needed time, and he didn’t ask how much. That’s the thing about Ni-ki, he gives you space, even when it probably hurts him to.

Most days you sit in the garden, tending the white flowers she planted with her hands and her stories. Moonflowers, angel’s trumpet, pale blooms that catch the dusk and make the lawn look like it's glowing from within. You water them carefully, whispering things into the soil as though she might still be listening. You catch yourself talking to her aloud sometimes. "I don't know what I'm doing," you tell the wind, and it rustles the petals in reply. "I don’t know how to say goodbye to all of this."

Sometimes your mom joins you. Sometimes she doesn’t. The suitcases are back in your room now, open-mouthed and waiting. You’ve started folding clothes into them but keep pulling them back out again, as if something in you refuses to be packed away yet.

You think of Ni-ki all the time. Not in loud, desperate ways. But in small ones. The way your hand itches to text him when you hear a weird song on the radio. The way you half-turn expecting to see him when you pass the record shop. The way you walk past the porch and feel the tug of those letters buried in the dirt. You haven’t dug them up. Not yet.

One evening, just before the sun falls behind the hills, you sit alone on the porch with a cup of tea gone cold. The air smells like salt and something softer—like honeysuckle and memory. You open your phone, scroll through photos. There he is. Asleep in the break room, hair all over the place. Holding up a record like it’s a mask. Laughing, mid-sentence, eyes crinkled like a boy who’s never known heartbreak.

And suddenly you’re crying again.

Because you love him. Because you don’t know what to do with that. Because you want to stay, and you can’t. Because you stayed too long in the garden and now you don’t know how to walk away from anything.

The grief doesn’t come in waves anymore—it’s more like weather. Always there. Sometimes soft, sometimes storming. But always, always in the air. And love, somehow, is tangled up in it. In her. In him. In this whole town that you only just started to know. You press your forehead to your knees and breathe. Then, through your tears, you whisper into the dusk like you’re writing it in the stars:

“I don’t want to leave.” But you will. You know you will. And when you do, you’ll leave pieces of yourself here like breadcrumbs. Ni-ki. The porch. The ghost of her laugh in the kitchen. The sea, always just outside the door. And the flowers. The flowers that still bloom, even when no one is watching.

The day of the funeral arrives wrapped in an overcast sky, the kind that presses low over your shoulders and makes everything feel heavier, even your bones. People come and go like shadows, brushing your hand, murmuring soft things that dissolve before they ever reach your ears. You smile politely. You nod. But you’re not really there. You’re somewhere deep inside yourself, tucked into a memory of her humming in the garden, of her hands brushing soil, of the scent of jasmine and salt water.

You wear the dress she bought you last spring the one she said made you look like a poem. You can’t remember the last time you ate. Or slept. You stand at the front of the small chapel, and your mother speaks with a voice made of tissue paper and strength. You try to speak too. But when you look out into the sea of solemn faces, your throat closes. You only manage her name. Just her name. And somehow, that’s everything.

Ni-ki is there, just as he promised, in the second row. Black shirt, solemn eyes, hair curled slightly at the ends from the humidity. He doesn’t take his eyes off you. Not once. He doesn’t say much — not yet — but he stays near, orbiting quietly like a moon. Afterward, when the service fades into hushed conversations and half-finished casseroles in aluminum trays, you and Ni-ki slip away. The backyard feels like a different world. The tide is low, the wind soft, the horizon painted in pale grays and creams. You sit on the old blanket she always kept on the porch swing, now dusted with sand. He sits beside you. For a long time, neither of you speaks.

The silence stretches out like a bridge between you. And then, gently, like someone testing the strength of old wood, Ni-ki says, “What happens now?” You don’t answer at first. You just watch the water folding over itself in lazy spirals. Then you whisper, “I’m leaving in three days.” He flinches — not visibly, not really — but you feel it. Like a thread pulled too tight.

He nods. “Right. Of course.”

“I don’t want to,” you add. But it comes out too soft, too late. He looks down at his hands, now buried in the sand. “Then don’t.” You turn to him, your voice frayed at the edges. “It’s not that simple.”

“Why not?” His tone isn’t angry, not exactly. But it’s desperate. There’s something wild and wounded behind his eyes, like he’s already bracing for the loss. “You said you loved me.”

“I do.”

“Then stay.”

The wind picks up. A gull cries overhead, cutting across the moment like a jagged line of chalk.

“I can’t,” you whisper. “I have a life in Seoul. School. My mom. I can’t just throw that away.”

“And this?” He gestures toward you, toward the blanket, the sand, the sea. “What is this?”

You feel your voice crack, a fault line splitting down the center of your chest. “This is love. But is love enough, Ni-ki?” He stares at you like you’ve struck him. “It should be.”

You bite your lip, trying to swallow the rising tide inside you. “Love isn’t a place. It’s not a house you can live in forever. Sometimes it’s just a moment… a season… a song. And then it ends.” He stands. Not abruptly, not angrily. But with the aching finality of someone walking out of a dream. “So that’s it?”

“I don’t want it to be.”

“But it is.”

You nod.

And that’s when he says the words that split the night in two: “Then I guess goodbye is all we have left.”

He turns and walks away, his footprints pressed into the wet sand like an unfinished story. You don’t stop him. You can’t. Your legs won’t move, and your heart — oh, your heart —i s a cathedral crumbling brick by brick. You sit there for a long time, long after the light fades from the sky and the stars blink open above you. You cry, quietly at first, and then louder. You cry like you’re emptying the ocean. You cry until the sand beneath you is wet and cold and the blanket smells like sea and grief and everything you’ve lost in one summer. You loved him. And it wasn’t enough. And maybe, just maybe, that will always be the hardest truth to carry. 

The day you leave Anchor–Crest, the morning air smells like salt and rain-soaked earth, and the sea is still singing its slow, eternal lullaby to the shore. The house is quieter than it’s ever been too quiet, like it’s holding its breath. Your mother is already packing the last suitcase into the car, her movements careful, subdued. You wander the garden one last time, barefoot in dew-damp grass, letting your fingertips graze petals like they’re goodbyes written in bloom.

That’s when you notice the stone small, flat, painted a pale lavender and nestled beside the angel’s trumpets. It looks like it doesn’t belong. But then again, so many of the most important things in your life didn’t, not at first. You kneel, brush away the soil, and find a bundle beneath it. Letters. Six of them. Folded carefully, tied with a ribbon that smells faintly of rose and time.

They are from her. Your grandmother. Your heart stutters. The first begins simply: "If you're reading this, it means I’ve already gone."You sit cross-legged in the grass as the sky begins to clear. Sunlight slants through the clouds like it’s searching for you. You open the letters one by one. She wrote about the day you were born how your mother called in the middle of the night, crying and breathless and in love. She wrote about the day you first stepped into Anchor–Crest with your guarded eyes and city-stitched edges, how she’d known, even then, that you needed a summer to soften. She wrote about your laugh how it sounded like hers used to. She wrote about Ni-ki, though never by name. “That boy who looks at you like he’s already writing a song about you,” she said. And she wrote about the garden. How every flower held a secret, and every secret led back to someone she’d loved.

The last letter is the smallest. Just one line, barely inked. "If you come back in the spring, I’ll still be here—in every bloom." You press the letters to your chest and close your eyes, letting the ache spread slow and sweet, like honey melting in tea. Her love, once distant and mysterious, now roots deep inside you an anchor you never expected to carry. It grows alongside the grief, and somehow, makes space for it.

Ni-ki doesn’t come by to say goodbye. You didn’t expect him to. Some stories don’t end with grand gestures or kisses at the train station. Some endings are quieter — softer — like the hush after a song fades out, leaving only the echo behind. As you get in the car, the wind lifts through the trees and sets the garden to whispering. The angel’s trumpets nod, the moonflowers still curled in their slumber. You turn in your seat and look back at the porch — the crooked heart painted near the step, the tiny sea star still drawn beside it in fading chalk. The sun rises higher, and for a moment, the whole town seems caught in amber. Like it’s waiting.

You think about the letter you buried with Ni-ki beneath the record shop porch. You think about the roll of undeveloped film tied with ribbon, still tucked in your bag. You think about what it means to leave, and what it means to come back. About how sometimes, they’re the same thing. Your mother starts the car. Gravel shifts beneath the tires. You look out the window, past the houses and salt-washed signs, past the place where the sea meets sky and dares you to choose.

Maybe you’ll come back in the spring. Maybe you won’t. The story doesn’t say. And that, somehow, makes it feel more like life.The garden keeps growing. The sea keeps singing. And the ending stays open, just like your heart. 

(★) @izzyy-stuff , @beomiracles , @dawngyu , @hyukascampfire , @saejinniestar , @notevenheretbh1 , @hwanghyunjinismybae, @ch4c0nnenh4, @kristynaaah , @simj4k3 , @sangiewife , @hyunj00 , @firstclassjaylee , @teddybeartaetae , @i-am-not-dal , @xylatox

[deansbeer]

★ soup, snuggles, and mr. wiggles // beau arlen.

synopsis. you're sick during a visit to montana, but your dad, comes to the rescue with chicken star soup, snacks, and your old childhood stuffed bear, reminding you that you're never too old to be cared for.

warning(s). fluffy fluff fluff | older daughter!reader | caregiving dad beau | mild illness (stomach bug) | nausea | fatigue | father-daughter bonding | nostalgia | childhood memories (beloved stuffed bear & favorite soup).

kari yaps. i love my pretty cowboy sheriff sososo much && literally don't have anything written for him + this idea was perfect for beau, because one im an older sister / daughter myself & two my brain was wired up @ 2am ???? n i took that opportunity to write. but i only got halfway & BARELY got to finishing it 2day.

you knew it was a bad idea the second you bit into the chicken sandwich. something about it tasted... off, but you hadn't eaten at all during your flight from houston to montana, and your stomach didn't give you much of a choice. by the time you arrived at the airbnb you rented, you were already feeling the first signs of regret—your stomach twisting uncomfortably, your body heavy with fatigue. you chalked it up to exhaustion from the drive, but when you woke up the next morning, nausea hit you like a freight train.

you'd planned today for weeks—just you and your dad, a father-daughter day he'd been talking about nonstop since you told him you were visiting. he'd even promised emily she'd get her turn after you left because, as he put it, "this one's special. just me and my girl." and now, lying on the couch of your airbnb, wrapped in a blanket, you felt guilt gnawing at you because there was no way you could keep those plans. your stomach rolled again, and you groaned, reaching for your phone to call him.

"hey, sweetheart," he answered on the first ring, his voice bright with excitement. "you ready for me to pick you up? i've got the whole day mapped out—breakfast, a little fishing, and maybe we can stop by that trail you liked last time."

you winced, both at the enthusiasm in his voice and the wave of nausea that hit you. "uh, about that…"

he instantly picked up on your tone. "what's wrong?"

"nothing," you said quickly, even though your voice was weak. "i just… i don't think i can make it today. i'm not feeling great."

"not feeling great how?" his voice lost its lightness, replaced by concern.

"it's nothing, dad. probably just something i ate. i just need to rest, that's all."

there was a pause, and you could practically hear the wheels turning in his head. "where are you staying again? that little airbnb by the creek?"

"dad, no, you don't have to—"

"i'll be there in twenty," he said firmly, already moving. "and don't even think about arguing with me."

you sighed, knowing there was no point in trying to stop him. "fine. okay, dad."

"what kind of dad would i be if i didn’t take care of my girl when she's sick?" he said, his voice softening. "sit tight, sweetheart. i'll be there soon."

true to his word, twenty minutes later, you heard the familiar rumble of his car pulling into the driveway. you managed to shuffle to the door, opening it just as he walked up, two large grocery bags in his hands and a determined look on his face.

"you look terrible," he said bluntly, though the warmth in his eyes softened the blow. "not that you're not still the prettiest thing i've ever seen."

"thanks, dad," you muttered, stepping aside to let him in. "just what every girl wants to hear."

he set the bags on the counter and turned to you, his hands on his hips. "all right, let's see what we've got here. crackers, ginger ale, that soup you used to love when you were little—chicken and stars, remember that?—and some popsicles, because you'd always ask for those when you were sick. oh, and a heating pad, in case you've got chills."

you felt a lump rise in your throat as you watched him unpack everything, his movements quick and efficient. he was always like this when you were a kid—hands-on, attentive, making sure you had everything you needed even when life got chaotic. and now, standing in your little airbnb kitchen, he looked just the same, though his beard was a little grayer and the lines around his eyes a little deeper.

"dad, you didn't have to do all this," you said, your voice thick with emotion.

he glanced at you, his expression softening. "yeah, i did. you're my kid, darlin'. it doesn't matter if you're five or twenty-five, i'm always gonna take care of you."

you blinked rapidly, willing the tears not to fall. "i suppose you're right."

he gave you a small smile before turning back to the bags. "and because i know you're gonna get crabby—don't deny it, you've always been a little bear when you're under the weather—I brought backup.” he pulled out a small stuffed bear, its brown fur worn and familiar. "found this guy in one of the storage boxes last week and figured you might need him."

you let out a surprised laugh, reaching for the bear. "oh my god, is this… is this mr. wiggles?"

"the one and only," he said, grinning. "thought he'd been retired, but desperate times call for desperate measures."

you hugged the bear to your chest, shaking your head. "you're ridiculous."

"and you love me for it," he said, nudging your shoulder gently. "now, go lie down. i'll heat up the soup and put on a movie."

you didn't argue, too tired and too grateful to protest. you curled up on the couch again, the blanket pulled snug around you and mr. wiggles tucked under your arm. a few minutes later, your dad appeared with a tray—soup, crackers, and a glass of ginger ale—and set it on the coffee table in front of you.

"all right, what's it gonna be?" he asked, grabbing the remote. "something funny? or one of those sappy movies you always make me watch?"

you smiled faintly. "sappy. but you're not allowed to complain."

"wouldn't dream of it," he said, settling into the recliner next to you. "though if i start crying, you're not allowed to tell anyone."

"deal," you said, your smile widening.

as the movie played, you found yourself relaxing for the first time all day. your dad stayed by your side, occasionally cracking jokes or making comments about the characters, his presence a constant comfort. and even though you felt awful, you couldn't help but feel a little better knowing he was there.

"thanks for coming, dad," you said softly as the credits rolled.

he reached over, brushing a strand of hair out of your face. "always, sweetheart. you're stuck with your old man, whether you like it or not."

and in that moment, with the warmth of the blanket, the faint taste of ginger ale on your tongue, and your dad sitting nearby, you realized there was no place you’d rather be.

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